As somebody who is completely impervious to all forms of sporting participation, I have amazed myself and bought some one kilogramme hand weights. My Pilates teacher brings a pair out sometimes in lessons, and I have to admit it is quite satisfying swinging them up and down. When I do the same exercises at home without the weights it feels less like real exercise (which of course it is) and more as though I have simply chosen to lie on the floor and wave my arms around ludicrously.
When the Systems Administrator, who is seeing a physio about a frozen shoulder, mentioned that the physio's routine would progress to using weights in due course, that clinched it and I said generously that I would get the weights and we could share them. If sharing a pair of soft grip dumbbells isn't a sign of togetherness, I don't know what is.
I insisted on getting weights with straps to go over the back of the hand like my teacher's. The SA queried whether this was strictly necessary, but given I'm naturally clumsy, if I'm going to hold two kilos at arms' length above my face I'd like them to be secured to my person, to reduce the chance of my accidentally dropping them on myself. The John Lewis website had some that were just right, and anyway there is something inherently reassuring about John Lewis. I peered into a sports shop a couple of months back, wanting to buy a tennis ball (just the one) to massage my feet, and found the whole football shirted, youthful, male ambience so off-putting I retreated again without even getting through the door.
The first time I tried to order the weights, John Lewis had temporarily withdrawn the Click and Collect facility from the Colchester branch of Waitrose, so the problems I found when I collected my last order had evidently made their way up to central management. That's good, better than poor old Tesco where customer gripes about the aisles being cluttered by staff picking orders for home delivery, produce being arbitrarily moved so that it takes ages to find basic cooking ingredients, and the checkouts being littered with revolting Halloween spiders go ignored from one year to the next, while the customers go elsewhere. A couple of days later Click and Collect had been reinstated, and when I got to the store I found they'd done the sensible thing and given it a dedicated albeit makeshift desk at the back of the shop next to the storeroom, with staff only processing John Lewis orders and not being expected to simultaneously rectify Waitrose till errors and process returns.
I am happy with the hand weights, indeed I am becoming so enthusiastic about the value of home exercise for us crumbling middle aged oldies that I went ahead and ordered a wobble board as well. Though John Lewis do not call it a wobble board, they call it a Balance Board, which is presumably meant to sound less negative than wobble. My Pilates teacher and all John Lewis website reviewers say wobble, though. I know the JL board is good, because my teacher has one of those as well. The SA is concerned about where I am going to put it, saying that having all of my weight condensed into a tiny spot would probably crack the bathroom tiles. Which is possibly true given that they are rigid (ceramic) tiles on a flexible (wooden) substrate. I was also prepared to concede that it could crush the grain of the oak plank floor in the study, but rejected the notion that I might break the hall floor tiles falling off the wobble board. I don't know how high the SA imagines the board is, or how wobbly, or how much the SA supposes I weigh, but the answer is, not that much.
I went for home delivery for the board, as by including a giant candle and some other Christmas shopping I could just scrape over the qualifying spend for free delivery. The Waitrose temporary Click and Collect desk might be best avoided as Christmas draws nearer.
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