You know it’s Monday when you awake with a sense of dread. Why so, I hear you ask? You don’t go to work any longer, they say. No, these days, Monday mornings mean the over-sixties’ keep-fit class. It’s advertised as the over-fifties but, apart from the instructor, we comprise a decrepit bunch of relics whose combined ages probably exceeds a millennium.

It’s therapy: we go to remind ourselves that another week has started. We can’t remember where to go next, let alone the names of any of the other forty or so masochists present. Most of us have forgotten to have breakfast and by Wednesday we’ll have lost track of the days. And if we failed to notice that it’s pouring with rain, a strategically placed bowl has been positioned to catch the leakage in the community hall roof. Those to the right must (pretend to) march and grapevine and box-walk carefully to avoid said obstacle. Yes, it’s another day in paradise.

Obviously, greetings don’t involve the time honoured question ‘how are you?’ We’d be there all week describing various symptoms. Which isn’t to say we don’t make enquiries: ‘feeling any better?’ And, of course, everyone is thrilled to have made it through another week – ‘I really didn’t feel like coming this morning’; ‘it was hard work getting up today’. We queue up to pay our £4 subs and the room is filled with an air of bitterness. To be fair, the instructor remembers all of last week’s excuses: ‘how are your hips?;‘did the antibiotics work?’ how’s your father?’ ‘how’s your mother?’;‘how are your ankles?’ The questions are a bit tricky for those who’ve had to learn how to update ‘the dog ate my homework’ excuse. That was last week. Last week has gone, never to return. You have to possess some semblance of memory to be a good liar.

Eyes on the clock, we complete the warming-up exercises after which the woman next to me says she’s had enough and is going home. We’re allowed to pause for a sip of water and replenish our drips. Who’d have thought a plastic bottle of tap water could be of such importance.

It’s time for the pelvic floor muscle exercise. Having obtained the correct position, which involves holding in a tummy that generally precludes sight of one’s feet and would be better achieved with a winch, there are four parts to this activity most of which, from a distance, are difficult to recall. I think the first involves standing up straight and tightening the ‘abs’. I don’t know what the ‘abs’ are, let alone where they might be located. After this, we must relax. I’m good at this bit because I think it means letting it all back out again. Next, comes stage three. I’ve never really understood stage three so always speed on to the final part which seems to involve standing up straight again. Anyway, today, I finally discovered what stage three means. I think. Basically, you won’t understand this unless you’re female. And aged or pregnant. You know that squeeze you do to stop yourself peeing, well that’s stage three. That one that you can’t see other folk doing. Of course, it doesn’t work in a practical sense when you’re old otherwise Tenna Ladies’ wouldn’t have been invented: we’d all be standing in the Co-op squeezing bits that have lost their raison d’être happy as Larry.

After this, we fetch our mats and lay on the floor and I start yawning. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is, every time I lay down I want to go to sleep. Some folk are scattered around the water collecting bucket and there’s a hiatus whilst they discuss the weather and how wet they are. I spot some previously unseen liquid by the door but, apparently, someone has spilt their water bottle; or misplaced their umbrella; or forgotten their Tenna Ladies’. We stretch out and draw our legs up to our who knows what. If we feel like it, we can pull our chins up to meet our knees. Snores and farts join the drip, drip of the leaking roof.

And we always finish with a dance. Thankfully, that business with the scarves has been abandoned as has all that Indian nonsense. Today, we’re doing something that involves a hop, skip and a waving of arms. The instructor has her back to us so we can follow her steps more clearly. She is hopping and skipping and jumping like a demented banshee. Behind her, forty pensioners are standing still and waving their arms half-heartedly. And afterwards, we give ourselves a well-earned clap and rush to the loo