I HAVE been running for a few years now, on and off. I do not know why I have to qualify it with “on and off”. Everybody who runs does it “on and off”, otherwise they would never sleep or watch the television.

The point is, I have a routine now. I strap on my phone holder, I insert my earphones, I check I have my key, I put on my running shoes, I check I have my key again, I pick up enough money for water, but not enough for bus fare in case I am tempted to cheat, I check I have my key again, and I head out of the door.

What I do not do is put on my glasses. There is a very good reason for this. When I run, I perspire. I also bounce up and down.

Those of you who wear glasses will understand that perspiration, particularly around the nose and ears, reduces friction. Add a bouncing motion to lack of friction and you know that those glasses are not long going to stay attached to your face.

And even if they do somehow stay on – for a laugh, perhaps – they will just steam up.

Glasses, then, are useless to the serious runner, which is why you never see Sir Mo Farah stop in the middle of the 10,000 metres to huff on his specs before wiping them with his vest.

And yet, if I could find a way to incorporate glasses into my running, it would prevent me from getting into the sort of scrapes into which I regularly get.

It might, for example, have prevented me from spooking the Duck Women.

I was pounding the pavement. I would like to think that I looked masterful and fit, but I know deep down I looked as if I were tumbling forward in slow motion, never quite reaching the horizontal, while trying to catch invisible cakes that had fallen out of my hands.

In the distance, I could see two figures. They were blurry, as was everything else at that distance, but they were moving fairly slowly, and, I anticipated, would not cause me too much distress. They were not, for example, carrying a ladder or large painting between them. There was little chance of a slapstick-type accident.

As I got closer, they moved into sharper focus. I could see they were women. One of them was carrying a cardboard box, and the other had a small dog on a lead. As long as I did not directly run into either of the women or the dog everything would be fine. Such are the calculations I must make every day.

I continued to head towards them, and it was only at the last moment that I realised that the small dog was not on a lead. Nor was it a dog.

It was, in fact, a duck, leading the women somewhere. And in the cardboard box was another duck, guarding a number of ducklings.

In retrospect I can only assume the two women were taking a duck family, which had hatched in their garden or yard, to the nearby park, presumably to rehouse them, rather than as a treat.

At the time, I did not have the luxury of working out what was going on, as my thundering hooves and poorly coordinated body threw the women and the elder ducks into confusion. The duck in the box flew out towards my head in an attempt to protect its young, the other duck quacked, and the women shrieked, almost dropping the box. I understood at last what it must be to be Godzilla.

I yelled an apology over my shoulder. It was the very least I could do in the circumstances, but also the most, given that my experience with ducks is limited to feeding them or being fed by them.

I clattered on, feeling bad about disturbing a family of ducks and their human companions, and I suppose I was overly preoccupied. Because in the fug of guilt I failed to see the real danger.

A single bramble stem snaked out from a wall, hanging over the road at face height. Had I been wearing my glasses it would have been deflected by them. Of course, had I been wearing my glasses I would have seen it in time.

It turns out that being smacked in the face by a bramble really hurts.

This sort of thing never happens to Sir Mo Farah.

WHEN I was undergoing the six-year process of changing from a boy into technically and legally a man, I owned a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer.

It was not by current standards a powerful computer. It was not even by the standards of the time a powerful computer. It was the computer equivalent of me. But it was relatively cheap and easy to program and had so many games. Again, the computer equivalent of me.

Yes, it took eight minutes to load one of those games – and often the loading process would fail – but that was OK. I was 13, what else did I have to do but wait? Teenagers are famously patient.

But I was loyal to that computer. In those days, among my peers, there was a divide. On my side, Spectrum kids, on the other Commodore 64 divs. I suspect they did not refer to themselves in such terms, but that is because they were divs because they had Commodore 64s.

Yes, there were other computers available, like the BBC Micro, but they were for rich children whose parents could afford to spend £399 on a computer just because it had a nice keyboard.

Games for my computer were not always available for the Commodore 64, and vice versa. Normally, this was fine, because, ugh, who wants to play a Commodore 64 game?

But occasionally a game would appear on the Commodore 64 that I actually wanted to play. I would hear the Commobores in my class excitedly chatting about their game about llamas or Ghostbusters, and ache to join in. But I had made my choice. It was not to be.

I grew up – more accurately, older – and such emotions of frustration and exclusion were relegated to the 1980s, along with Black Watch check trousers, trimphones, and cartoons on BBC2.

But now it’s back. Because virtually everybody I know is watching Game Of Thrones, and I am not because I don’t have Posh Telly.

Actually, I do have Posh Telly, but I have the wrong sort of Posh Telly. There are three main types of Posh Telly – I won’t list them here because this is not an advertisement – and I have picked one of the ones which doesn’t have the Bosoms And Dragons programme.

Usually when I tell people this, they explain to me that I can very easily sign up to a package which will give me access to Swords And Nudity. And I have to tell them that I am not in a position to do that.

This time I am not sticking with my own type of Posh Telly out of loyalty, but because I can’t afford to have three types of Posh Telly. I have to draw the line somewhere. If I shelled out eight quid a month just to watch a show that only has 10 episodes a year, what would happen if a show I like appears on the remaining type of Posh Telly?

I’d have to pay for that too, and in the end I would be paying more per month to watch programmes that aren’t even on than I would be paying for food.

This logistical situation means that I have now effectively become a keen viewer of a television programme I do not watch.

I understand all the references. I know what the Red Wedding is. I know who John Snow is. In fact, when I hear somebody say the name “John Snow” I do not automatically assume they mean the Channel 4 News man.

I understand the joke when people say “Hodor”. I know what both Robson AND Jerome are doing these days. I am incredibly angry that Ed Sheeran was in the latest episode.

I feel like I did whenever I visited my late mother and she would tell me the ins and outs of the lives of people I had never met: utterly confused and yet fully briefed to A Level standard.

But this stuff is taking up too much valuable real estate in my brain considering I have never seen a second of the show, and I wonder which important information is being crowded out whenever I recognise the Iron Throne in a picture.

However, I am not going to let it bother me. And that is the proof that I have now grown into an actual man.

Mind you, I bet if I had been a Commodore 64 owner I’d still be whinging. They are the worst.

I HAVE A naturally quiet voice. It is sometimes hard to tell whether I am whispering or shouting. It does not help that I make the same cupping gesture for both activities.

Part of this is because I have a lisp, which was cute when I was a small child, made me a target when I was a larger child, and is just annoying now I am an adult.

It means that I spend far too much of my life avoiding S sounds in conversation. There is no way, for instance, that I could ever romance a woman called Cecilia. I would have to call her Thingy all the time.

Similarly, I could never take up with a coastal-based marine fossils dealer, because I could never explain her job.

But mostly my quiet voice exists because I am polite. I do not think that anybody should be forced to listen to me when I am having a conversation. It would be nice to think that people engaged in conversation with me did not feel forced so to do, but they are not my concern.

My concern is that I am never considered That Man In The Pub. For there is nobody worse than That Man In The Pub.

You hear him before you see him, and then when you see him you immediately know that the voice you heard came from him even if, for that moment, he is not speaking, because his appearance is as loud as his voice.

There are two main types of That Man In The Pub. The first wears a suit and appears to be aged about 35. He may not actually be 35 – he might be in his twenties – but he has always wanted to look 35. He is probably an estate agent. He may not actually be an estate agent, but he has always wanted to look like an estate agent.

This man does not wear a tie, but he does have a pocket square. The pocket square is the most ridiculous piece of clothing since Adam and Eve donned fig leaves. (Incidentally, does anybody know how they managed to attach these fig leaves? Did they have Pritt Sticks in the Garden of Eden?) It is a handkerchief that you cannot actually use as a handkerchief. Its only use is as a signal to other people that you are a person to avoid.

The second type of That Man In The Pub wears a football shirt. It is a never-ending source of amusement to me that if I turned up at the pub dressed as Spider-Man I would be lambasted. Also I would have no idea how I would drink anything through the mask.

However it is perfectly acceptable for a man with a beer gut and an approach to personal hygiene and fitness rarely seen in the modern game to pretend to be John Terry.

But what the two types have in common is an overwhelming need for everybody in the pub to know that they are there. They have to be the loudest in their group. They think that banter is a good thing rather than a substitute for a sense of humour for people who cannot think of their own jokes.

I witnessed the first type this week. I was in London for a meeting and had an hour to kill before my train home.

I went to a pub, because there is only so much entertainment to be had in a station waiting room, ordered a drink, and sat in the corner trying to look as if I hadn’t been stood up.

In he came, wearing a pinstriped suit and shiny shoes, surrounded by his entourage of nodding pillocks. The party sat around me and started talking across me. I know I was going for a discreet effect, but I did not realise I was actually invisible.

The subject matter chosen by That Man In The Pub was wide and varied. It concerned the ugliness of his companions, the likelihood that they might be homosexual, the likelihood that various female tennis players might be homosexual, and the physical attributes of the female bar staff. And all of it was delivered in his outdoor voice.

I tried to hide my distaste, finished my drink, and left them to it, glad that I am able to say I am not like That Man In The Pub.

But even if I did, you wouldn’t be able to hear me.

I AM not hugely keen on buying clothes. Do not get me wrong, I like clothes. I like how they stop people seeing what I really look like and how they keep me slightly less cold in winter.

I also like how many items of clothes have pockets, so I can store things like receipts and pens that have run out of ink. I particularly like this feature in jackets, when I get a hole in the pocket lining, and items fall through into the space between the lining and the rest of the material, turning the entire garment into a sort of super-pocket.

So clothes are OK in my book, but buying clothes is not OK, because buying clothes is a faff. Buying clothes involves going to a place and looking for things that are both your own size and age appropriate.

And then when you find the – oh, let’s pluck an example out of the air – pair of trousers of the correct waist and inside leg measurement you have to try them on in a cubicle that is at the same time too narrow for a normal-sized man with elbows and too wide to prevent a normal-sized man, temporarily standing on one leg for the purposes of removing a pair of trousers, from falling over and crashing into the side of the cubicle.

“Are you all right in there?” asks the woman at the entrance, who checks how many items of clothing you have taken from the store.

“Yes,” you lie.

And then, when you finally struggle into the trousers, you are displeased. This is because you have picked up what the shop has described as “black skinny jeans”, and you know that you are a 45-year-old man and this screams “mid-life crisis, but you can’t afford a Ferrari” and this can only end badly.

But the only reason you have picked them up is because the “regular fit” jeans looked as if you could fit both of your legs inside one of their legs, and there isn’t a style between regular and skinny.

However, now you have put them on, you realise that you look like a half-emptied icing bag, as if all of the flesh in your body has been pushed up above your waist. You are a lollipop in human form and you are not sure if you will ever breathe again.

Somehow you undo the button and peel the trousers off, taking your socks with them because of physics. And it is at that point that you realise that, although the hanger quite clearly says 34in waist/32in inside leg, the label on the trousers themselves says 30in waist/34in inside leg.

You have somehow managed to wear for a few painful moments the trousers of a man who has been extruded through some sort of giant pasta machine. It is a wonder that you have not had to have something amputated. In a way it is an achievement.

So you dress yourself again and take the Trousers of Doom back past the knowing look of the Guardian of the Cubicles. And then you search through the labels rather than looking at the hangers, because the hangers are liars, until you find the correctly sized trousers.

And then you walk back past the Guardian of the Cubicles, who gives you her special “Really, mate? Haven’t you learnt your lesson yet? You can’t wear them. You’re 45 years old, mate. You still call them Opal Fruits” look.

And then you repeat the bashing your elbows and falling against the side of the cubicle exercise, before looking in the mirror, and thinking, “Yes, you know? This is still an achievement. You are still able to wear the trousers of a much younger man. Yes, this is a much younger man who doesn’t get a lot of exercise, but still…”

It is at this point you think, “Why is there no transition between clothes for 25-year-old men and clothes for 65-year-old men?

“Why do I have to go straight from skinny jeans to grey flannels with elasticated waists for comfort? Why is there nothing for a 45-year-old man who wants to look like a 45-year-old man who is comfortable in his own skin and, ideally, his own trousers?”

And then you take the trousers to the cashier, and she is a teenage girl, and she looks first at you and then at the trousers and then back at you.

And you say, “They’re for my son.”

THE sun had been beating down for days, turning the world around me into a shimmering Mediterranean paradise. The beautiful people filled the pavement cafes with tans and laughter. Diners in Greggs were actually considering the salads.

Even I was wearing a slightly less heavy tweed jacket – next stop, a mankini, no doubt.

And so the land was prepared for me to have a cold. Nobody knows why colds are called colds. I only seem to get them when the weather is sunny, and when the night air is warm and stagnant, and when people do not seem to believe that I might have one.

The full packet of tissues I took with me to work had expired just after lunchtime, the final one looking like a string vest. I had to replenish my supplies.

This led me to a nearby branch of a nationwide chain of newsagents. I will not say the name of this company, but if I just say that you can’t buy a pen in there nowadays without them trying to sell you a family-sized Fruit & Nut for £1, you will know of which I speak.

I found the tissues, and near them was a packet of Lemsip Max Day & Night Cold & Flu Relief Capsules. I was not sure how severe my cold was in the range of colds, but I decided that something called Max would do just the job. There’s no point in pussyfooting around with cold medication. I don’t mind using a sledgehammer to crack a nut as long as the nut ends up cracked.

I took the items to the counter. “Ooh,” said the shop assistant, “Have you got a cold?”

I peered at her through bloodshot eyes, with a throat that felt like I had swallowed a cheese grater for a bet, and a red nose that was crying out for the tissues that lay between us. I looked like somebody miming a cold in a game of charades.

Sarcasm would have been so easy. “A cold, you say? Tell me, what gave me away, Miss Marple? Was it the sense that I appear to looking at you through a very thick pane of glass? Was it my Barry White voice? Or was it the fact that I have just put some aloe vera tissues and cold medication right in front of you? Ooh, it’s a right poser and no mistake!”

“Yes,” I growled, with levels of restraint that should have been beyond me in my weakened state. It was almost superhuman. “I hab a cold.”

I paid the woman and shambled weakly back to the office, my supplies in hand. I staunched the, well, flow with my newly-replenished stash of tissues, and then opened the box of Lemsip Max Day & Night Cold & Flu Relief Capsules.

I would have complained to colleagues about how ridiculous it is to have a product called Lemsip that neither tastes of lemons nor is designed for sipping, but instead I was in a good mood and did a victory lap of the office because I opened the end of the box that didn’t have the folded end of the “how to take tablets” instruction sheet.

But then I went to pop the capsules out of the delightfully-named blister pack, and everything went very wrong indeed. I pushed the first capsule from the back with my thumb, as one does when faced with a blister pack. And I could not break the foil.

I know I was in a weakened state, but surely even I should have been able to push a capsule through a bit of foil. But it was not my fault. The capsule buckled with my pressure, which meant that it did not pierce the surface.

I am not making excuses. I recommend that you try this exercise. Take a large square of cling film, and place a swiss roll on top of it (jam for preference). Then put a large square of aluminium foil over the top, and pinch it around the cling film, as if you are making the least appealing ravioli in history.

Now try to push that swiss roll through the foil. You can’t, even if you use a massive thumb made out of plaster, because the swiss roll collapses.

The point I am making is that the manufacturers of Lemsip capsules might be good at chemistry, but they are terrible at physics. And that remedies should make you feel better, not worse.