Balding Pilates instructors are magicians.

I'd written 'Start a Pilates class'
on my new year resolution list back in January, but I'd put it off
and put it off because I've been a bit pre-occupied with fighting
street crime. And finding a cure for narcissism. And solving the
glitch in the String Theory of Physics. Urm. Also? I am a big fat
scardy-cat.

I've never been a super-Pilates
head, but I am absolutely convinced of its body-altering properties.
A few years ago Olivia and I did Pilates every Monday night after
work, and every Tuesday was known as Thin Tuesday because For
Serious. Something about that class made us look 7 pounds lighter
right after. This surprised us both, because in the main we just did
a bit of stretching on the mats and tried to avoid fanny-farting. It
wasn't difficult. Thin Tuesdays were the bestest invention.

Back-To-Normal-Wednesdays were a bitch.

But that class was done in English- in
as much as you can refer to the North Yorkshire dialect as English.
Here in Rome, those Pilates classes are quite obviously in Italian.
Italian being, of course, a language I don't speak particularly well.
Adding vowels does not a Roman make.

AND LOOK. FINE. Be a judgmental little
slut towards me about that. You can't be any meaner to me about
having been here nearly a year with a progress count of approximately
zero per cent than I can be to myself. Because I am. I am embarrassed
and humiliated that I don't go to Italian class every day, and have
Italian friends, and essentially just make sex with Italy and have
little Italian babies who can mock me in two languages that I am just
not good enough and so how dare I even leave the house every morning?

Long story short: I came here to write
a book, not to learn how to say hunchback
or double-decker bus in
another language. So excuuuuuuuuuse me if I can't conjugate verbs
properly.

Unrelated: your
fried artichokes are delicious, Rome.

When I
realised there was a Pilates
studio thirty steps from my house, it took me three weeks to pluck up
the courage to tap on the door and make an enquiry because I didn't
know what to say. I had to rehearse a little monologue in my head,
and I was shaking a bit when I entered the building. Il mio Italiano
e' bruttissimo, lo so I said. My
Italian is ugly as hell, I know...

I signed up,
because I was too embarrassed not to once I was in there, and started
Tuesday morning. In Italian. And I rolled on foam cylinders, which I
didn't know the word for, and used my thighs to push rubber rings,
which I didn't know the word for, and I exhaled for the exertion and
inhaled to recover, and I didn't know the words for that either.

Do you know what is
worse than being incompetent with speaking? Being incompetent with
those FUCKING FOAM CYLINDERS and rubber rings, and huffing and
puffing as lithe forty-something Italian women don't even break a
sweat, holding those sister-effing positions for the whole time they
were told to. Cut to me, at the back of the class, falling over and
breathing too heavily and being PURPLE, all in the wrong language.

And the guy kept
telling me off because I kept giggling, and I'm quite sure he was
saying something along the lines of ENOUGH, STUPID ENGLISH-SPEAKING
FAT GIRL! THIS IS A PLACE OF PILATES EXCELLENCY, OF WHICH YOU ARE
MOCKING WITH YOUR FLIGHTLY ATTITUDE.

Oh, COME ON!
I wanted to yell back. You are supporting your body weight
with your thumb and forefinger! You didn't even break wind when you
did the knees-to-the-chest thing! You aren't normal! It isn't me
ruining your life, it is you and your unnatural flexibility ruining
mine!

And then he grabbed
my leg and moved my hips to sit flush on the mat, and stretched me
out until it hurt and I let out a little yell which meant that he won
at life.

'Ci vediamo la
prossima volta?' he said me, without looking up, as I hobbled to get
my hoodie and water bottle at the end of the class. See you next
time?

'Si, certissimo,' I
replied weakly, thinking to myself, AS LONG AS YOU FUCK OFF AND DIE
FIRST YOU SADISTIC ENGLISH-HATER.

But then, I woke up
Wednesday, sore as hell and unable to use my own stomach muscles to
get out of bed unaided, and buggar me if I didn't discover my new
favourite day: Thin Wednesday.

My pride must've
weighed more than I thought.