NCT Barbecue

“And what do you do?” my wife had asked the Mousey-Looking Husband of a friend who happened to be standing next to her in our small group of mainly strangers at the NCT barbecue.

   “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” replied Mousey-Looking.

   “Looks like we’ll have to guess, then,” I said to my wife, whose face didn’t so much fall as run to the nearest cliff-top and leap. “It’s okay,” I explained to the assembled group, “my grandfather worked for the intelligence services and he told me that as long as people guessed his work and he didn’t actually tell them, then he didn’t have to kill them.” However, before I had a chance to play my little guessing game, my wife had turned to the Inexplicably Smug-yet-Unattractive-Looking husband of another NCT friend.

   “And what is it you do?” she asked.

   “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” replied Inexplicably Smug-yet-Unattractive-Looking, smiling conspiratorially, and smugly, at Mousey-Looking.

  By way of diversion, and possibly in an attempt to lighten the mood, Someone’s Wife asked me, “And what do you do, Fergus?” Tempted though I was to say “If I told you, I’d have to kill you” I didn’t, but I was loath to tell her that I was an undercover Islamist working on a new vest design for Al-Qa’eda. Instead, I turned to Mousey and Smug. 
   “If I told you, you’d have to kill me.”