Bikram Yoga

Earlier this year while in Manchester, I was introduced to Bikram Yoga. This is pretty much yoga done in a sauna - you burn a shed-load of calories, sweat drips off every limb, and by the time you get to the floor postures you feel pretty much like how I’d imagine a hot exhausted slug would feel on being asked to do sit ups. But the strange thing is I like it.

I’m not a natural exercise person, I’ve decided. I’m more a natural chocolate sort of person, more a let’s sit down and read a nice book rather than throw frantic shapes person. Yet sporadically over the years I have, like most people, tried out an exercise or two.

Gymnastics was my first and true love in the exercise world. I went to a weekly class after school for eight years; I was a whiz at the asymmetric bars, not so bad on the floor, and looked like ‘a dying duck in a thunderstorm’ on the beam, according to the sadistic gym teacher. Several migraines later, I sadly said goodbye.

After gymnastics came swimming – via lessons at school. Once a week we would eagerly be herded into a coach and taken to the local swimming baths. We used to navigate around the suspiciously warm splash pool for our feet, and then plunge into the water, yelling. Not quite sure why it was customary to yell but the rest of the lesson would be spent splashing first one way, and then the other, around and around the pool. They’d also be the intolerable wait shivering at the side of the pool while the teacher demonstrated something like the correct use of a float (held with arms out straight, not as a shield/weapon against another pupil). Woe betides your mother dressing you in tights when you had to wriggle out of your wet costume back into your school clothes. We had all perfected the art of getting showered and changed in one minute flat – needless to say the coach trip back to school was full of soggy small people.

I first joined a gym when I was 15 – mainly because you could smoke in the tiny café area and drink milkshakes – both perfect things to do pre-work out. Needless to say I wasn’t quite into the ‘gym’ thing, although I liked the posters from Athena covering the walls.

At University I tried to take up jogging but swiftly decided it wasn’t for me. I liked the idea of it, but barely travelled the length between lampposts before I had to stop, wheezing. I’ve never lived anywhere nice enough to warrant a jog anyway – around the block usually involves a motorway. Also people running around here tend to look like they have just been involved in something dodgy. And so it was back to very sporadic gym visits – where you’d pay by the month, listen to bad techno over the intercom, and wish you were somewhere else.

And then I discovered yoga (cue some sort of harp music).

My first yoga lessons were in a tiny church hall in Tottenham. The teacher used to come in with her cassette recorder, fuss with it for ten minutes and then fill the room with tinny whale song. It wasn’t the most auspicious of starts, but surprisingly I stuck with it.

I think it appealed as it takes the flexibility of gymnastics, mixes in a bit of meditation and has an instant ‘feel good’ factor when you leave a class. So from then on I left the gym behind and began sporadically attending yoga lessons instead. Over the years I found nicer classes – usually tucked into community halls, where you’d do postures under a framed picture of the Queen. I liked it, but wanted more…

And then a friend introduced me to Bikram. Now this is extreme yoga – and one of hardest work outs I have ever done. But it is amazing! Even if I feel like a hot slug most of the time. I have now signed up until October, and as it is not cheap, I have to go twice a week to make it worth my while. That is a huge commitment for me, but I think it makes me feel more positive; I sleep better, and therefore feel better (as too knackered for pontificating). This is all good! And it means I can stir Cadbury’s chocolate buttons into my morning porridge with no remorse at all.

Timewarp

I feel very unsettled recently, and keep having Deep Thoughts about Life, the Universe and Everything. You know - those sort of thoughts... quick run to the hills! It all began with an innocent idea to look at old school photographs…

If I had a super-hero name, it would be The Archivist. I keep a large collection of various ephemera from my schooldays – including cassette tapes that I used to record the sounds from a typical school day. Yes, I was a little strange. The idea behind it was an urgency that nothing would last, and that one day all this would be just a memory. This was no doubt prompted by the unexpected death of my father when I was 12 – mortality hit, and my response was to keep everything I could get my hands on – no matter how small, I carefully treasured it. None of it has any value except to me – unless in the future a museum would like to know what a day in the life of a comprehensive school sounded like in the late eighties. Loud, mostly – ‘norf landen’ gobby teenagers trading insults and frenzied laughter between lessons so dull you can practically hear the boredom.

The other reason I kept everything, fuelled by the feeling that nothing would last, was because I wanted to be able to remember what it was like to be a teenager if I was old by the time I became a writer. I had the idea I would grow up and write for teenagers (as when I was a teenager all my stories were for my contemporaries) and I didn’t want to forget how it felt. I kept a lot of diaries around this time as well – gut-achingly awful things to re-read, but perfect for wanting to remember how awkward life was back then. Perfect in fact for research, as long as I try and pretend that the hopeful voice coming from the diaries wasn’t mine.

The unsettling part of this post, apart from the fact looking back can always be a double-edged sword – is that I started to wonder what my contemporaries back then would think of me now. I am still in my childhood home where some might remember knocking for me, outwardly nothing has changed. I am like some weird pickled version of Miss Havisham. What would I think of them – if they were still in the same place as back then? My first thought might be ‘what on earth happened to you?’ like the theme song to the TV show ‘Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads’ - one of those shows that trade on nostalgia and the whiff of regret, sentiments sometimes too close for comfort.

Hey what happened to you?
Whatever happened to me?
What became of the people?
We used to be
Tomorrow's almost over,
Today went by so fast,
The only thing to look forward to is the past.

I tried to analyse it (as that always makes things better, right?) and I guess my biggest fear is that they would all think I am a loser. Which means, as I don’t really care what faces in photographs think, is that ultimately *I* think I am a loser. And if that is what underpins everything, then it is really hard to change. I try so many tactics to not feel this way – I do try to trust that everything I do is for a reason and one day it will all work out swimmingly, but this is a whispy confidence that is hard to hold.

I think I put too much pressure on my story. I want it to save me… and I think I need to work out how to save myself first. I want the book to sell so it can take me away from all this – I want to buy a little place of my own, I want to justify my life, and prove that if you keep trying enough you will succeed. But these shouldn’t be the reasons – the reason should just be I have a story to tell. That was the original thought – and on the way it has instead become my saviour that will rescue me. I think that is what is piling on pressure and why I am finding editing so hard. I need to step back somehow, and convince myself that it is all alright, and just telling a story is a fine thing to do.

So feeling like this, it probably didn’t help that I found 28 consecutive episodes of Home & Away from 1989 on youtube. I used to love that show back then, as when everything else around me seemed insane and confusing, it (and Neighbours, and Grange Hill) was a constant reassuring presence. So I have been watching shows last seen when I was 14 (helping to add to the weirdness) and it was strange and somewhat lovely to revisit them again. Apart from finding out the actress that played (and still plays) little Sally Fletcher is now 30 years old. Google has a lot to answer for, sometimes.

Writers' Rooms

The Guardian newspaper has an ongoing series called Writers' Rooms. This reveals where many famous authors sit and create their masterpieces. It also seems to reveal them all as being incredibly wealthy, owning at least two heirlooms (owning just one is so passé) and being able to namedrop a famous designer who created their shelves/chair/desk/lamp/ancient parchment notebook on wish to compose.

This is my take on the series - written in the style of The Guardian. In fact - please read this first, and then come back...



Writers' Rooms: Jayne Ferst-Second

It’s the back of the house, and only seventeen years ago stars shone through the gap between the ill-fitting curtains while the floor was ankle-deep in computer magazines left behind by my older brother. I love the sound of sirens and view of the motorway in the distance. Who says London is overcrowded? True, the room is often noisy but silence addles my brains.

I’ve got cat hairs round the little window, and type by hand at the chest of drawers awkwardly positioned in front of it. The corkboard was made by Argos.

The bookends are stacks of historical books to bring me good luck, because my debut novel covers a span of decades. On the window ledge stands a strange plastic pot with plastic flowers my mother brought back from a car-boot sale.

On top of the shelf containing my essential reference books is a 1960s dolls house and a lustrous feather duster – both from my Nan’s in Stoke Newington. And there’s an unholy mix underneath: a Matchbox scooter, a Camden-era candle and a cobalt pot thrown by me in anger the last time I was looking for something.

I bought my shelf unit when I was 19 with my pay cheque from Woolworths, and that’s where I store crap. The shelves don’t really fit, but I jam everything into it. There’s a photograph of me when I was grumpy and small on the shelf, and in the corner a 21st-century embossed double-whammy candle. Books, coasters, paintbrushes, mugs…everything in the bedroom either relates directly to my mum or is rich in personal association. Everything is here by accident.

The half of the room out of shot has wooden wardrobes, their slats all covered in dust, a Hackney ottoman and a dresser piled with perfume and projects. There’s also a primitive painting of flowers by the Swedish shop Ikea.

Each of the walls are the same colour, but what you can’t see is the hidden blue tack stains from teenage posters – pictures of childhood. So the walls are as merry as a bog-standard bedroom, dressed in the colours of suburbia.

***

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Seven hours

Today I have sat here for seven whole hours and how many words did I redraft? Exactly 979. Speedy Gonzales is my new nickname. But the good thing is that I tightened the last page of chapter five, did a read-through of the whole thing, still liked it, and have proceeded onwards. I can now officially say I am redrafting chapter six. Maybe one day I will end up with a story that I am happy to let people read!

I really wish I could invest more of myself in this blog. Sometimes I feel I have nothing new to say – work is work, life is life, things are still in the doldrums of recession. Every so often I get a burst of creativity with no time to play – ideas that I think are terrific but I have no money to back them, no time to let them grow, and so they flare and then flicker out. I think I should resort buying lottery scratch-cards – maybe it will happen, right? Or maybe it is just a poor woman’s tax after all. I hate feeling despondent. This is my golden age, my time of infinite possibilities – and all that happens is I grow older one day at a time. I want to be able to throw back the windows and be happy in my skin.