Mandy in my Daydreams

Arriving at Bikram Yoga Chiswick I am greeted from all sides.  ‘Good morning, Nick,’ the lady levering her MBTs off her feet at the door says.  ‘Hello there, Nick’, the one parking her UGGs next to four identical pairs on the shelf agrees with her.  ‘Don’t worry, Nick. I know your name’, the pretty receptionist says when I offer her my membership card.  ‘Hi Nick’, a couple of half naked men chorus as I enter the locker room.

I can’t help myself from indulging in a little swagger as I don my gear and enter the stifling heat of the studio.  I am obviously the man.  At least as far as those fine people of Bikram Yoga Chiswick are concerned.  I am the new and popular hero, I tell myself, adjusting my mat and towel happily, while a couple more people shoot smiling nods in my direction.  In the ten minutes peace before the class, people - no, not people, fellow practitioners - limber up around me and I lie on my back and savour the moment.  They love me here, I tell myself.  They all know me.  How could I be anything other than THE MAN?  I’ll probably get free membership here as I’m so good for morale.  Maybe they’ll even name the studio after me.  After all, they know me here.

Then Mandy the instructor walks in and we spring to our feet and clench our hands together under our chins and pump our elbows very slowly up and down to synchronise our deep breathing and I realise why it is that everyone seems to know my name.  They’ve learned it from Mandy.

If I have a particular skill, one that separates me out from a crowd and will win me huge prizes on the weirdest ever episode of Mastermind, it is my extraordinary ability to daydream.  I have been violently yanked from a reverie by a school teacher calling my name more often than an academy of sumo wrestlers has had hot dinners.  I have instantly forgotten the names of 80% of people to whom I have been introduced socially as something about their appearance has reminded me of something like – no, it’s gone, sorry.   I drift away into my thoughts during speeches and sermons; conversations and car drives; television programmes and tandem hang glides.  I am not far off being able to do an entire yoga session on auto pilot.  I couldn’t do it well, mind you, but I could do it.  Unless it was a Tuesday morning and Mandy was teaching.

Mandy is one of the more experienced of the teachers at BYC.  She really knows her stuff.  I think she might be mates with Bikram himself too, from the way she talks about him.  Not that she brags or name drops.  There’s just a fond familiarity to her tone whenever he comes up.  It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that they visit each other’s houses regularly for Friday night curries and Sunday barbeques.  They are probably godparents to each other’s kids and take summer holidays together. 

Mandy is the sort of teacher that six-year olds accidentally call ‘Mum’.  She strolls the studio like a fierce but fond primary school Miss, congratulating good performances and correcting the wrongdoers.  Occasionally she’ll go off-piste with her own interpretation of a posture that might have a lesser instructor inhale sharply when they should be exhaling. She knows exactly what she is doing though and she takes the whole class with her, urging us on by name.  ‘Well done, Xen.  That’s great, Eric.  Antonio, arch your back a little.  Good posture, Lolly.  Don’t stick your bottom out like that, Nick.  Left arm up, Nick.  Nick, stop fighting it.  Yes you are, I can see that grimace on your face.  I want to see a smile.  Just enjoy it.  No - stop grimacing, Nick.’  She is amazing.  Nothing escapes her notice.  Parts of my anatomy that I have never heard of before are identified as being wrongly angled, extended or flexed and gently corrected.

It is helping.  My yoga is coming on in leaps and bounds.  I’m sure it should be smoother than that but it is improving and Mandy’s supervision is really helping that. 

I find it very difficult to daydream in her class as she spots and points out every position that I don’t think through perfectly and that’s how everyone else in the class has learned my name.  Who wouldn’t after hearing it that often?

‘Up on your tip toes.  Like a ballerina, Nick.’

The class continues.  We will spend ninety minutes, twisting and contorting ourselves as the clock ticks and the sweat drips. 

Mandy will guide us every step of the way and at the end we will lie exhausted in the dead body pose before gradually picking ourselves up and heading off to chatter in the changing room.

‘Suck your stomach in, Nick.’

People look at me in amazement when I tell them that we all talk to each other in the blokes’ changing room after class and that there’s nothing weird about it at all.  I don’t blame them.  I’m amazed myself.

I’ve been a member of several gyms over the course of my life – or at least rented their membership cards to pretty up my wallet and I’ve always hated that pair of execs who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time standing naked in front of a mirror combing their hair to perfection, one of them braying about markets and colleagues while the other agrees repeatedly with a forced manly timbre to his voice, the kind people use when joshing mates in the half time bars on football grounds (apparently).  He seems to be struggling to fulfil some unspoken challenge of remaining naked as long as his superior, like playing chicken with the last turkey. 

‘Nick, stop making that face.  You’ve got to smile - look like you’re enjoying it.’

I remember discovering myself in the same swimming pool as Tim Neligan, the MD of Zenith, on a regular basis at Cannons in Paddington (the third or maybe fourth gym that has been proud to call me a member but struggled actually to place me).  We didn’t stand and natter nudely at the lockers but he was always good for a friendly hello in the shallow end and would often start conversations with me over the water cooler about swimming.  I often wondered if this might perhaps be the moment when my career began to soar.  Tim was actually the person who officially made me redundant but he was awfully nice about it so maybe it was that extra length which helped. 

‘Suck your stomach in further, Nick.’

I have now become one of those people who talk in the locker room.  I suppose nothing bonds people like spending ninety minutes tying yourselves into knots together and my fellow overheated contortionists are often glad to exchange a grimace or a sigh or a comment on the arduousness of the class or the Hades-like heat of the studio or the excitement of the day that awaits us as we peel sweat-sodden clothing off and head for the showers. 

‘Stop lifting your chest, Nick.’

I do wonder whether it could be one of the side effects of spending much of my days on my own.  I’ve never particularly enjoyed my own company and perhaps this bare bottomed banter is my fault.  Perhaps the nice people at Bikram Yoga Chiswick used to maintain a respectful silence with one another.  Maybe they rue the day that I came to join their fold.  Maybe they are dying to tell me to shut up but being good yogis they are worried about the bad Karma.

Maybe I should test this out.  Maybe after this class I will stay stonily silent in the locker room and wait to see if anyone addresses me.  Perhaps there will be a relieved silence and peace will return to the locker room.

But I doubt it.  Bikram Yoga Chiswick is a friendly place.  Lots of people may know my name but I know theirs too.  I learned them from Mandy.  That ferocious focus isn’t just on me.  It extends to everyone and that’s how I know their names.  Mandy tells them to tuck their bottoms in too.  She’d do it to you too if you turned up there.

‘Well done, Clare. Touch the ceiling, Alex.  Arch your back, Elizabeth.  You too, Melody.  That’s a great posture, Catherine.  Hips forward, Otherworldlyone at the back.  Chin up, Philip.  Hold your hands behind your head, Brent, like the police are trying to search you.  That’s it.  No Paul, pretend you’ve got a million pound cheque between your buttocks.  Hold on to it tightly.  I’m trying to steal it.  You think that’s grumbling, Richard? I’ve got teenagers at home.  That’s not grumbling.’

You might say that Mandy is a great guide to anyone exploring Bikram Yoga for the first time.

‘Think of your nipples as headlamps, guys.’

I know that it’s time to focus.  We’re already at the floor stage.  If I don’t start paying attention, I won’t get the most out of Mandy’s teaching and maybe I’ll never be able to do the Triangle or the Camel pose properly and I won’t be able to reward myself with a nice Coconut milk from Francesca at reception and I’ll leave worrying that I’ve wasted the opportunity and when I unlock my bike from outside Sainsbury’s, I’ll be regretting my lack of attention but I should remember that I need to pop in to Sainsbury’s and get some food as Tony’s coming to lunch and I wonder how his holiday in Jordan went and I hope he’s brought the photos to show me and is Corkers ever going to reply to that email about meeting up later on and I wonder what it was that he said he wanted to ask me about and I must remember to ring the plumber back but above all I must focus on this before it’s too late.

‘Thanks a lot, guys.  Have a lovely day.  Namaste.’

Bugger. 

A massive thanks to Max (aka Paul Heneker) for so expertly adding me in to all the studio scenes, when I was actually clutching a glass of wine round at his flat in my yoga kit.  If you’re looking for a decent photographer (or would like some photos faked to show you doing sporty things), here’s his site http://www.heneker.com/.

Arriba Arribada

‘Padre, Padre, me quiero confesar,’a Spanish man flings himself at my feet and begs me in slurred Gallego to hear his confession.  He is only the second drunk Spanish man to do exactly this today but it’s still the morning so anything could happen.  I smile politely, make a vague sign of the cross in the air and join the crowd jostling their way through the narrow streets.  I glance back to see him give a last entreaty before returning grinning to his friends and his drink.  Five minutes later, we are ambushed by another inebriated would-be confessor.  He grabs my leg, throws back his head and launches into the familiar routine, ‘Padre, Padre…’

I am in north-west Spain, just above Portugal, walking the narrow medieval streets of old town of Baiona.  My presence has not suddenly overwhelmed the Galician locals with pious guilt and filled them with the desire to confess their sins.  It is just that I am dressed in a monk’s habit (a Dominican Friar, I think) and am walking the streets of their town with two other similarly dressed men – Brothers Arj and Kirb, we’ll call them.  The three of us spent part of our formative years at a school in Yorkshire run by Benedictine Monks so you might be forgiven for assuming that we have grown up to become secret weekend missionaries, donning our brown habits and spreading messages of fire, brimstone and forgiveness among the Spanish heathen.  Although I can’t speak for Kirb and Arj with 100% confidence, I can tell you that I am no secret man of the cloth.  In fact, eighty per cent of the people around me are dressed in the garb of a similar era and the other twenty per cent, frankly, look a bit silly.  They are not entering into the spirit of Baiona’s Festa da Arribada.

Arribada means ‘arrival’ in Gallego, the dialect of nearly everyone around me.  The particular arrival that they are celebrating with this Festa is that of Martin Pinzon and his ship, the Pinta, one of the three that set sail with Christopher Columbus en route to discovering the New World.  Not only was the Pinta the first to reach it in October 1492, but it beat the others back to the Iberian Peninsula too.  On 1^st March 1493, Pinzon brought the Pinta into the bay of Baiona and announced the discovery of the New World to the people of Spain, scooping Columbus himself by several months.

He picked the perfect place for it.  I have no doubt that the people of Baiona, on hearing his announcement, would have stopped what they were doing and thrown the most enormous party to celebrate.  Even now, five hundred and eighteen years later, they are still celebrating.  On the first weekend in March every year, thousands of people flock to Baiona in all manner of medieval costumes and take to the streets.  Bars open all day and street traders wallpaper the old town with rough wooden stalls selling local foodstuffs and replica medieval weaponry. 

For the last three years, Kirb and I have joined in, using the weekend as an opportunity to catch up with Arj who has settled there with his Baiona-born wife, Maria, and two children.  Awoken by cannon fire each morning, we spend the weekend walking the streets in costumes rented from the little stone-fronted shops that open only for those two days in the year.  We trawl the stalls for delicious traditional food and gather outside bars for beers and sangria in clay bowls, serenaded by roving gaiteros bands. 

We bump into affectionate old friends and familiar faces from previous visits.  Arj has his cheeks squeezed by a jamonerie owner with jowls down to his collar bone.  Kirb is patted fondly on the back by the new barman at Portiko, our favourite Baiona bar, on whom he has already made an impression.  We find Ramon, veteran of many of our Baiona nights, being embraced by a thickly moustachioed man in a leather jerkin at his favourite bacalao (cod) stand.  Off the main drag we stop at a bar, sitting down on a stone wall while a mob of children play around us.  Whenever one comes within reach of an adult, they are scooped up and kissed and hugged.  Ramon, his wife Rebecca and their two children all wear perfectly matching costumes.  I find myself thinking of the Von Trapp family in their play clothes cut from the same curtains. 

We are joined by Pepa, the wife of Alberto, with whom we spent the previous night, dining on monkfish and gigantic gambones and drinking obscenely large whiskies in Portiko.  We are told Alberto is still in bed.  ‘Que flojo’, Ramon dismisses him, using what I gather is a fairly graphic term for a someone who can’t take their drink - the same one in fact that he used on me when I left the bar at gone one-thirty that morning.  Poor Alberto is obviously deeply affected by our Friday night together and misses the whole of Arribada, to his wife’s shame.  His daughter Teresa seems unphased by the loss of her papa and charges around the medieval playground with Arj’s daughter Mariana, having their faces painted, sitting in a giant swinging boat and gasping in delight at the display of geese, pigs and ponies by the waterfront.  Arribada is well set up for kids and they all come in costume.  I see Princesses, Maid Marians, Knights Templar, even numerous miniatures in my own Dominican Friar costume.  There is also a Spiderman.

We arrive at the main square in time for a performance by Peter Punk, a coxcomb-clad clown with an uncanny resemblance to Joaquin Phoenix.  He abuses the audience, condemns the government in a thick Gallego accent and rides around on a six inch bicycle, clown shoes splayed wide from the pedals.  He spends half an hour winding up a local woman before stripping to an old style swimsuit, vigrously rubbing his nipples and stepping in to take her place in a Heath Robinson contraption that empties two water buckets over his head and slaps him in the face with a spring-loaded foam hand covered in whipped cream.

Up the hill, we pause for pulpo.  A giant cauldron simmers with tentacles.  Beside it, a woman in a brown tunic lined with gold snips the octopus into bite-sized chunks, douses them in virgin olive oil and peppers them with paprika before dishing them up on wooden plates to the waiting queue. 
  

 

A lady in green velvet adjusts the brocaded bonnet of a toddler in a pushchair.  A cobbler is hand-making shoes while tourists pose for photos in a giant pair beside the stall.  A beautiful girl passes us in a wimple and aviator sunglasses.  A squire in doublet and hose wields an enormous digital camera.  A knight with a pierced eyebrow watches a leather-aproned blacksmith hammer a metal knife on his anvil before thrusting it into a fire which his cowled assistant keeps hot with a six foot pair of bellows.

A frenzied beat approaches as half a dozen minstrel drummers escort a pair of lurid stilt-walkers through the streets.  They swoop down on unsuspecting mothers and gather up their children or snatch sun hats from the heads of Knights of the Crusades.  ‘A baixo’, one of the drummers urges us to the ground and we all drop to one knee as the walkers march up and down until the beat gathers and forces us to our feet as one and we follow the stilt walkers off towards the main square before Maria is distracted by a marrucho stand where the crepes are supposedly the best in Galicia.  There is a Cardinal standing there holding a beer and chatting up a serving wench and a witch.  Feeling outranked, we friars slink away.

On the beach we watch a display of jousting and general gallantry.  Boldly coloured horses and their riders thunder up and down the beach, spearing hanging rings with their jousting sticks and hurling spears into targets in front of a bursting grandstand.  The crowd gathered around are given coloured napkins to wave for their favourite knight who returns triumphant to his chosen corner to enjoy their cheers after each feat.  ‘El Caballero Negro’ the black rider is putting up a strong fight but ‘El Caballero Amarillo’ (yellow) is obviously in serious difficulty on a huge and skittish horse, plunging with alarm in every direction but the right one.  Unconcerned by the danger, the Spanish crowd laugh at the sight.

At the Boquerie, we discuss marriage and beards over beers while the kids play with my camera over the fountain.  Arj keeps us supplied with plates of tortilla, churrasco de cerdo (pork ribs) and criollo (chorizo sausages) barbequed a la plancha. 

Over the road a beautiful woman with a garlanded brow is juggling with sticks on a cord and off towards the beach all we can hear are the bubbling whistle of dozens of bird callers.  Men in tunics and jerkins cluster around upended barrels and drink Estrella.  A jester in faded technicolour juggles three equally faded technicolour balls then bares a set of hamster teeth and offers his cheeks out for a kiss.  He looks crestfallen as children shy away from him.  A man in an owl mask with a pinched beak plays what looks like a wind-up violin.  He nods a greeting to a man in thick leather gloves with an owl sitting malevolently on one wrist.  A stilt-walker returns and siezes an inflatable mace from a knight in a black cape, pretending to lay about him with it. 

As the dusk looms, Brother Arj, Brother Kirb, Maria, Ramon, Rebecca and a small swarm of costumed children wander down to the sea front, hanging exhausted over the railings.  Hoots, whistles, drum beats, cannon fire and excited Gallego chatter echo over the water.  In the harbour is moored a fully seaworthy replica of the Pinta.  It is now a regular tourist attraction all year round.  A sailor in a white smock hangs off the rigging and points towards Baiona.  I like to think that it is Martin Pinzon, enjoying the party that he and Columbus started so many years ago.