I have a song called "Hard Edge, there is a part in it that goes, "raise a glass for the working man, what could make him do it I could never understand, but I know now cause I've lived that story. And we carry on and we carry one another, and we climb and we climb, but the ladder gets higher and the days get longer, and a laugh becomes your best friend."
In our home growing up, humour was a big thing. Our dad had a collection of sayings that were always applied at the appropriate situation. One of those sayings was "i'll get you a hoop". That applied to our asking for a two wheeler bike. Back in Liverpool, during the war times, if you were on the poorer side you got a hoop that you could beat along as it rolled, with a stick. So that became the comedic answer to"can we have a bike". We didn't have a lot of extra money but we did get a bike eventually, it was second hand, we shared it, and it wasn't a hoop.
One of the more prolific comedic moments of my life could be entitled, "The clown incident." At my construction job, at a refinery, we had a work trailer on site. There were several work trailers for the various trades working there. One day at lunch time I entered the shop side of the trailer, and as I did one of my fellow workers piped up, "you better look at your hanger." On my coat hanger was a clown suit and a coloured wig to match. My boss said, "why don't you put it on." Being me I did just that. So we sat around in the office part of the trailer where a few of us usually had lunch, and had a few laughs. Then lunch was almost over. My boss said, "hey why don't you give some of the other trades a laugh." It sounded like a good idea at the time. I proceeded to put on my hard hat and my tool pouch, with the clown suit of course, and then stepped outside to see if I could grab the attention of the other trades. Unfortunately they weren't quite finished their lunch so I decided to go back in and wait a minute. So at this time the whole crew was in the trailer preparing to go back to work. Suddenly the door opened to the shop part of the trailer and in came the company owner, lets just call him Heinz. A very stern serious german company owner who wouldn't put up with shenanigans. At that moment every head turned to Heinz then to me, then everyone scattered, practically running out the door. I was left facing Heinz, as if it was a gunfight. All I could hear was my boss behind me say,"I don't think I can save you this time Murphy". "What is the meaning of this!" Heinz barked. "We have clowns on the payroll now! This is not a circus!" Apparently it was. I quickly got out of the clown gear and out of the trailer to go back to work. My boss had to go out to lunch with Heinz and had to fight back laughter all through his lunch as he was continually grilled,"why was my man in a clown suit, what is the meaning of this."He was so angry he was ready to fire everybody. Ironically, Heinz was not a fan of me prior to the incident but my boss had spent considerable time building me up to Heinz as a really good worker. and then this, the clown incident.
No-one could stop laughing the rest of the day and the story became one of the legends of Heat and Frost Local 118.