Dogwash

I sometimes have a problem keeping a straight face in bread and cake shops, though the staff of my local Greggs are by now long used to my eccentricities and unfazed by them. It all started when the random thought crossed my mind that a Belgian Bun sounds as if it ought to be the name of some kind of slightly frowned-upon sexual practice.

I don't know where the idea came from. One might, I suppose, venture a possible connection with the fact that a Belgian bun is sticky and has a cherry in the middle, but I suspect the origins of the association to be rather more irredeemably random and illogical than that, lost in the workings of the semi-detached mind. Whatever, I am now stuck with it and live in dread of the day when some comely and innocent young maiden politely inquires, "Would you care for a Belgian bun?" I mean, how do you, decently, explain an uncontrollable fit of the giggles in such circumstances?

Or to quote a very old joke, "'The bishop's a long time coming', complained the actress, stirring her tea with the other hand."

On a not dissimilar topic, I was making use of the gentlemen's sanitary facilities in one of our local hostelries, when I happened to read the instructions on the vending machine:

Pull knob out, then push all the way in to dispense

All very sensible, but — given that the machine in question was selling condoms and inflatable sheep (I kid you not) — perhaps just a touch unnecessarily explicit.