Beware the birth bible

I stumbled through these pages unprepared. As yet unbolstered by the level of hormone required to make sane women disregard all that pain nonsense. I shrieked aloud in Woolworths and couldn’t eat my last six bits of buttered toast.

With a shaky hand I put a bookmark in, just as it turned a little too realistic, and wrote on the bookmark NOT YET, YOU FOOL! I left it alone for a good month, by which time I was so awash with oestrogen-fuelled optimism that I took it all as seriously as a 1960s episode of Star Trek.

I really think publishers should put these helpful markers in for us. A colour coded page every so often, saying DO NOT READ AHEAD UNTIL YOU’RE AT 30 WEEKS. Or SIT DOWN AND EAT MORE CHOCOLATE BEFORE YOU TURN THIS PAGE.

Come to think of it, the whole last quarter bit could also be a very effective form of contraception for men. Instead of getting Readers Wives at the end of girlie mags, the government could insist on a Readers Wives Give Birth section. Condom sales would soar…