My dad, Patrick Joseph, Paddy to friends and relations, was known as Patsy among the Irish building confraternity, surprising now, but not then in the forties and fifties. I only heard it once when looking for him on site.
"Paddy ? Oh ye mean Patsy Lynam. Yes over there."
My dad was a builder, like Michael his father before him, master mason, bricklayer and anything in the building line.
Not surprising then that one of his proud possessions was his trowel. It started as a bricklaying trowel and ended up as a pointing trowel worn down by thousands of bricks and tons of mortar. He only ever had one at a time and one of his many sayings that he passed down was "if you have one you will always know where it is, have two and lose them both.? It applied to anything of importance to you. (including women ,with a cheeky smile.)
Looking at his old WHS trowel in my garage, one was mine and one his and now there's only one, I seem to remember he favoured the Tyzak. It had a more comfortable handle and was better balanced. Now, I believe, WHS-Tyzak are one and the same, merged in company perhaps also in product.
I once asked him what WHS stood for. His answer varied with his mood. If it was positive "Work hard or starve," if negative, "Work hard AND starve", but there was always a smile.
And one other thing about my dad, I never heard him use foul language, "site language" my mother called it, at home or even when I was with him on site. Now that was a rare thing.
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