Hello Mr Chips

A very good friend of mine has asked if he could post the odd article now and then to help give the blog a different perspective. Chippers has held many titles in life but none more enjoyable than when he was a keeper of buildings. This was over thirty years ago, but it still seems fresh in this mind. It was in this line of duty he was called upon to attend what’s known in the trade as ‘a large obstruction’ in one of the toilets. Training in those days was at a minimum and he merrily went ahead to clear the blockage with all the gusto of a dwarf heading down to the mine. He used a mixture of three toxic cleaning products to dislodge a huge richard the third that had got stuck in a ladies toilet. A good dollop of chlorine bleach, ammonia and a drain cleaner was sprinkled down the pan without hesitation. After collapsing due to fume inhalation, the huge richard the third then erupted like mount vesuvius and spread a toxic mix of the brown stuff all over the walls, ceiling, and floor. As he collapsed two people passing the toilet must have heard him kick the bucket and managed to drag him feet first out of the loo. He was revived by an old lady who was eating an orange at the time. Sightseers have said she had to take her teeth out before giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation. His only physical injury was a large graze to his nose as he was slowly dragged out on the coarse floor tiles. Mentally, who knows what it has done to him, but one thing we all know is that he still harbours issues with oranges. To this day he still gives new recruits a tour of the building, ending in the ladies toilet where he makes sure they all see the ceiling which is still pitted with sweet corn craters left from the incident years ago. He talks about this incident as though it was something like roswell. He tells them there is a conspiracy theory as to why the ceiling has never been refurbished. Over the many years he has worked there, when the preverbal shit has hit the fan, the manager has always walked him into the toilet and asked him to look up. What a strange place he works in. He goes on to tell them “a cloud seemed to hang in the air for hours and so sanilav toilet cleaner citrus fresh was used. Three hours later the building manager had heard about the incident and walked straight into the toilet for a crap and said to him “cor someone’s shit an orange”. Since that day a traumatised chippers still finds it hard to eat an orange. This obsession has lead him to paint the orange before eating it.


Chippers gave up this line of work ages ago and although he is no where near retiring age, his mind retired last year. Never fear though, we will all benefit from his pearls of wisdom.