Getting to work is an adrenaline rush

I walk into work these days. And so I should, it's only just over a mile as the crow flies or a little bit more than that the way a lardarse ambles.

That's not to say I don't arrive at the office a steaming, sweaty mess, like a jogger. I do. But it's not just down to the fact I'm fat, sweat a lot and my thighs chafe if I walk more than 100 yards without splaying them out sideways.

It's also nervous tension, because for a large part of the walk I'm on a road with no pavement - or sidewalk if you're one of our trans-Atlantic cousins.


The suggested policy for this is, of course, to walk on the side of the road facing incoming traffic. That in itself should not pose too much of a problem. But I have discovered that most of the incoming traffic using this route - I've included a dodgy map, above, for real anoraks or people who are familiar with Petersfield - appear to be heading to work at the East Hants District Council offices and are subsequently in quite a bad mood.

Hence they object to a fat bloke waddling down their side of the road and forcing them to brake if there's a vehicle coming in the other direction. Some of the looks they send in my direction could send a lesser man scurrying into the adjacent undergrowth.

They appear to be suggesting I should walk off the Tarmac and instead wend my way through the knee-high grass, nettles and soft-drink cans, like the squirrels and badgers do. I do keep to the side but draw the line at turning in David Attenborough merely to get to work.

And keeping to the side's not easy. There is a distinct camber on the road which means I walk as if I have a club foot, dragging it behind me, giving the uneasy impression of a psycho leaving the scene of a murder as quickly as my disability will allow.

The only way to keep my feet on the same level would be to face into the road and walk sideways as if I was keeping close to a wall, like a prisoner-of-war attempting to evade a camp searchlight. And that, quite simply, is just not worth the embarrassment.

No wonder some of the drivers mouth obscenities at me for having the audacity not to trust my journey to the internal combustion engine.

I'll think I'll get myself a Lambretta ... and maybe a fish-tail parka.