D’ya hear yer man

It’s been a funny old week at the Lurgan Mail. Normally I only get the chance to scunder one, or at most two, of the ‘MAIL’ staff in my weekly column. This week however, it’s open season at ‘MAIL’ HQ.

Emailing without due care and attention

Anthony Wells, a member of the advertising team, passed his driving test on Thursday. He didn’t want anyone to know he was taking his test so he told us he was going to a hospital appointment.

Thankfully he didn’t end up scudding himself by crashing the car, failing his test, and ironically ending up with a hospital appointment.

In fairness to Anthony I’ve been told he’s actually a very careful driver. It’s just a pity he wasn’t so careful when sending emails.

Obviously buoyed by his driving success, Anthony attempted to send an email to his fiancee, addressing her as ‘Babes’ and showering her with hugs and kisses. Unfortunately for him, he disregarded his recently acquired road skills and failed to look both ways before putting the email into gear. Instead of going to his fiancee it ended up in the inbox of his boss, advertising manager Robbie Abraham.

Within minutes of the amorous email Anthony was summoned to Robbie’s office... where his boss was waiting for him with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of fizzy wine.

Points of view

Our photographer Geoff Cousins was quite critical of last week’s column. He said it was too long. I was shellshocked. Not once have I complained about Geoff’s photographs having too many people in them.

Geoff said he doesn’t like long anecdotes in the column, he prefers short oddities. His wife must like short oddities too. She married one after all.

I shouldn’t be too hard on Geoff this week saying as he became a granddad again on Tuesday. And to think someone once asked me and Geoff if we were brothers.

Fellow reporter Ruairi Creaney also made a few derisory comments about ‘Yer Man’ last week. There’s just no pleasing some people. Ruairi freely admits that he models himself on revolutionary socialist Karl Marx, but there’s times when he’s more like Karl’s brother - Groucho.

Boss vs spider

‘MAIL’ receptionist Jenna Flynn went to the cinema twice within three days last week... to see the same film.

Jenna liked Horrible Bosses so much that she had to go back and see it again.

I suggested to her that having worked for the Lurgan Mail for over a year surely she’d had her fill of horrible bosses.

Rather than describe her boss Robbie as horrible last Thursday, Jenna was hailing him as her knight in shining armour.

Robbie came to the rescue after a big spider was spotted in the men’s toilets. With myself and Anthony unable to capture the giant beast, Robbie told a petrified Jenna that he’d managed to locate it and flush it down the loo.

It was a foolproof story, except on Monday the same humungous spider came back to expose Robbie’s act of bravado as a well-intentioned lie.

The offending creature was bashed on the head with a copy of the Lurgan Mail. The spider on the other hand was treated more humanely.

Rail ghostbusters

I think that’s enough about the ‘MAIL’ staff this week. I’ll move on to matters of a more general nature.

I’m convinced Northern Ireland Railways have started employing ghosts as conductors in order to make efficiency savings.

My suspicions of spectral activity on the railways were confirmed when the automated train announcer reminded passengers not holding a valid ticket to purchase one from the conductor as he “passes through” the train.

Weekly teaser

The answer to last week’s teaser was: the prisoner walks five minutes down the path then turns and starts walking back towards the prison in time for the guard to see him. The guard, presuming that he is a visitor trying to get in to the open prison, turns him away because he doesn’t have the proper papers. Therefore the prisoner is free to go.

Here’s this week conundrum: I often go into the police station, sometimes in the middle of the night, and destroy considerable numbers of fingerprints. I do not, however, consider myself a criminal. Who am I?