january... sick and tired you keep hanging on me.

My tax return is due in by 31st January. I leave it to the last minute every year and then spend most of January stressing about it despite the fact that it normally only takes a couple of hours to do. Nevertheless, I'll typically do anything other than knuckle down and get the bloody thing out of the way. Cars get cleaned. Offices get cleaned ('office' is actually a bit grand a word for the smallest bedroom piled high with books CDs and computer gubbins but then so is 'study').

Now I really love the idea of getting fit, but can I be arsed? Well, yesterday Mrs Backroads and I took Boo for wander through several nearby muddy fields but I wouldn't call it high impact. Don't get me wrong, walking's meant to be one of the best forms of exercise but it's not as easy when you're at work. Sure I could walk around the streets near work but, frankly, it's a bit rough and I'm not sure that I fancy being menaced for crack money by the local povs.

Trail magazine reckons that the best way to keep fit for hill running during the winter months is to run up and down stairs at home for twenty five minutes each day. Now there's a couple of things to say about that:

Firstly, having a subscription to Trail magazine is the nearest I'll ever get to being a hill runner/mountain climber, but I find that browsing articles about 'Munro Bagging' , 'Wild Camping' and what a curmudgeon that Wainwright was, is almost as exciting as doing the real thing... plus there's loads of good gadgets in it... I find that a GPS unit is nigh on essential kit for circumnavigating Meadowhall on a Saturday afternoon (Full Semi Circle with Backroads).

Secondly, have you ever run up and downstairs for any length of time? It opens up an enter new dimension. You discover a breach in the space/time continuum. Oh yes, sure you can sit on your arse eating fig rolls and watching Des and Mel and Blam! - there's half an hour gone in the blink of an eye. Start running up and down stairs and time begins to stretch out before you. You can feel your beard growing! Put your iPod on and put on a really short track, say 5,6,7,8 by Steps, and it feels like a space opera.

So there it is. January. I have pile of great books to read, a tax return to put off doing, many pounds to lose, a small child who needs a new nappy every ten minutes and Celebrity Big Brother Live to watch. It's all good babe.