As I’ve mentioned, I belong to a gym. I’ve been a member for about ten years now. It’s located at a hotel about a mile-and-a-half from my house. Very convenient.

I should run, or at least walk there, but I don’t. I use the car. Yes, I know, carbon emissions and the like, not to mention the additional exercise, but until recently, if I went on a weekday, I had to get to the railway station after my session and catch a train to London in time to get me into the office by 9.30. So, walking, even running, wasn’t an option. I had to get back home, eat breakfast, collect my bag and make the 8.03. Now I have no such excuse, but there is invariably a good reason to drive. This usually involves a combined trip to the supermarket, or some such errand or another. Pathetic half-baked reasons they may be, but it’s my conscience and I’ll have to live with it okay? Or walk.

Anyway, the gym. It’s not large, but has a pool and a well-equipped exercise room that has recently been updated with new machinery. There is also a steam room and Jacuzzi. These tend to be more popular with the hotel guests than gym members and they can be seen luxuriating, wallowing even, like families of perspiring, pink hippos. Twenty minutes on the cross-trainer or steps would be of infinite more benefit. And there my friends, in that one damning, judgemental sentence, lurks the curse of being a regular, paid-up gym user; the highly irritating tendency to feel justified in passing judgement on those who aren’t.

If the majority of the population wish to be free to fart in the face of good advice from the experts and pay scant or no attention to the importance of keeping fit, that is entirely their affair. But I promise to cease any comparisons with keep-fat people and large mammals and all such spiteful elitist nastiness. I should be content to spend a smug hour or so a day forcing unwilling muscle and sinew through a series of punishing routines on contraptions that might well have been devised by the Marquis De Sade himself. In fact, I’m not so sure that he isn’t a member. Which is where, my good companions, the real fascination of belonging to a gym lies; the members. They are a constant source of fascination and are subjects for endless speculation.

In this intimate environment - where one subjects oneself to all kinds of stresses, strains and positions, exposing all manner of parts that, in everyday circumstances, are best kept covered and contained – some relationships inevitably form. The majority are confined to a nod and brisk ‘good morning’ or ‘see you’, in deference to a member’s privacy and right to suffer in silence. Others blossom, with actual conversation taking place. This, in my experience, is more likely to occur among the female members.

Women are much better at forming more than a mere nodding acquaintance, seemingly happy to discuss the most personal of topics with relative strangers. Men tend to stick to the weather, sport and golf – not a sport, but an unfathomable obsession. But there is hardly any communication across the gender divide. When it does take place, this is most common amongst the older members, where any hints of an ulterior motive, or ‘coming on’ are presumably presumed not to exist. Of this, I’m not so sure. Don, though long since past his eightieth birthday, has a wicked glint in his eye when addressing the ladies. A heart bypass and a fall from his garage roof a few years back seem to have done nothing to dampen his ardour. And just what was he doing on the garage roof at his age? I bet he’s no stranger to a swinging chandelier or the top of the wardrobe.

I’ve seen many come and go over the years. Some don’t stick it for long and soon disappear, never to be seen again - like the young man who accompanied his treadmill activity with a loud and single cough, emitted at regular and frequent intervals once he’d warmed-up. He wasn’t missed. Nor were the couple who pitched up on Sunday mornings and stage whispered and giggled away twenty minutes of everyone’s quiet solitude. But on the whole, there’s little to complain about, unless you’re called Don. For as well as retaining his lust for life, he keeps the management on its toes, ensuring that standards are meticulously maintained.

But I suppose we all benefit, we, the motley crew that make up the membership; Derek, hairy shoulders, bald head, over forty rowing-machine champ; Dr. Death, the spook of the weights; Edna, pensioner, arrives each day by bus; Rick, Canadian Harley rider who’s lack of height is compensated by pure power-packed muscle; George the cheery swimmer; Thumper, the treadmill queen: Bernard with the matchstick legs and his daughter, the school head; Sam, ruddy faced, always ready with a smile; Ted, the Saints supporter; Vince the Charlton fan; Fran, undisputed dame of the cross-trainer; Helen, with the hip replacement, caring for her bed-ridden husband; Shirley, the Porsche driver who drives herself; Jeff, Shirley’s partner, who needs driving; The Colonel, white knees, white vest, cream shorts, white socks, odd tennis shoes; Tony, a dead ringer for Anthony Newley, but still very much alive.

All there, most days, mostly. We happy fit few. Or should that be phew?