Perfect people & me

I’m bright pink, sweaty, and huffing and puffing enough to blow down a house (maybe even a brick one).

I run in and out of the shower and feel a little calmer and a little more collected (but only a little). I’m always so disorientated after a workout. I vow that lunchtime gym sessions are a thing of the past. Too rushed. Never again.

I barely get time to moisture, although my mum has dutifully drilled into my head, over the years, that not moisturising after a shower was the worst possible sin I could commit against humanity.

And then I see them. Those perfect girls, the ones who blow-dry their hair at the gym (I used to wonder why the gym provided those blow dryers). In one hour, they have managed to workout, shower, and blow-dry hair. Super-women!

And then one girl pulls out her hair straightner (oops, sorry, I meant GHD). Her hair and make up are perfect, a level I would aspire to achieve if I had a date with the man of my dreams or a massive night out. But here she was, at the gym at lunchtime, going back to work, just like me, yet so perfectly presented.

As I caught my lip-gloss-less and flustered reflection in the mirror on the way back to work, only 40 minutes late, I felt like hitting my head against a brick wall.