The story goes that some years ago there was a Scottish painter and decorator named Hamish McTaggart, who was always very interested in making a penny where he could.
One way that he found he could do this was to thin down his paint to make it go just a a wee bit further.
None of his customers realised what he had been doing, and as a result he got away with doing this for some time.
However, one day the local church decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings.
Hamish put in a bid for the repainting of the building and because his price was so low, he naturally got the job.
So, he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, buying the paint and yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine.
Well, Hamish was up on the scaffolding, painting away and the job was nearly completed, when suddenly, totally unexpectedly, there was a horrendous clap of thunder.
Scarcely a moment later, the sky opened, and the rain poured down, washing the thinned paint from all over the church, and a gust of wind that accompanied the rain knocked Hamish clear off the scaffolding.
He landed on the grass among the graves in the cemetery, surrounded by tell tale puddles of the thinned and useless paint.
Now Hamish was no fool and he knew that this was a judgment from the Almighty, a divine payback for all the cheating that he had been doing over the years.
He knew the game was up and there was nothing he could do about it, so he got down on his knees and cried: “Oh God, Oh God, forgive me; what should I do?”
There was a period of silence and then from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke: “Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!”
Yes I know that’s a terrible pun and I know we shoud appologise, but I bet it got you groaning didn’t it! Now it’s time to inflict this bad joke on your friends, so please share this post on Social Media or email the link and get some more people groaning.
Image used under a Collective Commons License from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pavdw/43214568665
