As many of you will have noticed, I have much in common with the singer-songwriter Kate Bush.
However, we part ways when it comes to hills. For she, famously, sang about Running Up That Hill, whereas I, infamously, have a fondness for running down hills.
It is my secret vice and one, alas, that I rarely get peace to practice. I should qualify the word “hills”, as the inclines under advisement are really just slight slopes.
But, still, they propel a chap in a downward direction and at speed, prompting the word “whee” to be emitted from the lips.
You say: “A man in your position – respectable pillar of society, payer of domestic rates – cannot be seen running down hills or slight inclines. The idea is preposterous.”
It is, I know. That is why I have to look around carefully before making my run. My secret spot lies in the woods beside the suburban hill where dog-walkers abound. But few of these venture into the woods, and you can often get peace in there.
The slight incline is only about 20 yards long, but it’s enough for a whee-inducing canter. The feeling it induces is one of childhood freedom.
It’s a glorious letting go, added to which is a slight frisson of fear that I might go over on my ankle and then where would I be? Answer: in the woods being stretchered out to an ambulance.
The fear also takes me back to a childhood incident that, alas, I forbear to recall. My friend and I were at the top of a steep incline in another urban wood, and he suggested we should run down it.
The idea seemed absurd – boy in my position, respectable third or fourth in the class – though it was not so much these considerations as the inherent danger that led me to pooh-pooh the suggestion.
For it really was a steep slope, with far more obstacles than the odd tree root that features in my current incline which is, anyway, really just part of a natural path.
Undaunted, Jim ran down, while I remained fearfully at the top, before heading home with my tail between my legs. Even now, I can rationalise my decision as admirable common sense.
But something dented my self-image as a heroic warrior (a dent that remains to this day), while Jim was shown to have hidden depths, he who had never played a prominent part in the British v Zulus re-enactments in the school playgrounds.
Today, I do not let the memory of that day deter me, as I take off downwards, because the experience also takes me back to a more pleasant aspect of childhood: just running, running, running everywhere with the wind ever in our ears.
To invert the words of the aforementioned Kate: “I’m running down that hill, with no problems.”
Running down that hill, all debts and fears disappear and I am proud, too, that I have taken the risk, not so much of twisting an ankle as of being seen by respectable ratepayers in anoraks, who would undoubtedly stand agog at the sight.
Indeed, it is the lack of common sense in the enterprise that makes it all the more delicious. And the feeling of freedom is wonderful.
