Nothing wrong with that....

Nuttin' wrong wid dat

Everyone with the misfortune to be acquainted knows that I'm pretty profane-happy. I've made a promise to BLISS to keep this, as far as possible, a swear-free zone. Now, recently, someone said: “there's nothing wrong with that”...and that reminded me of a story...and that story wasn't for general public consumption. But neither does it involve (necessarily, although, in my opinion, it always helps) any foul language. Perhaps. Though I can't see a way through this without using the word 'arse'.

Fire engines carried (they may still do so) railway warning horns. Simple things. Like oversized, steroid-enhanced kazoos. The idea is that, when working on a railway incident, and knowing the unreliability of the operating companies when it comes to (a) knocking the power off, and (b) keeping it off, you send one bloke one way (up the permanent way, I think the expression is) and another bloke down it, each armed with a warning horn and under instruction to blow the bejesus out of the things if a train happens to come along. Although they were largely rendered redundant as handheld radios became less like gold dust and more readily available, they were simple, and didn't depend on batteries or having a carried signal or line of sight or any of those limitations. They were – and there's no creature more inventive at breaking stuff than a fireman – as near robust foolproofness as it's possible to attain.

Simple, foolproof, nearly unbreakable, and a great source of amusement - a railway warning horn

So, a simple trick. Pick an oncoming watch, preferably one with a gaggle of nasty characters. One that you're not too fond of. Next, tie a shoe label to the handily-placed eyelet on the railway warning horn (there so a user can attach it to his tunic), and write “DEFECTIVE” on the shoe label, and leave it laying around the watchroom, or wherever chaps gather at change of watch.

This is the trick: before dropping it casually on the desk or wherever, the mouthpiece gets, er, inserted. Every watch will have an ideal candidate. The harier, spottier, and lardy of arse the better. There it lies, perfectly good railway warning horn, labelled defective, with a mouthpiece that's been up someone's bottom. Then, and this never fails, in they come, one-by-one, look at the warning horn, look at the label in disgust, blow a tune on it and say “there's nothing wrong with that” and wander off, bemused as to quite why there's so much fun and laughter going on with the off-going watch.

Quite why this is just so staggeringly amusing is bit of a puzzle. But staggeringly amusing it is.