Back in the mists of a misspent youth (or rather, a misspent gap year) I used to work for a large yet mysteriously anonymous organisation in the south-east corner of our great nation. In my former workplace, we had several different ways to pass the time. Some of these hobbies were fun; some less so.* One of the least mentally-scarring pastimes involved coming up with pointlessly lengthy expressions of surprise and/or anger (for example, a phrase popularly directed at the photocopier was "jesus christ on a bike in the snow"). It's a habit that I've continued to indulge occassionally; when the printer just won't print, it's very soothing to call it an ingrate macaroon-munching shitwizard.
Anyway: today, in a very exciting move, I went to a dance class and entirely failed to drop dead in the middle of it. This may seem a paltry achievement to those of you blessed with the kind of ruddy good health featured in your nearest BUPA advert, but I was rather proud! And even more so when I stepped outside afterwards to check my heartrate** and found it running a cool 80-odd beats per minute. NICE. So much for my sinus tachycardia!
The downside was that the hall where the dancing takes place is possibly the World's Hottest Room. The windows had steamed up before I'd even arrived (and incidentally, the hall's managers - obviously keen to keep the title - have also had the windows chained shut). Consequently, I had only two-thirds of my brain free to focus on attempting not to a) fall over, or b) kick my dance partner, because the other third was busy having an existential crisis over whether or not I was actually melting. It was at this point that my mind went back to those happy days in Anonymous Office Space #1,*** and I tried to come up with as many creative permutations of the phrase "sweating like a pig" as possible.
But I felt pretty proud/unpleasantly smug because I know that earlier this year I would never have been able to keep going through the whole class, especially in such a tropical climate. It just goes to show that things can change so quickly in a pretty short space of time, without you every noticing the baby steps along the way.
Short version of this post: Dance was fun and I feel THIS GOOD.
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*Like the time I was forced to listen as the terrifying woman opposite me explained that there was no point in buying whips from Ann Summers when - and I quote - "a tea-towel will do".
**Also, to leave.
***Which, ironically, was extremely cold after our department overspent on electricity and all the heaters were removed by grim-faced folk from Finance.
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