Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Growing friendship

Jeremy Clarke reports on his Low Life

issue 08 May 2010

I used to see Tom now and again at the local gym. I’d be on the treadmill and he’d be in front of the mirror lifting weights. He was already big then, but he was all chest and shoulders and no legs and the disproportion looked ridiculous. Broad at the top, he seemed to taper down to a point. Also, his shoulders were too high, too level and too immobile. One day this inverted triangle with blond hair flopping over a spotty schoolboy face spoke to me. He appeared on the next treadmill and said he’d just been outside to do some sprints on the football pitch, but abandoned the idea because there was too much dogs’ excrement underfoot. His soft voice and careful enunciation surprised me.

My dislike of this local gym — the too-cold air-con, the tinny rap music, the lazy, narcissistic attendants, just to name a few bones of contention — intensified to the point where I stopped going there and went instead to a gym ten miles further away.

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