Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

All Scot's are 6' Foot Tall

Ask any Scot how tall they are, and they will tell you that they are 6' foot tall.  The reality is, they are all sizes, and I'm not quite sure if it was William Wallace who started the trend away back in the day's of old, but whoever it was they started a trend in Scotland.  Could it have been Mel Gibson when he made the film Braveheart?  Is he over 6' foot also?

I'm 6' foot 2"inches tall, the genuine article, and I often come across people who will tell me that they are 6' foot tall even if they are only 5' foot 3" inches.  I stand beside them and look at them wondering why they've got such a hang up on how tall they are, and why they always want to be 6' foot tall.

Believe me, it's not all it's cracked up too be.  Being 6' foot tall has its disadvantages, especially when you are walking down the road cracking your head off some of the shop and street signs that are too low.  And Edinburgh has some low signs that were made years ago when the population was a lot smaller.

Being 6' foot means that you are bound to hit you head off something at some point while you are walking the pavements of the city.  It's just something that you have to get used too when you're that size.  Even the buses have low roofs, and when you are on them you have to duck to walk up the bus too get a seat.  The problem normally arises when you are getting off the bus.  If you stand up too quickly, your head will hit the ceiling of the bus as you exit.  So next time you are on a bus, have a look at ceiling and you'll maybe see the dents that some 6' foot people have made when they stand up too quick on the bus - there again, you might not.

If you ask anyone in Scotland how tall William Wallace was, they will tell you he was 6' foot tall at least and he could have been 7' foot tall depending on who you're talking too, yet there is no real proof of that.  I'm quite sure in the day's of Robert the Bruce and Wallace there were no measuring tapes so that people could see what size they were on demand.  In those days, people were small or tall, and it's quite hard to say if William Wallace was really as big as the Scot's say he was.  The biggest majority of people were small in those day, and there were very few people who could read or write in the past because they didn't have an education system like we have today, so record keeping was quite poor in the past, and word of mouth was more likely to be the way stories were passed on to the other generation.

When you look at the doorways of the past in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland, you will notice they are all low, with some of them being only about 5' foot high.  This is an indication that the population was a lot smaller in the past.  And we know that their life expectancy was a lot lower than it is today, due to the lack of food and lifestyle.

We now have nutritionists who have an understanding of what food is good for us, and there is a new generation of children who are going to be a lot taller than what our ancestors were.  It is not uncommon now to see taller people in the younger generation when you walk on the streets of Edinburgh.  So the population is growing a lot taller, and some of them will be a lot taller than what their parents were, but everyone is not 6' foot tall or the same size in Scotland.

When you are tall, you need to walk upright too keep your back straight, and for some people this will cause problems in their back later on in life.  If I had a say in how tall I should have been, I would have opted for about 5' foot 10" inches to 5' foot 11" inches, that's the ideal size for anyone.  Although, being over 6' foot tall has it advantages when you want to see something, and it's good when there is a crowd and you can see over other people's heads.

So next time you come to Scotland and someone tells you that they are 6' foot something tall or over, remember it is a Scottish trait too say that they are taller than what they really are.  The average hight of the Scotsman and woman is about 5' foot to 5' foot 11" inches, and that's official.  Just humour the people who tell you that they are taller than what they really are.

The people of Scotland do walk tall, and if they feel 6' foot tall when they walk, that should be good enough for anyone in the world.

Written by Andrew Murphy 18 April 2007

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