For Annie, with love

In our tireless quest for health and the body beautiful, Annie and I have been trying out dance classes. This led us, on a wet Friday evening, down a dark alley to a dance school specialising in pole dancing.

Here is a pause for you to fall off your chairs and laugh. Done that? Good. I'll continue.

Let me now add that there is nothing dodgy about this class. It's girls only, taught by women, you get in free, or pay to attend, and it's for fitness and laughs.

So along I went in my trusty blue shorts that hide my fat knees and met Annie - resplendent in her new purple kit from Sainsbury's - and her friend E.

We enter a small and slightly damp room, with a laminated wood floor and lines of poles down either side of the room attached to the floor and ceiling. The class is taken by a friendly and rather sweet woman.

We survey the class. Everyone is younger and thinner than us. There is a large mirror covering one wall put there, as all mirrors are, for me to contemplate my ugliness. My instincts begin to tell me that this is a bad idea.

In pole dancing, the spins have names. Stand next to the pole, hook one leg round it, grab the pole with your other hand, and twirl round gracefully. Congratulations, you have done your first Vanessa! I hook one leg round the pole, which disappears beneath the mountains of flab, and try to hold on with my hand. I discover that years of carrying boxes and turning pages have turned my hands to spaghetti. I stumble round the pole, landing with a thud on the floor. Fortunately we are at ground level.

We try another spin. This is called the Fireman. Put both legs round the pole, slide down, and land, knees bent, at the bottom of the pole. Stand up in an alluring fashion. I grip the pole for dear life with my knees and inch slowly down, like a geriatric sailor's monkey on a rope, getting stuck somewhere near the floor. The instructor passes and laughs - but not unkindly.

We learn some linking movements, which might look alluring when performed by a thin fit person. The instructor demonstrates in a sweet and calm manner, as if we are doing cake decoration or macrame. I begin to get that freaked-out feeling I get when I watch too much cardmaking on the digital channels. I am too absorbed in my own misery to wonder about E and Annie, but one glance tells me that they are not bringing sexy back either. In fact, sexy, having seen us do pole dancing, has flounced out of the room in a huff, packed its bags and gone on a very long cruise, leaving no forwarding address.

Annie is always very concerned that we will offend the teachers of the classes we attend if we don't go back the following week. However, this time, we decide that perhaps we will offend them more by turning up again. So we thank the teacher effusively for her time and effort, apologise for being pitifully bad, say that of course we will go on the mailing list, and escape with relief, collapsing in giggles in the street outside, vowing never, ever, to darken the door of a pole dancing class again.

Our quest for fitness continues...