There’s some over-ambitious packing that occurs on the eve of a work trip. Running shoes, gym kit, swimming trunks, canoe: all make their way into the suitcase. Days later, as I prepare to make the journey home again, I usually spot – among the chaos, the wriggle of worn hosiery and now-crumpled shirts – my untouched sports kit. It’s right there, in one corner of my Rimowa suitcase, slumbering with all the intent of a hibernating dormouse. But things switched up on this excursion.
I have been with a Monocle squad at the Livex Liveability & Investment exhibition event in Abu Dhabi this week. On Thursday I found myself doing some very unusual manoeuvres in front of Monocle Radio colleague Tom Webb. We both went for the first time in our lives to a reformer Pilates class. And let me tell you, if my buttocks could speak, they would be calling out to passersby, “Help me! This man just hurt me!”
My downfall began when another colleague started rhapsodising about the thrill of getting reformed at her favourite Abu Dhabi exercise spot, Bodytree. Her name is Ailish – she’s blonde and Irish. I reveal all this because this woman is dangerous. If she approaches you, back away.
Ailish convinced Tom and me – I believe we were drinking cocktails at the time – that we should join her for a guaranteed “fun” workout. But then, an hour before our fitness rendezvous, “something” came up. She vanished. Tom and Tuck would be on their own. Now, though Tom would also be a newbie, he had one big advantage over me: youthfulness. He notches up barely 50 per cent of my time on this planet.
Our instructor turned out to be a nice gentleman called Carlos, while the rest of the class was made up of women who looked like they belonged in the cast of Cats. Carlos explained to these lithe ladies that there were two first-timers in their presence and I heard at least one of them emit a gasp. It seemed that we were in for it.
For anyone unaware of reformer Pilates, you spend the class lying on, kneeling on, interwoven with a sort of bed adorned with straps, resistance springs and metal bars. The last time I’d seen anything that looked like this was when, as a child, I went on a school trip to a medieval castle and spotted the torture devices that pulled the limbs from rebellious peasants. But there was no going back now.
I did my best to follow Carlos’s instructions over the next 50 minutes but there were moments when my lack of co-ordination might have pushed him to the edge. “Arch your back as though you were lying on a watermelon,” he urged me. “No, but keep your chest down!” I think that you would have struggled to pop a kumquat in there without a little bit of a chest lift. But Carlos wanted more. I wondered: would a pomelo suffice?
Things also weren’t helped by the fact that Tom was a natural. “Look at Tom, everyone – he’s flying like Peter Pan!” said Carlos at one point, with the delight of a dance master spotting a new Nureyev in the midst of his class. Or at least a Wayne Sleep. “Oh, just wonderful, Tom!” I hated them both at this point.
Then there was yet another buttock-busting manoeuvre that could, however, be mitigated by holding on to a metal bar. Just as I reached out for this appealing aid, Carlos appeared in front of me. “Give me your hand,” he said rather firmly. So for the next minute, as my cheeks burned like barbecuing spatchcocked chickens, I also had to impersonate a ballroom dance partner, smiling through clenched teeth.
When it was all finally over, we made our way to our team dinner. Ailish was there. “How was it?” she asked, looking, I admit, a mite concerned. It transpired that after she had booked the lessons for us, Bodytree had messaged her a warning – stressed with a red chilli-pepper emoji – that this class would be a little bit brutal for novices.
Look, with time I might forgive her, Tom and perhaps even Carlos, though my derriere will be harder to win over. It has requested to be left alone to think things through. It needs time to regroup.
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