When I booked my flight to Hong Kong last week I requested a seat with extra legroom. Standard procedure when you’re over 6ft. After a few crisp keystrokes on her battered PC, the streaky tanned travel agent made it so. The snag? £100.
Friends and family regularly make comments about my height when we talk about me moving: “Everything’s made for short people out there, you know” “Watch out for getting umbrellas in your eye” etc. But most people don’t realise that tall people get woeful treatment here too.
The injustices don’t stop at flight space. Everywhere you look in Britain life is designed in favour of the short majority. Like Gulliver in Lilliput, my tall brethren and I are outsiders.
Cars come with backseats so cramped battery hens would feel claustrophobic. Kitchen sinks so low it’s easier doing the dishes with my feet. Even the desk at my very first job had me stooped to the point I looked like I was engaging in voyeuristic auto-fellatio.
I have nothing against short people; I pity their stumpy legs marching ten strides for one of mine, but for some reason they have become the standard. One can only assume that the monopoly of wealth at the top of British society that control the size of train seats, kitchen sinks and church pews, is small in both number and stature. Little consideration is given to the longer limbed.
Is it because they feel threatened?
As they look up to our noble faces, shielding their eyes from the glare of the sky, do they not see that tall people are human too? That we deserve the same proportion of space to stretch out that they have?
It shouldn’t be this way. The tall should be celebrated: we reach higher, stride further. I can only hope in the year I’m away that the UK takes far strides towards progress for the tall, if not, it may just have a long limbed riot on its hands.
#PFHK
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