I used to be a fast runner, but now look at me, the slowest guy in Hampshire, otherwise known as Hants.
I’m so slow, I meet myself coming back.
A few years ago I made a disparaging remark, at the Saturday morning run round the park
You see, I regarded myself as a ‘proper’ athlete,
so was scornful of this ‘fun-running’ phenomenon,
which to me was an excuse for avoiding ‘manly’
competition.
Yes, I was a misogynist too.
I said to a veteran of these events, Larry Lotsofstops,
at the post-run breakfast, ‘You’re so slow, a snail passed you.’
The ‘joke’ fell flat and I was given the cold shoulder,
so hit the bottle.
One day, running through a forest, still ‘phissed’,
I narrowly avoided crushing a slimy creature in a shell,
who asked, ‘Can I have a ride?’
‘I’m going to a convention for ‘terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs’, the scientific term for me, a typical example of
the British snail.
I acceded to his request, but a spider,
spotting the approaching rain-filled clouds, appeared above me saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’m checking the forecast on my website.
‘Apparently, I’ve lost all my spidery writing, it now looks like hieroglyphics.
‘A river called Amazon has put them all onto a cloud,
which is something on a computer.
‘Oh, I am confused.’
Then a party of ants, who feared being doused with water,
jumped on my legs, asking, ‘Can we come to?’
The spider said, ‘But, you’ll have ants in your pants in Hants!’
‘These jokes are what kept me going,’ said the snail,
‘avoiding galloping horses and escaped prisoners, like Magwitch.
‘You know, that character in Charles Dicken’s novel,
Great Expectations, who made a dash for safety
from his hidey hole on Essex Marshes.’
The next time we met, she boasted,
‘I’ve finally come out of my shell, and that’s not
just a literary metaphor.
‘It fell off when I embraced that spider, you know, the one with his website?
Anyway I’m going, for I take ages to get anywhere,
so keep up the running – oh, and stay off the booze.’
Alas, I did the first for a while, but not the last.
Years later, as I drank cans of lager in
that aforementioned forest,
I saw my slimy acquaintance emerge from under a stone,
wave her feelers at a spider who’d swung down,
then elope into a leafy glen.
That evening, I confessed to my addiction at a meeting
of Alcoholics Anonymous, which I’d decided to attend
on the spur of the moment, after this curious incident.
They applauded my honesty, and I now have a contract
with a movie producer, who had hit the bottle after a series of flops.
‘I loved your story,’ he declared, ‘even if it is a product of alcohol.
‘I even have a great script.
‘What’s more, I’ve lined up a great cast.
That fellow Tim Shanks, and that Irish fellow, Columbine Farrell.
‘I’ve even got the local fun runners to appear,
after speaking to a fellow called Lotsofstops.’
‘What, the chap I insulted?’
‘Yes, anyway, as a gesture of goodwill, he invited you take part
in a park run, which he said is still held at the usual place.
‘He said, back in the day, to use an annoying cliché,
you were a good runner.
My face fell, as I realised I could hardly do more than jog now, but brightened when he added,
‘Oh, he insists you mustn’t go faster than a snail’s pace.’
