As I stagger along the treadmill, heading towards the ever shifting horizon beyond which lies fitness, I stare at the seconds flicking by on the treadmill's digital clock and sustain myself with images of chilled beer glasses. I'm doing it, I tell myself, to stay healthy while the inner me knows I'm doing it because of vanity. At least I don't delude myself about my self-delusions.

Around me my sweat-drenched, red-faced fellow gym attendees fantasise about tall glasses of carrot and apple juice laced with high-powered vitamin additives, while my thoughts remain focused on a six-pack of stubbies from the local pub.

Gym-goers tend to be a fairly grim-faced slice of humanity, particularly the weightlifters, who crouch and grunt and lumber around like constipated bears. Happily, however, they keep to themselves and no one attempts to become matey, which suits me just fine.

The only complaint I have ever voiced related to one of the weightlifting fraternity whose personal hygiene standards were lacking and whose body odour would blister paint. He must have tried bathing once, many years ago, and had not enjoyed the experience. Tiring of running on the treadmill with a peg clipped on my nose, I was about to resign my membership when he stopped turning up. I scanned the newspapers for days for news of a man who had succumbed to his own smell, but there was nothing.

Since returning to the gym and abandoning the Coronation Drive pathway to the hoards of cyclists who terrorise it like so many Vandals and Visigoths, life has been quiet. Too quiet, I thought as I plodded along on the treadmill and watched a woman lifting weights.

I watched idly as Weight Woman huffed and groaned while her face turned puce with exertion and her kneecaps threatened to explode. "What strange people," I thought, stepping off the treadmill, grabbing my towel and heading for the carpark and the cool glass that lay beyond.

I sat in the car, made a couple of phone calls and was about to drive off when I became aware of someone entering the car beside me. Moments later there was the unmistakable "clunk" of metal on metal. Whoever it was had just hit my car with their door. So I got out to inspect the damage as the car beside me began to move. Apparently, I wasn't even to receive an insincere apology. Incensed, I pointed at my door and the small scratch in the paint and then accusingly at the departing car. Slowly, the driver's window descended.

"So that's it, is it?" I said. "No apology. Just drive off," I yelled and found myself staring into the singularly unappealing features of Weight Woman. "You rude cow!" I roared.

For a moment, I think she considered getting out and throwing me into the nearby creek. "Get [expletive]!" she yelled and screeched out of the carpark in a cloud of blue smoke.