A joke

A woman goes up from London to Oxford for the day to visit her son Gary who is a student at the university there. Gary meets his mother at the railway station, and during the course of the day he shows her around the university and all the sights of the town. To round off the day, Gary invites his mother back to dinner at his lodgings in Summertown, just north of the city centre.

"By the way mum," he explains as they make their way up to the lodgings, "I'm sharing this flat with a guy named Simon. For students like us, it's so much more economical than living alone. He'll probably be there now, I'm sure you'll like him :-)."

On arrival, the woman gets introduced to Simon, who is already cooking the dinner. Before too long, the three of them are sitting down to a elegant but frugal three course dinner comprising a carrot and orange soup starter, brazil nut roast for main course, with tiramisu for desert. The woman notices that the two young men seem to get on very well together, and the happy glances that the two of them exchange over the dinner table begin to arouse her suspicions.

After the meal, Gary notices his mother's growing uneasiness, and suddenly realises what she may be thinking.

"Don't worry mum," he says laughing, "I guess you're thinking that we could be a gay couple, but I can assure you that we're just good friends and we both have our own bedrooms".

Although not entirely convinced, she decides to let the matter drop, and offers to do the washing up to thank the two of them for such a lovely meal.

Two weeks later Simon is expecting his parents round for dinner, and is busy preparing the meal when he realises that the soup ladle is missing. Thinking back, he realises that they haven't used it since the night Gary's mother did the washing up.

"Gary," he calls out, "any idea what your mother did with the soup ladle when she cleared up, I can't find it anywhere?".

Gary can't find it either so he phones up his mother to ask her. "Well," she says indignantly, "if the two of you were sleeping in separate beds you'd have found the soup ladle by now!"