It wasn’t me.

I was in Waterstones in the Metro Centre the other day with my kids. This in itself isn’t the most exciting piece of information I’ve ever shared with anyone; the Metro Centre is a big shopping mall about ten minutes drive from my house, Waterstones is a bookshop, I like books, I have children, put these pieces of information together and it’s likely that I’ll end up in Waterstones in the Metro Centre with my kids from time to time.

So I was browsing around the books, when a woman with large… um… an amply-chested woman came in and started looking on one of the tables of books. Of course, she’s perfectly entitled to do this. The only thing was that she was wearing a rather low-cut top and when she leant over to examine a book closely it meant that pretty much the entirety of her breasts were on display.

Which my youngest had obviously noticed¹, as SWP sat bolt upright in his pushchair, pointing at the chest in question and yelling “Booby! Look! Booby! Booby! Look!” across the shop as loudly as his little lungs would let him (and believe me, that’s quite loud).

The woman was either completely oblivious — or more likely too mortified to move as the rest of the shop seemed to hear him clearly enough — and indeed one other chap, in the shop with his son, had to grab onto some shelves as he almost bent double with silent laughter.

So I just put the book I was looking at down and smartly whizzed the pushchair out of the shop, feeling somewhat mortified myself. Particularly because it wasn’t his father who had thought it would be funny to teach him the word ‘booby’. Not that I expect anyone will believe me…!

¹yes, all right, I’d noticed as well. It’s just the in-built radar thing. But I had then averted my gaze.