Blog Archives
Newmills Mechanic Nearly The Dearest In Europe
By Aughoughilley Schniffles
It has been revealed in recent EU cost comparison analysis that a mechanic inNewmills has the second most expensive per hourly rate in Europe, coming behind only a Ferrari garage in Rome.
Dunlop changing oil filters
“Luck-see, there’s a rake of reasons why we need till charge like we do. First you have the dippers about this time of year. They love a bit of overtime in the long evenings. Sure ’cause of the manoeuvres taken to avoid the dippers, we see all sorts through the gates here; new gear boxes, new engines, not to mention fuel filters! That wee Lithuanian lad has been changing one an hour this last week- haven’t ye Dmitri?.”
“Yous boys come here talking about me being dear an all that – sure you just have till look at the bonfires, and the tyres that get used up there, hi. Sure coming up to the twelfth and between now and Halloween you couldn’t keep a tyre about the place for love nor… well, just for love.”
Man Finally Sells Choc Ice At Washinbay Resort After 24 Years. Retires.
The man who walks up and down the shores of Lough Neagh selling handbags, sunglasses and mineral, despite there being no customers since 1990, has finally made a sale after Fr Fay bought a Choc-Ice for £1 yesterday evening.
Pat Quinn celebrated the windfall by buying ten 10p mix-ups at Falls’ shop, giving two to his wife Brenda.
Washingbay resort, which used to see thousands flock to from all over Europe to bathe in the icy eely waters, closed its doors to the public 24 years ago in preparation for the failed lignite excavations. Quinn, however, failed to give up on his sideline of selling useful goods to bathers and excited children and roamed the shore from 3pm-9pm every day since, rain, hail or dull.
An elated Quinn added:
“I’m ecstatic. I haven’t sold a thing since 1990 as no one comes here any more. I can’t describe the loneliness of it all. But I knew some day someone would cross my path and wasn’t it divine intervention – Fr Fay. He says he was just checking the area to make sure young ones weren’t curting in cars and hedges. I don’t give a damn what he was at – he bought a Choc-Ice. I’m retiring today.”
Fr Fay maintains this was just the start of a cleaning up of morals and standards in today’s youth in East Tyrone. From the front door of his mansion he told us:
“It’s a back to basics approach. All I see now is young ones walking about probably looking for courting and stuff wearing shorts and vests and winking. In my day I was in the bog stooling away or saying the rosary. I’ll put the romance out of them. I’ll be in the Greenvale this weekend and I’ll not hesitate to step in if I recognise one of my parishioners facing someone from another parish.”
Fr Fay added that the Choc-Ice was alright just.
Lough Neagh’s ‘Speedgoat’ Business Folds
Patsy Cush and Graham the goat on his maiden ride
After only one week in operation, the Lough Neagh Speedgoat Company have closed due to multiple unforeseen difficulties.
The initiative, which received backing from the European Funding Association, suffered immediate teething problems when Gregory, their flagship goat, refused to enter the water due to the extremely cold temperature of the lough. Company CEO, Janet Donnelly, admitted it’s back to the drawing board for Lough Neagh money making ideas:
“We honestly thought the idea of speedgoats would see people flock to Lough Neagh from afar a field as Colombia or Sudan. It turns out goats aren’t deadly swimmers. We did managed to find one named Graham who didn’t mind the water that much but didn’t really move much. In fact, he just floated there looking a bit confused.”
The Lough Neagh Speedgoat Company called it a day after their three water-friendly goats found themselves constantly brawling with the lough’s natural residents such as eels, minks, pollan and midges.
“It wasn’t going to make much money. Children were sort of afraid of the whole concept and they were our target audience. Patsy Cush thought his ride was class but he was a lone voice and he has always been easily amused. The money is still there though so we’ll get thinking about new business ventures on the lough.”
Brocagh Primary School have recently run a competition for ideas on how to improve tourism on the lough. Suggestions have included:
- floating competitions
- dragon boat racing
- underwater rugby
- aqua aerobics
- reality show on water about fishing with phone votes and stuff
Codology To Be Studied At Dungannon Met College
Experienced eejitry
The Southern Education and Library Board have denied the accusation that they are offering soft qualifications after Dungannon Met announced that from September 2014 a BTEC First Diploma in Codology which will be worth 4 GSCEs if successfully completed. The new course, which will be monitored closely by education boards across Europe, proposes to vigorously examine 16-18 year olds on all aspects of Codology including modules called ‘Acting The Clift’, ‘Bollocksing About’ and ‘Eejit Studies’.
Lecturer Francie Moore from Carnan reckons it will give local Tyrone youths a fine grounding on life before they’re tossed out into the real world:
“Yes, Codology is possibly the most important life-skill a fine young Tyrone woman or man should master before they get their hands dirty with trades or office work. When I was growing up we were forced to learn about codology from probably the age of two. I remember acting the bollocks in P2. These young ones nowadays are well into their 20s before they get to grips with being a clift with any degree of accuracy. Tyrone will be a better place for this course.”
Local sceptic and Newmills greengrocer Johnny Adams remains unconvinced that we’ll see any improvement in general skulduggery in the county:
“I can’t see it. In previous years I’d lose about £400 worth of sweets to thieves per month as well as about £200 worth of damage. Lads and lassies now can’t be bothered to bollocks about and have their heads constantly in phones. This is a waste of taxpayers’ money. You need to pump funds into the primary schools to make sure full blown codology is ingrained by the time they hit the big school.”
The first module called ‘Acting The Lig or Jack’ involves students wrecking about outside the Fort, stealing traffic cones and slagging family members. Their final module after two years involves a 3-hour exam on ‘Being a Complete Frigger’.
Dr Brian Cox Can’t Explain Concept Of Time In Stewartstown
A Stewartstown taxi-driver
After five days of intensive observation, housewife eye-candy Dr Brian Cox has headed back to England ‘despondent and bewildered’ after failing to explain how time has developed completely different dimensions in Stewartstown compared to everywhere else in the world.
Speaking from his laboratory in London, Cox revealed a few of the unsolvable conundrums which have left him a broken man:
“They kept this from us at the College of Physics I went to. For example, on the first night I went for a pint in the Roadside Tavern and the bartender said he’s be with me ‘in a minute’. I timed him and he returned to me in 4 mins 33 seconds. In that period he had checked the horse racing and spoke to another punter about Logan and the Under 21s. I just couldn’t work out if I’d just witnessed time travel or not. I couldn’t sleep that night.”
As Cox collected more evidence of a parallel universe in Stewartstown he explained another phenomenon which confirmed that time had different properties in mid-Ulster.
“I wanted to go to Cookstown to buy jeans in the world-famous market and asked a local if I needed to get a bus to there. He said it was ‘only down the road’ and that it was only ‘a locka minutes’. TWO HOURS it took walking and I was near wrote off on the Poplar Hill Road by a boy from Lissan in an Escort. That confirmed to me that ‘time’ as we know it has bypassed Stewartstown.”
Cox is also investigating the possibility that time is also standing still since the 80s after discovering the following telltale signs:
- 80% of 40 year olds are still wearing A-Team sweatshirts
- Every night closing time in pubs is signalled by the playing of ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe
- Many parents collected their children from school on space-hoppers
- ‘I Shot JR’ is spray-painted on most gable walls.
- ‘Big Hair and Mullet’ combo sales in local barbers.
Washington DC Admits To Listening To Phonecalls In Drumquin, Clady And Augher
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
In the wake of last week’s news of the security services in America listening in on phone calls throughout Europe, an international diplomatic investigation was sparked last night following a confession by a member of staff at the National Security Agency in Washington that he was instructed to secretly listen in on phone calls across County Tyrone.
“Gee, the guys were looking for a dude to secretly listen in to calls in County Teerone, and man, I guess I was the fall guy right from the get-go, being Irish an’ all”, said 28-year old Brent McRobertson. “My great great great great grand neighbour once went to somewhere near Ireland on vacation, so I guess that means I got the Irish blood in me. Anyways, I was listenin’ to all these calls, and seriously, these Teerone guys are crazy. They had all this talk of suckin’ diesel, and I was like, whoa, time check guys! No wonder they’re so unhealthy. That stuff is way disgusting”.
McRobertson said that he initially heard guttural barking and growling noises on the phone, which he initially believed was either interference from a local zoo or satellite disruption, but which subsequently turned out to be two brothers from Augher chatting to each other on the phone. In another phonecall from the Clady area, McRobertson said he overheard death threats being made.
“It was givin’ me the jeepers, man. These guys kept saying they were going to ‘kill Eeshil’ on Friday night, and that they were gonna take a couple of ‘owl blades’ with them. Is an owl blade some sorta bad-ass weapon? Aw man, it sounded like something bad was goin’ down. And who’s Eeshil? Is he some kinda gang leader? That dude’s gonna be history, period”.
McRobertson admitted that despite his Irish credentials he was not completely familiar with some of the local vernacular.
“What’s a ‘buckenbrolly’? Phone call after phone call folks kept talking about ‘that buckenbrolly’, and they were calling it a ‘clift’ which I think means cliff. Is it a place or some sort of geological feature? I tried to find out more on this local social networking site called ‘Slabber’, but it was the pits man”.
One of McRobertson’s colleagues spent an hour on the phone listening to a high-pitched screeching which was later identified as two women from Drumquin arguing about their favourite Nathan Carter track. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and had to receive extensive counselling.
Tyrone Enjoys Heat Wave As Weather Re-Classification Index Takes Effect
“Mild, with showers”
BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE
New rules to ensure greater parity between cold weather climates such as Tyrone and its warmer-weather European counterparts came into effect today.
The EU’s AWWA ‘Appalling Weather Weighting Allowance’ will now allow towns with generally disappointing weather to re-classify its weather forecasts, to ensure that it is not meteorologically-disadvantaged compared to its European cousins.
Council spokesperson Audi Pyper explained.
“For years we’ve got our hopes up that the climate’s improving and it turns out cat. We’ve had an ongoing programme in the County to persuade everyone to contribute towards increase global warming, because it would do wonders for the climate, but it’s not worked. Global warming unfortunately isn’t coming to Tyrone any time soon, so this is great news”.
Examples of the new index are shown in the table below, which are now in place with immediate effect.
|
Old Description |
New Description |
| Warm | Scorching |
| Breezy | Hot |
| Mild | Warm |
| Windy | Pleasant |
| Heavy Rain | Mild |
| Torrential Rain | Mild |
| Blizzards | Mild |
| Hurricane | Mild with showers |
| Sub-zero | Fresh |
Residents in Tyrone now face the exciting prospect of calling this month a genuine ‘Indian Summer’, where ‘Indian’ can be interpreted as ‘prolonged’, and ‘summer’ means ‘downpours’. “Yesterday it was horizontal rain in Edendork, proper pelting down”, said Pyper, “But apparently under the new index we can now call it ‘a slight chance of drizzle’. Class. Think what this’ll do for the tourist trade”.
Prospective tourist Thad McMasterson from America, seemed to agree.
“Gee, doncha jus’ love County Teerone? We checked the forecast with you fine people and it said it’s gonna be hot, hot, hot, all the way through the fall. I just gotta get myself and my wife Marleen ourselves a piece of that action. We’ll be right with y’all, just as soon as we’re done invading folks in some foreign country or other”.
Forecasters from the Met Office are predicting a slight dip in the weather next week, which is expected to be mild with showers.
Dromore Courting Rituals To Be Studied at Queen’s
Happily married Dromore couple, today
Despite allegations that degrees and masters have been dumbed down over the past decade, Queen’s University have announced that they are to run a course in Courting Rituals in 2013, focusing mostly on the romantic customs around the Dromore and Tummery Road area. In what will be surely a tourism boost for the area, the course coordinator, Dr Gary Greene, claimed that the field trips will centre mainly on the Dromore area, taking in the night time habits in the dances and ceili at the weekends.
“There’s no denying that courting customs in the Dromore area are unique to most in the northern hemisphere. I have been studying them closely and feel there is enough to go on to create an honours degree in the subject. One such well-known custom I experienced up close during a Hallowe’en bonfire a couple of weeks ago. It started out with young women of all sizes sitting together around the bonfire and turning their spinning wheels. A group of men draped in red blankets and playing musical instruments, like the triangle or the spoons, approaches them, and each man chooses a woman to serenade with a song by one of the many country and western singers from Tyrone. If the woman of his choice likes him back, she’ll take out a small stool from under her skirt and invite him to sit on it. Then the man will wrap her in his red blanket, and they’ll start eating the face off each other, in a romantic-ish way. It really is a townland of passion.”
Other Dromore rituals such as ‘burdin’ (boarding in English) need to be witnessed inside the home. “Burdin” was once a common courting practice in northwestern Europe and Colonial America but is only practised in Dromore and especially on the Fintona Road. With parental oversight, an adolescent boy and girl would stay the night together in the same bed, but tightly wrapped in separate blankets, sometimes with a thick burd (board) or plank placed between them. This setup permitted intimacy but no groping. Parents says it got them used to the opposite sex whilst preventing them going ‘buck mad’ when they turned 18.
Dromore has the lowest percentages of divorce in Europe and is said to be rife with pleasant copulation.
Tyrone Tribulations 