Conversations with Lily: the gym, the stuffing, the kale and the sweat.
Friday 23rd February 2018
As I review the blog section that houses conversations with Lily, I see there are fewer of them as time passes. This is not a true reflection of real life as in fact I think we have more conversations if anything. But she is 21. Apparently. So they are different from the young and late teen-age conversations.
We often go to the gym together and this is a conversation from last week.
Lily and I are driving to the gym to attend a spin class followed by Bums, Legs and Tums. Do not let these familiar and innocent names fool you. They are brutal at our gym. Nice, but brutal.
As we drive up the hill to leave the village:
Me: we could just not go.
Lily: not go where?
Me: to the gym.
Lily: what, just not go? (as if I had suggested participating in the class naked).
Me: yes. I could turn the car round. We could go home…
Lily: what is for dinner?
Me: chicken wrapped in bacon, roasted.
Lily: (genuinely happy) yay!
Lily: is there stuffing?
Me: no.
Lily: (crestfallen) what are we having with it?
Me: (said with unnatural enthusiasm as am fully aware that this news will be unpopular) kale! And mashed root vegetables.
Lily: (with heavy sarcasm) yay! Kale!
Lily: f**cking kale. We are always having kale. Why do we have kale so often?
Me: I grow it. I like it. It’s good for us.
Lily: can we have stuffing?
Me: well…if I drove to Asda instead of the gym I could buy some, then we could go home and cook it with the chicken!
Lily: but then we will feel bad.
Me: about what?
Lily: missing the gym.
We drive to the gym. As we toil through 45 minutes of spin, I note that as ever, Lily and I are the only women in the class who are obviously literally pouring with sweat and very red. Muse: why is this? Would like to think it is work ethic but think we are in fact just genetically programmed to most unattractive reaction to exercise.
As BLT is about to start:
Lily: I wish we were having stuffing.
Me: well it’s too late now. Also I feel sick so let’s not talk about food please.
Lily: we should have gone to Asda.
During BLT – the bit where you kind of half-kneel, half-lie on your mat and have to do incredibly painful things with your legs for an improbable length of time – which always comes after the running about bit and the torture that is 15 minutes of squats and lunges and thus makes me sweat even more, I catch Lily’s eye.
Lily: (mouthing/whispering) stuffing…!
Me: shh. Also – kale.
Later, someone I know only from the gym and who I really like comes up to me. We are happy because the class is over. She says: ‘oh Ali! your face in class always makes me laugh! You cannot hide how you are feeling, can you? You look so fed up!’ I agree but in fact I am startled to hear this as have always assumed my face to be a perfect mask of enigmatic opacity at all times. Later, on the drive home, I ask Lily.
Me: Lils, so-and-so said to me that I look – well fed up in classes. I am trying to look neutral. Which is it?
Lily: quite angry and sometimes a bit scared and always fed-up.
Me: wow! Sometimes I am enjoying it though!
Lily: were you enjoying the mat-work tonight? Because you looked psychotic.
Me: well no…but I was sweating so much my arms kept sliding away from under me. I must try smiling.
Lily: for God’s sake don’t do that. You look bad enough without adding a deranged grin to the mix.
Me:
Lily: why do we sweat so much?
Me: I don’t know!
Lily: I blame you.
Me:
Me: why?
Lily: the same reason I blame you for the moon-face and the hair: I get these things from you.
Me: you’re welcome.
Lily: but really, mum, why don’t I look like so-and-so in class? SHE never sweats so much she has to mop the floor at the end. HER hair never looks like she’s had a shower. HER makeup never slides off her face like a land-slip.
Me: we are working harder.
Lily: we’re not!
Lily: also how can the instructor do it all, AND yell at us non-stop, AND not die of sweating like us?
Me: practice? Or they won on the genetic lottery? They got lungs the size of hot-air balloons and no sweat glands and we got tiny lungs –
Lily: (interrupting) yeah to go with our tiny bladders!*
Me: yes! tiny bladders and tiny lungs – but incredible and over-productive sweat glands. Maybe, our profuse sweating is linked to having tiny bladders?
Lily: eh?
Me: well, our bladders are so small, the excess – um – fluids are excreted via our skin! So we don’t…
Lily: yes! OK, I get it! and also gross.
Lily: we deserve stuffing for tea.
Me: well, tough, too late, it’s kale.
Lily: when you’re old I am going to make you kale smoothies instead of meals.
Me: what about my wine allowance?
*It appears to be true that we both have bladders with the capacity of an egg cup. This is a source of irritation to anyone who has the misfortune to cave with me, or undertake a motorway journey with us as we like, in fact need, to visit all the service areas. On their first ‘date’ which was to Carnival, Lily’s boyfriend recalls that she had to visit the lavatory 5 times including just before leaving his house. And yet still he went on dating her. He doesn’t so much mind it – really why should he? – as find it an absolutely baffling feature. And then he had to drive me to Birmingham so now he knows where she gets it…
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