I’m not sure if the topless woman with the long dark hair is actually doing yoga, or whether the (presumably male) artist just fancied getting a slim young thing to adopt an interesting pose.  But I would like to think that this is an (admittedly quite advanced) yoga position. After all, yoga has been around for quite a while.

My mother - who died quietly, in her sleep, the night after dancing at a Valentine’s Day party - was still doing yoga stretches regularly into her 90s. It certainly worked; I remember walking into the Miami day centre where she went three days a weeks and, seeing her seated upright and elegant at a table, wondering to myself what my mother (then in her 80s) was doing among all these old people.

And my daughter Celine came along to the class that Jane and I attended in London just a couple of weeks before she gave birth.  (Click here for a couple of photos). Perhaps not surprisingly, certain of the postures had become easier than usual, as her body adapted itself to allow several kilos of new human being to emerge from it. Whatever, people in the class - the women in particular - looked on in some amazement.

That being London a good third of the people regularly attending the class were men.   Here in the sticks, however, I am the only man 19 weeks out of 20.  In fact my first teacher in Princes Risborough, Annie, once told us to reach down our backs ‘as far as your bra strap’, to which my response was that the only thing I knew about bra straps was how to undo them single-handed. That sort of thing doesn’t happen so much now, though a woman who replaced my current teacher, Liz, the other work asked us to do something which she called a ‘goddess’ pose.  I’ve nothing against goddesses as it happens, but I did wonder aloud if that particular pose was mandatory.

Never mind; I’ve always enjoyed female company, so I’m alright being treated as an honorary woman. (One significant moment in my move away from the pretty heedless sexism of my youth was when I turned up at school one Monday, my right eye covered with a patch, the result of a tiny splinter of wood flying up as I was chopping firewood.   All the women commiserated, wanting to know what happened and if I was alright; all but one of the men said things like ‘Arr, Jim lad’ or ‘Where’s your parrot?’, the exception being the only avowedly gay on the staff).

My weekly yoga session takes place on a Monday morning, but I try to do at least a number of stretches, twists and squats every day, starting first thing in the morning, using the bar on the Aga while the water is boiling and the toast is browning.  During that time, Jane - who prefers to do her yoga by herself - is in the living room doing a lengthier, more intensive session, after which it’s time for breakfast back in bed, to be followed by the first reading aloud session of the day, our current book being Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s sequel to the marvellous Wolf Hall.

But our most enjoyable yoga sessions are early in the morning, on the terrace in front of our room at the top of our Turkish hotel, to be followed by the first swim of the day, which is timed so that the sun comes out over the hills just as we are about to emerge from the sea, ready for our breakfast of bread, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, melon and watermelon.

Below is a photo of us in the ‘tree’ pose on our Turkish terrace.

Click here for more photos from Turkey.

And here to find out more about the form of yoga we practise.