Near death experience

Today I promised my friend and exercise partner Bossy Boots that instead of going walking in Leigh Woods today, I would do an exercise video instead. I made an Unbreakable Vow. BB, not being a Harry Potter fan, did not realise the significance of this promise, but the more cultured among you may be wiser. If you break an Unbreakable Vow, you Die. (Severus Snape makes one at the beginning of Harry Potter 6.)

So I got out of a bed, always a victory in itself, put on my highly unflattering track suit bottoms (which make me, in Beyonce's immortal words, too bootylicious for James) and started looking for Davina McCall's exercise video. It was nowhere to be found.

You can imagine my distress.

But, like a failed girl scout, I had a plan B. Also in the house, dusty, unplayed, and unloved is Pat Cash's Pilates Workout. I unplugged the DVD player, plugged in the video instead, and pressed the power switch.

Nothing happened. I called Texan Support, who pronounced it broken.

You can imagine my profound distress. To fail to do one exercise video is distressing enough; to fail twice is sheer carelessness.

I assessed the patheticness of the excuse:

"I couldn't do the exercise video because I lost Davina McCall and our video was broken."

On a scale of patheticness, with 1 the most pathetic and 10 the least, I'd give this a 3.

So I decided to go to the shops and buy another DVD.

A few minutes later, I was scanning the walls of the cheapy video shop down the road looking for exercise videos. The helpful young man behind the counter asked me if I was looking for anything in particular.

You may not think that there is much amusement to be derived from this encounter, but the gremlin in me couldn't help noticing that the chap in the shop (long black hair, pale skin, dressed entirely in black, radiating kindness, clearly one of the best kind of nerds) was as unsuitable a person to recommend exercise videos as it is possible to imagine.

"We haven't got very many," he said,"but here they are."

So I triumphantly headed home with Rosemary Conley's GI Jeans workout, put it in the DVD player and jumped around, really trying quite hard, missing Bossy Boots's cries of "You're not trying hard enough!" James walked through in the middle and saw me in action, so I have a witness.

So I have fulfilled my Unbreakable Vow and I will not die.