I’ve started going to the gym. Not a considered decision, I admit. Had I considered it, I’d have seen sense and foregone the experience. But I didn’t, so I haven’t, and now, three times a week, pedal like blazes up hill and down dale, for half an hour, while others around me are pounding away on treadmills or rowing like lunatics - all of us in front of panels as complex as those of an aircraft, which tell us how far we’ve travelled, how near to a heart attack we are, and how many calories we have used (depressingly few, I find (I have yet to burn off a Mars bar’s worth, for example)).

During the first few visits, my heart rate hovered perilously close to cardiac arrest, not as a consequence of exercise, but as a result of mortification – one is not merely surrounded by frighteningly fit, young students: one is surrounded by frighteningly fit, young students one is going to teach just as soon as one has showered, changed, and recovered sufficiently for one’s face to revert from puce to one’s more usual shade – a shade that shows that this woman with red hair also has freckles.

I have just about got over this stage in my development, not least because I am now confident enough to play with the myriad buttons on the dashboard, and so, because I am not exactly au fait with aforementioned buttons, am either hanging on to the handlebars for dear life having pushed the button for the cycling-down-the-north-face-of-the-Eiger-on-a-fixed-wheel-bike programme; or wheezing over the handlebars, having pushed the button for the cycling-up-the-north-face-of-the-Eiger-in-top-gear programme. In life-threatening circumstances such as these, it would be foolish to squander what little spare energy one has on fripperies such as self-consciousness.

Besides, there are ample opportunities for embarrassment once one has dismounted. (NB: ‘dismount’ is being used somewhat loosely here, taking it to apply when one intentionally parts company with one’s bike, but with no implications whatsoever about the method of parting.) For one has to cross the floor from bike to door. And one has then to descend a long flight of stairs to the changing room; stand in the shower; and, once respectable, walk back to one’s department. All this without losing balance or face.