The Fart Walk

I want to introduce you to The Fart Walk. Ah yes – the Fart Walk. Not the dainty countryside saunter with the odd polite puff beneath corduroy, but that Fart Walk – the grim morning procession that starts the moment you swing your legs out of bed and attempt to shuffle upright, joints clicking like castanets and your posterior launching into its own overture.

Because that’s what it is – an overture. A brief, introductory toot. A lone bassoon clearing its throat before the full symphony of parps begins. Not angry, not ostentatious – just there. Honest. Inevitable. The gentle pfft of a backside that’s lost all shame and now functions as your body’s unofficial spokesperson.

It’s never just one, of course. No, what follows is a sequence. A rhythmic, measured series of expulsions with every step. A percussive accompaniment to your early movements. A sort of… arse-led Morse code. Sometimes to the loo. Sometimes just to find your glasses. But most gloriously – and this is the true ceremonial version – the Fart Walk down the garden in your dressing gown to feed the fish in the pond.

There you are: wild hair, flapping robe, cup of tea in one hand, plastic tub of pellets in the other, slippers squelching on dew-soaked grass – and with every single stride, another entry in your symphonic diary of dignity gone by. Prrrt. Flap. Blip. Ffft. A toccata in brown major. You don’t walk – you announce.

The fish, traumatised, circle cautiously. The heron refuses to land. Somewhere a neighbour quietly draws their curtains and Googles "bungalow in Cornwall".

The best part? You barely notice. It’s no longer worthy of comment. Your spouse just shakes their head and mutters, “he’s up”, like a weary stage manager watching a veteran thespian fluff his lines for the fiftieth time. The cat leaves the kitchen. Birds stop singing.

And this, dear reader, is the truth of the Fart Walk. It is not a defect. It is not shameful. It is a stage of life. A declaration. A metronomic memoir of age and beans. You have become a living wind instrument. You are the morning oboe. The brass section of the over-70s.

So let the air speak. Let your cheeks applaud your efforts. Walk proud – down the hallway, down the garden, through the years – and know that you are not alone.

For every man of a certain age with a dressing gown and a pond is playing the same tune.

And the overture, my friend, has only just begun.