well done Snatty
to off-set this obvious brag post I feel you owe us an extra Guinnes story though
Just for you dear boy and having read my obvious brag post again I feel I owe you all this memory, but before I do I would like to point out that after one chat to me on Wednesday night Dingdells luck changed completely.........coincidence, surely not. So if you see me, come up and have a chat. If everybody does it at the bash we could keep this run going
Anyway as I have mentioned previously the Guinness marketing team were in honesty pretty astute if linguistically challenged. I mean paradigm shift was straight out of somebody's text book. One thing that they did come up with was the Dummy fount. Now as you are all aware lager sells more than bitter and bitter sells more than Guinness unless you are in certain strongholds of the black beer religion. To ensure that there was a Guinness presence at both ends of the bar we were instructed to place a dummy fount. A dummy fount looked like the normal dispenser but had a bottle opener behind it.
Now the fount at this time was a plastic replica of a straight glass of Guinness that was lit from the inside. Most pubs did not have the brass fittings that you see in the majority of places today, so finding space on the bar was sometimes challenging. Not only that but everybody elses founts were also lit so finding power or a spare socket so that it was lit was also troublesome. There was a target though so it had to be done. In our cars we had transformers, plugs, cabling, lightbulbs, wirestrippers, dummy founts and of course an industrial stapler.
So I am in call and I have identified the need for a dummy fount in a pub in Finchley. I get all the stuff out and in my suit and tie start this installation. Now Clive during my training had shown me how to do it all, and do it quickly, but I am a Jewish man and two things about the Jewish man that you should already know from this thread is that we can't dance and in addition we do not do DIY. Now the rest of the male society just think we are being clever in the fact that if you do something so badly you are never asked to do it again, but I can tell you we are genuinely awful at it and DIY.
It is going quite well and I have managed to wire the plug to the transformer and found a socket. I am now stripping the wire to connect the fount to the transformer. Connect it all up and bugger me if the fount doesn't light up just like it is supposed to. Fix the fount in the desired location using the clamp between a Skol (I don't even know if Skol even exists any more) fount and the bitter fount. It is at this point that the trouble starts. You know what I am talking about. Job done, getting a bit cocky, chatting up the antipodean barmaid as you do, when I suddenly realise that having stapled the wiring in place using industrial staples, the wire is now too short. Gorgeous blonde laughing at my jokes suddenly realises the problem and makes sure that I have an audience of the whole bar.......well the dozen or so that are in there.
So I pull the cabling out and I do it again. I am shaking and blushing and suffering terribly. All I can think is that it can't possibly get any worse as I am stapling the wire back to the underside of the bar at which point ladies and gentlemen I realise I can't move as I have stapled my Guinness tie there as well. To this day the stapling of the tie to the underside of the bar I regard as a miracle. I mean the tie defied the laws of gravity to get there. It had to. I can't find the correct descriptive word for the shade of red I turned, crimson would be close.
After a couple of minutes I have composed myself enough to a) extricate the tie situation and b) finish the installation. I think looking back on it the good lord was just showing me the error of my ways in chatting up the very good looking barmaid and I hope that this fairly embarrassing interlude makes up for the blatant brag post
Author