Who's The Daddy: A birthday gift for the wife is a bit of a weighty problem

The boss celebrated her birthday earlier this month, and because she’s had 27 of them since the long, hot summer of 1995, pickings are getting pretty slim. By the time you get to our age you’ve pretty much run out of trinkets to offer up.

There is one range of gifts that, while both practical and healthy, has to be approached with extreme caution, for fear of being beaten half to death with it if it isn’t received in the spirit in which it was intended.

Gentlemen, I’ve said it many times, you buy unsolicited fitness equipment for your wife at your own risk. Anything even vaguely sporty that’s made out of Lycra will be only be received with thanks if she specifically asks for it by name.

Women have enough on their plates already, what with being judged for absolutely everything they do (or don’t do) and having it rammed down their throats by ads every day on TV that they’re not good enough - their eyelashes are too thin, their skin’s sallow and tired and their hair looks dull and lifeless - without you hinting that they’re a bit chubby, the buff Prince of Fitness that you undoubtedly are.

One left field option discussed was a pair of prescription swimming goggles, although to be fair that was on holiday and halfway down the second bottle as the sun set over the Atlantic, which is basically pub talk, and it should be law that no one can be held accountable for a promise made in drink.

Thankfully, after some to-ing and fro-ing, the boss specifically said she’d like some weights, presumably because she read that lifting them regularly at our age can be very good for you.

The thing is, the ceilings in our house are quite low, and even if you did manage to lift a barbell over your head, the weights attached to each end would smash into the plaster and come crashing down like something out of an Inspector Clouseau movie, leaving you fighting for your life with a metal bar pressing on your throat as the ceiling caves in. In the end she went for hand weights, and some products her hairdresser uses that cost about what I earn in a day. Back in the day it was way easier, a 50p coin sellotaped to the inside of a card. Although I wouldn’t recommend this as a gift to your wife in 2022, not unless you want to sleep on the sofa until the clocks go back.