Elly Booth: Week 1

Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to the scene ELLY BOOTH. She loves the gym, she loves the Spice Girls, and she has difficulty showering…

buh columnist elly booth fitness january gym if you wanna be my lvoer Nudity showers spicegirls waannabe

However shockingly your Fitness New Year’s Resolutions are going, they really can’t have had such an abrupt end as my love of the gym. Or my aspirations of not being a whale at graduation…

The gym is like marmite: you either love it or hate it. If you are a protein-shake-addict, I am pretty sure lifting weights is the most euphoric experience in the world ever. However, if you are me in Cambridge, the gym isn’t exactly top of the list.

Put me back in industrial Midlands, on the other hand, and it’s an entirely different kettle of fish. Here the gym is called Smack and it is pretty much my favourite place in the world. It has cheesy music, cute personal trainers and more cross trainers than I could dream of. It was perfect even when I slipped and landed in a pool of a fat woman’s sweat (pretty much as bad as it gets).

At least, this is what I thought until I went into the shower after two hours of following the strict instructions of some crazy Zumba dancer right next to my old PE teacher. The latter had quietly whispered “I used to think you could be something” whilst staring disapprovingly at the chain of love bites down my back.

After an exhausting workout, I made my way for the showers. Unfortunately this happened to be at exactly the same time that the under-fives swimming class came out. I found myself trying to dodge the five year old boys who attempt to run between your legs and look up, potentially scaring them for life. I entered my shower.

Bored of little kids screaming at shampoo in their eyes, I put on my best singing voice and started bawling out the lines to ‘Wannabe’. As getting lucky that night was a near certainty (note the sarcasm), I started shaving my legs. At this point I reached the song’s climax.

“If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends, make it last forever friendship never ends..”

As I approached a potentially harmful decibel, I realised my screeching had been joined by my three fellow Zumba goers in the neighbouring showers.

Slightly confused, and worried my singing had actually lead to fatalities, I paused to hear the screams of “murder” in the high pitched voice of a five year old.

Not quite the way Women’s Health had painted it…

Suddenly scared that I was about to be murdered in a shower, and that my final words would have been penned by The Spice Girls (which I suppose would be better than One Direction (jokes I love them)), I screamed too. Suddenly the door came flying open with two personal trainers.

Stark naked in front of two random strangers – a rabbit in the headlights – I looked down. Turns out I suck at shaving and had a shaving cut, which had successfully filled the showering area with blood. This was typical My Luck.

I was the murder victim, standing in the altogether in front of all those who, just moments earlier, had been my adoring audience. My face was now as red as the blood.

Needless to say I never finished that performance. Also I don’t think I can ever walk back into that gym again. But hey, eating is far more fun and New Years Resolutions are made for breaking. If you see a four-leafed clover, howver, I’d be grateful if you sent it in my direction.

Happy Monday and hopefully next week will bring something slightly less boring (woopsy daisy if you laughed).