pentowater.blog

05/07/25

10.26am

I turned up in good time to teach Yoga Align, Virgin Active’s class which isn’t Vinyasa. I still can’t get my head around it as a concept, the timings in my head don’t really work and I get a mini sick feeling when I know I have to teach it. 

 I don’t really plan classes – or I do but it’s more like I have a structure in my head and then season it with elements and trinkets here and there. 

Place a few pebbles around the place. 

Except that I came to the wrong gym. I’m meant to be in Streatham and I’m in Fulham. 

 We cross the river on the Mildmay line to bring us south. The book I’m reading at the moment ties the Thames and the Tigris together in a story that flits between centuries and eastern and western cultures and peoples. Oppressed, ethnically cleansed, growing up in extreme poverty, literally born in a sewer in the case of the character born on the Thames. 

 I didn’t want to teach Align anyway so I guess there’s a positive there. I have lost the £28.50 I got out of my hangover bed for, however. 

Later…

6.10pm

The first 5amWR outing! To the Cinema to watch a gay film, as it is Pride today. My proud friends have hit the streets along with the 1000s of other friends, but mine will be taking ketamine.

As part of this residency is managing my misery and my alcohol use, I’ve swerved it.

So I’m going to watch Hot Milk at Genesis, which has been on the current site in Stepney since 1800s. The film got 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, which if you don’t know is like the ‘the people have spoken’ film review page. But I think sometimes gems are found in the bin store.

This film, even though set in Spain and filmed in Greece, with an ending to which I exclaimed out loud in the cinema ‘HOW CAN THAT BE THE END?!’ was beautiful, tense, scenic, sexy, lulling, lusty, dusty and sweaty. I could feel the mosquito bites from not having a net completely covering my ankles. Mostly set in a crumbly house on the sea in Spain (Greece) with the concrete jetty and clothes line with holiday clothes blowing on the line, Fiona Shaw constantly calling to her daughter to help her with something and the daughter audibly rolling her eyes. Played by Emma McKay from Sex Education, assisting a mother who can’t or won’t get up and walk out of her wheelchair as is the sense we are given. It was claustrophobic, familiar, not a huge amount happens, but it encapsulated for me the feeling of hot summers in your early 20s when nothing you do is of any real consequence and boredom permeates everything because you are privileged and purposeless.

McKay’s love interest in sensual, enticing, entitled and a total nightmare, as any youthful crush should be. I was there with them during their deep and scary bedtime chats, the awkwardness, the sexiness, physical touch being the love language which is painful to watch for it’s needy familiarity.

I was sat in the cinema watching it with only a handful of other women around my age on their own, apart from a couple behind me who cackled with laughter after my outburst at the end. ‘YEP!’ they concurred as I turned around in exasperation for the ending and they met my gaze with knowing nods.