My new year resolution is to walk to work. This decision is not recession-related, I already cycle to work, so the switch from pedal to foot power isn't about saving money. It's about the realisation that a brisk 2.5 mile march counts as significant exercise and a leisurely 2.5 mile pootle on my bike does not. I reckon the walk:cycle ratio is about 1:4. That is, it's four times easier to cycle a given distance than it is to walk it.

Obviously speed is a factor, so I have been timing my exertions to and from Wapping. So far, and I haven't been back in the office long so it's not a statistically significant sample, I've slashed my personal best from 41 minutes to 39 to 37.5 to 36.5 to 36. So diminishing returns are kicking in. Short of breaking into a run, which would never do, it is hard to see where further improvement is going to come from. Already I am the fastest thing on the pavement, slicing through fellow foot traffic at will. Future increases in leg-speed are going to be marginal.

I am pursuing the only other option. Fully 30 intersections, ranging from modest side streets to the great arterial highways of East London, interrupt my progress from home to here. That means having to cross a road on average every 146 yards, a lot of potential there for wasted seconds, and yet, a lot of potential for saving seconds too. So I've decided to become the world's first nuisance pedestrian, an urban outlaw at 4mph.

Using years of experience as an aggressive, law-bending cyclist, I jaywalk, I swerve, I squeeze up against parked cars and trigger their alarms, I grumble and growl at anyone in my way, obviously I ignore all red lights as a matter of principle. The day when I shoulder aside a little old lady with a shopping trolley cannot be far away. Nor, I hope, will it be long before fellow columnists begin fulminating against this latest blight on broken Britain.

Scooped

I've been struck, on my perambulations, by how much less dog muck there is these days. Maybe this is one of those small ways in which life is getting better. The large Muslim population on my route partly explains it (Islam doesn't hold with keeping dogs as pets) but even in more traditional gawd bless yer let's have a knees up apples 'n' pears jellied eels sections of the East End the pavement is remarkably unsullied.

It's not that dog numbers are falling. There are 7.3 million dogs in the UK. In 1975, when I was the age my son is now, there were 5.7 million, and yet back then, even with fewer canine bottoms on the loose, negotiating a normal suburban street involved a sharp eye and an ability to zigzag like a soldier under sniper fire. I conclude that, like the much maligned Race Relations Act, fines for not scooping up your dog's mess, combined with better facilities for its disposal, are an example of a public policy that has unequivocally changed human behaviour for the better.

Flingalong

Talking of dogs, on the beach in Pembrokeshire for new year I discovered the delights of the ball flinger. This humble piece of slightly curved, slightly whippy plastic with a scoop on the end must rank as one of the most useful inventions of recent years, so well done to whoever came up with it.

The flinger obviates the need either to bend down or get your hand covered in dog slobber. It also means you can launch the ball twice as far as you could under your own steam. Best of all, the flick of the wrist required for release is so addictively pleasurable that I'm going to buy a flinger for myself, and I don't even have a dog.

Singalong

Thanks to Mamma Mia! the musical, the film and now the CD and DVD, a new generation is discovering the melodic genius of Abba. I yield to no one in my admiration for the Swedish songsters, and yet their renaissance does have a downside. My daughter, moving towards the age when even a hint of paternal approval renders whatever is being approved of absurd and disgusting, is waging a campaign to prevent me listening to the Mamma Mia! album, even when she is not there. It's my heritage, I cry.

She's having none of it.

Revenge, however, is sweet. Rachel thinks the Mamma Mia! soundtrack represents the sum total of Abba's oeuvre. Ha! Those of us who've been around the block a time or two look at the track listing and see instantly that Fernando, Eagle, Knowing Me Knowing You, Waterloo, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do and other towering classics aren't on the album. She doesn't know, and I haven't told her.

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