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AN AMBITION FULFILLED My front drive is fourteen feet wide, exactly the same width as the local canal at its narrowest point. Using the edges of my drive as a guide I had chalked lines across the pavement to represent the canal. Now I walked along the footpath for some twenty yards, turned, ran back at full pelt, hit the first chalk line, leapt, and landed about a foot beyond the second chalk line. I retraced my steps and did the same again, putting a little more effort into it. This time I cleared the second chalk line by a good two feet, a leap in excess of sixteen feet. I then jumped across the lines in the reverse direction, with the same result. It was then that Atkins Down The Road happened by, on his way to buy a paper.      "Don't tell me," he said "you asked The Trouble to dress up like a schoolgirl and she told you to take a running jump."      He wasn't far off the mark as far as The Trouble telling me to take a running jump was concerned as I was in the doghouse for telling her Feng Shui instructor to clear off the last time he's called round to rearrange our furniture again. "I'm going to jump the canal," I said.      Atkins was quite impressed. "Really?"      "Really."      "When are you doing it? I want to be there. I'll act as your second, carry a dry set of clothing for you and a towel."      "There'll be no need for that," I said, "it's a done job."      Jumping over the canal at its narrowest point has long been an ambition of mine. In fact I've wanted to do it since I was a boy. During my schooldays I was a fair athlete, I always won the hundred yards in my age group at the school sports and the long jump with it, and could jump over eighteen feet when I was fifteen. Jumping over the canal should have presented no problem at all.      Lots of my schoolfriends had jumped it, boys who couldn't jump anywhere near as far as I could. The only casualty had been Bucktooth Dawson, and even he cleared it, the casualty being when his impetus on landing kept him running and he ran into a tree and knocked his front teeth out. (Disappointingly for him people still called him bucktooth. He pointed out that he now hadn't any teeth and therefore his nickname should now be Buck, which he would have enjoyed because he liked cowboy pictures, but nobody took any notice.      But I never did jump it. Something always stopped me. The fear of falling in and making a fool of myself I suppose, even though I knew I was well capable of clearing it. But I never forgot it, and many times since I've sworn that one day I will do it. So today, after satisfying myself that I could still easily jump the fourteen feet required, I set out to do it. I allowed Atkins to accompany me but spurned his offer of videoing the occasion for a potential 'You've Been Framed' clip. I didn't mess about when we got there, I just backed away from the water's edge as far as I could, ran, then soared over the canal like a gazelle, landing on the other side with a good foot to spare. Atkins was most impressed, and applauded.      When my schoolmates had jumped it all those years ago it wasn't really on to jump back across the canal as the land on the opposite side sloped away quite steeply and was composed largely of grass tussocks and the occasional cowpat, making a return jump much more difficult. So having leapt the canal the way back was down through the fields and return by the footbridge some hundred yards down the canal. Which is what I intended to do. Except that I now found out I couldn't. In front of me was not an open field but a housing estate, and my way was blocked by a ten feet high back garden fence.      Atkins saw my predicament. "You'll have to climb over the fence," he called.     "You must be joking."      "You'll have to jump back over the canal then."      "You must be joking."      "You'll have to stay there and starve to death then."      This is where my National Service survival training came in. "There are some planks in my garage. Nip back and get a couple of them to make a bridge over the canal."      "It's as good as done." Good old Atkins, I thought, a friend in need.      Four hours I waited there. He eventually returned just before dark, two planks over his shoulder. Naturally by then I was fuming. "What the bloody hell kept you?" I demanded.      "Sorry. Your garage was locked and when I asked The Trouble for the key she wanted to know what I wanted it for and I told her and she told me to clear off and to tell you what it feels like to be told to clear off like you told her Feng Shui instructor to clear off. Anyway I haven't got any planks and I don't know anybody who has so I had to buy a couple, you owe me fifteen quid."      No, I didn't fall into the canal when I crossed the planks, thank you for asking, although by that time I couldn't have cared less if I had.