Perhaps you had to be there, but...

Last night Himself and I had dinner with a friend of ours who is also over from the States on business. Somewhere between the appetizer and the main course, said friend leaned back in his chair and asked, out of the blue, "So, if you had a time machine, what time period would you go to, and what would you take with you?" Himself, because he's a bit odd, decided he'd like to go argue philosophy with Hobbes, whereas I muttered something about history being a sucky place to be female, but maybe I'd like to meet some suffragettes...

Of course, nobody asks a question like that if they haven't thought of their own answer, so we turned the tables. "And you?" we asked. "What would you do?"

"Well," said our friend, "I think I'd like to go back to the Middle Ages..."

"And start a boyband!" Himself crowed, interrupting.

Our friend looked poleaxed - that clearly had not been what he'd been about to say - but I almost died laughing. And if you know Himself, try to imagine him spontaneously, even gleefully, saying any sentence with the word "boyband" in it, and you'll get a bit of the reason why.

Time machine! Middle ages! Boyband! This is never not going to be funny to me, I am sure.