Imagine, dear reader, the scene. A lone figure presses onwards through the blizzard. Manfully – because when it comes to 21st-century gender politics, our hero, by the look of it, certainly identifies as “he/him” – he makes his way, stifling the odd groan. Today, it is almost a white-out, on another occasion blistering heat – for the gods show no mercy.
But still he presses on. What stamina! What doggedness! Such an inspiration! Or rather it might have been had he (by which I mean me, actually) been trekking through Outer Mongolia or perhaps the Kalahari instead of running in ever-slowing circles around an athletics track. For the moving scenario described above is, sad to report, just my grim daily routine, the slot I utilise between 2pm and 3pm to cover the “dip” that these days I experience of an afternoon, having had my cheese and tomato sandwich – this, with luck, featuring a dollop of Marmite, if my 11-year-old son Freddie hasn’t finished it again. Frankly, I’d prefer a nap.
But that’s not allowed. You see, the horrible reality of being some sort of old-school “explorer” with travel restrictions in a constant state of flux is that you have to keep at the top of your game, month after month, should somewhere currently on the red list suddenly become accessible. It’s not enough to be resilient in adversity while you traverse the burning plains of Africa (cf Burton, Speke, Livingstone) or endure months of raw walrus in the Arctic – the closest Captain Cook’s crew came to mutiny. No, you must be ready at all times in both mind and body. (“Also, be ready with your kit,” Mrs Allen would like to add. “For heaven’s sake, don’t forget that.”)
But is all this running around in a baggy tracksuit entirely seemly for someone of my advanced years, I hear you ask. It’s a question asked with increasing frequency by my children.
“You need to join a gym,” my teenage daughter Natalya will say, mooching about with her Starbucks decaffeinated iced coffee. “Get a discreet personal trainer to help out – one who won’t put you on his YouTube channel.”
Thankfully, Freddie rallies to my defence on such occasions. “I bet Dr Livingstone ran around a track, waiting for his moment, just like Dad. Scott of the Antarctic, too.”
“Hmm. Bet they didn’t look quite so dreadful by the end of it.”
Putting aside the delicate matter of my age for one moment, I expect there are those of you who think it a crying shame that I don’t maintain my fitness by hiking through somewhere more interesting – the sunlit Yorkshire Dales, say.
