The Fat Bloke Diaries
Episode Seventeen – Run, Run Away
It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s late. I’m tired. I have something else that really needs doing. I’ll go tomorrow. What other perfectly good reasons can I think of to stop me going for a walk or run tonight?
I’m much too old to be lying to myself. In truth these are all just excuses, nothing more. If I really want to exercise then I will. If not, then I should at least have the honesty to say, ‘I didn’t care enough about losing weight or getting fitter to go out’.
My least favourite excuse is ‘I don’t have time’. Time is like money. I have a finite amount of it to spend, and it’s up to me how I allocate it. I may not have any time available for exercising, but that’s only because I’ve chosen to do something else instead. If I don’t have time, it’s usually because I didn’t make time. Sure, sometimes real emergencies crop up but, thankfully, very rarely.
Of course, I don’t always take my own advice. There are other things that I would
much rather do, like listening to The Archers on the radio every weeknight. I wouldn’t
want to miss that for such a trivial thing as going for a run. But now thanks to
the BBC’s on-
So the other night I scheduled my time correctly and went running, I’d only been
out a couple of minutes though when I realised that something was wrong, something
was different. Some things – many things in fact – were blurred. Stupid me, I’d left
my glasses in the house. I’ve been wearing them for thirty years now and I’ve never
forgotten them before, at least not while I’ve been sober. Now it could have been
that my defective peepers had suddenly made a miraculous recovery and I no longer
need my specs but I doubt it to be honest. If I were a betting man my money would
go on me just wanting to get out and simply being forgetful. The onset of old age,
some might say, though they’d probably receive a slapping. I think it’s the Association
Game again. I had my ‘Legend in the Making’ t-
Luckily I had my ‘seeing-
It was either continue semi-
And then there was the totally unrelated Curious Incident of the Annoying Little Terrier in the Night Time. I could write a book about what happened, but I’ll give you the short version.
I’d heard about the unhappy combination of dogs and joggers (oh my stars and garters, have I become one of those now? I’ll find myself listening to disco, wearing a headband and cultivating an afro next), but this was my first experience of the toothy terror.
Generally I like dogs, I really do, but I’m not too fond of snappy little ankle-
It was out with its owner, a man with zero control and even less care for the wellbeing
of other people or his animal. He watched without emotion as it ran past my life-
Yap! Yap! Yap! Crunch! Yelp! Yelp!
I don’t think it was injured but, truth be told, I didn’t hang around long enough to find out. I legged it, plodding off into the night in my hoodie. The dog’s owner never said a word. Perhaps my appearance intimidated him, but I doubt it. No matter how much I try I can’t make myself look like a knife wielding yoof of criminal intent. I’m still a waddling, sweating fat bloke.
Anyway, enough procrastination, it’s time to get my running shoes on.
© 2009 Shaun Finnie