A Brick Layer’s Tale

We had a young lad working with us. His name was Darren and we called him 'Dangerous Darren'. He had more accidents than anyone I had ever come across. I mean most people have trodden on a nail at some stage, but Darren had done it four times and they were proper nails, all the way through and out between the lace holes on one ocaasion. Now you would think that he'd learn his lesson and knock nails down, or pull them out when he tossed a bit of shuttering to one side but not him, he left them there for everyone else to impale themselves on. These days most of us have steel toe capped boots with sole protection so the nails don't get all the way through but this was a few years ago and plenty of blokes liked to wear trainers especially in the summer.

In the end we got a bit fed up with telling Dangerous Darren about the nails and we decided to teach him a lesson. One of the blokes had an air nailer and we got a sheet of plywood and made up a bed of nails. We hid it behind the tea hut and the next time Darren chucked a bit of timber with nails poking up we all downed our tools and went and got him. We grabbed his arms and legs and he kicked and wriggled for all he was worth. He probably thought we were going to dunk him head first in the water butt which is the usual punishment but a couple of the blokes got the bed of nails out. It was a hot day and Darren was already stripped down to his shorts so we laid him down on the bed. We didn't want to hurt him badly so we laid him on the bed gently. He was OK but he couldn't get off without increasing the point pressure so he was sort of stuck there.

He was shouting at us, calling us all the names under the sun and we were calling him a 'little prick' and such like, and in the end we just left him and went back to work. After a while he went quiet and we thought we had better go and look at him in case he was bleeding to death or something. When we got over there he was spark out fast asleep or pretending to be, but he looked totally comfortable as if he was on a sun lounger.

This was supposed to be a punishment and there was work to be done, so one of the blokes decided that a bucket of cold water chucked over him was the best thing to wake him up. So we filled a bucket from the tap, not the water butt, so it was nice and cold and then we chucked it straight over him. He woke up with such a fright that he sat bolt upright and then jumped up and onto the ground. He was off that bed before he had even worked out where he was. And do you know he didn't have a scratch on him, not one drop of blood just a lot of little dimples in his back. They were all brand new sharp nails straight out of the nail gun, so we told him he must have had the hide of a rhino.

We were teasing him telling him that he must have Indian ancestors or been reincarnated from a Guru. After that he had a bet that he could walk bare foot across the nail bed. Like I said they were sharp but he pushed it up to thirty quid before he took off his shoes and socks and walked straight across the bed. Fair play to him. He took the bed of nails home on his roof rack so he could show his Mum. I bet she was really proud of him, you know like "And they always said my little boy would never amount to anything".

He left us not long after that to do a bit of travelling, and we never heard any more from him, then about a year later one of the blokes was down in Spain on holiday and he was walking along the seafront in the evening and there was Dangerous Darren all painted up and bare chested and he was swallowing fire, and juggling. But his big trick was giving someone a piggy back while he walked across a bed of nails. Like they say, we all have God given talents you just have to discover what yours is.