INDEX	Monday, 4 January 2016
That shrinking feeling
Apparently I'm shrinking and not in a good way. To explain: I used to weigh myself on some bathroom scales but I never managed to find any that were reasonably accurate. In fact friends who visited complained that my scales were completely wrong and this was not just a question of wishful thinking on their part. So a while back I discovered the scales at the local swimming pool, which are expensive (the days of putting a penny in the slot and then hearing the machine speak your weight, disappeared with decimalisation) but accurate. So I use them once a month. After Christmas most would expect a small weight gain, or perhaps a pretty large increase. But this was not my problem. What distressed me is that the machine also measures height and it reckoned I'd lost a centimetre. At this rate I'll be invisible in about 15 years! Unlikely, of course (though you never know). When I was 20 I was about four centimetres taller. Height loss at this rate is not uncommon, I think. My dad was shocked to discover he was considerably shorter than he had been saying he was for years. When he was told his new height he said he thought they were having a laugh. But a centimetre in a month is a staggering amount, and this is probably the answer. I must have been staggering or at least standing in a slightly different way.
Posted by Jonathan Brind.
INDEX	Monday, 4 January 2016