Learning to walk

Well, I'm now up and walking on Powerisers. To get the hang of walking took about 15 minutes in the privacy of the corridor outside my apartment, where there is a high ceiling, walls to lean against, no furniture to demolish and crucially, no witnesses to any embarrassing clumsiness. I'm now confident enough to walk, run and capriole, and have done so in Mamzar and Za'abeel Parks in Dubai. One thing that appears to be impossible is standing still. This is, I suspect, a direct consequence of being both biped and digitigrade.


The inevitable fall and subsequent struggle to get back on to my very long hind legs have yet to occur. It's only a matter of time. I suspect that it will occur as part of my attempts to leap 6 feet into the air, take 9-foot strides and run at 20 mph.

Small children are either fascinated or terrified. Bellowing "Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an In-dee-un!" went down well and amused a crowd of Indian lads.





Another thing that is only a matter of time is the appearance of the next pair of Powerisers in Dubai. Maybe I should go for a wander up and down the half-mile long Dragon Mart shopping mall. There must be hundreds of Chinese retailers who would be happy to sell cheap copies of Powerisers (that are themselves a Korean copy of a very similar German device). Dragon Mart is the place for Chinese copies of just about everything else.