Locked out

This morning I was out of the flat and running by 6:30; I didn't feel exactly wonderful after eating a plate of tofu as big as my head yesterday, but I had intervals to run. As I made my way to the river I felt dreadful; sluggish, hardly capable of putting one foot before the other. I pressed on.

As I exitted Clarke Quay, I picked up the pace. I had to fight to get myself up to speed, but I ran a kilometre in 4:12, and then slowed down to recover for a minute before my second interval.

As I jogged along, I thought how good it would have been if I'd packed a carbo-gel in my back pocket - I was only drinking tapwater today, and that might have been partly to blame for my dearth of energy. And then the horrid realisation hit me: I had forgotten to put my doorkey in my shorts.

It was 6:52 by then. Even if I sprinted as hard as I had ever run, my wife would be long gone by the time I got home, and the door would still be locked. I tried to run another hard kilometre, but knowing I had no breakfast at the end of it meant I couldn't push myself and soon I was back to trotting again. Running is all about future breakfasts.

I got slower and slower, until I was barely trundling back through Clarke Quay. As well as the satin pineapple outside our block of flats, there's been a celebration of Mid-Autumn Festival in the shape of unconvincing animal effigies by the river. Most are wearing clothes, apart from a bare-breasted pig who seemed to be leering like a porcine Page 3 girl as I staggered past. To be locked out and then imagine oneself harassed by a fake sow is a horrible way to start the day.

I got home, and I saw my wife had left the gate ajar. Hope sprang in my mind, only to be deleted as I discovered the front door itself was well and truly locked. I swore, then walked up to the office, where I had to sit on the pavement until a colleague let me in. At least this time I managed to make my conference call, rather than be lost somewhere near Tanglin Mall.

After that, I assumed my parents might be awake, so I went to their hotel to borrow some clothes and beg some cash. I am always surprised when I enter a civilised environment quite how badly I stink. It's one thing to be sweating your way through Chinatown. It's quite another to be uncontrollably churning out pheromones as you drip on the polished floor of a 4-star hotel, guests and staff alike staring at you, appalled.

I ate at Starbucks; it was awful. I needed that breakfast that lingered in the fridge at home; before midday I was so tired I could hardly stand, but still had a day of budgets and forecasts to rummage through. At six, I'd had enough and walked home, and then had to wait another ten minutes for my wife to return and let me in.

I'll not forget my keys again for a while.