It’s a fact known to all high-nosed, bush-haired professors of anthropology - and anyone who can stretch a tape measure.
Hotel guests are smaller than other people.
The evidence for this is found in the shower cubicles, which enable hoteliers to boast in brochures that their rooms are “en-suite”.
This word with its cunning hyphen suggests gleaming porcelain, a marble floor and soap scented for sensual delights, whatever your size.
Now it’s true, your perambulating pensioner once nodded the rarefied air of our crusty old pie of a town almost six feet above the pavements. But cruel time has scalped at least two of those inches and repositioned them around my belly.
Anyway, my wife and I had decided to visit our son in north London. And I was perked to note the room in our hotel was en-suite.
So towards the shower cubicle I strode - and a picture of Tarzan might already be flashing before you. Crossing the threshold, I saw that when the door was open, it was possible for me to pirouette, press the shampoo dispenser and grip the shower head. But when it was closed, there was too much of me and not enough cubicle for such a tricky manoeuvre. In the confusion, water sprayed out. Happily, the strategic placing of four towels prevented serious flooding.
Indeed, water had featured earlier in the day on the 110-acre Finsbury Park, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary. There, we hired a boat for £16 to row around the lake, joining the ducks and swans for a joyous hour.
Back on land, the eyes of my wife and son brushed the fluffy clouds, as I informed total strangers that our park in Birkenhead was twice as big and 21 years older than theirs. They must come and see it. It had led the way for all the world’s public parks.
Then I felt firm hands on both elbows steering me away from people, towards the ice cream shop where I continued talking to myself.
Finsbury Park is very fine, a place for escaping the ceaseless traffic and the jostling, ever-swelling crowds. We need green patches in our cities.
But on the way home, we walked through our park in the twilight. It was quiet, serene, a blessing to all those who like their air to be clean.
And then I sank into our deep, old bath on its claw feet and began counting those blessings. It took a long time.
