Читать книгу Blaikie’s Guide to Modern Manners - Thomas Blaikie - Страница 13

Mrs Gibbs gave up the public swimming pool in her midseventies because she was afraid of being mown down in the water. Matt and Zoe are both dilatory attenders at gyms. Matt only goes when he has to stay down in London for the evening for some reason; otherwise he is rushing back to his wife and children in Peterborough. Besides, he complains that his gym is full of ‘rather aggressive types’. We know what he means: usually men, scowling, banging away at the machines, breathing in and out in a noisy and conspicuously efficient way, allowing others to have a go with bad grace. Some of them never put the free weights back in the right place and, sweating being a proud feature, leave horrible sweat patches all over the machines. At Zoe’s council-run gym, women-only evenings have been introduced to counteract this problem. Not that this entirely suits her, since she sees the gym as a good opportunity to meet men and indeed has come across a number of boyfriends in this way.

 Gyms and swimming pools are social places; many of them are indeed clubs.

 If your idea is to be ‘totally focused’ on your own fitness programme and to resent any ‘distractions’, perhaps you should take up some solitary form of exercise such as round-the-world yachting.

 It is not unreasonable to assume that members of the same gym will smile at each other and exchange the odd friendly word.

 Allow others to use a machine while you rest between sets – this is called ‘working in’.

 Don’t ‘reserve’ a machine by putting a towel on the seat before wandering off for a prolonged chat with someone on the other side of the room.

 Put equipment back in the right place and wipe down machines after you’ve used them.

 A great deal of ‘picking up’ and ‘chatting up’ goes on in gyms (as it does in libraries). Disapproving of this is priggish and pointless – what else would anyone expect when a lot of youngish people with few clothes on are working up a sweat together?

 If you have to turn somebody down, try to nice about it (see Chatting up, dating, turning down, page 186).

 A gym is one of the few places where straight men may gaze at themselves in the mirror without risk of being mistaken for gay – not that gay men would ever waste time in that way, of course.