A history of movement: the school years

My first memories of physical education involve a girl called Claire.

Claire was taller than most girls. She had the wit of someone 10 years her senior and—most importantly—the handwriting to match it.

Her sick notes saved me from several PE (physical education) lessons. But many were inescapable. Some days we were all crammed onto the sputtering carcass of a bus to be driven to a nearby field for the most dire punishment: athletics. Worst of all: running. 100m up to the dreaded 1500m. The movement brought me no joy, only pain and embarrassment.

I was chubby and academic and it was clear that these lessons were for kids who were good at sports. I was always in the bottom group and had no aspirations of leaving it. It was clear the top group were the pride of the school, and the teachers did little to refute this. PE also meant trying to hide the fact that I still didn’t have pubic hair from other boys, especially those who relished broadcasting this fact to everyone in the changing room.

Another catalyst for movement was my inability to pass a driving test at age 17. I despised having someone sit next to me telling me what to do as I tried to figure it out myself. My instructor was a pudgy, passive-aggressive man with a haircut that I’m sure his Mum was proud of.

My favourite memory of him was when some kids threw a rock at the car I was attempting to drive. As the rock hit the rear window, his facade dropped and he snarled: “They won’t be laughing when I come back with a baseball bat tonight.” Surprised by his own venom, he quickly apologised but I respected him a little more.

I predictably failed the first test. My instructor quit just before my re-test so I had to learn with someone new, in a different car. I failed even worse on the second go and decided to give up rather than risk further humiliation.

The upside of this is that I cycled a lot, for many years. I only took jobs I could cycle to. I don’t remember appreciating any fitness benefits, but I did enjoy the speed and precision of the bike, weaving through traffic and across fields, not to mention the autonomy it gave me.

I only started caring about fitness when I wanted to lose weight. At the end of school, I encountered the Atkins diet and—happy to subside on Pepperoni, cheese and milk—I lost quite a bit of weight. This brought social approval and female attention, fulfilling my two greatest desires at that time.