Clomp, clomp, clomp. Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze. Blah, blah, blah.

When I crawled out of bed around five this morning, groggy and stiff as a plank, it was with slow Frankenstein steps that I shuffled over to the Fitness24Seven gym in the block behind our local supermarket, ICA. I was looking forward to the week’s first workout on home turf. The previous session I’d done at the chain’s branch on Hornsgatan in Stockholm.

I like Fitness24Seven’s concept, where your membership gives you free access to all their roughly 280 gyms in five countries. Last year I trained at ten different gyms in Malmö, Gothenburg, Trollhättan, Stockholm, and Bangkok.

The machines aren’t the same quality as at my old gym, where they have Italian Technogym, but they’re perfectly fine. After all, it’s the muscles that are supposed to do the work – not the machines.

Just like so many other Monday mornings around six in the am, only the middle treadmill was available. To my right ran The Clomper, to my left ran The Wheezer, and on the far end walked The Yapper, who, as so often, was in the middle of yet another incredibly important and very loud phone call with someone.

For me, training is non-negotiable. The medication I take for my arthritis suppresses my immune system so much that I have to keep moving just to have a fighting chance against nasty germs and mischievous viruses. On top of that, exercise keeps the ghosts at a respectful distance, which in turn leaves room for my fuel – creativity.

I usually listen to BBC, Monocle Globalist, Conan O’Brien, or The New Yorker Radio Hour when I work out. But The Yapper’s forty-minute phone call this morning made it hard to hear or focus on anything other than the conversation he was having – a call which, judging by the volume, was clearly of the highest national importance.

When The Yapper isn’t running on the treadmill, I can usually hear him talking and laughing so loudly that he truly deserves his nickname. I’m annoyed with myself for not having more civic courage so early in the morning.

I can live with the obviously flat-footed Clomper, and even though it sometimes sounds like The Wheezer is about to give birth any second, it’s really only The Yapper who manages to sabotage my concentration a bit.

From a social-anthropological point of view, I’m fascinated by how some people seem to be completely filterless and can behave as if they own the gym.

Some of the younger guys think it’s perfectly okay to mark three different machines as “theirs” at the same time. Others have no problem scrolling for several minutes between sets, as if they were at a café and not in the middle of a workout.

Last week, I actually mustered the courage to ask a guy (my age) if he’d be done with his sets soon. He just sat there glaring at his screen when I tried to get to the machine he was occupying. He got visibly irritated and snapped:

“I didn’t know you had booked it.”

I laughed, left him to his screen, and went to another machine without thinking too much more about the slightly odd situation. But clearly, I didn’t let it go completely. On the walk home, I felt like a guy from the “gym police”.

Sometimes I have a hard time understanding how people think when they barrel along in their own little bubble without showing the slightest consideration – or even understanding what you’re talking about when I gently point out that it’s not okay. Maybe I’ve just been to Japan too many times.

In an hour or so, it’s supposed to start snowing. If we’re lucky, it’ll remain for a while. I’m looking forward to some snow. I like the light and the silence a blanket of snow brings with it. The fridge and freezer are reasonably well stocked with food, and in one of the kitchen drawers, I’ve collected five or six cans of Heinz Baked Beans in case we end up completely snowed in here in Malmö.

Back in the late 1980s, when the highway between Kiruna and Riksgränsen was closed due to a snowstorm, you’d call the Swedish Road Administration to check when it would open again. A recorded voice on the authority’s phone line would then say:

“This is the Swedish Road Administration’s automated answering service. The road between Kiruna and Riksgränsen is expected to open in three hours. End of message.”

No timestamp, so we had no idea when the recording had been made. But it was also funny. Communication isn’t always that easy. Not for government agencies – and not for people at the gym…