Fighting talk | 22 September 2007

The gym attendant is giving me private boxing lessons for ten quid an hour. He used to box for the army. He candidly admits to having perfected one combination only during his short career: a left to the ribs followed by a right cross to the head. It was his secret weapon. It either worked or it didn’t, he says. His squashed hooter testifies to the occasions when it didn’t.

If he sees me in his gym, he comes out of his office and straps weights to my ankles. I feel like a fool trudging around the place like a deep-sea diver on the ocean floor. But he’s obdurate. If I’m going to learn how to deliver a combination, I’m going to need legs, which at the present moment, he says, giving mine a quizzical, sidelong glance, I ain’t got. Afterwards, however, when I’m showered, and with the weights removed, I feel as if I am indeed floating like a butterfly.