Softy Southerner meets Northern Aerobics, and expires.

I know they’re made of sterner stuff up north, but their aerobics instructors are a truly fearsome breed. It’s not like I’m new to the peculiar world of aerobics – I’ve spent many an hour prancing about to ’80s remixes and catching my sweaty “mad woman of the woods” reflection in the wall mirror (the public can think themselves lucky I don’t often jog outdoors).

I’ve grown accustomed to the wrath of instructors as I trip over my own knee caps when attempting to grape vine and bring down the other women like a stack of lycra-clad dominoes. I’ve long believed that I burn more calories in a class by having a fit of hysterics at the back than by following any of the steps. I’ve met instructors in many shapes and in various stages of neurosis, from the merely highly strung to the one who stopped the music mid way through, divided the class into under 25s and over 25s, and made us perform a series of ‘tough man’ challenges until the over 25s won and one girl had a bloody nose.

What I had not yet encountered was the peculiar Mancunian mixture of bitter mockery and sincere threat that seems to hold sway over Northern fitness. Perhaps it would make sense if I’d ventured into ‘kick ass judo for the burly and vengeful’, but all I’ve attended so far is body balance and yoga!

Body balance, despite mostly consisting of movements reminiscent of a kitten encountering a piece of lint, was enforced without mercy. The class was guided by a rotund woman with a voice capable of giving a regiment of the French Foreign Legion an attack of the jelly legs. Woe betide anyone who chased their imaginary lint in the wrong direction; if tasers were allowed in gyms, hers would be the first name on the order form.

Dear reader, I write in a state of difficulty, having heaved my mangled body away from this evening’s encounter with Mancunian yoga. After two hours of careful teasing, I’ve managed to remove my toe from my left ear, and the stabbing pains in most of my body are beginning to subside.

Part of the reason I’m in this state is sheer panic; when a man threatens to sit on you if you don’t straighten your back while sticking your neck between your legs, you straighten your back and to hell with the vertebrae! I’d never before associated yoga so much with the word pain, but as he guided us through each pose, laughing callously as joints snapped and tendons juddered, he informed us that we’d know when we got it right when the pain kicked in. Never before have I aimed to acquire a burning sensation in my spine. I do not intend to do it again.

Fi