Veteran road painter’s shame as he runs out of paint

Mishap

57-year old Gerald Markford told of his “Utmost shame and embarrassment,” when he realised that he had run out of paint whilst marking out a 3-mile stretch of road in Devon. The experienced road-worker, who was first employed by the local authority in 1958, said that he had been thinking about his niece’s Christening that was taking place at the weekend when “I looked down and realised that there weren’t any bleedin’ paint in the roller thing. I’d been walking for 300 yards, overalls and all, with not a drop of goodness coming out of my thinger no matter how hard I pulled and tugged on it.”

The road, which has since been repainted fully, was missing numerous important markings which “Could have caused a terrible accident if one of them wonky knocker-lorries had come busting down the road” like they sometimes does. They might have crashed into something big and spilt all them nice apples all over the place.” This would be particularly shocking as Gerald is “very fond of apples, ‘specially them fresh ones. My dear old Marjorie says that she likes to polish up a big red one until it looks like it’s going to burst its sweet goodness all over her face. Chance would be a fine thing, I says!”

Shaken

Gerald has promised to make sure that this never happens again by “Taking an extra tin pot with me, a practice that I had abandoned back when Saddam started the Gulf War. He was a terrible bugger he was. Scared me stiff whenever I thought of the things he could be doing to me if I was tied up in his chamber of dirty. Marjorie would have a fit if she knew about the things that go through my head sometimes.”

Speaking about his fear of being called up by the army and sent out to fight in the Iraqi desert, he said “If they captured me all I would ask was that they let me keep my overalls on. They are special to me, just you ask my Marjorie!”

“I got years of secrets hiding in the folds of them things.”