I WORE my coat and scarf the other day. When I had left my house, the weather was bitter and sharp as a lime. Tears streaked my cheeks horizontally. And I could not catch my breath as the wind punched me unrelentingly in the chest.

By the time I arrived at work, steel drums were playing outside the office, a limbo dancer was bent over backwards, and the snoutcasts smoking by the entrance were all in bikinis, even the men.

I pushed through the revolving door and heaved myself into the office, looking like the Tom Baker Doctor Who on the set of Ice Cold In Alex, annoyed that I was going to have to lug a coat home at the end of the glorious day.

“Well done, October, you magnificently capricious blackguard,” I thought. Or words to that effect.

So I had an excellent business idea, which I will call Coats2U. The txt-type abbreviation jars, frankly, but I want to appear bleeding edge, so I might appeal to youngsters or Prince.

Essentially, it would be an emergency coat delivery service, and it would cater for people who are not sure if they are going to need a coat.

Then, if it became almost, but not entirely, unexpectedly nippy or balmy, they could tweet, phone or fax, and somebody would deliver or remove a coat within 25 minutes. I’m not entirely sure of the logistics, but it would probably involve vans and the internet.

In any case, I expect to make most of my money between March to May and September to October.

But the weather is turning for the worse now and I managed to wear a coat and scarf all the way to the office this week without breaking sweat.

And now I am worried about escalation. After all, it is only going to become colder and I am already wearing a coat and scarf. Where can I go next?

I was genuinely worried about this earlier this week. I remembered I had my big coat, Big Coat.

Then there are gloves, maybe a jumper. But what if that’s still not warm enough? Do I even own a vest – thermal or otherwise? I can’t wear a hat as my head is freakishly large. Can I get away with two scarves? Would that even work?

In any case, if this winter is as cold as the past few winters – judging by my reaction to the current temperature, I am going to spend most of December and January resembling a table at a jumble sale, or myself the time that woman on the mobility scooter knocked me over into the rack at Matalan.

What I do know is that I am not going to wear a very long scarf. Not after what happened a few years ago.

I was sitting on the bus, as I do occasionally. It was wintry out, it being winter, and I sat at a window seat. The heating was on, burning up my left leg like a laptop PC, and the window was steamed up, revealing smeary libels written long ago by teenagers.

I was wearing Big Coat and a long scarf, and the heat became overwhelming. I was about to take off Big Coat, when a woman sat next to me.

I do not know if you have ever tried to take off a coat or jacket while sitting next to somebody on a bus, but it is impossible to do it without slamming an elbow into the face of your neighbour. As I had discovered the hard way.

So I could not remove my coat. I had to make do with taking off my long scarf. But in the heat I became drowsier and drowsier, and I lolled and lolled and . . .

The bus went over a bump, and my sleeping head hit the window. I snapped awake, just in time to see the bus stop before my own pass by through the gap in the condensation which had been made by the side of my face.

“Excuse me,” I said to the woman next to me. I grabbed my long scarf, quickly wrapped it once around my neck, and stood up.

It was not my long scarf. It was the long scarf belonging to the woman sitting next to me. I knew this because it was wrapped around her own neck, throttling both of us as I stood.

I don’t think my face has ever felt so warm, or I have experienced a look so frosty. It was a little October all of my own.

I WROTE a letter to Jim’ll Fix It when I was a boy. In retrospect, and for a variety of reasons, I am glad it was ignored.

I wanted to meet Spider-Man, specifically the actor Nicholas Hammond, who played him on the television. It’s a good thing it did not happen as we would have run out of things to talk about after the first five minutes.

“What’s it like climbing up walls and swinging on webs?” I would have asked.

“No idea. Stuntman, innit,” he would have replied, in American, while silently seething that I was not asking him about the sheer bloody hard graft of 2am shoots on the streets of LA and whether he used the Stanislavski method.

But I really did love his show, and thought fondly of it over the years. When other series were repeated, I always thought it a shame The Amazing Spider-Man was never given another showing.

Imagine my delight when I discovered, a few nights ago, the entire series was on YouTube. It’s probably difficult for you to do that, so think of that new television series Sexbox, and your feelings knowing that gravel-voiced Mariella Frostrup was going to present a programme featuring a shed in which actual people had actual marital relations while she waited for them to finish. My delight was the same size as your incredulity. Possibly a little smaller.

But my disappointment was even bigger.

For it was shocking. I was prepared for it to look dated, but it was so boring.

It has none of the pathos and wit of the Spider-Man comics. Essentially, it is the story of a man in a red and blue costume – who manages even in that outfit to look nondescript – fighting drab middle-aged baddies in suits, with the minimum amount of effort possible.

Most of the episodes’ action is centred around his day job, which is a bit like a James Bond TV series that focuses mostly on him filling out time sheets and expenses claims.

The fights are more unconvincingly choreographed than my dancing the night I tried tequila for the first time. His saggy costume makes him look like a Fathers For Justice protester.

And the big set-piece of every episode involves Spider-Man crawling up the side of a skyscraper, defying gravity as he clings to its skin by his fingertips, with all the grace of a 46-year-old stuntman called Eric being winched up the side of a building on a rope, reaching his destination more slowly than if he had used the lift.

It was so bad that I was embarrassed for my eight-year-old self, leaping about in the Spider-Man suit my Auntie Mary made, and there was a lot by which my eight-year-old self should have been embarrassed but I have chosen to disregard in adult life.

It reminded me of the time I excitedly showed a child of my close acquaintance one of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum games I had enjoyed in my youth.

To the 1984 me it represented the zenith of excitement, with sheer fun and breathtaking computer graphics and sound effects combining to give me the heady thrill of life as a space fighter pilot.

To the child in my charge 27 years later it looked like some Lego moving about in the distance, to the soundtrack of a checkout assistant scanning goods.

It is all the internet’s fault. If it were not for the internet, Spider-Man and Bleepy Lego Space Game would have still been inside my head, fuzzy, warm memories, set in the context of their time, enabling me to say, “They should repeat Spider-Man. I always think it’s a shame it was never given another showing,” with a clear conscience.

This is why I feel very sorry for Doctor Who fans. It is well known that lots of shows from the 1960s were wiped by the BBC in order to save money on expensive videotape. Along with episodes of Steptoe And Son, and the 1967 spectacular “75 Years Of Bruce Forsyth,” many Doctor Who stories were destroyed.

But this week the BBC announced that several of the missing Doctor Who episodes have been discovered – behind a sofa, if there’s any justice in the world – and will be made available for all to see.

And I say this to all Doctor Who fans reading this (all four of you): don’t. Let my Spider-Man experience act as a warning to you, because the thought of a tsunami of disappointed Doctor Who fans is too much to contemplate.

Don’t watch them, don’t even have a look at them. Let them stay in your head, as good as you always imagined them to be.

I WAS walking to work briskly, cutting through the other commuters like a hot commuter through commuters made of butter.

I am no great shakes at most things – barely a wobble, generally – but I have been walking for 40 years now and I’m not bad. In fact, people often say to me: “Slow down, Gary. You are walking very fast.”

And I say to them: “Yes, and that is with plantar fasciitis, the chronic pain in the heel. Imagine how quickly I would go if I didn’t walk like Kevin Spacey in that film.”

And they say nothing back because all conversations have to end eventually, especially made-up ones.

Perhaps if I had been less single-minded about getting to work I would have noticed the woman who was about to cross my path, recognised her as Nothing But Trouble, and altered my course to miss her, like a heat-avoiding missile.

But I knew if I didn’t speed up I would be late for work, and I do not like being late for work if I can help it. Public transport had already done its best to hinder me and I needed to make up time.

“Excuse me,” she said, stepping in front of me. I screeched to a halt like the Road Runner in front of a small mound of grain on a desert road, while behind the rock of circumstance the coyote of misfortune held a rope from which was suspended the 10-tonne weight of grief.

“Are you local?” she asked me, in a northern accent. “I’m standing in front of you right now,” I thought. “I doubt I could be more local without having to marry you.”

“Yes,” I replied. Maybe I was gulled by her salt-of-the-earth-I-know-my-way-around-a-pie accent. She asked me if I knew the way to a high-rise building which is situated next to my office.

I could have given her directions, although they were quite tricky, but I was going her way. “I’m going your way,” I said. “I’ll show you.”

And the coyote of misfortune let go of the rope.

Einstein is often attributed with the assertion that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. Of course, he kept telling people he didn’t say it, but nobody ever believed him.

For I have done this before. I have taken people to the location they sought, and it always goes wrong. Last time I shepherded a group of Spanish people, and accidentally spoke to them in Italian. Before that, I got in a small car with four, eventually hostile, men and took them to the road for which I had misheard them asking, rather than the road they actually wanted.

And now I was doing it again. We walked. I noticed the pull-along suitcase behind her, with its thudding, scraping wheels.

“It’s just down here,” I said. The trouble with this particular high-rise is that it is completely invisible until one is in front of it. This is not a Harry Potter-type building. It is just that the much smaller buildings around it block its view.

I could tell she was sceptical.

But worse than that, she was very, very slow. Infuriatingly slow for a brisk pedestrian like me. Walking with her felt like walking with a thick elastic band binding one’s ankles together. She was making me late. Maybe I could ditch her here, I thought.

“I’m slow,” she said. “I hope I’m not making you late.”

“No, no, not at all!” I said. Politeness had screwed me over. I shuffled alongside her trying to match her pace and appearing incredibly patient. We had nothing to say to each other. All we had in common was a direction.

The wheels thudded and scraped…

“It really is this way,” I said. “It’s just invisible.”

She looked at me, worried. “No! It’s not actually invisible, you just can’t see it.”

I wasn’t helping. “It’s definitely there. It was there on Friday. Unless there’s been a terrible disaster.”

“There’s been a disaster?” she asked.

“No, no! I mean, I don’t think so…” Maybe there had been, I didn’t know. This was a new low. I was terrifying a Lancastrian woman and I was late for work.

“Honestly, I’m sure it’s still there,” I said. I was committed then. Perhaps I should be.

Eventually, 10 minutes into a four-minute walk, we rounded the corner, and there it was, glistening in the autumn sunlight, 30 storeys pointing to the sky. Perfectly visible.

“There you are,” I said. “No disasters.”

She looked me in the eye, then walked off without thanking me.

I didn’t blame her. I think we were both relieved it was over.

AN ENVELOPE arrived for me and I sighed because I knew I would have to open it.

I hate envelopes, I thought. Envelopes carry bills and junk mail and Dear John letters. They never carry good news, because people phone to give good news. The best they ever do is carry confirmation of good news you have already been given.

But I mostly hate them because I am useless at opening them.

This is what would happen were I to present the Best Supporting Actor Oscar along with, say, Miley Cyrus…

MILEY CYRUS: … And Dustin Hoffman for Massacre At Sleepy Pines.

AN EXPECTANT BUZZ AROUND THE ROOM.

ME: And the winner is… Miley, would you mind not twerking? I am trying to open an envelope. No, seriously, you are knocking into my leg.

MORE BUZZ.

ME: And the winner is… Argh, I’ve given my thumb a paper cut. No, stop, it really hurts. (SUCKS THUMB) Honestly, it’s the chemicals they use to treat the paper. Miley, please put your clothes back on, there’s a time and a place…

MORE BUZZ. RICKY GERVAIS STARTS SINGING “WHY ARE WE WAITING?”

ME: Sorry, and the winner – Miley, stop rubbing up against Billy Crystal! He remembers when Buddy Holly died – the winner is. (RIPS ENVELOPE) Argh! I have totally destroyed the envelope and torn entirely through the card inside. Erm, the winner is Ryan… er, Ryan somebody.

I have never opened an envelope cleanly. It always starts so well, slowly I prise the flap away from what the internet informs me is known as the side fold. I push in a thumb, and slowly run it along the flap.

And then carnage. The envelope disintegrates. Every time. It might as well be made out of smoke. I am left with shreds of paper around my ankles and an envelope which looks as if a dog opened it in a hurry.

I am not sure why I should be so worried about this, but letters are so rare these days. If somebody has taken the time to put pen to paper, then carefully inscribed one’s name and address on the envelope, paid for a stamp, and taken it to a postbox, I feel it is only right to treat the envelope with respect.

I did once own a letter opener and it did not work out very well for me as it was, after all, basically a small sword. I would make an incision in the top of the envelope and tear along it cleanly, and then discover that I had either sliced through the actual contents of the envelope, or through the actual contents of my finger.

None of this is my fault. The poor design of envelopes is responsible, and that poor design starts at the closing of the flap. For there are two types of flap: the self-adhesive sort, and the adhesive variety which requires a DNA sample, like the next generation of iPhone.

I object to licking envelopes. It is not the taste, it’s the principle. I object on the same grounds as I do to sherbet dips. I was brought up with the sure knowledge that spitting is a terrible thing and only to be tolerated if by a parent on a hanky in order to wipe away some facial grime.

So an object which requires one to apply saliva in order for it to work is an abomination. Also, if you’re not careful you can get a paper cut on your tongue.

And yet this sort of envelope, which requires one to behave like a barbarian and places one at risk of injury, is preferable to the self-adhesive envelope. This is because sometimes people need to check what they are sending, and if you are quick you can re-open a spit-soaked envelope.

But the self-adhesive type was designed by somebody who apparently assumed that people do not make mistakes. Seal one of those and the only way to retrieve what is inside is to tear it open, and put the contents in another envelope. At best it is an envelope-selling scam and at worst it is a calculated insult to people like me who cannot remember things.

I looked at the envelope and sighed again, then I opened it, destroying it in the process. It was a letter from my GP. Bad news.

It was inviting me for a health check-up, which is something the practice offers to all men between 40 and 70. Bad news, as I am now placed in the same age bracket as Billy Crystal, a man who remembers when Buddy Holly died.

No wonder I hate envelopes.

“YOU must read David Sedaris,” somebody told me, not long after I started writing this column, unaware of my cussedness when it comes to reading recommended books.

This somebody was followed by another somebody, and another, making a small crowd – three, of course, being the minimum requirement for a crowd.

Obviously I’d heard of Sedaris, the American rock star of humorous essays, as I read the book pages of newspapers, even if I do not read many books, but I was only aware of him in the same way that I am aware of Tuscany or programmes on Posh Telly or social competence.

Eventually I asked, “Why? Why must I – specifically I – read David Sedaris?”

“Oh, you’d love him. He’s like you.”

“Is he?”

“Yeah, except he’s really successful, and he’s had an interesting life, and he’s funny.”

I had a book token, so I bought one of his books, and, annoyingly, it was all true. He became my writing hero, and I became just another Sedarista, buying his books and giving them away to convert others, like a Jehovah’s Witness.

Because I work in the media, like Kelly Brook or the late Sir David Frost, I sometimes receive certain perks. I know people who know people. Some might call it corruption, but that is because they are jealous.

Anyway, thanks to my insidious web of influence, I somehow managed to get onto the guest list for a recording of David Sedaris’s radio series. I decided I would take a book for him to sign.

Unfortunately, because of giving them away and the staining properties of tea, I didn’t have a book fit for him to sign, so I went to the grimly apostrophe-free Waterstones, and bought a copy of his latest book.

When I returned home later that evening, I dipped into the book and discovered that the author had already signed it.

What was I supposed to do? Take it back to the shop? “Sorry about this, but can I have a refund? Somebody has written in the front of it… Yes, I know it’s the author’s signature, but I need a clean copy… Why? Erm, erm, I want him to sign it.”

Maybe I could cross it out, or use some Tippex. This was becoming complicated. I decided I would take him a copy of my own, vanity- published book (available in no good bookshops) for him to sign, on the grounds it would be funny. I realise now that was a mistake, but I was becoming desperate…

I settled back in my seat at the Radio Theatre in London and watched Sedaris take the microphone, an incongruous green sports holdall at the feet of this neat, slight man.

As a warm-up, he and his worried-looking producer asked the audience which of us had travelled furthest to see him. The winner would take the holdall, which cost him $750.

“I’m definitely in with a chance here,” I thought. I was about to call out, when I remembered I was on the guest list. Would that be right? Or was it like celebrity editions of quiz shows, where the C-listers involved have to compete for charity, no matter how skint they are?

I kept quiet, and the bag was, inevitably, won by somebody from Liverpool.

My burning disgust was extinguished by Sedaris, as this sparrow of a man made his middle-class, middle-aged audience hoot like gibbons, and I completely forgot my calculations of the pounds sterling value of the bag.

After the show, I joined the queue of autograph hunters. I looked in my own, lesser, bag, my own, lesser, book next to Sedaris’s sullied edition. “I don’t sign other people’s books,” I heard him say. “It seems disrespectful.” I was going to have to get him to re-sign his own book.

“Erm, this is a bit complicated,” I said, when I reached the master. I explained in unnecessary detail the course of events.

He glazed over. “Where did you buy this?” he asked, when I had stopped.

“Liverpool,” I said. He looked at me, confused, and inscribed something in my book.

Then, as an afterthought, I handed him my own book. He received it with the politely encouraging smile an adult gives a six-year-old when given a picture of something which could be a ship or… actually, is that an iron?

As I walked away, I opened the book and read the inscription. “To Gary, you lost a $750 bag,” he had written, a permanent reminder to me from my hero that I am a prevaricating loser.

THERE are two types of people in this world. The first is people who take the last chocolate biscuit from the plate even though there were only five there to begin with and they’ve already had three.

The second is people who keep choosing rich tea because, although they really want a chocolate biscuit, they don’t want to appear like the sort of person who takes all the chocolate biscuits.

In fact, the rich tea industry is entirely based on the exploitation of this second type of people.

Nobody in the history of humanity has ever thought, “I know what I really feel like. A rich tea biscuit. Yes, that will hit the spot. I want something so bland and dry I forget what it tastes like even while I’m eating it.”

And yet they are still manufactured, just to bulk out plates of biscuits and feed resentment.

Because while the second group of people share many of the same emotions – fear, shame, guilt – they feel none more keenly than resentment.

They resent the people who go through life knocking over plant pots and spreading out while the rest of us clear up and budge up.

They resent the “anti-PC” people who boast that they “don’t take any shit” and “tell it like it is”, as if taking account of the needs and feelings of others were some sort of character flaw, and entirely inappropriate in the context of a celebrity cooking competition.

They resent the people who never listen and never shut up.

But they don’t do anything about it. They just seethe, because they don’t want to be like them.

Depending on whom you ask, I probably fall into either of the two camps, but I identify most with the second. And I have found I spend quite a lot of time seething lately.

Partly this is because of the current government, which seems incapable of understanding the relationship between cause and effect, economically or socially. It takes a certain amount of wilful ignorance to claim the proliferation of food banks and the simultaneous rise in house prices as a success.

But mostly it is because I get the bus every day and come into contact with an increasing number of chocolate biscuit takers, shouting loudly into phones, playing music out of their phones, and sitting with their legs at ten to two – while on their phones.

The worst moment of seething in recent memory happened a few months ago. I was sitting on the bus, trying to remember Curiosity Killed The Cat’s other hit, when I saw a middle-aged woman with some heavy shopping boarding. I still refer to “middle-aged women” as if I am not myself middle-aged, but let me keep my delusions.

The bus was full, with a couple of men standing. I was about to join them so she could rest, as heavy shopping is heavy, hence the name, but she sat in the old-lady seat behind the driver and placed her bag on the floor.

Soon afterwards, the driver braked suddenly, and a tin of cling peaches flew out of her bag and rolled down the aisle. It was followed by a tin of marrowfat peas, proving to me at least that they are still available.
I stopped the tins with my foot, like the expert footballer I am not, and returned them to her. She didn’t thank me.

Hmph, I thought, and turned to go back to my seat. Which was now filled by one of the men who had been standing.

What could I do? Have a row? What would it achieve? One of us had to stand. It might as well be me. Lord, it burned. I seethed like a man in intensive seething training, who wasn’t as naturally gifted at seething as others but got by on work-rate.

I looked at the man in my seat. He was looking dead ahead, ignoring me. Not on purpose. I suspect I was an irrelevance to him. I swear there was chocolate around his mouth.

The present government is full of sharp-elbowed chocolate biscuit takers, knocking over the poor, and unaware of the mess they are making because they have never had to clean it up for themselves.

I would rather have a government of rich tea eaters, which cares about the vulnerable and tries to make their lives better. I would rather pay more tax and know it is going to prevent children from living in poverty.

I just don’t see where that government is going to come from. In the meantime, all I can do is seethe.

And you can have my rich tea biscuits. They’re horrible.

I DROPPED my pen and sighed. I was going to have to pick it up, and whether I bent over or crouched, it was going to have the same effect.

I opted for crouching, as I have been on a health and safety “picking up objects” course, and retrieved the pen. Then I stood up again and I tucked my shirt in for the 37th time that day.

Why is it impossible for me to buy an off-the-peg shirt that actually fits? It is true that made-to-measure shirts exist, but they are not a realistic option.

For a start, I would need more than one shirt if I wanted to spend time in the company of humans. And if I could afford more than one made-to-measure shirt I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this. I would be lying in a hammock somewhere, I don’t know where, with a sea as blue as the sky, while a Filipino writes a column for me about how annoying it is when Scarlett Johansson pops round without phoning first.

My major difficulty in obtaining a shirt that fits is that I have a ridiculously large head. You are probably thinking, “Open more buttons, you idiot, and it’ll fit over even your head.”

But it is not the head that is the problem, it is the neck that has had to develop to support its bulk. My neck is in proportion with my head, but not with my slimmish body. If you put me on the Russell Scale, I’d be between Brand and Crowe, rather than Crowe and Grant. I do not have “guns”, I have “peashooters”.

This means that when I buy a shirt, I have two choices. I can buy a shirt that fits my torso but has the effect on my neck that a choke chain has on an excitable dog.

Or I can buy a shirt that fits my neck perfectly, but billows out about my body, as if I’d just put my head through the airhole of a parachute.

They are my usual choices. And, no, I can’t get a slim-fit shirt because sometimes I have to breathe out. I thought I had found the Holy Grail when I was able to obtain two shirts which fit my chest and are not too restricting about the neck

By this I mean I can have them buttoned up to the Adam’s apple for tie-wearing for a few hours.

But when I undo the top button later in the day I experience palpable joy, similar to that of a woman undoing her bra after a long day of being a woman, or the relief experienced when a cooker extractor hood is switched off.

But these shirts are not long enough, and I find I am tucking them in 80 or 90 times a day, which makes me look shiftily uncomfortable. This is because nobody needs to see my middle-aged midriff. It is less a midriff and more a midextendedsolo.

Certainly nobody needs to know what colour underpants I am wearing or where I get them.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to look dignified when one is constantly adjusting oneself like a man on a register.

I do not know why it was decided that neck circumference was the sole consideration when it came to sizing shirts, but I can imagine. And here I am, imagining it . . .

THE BOARDROOM OF THE SMASHING GARMENT COMPANY, SEVERAL YEARS AGO.
MD: This had better be good, Figgis. I am missing the first episode of a new TV series called Doctor Who, which looks as if it could run for 50 years, albeit with a break between 1989 and 2005.
FIGGIS: It is, MD. The boffins have come up with a way to mass produce shirts which will push our secret agenda. We will classify them solely by collar size.
MD: That is genius, Figgis. I can only imagine the frustration of, say, a man in his early 40s, who is about a Harty on the Russell Scale, with a freakishly big head and consequently thick neck, being forced to wear what is effectively a barber’s cape.
FIGGIS: That is probably an extreme case, but the principle holds. It might take around 50 years for our plan to work, though…
MD: I’ll watch Doctor Who then, and by the time the series finishes, we will have wiped out shirts forever.
THEY BOTH LAUGH MANIACALLY.
FIGGIS: MD, why do you hate shirts so much?
MD: I don’t. I just really like ponchos.

That is the only explanation.

And thinking about it logically, I would probably be in my hammock in the Philippines.

ONE of the things at which I am quite good is swinging. I do not mean the pampas grass/Channel 5 documentary variety, I mean the hanging from a rope variety.

I have always had an appreciation of the physics involved, thanks to years of watching Spider-Man on the television, and, insofar as I can be graceful doing anything, I appear effortless when I swoop through the air. I would probably have made a decent trapeze artist, were it not for my poor depth perception and crippling fear of heights.

In any case, it is not really a CV skill, but it came in useful when I was made to go on an adventure trail.

This trail involved for the most part various unlikely ways of crossing a stream, including rickety ladders, spring-mounted bridges, and rope swings. I was in my element (air), which prevented me from being in not my element (water).

And behind the laughter, derision, and, frankly, insults issuing from the various children with me – ostensibly amused by the sight of a man in his early forties, in his third-best jeans, and with a crippling fear of heights, trying to get his leg over a scramble net – I detected admiration.

In short, it was not my fault that I began to feel invincible and allowed the Bad Thing That Happened to happen. It was their fault for lulling me into a false sense of security and a true sense of stupidity.

There was a children’s roundabout. But this roundabout was not powered by the hand of a slightly envious parent. It was rotated, through a series of cogs and pulleys, by an 8ft-tall hamster wheel.

As I arrived at the roundabout, there was a man running in the hamster wheel, powering my own children’s ride. On a normal day, I would have thought nothing of this, but I had had my head turned by easy swings and slightly more complicated ladders.

“That looks like fun,” I thought. “I want a go.” And with those words I sealed my fate.

I sidled over to the wheel and the man eventually, if reluctantly, concluded that his fun was over.

He brought the wheel to a stop and alighted.

I stepped into the metal wheel and examined it. “How do I get this to move?” I wondered.

This was not my milieu. I am not a hamster, I am a man. I don’t store food in my cheeks. I have never gnawed on railings, not even at school. And when I see a pile of shredded paper on the floor, I think: “You have to tidy this before somebody gets home.” I don’t think: “Mmm, that looks comfy. Time for a snooze.”

I stepped forward. Nothing happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the man I had displaced chuckling. “Amateur,” he was clearly thinking. I took another step, as if attempting to walk up the side, and the wheel started to move.

I continued to walk, spinning the wheel. It sped up and I began to jog, breaking into a steady run. The roundabout was turning, the wheel was spinning. It really was fun.

“Look,” I overheard the man say to his wife. “His technique’s shocking. He’s got no rhythm.”

This man had actually practised. He was clearly a seasoned hamster wheel enthusiast. “Technique? Rhythm?” I thought. “Why do I need such things?”

It was at this point I realised I had no idea how to stop. I tried to slow down, but the wheel wouldn’t let me. I had to run to stop myself from falling over. And running made the wheel move ever faster. It was a vicious circle. Literally.

I suppose I could have jumped off and let the wheel slow naturally, but I was not as acquainted with the physics of human-size hamster wheels as I am with rope swings.

Inevitably I fell, and was dragged backwards around the wheel until gravity prevailed and I tumbled over and over until my elbow was skinned and the wheel had stopped.

The Amazing Hamster- Man was still there with his wife, watching and chuckling. I felt sorry for her. If I was correct in my assumptions about her husband, she would have to listen to this anecdote all the way home, and then every couple of weeks for the rest of her grim life.

I staggered away, and stood behind an 11-year-old, waiting for my turn on the zip wire. “Stick to what you’re good at,” I thought, as I nursed my injuries. “Swinging on ropes and judging people”.

I HAVE been away at a maximum-security forest holiday village. It is wrong to identify it by name, let us just call it Boden Butlins.

It has involved more swimming with young children than would normally be expected during a typical week, in the super-tropical thunderdome, I think it’s called.

“Swimming” is probably overstating the nature of the activity. One does not swim with young children. What one does is crouch, trying not to fall over, for an hour and a half to two hours, while the children have a whale calf of a time.

This teaches us a valuable lesson about context. If I attempted a cossack dancing stance while three-quarters naked in Marks & Spencer I would end up on some sort of register, but nobody bats a soggy eyelash at the pool.

Anyway, I don’t normally mind having my swimming activity curtailed. After all, it is “for the kids”. Also, I am not one of nature’s swimmers.

In fact, I think one of my best days was when that first proto-human crawled out of the water, flopped onto the sand, and thought, “Wow, this golden area with non-slippy rocks will make a great home. There are no sharks and it’s much easier to breathe. It will be even better when somebody invents towels.”

And I wasn’t even alive then, which just goes to show how many great days I have had.

However, on this occasion I did object, because I had been landed with the ring.

I have written before how I am plagued by things with holes in, e.g. front-door doughnuts, molar-destroying onion rings, my monthly budget. But this was the worst of the lot, a gargantuan inflatable ring, with which the children in my charge played for a maximum of 97 seconds over the two-hour period.

For the rest of the time I had to hold this colossal ring. It was like winning a large plush elephant at the coconut shy shortly after arriving at the fair and then having to lug it around for the rest of the day. (I imagine. I’ve never been able to knock off a coconut, but bear with me for the sake of the metaphor.) It’s a massive pain, but complaining about it makes one sound like Trevor Wet-Blanket, hon. sec. of the SWBBTGVS (Scrooge Was Better Before The Ghosts Visited Society).

But as I stood there, lumbered with Rubberhenge, I was comforted by the fact this was at least an improvement on what had happened earlier, when I attempted to inflate it.

I was standing in my trunks at a table by the side of the pool, and opened the valve. This was a big ask, I accept – this was no namby-pamby party balloon – but I am full of air and so I blew hard.

I felt my head go light. I think I saw stars. I had made precisely zero impact on the rubber ring. There was a man in late middle age on the next table. He gave me a look of understanding. This was a man who had been where I was, and left it behind, perhaps even with a sense of regret.

I parped into the ring again, with fresh resolve and more effort than I have ever expended on anything. I looked at the ring again. A deep wrinkle at the bottom of the hoop appeared to be slightly shallower.

OK, I thought, this is going to take a while, but I am having an effect on this thing. I blew again. My eyes popped. The man on the next table smiled, perhaps a little too much for the sake of solidarity.

A small crowd gathered, all astounded by the purple man.

I tried again, and again. Each time I could see a tiny smoothing in the ridged texture of the ring. Each time, I was aware of the man on the next table chuckling.

This is beyond me, I thought. I need the breath control of Bill Withers, or that man who did the longest trombone note ever on Roy Castle’s Record Breakers. Yes, I know my references are not very contemporary, but we can’t all be Jasper Carrott.

No, I thought, I have to do this. For the children.

Also so that the man on the next table, who was now rolling on the floor, hooting, tears of mirth streaming from his eyes, did not see me give up after ten minutes of effort.

He composed himself. “You know you can get that blown up over there?” he said, pointing over my shoulder.

About 20 feet behind me was a lifeguard surrounded by inflatable toys, with a pressurized nozzle in his hand.

I need a holiday.

I SAT in the dentist’s waiting room and looked around for something to pass the time.

But apart from some leaflets and posters around the place explaining the importance of looking after one’s teeth – a massive “I told you so, Myrtle” to everybody sitting there – there was nothing to read.

So all I could do was sit there and think about what was about to happen. This was not very much – it was only the dental hygienist for a small repair on a chipped molar and a scale and polish. Nothing at all to worry about…

Gary, stop now.

My name was called, and the dental hygienist, a pleasant young woman, asked me to sit in the dentist’s chair. I noticed a sign as I sat down which said the surgery was open until 8pm. My previous dental appointment had been at 8am. I got a B in my maths GCSE, so I quickly worked out that was a 12-hour day.

I didn’t much fancy the thought of people who put drills in other people’s mouths working 12-hour days. There must be a shift system in place, I thought, so I…

Gary, seriously, stop this now…

I’m sorry, who is this?

I’m one of the voices which tells you what to think about things.

What, are you Twitter?

No. You know how you’ve got a conscience which stops you from doing bad things?

Kind of …

Well, I’m like that, but I’m the one which stops you from doing stupid things.

Right. So if that’s true, where have you been for 41 years, matey? You are the worst “stopping people from doing stupid things” voice ever.

You never listen to me.

Why now? What stupid thing am I about to do?

You’re going to tell the readers what you said to the dental hygienist. It’s a very, very bad idea.

Well, I know it was a stupid thing to say, but I’ve got a deadline, and it’s not as if I’ve got much of a reputation to trash.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Sorry, readers… So I made a bit of chit-chat with the hygienist about how good the air conditioning was, and how I could lie there all day.

And then, with the potentially 12-hour shifts of the surgery in mind, I turned to the dental hygienist and I asked her, “What time do you finish work?”

She looked at me in horror. I didn’t count, but possibly three seconds of silence occurred. That doesn’t sound much, but try counting them.

“I finish at five and then I go home to my baby, which WE’VE just had,” she said. Then she pushed some instruments into my mouth and I couldn’t explain. And the moment was lost.

Gary, you don’t ask a woman what time she finishes work.

I know!

Not even if she’s a taxi driver.

I know! Do you write the posters in dentists’ waiting rooms? Yes, but if I write a column about it, I can sort of explain that I wasn’t flirting and everything will be all right.

Oh, God, it’s not going to be all right, is it? I just look as if I’m justifying myself after the event so she doesn’t “accidentally” smack me in the mouth with something metal the next time I see her.

Yes, Gary, at best you look like an idiot. At worst you look like a lecherous and mendacious flirt. And now everybody knows about it.

I wasn’t flirting! I am so bad at flirting I am even terrible at not flirting, apparently. Where were you before I opened my mouth, Mister Wise-after-the-event?

I told you, you never listen to me. If you listened to me, you wouldn’t have a column in which you explain every week in detail how incapable you are.

Aha! I knew there was a good reason.

On the other hand, if you listened to me you would be rich and successful.

Swings and roundabouts, isn’t it?

Yes, Gary, except the swings are massive and made of gold, and the roundabouts are tiny and made of manure, and you never get to go on the swings.