Wii? Ow!

Today's moral tale concerns the Wii Board, that device of Terrible Power and Unknown Mysteries. Approach with care, mortal friends, lest you too become a victim of the beast!

It seemed like such an innocent thing when I first stepped on it on Sunday afternoon, fun and friendly, with chatty comments coming out of the TV screen as it warmed itself up. But little did I know of the tortures it contained.

A few clicks in I found myself faced with an alarmingly cutesie six-inch tall version of myself with big eyes and a weirdly shaped nose. This bizarre character encouraged me to input my vital statistics, but upon doing so (to my horror) the little bugger promptly swelled up to full-scale Buddha-belly proportions. "Blimey, you're a bit of a lardarse, aren't you?" the Wii Board said with a snigger (or at least I'm pretty sure that's what I heard).

Next was the posture and balance analysis: rather traumatically, it turns out that I list irrecovably to the left. "You didn't come to me a moment too soon," said the voice beneath my feet. "How on earth have you stayed standing up this long?"

A few clicks of a button later and I managed to find something that didn't upset me too much: a hula hooping game. Just swivel your hips as fast as you can and lean over to catch the new hoops thrown your way by two other (equally twee) mini-people. So far so good; so very good, in fact, that after ten minutes I figured I had that one cracked and switched over to the step aerobics programme.

What was I thinking? Step aerobics? I can't even do those in real life. Within thirty seconds I'd fallen off the wretched thing twice and was prepared to put the Wii remote through the Wii screen and the Board itself right out the window.

So back to the hula hoops it was and win I (eventually) did. With only minimal drama and a few broken furnishings I shattered the existing records to become the afternoon's Super Hula Champ. Who would have thought swivelling would turn out to be my secret superpower?

But I'm paying it for today, O Best Beloved. I'm broken, utterly broken. My left thigh has cramps in places it never knew existed and I'm hobbling myself trying to correct the leftwards-lurch that I'm suddenly convinced everyone else has known about for the last 28 years of my life. Oh, the humanity!

There's no hope for me now, I fear; there's only choice left in my listing, hobbledy life. I'm just going to have get a Board of my own.