As a friend, you’ll know I’m so big-hearted that I make Pudsey Bear look like a rogue seal-clubber. So how could I refuse a chance to get hundreds of pounds in sponsorship money for my wonderful school, by taking part in the Croftfield Winter Fun Run?

By the time I limped past the fifth mile marker, my microshorts were working their way inexorably towards my internal organs and I was starting to have second thoughts.

“Annette...”

“Yuuuurrsss...”

“You know the mineral water the Year 9s are throwing over us?”

“Yuuuuurrrssss....”

“And you know how it’s a lovely marathon custom that’s supposed to stop us from getting dehydrated?”

“Yuuurrrrrss...”

“And you know how it keeps dribbling into our mouths?”

“Yuuuuuurrrrss...”

“I was just thinking... you don’t think it tastes a bit salty do you?”

Annette spat a ball of phlegm into the kerb in what I took to be a sign of tacit agreement.

“It’s just we’ve been lapping it up for about an hour now and it’s definitely got a tang to it.”

I spotted Owen Martin from 9B edging towards us in the crowd, bottle in hand.

“Perhaps it’s San Pellegrino,” coughed Annette.

“It could be San Pellegrino,” I agreed, squinting at the bottle Owen Martin was holding over his head, grinning wildly.

“But on the whole I’d say it looks a bit... yellow to be San Pellegrino.”

Annette looked at me. I looked at her.

“I’m never doing anything for charity again,” she grunted.

“Me neither.” I looked at Owen Martin, who had stepped back from the crowd control barrier and was about to take an underarm throw at us.

“Do you think Pudsey Bear ever had to put up with this?”

“Dunno,” mused Annette. “But it would explain the eye patch.”

Love Kate x.