Analyse This

I’m running. Not from a fearsome, drooling monster, but competitively. I’m in a bunch of four people and we’re at the front.

So far, so good.

Except I haven’t run in a week because I’ve injured my right knee. During the last seven days, I’ve also detected a distinct degradation in my decision-making skills. I now theorise that the right knee is the decision-making knee. Maybe we could test this theory with everyone smacking themselves in the right knee and then seeing if they can decide what to have for dinner. If you can’t inflict pain on yourself, get someone else to do it. Try annoying someone who’s been getting on your wick for a while but who you generally consider a bit too big and scary to irritate. I’m not sure how you get them to specifically inflict damage on your right knee, but I’m sure you’ll think of something.

Where were we? Oh right, the run. When the route deviates through a branch of Currys, I get a niggling suspicion that this may not be reality. Then the four of us come across a table around which are sat various members of our families. (An aunt, an uncle and a cousin for me – I can’t speak for the others, I don’t know them. Also, they’re not real.) I do a little bit of familial catching up, then I realise the other three runners have gone.

Dream-me turns out to have a sense of direction on a par with real-me. I end up running through hoards of shoppers, then my path is completely blocked by a man with an enormous trolley stacked with a couple of dozen assorted microwave ovens.

When I find the route again, the other three runners are long gone. The shoppers have made me lose the will to live, let alone run. Small children are overtaking me.

I come in 76th.