There are days when an undertow of emotion emerges out of nowhere to overwhelm the most ordinary of days. This is what happened to 'Tubby' Lard as he was making his way to the Weymouth House Technical School. (The curriculum of this school was so unrelentingly technical that "technically" there was doubt as to whether it was really a school at all.)
'Tubby' had given his usual 5A bus ride a miss in a bid to start improving his fitness. As he
walked down How Hill he drew in a deep breath and savoured the rich whiff of brewery yeast that lingers around the My Full Moon before whistling a happy tune. It was not long before his cracking pace had taken him to the spooky grime-encrusted railway arch by the Lower Bristol Road. As he passed under it an unknown girl zoomed by on her bike and shouted: "Out of the way, you fat slob!"
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!" This was a phrase which was often heard echoing around the prefab estate, and it was a phrase which carried little conviction. The words of the unknown girl hit 'Tubby' Lard with such a force that just a few months later 'Tubby' Lard could be called tubby no more. The malign jibe galvanised him out of his flabby "pile some more sugar on my Weetabix' lethargy" and changed the direction of his life.
In fact if 'Tubby' had not been walking through the grime-encrusted railway arch at that very moment he might never have joined the (now legendary) No Pain, No Gain! weightlifting Club, set up in the prefabs and his dreams of sporting success would have remained mere Walter Mitty phantoms of a flabby day-dreaming self.
As the jibe-hurling fast-projectile mounted girl sped by pedestrian 'Tubby' she felt over-whelmed by the high-fuelled energy of her life. "My life is going great, so let's make it feel even better by mocking this fat peasant!" The fact that she was wearing a grammar school uniform added another grain of salt into 'Tubby' Lard's freshly-inflicted wound. She (he mistakingly assumed) would be engrossed all day in studies of Renaissance art and literary criticism. He would be spending the entire afternoon sawing and chiselling away in the classroom that had been converted from Twiverton's old prison in the company of the deranged sideburned-knuckle-duster wearing crypto-Teddy Boy woodwork teacher. She was on course for life membership of the 'Nietzsche Society' (motto: the more bile you puke out on weak types who do not bash you back the better you are going to feel.) He had unwittingly co-opted himself into the 'Keep Your Head Down And Be Kind To Others Society' (motto: prepare to get hammered into pulp). She would be on a permanent high while he would be on a hiding to nothing.
The intersection of two life-trajectories under the grime-encrusted railway arch - those of the jibe-hurling girl and the pedestrian 'Tubby' - poses the perennial "Who Would You Rather Be?" question. Would you prefer to be like the overweight pedestrian 'Tubby' - a slow-moving target for every passing chariot-racing Wagnerian spear-thrower - or the lithe lean-limbed fast-moving jibe-hurling girl who feels the exhileration of the wind racing through her hair as she dispenses cathartic verbal kicks to any plodding losers whose shadows light her way?
Years later 'Tubby' Lard would feel a strange debt of gratitude to the "fat slob!" yelling girl whose face he could never remember. He would find himself wondering whether she was still racing through life with that same turbo-fuelled spite-filled elan, or whether fate had tired of her egoism and inflicted some sobering reversal of fortune under her own grime-encrusted railway arch. When 'Tubby' Lard's photograph made the front page of the Bath & Wilting he was shown holding the Somerset Weightlifting Trophy aloft. You could just about make out a "my claws are no longer blunt" tattoo (a quote from Mr F. Nietzsche) on his muscle-bound chest. As that 1950s' philosopher Charles Atlas discovered, deep in the psyche of many world famous body builders is a seven stone weakling who had sand kicked in his face.
One of 'Tubby' Lard's many dreams is to have the following words engraved in silver lettering on
Twiverton's famous grime encrusted railway arch:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

'As You Like It'
Act 2 Scene 1.