How to jaywalk, by an expert

Not how it's done

In 2002, tracksuits with ‘BABE’ on the butt were cool, S Club 7 were still in the charts, and the US Army raised a few eyebrows when they released a first person shooter video game as a recruitment tool.

I was never good at shooter games. I was good at that game Toad. When game consoles were the size of your face and made up of just a few pixels, the aim of this game was to get your ‘toad’ (a square) across the road by moving into spaces before the cars (rectangles) reached you. So instead of becoming a solider, I became a jaywalker.

My personality suits jaywalking – i.e. navigating the road on my terms, rather than being dictated to by crossings and lights. I am very impatient. I don’t like being told what to do. I’m decisive. I walk alone a lot. And I’m often running just behind schedule enough that waiting a whole minute at the side of an empty road will switch me from bang-on-time to actually late.

I’m not here to tell you to start jaywalking: that would be against the blogger’s code of responsibility to readers. It’s not illegal in Britain, but then neither are fireworks or teaching yourself how to do backflips on the home trampoline or piercing your own ears. But like all these things, if you have a sneaking suspicion that you might not be very good at it, you probably shouldn’t try it. And if you are going to do it, do it like a boss.

Family members, fiancé and future medical insurers: stop reading now. For everyone else, here’s how to jaywalk.

Be gazelle
You may be a sloth in your resting life, but when you are crossing the road, you are a gazelle. Think gazelle. Be gazelle.

Gazelles know that crossing a road is not the time to check your phone/stare at the sky/tie your shoelace/read just one more page of your book. Have you ever seen a gazelle pausing to check Google maps while it’s springing across the savanna?

You need to be focussed on moving across that treacherous river without being snapped up by a crocodile. By which I mean getting over the road without being knocked down by a lunatic on a Deliveroo bike. Save the cat video for your lunchbreak, or wait for the green man.

Always check the side roads
Side road traffic is like love and periods and cravings for new potatoes: it appears when you least expect it, with potentially dramatic results. Even if you’ve walked across the same road every day, always check there is nothing coming. One day there will be and it won’t hit you because you remembered this rule, and you will feel a weird sense of pride, relief and invincibility.

Be decisive
You’ve done the necessary calculations and decided you can make it. Go now: another half a second and the car crawling along 10 metres away has found the accelerator and you have to re-evaluate the whole thing.

Never follow a stranger over the road
Like the adult version of stranger danger. Even if they look like they have this jaywalking thing down to an art (and it is an art, darling), don’t follow them. They could be high or unfamiliar with the concept of cars or just an idiot. Plus they’re only looking out for themselves – you follow them two seconds later and the situation has changed. You are the master of your own fate. Yes, you. Not that guy strolling confidently in front of the No. 76 without a care in the world.

Drivers have feelings too
Yes, the rumours are true: drivers are actually human and they need to get somewhere as well. Take advantage of a momentarily clear road and sloooow vehicles, but don’t walk out when they’re accelerating towards a green light and expect them to stop. And save ‘Hey, I’m walking here!’ for moments of justified outrage.

Learn to read traffic
With focus, study and practice you can become a Jedi of the road. Or a Sith, if that’s what you’re into. That driver isn’t indicating, but have all the other cars ahead of them turned towards you? Which way are they spinning the wheel? How long does it take for the lights to go green after the red man has appeared? It becomes a big puzzle you get to piece together.

Crossings are a conspiracy
I’m going to destroy everything you believed about society, the nature of the universe and the order of life. Don’t bother pressing the button at most pedestrian crossings. Like the ‘close doors’ button in lifts, most are put there just to make us feel like we have some control over our lives. Don’t buy into the lie. Truth is beauty. Ugly, sad, twisted beauty. Instead, find the nearest CCTV camera and stare accusingly.

Buses are slow
Although the phrase ‘What happens if you get hit by a bus tomorrow?’ is often used to force people to consider their own mortality, they are far from the being the scariest vehicles on the road. They're like Great White sharks: they're big and tough up close, but this hyperawareness also means you’re more likely to avoid them. Of course you should still look out for them, but it's hard to overlook something bright red that accelerates at the speed of a morbidly obese walrus and stops every 100 metres.

Beware professional drivers
Taxi and van drivers’ livelihoods depend on getting through traffic. They therefore have no tolerance for anyone else being on the road. It can appear that they are playing a game of human bowling, in which you are the pins. Some will accelerate straight at you. They are most likely to beep and shout wildly unimaginative swear words. Treat them with the caution you would grant to a rabid dog on speed who has spotted you wearing Lady Gaga’s meat dress.

Think bike
If you’re crossing between cars stuck bonnet to trunk in a traffic jam, always, always, check that there’s not a Lycra-clad speed demon weaving through the middle or up the side.

Cycling in London is scary, which means that some cyclists see themselves as gladiators pitched against everyone else on the road. They will not deign to inform us which way they plan to veer off to next. Red lights and one way streets and laws about riding on the pavement do not apply to them.

To avoid getting a spoke through your leg, listen out for the sinister sound of spinning wheels and for the bells they're constantly hammering away at, in the manner of a crazed priest announcing a coronation or a wedding. And stay as far away from anyone on a Boris bike as you can without actually leaving the city.

And motorbike
Motorcyclists are more vigilant but also more dangerous if you’re a pedestrian. Not only are many willing to weave into any space they can get into, regardless of who’s currently filling it, but they have the acceleration to change a road crossing situation before you can say Hell’s Angels.

Choose life
The aim of the game is to get across in one piece, which means waiting for the right time, even if that takes swallowing your pride and letting the red traffic light usher you across. You won’t reach your destination feeling like you beat the man and the tourists and the whole damn system, but you will get there, which is more important. Apparently.

Running with it: a novice runner's revelation

'Attention please, this is a platform alteration...'

It’s 6:15am, and the only people around town are either being paid to be there, or are on their way to be paid to be somewhere else. Most other people of sound mind are either sleeping or hunched zombie-like over breakfast, attempting to conjure up semblance of consciousness from their cornflakes. This just leaves the runners, bootcampers and cyclists who have dragged themselves out of bed, shoved their sleep-deprived bodies into Lycra and pushed them out the door for a dose of early morning exercise. To my shock and occasional horror, I am now one of this mad part of the population.

I’ve had an on-off relationship with running, mostly off. There were the PE lessons when we were sent to shiver or sweat a few laps around the track in the name of the curriculum and my school’s ‘Sports Mark Gold’ status. Then there was a fairly steady period in the Easter term of my first year at uni, which saw me doggedly running round the lake, being casually overtaken by lean and limber athletes while I tried to make it through one Killers track without having a heart attack. Sadly, a summer job as a chambermaid put paid to any serious fitness ambitions, since after a day of making beds, cleanings rooms and pushing a trolley the weight of a baby elephant around, I could barely drag my body to the fridge let alone put in a couple of miles of running. Seriously, chambermaids are the secret superheroes of the service industry. But that’s a post for another time.

Then, finally, there was a ‘Stress Run’ in January. Facing the potent combination of a 12,000 word dissertation and a recent break-up, all set in the arctic conditions of a student house, I snapped, dug out some antique trainers, a hoody and woolly hat, and threw myself down the street with a playlist of angsty lovelorn songs for company. I charged along for about three and a half minutes before heartburn set in. Love hurts.

Interestingly, it was stress that sent me running this time, too. My dad had just brought me back from university for the last time, leaving behind my friends, my independence, and the life I had spent three years building. I stood in my room, staring at the blank walls and piles of boxes, grabbed the same old antique trainers and decided to run it out. So off I went, down the roads I’d run during the aforementioned Easter sessions. Except that instead of getting round the route once and collapsing, as anticipated, I kept going. And going. And going. And then I ran home and collapsed. Looking back now, I only ran about two miles, but for someone who had taken weeks to get past five minutes several years before, this newfound fitness was enough to make me go out again. The challenge of improving gave me something to focus on, when everything else seemed to be covered in a fog.

Although I’ve only been going for a few weeks, I have learned a lot from running. Some of it is practical, and some of it is personal. For example, I still believe that Lycra was invented for currently fit people to show off their current fitness, and that joggers are just as good, but I have discarded my antique trainers for a pair of shiny pink running shoes. The noticeable difference led my poor feet to break into a totally involuntary jig. While we’re talking about feet, I now also understand terms like over-pronation (when the arch of your foot rolls inwards as you walk) and, unfortunately, plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the tissue or ligaments in the bottom of your foot. It really sucks, but more on that later.)

However, at the risk of sounding like a coach addressing his underdog team in a sports films, the most important lessons I have learned from running have been the ones that taught me something about myself. To get out of bed, throw on your shiny pink running shoes and boldly declare your intention to run or keel over trying is to take charge of your own body and your own goals. No matter what else is going on in your life, you have the opportunity to challenge yourself to improve at something. When I’m running, I am the one who has to push myself up that hill, to the next tree, all the way home, in thirty degrees or pouring rain. Thus, when it goes right, I can look back and see that yes, that bit where the guy with the zimmerframe overtook me was hard going, but I got through it, and I did it on my own. Of course, when it goes wrong, I’m also the one who has to pick myself up (sometimes literally) and agree that it will go better next time, but that’s part of taking responsibility for achieving my own aims.

Having decided to challenge yourself, you can always go further than you think. There’s a particular road on my regular route that I dread because it’s the point where images of myself walking home in the rain, with aching legs and the embarrassment of failure start floating before my eyes. But even as I picture this, my legs are still going (even if it’s at a speed that means snails are getting impatient with me) and eventually I catch a second wind (though it’s more likely endorphins). Not only will I get to where I planned, but the sense that I’ve triumphed over adversity means that my slightly disbelieving self, marvelling that my legs are, in fact, still moving beneath me, will possibly continue to run further than I planned.

While it’s important to push yourself, you also need to listen to your body. I don’t mean stop running the moment something starts complaining that this is all too much, and it would really rather go back to bed with a giant plate of eggs on toast and a bucket of tea, thanks. There are times when your brain needs to tell your body to stop whining and keep moving. Or to get up off the pavement or road and get running again. There are other times, however, when you need to allow it to have a rest. I learnt this the hard way, when my sudden surge in activity and some poorly chosen footwear landed me with the aforementioned plantar fasciitis.

It may sound like a plant species bred by Nazis, or maybe a planet from a sci-fi film, but it’s actually a painful condition in your foot. To get some idea, imagine there’s a piece of very tight elastic starting in your heel and running the length of your sole. Every time this elastic is forced to stretch (so when you walk or dare to move your foot too fast), it feels like someone is stabbing all along your sole with something pointy. At this point, you have to accept that no matter how much you might like to be out there, sweating and aching and red-faced,  you need to take care of this first. Running has taught me to appreciate my body as a pretty awesome machine, capable of more than it’s been given credit for, but also that in order to keep it, er, running well, I also need to give it attention, rest and scrambled eggs on toast.

In the last few weeks, I’ve transformed from a running novice with antique trainers and no clue to a running novice with shiny pink running trainers and a new perspective on what I can achieve. It’s hard, and there are times in every run where I want to stop, but the sense of control and achievement that comes when I don’t makes it worthwhile. If I, who couldn’t run through ‘Human’, can learn to run solidly for fifty minutes, there’s a good chance that anyone else with two working legs and reasonable health (and many without these) can too. There is a method to the 6am madness, so postpone the cornflakes, dig out some shoes, and run with it.

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