Domestic turn: Shifting my training routine to a home-environment is bringing with it lots of unexpected sensations. Weights seem heavier, supports (including chairs) are the wrong position or height for training, as a consequence I am feeling much more injured. This comes after waiting at least a month, maybe 5 or 6 weeks for my left knee to heal – after turning it slightly in the wrong direction, a minor rotation that put me out of action. Maybe my age is showing through my body. Maybe healing is taking longer.

Yes, at home, I cannot go full power. My weights lie on a dark teal silky shaggy rug, dotted around a sofa and padded ottoman that has become my chest press flat bench. There is little room and no mirror, it is impossible to check my form – it’s all happening in my head and I’m clearly not quite getting it right. Gym equipment colliding, engulfing colour schemes making intriguing, almost exciting combinations. Movements and actions need to be adjusted to the new parameters – avoiding the low lampshade, and my collections of trinkets; the many armed doll, Franko’s stitches and grandparents nick-knacks. All now part of my gym, forming an imitation audience of the one I hadn’t quite acknowledged that I had – or that I performed for.

So, in the gym, you constantly judge yourself in relation to other people. The gym is a place of transformation and everyone there is moving along their own axis – back and forth, maybe with slight adjustments, and then back and forth. This is all visible, in that way, the gym is an honest place. You see people try to do things and fail, here, failure after failure becomes success. Real failure is getting fat or not coming to the gym for a prolonged period, but you can always turn that into a success story.