Get off the sofa and become an ‘exerciser’
Old friends get you doing the strangest things and so it was that, after a fish supper in a beachside café in West Wittering between lockdowns, I found myself catching one friend as she fell off the other friend’s stationary training bike in her spare bedroom. The falling friend is a ceramicist and, like me, does not identify as an exerciser. When the pedals started going faster than her legs, she screeched, her eyes widened, and then she toppled sideways.
“Exerciser”, I should add, is a term I’ve coined myself. It describes what I am not and, in order to see off things I don’t want in my life (pandemic-induced anxiety, panic about finishing my new book), what I am now trying to become. An exerciser.