Step To It

It's not often I write about my sporting endeavours on this blog. And there's a very good reason for that. I tend not to undertake any.

When Prince Harry was slogging his way to the North Pole he did it without my help. Sure he asked me to come along but, you know, I only do white and ginger when it's Karen Gillan or Nicole Kidman so the thought of 3 weeks in the snow with the half-blood ginger Prince didn't do much for me. And really, the arctic circle is no place for strip billiards (balls tend to ice up when left outside the pockets for too long).

And the amount of times Ray Mears has telephoned or emailed me and asked me to be his wingman on some jaunt around the Amazon or the American Rockies... well, to employ the old saying, I haven't had as many hot dinners. And as tempting as it is to hunt Bear Grylls "Deliverance" style through the American back-country while he squeals like a pig it doesn't compare with killing Falmer in Skyrim from the comfort of my own office chair surrounded by the vast Lego world I have built around myself to protect me from the ravages of the real world outside.

And don't even get me started on the Olympics. I thought it only fair to give Mo Farah a fighting chance at a medal, OK? Such trinkets of idolatry mean absolutely nothing to me.

So it came as a complete surprise when I found myself lured into the competitive world of team walking. For the first time ever I have joined with some work mates from the corporate world that I inhabit in my daylight hours to undertake the GCC Get The World Moving Challenge.

Basically, for the next 100 days I will be living in one-sided symbiosis with a digital pedometer (not paedo-meter as my eldest son insists on pronouncing it) that will record my regular 24 hourly attempts to walk at least 10,000 steps a day in tandem with my team mates. Those steps are then input into the web site above and translated to miles that are plotted onto a satellite map. The goal is to virtually walk around the earth and, dependent on your competitive bent, thrash the Americans who are currently top of the leaderboard.

No donations from you are needed though your verbal support would be appreciated.

At the moment the pedometer is proving to be an almost hypnotic distraction. I find myself checking my step total so often I am beginning to walk like Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Show. Possibly the hump on my back and my odd, stilted way of talking had already placed that image in people's minds but I like to think my penchant for singing the Time Warp is a new development in an already damaged psyche.

I'm also becoming more annoying and inane in my interactions with those around me than normal. For instance did you know that it takes me 100 steps to get up in the morning, get dressed and feed the cats? Or that an average bout of meal preparation in the kitchen takes me approximately 500? Next week I hope to be able to tell you how many steps it takes me to walk to work and how many I clock up stamping my feet in the office when Skyrim crashes on me.

10,000 steps a day?

Effing easy.

The Pygmy Postmen Of Leamington Spa

Poor little blighters. It’s the weather, you see? It’s done them in. Finished them off. They’ve all gorn an’ bought it... Gone up to that little miniature world in the sky.

They were the Midland’s best kept secret. One of Leamington’s rarest breed of fauna. So rare, in fact, that I doubt that even the great David Attenborough has ever seen one, though if he ever tried to frank a letter in the main Leamington Spa Post Office he may have inadvertently stepped on one. They make a small squishing noise not unlike stepping on a Stag Beetle. Though unlike stepping on a Stag Beetle you don’t then get ear-ache from all the Stag Beetle’s mates effing and blinding at you for your carelessness.

I am of course talking about the Pygmy Postman. And while I’m at it I better throw into the mix the Tiny Taxi Driver and the Borrower Bus Driver too. ‘Cos they’ve all been affected. They all of them, to a miniature man, disappeared inexplicably from Leamington’s streets on Saturday morning.

It began with the snow. And I suspected it ended with the snow too. You see we had 3.5 inches of snow fall in Leamington Spa on Saturday. And, as I am sure you are all aware, the Pygmy Postman and his related species are only 3 inches tall.

Well, I mean, you do the maths.

I suspect the poor little buggers were swamped within the first couple of hours. Snowdrifts up to the kerbs and, in some places, clean over them! They were never going to cope. Not even with their boots borrowed from Action Man. The Bus Drivers are no doubt lying frozen solid under a garden hedge somewhere; their buses lying empty and echoing to the sound of non-existent commuters who were unable to get into town that day because of the positively Antarctic conditions that ravaged this little Spa town that I call home. The Tiny Taxi drivers I have more hope for as I suspect they are all merely snowed in to their local pub and dare not jump down from the doorstep lest they find themselves in need of a St. Bernard puppy to dig them out. No doubt they are even now swimming around a small brandy glass trying to make the best of it.

Us big people take it all for granted you see. We dig ourselves out of our homes; we haul the snow off our cars and in some cases some of us (like me) wade heel deep through the snow drifts and make our way to work under our own steam and never give a second thought for the little people who can’t do all that. The tiny people who, up to their necks in a few millimetres of snow and ice, find themselves quite literally out of their depths.

Please people, if you do nothing else for others this Christmas, can I please ask you to spare a thought for the diminutive breeds of our society? We rely on them all year round and it is only now, when times are hard and the Polar Bears are migrating as far south as Birmingham, that we realize the great all-year round service that these little guys offer us. Only when they are gone and pewling helplessly from inside their snowy tombs do we finally value them.

Poor little soldiers of Leamington Spa. I salute you.