Razzamatazz - British comedy


JOGGING

While I was out walking this morning I saw something which I never expected to see in my life, not even in my wildest dreams. It was a jogger smiling.
     In and around the town where I live, New Mills, on the edge of the Peak District, there are many nice walks and the route I’d chosen today was one I don’t do all that often. I’m glad I did though, otherwise I might never have seen the phenomenon of the smiling jogger. I’d been watching a kestrel hunting for its lunch and I heard the jogger before I saw him, the familiar pad padding of trainers on tarmac accompanied by a variety of puffs, pants and wheezes. (If jogging is a way of keeping fit then I for one am quite happy to stay unfit. It’s a nice walk for me every time, taking time to smell the flowers. The only occasion a jogger would have time to smell the flowers would be if he had to stop to let a hearse pass, possibly one carrying the coffin of an ex-jogger who’d died from a heart attack while out jogging).
    When I turned to the jogger he was about twenty yards away. He wasn’t smiling then, he had the usual pained expression all joggers seem to have. Then, when he was about ten yards away, he suddenly broke out into a huge smile. I thought at first he’d recognised me and it was a smile of greeting, although I didn’t recognise him, but then I noticed he wasn’t looking at me but past me. I raised a hand to stop him. If a jogger was smiling I wanted to know the reason why. Perhaps I could pass on his secret to the thousands of other miserable-looking, red-faced and out of breath joggers I often see while I’m out walking. He pulled up, but kept jogging on the spot, as if scared he’d never get going again if he stopped. “What?” he said.
    “You’re the first jogger I’ve ever seen smiling,” I said.
    “So?”
    “So do you mind telling me why?”
    He pointed to a house about ten yards farther on. “You see that house.”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s where I live. When I get there I can stop bloody jogging.”