An Expert would not work in a TV Shop for less than £100.00 per hour, now that is a fact.
Indeed Spitty, a true expert, and on who’s word you can rely as in the old days, is worth every penny of it. 
I always admired those lucky people who could get into some of those jobs where one can get lost in, jammy jobs, you know the type of employment, usually government, where clocking in and out on time are the most important parts of the ‘work’ day.
You clock in, then you get a cup of tea before you sit down to ‘work’, then you tell your workmates all about what happened to you last night, that brings you up to the morning tea break, more chat and if anyone in authority happens by you use the new gift you have acquired from observing your fellow ‘workers’, the art of appearing to be doing something whilst actually doing nothing, that’s not to be sniffed at, it’s quite a hard trick to master for a beginner, but once mastered you’re away in a hack.
Nice work if you can get it, and the only time you’re noticed is when your not there.
All you got to do is hang on in there and at the end of it you’ll receive a handsome reward in the form of a generous government pension.
My younger brother had one of those jobs in a government dept. never done a hands turn all through his working life and came out with a fat pension at 60, while the rest of us mugs had to wait until we were 65.
Ah well could be worse, like these poor chaps.
It ain’t a bad shout, being a Mug, you will always get by (Thanks to the Capitalists;-)) and being a Jug is OK, unless your name is Toby.
I had my first pint in a pub called the Toby Jug in Sth. Kings St. many many years ago, got as sick as a dog after it, it must have been a depth charger (stale beer, usually left lying overnight, then topped up to look the part) .
“Pulling the wool over your eyes”
Or, as Clint Eastwood so crudely put it “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining”
I have always wondered where that expression came from. Here’s an interesting short piece I dug up about it’s possible origin, the sheep’s own wool growing over their eyes and impairing vision.
This chap is writing in to a publication called “The New England Farmer” in 1838, a nice simple letter explaining a lot and showing concern for animal welfare, fair play to you John I say.
WOOL OVER THE EYES.
Dear Mr. Tucker—Since I have commenced giving an account of my experience and observations relative to wool growing, I thought it might be well to mention one other obstruction that impedes the comfort and takes the lives of sheep. Although I see there are many close observers that write for the Farmer, they have as yet neglected to urge the necessity of examining the eyes of sheep. I have frequently discovered sheep with their eyes shut, or mostly so. On examination, I find the hair that grows about the eyes, to be turned into the eye. Lambs in the winter, before they are a year old, are the most troubled; those that have the most wool about the head are the most liable. I have yearly to shear the faces of fifty to seventy that get into that situation, and open their eyes and cut out the hair. Some sheep become perfectly blind, dwindle and fail. There are many instances among old sheep of high blood. It requires the greatest care to open the eye, and with a sharp shears cut the hair close. This is not only the case with my sheep, but I have frequently passed the flocks of others that were tormented in the same way.
John Spicer, East Barrington, Yates Co. March 10, 1838.
My God!, the poor sheep, I hope that problem is well and truly solved for the unfortunate creatures.
Yeats county is Sligo as far as I know.
I do like hammers, they have so many uses and the specially designed types often have me puzzled.
My son sent these three hammers over to me (below) to see could I tell him what they are for, to be honest I haven’t a clue but rather than send him away empty handed, I offered him my full fatherly Irish logical answers, God help him if he heeds me.
https://i.postimg.cc/25DTX8L2/hammers.png
The first is actually an antique and was rescued from an old miser’s jewellery workshop, he was as tight as a drum so he hired two goldsmiths to work next to each other, one chap was right handed and he used the right handle, and the other lad was left handed and used the other handle, only one hammer needed to be purchased. 
The next one has a magnetic head and was used by a brilliant upholstery worker, not only could he hold a mouthful of tacks, but he could also fill his right ear with tacks as well (he had exceedingly big ears, God bless the mark), enabling him to take out two tacks at a time and bang them home, by the way, his record was to upholster 43 sofas in a normal working day.:shock:
The last hammer is easy, it’s a ceiling hammer and when you’re up on the step ladder, your hands are tired and your arms are heavy and you think you’ll never get down, well with the ceiling hammer you can switch from hand to hand without letting go the handle and dropping the hammer on the wife’s skull below you, that could disrupt all your plans for the rest of the evening.;-)
Sorry, Hammers involve nails, not sure which I’d rather be.
Give me a screw, every time, it is undoable but then again, it ain’t.
Screws are good, but there are so many different heads these days you’d need a dozen screwdrivers.
For a non permanent quick job like the flower boxes I’ve done for the wife, I prefer the hammer and nails way, far easier to remove when taking it apart after it eventually gives in to the soil in it and the Irish weather.
I have often heard construction folk refer to a hammer as “The American Screwdriver” never quite understood why.
I love some of the reviews they post on aliexpress the Chinese shopping site, I buy a lot of my shirts there, once you get the size correct it’s plain sailing from there on.
As I typed a favourable review I noticed this one above it from a chap in Mexico.
“The shirt is well sawn. Buttons are bright and firmly sawn. With the size you need neatly-this model for tin people. Since I’m slim, I sat perfectly on me. 13 Mar 2020 12:09”
Yeh just have to giggle, have you ever tried sawing a shirt in half? It’s akin to pushing a car up a hill with a rope, and how does one sit on oneself one wonders?.
There was an unusual item on the Antique Road Trip the other day, the wife loves these antique shows.
Anyway the item in question was a beautiful wooden box inlaid with ivory decor and with a red leather handle attached, inside were some empty bottles of different sizes and one or two brushes, the expert at the auction described it as a “Travelling toilet case”
I was confused and turned to the wife, hoping she could deconfuse me.
“Tell me dear woman, how do you suppose they managed to fit a toilet into that little wooden box?, and why would someone taking a trip want to bring a toilet with them?”;-)
Not to worry, Donavan has the answer for travellers with that problem in this seldom heard 1970’s “B” side recording.
“If shitting is your problem when your up there in the stars, the intergalatic laxative will get you from here to Mars?
sounds like it was Touch and Go when Donovan recorded that. A Shit a day, helps you work rest, and play.
Gummy would have liked that one.
Indeed he would Spitty.
There is an ad out now for a spirit mixer (no, not a fella who hangs around with spooks), it states that three quarters of your drink is a mixer so why not use ours, it’s the best etc…
Now I’m not much of a spirit drinker these days, but when I did take a drop of whiskey it was taken with a small amount of spring water, and even at that old Paddy Farrell the innkeeper would gawk at me in shock and say “You silly young man!, it took 12 years to make that whiskey and there you go ruining it all by pouring water into it, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”:shock:
Somehow I don’t think having three quarters of your drink lemonade or whatever is in the mixer, would go down too well in this country, maybe with the new generation of drinkers but not with the older ones, besides people think that the more you add to the spirit the less intoxicating it becomes, nonsense, if you buy a small whiskey and pour it into a pint of lemonade, you are still drinking a small whiskey because it’s in the same glass and ends up in the same stomach where everything is separated, the alcohol goes one way (to the brain) and the lemonade another, a mixer is only to take the rough taste off spirit drinks.
Another way to look at this is to take a pint of beer, beer averages about 4% alcohol, that means 96% of the rest of your pint is just a watery product, yet if you drank 5 pints you would be well on your way to happyland.
Before mixers in small bottles were thought of the publican would give you a ‘dash’ of lemonade for free, ask for more that a dash and you got a funny look and a snotty answer. They also had those large syphon bottles where one squirted in a splash of soda water, mind you I said a splash, not three times more than the good stuff already in the glass, that would completely drown it.
Ah well, times change, I never thought I’d see the day when folks would walk into a pub, sit down, and then pay through the nose for a round of water.
I wonder is there such a creature as a waterholic? I once knew a keep fit fanatic who drank 6 pints of water a day, he couldn’t face the day ahead of him without having his ‘fix’ of water before he left for work, no messin.
That reminded me of the waterholic’s song, remember this?
Two things I will never know the answer to.
My mother’s father once told her a riddle when she was a very young child, she never got the answer to it as he went off to fight in the first world war, came back on a stretcher and died in hospital a few months later.
She repeated the riddle to my brother and me several times, maybe just to pass on the torment of never knowing the answer ;-), but I remember every word of it, it went like this:
“If it took 24 yards of tripe to make a suit for Nelson, how long would it take a German sausage to walk a black pudding out of it’s mind?
The other one was not a riddle but a sort of warning from my father’s father, he was a grumpy old git, but he once lifted me up on his knee as a small boy and said.
“Jimmy me lad, let me give you a bit of advice, never trust a person called Melvyn”:shock:
That’s all he said, nothing else, I never knew what happened between him and Melvyn, I asked me granny, she didn’t know either, and she was his wife.
Thankfully so far I’ve never met a Melvyn of any description, let alone trust one, but I really would love to know what happened to my grandad to make him say such a thing to a small boy. 
My missus can really snore, last night was particularly bad, she just hauls in the air like a giant vacuum cleaner and then lets it out again as a series of assorted weird noises, I even whispered a love verse into her ear to break the snoring cycle, but to no avail.
“Close your mouth and go to sleep
You sound just like a rusty jeep”
Can you plant me in your garden Spitty? “I want to be a lawn”;-)
Actually Greta Garbo insisted she never said that, what she actually said was “I want to be let alone”
Sort of like a rented lonely house.
There’s always some smart arse to come along and say this and that celebrity didn’t say this and didn’t say that, Bogart was not supposed to say “Play it again Sam” and Cagney never said “You dirty rat” Michael Caine never said “Not a lot of people know that” etc…
Why can’t they just leave it as it is, people don’t care if these quotes are word perfect or not, nobody is getting hurt or offended, so why not lay off, as my old teacher used to say to us when the quittin bell rang “Who said” “I go, you see me go?”, his answer was always the same “I did, just now” and he was out the door like a shot to catch his train home, he was one of the few decent teachers we had back then.
We have our own family crest as have most families, indeed many’s the signet ring I engraved with chests I’m me day, our motto is in Latin but translated it simply means “Never depend on anything till you have it in your hand”.
Not a bad one, it avoids a lot of disappointment.
There are three fish featured on the coat of arms, no surprise to me, there have always been exceeding good drinkers in the family all down the line.;-)
One old trick my great Uncle Dave would use in a bar was to bring up the subject of family mottos, then ask someone at the table what they’re motto was, when they spoke it he would say nothing and wait, after a while, the other fella would say to him “And what’s yours Dave?”
“Oh mine’s a large whiskey with a dash of peppermint please”
You are right Jem, I remember having disrupted the Class, my Teacher said “Spitty” why do you have to be so honest?
I would answer 50 years on, I dunno, it can take 50 years to reinforce the thought, no one has the facts.
Now, no one has the Fax.
Ah yes remember the fax thing, big deal when you had a fax machine.
It seems they are making a comeback, fair enough, lets hope they don’t bring the Yuppies back with them, what a shower of gobshites they were.
“Are fax machines obsolete?
The fax machine is a symbol of obsolete technology long superseded by computer networks — but faxing is actually growing in popularity. … It turns out that in many cases, faxing is more secure, easier to use and better suited to existing work habits than computer-based messaging.Mar 10, 2019” Wiki.
Best to give the streets time to air before you venture out, you never know what could hit you if your not familiar with an area.
I remember when we first got a video recorder, the son was blue in the face trying to tell me how to set it up for recording programs, I still never got the hang of it, just as well for then came the digital age and out went the millions of video machines along with those awful tapes that would sometimes get stuck in the slot, then you’d lose your rag and forcibly yank the thing out with a chisel or a breadknife, ending up with tape all over the place. 
But even now the CD’s are obsolete, most new PC’s don’t have any CD slots, I have hundreds of them gathering dust out in the shed after I transferred them all onto two hard drives.
Schools the same, you learn more when you leave, I hated it and only learned the three basics, reading writing and arithmetic. I was so happy in my work from the age of 14 that the years flew by and it was only when I was in my 20’s and married that I realised I could have done with a good education, but it was too late then and I was very busy at my job and had a young family to raise.
When I look back on school now I would have skipped the arithmetic and spelling had I known they were going to invent calculators and spell checkers ;-), so dream on all you good daydreamers, anything you can think of has to be possible in the future, otherwise it could not enter our organic heads, we are all made of earth ’stuff’ when you think about it.
I always liked Sam Cooke singing this.
I just wonder where my certificates are now, 45 years on, at least I have my Birth Certificate, just have to hope, its worth the paper its written on.
Birth certificate, I’m sure I have mine stashed away somewhere.
You could say we were all certified from day one and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to become sane so we can mingle with the rest of humanity,
The only certificate you’re sure of getting is the death certificate.
There was a boy in our class who suffered from polio, there were a lot of polio cases around in the 50’s, the poor kids had to wear those horrible steel bars and hard leather brace things on their legs.
Anyway young Flynn in our class had a few other things wrong with him, his ears were huge and he had a lisp, he also had a bad stoop, but he was a cheerful plucky lad and gave as good as he got in the slagging department, and we all know what school kids are for slagging.
One day Fr Burke came into the classroom to examine the kids on catechism, he told us all to relax that he would not be asking any hard questions.
The first victim was a very well mannered boy.
“What is your name son?”
“My name is Nigel Father”
“Who made the World Nigel?”
“God made the World Father”
“Very good Nigel, sit down you passed”
Next up was another nice lad.
“What’s your name me lad?”
“Thomas Father”
“Tell me in your own words, what did God do for you Thomas?”
“Well he gave me a lovely mother and father, and we live in a nice house, daddy has a car and we’re very happy Father”
“Excellent Thomas, you passed also”
Now young Flynn was hidden down the back of the class, teacher put him there in the hope the priest wouldn’t spot him, but alas, the priest sees Flynn’s big ears sticking out from behind the head of Curly O’Toole.
“Now then, stand up you boy at the back” he shouts at Flynn”
“What’s your name son?”
It takes a while for Flynn to struggle to his feet with the use of his crutches.
“Larry Flynn Father”
“Now don’t be shy boy, I’ll be easy on you and ask you the same question I asked Thomas, tell us all in your own simple words what God did for you Larry?”
“He f…ing near ruined me Father”
Well they do insist in school that honesty is the best policy, seems it backfired on Fr. Burke.
That’s a true story, the class was in fits of laughter and as soon as the priest left Flynn got six of the best from the teacher.
Talking about young folks slagging.
The old dance halls and record hops of the 60’s used to be great fun.
Girls were always first to dance and they would dance in pairs. A good idea for us shy lads was to “Split up a pair’ on the floor, that way the chances of being refused were halved, one of the girls might want to dance with you and that would lead to the other girl dancing too rather than sitting back down on her own, even if refused it wasn’t as embarrassing with two fellas walking back to sit down as it would be on ones own.
Fellas used to slag the girls across the floor, saying things like “Hey Bridie!, lends yer face, I want to chop sticks” (meaning she was a hatchet, which in those days meant the complete opposite of an oil painting), and “Hey Mary, next time your in a China shop trade in your eggcups for a pair of jugs”
All in good spirits I hasten to add.
Strangely enough, the real good-looking girls were seldom asked to dance for the simple reason the fellas knew they hadn’t a hope, and the thoughts of being refused in front of their mates and laughed at for the rest of the night was too much to risk, fellas were not as cocky back then as they are today, they were good at knowing where they stood in the mating game.
Ah yes, there was great craic back then, the whole experience was an education on life in itself, education you could never be taught or get get out of a book.
“She taught me to Yodel, yo dee low dee de…” Whatever happened to old Kangaroo eyes Frank Ifield, one of Gummy’s lot I believe. Phillis got a kiss from him when he sang in cabaret here back in the 70’s, she didn’t wash her face for a week after that, so thrilled was she.
We had many the good night boppin and a hoppin at the hop.
Watched the show at the time Jem, now I see the Fall Out, and wonder what it was all about, Much ado about nothing, maybe?
The Junior geezer may have been of the same opinion.
I wasn’t a bad oul jiver in me day Spitty, but I never did get the hang of the Twist.
The wife and me were talking about old sayings last night and how some of them don’t make sense, like the two I’ve often quoted before “ Look before you leap” and “He who hesitates is lost, completely contradicting each other.
Anyway we eventually got around to dogs, they seem to feature a lot in old proverbs, “Let sleeping dogs lie”. “Lie down with dogs and you get up with fleas” “Every dog has his day” etc…
So it was with dogs on my mind that I trotted off to bed last night, and just before I nodded off I had that old chestnut in me head “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. actually you can.
My dog is 9 now and I’ve just taught him how to read the Sun newspaper (ya gotta start at the very bottom ), took him all of five minutes to learn, and judging by the sour puss on him he was not impressed, though he did like the girls in it, he’s a bit of a randy old bird dog.
Might try the Times on him tomorrow, then the Racing Chronicle, you see the whole idea is to have him read out the race cards to me and then give me a few tips, well he soon got bored and I took him for a walk. We had just got to the top of the road when he sat down and then got up and faced the direction for home and started to pull on the lead, very unlike him I have to say. he usually loves his walks, maybe he sensed the pub was closed and he wouldn’t be getting his saucer of Guinness.
Then I woke up and after breakfast I did what an old friend of mine used to do, look up the racing cards and see could he find any horses name to coincide with his last dream.
I found one running in the 2 pm at Wexford, one of my favourite tracks, it was called “Walk me home” that had to be the one so I but a fiver on to win, it romped home at 11/1, God’s truth, you can believe that or not, I don’t mind. but I’m now 55 quid richer than I was last night, weird eh?
We got our little fella from the dogs home, he was on death row, a very sad place to visit is the dogs home.
This’ll bring a tear to your eye.