FBD4

The Fat Bloke Diaries

Episode Four – The Rhythm Method

It’s about time we talked about my exercise routine. That still sounds strange; me, a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool fat bloke actually having an exercise routine. But have one I do, and it goes like this.

On two of the five weeknights I get home from the office at around five pm, have an early meal, do some more writing at home and then change into some shorts and a t-shirt that I wouldn’t normally be seen dead in (my favourite shirt of the moment says ‘Legend in the Making’). Then it’s forty minutes or so on the bike before a long relaxing bath. On Saturdays and Sundays I attempt to push myself, seeing just how far I can ride each day. When the spots before my eyes get so bad that I can no longer see, I know it’s time to dismount, if I haven’t fallen off already – something that’s happened more than once.

But I’m not alone on this voyage round my dining room. Accompanying me are the musical heroes of my formative years, the soundtrack of my life travelling in MP3 format. 1,200 songs on shuffle mode. Each cycling session is a random journey into my musical history, like listening to my own personal radio station. If I close my eyes – which I usually do as I can’t see much without my glasses, and I don’t like having to clean the dried rivers of perspiration from them – then I’m sometimes transported back to the seventies and eighties of my youth . As anyone who has made it to middle age will tell you, these were times when the songs were better, the summers longer and I hadn’t a care in the world, except for wondering which actor would become the next Doctor Who.

Back then I certainly wouldn’t have found myself in a darkened dining room with my eyes tight shut trying to reclaim my youth by pedalling the pounds away. I'm aware that it’s only ever going to be a partial success at best, but at least the music is still great.

Much to my surprise I find that my legs take on a life of their own, trying to match the rhythm of the song. As the beats pound so do the pedals, which is great if it’s Slade or Heaven 17 (did I mention that I'm an OLD fat bloke?), but not so good if it's something faster. The other day, for example, a dance beat track by The Prodigy came on, and I nearly killed myself.

Then a song started up by the darling of the depressive, Leonard Cohen, and I nearly killed myself all over again.

Finally, in a superb ironic twist, the batteries died and saved me the trouble.

I’m not a natural born cyclist, I’m a fat bloke. And I’m not a singer either, certainly not forty minutes into a session on the bike, but sometimes even I become a slave to the rhythm. Out it all comes, in a not-very-melodic stream of consciousness. For example, the other day ‘Tainted Love’ appeared on my player's random rotation. Brilliant. But the Soft Cell classic is a pretty fast track, so given the speed I was pedalling and the length of time I’d already been going, there was no way that I was ever going to keep up with Marc Almond’s singing, and of course with my earphones in place my vocals were a lot louder than I intended. So while I’d planned a gentle accompaniment to my furious leg action, what I actually produced was the following;

“Sometimes I feel I’ve got to…” (puff, pant, cough) “…Get away from the pain…” (gasp, heave, wheeze) “…Woah, Tainted Love”

As you can imagine, it wasn’t a Grammy winning performance.

And my partner isn’t particularly enjoying my singing cycler act either. She’s usually in another room with the door between us firmly closed, but her peace and quiet is often shattered by my pained vocalisations. She doesn’t know whether I’m joining in with the song or crying out in agony.

She may be used to the singing by now, but my embarrassment plumbed new depths the other day when she walked in to find me eyes shut, pedalling maniacally and air-drumming for all I was worth.

It’s one more reason why drum solos are just plain wrong.

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