My brother tells this true story. Every time I think of it I burst out laughing. Now, you might have to be Irish to get the humour in it but I'll take my chances as the story truly deserves the light of a bigger audience.
Bro is an engineer and would travel a lot up and down Ireland. You might think being an engineer would be an awful bore of an old job. But no. It had its moments.
He was up in the backside of Mayo one day and was running out of petrol and he found this old shop off the beaten track with a petrol pump outside and pulled in. An oul fellah came out, a dirty, greasy oul fellah and filled up the car.
"Where would I get a bite to eat?" sez Bro, noting it was well past his lunch time and he was starving.
"Ah, sure, I can take care of yez," sez Yer Man.
So Bro follows Yer Man into the shop which reflected the condition of Yer Man himself. It hadn't seen a duster or a wipe down since God was an altar boy.
"I'll be fixing yez up so, a good thick sammich," sez Yer Man, hauling out a big round of brown soda bread and slapping it on the filthy counter. Next, he retrieves a huge slab of ham from somewhere and Bro notes it is crawling with bluebottles (big flies). Yer Man then goes into a drawer and selects a rusty, dusty carving knife and with a flourish pulls out a filthy rag from his back pocket and proceeds to wipe down the knife.
It's at this point in the proceedings that he catches the appalled look on Bro's face. Completely misinterpreting the look as approval for how well he's conducting his lunch preparation, he says proudly:
"Arragh I'm a hoor for the hygiene."
I bet your brother suddenly remembered a very urgent appointment!!
ReplyDeletePoor in hygiene but rich in language!
ReplyDeleteCome on, don't let us hang in suspense. Did bro eat the samich?
ReplyDeleteI think if it were me I would already have made my excuses and run to the car feeling slightly queasy. I assume hygiene inspectors never get as far as the backside of Mayo.
ReplyDeleteI'm echoing Rummuser, and.....??
ReplyDeleteNow I'm oddly peckish. A ham sandwich would slip down nicely.
Oh lawdy lawdy us Irish have off the beam senses of humour. Obviously.
ReplyDeleteDid noone catch the humour in this?
Maybe you have to hear the voices or something.
Yer Man thought himself a "hoor for the hygiene" when he was anything but.
And yes, in the way of our family Bro took and paid for the sammich and promptly tossed it to the gulls first chance he got. But that wasn't the point.....
XO
WWW
I got it. Since my mother died my brother is a bit of "a hoor for the hygiene" himself. I wouldn't eat anything prepared in his kitchen for love or money!
ReplyDeleteWell, yeah, I got it. 'Twas why I had tried to compose my response in the same vein.
ReplyDeleteAs to Irish....my last name started as Ó Maolagain, shortened by Ellis Island in 1838 to Mulligan.
Came through loudly and clearly, and that's from a thought-I-had-Irish-ancestry person who since has found English ancestry and not a speck of Irish, to my chagrin.
ReplyDeleteI heard your voice in every word and the perfect punchline had me in fits. X
ReplyDeleteOh, Lord love a duck!
ReplyDeleteThough I'll never be able to roll it off me tongue like a true Irishman, I'm adding this one to me lexicon. N'er again will I make an excuse for cats on the counter or a stack of dishes sitting in a cold muck of soapy water in the sink. I'll just shoo the cat off, and say I'm soaking the dishes for the third day because, "I'm a hoor for hygiene."