The Darndest Things...

Funerals are a bit different all over the world but I find that no matter where they are, the coming together of family and friends mean that all of the best, funniest, stories come out, some may be those family stories that everyone’s heard a million times and some come out of the blue. Here’s one for the archives:

It was the late 1970’s and Tommy-boy was only a wee thing toddling around Belfast with his mummy and daddy. They had a friend who was not only a bit clumsy but also a bit of a potty mouth and was prone to saying, “f*cking Jesus” whenever he dropped something/stubbed his toe/lost his keys etc…

Fast forward a few months and wee Tommy is in the local butcher shop with his mommy. It’s packed out with people getting their shopping in. Now I don’t know if this is actually true but I imagine the other shoppers to be mostly women, perhaps middle-aged moms and grannies getting the meat for Sunday lunch; a solidly ‘good-Catholic’ type of North Belfast lady and I imagine that the butchers was a small shop, a little local hole-in-the-wall (as it still is today.) So, Tommy and Mommy are in the queue. The lady in front of them is placing her order and asks the butcher what kind of cheeses he has today at which point wee Tommy looks up and says to his mommy (and inadvertantly the whole shop) “fucking cheeses.”