22 years is a long time between bench presses...

I joined a gym the other day. The last time I was a member of a gym it was 1984 and it was the North Sydney Police Boys Club. This is before it was popular to look at yourself getting bigger in the mirror. There were none of the lycra shorts and baby oil brigade in the North Sydney Police Boys Club (despite what the name suggests).

The gym of circa 1984 is very different from the de Stafford Sports Complex of 2006. The first thing I noticed was the cost. A years membership to the North Sydney Police Boys Club gym was AUD$5 - that will buy me a short macchiato and glass of imported bottled mineral water in the downstairs cafe at de Stafford!

The gym I used to go to had a couple medicine balls and a set of weights. Nowadays there are so many different pieces of machinery to flex your abductor or stretch your glutes on. I stepped onto the jogging machine and stared at the dashboard full of LCD push-pads (no doubt looking like my father trying to program a DVD player). After pushing buttons at random for several minutes I tried to kick-start the apparatus - it's at this point one of the staff came over to assist me with a patronising smile and a few words of advice. I was off and running - literaly.

The gym of 1984 was a house of pain. The air was heavy with testosterone and the sound of clinking steel. This has been replaced with euro-pop melodies and the hum of a treadmill beneath the weighty concerns of a housewife and middle-aged, unemployed man trying to fit in 'summer shape' workout before the kids need to be picked up from their friend's house!