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Hurrah, hurrah. The nightmare that was the 2009 London Marathon is over. I survived – but only just. In fact the reason it’s taken a few days to write this, is that I’m only just now walking again without sticks.

Blisters. I’m now an expert on blisters – my poor feet – I had blisters on the blisters. But since, if you remember, the whole point of the exercise was to get a worn-out, broken-down old geezer (me) to represent the worn-out, broken down old donkeys of the Third World, I suppose that must be regarded as a success. And the costumes did their job - simply amazing reaction to what a number of people said were the best costumes they had ever seen on the Marathon. At least I now have a better idea what those poor, long-suffering critters have to stoically endure day after day. Many have to walk the equivalent of a marathon every day of their working lives - we had to do it just once. So I was not that stoical, frankly.

It all started badly enough.

The police shut all the roads leading to the start at dawn – so we had to get on the train carrying all the donkey heads. People thought we were going to some slaughterhouse training seminar. Then when we got all kitted up in the Park before the start, we found we had to wait for nearly an hour before we could get cracking – forty thousand runners get precedence over idiots like us. But then at last we were off – carrying the forty five pound costumes for twenty six miles. Naturally, my colleagues shot off like whippets, and I was soon bringing up the rear. Through the costumes, all you can see is a little square of road in front of you, covered in empty plastic water bottles.

So then it was just, plod, plod, plod – mile upon mile. Luckily people took pity on me, and started walking alongside – the SPANA family were just brilliant – every time I said ‘This is stupid, why can’t I just sit down here and die quietly ?’ They would beat me with glucose sweet wrappers and energy-drink bottles ‘til I got up and struggled on.

Suddenly it’s Tower Bridge and half-way, and you start to think ‘maybe, just maybe, I might survive this after all’. Then it’s onto Canary Wharf and the financial sector – I’d been relying heavily on the thought of vintage champagne or Chateau Lafitte from all the rich investment bankers there to get me through the last ten miles – but they all claimed to have been working for Lehman Brothers, and we got nothing. Bit suspicious that.

Finally, at last you can see Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in the distance – the end is in sight - then round to Buckingham Palace. But of course it was so late by now that everyone had gone home and it was starting to get dark. I swear I saw the silhouette of someone wearing a crown in the Palace windows, drawing the curtains as I went past.

Cor, what a relief when they lift the whole caboodle off you, and your little throbbing feet can ‘Go critical’, like Three Mile Island. I did it in a sizzling ten hours, twelve minutes – exactly five times slower than the winner (2hrs 05 mins) – but when I’m in Morocco next week, and I see some poor overloaded donk, limping and struggling down a track – I feel I’ll be able to look him in the eye, and say, genuinely, ‘I feel your pain’ !.