A country road and the pursuit of happiness

I GO for a walk most mornings. These days the experience is quite miserable: it is dark, we have to wear hi-vis jackets and light our way with torches. The sheer agony of hauling myself out of bed to face the bleakness of that dank gap between dawn and day is almost overpowering.

The heat of the bed and the snug comfort of the quilt are like Sirens calling me to my aerobic ruin, a fate that looks like heaven when presented on a warm mattress and a soft pillow. Ignoring the call of slumberland for a bracing winter walk is like turning down a spoon of honey for a ladle of cod liver oil. But it has to be done.

I’m at that age where I need to keep as many of the moving parts in motion as often as possible before they seize up. So most mornings I fight against the longings of the body and pound the roads for a half an hour or so.

On returning to the house from the forced perambulation, I submit myself to a set of exercises intended to manipulate those bits of the body that remain unmoved by even the most energetic walking. The combination of sit-ups, press-ups twists and turns are an amalgam of physical jerks suggested to me by the plethora of amateur fitness instructors I run into in places where drink is consumed. My efforts at keeping on the lean side of fat are forever falling short.

While I moan about the necessity to exercise I have to admit that, every morning, once the rituals of exertion are done, I feel much better and face the day almost smug in the knowledge that I have shaved a few minutes or hours off the inevitable confinement that precedes the shuffling off of the mortal coil.

But no matter how much I talk up the benefits of my morning gut busting, when the alarm goes off I groan deeply at the prospect and the process. As the days shorten and the night takes over, the thoughts of four months of trudging in the dark is enough to drive me to despair.

We walk early in the morning so that, like D’Unbelievables, we can have a good run at the day. It also means we don’t have to ‘squeeze it in’ at another time. Very occasionally, if I’m not too busy, I’ ll delay my walk to the early or late afternoon. One day last week I delayed the dose and took to the road before lunch.

I yelled for the dog who, unlike me, positively salivates at the prospect of a canter or multiple canters along the road. This canine love for walking was explained to me by a lady I met at the local vet’s surgery. She told me that, for dogs, a walk is like surfing the net; they sniff at every bush, tuft and bramble, gathering, through their nostrils, heaps of information about what has been on the road before them and how long ago it was there. They find out if there’s something worth tracking down or something they should be afraid of.

So we took off on our afternoon ramble, one reluctant human being and a wildly enthusiastic dog. It turned out to be a most enjoyable journey. We met a whole procession of the neighbours, I took time to lean in the windows of cars and jeeps, I perched myself on the steps of a few tractor cabs and propped myself up against five-bar gates talking about the weather, the fodder situation, the recent happenings in the parish and the pointlessness of the Presidential election. It was great to meet the neighbours and to see them in daylight. It was balm for the soul to take the time to talk.

However, my inner personal trainer wasn’t too impressed with my progress as a voice within me cried out ‘no pain no gain’. The pleasant aura left by my leisurely meandering was almost undone when this inner personal trainer discovered his inner drill sergeant who bellowed like an exploding Kitchener decrying the uselessness of my strolling.