BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN

I used to like the gym. Then I got older. Weights are an important part of my new fitness regime. Thanks to the phenomenon that is rust, these days the home gym in the outhouse is a death trap. So, I attend a gym instead. I point blank refuse to wear Lycra. Maybe I stand out in my old trainers, rugby shorts and the Led Zeppelin T-shirt which has served me so well since university. Perhaps the blue office socks are a giveaway. It could be the hellish scars on my legs. Or the aged groans – I huff and puff a bit more than before, like a Mark 1 Cortina.

Some young’uns giggle at me. I do not give a damn. Inside I am giggling at them whilst desperately trying to avoid eye contact with their frontal wedgies – so barely escapable as they are in their lairy LuLulemon and Sweaty Betty.

At the start of February, after several weeks of daily gym attendance, one night I figured that I merited a treat. The Double Luck Kitchen serves a noteworthy hot honey mustard sesame crispy chicken. So I popped by there on the way home from the gym. And as I sat outside in the hybrid guzzling petrol, electricity and my takeaway, I was overcome with shame (for the takeaway). I determined to at least save the fortune cookie for one of the dogs. But no, I scoffed that too.

Its message merely enhanced my pangs of guilt:

‘Stay Healthy. Walk a Mile’.

February Half Term.

The children are home. Every day it’s raining cats and dogs. We’re taking a short break away from home, many miles from the gym. It is 4 o’clock on a Saturday morning and I’ve had enough kip. ‘Stay Healthy. Walk a Mile’. The exercise I prefer is not on offer. I see a lighthouse beaming on the horizon. I decide to walk there. It’s far further than a mile away along the ragged Cornish coast. There and back must be ten miles. Who cares? It’ll do me good. I set off, eager doggies in tow.

The heavy rain, joined with sea spray blasts against our faces, takes our breath away. The terrier, despite his luminous flashing kagool, flinches. The walk, along the muddy coastal path, seems never-ending. I stop for a coffee in a petrol station in a rundown town which we stumble across along the way whilst in pursuit of a poo bin. I split a bacon and cheese bap with the dogs. We march. Onwards. Towards the illuminations.

We get to the lighthouse at eight (in the morning). A ‘Well done that’s 10,000 steps’ message pops up on my phone alongside a silly cup which I mentally transfer to the terrier who must have done a million. I look back along the coast back towards the house where we’re staying but it’s not visible in the mist. I notice a pressure on my ribs. I recall noticing it before at the gym. Maybe I’d been overdoing the weights? It’s probably nothing. ‘Stay Healthy. Walk a Mile’.

We stop for another coffee on the way home. And a bag of Jelly Babies. Eventually we get back to the house. At midday. We are all three of us soaked through, covered in mud and shivering. A hot bath ensues for me while my teenage son, just out of bed, hoses the tired dogs down in the rain on the terrace.

That afternoon the pressure on my ribs grows. Paracetamol is useless. My breathing soon becomes affected. On a group call the next day the Deputy Editor refers to me as Darth. Fortunately I know a doctor who holidays nearby. She pops around after Sunday Roast and listens to what remains of my breathing.

“Dom, you have walking pneumonia. You’ve had it for a while. Here, gob in here (she presents me with a tube). It’s lucky you went for that walk or you’d probably never have noticed it. Likely things would have ended far worse for you.”

Recuperation.

A course of antibiotics and two weeks later, I am back at the gym. My phone buzzes. It’s a message from home:

“Pick up a Double Luck if you want dinner. Am eating at Elizabeth’s.”

This visit my luck doubles up. The restaurant owner deposits two fortune cookies in the takeaway bag. I open them gingerly, with as much ginger as my order of duck with spring onion.

‘Dance as if no one is watching’. ‘Plan for many pleasures ahead’.

Cha-cha-cha.

I pick up a bottle of Cordosyl from Boots on the way back home.

Dominic Wightman is Editor of Country Squire Magazine.