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A number of years ago now, I forget how many but it was back in the old century, I had occasion to attend the wedding of some friends in Virginia.
An encounter with a Virginian hotel shower, subsequently repeated and confirmed in Philadelphia and then Chicago led me to form an hypothesis. That hypothesis is thus: the averagely well to do white caucasian American is not the paragon of health and vitality they often appear to be. For the purposes of this exercise I draw a distinction between health and fitness. Natural bedfellows they may be, but ofttimes they exist separately.
The vicissitudes of the American continental climate are such that even the least robust of intellects will acknowledge the wisdom of taking probably a minimum of two showers each day during the non-winter months. It is, frankly, the only way to remain sane on a continent where you can almost grab the air and wring the moisture out of it.
The trouble is, North American showers spray water with an industrial efficiency, so that anyone using them regularly is in a permanent state of fresh bruising. A bruise is rarely left to the point where it discolours and looks bad; well before that happens the population is back under the shower, revitalising the subcutaneous blood reservoir.
So no matter what the person eats, or how little exercise is undertaken he or she looks permanently to be in the very rudest of health!
I have now been reminded that Germany is much the same. The climate is less severe, but the average German makes up for it with an almost psychotic need for cleanliness. And their showers are only marginally less powerful than the hoses used to mechanically strip meat from animals' carcasses by the major burger chains.
The average German therefore, regardless of body size and shape always appears to be the very vision of vitality.
In the UK by contrast, the showers, with few exceptions are weedy inconsequential affairs and they simply do to get the dirt and sweat off. Most Caucasian Brits therefore are pasty, pale individuals. Only the truly healthy look it. The rest are pale and spotty even at acceptable health (and fitness) levels. The remainder are either orange from an ill-advised application of fake tan, or are a shade of burnt umber such as would make George Hamilton wince, after spending far too much time and money on a sun bed.
These are three of the richest nations on earth, yet only two have bathroom showers as standard that would flatten an unwary man. There is a visible and clear correlation.
I rest my case.
An encounter with a Virginian hotel shower, subsequently repeated and confirmed in Philadelphia and then Chicago led me to form an hypothesis. That hypothesis is thus: the averagely well to do white caucasian American is not the paragon of health and vitality they often appear to be. For the purposes of this exercise I draw a distinction between health and fitness. Natural bedfellows they may be, but ofttimes they exist separately.
The vicissitudes of the American continental climate are such that even the least robust of intellects will acknowledge the wisdom of taking probably a minimum of two showers each day during the non-winter months. It is, frankly, the only way to remain sane on a continent where you can almost grab the air and wring the moisture out of it.
The trouble is, North American showers spray water with an industrial efficiency, so that anyone using them regularly is in a permanent state of fresh bruising. A bruise is rarely left to the point where it discolours and looks bad; well before that happens the population is back under the shower, revitalising the subcutaneous blood reservoir.
So no matter what the person eats, or how little exercise is undertaken he or she looks permanently to be in the very rudest of health!
I have now been reminded that Germany is much the same. The climate is less severe, but the average German makes up for it with an almost psychotic need for cleanliness. And their showers are only marginally less powerful than the hoses used to mechanically strip meat from animals' carcasses by the major burger chains.
The average German therefore, regardless of body size and shape always appears to be the very vision of vitality.
In the UK by contrast, the showers, with few exceptions are weedy inconsequential affairs and they simply do to get the dirt and sweat off. Most Caucasian Brits therefore are pasty, pale individuals. Only the truly healthy look it. The rest are pale and spotty even at acceptable health (and fitness) levels. The remainder are either orange from an ill-advised application of fake tan, or are a shade of burnt umber such as would make George Hamilton wince, after spending far too much time and money on a sun bed.
These are three of the richest nations on earth, yet only two have bathroom showers as standard that would flatten an unwary man. There is a visible and clear correlation.
I rest my case.