Swearing

I'm not sure that I'd recognise a pair, but there's definitely such a thing as "fuck-me shoes". Analogously I've heard a young woman who was familiar with the term describe one of my colleagues as having a "punch-me face".

I don't know how common the term is, but in engineering a big nut with a huge torque setting is sometimes called the "Jesus nut". I understood that it was because you say "Jesus!" when it finally comes undone.

At the weekend the two terms became muddled. I was working on the same car that tried to bite my finger off at the beginning of the year. I was standing on the brake pedal while the owner was straining against the front hub nut with a long breaker bar. He went red in the face and started shaking before it was eventually freed. Despite my instruction on the traditional exclamation he said the wrong thing when it gave way. He said "Fuck me! That was tight" and the idea of a "fuck-me" nut was born.

The most frightening fuck-me of the day was on the ball joint at the top of the upright. It was on the bench and we had a scissors-type splitter on it. We braced the upright with a scaffold pole and tightened the splitter until we were sure we would strip the threads rather than break that taper. We then started investigating ways that we might be able to strike the taper with a hammer. While we were turning it over on the bench the taper gave way with a loud bang and a violent jolt. My friend was holding it at the time, but he was completely uninjured! Guess what he said?

Richard "Fuck Me!" B