Filler 7

Had very nice chats today with Max and Alastair. Instant messaging may be terribly nerdy, but there's something very civilized about it too. Or perhaps it's just the people I'm chatting to? Anyway: on with the communication, it is, in true Sellars and Yeatman fashion, a Good Thing.

For some incredibly stupid reason I'm on a one day training course today (by which I mean tomorrow, at least as far as my sleep cycle is concerned): Choreography Ideas and Teaching Top-Up. Heaven help me.

As I may not have made entirely clear within the confines of this weblog, one of the many frankly stupid things I do is teach aerobics. This is not a career. For me, and really, for anyone. Well, with a few notable exceptions. But certainly not for me. It's more of a hobby.

I don't mean to suggest that I take it lightly. Au contraire. There are few things as terrifying as standing in front of a room full of people when the music starts and they're all looking at you to make them thin and gorgeous. I've done a fair bit of training for this, and it has cost me many sleepless nights I can tell you. I try to approach it professionally -- but as professions go, this one really doesn't pay its way. If I had to live on my earnings as an aerobics teacher, I would be long dead. Especially with having to pay for music rights and all that.

So, squeezed into the interstices of what I laughingly call my working life, teaching aerobics (and step, which I much prefer) counts as a hobby.

At the Central London YMCA, where I teach, the teachers are, as a rule, not paid. We do it for the love of it -- but there are various perks. One is free membership and use of the facilities, most of which are very nice. Another is several free training courses each year. The YMCA run, somehow, one of the country's leading fitness training bodies, and some kind of internecine bartering provides us volunteers with places on their courses.

And so, around Easter each year, we get these forms that list all the modules being run and ask us to nominate the ones we'd like to do. And you know how it is when you're idly browsing through brochures, you think "ooh, this looks interesting!" and "I'd like to do that" -- and then four months later you get the course papers in the post and it's WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING? CHOREOGRAPHY IDEAS AND TEACHING TOP-UP? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND? Only by then you're committed to it, and to wimp out would be really bad form.

So. Bright and early.

These courses are always a bit, well, Hello, boys and girls...

I can't help sounding like some kind of odious snob in these circumstances, but for fuck's sake, I'm 36 years old, I have two fucking degrees and a long-standing career in an intellectually-taxing profession, I know who I am and what I'm doing, and suddenly I'm back in fucking nursery school being taught the rudiments of stupidity by condescending halfwits.

And, it must be said, usually enjoying the experience.

So. Bright and early.

At least this is only a one-day course, and it's hosted at the Central Y, which is just 10 minutes down the road. In three weeks or so another of my idle springtime choices hoves into view, and that one lasts three days, with lots of homework each night, sited at a health club on the other side of town. Brace yourselves for the whining, people, it's gonna be brutal.
Posted by matt at October 23, 2003 01:29 AM