But you've got to know where to draw the line. If after handing over your money in the bakers, the hair-netted Pie Operations Supervisor (or whatever their suped-up job title is these days) asks if you'd like a carrier bag for your purchases, you have clearly bought too much. If  you have inhaled this food (and the bag) before you leave the shop, there is a problem. You must be, for want of a better word, a bit of a chubber. But I don't place the blame solely at your feet. What messages is society sending us?

 

I picked up a set of green living top trumps cards this week; a whole range of sustainable lifestyle choices such as recycling, composting and fitting solar panels are rated 1 (low) - 10 (high) on their Co2 impact, general environmental impact, ease and cost. A lot of them make sense, and the game is fun to play until Kim Coley decides it's got to be best of five, and then best of seven and so on and so on. 

 

But I take issue with some of them.

 

With '1' being the easiest possible action, walking scores at '2'. After breathing and talking, I've always thought of walking as a fairly basic action for the majority of people. Sadly there isn't a card dedicated to 'Walking to Pete’s Pies' which is presumably easier than general walking if the queue waiting for it to open is anything to go by. So as a group we have deemed walking to be a marginally difficult task. Interesting. But it gets worse when compared to some of the other green actions on the top trump cards.

 

Building and installing a bird box scores a '3' for ease. This task that demands carpentry abilities, tools and precision. As someone who once built a bird table (which actually seemed to repel birds), it ain't no walk in the park. So for walking to be considered only a tiny bit easier than fashioning a hollow wooden box from slats of timber is quite a statement.

 

The walking difficulties don't stop there though.

 

The 'Walking Bus' (e.g. walking in groups)scores an ease rating of '4'. As if walking somewhere on your own wasn't difficult enough. I can see the headlines now... "Teens combust as shoulder-to-shoulder friction sparks blaze", "OAPs tied in knot: Cameron urges public to keep safe distances from one another as they stroll" and "Busy rush-hour pavements cause people to go to wrong jobs". Walking in groups scores a '4', and so does catching the bus.

Catch the bus then - safer - and you won't burn any of those precious calories. But the fact that walking with company is deemed twice as difficult as walking is mind-boggling. Is it the multi-tasking of walking and talking? Or the knowledge that you have to move in a reasonably straight line? Or that you haven't discussed where you are going and are struck by uncontrollable fear that you will never be able to stop and will end up circling Bourges Boulevard until judgement day?

 

But the one that really gets me is cycling. This also scores a '4', so is also deemed twice as difficult as walking. But its well easy! Especially in Peterborough which is FLAT, when it becomes nothing more than sitting down. So sitting down scores a '4' on the difficulty spectrum? I honestly don't know a more basic human action that 'the sit'. 

 

So if the cards for 'Cycling', 'Walking' and 'Walking in groups' score '4s' for ease/difficulty, I reckon the rating for 'Overcoming the greatest threat to life on Earth since that meteor hit that T-Rex' is going to get at least a '6' or a '7', and I don't fancy our chances.

 

Incidentally, the only card that scored a '0' for ease (i.e. no effort what-so-ever) was 'Eating butter.'