I have this sporty female friend whose life appears to revolve around forcing me into ridiculous shorts and chasing me with a whistle. It’s not that my level of fitness is in need of personal attention – I no longer smoke, drive, or wheel my beer into the TV room on the back of a radio controlled monster truck.
On the other hand, being single means that I am gapingly vulnerable to some of the more uninspiring invitations that come my way. I’ve done everything from attending a Czech film festival to shuffle politely between stalls at a Teas of the World celebration.
Certain friends have seized upon my availability – and let’s face it, my desperation. They know full well that I will spend any number of hours helping out on garden allotments or enduring the inhumane torture that is performance poetry, in order that in return they will accompany me to a pub for an hour while I stare shamelessly at girls.
It doesn’t work in reverse of course. If I want my friends to come hiking with me I usually have to fool them into thinking we’re going to Alton Towers for the day. My sporty female friend is no different. I am not the perfect fitness pupil, merely the only one who can never excuse himself on the grounds that Jessica/Rooney need to have pen tops removed from their ears/nostrils as a matter of great urgency.
My sporty friend called me up a few months ago with the idea that we should remove most of our clothes and run through the streets of Leeds, hotly pursued by stray dogs and gangs of feral children lobbing stones at our backs. It seemed like a crazy idea, but when I tried to excuse myself on the grounds that young Jessica had just swallowed a washing-up liquid bottle and needed medical attention as a matter of great urgency, it was swiftly pointed out to me that I am childless, currently without a partner, and therefore almost certain to have no washing-up liquid in the house.
“It will be good,” she said. “We can enter some 10k races just to keep things interesting.”
“Well, okay,” I said. “As long as I get to jog along behind the front runners dressed in a funny giant chicken costume, just like last time.”
“That wasn’t a fun run,” she reminded me. “That was Princess Diana’s funeral. The big chicken suit didn’t go down well at all.”
So we ditched the big chicken suit, but we did start running together, the successful part of the story being that I am still running four or five times a week. The thing is, even a modest programme of physical exercise leads to an undeniable sense of improved happiness and well-being. This naturally brings increased levels of confidence in your day to day life. It is difficult not to feel upbeat and confident when you are flushed with personal achievement. For is it not but a few short weeks since the zip on your shorts peeled apart with a slow, miserable groaning sound? Now look at you – with your firm, muscular limbs, sleek running profile, and frequently upstanding wanger, you could pass for a racehorse.
Alas, whenever you get just a little too confident, a little too full of your own marvellous new self, life has a way of bringing you back to earth, usually with a bump, and a roll, a few more bumps and a disrupting, but not quite final, meeting with a fence, before depositing you in a garden pond, slimy green weeds clinging to your head like a soggy toupee.
Take today for example. Today I was jogging along my usual route when I entered one of those daydreams in which you imagine yourself as others may see you. Naturally, when your confidence is high and you feel at the peak of your game, it is difficult to see yourself as anything less than perfect. At that point it was impossible to picture myself smiling gormlessly as I got off the bus at the wrong stop, none of the buttons on my shirt fastened in the matching holes and the handles of my plastic shopping bags stretched ominously to their elastic limits.
Instead the images that bloomed brightly in my mind were of sleek yachts speeding through calm blue seas, big cats darting tirelessly over the African savannah, and of course Olympic athletes powering into the home straight. This truly was how I saw myself. I could feel my body working like some powerful industrial machine, my legs taking long, smooth strides over the ground, my arms pumping rhythmically across my chest. I must look amazing, I thought. And then I happened to glance down at my shadow.
What I expected to see was a true reflection of my athletic self, my fluid, almost dance-like grace and co-ordination reproduced on the pavement, like moving street-art. In its place was…well, you may have to bear with me here, as this is very difficult to describe. Frankly it’s a long time since I have witnessed anything like this. I honestly haven’t seen anyone run this strangely since a drunken girlfriend of mine lost a shoe as we dashed for the last train home. She too was doing that thing with her arms, that floppy, boneless jiggling thing that puts one in mind of an outrageously camp Frankenstein’s monster.Naturally I was appalled, shocked into a long moment of utter disbelief. Beside me the shadow lumbered on like some grotesque twin, weird little kangaroo arms jerking wildly. I thought to myself, this is exactly how you would run if you wanted to make a sobbing child laugh.
“Stop running funny!” I howled, and at once the spell was broken. Now I could actually hear my feet smacking heavily onto the tarmac; they were hopelessly out of sync and without any kind of fineness, like the time I stamped my way around my niece’s dance-mat with furrowed intensity. All of a sudden I felt heavier and completely without command of my movements. Worse still I could now see people in the street pointing and laughing. Some of them were doing impressions of me – prancing around like some sort of gay tyrannosaurus rex – before collapsing against the bus stop in spasms of laughter.
Nevertheless despite the threat of further public humiliation, I will go out jogging again tomorrow. I am nothing if not determined. Besides, if I wear the big chicken suit nobody will even realise it’s me.
