John went over to see Eddie yesterday, who’s basically someone we do work for and them for us and, as is customary, they got chatting.
Eddie was messing about with a plug, or something and John told him he that he wanted to be careful he didn’t electrocute himself – not in a Health & Safety type way, but in a more jocular manner.
Eddie piped up and said, ” Electrocuted! Don’t talk to me about being electrocuted! I’ll give you my top ten if you want.”
I presume this means Eddie has been electrocuted more than ten times, but it still didn’t stop him reeling them off. I won’t go through them all, but there was one time he rewired a whole house and it was only once he got round to doing the last plug that he realised everything was still live. He found this out by cutting through one of the wires and his snippers careering out of the window.
Another time he was working at a firm and a forklift truck ran over the wire to his sanding disc. Unbeknowns to Eddie the truck had cut the wire. Consequently, when he flicked the switch he received a full 240v. John asked him what happened next and Eddie replied he didn’t fully remember as he’d passed out at some point, but he did recall it being “a bit of a bastard to let go of.”
However, my favourite electrocution tale comes from a pal of mine whose last name is Brennan and bears more than a passing resemblance to Lily Savage when not in drag.
A good few years ago, he managed to blag himself a job at a cotton mill as an electrician’s assistant. Now, if we’re being honest, he doesn’t even know how to put a plug into a socket, let alone change one. Still, he got the job with a bit of charm, some pretend DIY skills and the promise that he’d go on a course for advanced sparkies.
For two weeks, he managed to follow the chief sparky round the factory handing him his tools and making brews. It was quite a cushy little number. That was until the head electrician took an unexpected day off and one of the machines unexpectedly went down. Lily was called into action immediately and set about sorting it out. Everyone was a bit frantic as it was the main machine and production had ground to halt.
With quite a crowd, he whipped open his toolbox, grabbed the first screwdriver he came across and went straight for the operating panel. He poked at one of the connections and there was an almighty flashing and a banging.
Lily came round on the sick bay table having been thrown ten feet through the watching crowd and only stopping as he hit the nearest wall. The fool had failed to switch the power off and failed to pick up an electrician’s screwdriver.
As he tried to focus, feeling slightly worse for wear, the first face he saw was that of the boss who’d hired him in the first place looking less than happy.
He bent over Lily and the first thing he hissed was “You’ve never done this before have you?”
He didn’t wait for a reply and just disappeared. To this day Lily has no idea whether that meant he was sacked.
