Sometimes, I do wonder at my own idiocy.

One day last week, I am planning to catch a bus home at a little after six when my boss says he wants a word. How many words, exactly? Not many, he says. That’s okay, I can catch a bus at about 6.45pm. I need to be somewhere at eight to pick up the kids from youth club, but this leaves me plenty of time.

Not many words takes a long time to say. I miss my 6.45pm bus. The next one is not for another hour, which won’t get me near youth club in time. That’s okay, again. I am resourceful. There is a bus that leaves at 7.15pm which takes me close to where I need to be. It will give me 20 minutes to get to youth club, which I can do if I walk quite fast.

I have never caught this other bus before, and I am dismayed when it goes a circuitous route quite literally round the houses. It pulls up at every single stop to let someone on or off. I glance at the time. It is ticking on. It eventually gets me to the appointed stop at 7.45pm.

I realise this is a lot further away in reality than it seemed in my mind. I set off at a very brisk pace. The evening is cloudy but warm. Muggy, in other words, the sort of weather that sends sweat trickling down your back.

A quick look at the time means that even at a brisk lick, I am not going to get to the youth club at eight. I have a vision of the children sitting on the step like Victorian orphans. I start to run.

I have no idea what I look like. I am wearing a suit and smooth-bottomed shoes that are not much good for walking, never mind running. I have a waterproof coat on as well, because in the morning the weather wasn’t muggy, it was rainy. But now it is muggy and I am sweating like a pig. Also, for reasons there isn’t space to go into right now, I have four cupcakes wrapped in a bit of tinfoil in my bag.

My lungs are beginning to burn. My calves are on fire. People passing by in cars take long looks at me, as though memorising my appearance for the inevitable Crimewatch appeal some weeks hence. I am incredibly unfit, I realise.

I go pelting up to the youth club, red-faced, sweat pouring off me like a human Niagara Falls, gasping for breath as though I’ve just fled the Amityville Horror. I make it just in time.

I get home looking like I’ve been dragged through a hedge by a gang of trolls, and my wife looks at me pityingly. She says: “Why didn’t you just phone me and I’d have gone for them?”

Oh, yeah. I didn’t think of that.