Yesterday, I went to my first Heartcore class.

I have been working so hard for the last few months that I have done literally no proper exercise. I have done the stoop, twist, and baby lift a few thousand times, but while that does wonders for your lower back muscles and your thighs if you do it right, it’s not a fitness program.

So I went to Heartcore, which is just up the road.

It’s incredibly civilised. The whole place feels like the lobby of an expensive hotel, and there are only a few people in each class. The first sessions’s free, so you feel completely at ease about the whole experiment. They even play that tinkly music which you hear at spas, the nose-flute meditation arias which go with sandlewood candles and paper underwear.

Cool. Pilates in the relaxed environment.

And then the class started, and I felt pain, and it did not stop for fifty five of your Earth minutes. I burned, laboured, flaked out, restarted, struggled, and travailed, and the tiny pixielady at the front smiled benignly on my efforts while of all things Tone Lōc played on the stereo. Seriously, I have not heard his music since teenagers used it to seduce one another on the dancefloor when I was, er, a teenager.

And I knew then that I was in the Evil Day Spa OF DEATH.

And it was awesome.