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| In the great gym wars, I know where I stand | In the great gym wars, I know where I stand |
| (3 days later) | |
| A good escape from the heat in New York at the moment is the gym industrial complex. This requires a brief but searching self-audit before determining which franchise to join. Even if I had the money, for example, am I the sort of person who can put down $299 (£231) a month to join Equinox, the Ivanka Trump of gym chains, because the towels smell of eucalyptus and they hand out free razors? (No, I decide. It interferes with sniffy ideas I have of myself of not being that kind of person) | A good escape from the heat in New York at the moment is the gym industrial complex. This requires a brief but searching self-audit before determining which franchise to join. Even if I had the money, for example, am I the sort of person who can put down $299 (£231) a month to join Equinox, the Ivanka Trump of gym chains, because the towels smell of eucalyptus and they hand out free razors? (No, I decide. It interferes with sniffy ideas I have of myself of not being that kind of person) |
| At the other end of the scale is the complex six blocks south of my house, which for $150 a year provides a bigger pool but no frills whatsoever. I went there last week and it was like a trip to the 70s. The floor in the women’s changing room was slick with soap sluicing out from the curtainless shower cubicles and the industrial floor tiles would have worked well in an abattoir. The pool itself, meanwhile, was spotless and empty, instantly transforming the locker room from a hair shirt into a small price to pay. | At the other end of the scale is the complex six blocks south of my house, which for $150 a year provides a bigger pool but no frills whatsoever. I went there last week and it was like a trip to the 70s. The floor in the women’s changing room was slick with soap sluicing out from the curtainless shower cubicles and the industrial floor tiles would have worked well in an abattoir. The pool itself, meanwhile, was spotless and empty, instantly transforming the locker room from a hair shirt into a small price to pay. |
| There are some mid-range options, but in this city it is somehow worse to be in the middle – New York Sports Club, for example, or Planet Fitness, so bland, so mid-list, so lacking in anything that might be called character – that the two extremes are the only self-respecting way to go. I’m sticking with the crunchy city pool until the wind changes or I find the banker within. | There are some mid-range options, but in this city it is somehow worse to be in the middle – New York Sports Club, for example, or Planet Fitness, so bland, so mid-list, so lacking in anything that might be called character – that the two extremes are the only self-respecting way to go. I’m sticking with the crunchy city pool until the wind changes or I find the banker within. |
| Infernal sunshine | Infernal sunshine |
| There is a sub-genre of literature devoted to the effects of hot weather on English people – field leader LP Hartley – that I have been thinking about this week. Ian McEwan did it in Atonement, so much of which was taken up with the account of one long hot day and that practically shimmered on the page. Outside England, one looks to Carson McCullers, or I suppose Tennessee Williams, for the best expressions of the way excessive heat warps the mind. | There is a sub-genre of literature devoted to the effects of hot weather on English people – field leader LP Hartley – that I have been thinking about this week. Ian McEwan did it in Atonement, so much of which was taken up with the account of one long hot day and that practically shimmered on the page. Outside England, one looks to Carson McCullers, or I suppose Tennessee Williams, for the best expressions of the way excessive heat warps the mind. |
| But the English sub-genre is more powerful to me because English people are so disproportionately excited and dismayed when the sun comes out. In the opening story of Bad Dreams, Tessa Hadley’s latest collection, the sky is a “blank, baking glare” that “prised its way each morning like a chisel through the crack between Jane’s … curtains”. It wasn’t, observes the author, acceptable “in Jane’s kind of family” to complain about good weather, and yet “the strain of it told on them; they were remorselessly cheerful, while secretly they longed for rain”. | But the English sub-genre is more powerful to me because English people are so disproportionately excited and dismayed when the sun comes out. In the opening story of Bad Dreams, Tessa Hadley’s latest collection, the sky is a “blank, baking glare” that “prised its way each morning like a chisel through the crack between Jane’s … curtains”. It wasn’t, observes the author, acceptable “in Jane’s kind of family” to complain about good weather, and yet “the strain of it told on them; they were remorselessly cheerful, while secretly they longed for rain”. |
| She is writing about the most potent kind of hot weather, that remembered from childhood, in this case, Surrey in the 1960s. In my own childhood memories, the summers are hotter and longer than any since; the grass on Centre Court at Wimbledon is always brown and it is always hard to sleep at night for the heat. | She is writing about the most potent kind of hot weather, that remembered from childhood, in this case, Surrey in the 1960s. In my own childhood memories, the summers are hotter and longer than any since; the grass on Centre Court at Wimbledon is always brown and it is always hard to sleep at night for the heat. |
| In the novels and short stories, these tricks of weather serve a dramatic purpose, a torpid background condition against which sudden out-of-character gestures – most of them brought on by inadequate sun protection – are all the more violent. But even in common memory they have a function, perhaps; getting at how time moves more slowly the smaller you are and how the sun inclines one to riot. | In the novels and short stories, these tricks of weather serve a dramatic purpose, a torpid background condition against which sudden out-of-character gestures – most of them brought on by inadequate sun protection – are all the more violent. But even in common memory they have a function, perhaps; getting at how time moves more slowly the smaller you are and how the sun inclines one to riot. |
| Happiness is a call away | Happiness is a call away |
| I cancelled an order with an online shopping site this week, which meant a call to customer service, although it turns out this designation has expired. Instead, I was put through to a woman who asked: “Hello, happiness team, how may I help you?” There was no hint of sarcasm in her voice and I felt so bad for her having to repeat this absurd phrase all day long, that at the end of our exchange I said, with insane enthusiasm: “I love your service.” She absorbed the compliment seamlessly. Perhaps this was the intended result all along. | I cancelled an order with an online shopping site this week, which meant a call to customer service, although it turns out this designation has expired. Instead, I was put through to a woman who asked: “Hello, happiness team, how may I help you?” There was no hint of sarcasm in her voice and I felt so bad for her having to repeat this absurd phrase all day long, that at the end of our exchange I said, with insane enthusiasm: “I love your service.” She absorbed the compliment seamlessly. Perhaps this was the intended result all along. |