D’ya hear yer man

With nine weeks to go until junior’s estimated due date, Karen and I have been getting prepared for the new arrival.

We’ve emptied a wardrobe of clutter (mostly mine) and begun to fill it with essentials for mother and baby.

I can’t help but feel Karen is getting the raw end of the deal. While the baby is amassing a collection of cute and colourful babygrows and beautiful knitted items, Karen, on the advice of our pregnancy book, has had to purchase disposable pants and breast pads.

I never thought pregnancy was easy, but I’ve come to learn just how uncompromisingly difficult it is for women. Karen is getting kicked and punched left, right and centre by her passenger and as her bump grows proportionately to her discomfort, I can’t help but feel a bit guilty and useless. Karen is doing all the hard work and the best I can do is to offer to give her a back rub or make her a cup of tea.

On Saturday I played my first game of rugby this season. I came home on Saturday night bruised and battered. Karen can’t understand why, at my age, I don’t just give it up.

For now, the reason I keep playing is out of sympathy for her. I think it’s only fair that if she’s suffering from intense pain causing by a barrage of kicks and punches, then I should be too.

A load of bull

My dad and I enjoy the odd lunchtime game of darts. I challenged him to a game last Thursday confident I could maintain my 28-game unbeaten streak.

We had a brief warm-up before aiming for the bull to determine who would throw first. My dad hit the bullseye dead centre and I didn’t come anywhere close, so he took pole position and started the game.

Buoyed by the momentum of hitting darts’ ‘holy grail’ dad built up a good lead, but began to falter as he neared a finish. I got my act together and stared to close the gap.

I required 110 to finish and dad was on 71. He stepped up and only managed to hit single one. I breathed a sigh of relief. He then hit single 20 and was left with 50 and one dart to take it out with.

“You might as well go for the bull - you’ve already hit it once,” I said. I was banking on lightning not striking twice.

As you’ve probably guessed, I was wrong. With his final dart he struck the centre of the board with the sort of accuracy that would have Sid Waddell out of his seat and screaming.

Dad stood there milking the applause from the imaginary crowd. Stung by the defeat I immediately demanded a rematch the next day.

“I mightn’t be able to play you tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve an appointment to get my eyes tested,” added the man who’d just hit two bullseyes.

Dessie is some bai

Some of you may have noticed the competition on the previous page to win tickets to see Des O’Connor in the Waterfront.

When discussing the competition in the office, Ruairi chipped in with a question which I’ll not forget for at least two weeks.

“Who’s Des O’Connor?” he asked. “Is he some local bai?”

Bai, for anyone reading this outside Lurgan, means an individual of the male persuasion.

I suppose, if you weren’t aware of Des O’Connor, given the name, it’s an easy conclusion to jump to that he comes from Lurgan.

Dessie O’Connor from the ‘Back of the Wall’, with one leg shorter than the other and a thirst for stout, sounds like a fairly believable character.

Dodgy joke

An Irish man and a Welsh man go to Disneyland. As they’re entering the Magic Kingdom the Irish man spots a low beam and says to his Welsh friend, “Taffy, duck!”

The Welsh man walks straight into the beam and is knocked out cold. When he comes round his friend asks him, “Did you not hear me say, ‘Taffy, duck’?”

“I did, Paddy,” says the Welsh man, “but I prefer Mickey Mouse.”

Weekly teaser

The answer to last week’s teaser was: 1985 bottles of whiskey are more valuable than 1977 bottles because there’s more of them.

Here’s this week’s teaser: A carton contains six eggs. If six people each take an egg how can there be one egg left in the carton?