THE man running along the pavement is young and fit and knows it. His body is lean and sculpted, with no unwanted flesh to encumber movement.

Off the bus comes another man, older and much less fit, with the weight that masses inconsiderately when you are not paying attention. The day is uncomfortable with heat and so is he, by the looks of it, red in the face and full in the belly.

The man on the bicycle sits somewhere between the other two, older than the first, slimmer than the second, with straggly hair that trails behind as he pedals along.

These men are linked by one sorry trait: they are topless in the heat, the young runner flaunting his perfect physicality, the older man flaunting his imperfect physicality, and the third man flaunting something in between.

These men were not seen at the same time, but I have gathered them here in clammy assembly, and I do hope you’ll forgive me.

The young man ran if to say, here’s what you get if you spend hours at the gym. I wondered about lifting my T-shirt in riposte, as if to say and here’s what you’ll get in 40 years’ time. But I carried on running slowly, trying to recover from a bout of T&T Syndrome. That’ll be tummy and tendon, the one larger than it used to be, the other too taut and prone to alarming twinges.

I’ve been walking briskly and running, then walking briskly again. The longer this goes on, the more the difference between the two paces will be eroded. Is this walking or is this running, I may well ask myself.

I can  understand, but not forgive, the young man, as he was proud of his body. The weighty man coming off the bus was something else. Other passengers had been forced to sit too close to his uncovered torso, and that can’t have been congenial.

It’s a weird thing to do. I barely even take my T-shirt off in the garden these days. As for beaches, remind me – what and where are they?

Keep your tops on, guys. No one wants to see your flesh, whether it’s sculpted or looks like a slowly melting pack of butter. Sweaty, unpleasant and, in some circumstances, threatening. Keep a lid on it, why don’t you.

There was a man used to run around these streets, older than me, slim and balding, with flyaway wings of hair. He never wore his T-shirt but carried it, as he sweated to wherever he laid his hat, and that unworn T-shirt.

“That’s gross,” my daughter said once when younger, as we drove past.

She wasn’t wrong. It was and still is.

That’s got that off my chest. A chest that’s otherwise staying covered.