Many mornings I’m the first in the queue at the health club, this way I’m in the pool before it gets busy, I even tend to travel there in my bathing shorts for rapid access. There’s nothing worse than swimming up and down and continually bumping into the wide swathe of humanity that frequent my Gym. I swim first then sauna or sit in the steam room for twenty minutes, it’s a good way to start the day. I have to say though the members of my local club are a curious bunch.

I headed for the sauna after a swim recently and there is one occupant in there, bizarrely he’s wearing an enormous wooly hat, I shit you not, a massive wooly hat. What the hell is that all about?

I sit there for a while trying to resist enquiring about the head gear, but it doesn’t last and I have to chirp up. Why?

I’m married to a Norwegian he says.

He doesn’t say anything else.

I sit there wondering, what I’ve missed, should his response have explained it? Am I thick?

After an extended silence he eventually adds that Norwegians believe the hair doesn’t react well to the sauna, whilst saunas are good for the body its not positive for the hair, they reckon wooly hats help protect the scalp from dry heat.

As my hair continues an inexorable path of recession I may well be investing in a Norwegian Wooly Sauna hat. Watch this space.

But listen, I’m avoiding the issue that’s been building up over the last few weeks that really has my goat, and if I’m not careful I will do something I will regret.

Rather often as I said I’m first to arrive, I go straight to the changing rooms stick my bag in the locker and shower then I’m in the pool, it takes me no more than a couple of minutes.

But time and again when I get poolside there’s this geezer already in there. How the hell does he get in before me? I begin to wonder if he has some premium early access card or something. He doesn’t even swim the weirdo, instead he walks up and down the length of the pool carrying a float in each hand for half an hour. then gets out and leaves. Oh and he also arrives at the pool with a shopping trolley. One of those old lady type shopping trolleys, you know the kind:

He takes up the slow lane and makes it difficult for anyone else with his strange exercise regime, I end up having to use the medium lane and to be honest it’s too early in my latest path to wellness to leave the slow lane. Anyway, after a while of this happening I began to notice that each time he was in the pool there was a really strong pong of after shave.

Then I realised, this bloke was in the pool before me because he wasn’t showering first. The dirty bugger wasn’t showering. Each time I catch a whiff of his scent I sense my hackles rising, I even took to stopping mid swim, standing up and trying to make eye contact with him, giving him a stare and a dirty look, before resuming my swim. It unsurprisingly had no effect.

Being English and having gone to a minor public school I have an ingrained proclivity towards being polite, not making a fuss and trying to be nice to the people I come across even if they are a bit cunty.

Now generally I am pretty good at doing this, I can swallow minor irritations, put ’em down to people having a bad day etc. But, when things drag on and I let small things fester it becomes a bit like a pressure cooker, I keep the annoyance under restraint until the pressure is too much and I blow. Suddenly I become a raving lunatic about things that shouldn’t matter. The man with the shopping trolley is becoming a potential incident waiting to happen.

I talk to friends about it, one says oh, you should talk to the management, it’s disgusting. they should know. But I can’t make a fuss can I? And what if I’m wrong, maybe he showers before he comes to the gym.

Or why don’t just take him to one side and have a quiet word with him? The dirty man with the shopping trolley, I just don’t know what to do.

Yesterday in the sauna two folks are in conversation, one is talking about how many celebrities are members of the Club, she is talking about one in particular, wait a minute it sounds like HIM I think. I butt in to the conversation. Is he the bloke that comes to the pool pushing a shopping trolley I ask?

Yes she says, that’s him.

When I get home it’s out with the laptop, YouTube takes me back to the 80’s and there he is, the first video I click on has 11 million plays. Jeez I don’t recognise him now at all, I’d no idea it was him. He had some banging tunes back in the day. Does this make my quandary on the showering front better or worse I really don’t know.

Where I go from here I can’t say, after all I may be wrong, and as for naming and shaming him, well of course I can’t do that, I’m an Englishman after all. And it just wouldn’t do. I will just leave that to your Imagination.