Dear Auntie Betty

I think my wife is having sex with our next door neighbour. How can I be sure?
Waiting eagerly for your answer

Mr P Jones (Leeds)

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Dear Mr Jones

I receive a lot of letters like this every year from desperate husbands and wives who suspect that their partners are cheating. Fortunately, infidelity is easy to detect.

First look at your wife. If she is naked and your neighbour is on top of her, then they are having sex.

Hope this helps.

Betty

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What a fantastic joke. You could call it a temporal pun: Whereas a standard pun will often expoit two different uses of a word (There are two fish in a tank. One says to the other, “Do you know how to drive this thing?”), this one exploits two different time referents of the present continuous (happening right now and happening round about now).

Can’t wait to use it in class tomorrow.