Pro IQRA News Updates.
An apprentice plumber is relieved to have stumbled through his final exam to strike up a conversation with eccentric middle-class men.
Having already mastered actual plumbing, 24-year-old James Bates was desperate to pass the most difficult part of his apprenticeship – a practical exam in which he attempted to install a toilet while being constantly distracted by a little man named Julian.
“It was physically exhausting,” said Bates. “At first, I had to manipulate him to change his voice significantly to try to sound ‘hard’, and then I had to avoid his constant offers of tea while trying to get my U-bend figure in.”
“Plumbing these days hardly revolves around fixing the pipes, and most of the skill lies in figuring out what football game a fancy bell is trying to hook you with with patronage.
Some of the best plumbers don’t make the grade because they can’t handle jesting a stranger named Hugo Rabbiting about 4-4-2 versus 4-3-3 for trying to become an honorary member of the working class.
“At one point, Julian started talking about bar fights, as if that was something I knew about. Luckily by then I just had to test the flow and I was done.”
Examiner Martin Bishop said, “Compared to a 20-minute long conversation with a college lecturer incompetently discussing beer, pulling a Mini Fatberg down the drain is a piece of piss.”
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