MY wife Maria came home from shopping in Huddersfield the other day and said: “I’ve got you a present.”

Which was unusual, but nice.

I mean, we are now at that age where the only person who gets a present in our house is the dog.

But a present for me? I hoped it wasn’t a bone.

It was something entirely different. It was a box that promised to increase my stature by two inches.

Pardon?

The box contained rubber heels to be slipped into your shoes so that vertically challenged people such as myself could attain a height that was almost average.

For a moment, I had doubts about the purpose of the gift. After all these years of marriage, did my wife suddenly think I was too short?

Perhaps I had shrunk with age? I’ve heard that people do that which is why I have started hanging off the beam in the garage by my feet to keep my body at full stretch. I can’t afford to shrink.

“Why did you buy me these?” I asked.

“Because I thought they were a laugh,” she said. “Something daft that you can write about.”

Well, there was that. My wife goes through newspapers and magazines for me, cutting out unusual stories or surveys that might make a piece in this column.

And trying out lifts in my shoes might be just the thing to brighten up the day.

After all, Manchester United had been beaten at Wembley and Town had missed out on promotion at Old Trafford so I needed something to smile about.

In days of yore, Hollywood stars such as Alan Ladd allegedly wore them because, at 5ft 6ins, he was shorter than his leading ladies. Tom Cruise, at 5ft 7ins, is said to wear shoes with an inbuilt height advantage all the time.

But I’m not in movies and I’ve never been too bothered about my height. I blame my stature on being a working class war baby.

So I slipped the lifts into a pair of chukka boots and said to Maria: “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“I’m taller.”

“Are you? I hadn’t noticed.”

We went round to my daughter’s and I said: “Notice anything different about me?”

“You’ve had your hair cut.”

Wearing them around town was strange. Because they are layered rubber, I tended to bounce. Running across a zebra crossing was like taking a giant step for mankind. I thought I’d never come down.

At first, walking made me look like a small John Wayne desperately looking for a lavatory, all pinched toes and clenched buttocks and with a distinct tilt to the front.

Eventually I forgot I was wearing them until my calves started to hurt.

“Now you know what it’s like to wear high heels,” said Maria, without a trace of sympathy.

As an experiment, it was interesting, but I won’t wear them again. Imagine going through airport security, taking your shoes off and suddenly shrinking. What’s this? Plastic explosive in the heel? You’d be whisked off for a body search with Vaselined Marigolds straight away.

I shall pass them on to a friend who is need of an extra inch or two and you can quieten down in the cheap seats, his jeans are too long.

Maria was right. They were daft and well worth the quid she paid for them in one of the town’s pound shops.

Especially when I went online and found the exact same product was being sold for £39.95.

By heck, missus. But that is daft.