Oh look is that my finger on the Floor ?

                                                 While in my late teens I had the opportunity to live in Denmark , nothing too exciting I decided to work in a factory making tin cans . You know the sort ? For spam and the like . Just another way for me  to see the world and work at the same time . It was in a town called Odense , not far from the German border . You see at the time we were the pioneers of the E.E.C. ( European Economic Community ) and as such the borders had been opened in all the countries to allow foreign workers . There were about thirty of us , all unknown to each other but eager to explore .
                                                On arrival we were given a four bedroom apartment to live in , so four complete strangers had suddenly become roomates . Strange idea thinking about it now , but it worked for us . In our apartment there was Joe from Bray , Larry and Tony from inner city Dublin and myself . Joe and I were compatible , but the other two , well thats another story .
                                                We worked 8 hour shifts 7-3 and 3-11 , for me this was not a problem as I was used to getting up early . We arrived at the factory and met with the liaison officer to be given our duties and to find out what department we were to work in . A nice painless and slow introduction . Now the great thing about Denmark is that practically everyone speaks english there , even their movies be it in theatre's or on tv were in english with Danish subtitles . So you can see it was easy to fit in .
                                               The story I want to relate about this time in my life is gonna be surprising , maybe even shocking but all of it is true . Ok , I was given the job of assistant to a machine operator in the printing department ! There were sheets of metal 4ft by 4ft awaiting some logo to be printed on them , spam , frankfurters , whatever but you get the picture . I used to feed these sheets into the printing machine ,  wearing gloves of course ( safety first ) . The sheets would come out the other end with the perfect logo on (or not ) .
                                                Our break would come along , and we never had to leave our stations as there was always this lady who wheeled a trolley around with open sandwiches drinks and refreshment .I also noticed on her trolley that they served Bottles of danish BEER 7-9% PROOF . It then dawned on me , why there were so many guys going round the printing dept. with FINGERS MISSING !
                                                    True Story , the 70's , now there was an Era !