And the rickety old fan spins on the ceiling, looking like it could fall at any moment and act as a large spinning guillotine; leaving behind a bloody mess of dismembered limbs and rotting corpses.

I am doing Pilates at my local sports centre. The room we are using also doubles as the children's play area during the day, which explains the giant orange hippo on the wall and the silver grey seal looking down on us with an evil porpoise.

Apart from the instructor, I am the only man there and I managed to find a spot at the back where no one can see me. I am very grateful for this as everyone has taken their socks off and not only do my feet pong a little bit but I haven't trimmed my toe nails in about 3 months. "Ok ladies," says the instructor, "time to start. Oh sorry, Ladies and Gentleman..." Everyone pauses and looks around for the person with different chromosomes and who looks uncomfortable at being there. I stand out like a female Chief Executive of a FTSE company.

We begin stretching. This isn't too hard, I think. This is just what we used to do before playing football. (Albeit in a more manly fashion, without the mats, with our socks on and without Tubular Bells in the background). "And now twist your body and raise your right arm so it's completely vertical. I want to see nice straight lines." Hmmm, this is new. My calf muscle twitches, my quad and my hamstring join in. They twitch and shake in time to the music.

The instructor wanders round as we hold the position; he takes a particular interest in my stance. He straightens my arm from its position at "2 minutes to" to "o'clock". The giant orange hippo on the wall sniggers at my incompetence and the ground fails to open up and swallow me.

And now we're on our backs with our legs in the air, which - looking round - should be a familiar position for the ladies in the room. "Now I want you to draw the numbers 1 to 8 with your feet." That is great because I can pretend to be number dyslexic and keep drawing the easiest number. I reach 5 and a bead of sweat gathers and runs down the side of my face. "And once you reach 8, we're gonna count backwards!"

The instructor then cooled us down and we stood up. "Give youselves clap" he said. All the girls did. Which was very, very lame.

When all said and done I will admit it was quite good fun. I ache in the places I expected to ache in and I'm not in as much pain as say I am when I'm, ahem, dropping a very obese kid off at the pool.

I'll be back next week.
If only so I can prove something to that hippo.