MR AVERAGE GETS A PUNCTURE

"Well, it seems as though you're quite average," said the man, staring at his laptop.

I slipped my socks back on.

I had had my visceral fat, my body-mass index, my muscle-fat ratio and my hydration-level measured by a tiny, imperceptible electrical pulse rippling through me from a pair of digital scales.

"Yes, your metabolic age seems to be roughly about the age of a 39 or 40 year-old," he went on.

Fair enough. And that was it. Mr Average zipped his boots, said thank you to the man with a laptop and left the medical room, heading back to his desk.

I still believe I need more exercise. I haven't walked to work in ages and I'm far from that twenty-minutes-a-day brisk stroll that's suggested as the minimum. Then there's the gym I haven't joined, the runs I haven't been on and the push-ups I haven't done. Not to mention the swimming and cycling I can't do! Typing, playing the piano and thinking up songs is not enough.

Funny then that a few hours later, I was on my hands and knees, red-faced with exertion, cranking a jack and trying to unscrew the wheel nuts of my passenger-side front tyre.

You won't need three guesses at what had happened. Flat. Puncturino. I rumbled to a stop in the High Street, dishevelled my boot, yanked out the spare and set about the age-old manly trick of tyre-replacement.

"Yeah, it's just that I don't have the thing that undoes locking wheel nuts..." I eventually found myself saying to the AA call centre.

"Someone will be with you in twenty minutes," said the lady on the other end. She had the tone of a woman who has heard it all before. 

I was left then, to contemplate the immovability of those wheel nuts and my distinct lack of upper-body strength. I was thinking about the gym and what it must be like to be one of those Schwarzenegger types, when my Dad turned up.

He told me I should have a thing that undoes locking wheel nuts. I told him I didn't have one. He told me it's usually in the glove compartment. I found it in the glove compartment. Then the AA man turned up and my Dad told him how silly I was for misplacing the thing that undoes locked wheel nuts. 39 years old I am.

Ten minutes later, the spare was on, I'd learned the correct place to jack up my car (well I was nearly right!), the grubby old wheel was in the boot and I was on my way home.

Maybe a little physical exertion in the summer heat did me some good? I certainly enjoyed getting my hands dirty, trying to solve a real-life, practical problem. True, I needed strength and tools. And yes, I certainly needed help. But I'm all the better for it, if not the stronger.

So then, about that lack of exercise...