The Worst of All Words

In the factory where my grandfather worked for decades, there was one item more important than any piece of machinery or safety apparatus: the swear jar. Whenever someone uttered a curse word, he was bound to pay sixpence into it and, at the end of the month, the coins were collected and used to buy tea and biscuits for elevenses. My grandfather had been at the factory eight years before someone worked out that he was getting his tea and biscuits for free: he never paid a single sixpence into the swear jar because he simply never swore.

He didn’t swear during conversation. He didn’t swear if he had a disagreement with a co-worker. And he didn’t even swear when a semi-melted splinter of copper shot out of a malfunctioning machine and into his eyeball. (When I asked him why, he said, ‘Because I couldn’t see how foul language would get it out.’)