That completely stumped me, especially as I’m several degrees whiter than him.But I was totally lost for words when, standing in a shop one day, this tiny old lady shuffled up and tugged at my arm. I stooped down to her 4ft 11in frame and she said, “I wish I had six inches of you,” before shuffling off She was talking about my height At least, I hope she was talking about my height.. CAROLINE is attractive, successful, solvent – and single And she expects to remain all those things. So, there we were, in the eyes of most people perfectly suited to each other, when in truth we were total opposites.Occasionally, you get the flirtatious woman who looks up at you and coyly asks whether the “rest of you” is in proportion.

The correct answer to this is to say no it is not and that if it were in proportion then I’d be 8ft tall. Sadly, I haven’t got the chutzpah to pull off a line like that.In fact, I don’t have any decent, well prepared put-downs for witty questions like “What’s the weather like up there?”, which is a shame because I’ve been hearing that stunningly original line for, oh, at least 20 years Another favourite is to ask if I play basketball For the record, I do not. They were always asking me to join the team when I was at school, but, with a logic that I still cannot fully explain, I refused because I thought they were only asking me because of my height. If people were going to stare at her for being tall, then she would give them something to stare at I, on the other hand, am a wallflower. I’ve had so many years of people informing me that I am tall – people coming up to me and telling me that I am tall, like I don’t know this already – that I like to keep quiet about it. Although I did think they were probably staring more at her fabulously long legs than at me.But that was the difference between us Suzanne was extrovert-tall, I am introvert-tall She was of the “If you’ve got it, flaunt it” school.

I felt vaguely like a father holding onto a small daughter for fear she would run out in traffic.I did date a tall woman once. Suzanne was 6ft in her stockings and more when she wore her heels, which she did often. In fact, she was one of the few women I went out with who didn’t need to wear heels but always did, which proves there is no God. We would saunter into bars like a pair of visiting Amazons to the astonished gaze of those around us. For 18 months I lived in near-perfect harmony with a beautiful French woman who was so short that I never dared ask her height.