Life's Like That

Jones, a bachelor had visited his married sister, and had been shown the new baby.

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1960s

ONE FOR THE BABY BOOK

Next day, his friends asked him to describe the new arrival.

“Well,” he replied, “Very small features, clean-shaven, red-faced and a desperately hard drinker.”

—THE ENGLISH DIGEST, DECEMBER 1961

1970s

SPELLING IT OUT

On their 50th wedding anniversary, a couple summed up the reasons for their long and happy marriage. The husband said, “I have tried never to be selfish. After all, there is no ‘I’ in the word ‘marriage’.” The wife said, “For my part, I have never corrected my husband's spelling.”

—ROBERT BRAULT IN CATHOLIC DIGEST, JANUARY 1976

A FRIEND WAS celebrating the birth of his first child with fireworks. As a loud cracker went off, a boy on the floor above asked another “What's happening down there?”

“It’s the population explosion,” came the reply.

—R. HAMSINI, BOMBAY, AUGUST 1978

WORKING AT A print shop at Soho in London, I was waiting in a bus queue when an Indian student friend came panting up to me: “Caught you just in time. Are you going to the ‘Follies’ again today?” he asked loudly.