I wasn't expecting that...

Last year I told you how I'd started a gratitude jar. 
I also confessed to being rubbish at following or creating daily routines. 
The plan idea vain hope was that this positive activity of routinely recording something for which I was thankful, or perhaps, more likely, the nightly moment of guilt at not yet having completed the task, would turn things around. My gratitude jar would inspire a new positive habit.

Not even close.

By May, it was accumulating little more than dust. 
Round-about July, I tipped out the bits of paper and filled the vase with flowers: the instant gratification of the flowers preferable to the long-term benefits of repetition.

I suck at routine. I suck even harder at change.

But I knew when my life was relocated to the other side of the planet, I was going to have to embrace change. In lots of ways. And in lots of things.
And in me. 
So I decided it would be wise to start with a small change in my behaviour. 
Well, to be honest, it's not that small. Not for me.
But it's not huge...

Anyway, size isn't the issue here. What I decided was that I would make a conscious and quite deliberate effort to make more eye-contact with people. Anyone. 
Everyone. 
And I pledged to myself that I would smile more, even when on a crowded London street, or in a train lined with phone-focussed commuters.

The consequences have, so far, been both gratifying and perplexing in equal measure. 

Certainly, it requires some thoughtful lip and cheek muscle action on my part to generate a perfectly casual, genuine-looking lips-together smile and avoid looking loopy... or creepy. I don't think I've actually frightened anyone. So far.
However, I have found that the smile-to-smile-response ratio doesn't seem to be consistent. Whilst there is, undeniably, a higher rate of return from women, a great many still insist on pretending I am invisible. And on some days, so many people barrel straight into me, or shove in front of me, or remain propped rock-like in my path that I begin to believe I am invisible. 

But that's not what I wasn't expecting. What has really taken me by surprise is how often, now, with my routinely eye-level gaze, I catch sight of someone amidst the hoi-polloi who looks familiar, a face that matches another, a sparkling champagne bead image that pirouettes to the surface of my memory. 

Now, I understand about doppelgängers. Apparently, the chance of having a living one is 1:135. More if you add animals to the mix. No, that's not what I have found befuddling.

The thing I wasn't expecting is that nine times out of ten, after the image has registered and I've done the mental double-take, after I've marvelled at the glistening pearl of memory bobbing at the very top of my mind... it pops in my face.

The bubble bursts as I realise that I have just matched that random-whoever-on-the-street with a specific-someone from my experience... just exactly the way they used to look. Decades ago. When we were at school, or uni or in a hot smoky pub dancing to a live band. In the '80s.
Long ago and far away.

What do you think? Is this a cause for concern...this seeing people as they were? Is it an inevitable product of aging, or a trait uniquely and weirdly my own?
And should I persist with my puckery old-lady lips-together smile and continue trying not to look loopy...or creepy? 
Or would I be better off just working on that invisibility thing?

Zumba!

'I would luv to see a video of you at yoga and zumba, now that would be a giggle sis.'

Perhaps I’m being my characteristically oversensitive self, but I confess to being a tad affronted by this decidedly unflattering and considerably less than supportive response to my revelation that after a rather overly lengthy period of relative inertia, I have commenced a rigorous fitness regime of Zumba on Tuesday mornings, and yoga on Thursday evenings. 

(Can you tell I’m reading George Eliot again at the moment? Check out the word count on that sentence. I could've gone for a PB if I’d chucked in a semi-colon.)

But back to the topic at hand. 

Never in my 58 years have I attempted either Zumba or yoga. 

I was rubbish at aerobics back in the day. And I have given a couple of those women-only 45-minute circuit gyms a bit of a thrashing at various times over the years but, generally, the thought of exercising in front of anyone other than the dog terrifies me. 

I hyperventilate at the mere prospect of being in near-proximity to spandex, lycra, short shorts, and racer-backed sports tops. And a wall of mirrors will see me slink as far to the back of the room as possible.

That's not 100 per cent accurate.

I plant myself in the far corner of the back wall of any exercise class, even if there isn’t so much as a square-millimetre of reflective surface in the near vicinity.

So, no schmancy high-class gyms for me. I’m taking both classes at the local community centre… in the same room that hosts the Chinese playgroup, the ukulele ensemble and the LGBT Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Secretly, I’m hoping that one glorious day a monumental scheduling error will result in all of us being in there together.

Lindale, the Zumba instructor, is a ridiculously cheerful once-professional dancer who frequently entreats us to 'open the chest' and  optimistically implores the use of 'beautiful arms'. The hour-long class features pretty much the same routines each week, and after 4 weeks, I’m actually starting to anticipate what comes next, because Lindale isn’t one for counting beats or shouting out instructions about what to do next. He’s having too much fun merengue-ing with his invisible partner, shimmying his maracas, and voguing wherever the opportunity arises.

Staying in step is particularly tricky during the ‘rest’ songs. 
Especially the saucy jazz classic Fever. 

While I favour Peggy Lee’s moves:  

Lindale seems to be channeling Madge:

Or maybe Madge's backing dancer... 

What’s that I hear you say?
Fever doesn’t have a salsa-inspired Zumba beat.Well, I did say it was a rest song.

But…

Ahhh…

Well…

The truth is it’s a Zumba Gold class. 

Yes… OK… I admit it... It’s only Zumba for geriatrics. But it can be tricky. Really it can. Not as tricky as yoga (and no, it's not yoga for the over 50) but it's still tricky. 


And I still think my brother is mean.

He should read more George Eliot.