Wright On! Shelley Wright takes a wry look at life

YESTERDAY when I woke up I could hardly move my legs and today the feeling has just got worse. I think I've seized up.

Now for anyone who has ever taken part in a step aerobics class, or any other form of fitness torture for that matter, there will be no need to explain.

But for those of you lucky enough to so far escape such things, I will try.

It's difficult though because the problem is really an indefinable all over ache - basically I feel like Wile E Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons.

You know, the one where Coyote is always trying to drop ten ton weights off mountains on to Roadrunner, but it all goes wrong and he ends up flat as a pancake and has to be peeled off the road?

Well that's me. I can't move and I can practically hear the birds tweeting around my head.

I'm just hoping I will pop back into shape Warner Brothers-style in a couple of days but the way things are going I think I've more chance of winning the ACME lottery first.

And if you're not a cartoon fan just try imagining someone has sliced your legs open with a rusty blade and tied your calf and thigh muscles in a bow around your ears and you should be somewhere close to how I feel.

For a moment yesterday morning I thought I had suffered a stroke in the night, but now I just think a doctor must have crept in a couple of nights before and performed a lobotomy while I slept for me to even consider "step" in the first place. It's even affected my face which, for some strange reason, is now connected to my knees and every move is teamed with an involuntarily grimace similar to the one I make when Animal Hospital comes on the TV.

It's all I can do to stop myself groaning loudly with pain and it's not good.

I mean, I'm only 24 - and thought I was relatively fit.

But you know you've gone wrong somewhere along the line when people start stopping in the car park and offering to help you into work because you're hobbling along like a snail with a broken leg.

And I wouldn't mind but she was older than me too.

Thinking back I don't know what possessed me to go. Well, actually, I do. My sister-in-law - a fully paid up member of the fitness firm.

She said an hour jumping up and down on a rubber step would make us feel better when she encouraged my friend and me to go along.

But I suspect what she actually meant was that watching us trip ourselves up as the rest of the class moved cleverly up and down the step would make her feel better.

And how she managed to keep up with everyone else as she chuckled at us through the mirror at the front of the gym I'll never know - but I spotted her and I've got her number, let me tell you. I can't really blame her though. We did look a sight.

My friend Shelley - yes, I'm friends with the only other person in Rossendale with the same name - just couldn't put a foot right as she stepped up as everyone else stepped down and down as everyone else jumped in the air. And, oh dear, she got so confused with the routine she was actually on my step at one point. What was going on there?

From then on she decided to admit defeat, ditch the class altogether and started dancing to the music instead.

About the same time my sister-in-law had to stop mid-move as she choked on a mouthful of Evian water that wouldn't go down the right way because she was laughing so much.

I don't think we can show our faces there again but, to be honest, that might be a good thing. I can't go through this every week.

I think I'll stick to those fitness videos in future where you can sit in the chair and just join in when you want.

I usually find towards the end when it needs rewinding is a good time, don't you?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.