People often ask me why I walk in the middle of the road when (to them) there’s a perfectly good pavement available.

It’s for the rush. One that can hit you with dopamine with one glove, and flood you with endorphins with the other. Knowing at any moment I might have to crab shuffle off the road and raise an apologetic hand at a driver gives me something unquantifiable that I rate at 10/10.

I don’t do it for this next reason, but a nice bonus is you can do that thing where you swing both of your arms round in big circles which is surprisingly liberating. Plenty of tarmac either side of you and, as you’ll see next, there’s rarely many people around to judge you for doing what they wish they could.

I’m regularly asked where I do it.

I’m no addict. I consume in controlled quantities, know my limits, and only pick opportunities that are right for me and my brand. Unfortunately, there’s precious few of these. There’s a few out there who say if opportunities were abundant the novelty would wear off. This amphibious pedestrian finds that hard to believe.

Finding these places can be marathon. Here’s a few tips for stumbling across, but not on, them:

• Around stadiums on matchdays. The roads are blocked off for crowd control. It’s a cake with icing as well as a cherry because these roads are also the most fertile. The council deliberately builds them well to allow rubbernecking drivers to idle past on non-matchdays and marvel at the architecture without a pothole veering them off course and into said architecture. Makes for a really smooth ride.
  
• One-way backroads. Backroads because backroads are quieter so less chance of being murdered. One-way because if you walk against the traffic you’ll at least get to give your murderer a narky look before they make an example of you.
  
• Places cars won’t go. The stars have to align on this one. One of my favourite haunts is Cowper Street by Old Street station. A marvellous street, it has three deterrents:
  1. A dead end.
  2. A school (heightened consequences for our one-way backroad driver)
  3. Opposite the school is XOYO. Even the mid-road rambler’s boldest foe, the Uber driver blindly following a sat nav, is too terrified to go near it (including during the day lest they end up with a double threat straggler-reveller in the back).

I’m occasionally asked for best practices when meandering mid-street.

Beginners should always be within two strides of the pavement and unafraid to flit on and off. Think of kids at bowling alleys putting the sausages up. A nice safety net, but one with a cost. Part of the rush is thinking you have no alternative, just as getting a strike with sausages is worth less than one without.

On a practical level, there are equivalent rules to walking on pavements (where you can’t walk under signs or step on manhole covers etc.). For roads these include not touching the white lines or stepping on drains. The former we recommend adhering to before you walk in roads too.

I’m never asked for my motto, but here it is (including workings).

My parents used to tell me: Never miss a chance for a cup of tea or a wee.

Well I raise them one more: Never miss a chance for a cup of tea, a wee, or a wander down the M3 from Surrey to Eastleigh.