Foot in mouth

Don’t stop me if I've told you this one before, because I have, and the whole thing can now be retold with the woe turned up to eleven.

Thanks to brotherly connections, I had rustled up a couple of tickets to an end-of-season football match between Arsenal and Newcastle, at the home of football itself, Highbury. And being the nice guy that I am, I invited my utterly excellent father-in-law, Ken, along by way of a freebie. All we had to do was get up to The Smoke and take in what was, of course, going to be a glorious 6-0 humping against the Skunks.

All simple enough – we took the train up to Paddington and headed down to the Underground platform for a Circle Line train that would take us on to King’s Cross and a further train to Arsenal.

If you’ve ever been to London and waited for the Circle Line at any time of day, you’ll know that the trains are about one every three days and have a man walking in front with a red flag, so we were forced into a mammoth wait which slid into abject boredom once all the posters had been read, the chocolate machine vandalised and the line inspected for dead rats.

It was then that we met this gorgeous young lady that I had worked with a few years previously. We were soon engaged in conversation, trying not to mention how much I'd wanted to have a go on her when we were colleagues (mainly because that’s an incredibly bad thing to say in front of your wife’s father…). Not that I wanted to, obviously, being happily married an’ all that. But you know – blonde, sylph-like and all the bumps in the right places. And, unusually for a Russian woman (and not generalising in anyway at all here), hardly barking mad at all.

After several minutes of “what are you doing now” and getting her up to date on local gossip, I decided to allow my eyes to wonder south and broach the subject of the bleedin’ obvious:

"Oh," I said, gesturing to the bump, "when's the baby due?"

Wait for it...

She flashed me the most wonderful smile.

Wait for it...

Fading to a look of withering disdain.

Wait for it...

"I'm not pregnant."

Pie retention.

Not baby.

Pie.

Dad-in-law's guffaw's echoed down the platform and could be heard several stations away.

The platform completely failed to open up and swallow me.

Train came. I fled, Arsenal were shit and lost 1-0, and Ken (“’I’m not pregnant’ – you tit!”) laughed the whole way home.