Ready Steady Go!

I was always running.

That activity formed a large part of my formative years.

I was always willing to offer to do a chore for a family member, neighbour or just any stranger in the street which would allow me to do it at running pace.

Even if there was no request for assistance I would just run for the sake of it.

The fact that my parents had bought a house on a modern estate meant that there was a ready made route down, around, up and back across the maze of streets to the starting point. I never got tired or bored of just doing successive laps whenever I found myself with the urge to do it or just a few minutes of slack time after school, before tea, after tea, between favourite TV programmes or just before my bedtime.

The funny thing about my obsession with running was that I did not really seem to reap any benefits of it.

I was up there in the first few finishers in the winter slog that passed for cross country and similarly in the summer on the freshly marked out running track that took up almost all of the school playing field.

I did compete on behalf of my school at the county championships and my hazy memory, some forty years later, has me streaking away from the rest of the field and breaking the shiny tape on the finishing line. However, I have no trophies or certificates to substantiate this abiding memory nor any photographs of holding such mementos.

My parents have assured me on a number of occasions, when pestered , that they do not have any well preserved faded newspaper clippings showing me on a podium, receiving a commemorative medal or even just a note of the finishing order in very tiny print. I would not have even minded if any form of official record had, as usual spelled my family surname incorrectly.

I was always impressed by the thought of my name being held in the National Archives based on the fact that a copy of every publication, however insignificant, was required to be sent for safe keeping, or had someone just said that and I believed them implicitly.

As that warm fuzzy memory of athletic prowess slowly fades I then have a horrible recollection of being ushered hastily away by the teaching staff and bundled onto the bus as though I have in fact conducted the race completely naked and simultaneously gesticulating rudely to the massed ranks of the junior schools of my local area.