Jogging? No thanks – I’ll be on the sofa with a fresh packet of digestives | Steve Canavan

You can’t so much as drive 200 yards without seeing someone on the pavement tottering along wearing some garishly-coloured and outrageously tight-fitting Lycra outfit.

This has two knock-on effects.

One, such is the glare from these outfits I’ve had to permanently wear sunglasses while behind the wheel, and, two, it has made me feel incredibly guilty about my own lack of activity.

It’s as if these individuals on the pavement, all out running and being healthy, are shaming the rest of us into doing something ourselves.

What makes it worse for me is that I live with a runner.

About four times a week Mrs Canavan will don the most god awful outfit, pull on a headband that makes her look like a slightly more ridiculous John McEnroe circa Wimbledon 1983, lace up some flashy trainers that cost in excess £150 (the website description of her current ones reads, ‘nitrogen-infused DNA FLASH midsole and unique carbon fiber propulsion plate work together to keep runners in their preferred motion path’. Come again?) and head out the door to pound the streets for an hour.

I, meanwhile, spend the same hour watching television, eating chocolate digestives, and drinking tea.

She returns home looking fresh-faced and full of life, while in the same period I’ve only moved once, to use the toilet, and consumed 14 digestives.

She will, moments after entering the house – and this annoys me because I’ve complained several times before about it – try to give me a kiss.

But after a six-mile run, Mrs Canavan – how can I phrase this kindly? – smells like a pig that has spent the previous hour rolling in horse manure, then nipped back for another hour’s rolling.

I naturally rear away and remark: ‘You might want to take a shower first darling?’

She’ll head upstairs and – and this another thing that annoys me (I get annoyed quite a lot) – take off her sweaty, stinking running gear and throw it into the laundry bag, where it mixes with all the other washing and permeates everything else with this godforsaken stench.

Even when you put it through the washing machine on an extra-long cycle, with a generous double measure of Persil Pro-Formula, all the laundry comes out with a faint aroma of Mrs Canavan’s running gear – the end result of which is that whichever T-shirt I am wearing on any given day, I always smell slightly like my wife after a long run.

Anyway, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em I thought and so, a week ago – and with nothing else to do because my football and badminton has been cancelled in lockdown – I put on my shorts and T-shirt (no Lycra for me; I would rather sleep with Donald Trump, twice, than wear it) and headed outside.

For the first few hundreds yards or so I quite enjoyed it.

I felt good.

It was a cold but still evening and it felt strangely satisfying to be out jogging.

A fellow runner approached.

I quickened my pace slightly – just in case he thought I was some amateur – and as we passed we nodded at each other, as if to say: ‘A fellow athlete – respect’.

All was going well until I got about three streets away from home when I suddenly began to tire, got a stitch (with hindsight the two bowls of smoked haddock risotto I’d consumed half an hour before was probably an error), and – more pertinently – I just got a bit bored.

I mean staying fit and healthy is all very well and good but you at least want to be interested in what you’re doing.

In football you can score a goal, in golf you can get a birdie, in netball you chuck a ball through a hoop – in running you put one foot in front of another and hope you don’t trip over a kerb.

The most exciting it gets is if you pass a house with the lights on and curtains open and you can see a couple inside having a blazing row (I lingered outside one semi-detached for 10 minutes just to watch. She threw a plate at one point. It was great).

My run lasted less than half an hour before I returned home, washed my shorts and T-shirt separately (just to make a point to Mrs Canavan), then opened a fresh packet of biscuits and headed for the settee.

Sometimes you just have to accept that some things in life aren’t for you.

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There was a touching moment in the Canavan household the other day when my three-year-old, Mary, noticed, seemingly for the first time, a picture of my mum and dad on the wall in the hall.

‘Who is that?’ she asked, pointing at it.

‘That’s my mum and dad. So there’s your granddad and next to him is grandma, when she was a bit younger,’ I said, then decided to take the plunge and added, ‘but my dad – your granddad - has died so he’s no longer around now.’

Worried this might have been a bit too heavy, I quickly added: ‘But he would have loved you so much had he still been here.’

She went very quiet and carried on staring at the photograph for a minute or two.

Then she turned in my direction, looked me straight in the eye, and – as I held my breath for the big question about to come - announced: ‘Daddy, I’ve been thinking, if the television breaks down and we can’t watch Peppa Pig any more, what shall we do?’

It wasn’t quite the response I’d been expecting, but did make me smile.

Oh to be three.