Feeling Great, Looking Crap

I was woken up at stupid o' clock this morning, not by something out of Revelation on this occasion, but by Ronnie the cat. At present we are leaving our bedroom door open at night due to the warm temperatures and the fact that we can't open our bedroom window. Thanks a bunch to whichever lazy, knob head painter and decorator thought it would be a great idea to paint the windows whilst they were shut. The upshot is that Ronnie gets bored around 5.30, saunters in and jumps on my head; and so my day begins.
So, having been awake so early I have already been to the gym and am currently sitting with damp, straggly hair plastered to my face writing this. I never look good at the gym unlike some of the dolly birds I see there and this reminded me of a story a friend once told me.
She was a regular at a local gym going there as often as she could after work. Her grown-up daughter discovered that a friend of hers worked at the same leisure centre and was trying to describe her mum to him.
"She'll be the one on the tread-mill wearing the cheap ASDA track suit, looking red and sweaty with hair dye running down her face.", was the flattering thumb-nail she provided. Bad enough, you may think, but then the gym instructor replied, "Oh yes, I know the one"!
I don't think she goes any more.

Going to the Gym

If you were to ask what people go to the gym for, the obvious answer would be 'to exercise'. Whilst most do, to varying degrees, there are definitely other motivations behind gym membership, and distinct subsets of people who attend.
The first 'gym genus' is 'Musculus Maximus'. These are the young and not-so-young alpha males who prowl around in a pack in the corner around the free weights saying things like 'Can you come and spot for me, Carl?' or 'You wanna try 20 reps at 50k, mate'. They are usually dressed in Kappa muscle vests and have tattoo sleeves and knuckles which drag on the floor. You can tell they are deadly serious about all this as they wear special gloves and belts. They can easily spend a whole 2 hours in the gym just working on their infraspinatus and make more noise over lifting a few barbells than I did giving birth.
The next group are 'Copularis Magnus', the young women clad in lycra who are spray-tanned to within an inch of their lives. They arrive (and more incredibly, leave) with immaculate hair and make up and appear to have had their sweat glands removed. Oh, or maybe they just don't do enough to actually make them sweat? They can be seen on their own but are more usually spotted in pairs, sometimes with one of the couple a little fatter and less attractive than the other one. Typical behaviour involves sitting on the floor mats chatting for 20 minutes and laughing raucously. I want to shout at them 'You wait until you've given birth and breast-fed a few times, you'll never look like that again!'.
Finally we come to 'Populus Antiquus/Medicus Referus'. This group is invariably not appropriately dressed for exercise, often being clad in heavy shoes and thick sweaters. I don't wish to be rude (or do I?) but many in this group would benefit from some good deodorant and a nice minty toothpaste. I will not mock too much though, as I am acutely aware that in the next couple of decades I too shall be a card carrying member of 'Populus Antiquus' in the sub genus 'Rinsus Caeruleus'.