Same old jokes that go way over my head T

THE interior of our house is wonderfully cool in the summer. This still didn’t stop my wife Maria from leaving the back door wide open “to catch a breeze” during the recent hot spell.

No breeze was caught but the open door encouraged half a dozen flies to visit.

Two of the more adventurous visited me in my upstairs office. It can be disconcerting when you get buzzed as you try to work in front of a computer screen.

“Close the back door,” I shouted to my wife.

“I’m getting bombed by flies.”

“Give them a burst of hairspray,” she shouted back.

She prefers hairspray to swatting in the belief that their wings will become temporarily frozen and they will glide to the floor where they can be put on a newspaper and deposited outside. As if.

I grabbed a can and went to war in my office only to discover that mousse doesn’t spray too well through the air but can HE long and the short of it are always picked on.

We have laws that protect equality yet if you are short or tall you are fair game for being poked fun at by anyone of medium height.

And if you don’t laugh, you don’t have a sense of humour.

John Bercow, House of Commons Speaker, said: “Whereas nobody these days would regard it as acceptable to criticise someone on grounds of race or creed or disability or sexual orientation, somehow it seems to be acceptable to comment on someone’s height, or lack of it.”

At 5ft 6ins he should know. He’s been called a stupid, sanctimonious dwarf, before now.

I’ve put up with comments all my life for being on the short side. But, as my mother said, they don’t make diamonds as big as coal bricks.

As a short person I have always had tall friends. At school, my best mates were two prop forwards, I shared a flat with a chap who was 6ft 6ins. I played inside right to a centre forward who was 7ft tall. I drink with two chaps who are well over 6ft and if I stand between them and put my arms out we look like rugby posts.

I’m used to the banter I’m supposed to accept with a smile: Stand up. Oh, you are standing up. The long and the short of it – Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger buddy up in the 1988 comedy movie Twins By heck, but you’re ugly. Did you fall out of the Ugly Tree and hit every branch on the way down? make a mess of your keyboard.

We have so many cans in our bathroom it was easy to pick up the wrong one. This is a mistake I’ve made before when I sprayed my armpits with extra strong freeze-hold hairspray instead of deodorant.

I walked around like a dingle dangle scarecrow for half an hour before it wore off.

This time the flies disappeared of their own volition, possibly laughing their socks off at the mess I made. I also know the jokes tall people are supposed to laugh at as if they’ve never heard them before: What’s the weather like up there? Oh, how they chortle. Plus points for tall people are that they can always get served in bars and reach top shelves. On the minus side, they have problems finding trousers long enough and have trouble fitting into an aeroplane seat.

Being short means you often can’t get served in bars and you can’t reach the top shelf and you always have to have your trousers shortened.

On the plus side, an aeroplane seat is no problem.

Tall and short people both have a sense of humour but also a sense of social decorum.