I'm an embarrassment
Embracing basic joy even when everything's a bit rubbish
Last Tuesday, I spotted a ridiculous Christmas tree hat in the window of the Red Cross charity shop in Forest Hill, clearly labelled “not for sale”. However, in touching scenes straight out of a Richard Curtis film only with less fat-shaming and cutesy misogyny (I still love them though), the nice manager let me have it for two quid.
It was a festive headgear emergency, you see. I was signed up to be the tail runner on a Christmas lights running tour that night which my parkrun pal Sinead was leading for Secret London Runs. I’d been wanting to go on one of these for the last couple of years but never got my act together in time to organise it, so I snapped up the opportunity to be Sinead’s little helper.
For the uninitiated, a tail, or back, runner, brings up the rear so that none of the other participants get left behind, lost, humiliated, discarded on the streets of Soho like a used bottle of poppers.
There were about 15 people in our group, in varying degrees of novelty festive dress, from Santa hats to tinselled tits. My activewear is not very festive, colour-wise, so the hat, plus a light-up badge borrowed from my 6 year old, would have to do, plus Sinead gave me a sort of glowy polystyrene stick thing to wave around in case of emergency. I would normally run with a ponytail, but the hat prevented this, so I was FORCED to put my hair in what can only be described as slutty little pigtails, much to the horror of my non-running friends when I sent them a slutty little selfie.
It was a 10K run, but took almost two hours, since we stopped every few minutes to gawp at lights and learn about the history of them (Sinead had been swotting up; there’s nothing that woman doesn’t know about fairy lights now).
Central London at 8pm a week before Christmas was, as you can imagine, an absolute shitshow, with harassed shoppers, drunk people, Deliveroo riders, tourists wobbling on Lime bikes and general waifs and strays all clogging up the roads, not expecting to see a pack of wholesome, lycra-clad, glitter-encrusted joggers puffing past them. The person who eyed us most suspiciously, though, was a moody-looking Santa impersonator taking a fag break after charging tourists a fortune to pose with him near Pall Mall.
Guess what though? It was all JOYFUL! In our group, there was a mum running with her two grown-up sons — an annual tradition, apparently, that brought a tear to my eye when I imagined that I could be doing it with my kids in 20 years — plus a deeply festive middle-aged couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and various other very nice people. This, along with the utter gorgeousness of the Christmas lights in a city I’ve lived in for 25 years but rarely stop and properly appreciate, was the ultimate cockle-warmer, and I really needed it.
Lots of people in my life are going through difficult times at the moment — I’m not sure if it’s been a bad year or if this is just how things are when you’re over 40 — and my stress levels have been high (which douchebag decided tax bills should be due a month after Christmas?), my last remaining cat is sick, plus I’ve been wading through the usual end of term madness AND I missed the last posting day for Christmas cards. I don’t want to be a festive mum mental load cliché but, well, I am. With bells on. Literally.
On a scientific level, exercise obviously helps with stress, but I’m feeling bloated and sluggish and not about to smash any PBs, so right now I’m focusing on how much it helps on a social level. And this means leaning into the cringe and the “you don’t have to be mad to run here but it helps!” side of things. So yes, this means Christmas lights runs in wacky, frankly uncomfortable, hats, and it means parkrun on Christmas Day (fresh air definitely needed before constructing something called a Cookeez Makery). Plus, all being well — by which I mean if I get out of bed on time — I’ll be hitting my 100 parkruns milestone on New Year’s Day at my beloved Catford and I will get to wear a SPECIAL WACKY CAPE.
Leaning into the cringe has always gone hand in hand with leaning into running for me. If you do any form of exercise, but you’re not spectacularly good at it, it is all a bit embarrassing. You sweat. You are red. You make weird noises. You wear clothes you wouldn’t normally wear, and probably no makeup. Sometimes you might even fall over. Combine that with the ultimate time of year for organised fun (Christmas jumper day! Secret Santa! Charades! Unbearable isn’t it?) and is there any point in trying to be anything other than deeply uncool?
I should add that there are things to celebrate too — and one of them (slightly off-brand sincerity and gratitude coming in 3-2-1…) is the fact that it’s been a great Substack year for me, so thank you from the bottom of my Baileys-soaked heart for being here — whether you’re a newbie or an old (come-all-ye) faithful.
On this day last year, I had 663 subscribers and hadn’t switched on the paid option, and I now have 1971, and a few of you are paying. I’d like to hit 2000 by the end of the year which sounds tantalisingly close, but I also know that every time I send out a new newsletter, I have to brace myself for a flurry of instant unsubscribes from people who’ve remembered I exist and despise everything I stand for (or just signed up accidentally in the first place). BUT if there’s someone in your life who likes mediocre running and getting a bit cross about body image, now would be a great time to make my Christmas wishes come true and tell them they should sign up. It would be a better gift, for me and arguably for them, than a novelty hat.
When I logged in today to post this, I also clocked that December 2024 has actually been Keep It Up Fatty!’s biggest month of all time. Largely thanks to my post on fitness icks going a bit viral on the Substack app, my 30 day page views are sitting at a whopping 15K. This is all very pleasing and a great boost as I go into the new year with lofty ideas about collabs and audio and, like, stuff.
So, thank you for being here if, in fact, anyone’s even reading this and isn’t 76% bread sauce and 24% sellotape at this point.
Here’s to an embarrassing Christmas and an absolutely cringegasmic new year.
Hurrah! Congratulations on a fab Substack year 🎄❤️xx