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.

Last Of The Can’t Drive Club

About 6 years ago I made a concerted effort to learn how to drive. I got to the point where, accompanied by an instructor, I could drive on a motorway. And then my youngest boy appeared and I decided to finally get round to completing my part time University degree… and the money wasn’t there to support £120+ a month for driving lessons. I “temporarily” gave them up.

It was probably a bad decision. Especially as I was so close to qualifying for my test. And let’s face it, I think deep down inside part of me knew that this cessation in acquiring this particular skill was anything but temporarily.

Driving never seemed natural. Not to me. I always felt I was breaking some secret rule, some hidden druidic law concealed at the very heart of my own personal universe. I was never meant to drive.

I never felt the burning desire like most of my peers did in my late teens. Never felt the lure of having my own set of wheels in my twenties. And just wasn’t career minded enough in my thirties to see how being able to transport myself beyond the walkable limits of Leamington Spa might aid me in my desperate search to find a more soul satisfying line of employment.

I gulled myself that I wasn’t the only one. I had numerous male friends who couldn’t drive, hadn’t learnt and exhibited utterly no desire to do so. One of those, Dave, has been my mate since I was 16. I always felt we were destined to walk the earth, to quote Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, “like Cain”. With occasional reference made to a bicycle. I haven’t had regular contact with Dave for a few years now but I knew he and I were upholding the virtues of “Shanks’s Pony”.

I even kidded myself that all this was ecologically responsible. The last thing the world needs is another driver and another car on the road, right?

Not learning how to drive sat comfortably with me. It was me; it was who I was and I was content.

I learnt last week that Dave, sometime over the last few years, has not only learnt to drive but also owns a car. He’s made a couple of references to it on Facebook. I was so ingrained in how I thought of us two that I actually thought he was joking the first time. That it was a wind-up.

But no.

He really does own a people carrier and can drive the ruddy thing. Up and down the country and even across to Europe if he goes via the Eurotunnel.

I am the last member of the Can’t Drive Club. The schism that life has thrown up between Dave and I is worse than I ever imagined. He’s now a motorist and I’m just a pedestrian.

I haven’t felt this bad since all my school mates got picked to be prefects and I didn’t.

The world is leaving me behind.

Quite literally in fact.

With the wind behind me, going downhill on a good day, I might be able to reach 15 miles an hour… but that really is my top limit.

The Road Reluctantly Travelled

Is it normal to take the long way round on your journey to work?

To delay the inevitable?

I can remember, years ago, back when my pass badge was shiny and the photo printed on it featured a young man bristling with enthusiasm and a full bead, that I would march to work with a spring in my step and a skip in my stride. So much so that one day a motorcycle traffic cop, a builder and a Native American Indian in full head-dress accosted me in the street and asked me to join their colourful band of deep throated singers.

I declined but now I’m wondering if that was a wise career move.

Because the spring has been replaced with a shoulder droop and the skip has been replaced with a foot drag reminiscent of someone who’s been hitched up to a chain gang. For those of you who are familiar with the work of Charlie & Lola... I have developed a “Lola walk”. The kind she employs when life is particularly bad. When she’s lost her satchel or ripped her Lelli Kellys.

And I am starting to take the ‘long way round’ to work.

It started with a few detours around the block. Alternative routes that covered more or less the same ground but from a different direction.

But then I started to become more adventurous. I started pushing the temporal envelope, pushing the flexibility of my start time. I started going all round the houses. Started trying to listen to entire album’s worth of music on my MP3 player (bear in mind that the journey at its quickest takes a mere 15 minutes). Started searching for old ladies to help across the road and refusing to go into work until I’d found one. In the end I had to improvise. I had to dress up as an old lady myself and help myself across the road. Have you any idea how long it takes to cross a road when your colostomy bag isn’t properly fastened?

Now, I fear, I am taking things too far. I am booking trains to Manchester and wondering if I can get in a bit of shopping before I head into the office. I am eyeing up flights to New York because I figure that paying my respects at Ground Zero would be an honourable way to start my working day.

Is this normal?

Is this behaviour indicative of some, as yet, unnamed malaise?

Answers on a job application form to the normal address, please.