A terrible thing is happening to me. A terrible thing altogether, writes Kilian Doyle
I'm getting fat. Not that I have anything particular against fat people. I just don't want to be one.I'm becoming positively Homeric. And, in case all you lovely ladies think I'm turning into a chisel-jawed Greek warrior, I'm sorry to say I mean Homeric in the purely Simpsons sense.
I'm getting so sluggish I'm going to have to start carrying a mop around to clean up the glistening trail I leave behind me. Or people will start to talk. Maybe my corpulence is just down to age. After all, I'm not 18 any more. It's inevitable I won't be snake-hipped forever, right? Wrong.
The truth is, I'm turning into a pathologically indolent buffoon. Why, just the other day I spent a good hour trying to teach my chronically obese cat to fetch the TV remote for me. She was not impressed.
I blame my car, the sultry, curvaceous, metallically painted Bavarian tart that she is. As, obviously, I can't blame myself. Two months ago, afore she rolled into my life, if I needed to go anywhere within a 10 mile radius, it was out to the garden shed to my sleek red princess of a racing bicycle, and on the road with me without a second's delay.
But now I've got options. And, as we all know, options'll add a stone to your weight. And the option to sit in a big comfy seat with a purring panther of an engine doing the work for me, rather than huffing and puffing to within an inch of my life, while perched on a saddle so narrow just looking at it brings tears to the eyes, is looking more attractive in direct proportion to the expansion of my waistline.
It's hardly surprising - I'm becoming somewhat obsessed with my car. I've even started doing something I swore I'd never do - I've taken to driving it nowhere in particular, just for pleasure of it. I sometimes think if the car had a fridge, a microwave and a telly in it, I'd never get out.
It's also incomparably safer than trying to cycle anywhere in Dublin. Perhaps my brain is subconsciously directing me from the shed to the mantelpiece where I keep the car keys as a form of self-preservation.
Sadly, the relationship between my bicycle and I has changed beyond recognition.
Where once I would gaze lovingly at her curves, tingling in anticipation of the next time I could glide through rush hour traffic astride her scarlet frame, now I see only effort and pain.
Where once we formed a perfect symbiotic union between man and machine, now we both rattle and groan awkwardly as we stutter down the street. Where once there was a mutual respect and adoration, now there is only frostiness and mistrust.
Every time I climb on, I feel her shudder and recoil slightly beneath me. Not from my increased bulk (although that may be a factor) but from her knowing I've being cheating on her with a vehicle with bigger headlamps.
It feels like the dying throes of a love affair. Much as I'd like to rekindle those days of wine and roses where we'd cavort through the gaps between rumbling trucks without a care in the world, it's over unless I act, and act quickly. She won't wait forever; she'll just rust away and die.
If I don't do something, I'm going to end up a fat old man with nothing for company but an expensive, demanding wagon that'll some day break my heart by leaving me stranded on top of a mountain. They always do, apparently.