Also a good sniff of everybody's armpits on the tube, I noticed. (My legs are not particularly short but there always seems to be an influx of massive tall people around Covent Garden.)

This is what happens to short people *all the time*. It's one of the reasons I don't like London very much. (Oddly enough my experience of other city's tubes/similar haven't been nearly so overcrowded, though Paris was definitely hotter.)