by Peter Quinn
7 April 2010
Customer: I was on a stag party in Somerset recently, and guess what they sell in the vending machines in the gent’s toilets!
Barber: No idea. What?
Customer: Viagra, condoms and inflatable sheep. Seriously! I’m not joking!
Barber: That’s like a one-man show.
3D football
8 April 2010
Customer: Ah, I hear it’s not great for football unless they have close-ups. You’d need more cameras to get more shots of the ball coming towards the screen, which leads me to an idea a friend of mine had for a laugh. He said, ‘Bring a football to the pub, and then at some stage throw it into the crowd watching the match!’
The Planning Department
9 April 2010
Customer: I have a friend who lives in the Waterways in Sallins, Co. Kildare, and, if you remember, they were totally flooded back in November. The cars were almost floating in the car park! He told me a local person had mentioned that the place used to flood regularly in the past and that they called it the swamp. It was a pitch-and-putt course, and it would flood so badly that you could see the flags but not the flagpoles! How they ever got planning in flood plains is beyond me. My friend said the management company had gone bust in the recession, so I said he should contact the builder, and he told me they’d gone out of business too!
Barber: Their apartments and houses are worthless now, as they can’t get insurance. Nothing has been done, so the chances are they’ll flood again in the future. It really is a terrible situation. A customer told me recently that the Planning Department didn’t have many inspectors going round the new estates being built to check that the work was being done properly, and that, as a result, the quality of the work suffered in some developments. But the wastewater from washing machines and dishwashers is going straight into the domestic wastewater pipe, which, in a lot of cases, ends up in local rivers and streams. And, according to this particular customer who tests the river water, it’s killing a lot of the ecology. No more tadpoles in the rivers and God knows what else!
Customer: There had to have been a lot of brown envelopes going round, that’s all I can say.
Potholes
11 April 2010
Customer: I hit a pothole last week. After the snow the roads have been in a terrible state. Anyway, it nearly took the wheel off my car: it damaged the rim and blew out the tyre. I was so angry! A friend of mine knew a lad in the council, and he told me to go up and ask for him, as he could compensate me for the damage. So it took a phone call and I was up at the council offices waiting for this lad. He was nice enough, and he asked me about the damage. Then he asked me where the pothole was. I told him, and he says, ‘Ah, that’s not our hole!’
Barber: That’s brilliant. So whose hole was it?
Customer: He said that the gas company had been digging up that road last and that the council wasn’t responsible for it once they’d been there. I gave up after that.
Why we don’t like fish!
13 April 2010
Customer: Do you know why we don’t eat much fish in Ireland? I mean to say, for an island nation we have an abundance of fish, but people don’t care for it.
Barber: I’ve often wondered why. The French, Spanish and Greek people all love their fish: they even have fishing rights in our waters, thanks to the Government, which gave our fishing grounds to Europe.
Customer: Well, it being Good Friday yesterday, I remember travelling as a young lad down to hotels in the midlands, and the church made it a sin to eat meat, so we were more or less told to eat fish on Fridays—not just Good Friday. But in the midlands they didn’t have fish in the hotels, as it wasn’t possible to transport from the coast to the country and keep it fresh, so they’d offer you two boiled eggs and toast with a pot of tea! That’s the reason we don’t eat fish here: it was seen as penance food.
Checkpoint Charlie!
14 April 2010
A customer told me this story many years ago, and it’s supposed to be true.
A business man called Charlie drove home from the pub very drunk late one night and got stopped by the guards at a checkpoint. There was a garda car by the footpath, and he parked behind it. They realised he was hammered and asked him to get out of the car. It was a while before he could get standing on the road beside them, and he was swaying gently from side to side.
The guards were about to breathalyse him when a car came speeding round the corner, left the road and crashed into the ditch! The two guards ran to the crash, leaving the drunken man alone. Charlie decided to make a break for it and impulsively jumped into the car and drove home as fast as he could. He told his wife that he had been stopped and that if anyone happened to call she was to say that he’d been in all night. Next morning the doorbell rang. The man’s wife opened the door to two guards.
‘Is your husband here?’ they asked her.
‘Yes, he is. Why, is there something wrong?’ she asked innocently.
‘Well, we think he drove off from a garda checkpoint late last night.’
‘Oh, no! It couldn’t have been him. He was here last night with me.’
‘I see,’ the guard said. ‘Could we speak to him?’
‘Sure, hold on.—Charlie?’
A few minutes later the businessman came down, fresh from the shower.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Good morning. We believe you drove away from a checkpoint in Stillorgan last night.’
‘Ah, now, that couldn’t have been me. I had a quiet night in last night.’
‘Well, would you mind if we took a look at your car?’
‘Sure, that’s no problem. It’s in the garage. I’ll just get the keys.’
So they walked over to the garage, and, calmly and confidently, Charlie turns the key and pulls up the garage door. To his absolute horror, the car in the garage is a garda car!
‘How did you think we found out where you lived?’ the guards asked him. ‘You left your car at the checkpoint, so we ran your number-plate.’
Motorways in Ireland
15 April 2010
Customer: Everyone is off today, it being Good Friday, and I came up the motorway. By the way, it’s a beautiful day in Cork—the sun is shining. Anyway, I come up a lot, but on bank holidays there’s less traffic—but it’s nuts! Everyone is doing whatever speed they want in whatever lane they want. On a working day the traffic is much more streamlined. There was a crash on the N7, and I thought, ‘No wonder!’ It’s a free-for-all.
Barber: I’m always asking people what lanes they use on the motorway, and very few people know. I only found out recently that you stay in the inside lane and that the other two are only for overtaking; but it hasn’t even been in the Rules of the Road till last year! My girlfriend was stopped by the guards for cruising in the inside lane, so it seems not all the guards know either.
Customer: It’s mad. They build these roads and then don’t tell anyone how to use them!
Why men and women will always be at odds
16 April 2010
An Italian customer told me this gem one day . . .
Customer: You know why men and women will never understand each other?
Barber: Is this a joke, now, or a pearl of wisdom?
Customer: A joke? No, this is knowledge. This is so you can understand women better.
Barber: That’s a big claim you’re making, but go on, let’s hear it.
Customer: Okay, it’s real simple: women need to feel loved to have sex, and men need to have sex to feel loved.
Barber: Profound.
Mortgage increase!
17 April 2010
Customer: I can’t believe the banks are putting the mortgage rates up. We bailed them out, and now they’re sticking it to us. There will be more increases on the way.
Barber: The rates were supposed to stay the same until September. I wish they’d let us get off our knees before they hit us with this.
I can imagine there’ll be a lot more repossession now.
Customer: It’s just not right. It was greed that got us into this mess—pure greed!
Barber: And you know what that means: the bankers had totally abandoned their discipline and threw away the rule book. How did that happen in ten years? Ask anyone who tried to get a mortgage or a loan in the eighties. There’s even a story that the banks in America thought they’d eradicated risk and could loan to people with no income, no job and no assets. They were called ‘ninja mortgages’! A customer told me there was an economist in the nineteenth century who thought the banking system would only work if it adhered to Christian principles. And guess what! Greed isn’t one of them!
Limerick in a nutshell
18 April 2010
Customer: Limerick has no jobs, no minister and no bishop, but they have the pubs open on Good Friday!
The Icelandic volcano
19 April 2010
Sky News is on the shop television, and the story covering the Icelandic volcano is on . . .
Customer: What are the odds?
Barber: The odds on what?
Customer: We get the best weather we’ve had in years, and then, out of nowhere, for the first time in two hundred years, there’s a huge volcano in Iceland, and the ash blocks out the sun!
Pet hates
20 April 2010
Customer: I was in a nice restaurant the other day having my lunch when a woman came over to clear the table next to me. The tables are very close together, and when she took away the plates she came back with a spray and a cloth. Well, I couldn’t believe what she did: she soaked the table with the spray, and it was like a mist in the air. I could smell it, and it was like fly-killer—really pungent. I was thinking, ‘If I can smell it then this stuff is getting on my food.’ It put me right off.
Barber: I had that happen to me too! It really is a bad idea. I cringe when I see the cleaning products coming out!
The ash cloud
21 April 2010
I’ve had almost every customer in the last few days tell me they know someone stuck in an airport somewhere in Europe. One customer had a friend stuck in Spain. ‘Well, that’s not such a bad place to be stuck,’ I said. ‘Well, you’re wrong there,’ he replied. ‘It’s been raining.’
There was black rain in Reykjavík because of the ash from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, and one of the papers had a photo of the dust cloud and the headline ‘Europe’s 9/11!’ The dust cloud had spread over most of Europe and had forced the planes to be grounded, as the dust plays havoc with jet engines and causes them to fail. It’s a natural disaster of biblical proportions. But here’s something I heard from the barber’s chair while talking about the volcano:
Customer: Did you know that two hundred years ago there was a large volcano in Iceland and that it caused crops to fail all over Europe? Even as far away as North America the dust cloud was seen. Well, after the crops failed there was a shortage of food, and this food shortage caused the French to revolt in 1789.
Sometimes it snows in April!
22 April 2010
Customer: I can’t believe it’s snowing again—never saw anything like it: a blizzard of snow and then the sun comes out and it’s warm again!
Barber: Tell me about it! I was up the mountains last week, and there was snow still—in patches, but up to a foot deep. It’s nearly two months since the snow fell.
Customer: In the country there’s a saying: ‘If there’s snow on the mountains it’s waiting for more.’
The Choctaw Indians
26 April 2010
Customer: Have you heard of the Choctaw Indians?
Barber: No, I can’t say I have. Why?
Customer: Well, I heard you talking about the Famine to that last customer, and I thought of a story I’d heard about the Choctaw Indians. The tribe was forced to move from their homeland around the Mississippi to Oklahoma to free up land for European settlers, and many died on the way. It became known as the Trail of Tears. When the people heard about the Irish Famine they were reminded of the suffering they themselves had gone through, and they collected money among themselves to send to Ireland in 1847. They sent $710 to the Irish people—about a million or more in today’s money—for famine relief. Quite an impressive sum!
Barber: That’s some story!
Drink-and-drive holidays
24 April 2010
Customer: I had an idea to post on the web site for business ideas. It’s called ‘Your country, your call’. Have you heard of it?
Barber: Oh, yeah, I saw the ad on TV one night. What’s your idea?
Customer: Drink-driving holidays! Imagine going away with the lads to a hotel, and you get cars to drive to the pub, where you can smoke inside and have a load of beer and then drive back to the hotel. The road would obviously have to be closed to other traffic, like a road specifically for the purpose, with rubber barriers on the sides for safety. Can you imagine the number of lads who’d love that? They’d come from all over Europe—stag parties and all. It’s a winner.
Barber: I can’t imagine them going for that!
Dodgy hair
25 April 2010
Customer: I hate my hair. It’s so flat my friends call it Lego hair—you know, like the hair that Lego people have!
Barber: Brilliant!
Water is the new oil!
26 April 2010
Barber: I’d put money on Mr Ballygowan backing up that claim.
Customer: Well, it’s true. There are people going round the country dowsing for water and analysing it. If it’s good, and if there’s a large amount of water, they buy the land!
Barber: So they expect the water from the reservoirs to get worse?
Customer: They’re banking on it. It’ll be hard to get decent water in the future unless you pay for it!
Orders from head office
27 April 2010
Our friend from the bookies pops his head in to tell the whole shop that there’s going to be trouble over Máire Geoghegan-Quinn’s pension if she doesn’t refuse it. ‘Trouble, I tell ye!’ And off he went up the street, laughing out loud.
Customer: Is your man for real?
Barber: Ah, he does that all the time.
Customer: Mad as a box of frogs. He should be doing stand-up.
Barber (holding up a back mirror): How is that now?
Customer: Can you put a straight line across the back there?
Barber: Are you serious? We didn’t do that the last time?
Customer: I know, but they’re the orders from headquarters.
Barber: You mean the wife?
Customer: I do—she who must be obeyed.
Barber: Well, we better do it, then, or we’ll both be in trouble . . . There, that’s it now.
Customer: These are the things that make life easier as you get older. You see, if she’s happy then I’m happy.
Barber: Now that’s sound advice!
Identity crisis
28 April 2010
Customer (an older gent): I saw coverage of Irish people stuck in airports on the news, and I was taken aback by their attitude. This expectant arrogance is becoming the norm in society. They were demanding that the Government do something to get them home; they demanded that the airports get them to their destination! It’s not the Irish way. Sadly, we’re becoming a people the likes of which we’d once have despised.
Hello, sunshine
29 April 2010
Customer: The girls are all out looking well. Amazing what a little sun can do, eh?
Barber: I know. I bet there are cars crashing round Stephen’s Green right now because the drivers are all rubbernecking!
Customer: Ah, the Green would be the place, all right.
Tough critics
1 May 2010
There were a few lads in the shop, and they were commenting on the women walking past the window . . . sunny day. . . short skirts. . .
Customer 1: Hey, lads, check out this
bird. She’ll be coming by in a second.
Customer 2: Jaysus, you must be joking. I wouldn’t ride her into battle. She’s bleedin’ Dot Cotton!
Customer 1: Sure what would you know, the state of your bird!
Customer 2: My bird’s got great legs and you know it.
Customer 1: I’ve seen better legs hanging out of a nest!
Going to the ball
2 May 2010
Customer (a young doctor): Just a tidy-up. I’m not due a haircut for another week or two, but I’ve a sex-trafficking ball to go to tonight.
Barber: Did you just say a sex-trafficking ball?
Customer: I just realised how that sounds. It’s a ball to raise awareness and money to stop sex trafficking, that’s all.
Barber: Well, it’s an unfortunate title.
Customer: Not as bad as the rape ball we went to a few months ago! It was for the Rape Crisis Centre.
Tiger tramps
3 May 2010
During the good old days of the Celtic Tiger, a homeless person came into the shop one morning and approached me.
Homeless person: Hi, can I have some money to get a breakfast? I’m starving.
Barber (handing him a couple of euro): Okay.
Homeless person (looking at the coin in the palm of his hand, then back at me): Where am I supposed to get a breakfast for that?
Yes, that really happened!
An ecumenical matter