Same here 
there were Pigeon Fanciers in our family, tried to get me to join the Club, told um straight âGot no time for the Pecking Orderâ. 
I never gave orders when I was gainfully employed, I gave requests or technical instructions, which could be refused.
I have a friend who was working on at a high tech part of the manufactory that ran very very time sensitive jobs. Compressors ran for days at a time to charge hundreds upon hundreds of air bottles and receivers, then it would be released into a test chamber where for example a missile engine was being put through its paces.
The air supply lasted a maximum of six minutes, and my friend was politely but firmly told not to say please or thankyou when issuing instructions as it took up too much valuable time.
Talking about compressors and air Fruity, when I started learning to hard solder we had to use our lungs to blow pressure through a rubber tube and into the coal- gas fuelled blowtorch, you had to wait until you served your time before they allotted you a double bellows for the job.
Then when the North Sea gas came online that was the end of the old blowpipes.
I reckon the few years I was blowing away every day did my young lungs a power of good for my later years, the last X-ray I had (2 years ago) showed they were still in good shape for a smoking old lad.
One of my sisters in law (brotherâs wife) paid us a visit yesterday, we hadnât seen her in years as they live in the country, sheâs well to do, way out of our league, inherited a lot of property in the area and resides in a fine big house with huge well kept gardens with a long gravel driveway leading up to it, all very posh.
Anyway she decided to leave us after two boring hours, on the way out she invited the wife and me down to her place for a visit, adding âWe provide slippers at the hall doorâ
Well she can stick her visit and her slippers, we have no intention of taking up her offer.
Shoes or no shoes, I respect everyones right to have their own house rules, itâs their home after all and good luck to them, but if they include me removing my shoes, then I have the right not to visit them, Iâm only giving my personal view here.
Iâve been in a lot of houses in me day, posh ones and poor ones and nobody ever asked me to remove my shoes and I wouldnât dare ask them either if they visited me. This subject came up here a few years ago and I gave the same opinion back then.
I got rid of all the carpets years ago, carpets are the biggest dust collectors in the entire house, the Granny used to call carpets âbug huggersâ when I was a kid, no matter how clean they look they are home to hundreds of microscopic crawlies, not only dust mites, but all sorts of dangerous bacteria, indeed one would be safer wearing shoes walking on them, best not to have any carpets at all as far as Iâm concerned, wooden flooring is far safer and easier to look after, as is good quality Lino.
I can understand high heels being banned on wooden flooring, as a matter of fact I remember certain dance halls barring them in the past, didnât effect me though, I could never jive properly in high heels. 
If one wants the ultimate in house hygiene, best to ask your guests to remove all their clothes along with their shoes, clothes that have collected bacteria in their own home and on the journey from their house to your house, itâs not just the shoes that carry dirt particles and germs.
âStep up to the fire Molly and watch you donât burn your bumâ. 
Come to think of it it could turn out a more interesting evening that way.
Itâs a helluva long time since I heard this oldie, isnât YouTube marvellous. 
Carpets could get sticky for a variety of reasons, nylon ones got sticky on their own. 
As the winter slowly closes in a lot of old folks are stuck with daytime TV to relieve boredom.
It becomes too cold for me to operate in the workshop so Iâm mostly indoors except for my lunchtime trip to the pub and the odd night there, some are not so lucky and canât get out so have to watch it all the time.
To be fair, some of the old films on the Talking Pictures Channel and one or two other channels are enjoyable to us oldies, but the ads are so depressing and downright cheeky by telling you how much to give them, and every month too, not just every now and then, that, to me is downright abuse of charity status, charity is given and never demanded.
Bad enough with all the depressing funeral and cremation advertisements, now we have a glut of legalised beggars asking us to leave them a chunk in our wills, âRaiders of the Last Willsâ the wife calls them, âLeave it all to us and we will gladly send you a free will pack with a Parkinson pen to write it with, plus a photo of Boris Karloff and a free cuddly toy of the grim reaperâ.
What irks me is that the heads of these begging organisations are making a terrific living with the proceeds, they all live in big houses and drive the best cars, they say they are entitled to this as only the best people can do the âjobâ properly, the best people?, who are they kidding!, any gobshite can collect and count money.
Let them be paid the same wage as any tradesman and cut down dramatically on the administration costs, there are plenty of others who could and would willing do the job just to have a job.
The ones at the bottom of the pile and the most caring are the volunteers, and they are paid nothing!.
Some sort of decent regulation is badly needed to control this type of âAdministration costsâ scandal.
Glad now I got that off me chest. (releived smile).
This might cheer you up, it does it for me every time, a real foot stamper that you can stamp your feet either in anger or glee, take yer pick.
My workshop is insulated and heated, and if needs be I put the heaterâs on an hour before I go out to play.
However, if the weather is foul and the job is not urgent, I wonât venture out unnecessarily.
I know what you mean about the daytime TV, especially the horrible adverts.
I have never gone to a neighbour or friendâs house, nor had a neighbour or friend come to ours and bring up the subject of funeral plans. It just doesnât happen.
Now I know that men are sometimes bad at talking about certain subjects, especially menâs health, but my friends and former colleagues seem to be made of a different material to others.
We regularly talked openly about menâs problems. Prostate, digestion, dicky ticker, injuries, operations, testicular cancer etcetera were all discussed.
Whilst the department I worked in was predominantly male, we did have some most excellent female engineers as well as support staff, and generally no subject was off limits where health was concerned.
The only thing we never discussed was ruddy funeral plans!
Fair play to you Fruity, Itâs good you and your workmates could openly talk about health things, Iâm afraid Iâm one of those whoâd keep it to myself until I dropped dead with whatever it was, especially at the age I am now, whatâs the difference, something is going to take me down, anyway Iâve sorted the departure bit out and made me peace with God and everyone else so Iâm quite prepared for what comes next, but Iâll make the best of it while Iâm still healthy and wonât think about it until it happens, cross me bridges when I come to them so to speak. 
Sorry for being so downbeat but Iâve been a bit depressed lately with all this bad news everywhere, Iâll soon shake out of it. 
By the way my eldest grandson Sean (22) finished up at college and passed all his exams, good news for a change.
I was telling you a long while back that he was studying civil engineering.
His âpassing outâ or whatever itâs called was postponed on account of the pandemic, itâs now to be held in November.
He secured a good job in one of the biggest building companies here, he loves it.
Needless to say we are all very proud of him.
This was taken in his small flat in town where heâs staying with his girlfriend, she was studying the same thing as he was and she passed too so weâre delighted for the pair of them.
All this passing out, I would get the appliances checked out.
A handsome lad, and a noble and valuable trade he and his girlfriend have chosen. Itâs a bonus to find a job that he enjoys rather than one to endure.
It wasnât the trade I had planned to be in, but I was lucky that I ended up in a job I loved, partly because it was interesting and partly because of the endless insults and banter that fuelled the whole place. From your ramblings on here Jem, I got the distinct impression that you loved your job as well.
Thank you Fruity.
You are bang on there about me and the benchwork, I have always loved it.
I started off as the messenger boy and when I got a chance at the bench I jumped at it, I took to it like a duck to water, everything sort of came to me naturally as if I had being doing the same thing in a former life, uncanny really.
The wifeâs posh niece was here today, she had been shopping in swanky Grafton St. and even took two âBrown Thomasâ bags out of her car to show the wife a new pair of boots and a handbag she bought, she never talks about anything else only money, I said hello then skedaddled out to me shed.
I was tempted to tell her this old joke but then I realised I would have to face the consequences when she left.
There is a long established very fashionable store here called âBrown Thomasâ, it is smack in the middle of posh Grafton St.
A popular joke doing the rounds in Dublin after the Muhammad Ali fight with Sonny Liston in 1965 was:
âWhat has Grafton St. and Muhammad Ali got in common?â
âThey both have Brown Thomasâsâ
Native American names and tribes, Iâve always admired these nature loving people.
Great the way they name their children by events that occur at the time of birth, like a red cloud was low in the sunsetting sky when Red Cloud was born, or a fleeting gazelle went by the tepee as Running Deer come into the world, all to do with nature.
I often wonder was my Dad drinking a glass of Jameson whiskey when I was born and he named me James, after all his name was James and I was his son.
I love the way they always had a great respect for mother earth and only took from it what they needed, wouldnât it be great if we had followed their example then the world wouldnât be in the state itâs in now.
There are so many tribes that I was very surprised when I looked them up, most of them listed Iâve never even heard of, seems Hollywood didnât either because they were never featured in the old western films.
For example how many of you have heard of these tribes, to name but a few:
Otoe, Quechan, Miwik, Ho-Chuck, Nez Perce, Paiute, Ute People, and my favourite nameâTulalip,
âShe wore a Tulalip, a big yellow Tulalip, and I wore a big red roseâŠâ
A light hearted look some famous Native Americans, tribes, and places.
Ger OâKee was a big fan of cold cheese, he was a man of the land and had a prize animal who unfortunately suffered from diarrhoea, he called it Shitting Bull.
He used to have an old nag who was psycho and had to be put down, dangerous having a Crazy Horse on the farm.
His wife Shy Ann was very bashful and always wore old jeans with A Patchy on the backside, she suffered terribly from varicose veins and had Blackfeet, she was also a complainer and always had something to crow about.
The couple only had one child, a lovely daughter, she was tiny and always laughing, they named her Mini Ha Ha, she was engaged to a randy midget called Little Big Horn who had a gammy leg after he was knee capped with a tomahawk at Wounded Knee.
Shy Ann had a brother who was the opposite to her, he refused to wear any clothes, Running Bear everywhere he went, eventually he caught jaundice in the fingers and had to change his name to Yellow Hand.
Yellow hand once visited the UK and went to a disco in Wolverhamptonâs Molineux Stadium where he met several football players, it was only when he came home that they gave him the nickname âHe who dances with Wolvesâ.
Heâs a very old man now, lost all his hair and sits in his toupee all day making grunting sounds as he bides his time before he enters the happy hunting grounds.
Ah recruiting you say Spitty, never done any but I was once recruited.
We used to have recruiting officers from the nearby barracks come round our streets recruiting young lads for the local defence force, the LDF, they later changed the name into Irish meaning the same thing and the initials for that was the FCA, nobody could pronounce the Irish words so most folks called it simply the FCA, nicknamed the Free Clothes Association because you got a new uniform of bulls wool extra hairy material of which the collar cut the neck off you, when you were in your civilian clothes everyone knew you were a part time soldier because you had a big red neck on yeh.
My mates and me only joined up for the two week annual camp in the Glen of Imaal artillery firing range when you were paid the full army wage for being there.
You had to give the uniform back when you left, I though Iâd never get out of it.
I remember when me Dad took this picture at the back of the house where the sun shone directly into me eyes, it was in black and white with one of those old Kodak box things, he coloured it in himself by hand at the time, he always took photos with the sun being behind the camera for some reason unknown to us, result was we were nearly always taken with our eyes shut or half closed.
Notice no shiny badges strips, nor medals on the uniform, just the raw private outfit that never fitted properly, I never got further than that in the two years I was signed up for, oh I tell a lie, I got one star for throwing the hand grenade and another for completing a 15 mile route march, making me a two star private.
My Son is a handsome beast, and, I did not have a camera handy, but he diced with the ATC, and in uniform he looked the business, thank goodness, that is where it stopped, flash the uniform then step back.
I met a few Native Americanâs in my travels and works in the USA. One lady I met was one eighth Cheyanne which meant she was entitled to a free college education.
I bought a few trinkets from an American Indian market, and a brace of T shirts with this printed on them on a visit to the Grand Canyon. The North and South rim are state owned and federal law prohibits aircraft from flying below the canyon rim. The West Rim however is on Indian Nation land and they have no such restriction, so we took a jellycopter ride to the canyon floor followed by a boat ride up and down the Colorado river. Much better than the mule trek down to the floor that is offered at the other two rims.
The first time I took my Lovely Cousin to the USA we stayed in a nice hotel at Niagara Falls. We went back a few years later only to find the hotel had been flattened to extend the car park of a casino owned by Indian Nationals. Apparently they made more money from the casino than the hotel profits. I believe the casino had a huge drain-hole in the middle that people went and threw there money down it.
Iâm not a gambling man and have only ever been in a casino once, and that was to exchange money. We were told that it offered better exchange rates than anywhere else, presumably to entice foreigners in and increase profit.
I met a chap in one of the hotels who was married to a Native American lady called Five Horses. I asked him how she got that name and he said itâs because all she does is Nag, Nag, Nag, Nag, Nag. 
Yes indeed Spitty, I think one has to be of a special kind to make a career of the army, not many signing up over here these days, I suppose the billionaires who depend on the military to protect their interests will just have to cough up a lot more lolly if they want young folks to put their lives on the line for them, after all wars are all about money and power, nothing to do with the ordinary Joe Soap who has neither money nor power.
, Five Horses, I like that one.
You and your wife certainly get around Fruity, I was never one for foreign travel, Iâm a real home bird.
âPlentyâ was the film I intended to watch last night.
An airdrop over occupied France during world war 2, first to drop from the aircraft were several cylinder containers, then came Sam Neil pillowing down in a parachute and straight into the loving arms of Meryl Streep. Five minutes later they were in bed together, Oh no says I, another crummy love story, and I switched it off.
Then my mind began to wander and I thought whatever happened to the first fella to try out a parachute?
I had as a child tried to jump off the garden shed holding me grannyâs umbrella above me, but instead of slowly floating down I went straight down, landed on a shovel that sprang up and the pole whacked me head and sprained me ankle at the other end.
I had just seen Alan Ladd in The Red Berets (1953) at the Plaza cinema and all the lads looked so cool as they one at a time slid evenly out of the plane like white lotto balls from the lotto machine.
I had made me mind up then and there that I was going to be a paratrooper when I grew up, but then the older brother put the hymn of jaysus on it when he said that sometimes the parachutes donât open, after the experience on the shed and me sore head and ankle I instantly dismissed the idea.
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You are very wise, Jembo, and Gumbud knows it.
There may be a divergence of intent in the offing, time to hit the exit.
I was delighted to read today that the old vagrancy laws are to be reviewed.
Seems to me thereâs no such thing as real freedom, not when we still have laws like these on the books anyway.
âThe Vagrancy Act also aimed to punish âevery person wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggonâ. Namely transient people, typically from Scotland or Ireland, who were considered undesirable.â
âWithout visible means of support is a term employed in VAGRANCY statutes to test whether an individual has any apparent ability to provide for himself or herself financially. A person who has no visible means of support and loiters in a public place might be arrested and prosecuted for vagrancy.â
The above laws sound to me like the ultimate in âKicking a man/woman when they are downâ
Thank God they are getting rid of these sanctimonious haves looking down on the have nots laws.
I think the governments deliberately hang onto outdated laws just in case something awkward comes up then some smart government legal eagle can cherry pick one out to suit the occasion, sort of an old ace in the hole thing, Oh yes, itâs been done before, they never throw out the dirty water until they get the clean water in.
âBreaking rocks is not much funâ neither is sleeping on them.
Jembo, I just do âPermittedâ freedom nowadays, with minimal Law Breaking, canât be arseâd with the consequences of pushing the envelope.