by Henry VIII signs up for a gym membership and discovers a tyranny worse than his own
I have led men into battle wearing sixty pounds of armour. Kyle asked me to do twelve burpees and I nearly abdicated on the spot.
The Induction
My manager Dev booked me a gym induction in Hackney, insisting the material would be excellent, and it was, at the cost of my remaining dignity and possibly a hip. Kyle, twenty-six years old, wearing a vest advertising a protein brand I have never heard of, asked me my fitness goals. I said my fitness goal for thirty-eight years was staying alive long enough to execute my enemies personally. He wrote something on a clipboard. I believe the word was ambitious.
The Machines
He placed me on a machine that simulates rowing, which I found insulting, since I have never once rowed anything myself, that is what servants and prisoners are for. After ninety seconds my screen said I had rowed four hundred metres and Kyle said that was a solid start. In 1513 I personally led the vanguard at the Battle of the Spurs. Kyle has never heard of the Battle of the Spurs. Kyle has heard of a smoothie called the Green Machine, which he recommended I purchase for six pounds fifty afterward, an amount that would have fed a Tudor household for a week.
The Squat Rack
Kyle then introduced me to something called a squat rack and asked if I had ever squatted under load before. I said I once carried the weight of an entire schism with Rome on my shoulders for six years, and he said that was not quite the same muscle group, and to be fair, he was right, my knees confirmed this immediately with a sound like a drawbridge.
The Class
Later I was placed in a group class called Body Blast, alongside eleven strangers and a instructor shouting numbers over music with no melody. A woman beside me, roughly the age of my third wife when I married her, was doing something called a burpee with terrifying enthusiasm. I attempted one. I would rather storm a castle. A castle has stairs, at least, which go somewhere. A burpee simply returns you to where you started, over and over, which is the most accurate description of my marriages I have encountered since returning to this earth.
The Verdict
At the end Kyle told me I had done brilliantly for a first session and asked if I wanted to sign up for a twelve month contract with a two week cancellation clause buried in paragraph nine. I have signed treaties with less small print. I told him I would think about it, which in my day meant someone was about to be arrested, and in Hackney apparently means the same thing, because he immediately offered me a fifteen percent discount to reconsider. I left with a bag containing a free protein sample and the distinct sense that Kyle, twenty-six, vest, clipboard, is the most ruthless negotiator I have faced since Cardinal Wolsey, and considerably better at cardio.
Kyle would, I suspect, have strong opinions on my diet plan as well, given half the chance. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: the nation’s sudden and expensive need to purchase shorts, Burnham’s own housing plan opening with a speech about how big the plan is, the full eyewitness account of how I came back in the first place.
