The Piano

It was only in latter years that I nurtured any real respect for the piano. Professor Longhair and the Mississipi delta crew are now heroes of mine but that was not always the case, in fact my first encounter with said instrument occurred when I was thirteen years of age. It wasn't at a piano lesson I might add, it was quite the opposite. I was enlisted to break up the up-right piano which had proudly stood in the bar of the Pierre hotel for a generation. Now, anyone who has ever broken up a piano knows the best way to go about it, is to roll it off the roof of a six storey building, unfortunately I had never met anyone so knowledgable in such matters so I decided on a different tact. I arrived in the Pierre at 8.30am on a Saturday morning with a  sledgehammer and a Bushman saw. I gently placed the Bushman on the Tremolo pedal and climbed onto the piano with the sledgehammer. I then swung the 20Ib hammer in a 180 degree arc and hit the upright section of the soundboard full square with the hammer. I fully expected the piano to disintegrate into thousands of un-recognisable pieces beneath me, but no, that was not the case. The hammer merely bounced off the rosewood panel sending the key of C reverberating around the hotel at 150 decibels. Within 2 minutes the entire roll-call of guests had assembled at the reception demanding an explanation for the unannounced early morning alarm call which had unexpectedly echoed around the hotel. Silvio didn't hang around to answer any questions but instead made lively out the back door and lived to tickle the ivories another day. That was one crap job I'll never forget, neither will the guests in the Pierre!!

East Berlin

Herr Grabosch drove me from Nurnberg to East Berlin in his 4x4 at a steady 100mph.The journey was punctuated by slugs from a Jagermeister bottle, and comments about how marvellous the autobahn's were. I think we stopped once for a piss, god knows I needed one, after the amount of weiss-beer I consumed the previous night. When I got to East Berlin I hooked up with two bricklayers and a plasterer, who were going to help me build a basement for a timber framed house. The client was a Eurovision fan, who thought the sun shone out of Johnny Logans arse. And that my friends is were the proverbial shit hit the fan!!. Herr Grabosch handed me the plans and quickly drove off down the autobahn. Just about the same time, we realised that all info on the drawings was in German, unfortunately nobody had considered doing a crash course in German before they flew over. This problem was further exacerbated when deliveries of the wrong materials started to arrive. The delivery drivers insisted on leaving them on site, saying Herr Grabosch had ordered them. We couldn't argue even if we wanted too. The Johnny Logan fan wasn't too happy when Herr Grabosch ordered a lean mix concrete for the ring-beam and we barrowed it in to the formwork. Needless to say the whole lot had to be removed, but by then I was already half way through my fifth bottle of weiss-beer and enthusiastically singing the chorus of 'What's another year?'. That was one crap job I'll never forget.

The Drop Off

When I got a job as a courier I thought all my birthdays had come at once!. Just sit in the van with the radio and the heater on, and drive from A to B. What could be easier?. That my friend is where Silvio made his first mistake. You see normally parcels that are getting delivered to someone have the correct name and address on them, but not my parcels. My f@%king parcels never had the right address or the right contact number for the person they were going too, which meant that Silvio drove around Ireland like a gobshite, paying for his own diesel, while he tried to find people using telepathy. Eventually the parcels did get delivered, which owed more to my powers of detection, than anything to do with the efforts of the courier company. After three days of touring the country against my will, I decided to deliver my notice to the boss. Luckily, he was at the address the company stated!. That was one crap job I'll never forget, nor should you!!

The Fire Escape Caper

Definitely one of the crappiest jobs I've ever had. I was working in a well known hostelry in Dublin when the manager caught me by surprise and asked me to carry all the double beds down from the top floor to the bottom." No probs", replies Silvio," I'll just get someone to give me a hand". Then the boss says "bring them all down the fire escape Silvio, we don't want to be troubling the guests as they're going up the stairs". The job had just shifted from the mild headache category into the major migraine division. Anyway, everything went O.K to begin with, we got three King size beds down by 9.30a.m, bases and mattresses and we decided we'd try for one more before heading for the tea. I hadn't had much of a breakfast to start with and was beginning to feel the weaker for it. We carried a King size mattress to the top of the fire escape fully intending to carry it down to the car-park below, when suddenly I slipped, and accidentally pushed the mattress out the door. I heard a scream from outside, and the noise of someone falling quickly down flights of aluminium stairs. The mattress quickly followed, as I tried to regain my foothold and hold in the laughter. The boss arrived, accused my mate of lying down on the job and sacked him. I left soon after. That was one crap job I'll never forget!!!.