by Peter Quinn
4 May 2010
Customer: A friend of mine was talking to a young parish priest about his son recently, asking him for advice on how to keep him out of trouble during the dreaded teenage years. So the priest says, ‘Get the lad into sports. We always said it’s sport or sex at that age, so get them busy with the sport and he’ll be just fine.’ ‘Okay,’ my friend says, ‘that’s good advice.’ He’s a bit of a chancer, you know, and he ended the conversation by asking the priest, putting on a cute-hoor accent, ‘And what sport do you play yourself, father?’ He said you’d want to see the look he got! Never answered the question, though!
Cromwell revisited
5 May 2010
Customer: You know the way St Patrick got rid of the snakes in Ireland and was canonised later on?
Barber: Sure we all know that.
Customer: Well, I wonder, in light of all that’s happened with the church, you know, the abuse and scandals and all, if Cromwell will be regarded in a different light in a few hundred years by the historians. He tried to get rid of the priests in Ireland and used to burn down the churches during the Penal times.
Barber: I’m not so sure they’d see it that way!
Girls of summer
7 May 2010
Customer: I love this weather. When the girls are out looking summery it does you good.
Barber: If I had a euro for every time someone said that . . .
Customer: Just look at her—stunning! And to think I almost missed her going by! You should get wing-mirrors on the front of the shop so we could see them coming!
Skin cancer
8 May 2010
Lots of older customers have skin cancer on the top of their ears from sun exposure. It’s a place you wouldn’t normally think of putting sun block, but if you do it now you won’t have a problem when you’re older. Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in Ireland, and it’s no wonder, really, when after a sunny day most people are burned. I guess sunny days are so rare we forget to use sun block. I’ve done it myself.
The scalp is another area that needs protection if you have a very short haircut or a shaved head, so it’s important to use sun block on a scalp covered with short or thinning hair. You can have a look at the Irish Cancer Society’s site: www.cancer.ie/sunsmart.
Exam hairstyle
9 May 2010
Customer (with very long hair): Will you leave my hair long over my ears and over my collar at the back, please?
Barber: Okay. The weather is getting better, though. You’ll be very warm with all that hair.
Customer: I know, but I’ve a lot of my study material recorded, and I put it on my iPod. So if you leave my hair long over my ears no-one will see the headphones, and if it’s over my collar at the back I can run the wire from the headphones down into my shirt from the back.
Barber: You should get an A just for coming up with that!
‘Cash for gold’
10 May 2010
Customer: There’s been a spate of robberies since they started this ‘cash for gold’ promotion. Lads are breaking into houses to get gold to sell. They don’t ask for receipts. I guess not many people would have receipts anyway.
Barber: There are people out there who’d take the gold out of your teeth.
Customer: It’s just as well they bury them deep!
No more haystack hair in the morning
12 May 2010
In the morning does your hair look like a bird’s nest, with bits sticking out everywhere? Well, I was cutting an older gent’s hair the other day, and he shared a solution . . .
Customer: Why don’t barbers use a hot towel to finish the hair any more?
Barber: What does that do?
Customer: Well, I used to live in London years ago, and they always finished my hair with a hot towel. I use it most days to get my hair to sit down in the mornings. You put a facecloth or towel into hot water—as hot as you can stand with your hands—then squeeze the excess water and put it on your head for a minute or two. It seems to steam-iron your hair flat onto your head.
Barber: Yes, it would do that. Brilliant—I’ll be telling everyone about that.
Greece frightening
13 May 2010
Barber: This bail-out for Greece is frightening. €750 billion. Lenihan says we’ll make a profit, as we’re borrowing the funds at a cheaper rate than the one at which we’re loaning it to the Greeks—but that’s only if they pay us back!
Customer: If they don’t we’ll all be shovelling shite!
How much is a billion?
14 May 2010
Customer: Every year the figures in the papers for national debts are rapidly increasing. It was hundreds of millions; now it’s hundreds of billions. But a billion in the US is different from a billion in the UK. A billion in England is a million million: that’s 1 with twelve zeros; in the US it’s a thousand million: that’s 1 with nine zeros. I don’t know if we use the American value or the English.
Barber: After a million I’m lost. I tried to enter a billion in the calculator on my phone, to divide it, and I could only enter ten million. There wasn’t enough room for all the zeros!
Customer: Here’s a good way to remember it: a million seconds is 12 days; a billion seconds is 31 years; and a trillion seconds is 31,688 years!
Ferry boom!
15 May 2010
Barber: Looks like the ferries will be doing okay for a while. People are saying they’ve changed for the better in the last few years, and it looks like the ash cloud will be disrupting flights for a while longer.
Customer: It’s true, all right. The boats haven’t been this busy since the Famine!
Random pub story
16 May 2010
Customer: In a pub in Dublin there were a few lads who’d always get phone calls at the bar from their wives telling them to come home. You’d mostly hear the lads say to the barman, ‘Tell her I’m not here.’ This happened one day in the pub, and, minutes later, in walks a woman with a dinner tray—knife and fork, the whole lot—and plonks it down on the table in front of her husband. She stares at him for a minute, and there isn’t a sound in the pub or a word said between the two. She turns and walks back across the bar towards the door smiling, ’cause she’s got him good and mortified in front of everyone. But just as she reaches the door her husband shouts out, ‘You forgot the sauce!’ Well, the whole place erupted with laughter! Never saw that woman again.
More jobs lost!
17 May 2010
Customer (a pensioner): What’s going on with the Government. I mean, they’re closing down businesses everywhere: there’s Quinn Insurance, the head shops, and now they closed a load of brothels in town. All those girls will have to sign on the dole, you know!
Ladyboys in Zanzibar
18 May 2010
I miss the stories of excess and the surreal things that happened in Dublin back in the Celtic Tiger era. But this has to be my favourite. We had heard stories like this, as you would from people coming back from holidays abroad, but to hear about it happening in Dublin . . .
Customer (a student): We were all out last night in Zanzibar [a pub], and it was packed—full of girls—so the lads decided to stay, and we all got hammered. Some of us were up dancing, some of us were chatting up girls, but one of our mates had pulled a ladyboy.
Barber: Ladyboys? In Dublin?
Customer: Yeah, there’s a few around—they’re mostly Thai, I think. So we’re trying to tell him, but he’s having none of it. He thought we were winding him up. With the beer-goggles on he thought she was a babe, but we were sober enough to know she was a he.
Barber: So what did you do?
Customer: We went back over to get him, and at this stage he was getting off with the yoke, so we grabbed him and dragged him out of there! He still doesn’t believe it was a ladyboy.
Barber: That was a lucky escape—it could’ve been The Crying Game all over again!
‘Don’t Feed the Gondolas’!
We were talking about the television programme when a customer told us the story behind the name. In a meeting about doing up an area in Cork with the tourists in mind, the customer told us it was suggested that they get some gondolas for the river. The idea seemed to go down well in the room until someone said, ‘It’s all very well for you to suggest putting gondolas on the river, but who’s going to feed them!’
Missing ducks
20 May 2010
Customer: I heard the ducks are disappearing down in the park since that new Chinese takeaway opened!
Barber: No such thing as coincidence!
The Muslim perspective
21 May 2010
Talking to a Muslim about Ramadan.
Customer: Well, I fast every day during Ramadan. From sunrise to sunset I don’t eat or drink.
Barber: Can you have a drink of water?
Customer: No, nothing can pass my lips during the daylight!
Barber: How can you do that when you’re working? It must be hard to do even if you don’t work.
Customer: It is hard, but they’re the rules.
Barber: I’m always amazed at how you follow the rules of your religion so exactly, even when the rules are so strict. Would you not have a drink if there was no-one around? Who would see?
Customer: Allah would see!
Sell your body!
22 May 2010
Talking to a medical student about the bodies they work on for research.
Customer: I was in the room on my own, and it was freezing, so I opened a window. It was quite warm outside, and it never even crossed my mind, but when the lecturer came in he went nuts. ‘The cadavers have to be kept cold,’ he says. ‘They decompose rapidly!’ Man, I felt so stupid. I didn’t have the window open long, but if he hadn’t come in when he did the cadaver would have been unusable.
Barber: Where do they get the bodies? I know they’re donated, but how would you go about it. Do you sign up?
Customer: Ours come from abroad. That way, you don’t end up working on your granddad! But yeah, you can sign up. They pay for it too, I think.
Barber: You have me thinking now: I wonder if they’d give an advance payment or a deposit!
Something’s up underground
23 May 2010
Barber: There was an earthquake in west Clare last week!
Customer: I didn’t hear about that. There must be something going on underground with the earthquake in Clare and the volcano in Iceland!
Fish and chips
24 May 2010
We were talking about the fresh-cod scandal—the chippers using cheap fish—when a customer took us back to the heyday of Burdock’s chip shop at Christ Church.
Customer: I remember queuing outside Burdock’s after closing time on cold winter nights years ago. There would be a long queue outside, and there would be people from all walks of life: celebrities, politicians and all! People would wait as long as it took to get the chips, and once you were inside it was nice and warm. They had a coal-fired frier, and there was a lad who would keep shovelling the coal into the furnace in a corner, like a steam train. They used lard to fry the chips—big square blocks of it. I saw them putting a block in the frier one night when I was there. They really were the best chips you could get.
Barber: I remember it well. I used to keep them under my coat for the walk home when it was freezing out. They were too hot to eat. Probably the coal furnace made the oil hotter than the modern friers today.
Customer: It went up in flames, so the coal-burner had to go back in 1998, and I don’t think it was ever the same after—but that’s just me. Some people said it was a Maguire and Patterson job. But that’s just rumour, I thought, till it went up again in 2009. Then I started to wonder!
Lumpy custard
25 May 2010
Customer: My son is six years old, and he was staying with his grandparents recently. As he’s fond of custard, his granddad was making some for him. So when he served it, my son examined it and told him he didn’t want it. ‘Why?’ his granddad asked. ‘Is there something wrong with it?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’s no lumps in it!’ His granddad explained that custard isn’t supposed to have lumps in it. And my son told him, ‘But my Mam always makes it with lumps!’
Brussels sprouts
26 May 2010
Customer: I’ve been trying to get my kids to eat better food lately: more greens and fruit. It’s not easy, though.
Barber: I know. You probably know the one about pretending a piece of broccoli is a miniature tree.
Customer: I do. I’ve also been telling them Brussels sprouts are Cabbage McNuggets!
Eurovision
27 May 2010
Barber: There’s a lot of talk about the Irish entry for the Eurovision. Did you hear it?
Customer: No, not yet. They say she has a chance, though. The song is meant to be good this time.
Barber: If we win, how could we possibly afford to stage the Eurovision now that we’re looking for pennies just to keep the lights on?
Customer: RTE will have to send out a sniper if we get through to the final!
Gardening tip
28 May 2010
Barber: I’ve been trying to get the weeds out of the garden, and I tried that stuff that kills the weeds and turns them black, but it didn’t work very well.
Customer: That stuff is rubbish. Use diesel.
Barber: Diesel?
Customer: Yeah, diesel. It kills everything. You have to reseed it after no more weeds, though. Doesn’t smell great for a week or two, but, hey—it works!
Highlights
29 May 2010
Customer: I want to get highlights in my hair.
Barber: Okay, that would look well. Do you want them very light blonde?
Customer: I don’t mind as long as they aren’t car-thief yellow.
So true!
30 May 2010
A customer was telling a story about a crazy night out on the town that ended with some of the lads in the garda station and one in the hospital. When he left another customer said:
Customer: You must hear all sorts in here.
Barber: We do indeed.
Customer: I’ve read thrillers that didn’t have that much action in them!
Not so healthy!
31 May 2010
Customer (from the Netherlands): Why is it that your Minister for Health is obese?
Everyone burst out laughing.
The HSE
1 June 2010
Customer (young student): I was doing work experience in the HSE, and, man, I can’t get over the waste in there.
Barber: I’ve had customers tell me about it. No-one seems to do a lot.
Customer: It’s like that, all right. I spent days surfing the web, and no-one said anything. One day they had a meeting, and there were ten people at it. They ordered thirty sandwiches at four euro a pop—for ten people! I asked why they ordered so much and was told they got a selection, ‘cause not everyone likes the same. So why don’t they just ask what people want before they order! It’s nuts! So then they asked me to stay on when I finish work experience.
Barber: Are you going to?
Customer: No, I told them I’d like to work for a living!
Overqualified!
2 June 2010
Customer: My daughter is a lawyer, and she was working in town a few weeks ago. She had to stay in for lunch, so she ordered a pizza with some friends. When it arrived she saw that the lad who delivered it had passed the bar with her. Now he’s delivering pizza!
Barber: We could all be delivering pizza soon, the way things are going.
Barber-shop phone calls
3 June 2010
The phone rang. I answered it, and as soon as I had said, ‘Hello. You’re through to the barber shop,’ the caller hung up. I went back to the customer whose hair I was cutting and told him what had happened . . .
Barber: That’s the fou
rth time today: people keep ringing and hanging up. It happens all the time! Customer: I do that myself to see if you’re open.
Barber: What! Why don’t you say anything?
Customer: Well, I’d feel pretty stupid saying, ‘Hello, are you open?’ So I just hang up and come down!
Barber: The mystery is solved!
Do you drink much, Mr Murphy?
4 June 2010
A customer told me his granddad, Mr Murphy, wasn’t well, and the doctor was called. After examining the patient, the doctor asked a few questions . . .
‘So,’ the doctor says, ‘talk me through a normal day from the time you get up in the morning.’
My granddad tells him he gets up and has breakfast. Then he says, ‘I ramble down to the pub for one or two and pick up a paper.’
‘What do you do after that?’ asks the doctor.
‘I’d go home for something to eat, then, around lunchtime.’
‘Very good,’ says the doctor. ‘And then after lunch what would you do?’
‘Well, I’d ramble down to the pub for one or two, you know—watch the horses on the telly.’
‘Well, when someone says one or two drinks it tends to be more. Anyway, what do you do then?’
‘Ah, I’d stay there till my tea was ready, and I’d go home.’