Tales Of Ordinary Madness

[Giggles]

I can't believe I read all that...   

I can't believe you're complaining about it 

[StoutAndAle]

Just back from a job site where I had to run through something with an in-house technician called JJ.

".... and if there's any further issues you can give me a shout. OK, JJ?"

"Yep sound" said JJ "I'll walk you back down to the reception".

As we walked along someone poke their head out of an office and said;

"Stephen, would you mind taking a look at this for me?"

I kept walking but JJ had broken off and was walking towards the person that had shouted out for Stephen. JJ called after me "Stout! Hold tough there for a minute, you need to be accompanied."

Perhaps yer wan had gotten JJ mixed up with someone else. A few minutes later we were on the way to the front door.

"Mad in a big place like this that people can get you confused with someone else." says I.

"Yeah, hasn't happened to me yet though" replied JJ "and my memory is something shocking."

I was now completely confused.

Got the the reception where a security guard asked who I worked for and what time I signed in. He brought up the screen in front of me and as I was about to sign out he said to JJ;

"France were way too strong for Ireland eh, Steve?".

My eyes darted along the screen and sure enough, I had been booked in for a meeting with Stephen Murphy*. I was 100% convinced that he introduced himself as JJ Murphy to me when we first met about 2 years ago.

"Yeah, imagine if Dupont had been on for the whole game?" said JJ/Stephen/Steve as he turned to shake my hand goodbye.

"Em. Sorry but I think I've been calling you by the wrong name. I thought your name was JJ"

"It is."

"But he called you Stephen" I said, nodding at the security guard.

"Yeah, Stephen Murphy"

"How do you get JJ from Stephen Murphy?"

"My dad's name was John. So JJ is short for John Junior"

"Oh right. So your first name is actually John?"

"No" said JJ - with a tone which, quite frankly, implied that he was talking to a simpleton, "My name is Stephen. My dad wanted to call me John after but my mother picked Stephen."

"Right but when I met you, you said that your name was JJ."

"Yeah. I go by Stephen or JJ because my dad was well known where I'm from."

"Oh right. Did he work here too or something?"

"No. He died in 1999."

It was at this point that I had to check that I could smile and remember who was the current Taoiseach because I feared that I might have been having a stroke.

"Good luck so."

Limerick is a weird place.





*Not his real surname.

[open face surgery]

It's a nickname. Seems fairly straight forward to me.

[StoutAndAle]

Fair enough - maybe I am a simpleton.

[astfgyl]

Fair enough - maybe I am a simpleton.

I only found out that my own father's first name wasn't even his name when I was about 16. It's not unheard of in munster

[Ducky]

Ha, yeah found out my brother-in-law's first name wasn't his actual first name the day he married my sister with the ol' "do you such-and-such take..." line.

They were together five years before they married 

[astfgyl]

Father used to have a minibus and he was putting his name on the side of it and I was asking why was he putting it down as that? Thought he was at some tax trick or something. That's when I found out what I'd thought was his name wasn't even his middle name. Funny enough after all those years

[StoutAndAle]

I was on a job up in Dublin last week.

One of the trainees/apprentices was told to pack the gear and follow the checklist - true to form (and this is partly my fault for not checking his homework) - we discovered that we were missing a few tools from the kit when we landed at the job.

Not a big deal - found the nearest toolroom supplier and headed in that direction.

Stood in the queue at the trade-counter I overheard the following;

"Do youse sell torque screwdrivers?" asked a customer.

"Torque wrenches, yeah?" came back the reply from the lad behind the counter.

"No, a torque screwdriver. For small ranges."

"Oh. Yeah we do, yeah."

"Righ' and are they insulated? You know wharra mean, VDE yeah?"

"Yeah, for electrical work."

"That's right, I'm doing work on panels that will be live"

The counter lad comes back with a VDE 1000V torque screwdriver.

"That's the fella" says the customer "How much is tha'?"

"Eh..." looking at the computer on the counter "it's gonna be two hundreh and... two hundreh and forty plus VAT"

"Ah here! No, no way. Do yis have ordinary torque screwdrivers? Cheaper?"

"Yeah. They're abou' a hundreh and forty quid. They won't be insulated from high voltage but!"

"Fuck tha'. Gimme the cheap one. Probably not all the panels are live."