Last weekend we celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary. We decided long ago that the mainstay of our celebratory presents for such events would not be surprises.

You might see this as a lack of romance, but I am pretty sure Mrs M was being pragmatic when she suggested we should adopt such a position. After all, why risk valuable gift money being wasted on items that you might not want?

In truth, I have been known to buy things that seemed sensible to me, but didn’t fit with a female perspective on gift-buying (we won’t mention the sewing box of 1988).

For this year’s anniversary, my wife hinted well in advance that we had never been to see a ballet. She started this process during our trip to see Strictly Come Dancing. What started out as a reasonable wish to watch a tango from close-up turned into a desire to spend a couple of hours viewing pirouettes.

With this said, we set off for Sheffield to watch Northern Ballet’s rendition of Wuthering Heights.

The Lyceum Theatre was superb and the cast were clearly world-class; it wasn’t long before the whole audience were spellbound, including myself.

Mrs M lapped up every minute of the performance and during the interval she seemed eager to find out what I made of this dancing feast.

I pointed out that, although I appreciated the skill of both the performers and the orchestra, I wasn’t fully sure what was happening in the story.

She tried to help by enquiring what was going through my mind as I watched. I think she felt that this might show that I understood at some deeper level.

“Well,” I said, trying to be honest, “most of the time I was thinking how much all of the male dancers looked like Alistair McGowan.”

She looked slightly disappointed, as if hoping that somewhere inside this 18st ex-rugby player was a cultured heart.

“In addition,” I continued, “I was counting how many times they skipped.”

Apparently this wasn’t the answer she wanted, and she tried to tell me that in ballet it isn’t called skipping.

On the plus side, I bought ice-creams for us both, but it seems that I didn’t choose well so I had to eat the one that Mrs M rejected, then go back for another of the ones I had chosen for myself. Result!

We settled down to watch the second half and I tried to view it through enlightened eyes. At the end, Mrs M again asked for my opinion. “It would have been better if they had ended with the Kate Bush song,” I offered.