Everyone is at it: exercising, that is. The highways and byways, passages and boreens are clogged with people of all dimensions in yellow jackets, walking, jogging, galloping and sprinting.

The world is gone mad on fitness, I suppose a lot of it is guilt, as a result of overindulgence during the holiday season.

For whatever reason, there is hardly a moment of the day when gangs of people around here aren’t pounding the roads and snorting like horses on the final furlong at Fairyhouse.

The Mother can’t understand it. “If they may do a decent day’s work,” she said, “they’d get the fat off their big behinds instead of runnin’ around the roads of the country like cattle runnin’ from the warble fly.”

Last week we were going to Cork to a meeting, and we left at six in the morning. (When she’s not sure where she’s going, she likes to give herself plenty of time to get lost.)

Anyway, on the Borrisnangoul road at quarter past six, we met two runners with flashing lights on their heads and jackets bright enough to make them visible from outer space.

“Will ya look at that pair of lunatics,” said the Mother, “they’ll go home now and sit on their arses for the rest of the day. If they may get a good night’s sleep and do a dacent day’s work, they’d be better off. That caper should be banned.”

If the Mother had her way, a lot of things would be banned: from mobile phones on public transport to pom dogs that can fit in a handbag. “If a dog can fit in a handbag, then he’s not a dog at all. He is the first cousin of a rat,” she is wont to declare.

Whatever about her opinion on dogs, I tend to agree with her when it comes to exercise.

I like to take a stroll myself, but I think this running up mountains and the like is a waste of time and energy. Life is too short to spend it gasping for air and sweating like a sow simply for the sake of sweating and gasping.

However, I was brought to my senses last week by a funeral. Now, the death wasn’t tragic; it was a happy release.

Sally Maguire was in her 98th year and her poor auld body just gave up. Anyway, her family is well-known in the four parishes and a great crowd turned up at the church for the obsequies.

The burial took place in the old graveyard at Rathnanool, and we had to walk across three fields to get there.

The small crowd of us who made the trek to the graveyard were appropriately shod in strong boots for the journey – but a few of us should have brought walking sticks as well.

By the time we got to the graveyard, we were winded and barely able to answer the decade of the rosary for poor Sally.

As soon as her coffin was lowered into the ground, shovels were handed out to all the able-bodied men present, among whose ranks I was numbered.

We were expected to fill in the grave and had no choice but to put our backs into it. Of the seven of us filling in the grave, at least five are on blood-pressure tablets.

I thought the walk across the field was bad, but the filling in of the grave nearly caused me to burst.

I was sure my chest would cave in, my hernias would pop out and my lungs would explode from the effort. There was sweat pumping out of the quarest of places.

Luckily, Pa Quirke’s youngfella and one of the young Cantillons were on hand and took pity on us.

Under the careful supervision of undertaker Tinky Ryan – and with more than a helping hand from Superquinn – they finished the job while the rest of us leaned on our shovels, gasping for wind.

As we made our way back through the fields, Superquinn caught up with us. “Myself and the two young lads had a narrow escape back there,” says she.

“What do you mean by a narrow escape?” I asked.

“We were lucky that we didn’t have to dig graves for the rest of ye. After the bit of shovelling, ye all looked like ye’d soon have need of a plot.”

She was right.

Once back on the tarred road, we retired for a well-earned pint or two to the Drippin’ Tap in Shronefodda, where we proceeded to compare the various pains and aches the filling of the grave had caused us.

We weren’t long in coming to the conclusion that we might have no choice but to join the puffers and panters pounding the roads.

Otherwise, we might all be joining the late Sally Maguire and her equals much sooner than we’d planned.