Maintaining swimming pools. I used to maintain swimming pools. My Dad's swimming pool, to be exact, in the Candlelight Inn Hotel in Dunmore East, Co. Waterford, in the glorious republic of Ireland. This involved cleaning the filters, which used a substance called diatomaceous earth (I think that's how it was spelled) to filter the water. I also had to check the chlorine and Ph levels regularly, and of course make sure there was enough water in the pool! In winter the pool wasn't used, so come the spring there would be a big cleaning operation to get ready for the summer season. Occasionally I would dive to the bottom where the drainage sump was and remove various articles such as clumps of hair and the odd set of false teeth.

Driving herrings. I'm sure there are plenty of people who can say they have driven a lorry load of herrings the length of Ireland, but I haven't met too many of them! I was in Dunmore East one winter in the late seventies, during the herring season, when (in those days..) there were plenty of herrings in the Celtic Sea and so employment was generated handling these delicate fish. I was approached by a slightly shady fish merchant from Dungarvan, who had heard that I had a licence to drive an articulated lorry. He offered me fifty quid cash (and don't tell the Revenue Commissioners!) to drive this lorry load of herrings from Dunmore East up to Killybegs in Donegal. Having little else to do at the time, I said yes, and duly departed in a scrappy-looking Hino, pulling a flatback (cool trucker jargon) loaded with boxes with herrings-on-ice at seven o'clock one evening, bound for the road that would lead me north through the bogs to Donegal. What a nightmare! I got half-way up there and my arse was sore from the lorry hopping up and down along these Irish bog roads. I reached Sligo town in the early hours of the morning and ran out of diesel. Not a drop. Sitting there wondering what to do. I went for a walk around the town and what did I spy only a roadworks site, with a JCB digger and ten gallons of diesel, ready for the next day's work. Feeling that my need was greater than theirs at the moment, I helped myself to five of the gallons. Back to the lorry with me, where I poured in the diesel. No start! Diesel pump airlocked! I stood there wondering how to bleed the fuel pump on a Hino engine, at six o'clock in the morning, when a car pulled up and a young man asked me if I was alright. I told him about my predicament and he said "no problem, I'm a diesel mechanic" Cool! Off with me to Donegal, where I arrived in one piece later that morning. Never again!

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