FAR AWAY FEET

I’ve just been looking at my feet at the end of the bed. They seem very far away today.

I doubt I’ve got taller, but somehow those wiggling toes are sticking out at the end of my jeans, and they do seem a long way off.

I get this sometimes - either a perception that I’m longer than I thought, or, more often, the opposite: that I’m a very small person. I buy M sized jumpers and they’re baggy like tents. Then I search for trousers with an inside leg of 30 inches and wonder why the waist size is a waif-like 28 and won’t do up around my 33 inch waist. Then it doesn’t seem right that my waist circumference is longer than my actual legs - like a sort of garden gnome, or a weeble. It’s easy to do yourself down.

But not today. Today, my toes look like they’re six feet away. My femurs are marvellously longer than two outstretched hand-lengths and the tibias float off towards my bare feet in the hazy distance. I could outshank Longshanks, glower over Goliath, and bolt past Usain tonight, given half the chance. In my dreams perhaps.

Is this is a common thing, losing perception of your dimensions? I had this when I was young: I’d sometimes feel as though my fingers were enormous and my nose could rub the ceiling, especially if I closed my eyes. If I lay down, the room would spin, often as though the stars  were far far away; often as though I could reach out and pop them in like sweeties.

Well anyway. There’s no real way to prove my feet aren’t as far away as ever. The more important thing is that they’re still attached to the rest of me. And that they are.