Fat Chance (11 page)

When did I stop
wanting
to make an effort?

Five years ago?

Ten?

‘Fifty star jumps, you say?’ I ask, puffing my cheeks out.

‘Yep.’

‘Right.’

I painfully haul myself to my feet for what feels like the
thousandth
time that week (probably because it is) and assume the position.

‘One!’ I shout as my flabby carcass achieves a momentary break with the Earth’s gravity.

‘Two!’

‘Three!’

‘Four!’

‘Fi—
SHIT
!’

‘What is it?’ Alice says and comes over to support me.

‘My back,’ I whine. Pain—proper pain this time, not just the chronic aches I’ve been party to for the past seven days—shoots across my upper back. I felt something go
twang
around my right shoulder blade as I hit the fifth star jump.

I explain this to Alice.

‘Sounds like you’ve pulled a muscle.’ She slaps me on the arm and steps away. ‘You’ll be fine.’

‘It’s agony!’

‘Nothing a couple of ibuprofen won’t fix,’ she says and wipes her sweaty brow. ‘I’m quite relieved actually. I thought from the way you screamed like a little girl there that you’d ruptured a disc in your spine or something.’

I haven’t as yet had the courage to ask Alice if she has a
husband
, but if he does exist then I pity the poor man more than words can say. His wife has the sympathy and bedside manner of Darth Vader with a head cold.

‘We have to stop,’ I implore.

Alice looks me up and down carefully. I’m sure I look a right state. My face is red and puffy, my sweaty hair sticks on end, my rugby top is badly creased, and my hairy gut is hanging over my tracksuit bottoms in plain sight. I’m stooping like an old crone on her way to Snow White’s house, and wobbling around uncertainly on legs that could give out from under me at any moment. In short, I look like a fat, out-of-shape technical writer who’s done more
exercise
in the past week than he has in the past decade.

‘You’re probably right,’ Alice concedes. ‘I did want a last
warm-dow
n jog around the park—’

‘For the love of God, please, no.’

‘No. On second thoughts, I think you’re pretty much done, Greg.’ She puts one leg up on our favourite bench and starts her warm-down exercises. ‘Do you want me to give you a lift home?’

‘No. I think I’ll try to walk.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’ Partially because there’s a Tesco Express on the way home where I can buy painkillers, and partially because I’m afraid that if I do get in a car with Alice, she might think of some
last-minute
training I can do before we reach my front door. I really don’t want to be running along the high street with her beeping her car horn and shouting ‘Faster, you tubby bitch!’ at me until something
prolapses
.

‘Okay.’ She stands up. ‘Well, it’s been fun.’

‘Has it?’

‘I think so. If you feel like another course—maybe a
longer-term
commitment—then give me a ring.’

‘Okay, I will.’

No, I bloody won’t.

‘Great. I’ll email you the de-brief that I send to all my clients. It’ll contain advice and help for what you should do next in your exercise regime.’

Never hire a personal trainer again?

‘Thanks, Alice.’

She thrusts out a hand. ‘Best of luck with the weigh-in session today, Greg. I’ll be listening in.’

‘Thank you very much.’

I hope I bloody have lost weight. I can see Alice storming the radio station and taking several innocent bystanders hostage if I haven’t.

‘See you later then, Greg.’

‘Yeah, goodbye, Alice.’

And with that she’s gone again.

My tormentor of the past seven days jogs down the path towards the car park, leaving me in abject misery, and standing next to a park bench I will never visit again for as long as I live. In fact there’s a very good chance I’ll never visit this
park
again.

Or anywhere else where there are trees, birds, grass, or sky.

Ten minutes later and I’m walking slowly through the doors of Tesco Express. The pain in my upper back and shoulder is so acute now that it’s making me a little light-headed.

I stand in the medicine aisle for a good minute trying to decide on which painkillers to buy. There are the brand names and the cheaper superstore equivalents. I plump for a pack of these as I’ve never been one for trademarks.

I pick up a box of 200 mg ibuprofen and take it over to the girl at the counter.

‘These are quite strong, you know,’ she says as she puts them in a bag for me.

‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ I tell her.

I don’t know what she’s on about, though. The last time I took these pills was when I twisted my ankle last year. Two didn’t touch the pain, so I had to take three in the end to even get a little relief.

The pain I’m in now is far worse, so I dry-swallow four of the little white pills as I walk back to the house. This should be enough to take the edge off.

‘Hi, honey,’ Zoe says as I come through the door. ‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks, baby.’

‘Have you been run over?’

I think of Alice’s bulgy eyes and stern expression. ‘Yes, I rather think I have.’

‘Well, we’re due at the station in an hour so you’d best go have a shower and get dressed. Remember to wear decent shorts—we’re being weighed today with hardly any clothes on.’

‘Okay,’ I agree and slope off upstairs.

The shower is invigorating and by the time it’s finished I’m actually feeling pretty good about myself. The pain in my back is almost completely gone. Those painkillers are better than I thought!

I even start to whistle as I get dressed, and by the time I walk back down the stairs I’ve got a broad grin on my face.

‘You look better,’ Zoe says as I enter the kitchen.

‘Yeah . . . yeah, I feel better,’ I reply in a dreamy tone of voice.

Actually, it’s not a dreamy tone of voice, it’s a
stoned
tone of voice. Those pills must have been a
lot
stronger than I thought.

I amble over to the medicine drawer where I’d put them earlier and inspect the packet.

Oh no.

I picked up the wrong ones in the shop.

I thought I’d bought the 200 mg, where in actual fact they are
400 mg
. Twice the fucking strength.

No wonder I’m a bit spaced. I’ve ingested enough
anti-
in
flammatory
medicine to stun a gorilla.

‘You alright?’ Zoe inquires from right beside me. I hadn’t noticed her enter the room.

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘Because you’ve been staring at that packet for five minutes.’

‘Have I?’

‘Yes, Greg.’

‘Oh.’

‘Are you going to be alright to go out?’

I put my hand on her shoulder. The softness of her jumper under my fingers is amazing. ‘Mmmmmm. ’Course I am, baby.’

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘Nothing. I may have just taken a little too much ibuprofen.’

‘Oh, Greg!’

‘Sssshhh,’ I tell her and put my hand on her soft, warm cheek. ‘It’ll be fine. I’m fine. It’s all fine. Fine and dandy. Dandy wandy.’

‘Oh, good grief.’

‘You have lovely skin. I don’t tell you that enough.’ I stroke my finger up her face. ‘Lovely, lovely skin. Skin, skin, skin, skinny, skin.’

‘I’m driving,’ Zoe says, breaking away from this disturbing analysis of her epidermis.

‘Okay, sweetheart. You drive. I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’

I drift off to somewhere warm and bouncy for a moment.

‘I’ll not drive,’ I eventually say.

‘Oh, this is going to go well,’ my wife says with a level of
exasperation
I am completely oblivious to.

‘That’s the spirit!’ I cry happily and then walk straight into the kitchen door.

On the drive to Stream FM I’ve decided that ‘kumquat’ is the nicest word in the dictionary.

By the time I’m stripped down to my t-shirt and shorts and am waiting in the green room I’ve changed my mind. ‘Albumin’ is in fact the nicest word in the English language. ‘Kumquat’ is a distant second, with ‘moleskin’ crashing in to third place, slightly ahead of ‘wombat.’

‘I can’t believe there’s going to be a bloody audience for this,’ Zoe says from beside me.

The weigh-in is to be conducted in the large conference hall here at Stream FM’s offices. They’ve converted it into a
temporary
studio for this very purpose. A specially selected audience of a
couple
of hundred have been invited along to lend a certain
atmosphere
to pr
oceedings. The weigh-in will go out live on air and will also be streamed on the website.

This is all making Zoe understandably nervous.

I couldn’t give a rosy, red fuck. I’m too busy thinking of words that rhyme with
albumin
.

I glance around at the other five couples, unable to wipe the dumb smile off my face. Frankly, it’s a miracle I haven’t started
dribbling.

Most of them are looking as terrified as Zoe—other than the two scumbags whose names escape me right now. She’s taking
pictures
of her enormous child on her iPhone and he’s picking his nose with the kind of enthusiasm you’d normally see from a dwarf in a gold mine.

I do remember Shane’s name, the largest of all of us. Even in my creamy ibuprofen torpor I can tell he’s lost a fair bit of weight, even in the past week. This sharpens my foggy mind a bit. If he’s lost some of his enormous bulk, I’d better have as well.

My male pride has taken a right kicking in the past few days at the hands of Alice Pithering, but standing here sizing up the
competition
has kick-started it again in no uncertain terms.

Sadly, I’m also still as high as a fucking kite, so my competitive edge is dulled again fairly quickly as I realise the word ‘albumin’ is quite close to ‘album.’ As in ‘Have you heard the latest Green Day albumin? It’s great . . . no yolk.’

This awful, awful pun sends me into a giggling fit that passes only when Lottie the production assistant comes into the room and tells us that it’s show time.

And what a show it is! A veritable cornucopia of razzle, dazzle, and glitz!

It’s either that or I’m off my tits on over-the-counter drugs, and the weigh-in is actually just a set of large scales, an LCD scoreboard above them, and two hundred vaguely bored-looking people sitting in chairs waiting for something fat to happen.

We’re paraded in through the large set of double doors to the side of the conference room, and I have to resist the near overwhelming urge to start mooing.

Elise and Will, who look very shiny this morning, are speaking to the crowd and the wider listening audience, as they wander around the temporarily erected stage at the back of the conference hall.

A large sign on canvas—one that must have cost a fortune—is hanging behind the stage and reads FAT CHACE! Somebody has come along and attempted to change the misspelling by
squeezing
in the N, but everyone in the room can see where the cock-up has occurred. It’s obvious that the sign was knocked up by the
reprographics
department during their lunch break.

‘And here they are!’ exclaims Will as we file in. ‘Our twelve
contestants
, ready to join us on stage for the first weigh-in!’

‘That’s right! Let’s give them all a big round of applause!’ E
lise a
dds.

The crowd is suddenly energised. They’ve been given their cue, and by golly, they’re going to provide a heartfelt contractually
obligated
response if it kills them.

A roar of applause rolls over our heads as we take to the low stage. There’s even a few whoops and cheers going on too. I swear I hear somebody make a mooing noise, but that’s probably just the ibuprofen talking.

Twelve seats are arranged for us at the back, and we each take a pew as Will and Elise tell the audience how the weigh-in will go.

Each couple will step up to the scales and will be weighed one after another. Our combined weight will be totalled up and put on the elaborate scoreboard, along with the combined weight loss percentage. When all six couples have had their turn, whoever has lost the most body fat will win the first weigh-in—and the weekend break in London to see a show.

This is all a very neat way of assessing which of us is doing the best job of shifting the fat. However, I can’t help thinking there’s something of a loophole. If I just cut one of Zoe’s legs off, that’ll win us the weigh-in no problem.