dropping out of character

I've nothing against people exercising but there is something a little bit weird about people making three little piles of clothes a measured number of paces apart then doing static exercises at one in between trotting to the others and back, especially when the trotting was done far too slowly for the distance to have been important for the overall timing of the event. Doing presses-up in public is traditionally seen as Going a Bit Too Far (unless, oddly, if it's as part of a group of people all keeping-fit) but the addition of lunges and squats (in between slowly trotting to and from the other piles of clothes) turned it all into slight comedy rather than mere posing, though star-jumps would have been more effective. After a few cycles he had evidently warmed up and become sweaty enough to remove his T-shirt, thereafter glistening unpleasantly in the setting sun. It's at times like this that short-range telepathy would be massively useful in order to persuade small groups of bystanders to form circles around such performers, perhaps providing feedback in the form of claps, cheers and boos depending on whether or not they liked that particular exercise or thought it particularly well-executed. If the exercising-gentleman had chosen to perform his activities on the High Street then such crowds would probably have formed spontaneously and uncoerced, though without the light mocking behaviour required to disconcert him. I was only watching him as he happened to have set up his piles just across from where Nicky had stopped to feed the wingpiglet following her release from the dentist, after which she'd trundled across the Meadows to meet me on my way back from the bicycle-shop after the need to collect my bicycle from refitting coincided with trundling Edgar around for a couple of hours whilst Nicky's gums were repaired. Although the need to gently shuggle the buggy meant that one arsehole could jumped past me in the queue and a slight instance of having-to-be-picked-up-and-comforted whiny grumbling after Edgar awoke with nothing but shelves of bicycle accessories in his field of vision rather than a nice reassuring parent or two all tasks were able to be performed, though walking whilst wheeling the bike and the buggy wouldn't be particularly easy on a normal roadside footpath compared to the nice big wide path across the Meadows.