Daddy, why’s that man got a hairy bum?

ALWAYS used to think middleaged spread was just another name for mouldy fish paste. Then about 10 years ago I hit what I think is defined as middleaged and at roughly the same time, I started going to the gym twice a week. It was a real culture shock the first day I walked through the doors at the Virgin Active. I had never been to a gym before.

There was this guy with muscles on his muscles trying to kill a punch bag. Punching, kicking, kneeing, head-butting. I halfexpected him to pull out a 9mm pistol and shoot the thing. The machines were lined with people who looked grimly determined to enjoy themselves. There wasn’t a lot of smiling going on.

I had a strict routine when I used to go to the gym. Walk in, try not to look left or right in case someone thought I was picking a fight, pull in my stomach as I walked across the floor, enter the swimming pool gate and then sit back and read the newspaper as my two kids had their swimming lessons. It was very relaxing, and my karma felt a lot better knowing that the sprogs were being made drown-proof.

That was the last time my shadow darkened the door of a gym, except for the time I had to go

Ito the Sports Science Institute for some physio on my knee from the same guy that puts Schalk Burger back together again. It was a humbling experience.

Back in my Virgin Active days, my daughter was a very talkative three-year-old and of course I had to take her to the gents to get changed. She was a voluble toddler, and the change room was like an echo chamber. So she would say things like: “Daddy, why’s that man got a hairy bum” or “Daddy, why are those two men kissing?” I fled. I got into this train of thought (musing about getting older, that is) while rummaging through a box of old snapshots recently. I came across a Kodak Instamatic classic taken on New Year’s Eve, 1970, when I was 14. Our extended family was staying at my parents’ holiday house, and at midnight, my one brother, three cousins and I sneaked a bottle of champagne and got giggly drunk. Someone took a Kodachrome Moment picture.

Now Kodak is bankrupt, film doesn’t exist any more outside of the art schools, two of the cousins are in Australia, and one is in New Zealand, and they’re all wildly successful. Evidently my old school has reunions in Australia that draw more old boys than the reunions in Cape Town.

Then there are the appointments pages in the Sunday Times. I keep seeing pictures of all those real nerds who were at school and university with me, you know the pale, flaccid ones with spectacles who took life so seriously? Now I wear specs and they’ve just been appointed MD of Mammon Inc at a salary of zillions. (“So what do you do to relax, Mr CEO?” “Oh, every year we go skiing in Switzerland, scuba diving in the Caribbean, I sail my yacht around the Med and I go to the gym five times a week to keep in shape for the Comrades, the Argus, the Duzi, the Two Oceans, the Iron Man contest and wife number three.”)

Some years back, a British friend who was doing a very British thing and walking around the world with his wife decided that his stateof-the-art Lowe Alpine backpack was too heavy. So he gave me the Lowe. The only problem is that I’ve never used it because both my knees have wonky cartilage as a result of bad surfing wipeouts over the years. And it costs a gazillion per knee to fix them, so I’ll just have to wait until I win the lottery that I never enter.

Talking of surfing, my sleek, seven foot four inch surfboard that was custom built for me is gathering dust in the garage – and it’s not the knees this time, it’s just that right now I’m not sure I can face the pain of fighting off all those 11year-old grommets in the backline (and getting called “Sir” by them). And then my buddy had the cheek to say to me “isn’t it time you thought of just using your bodyboard.” The horror, the horror. Anyway, sod them all. One of my favourite photographs is of a sign outside Lilongwe, Malawi, that reads “is your car disgraceful? Bring her to us and we will make her graceful again.” I am determined to grow old disgracefully. I’ll walk around embarrassing my kids by wearing cargo shorts, back-to-front caps, and T-shirts that say things like “talk softly and wear a loud shirt” or “I’d rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.”

And I’ll ask my friend Andrew Donaldson if I can join his band, The Hip Replacements.

tony.weaver@iafrica.com