Red Carpet

The Red Carpet ©

By

Michael Casey

I was just reading the Daily Telegraph, its my paper of choice, they had a photo selection on the continuing celebrations for Paul McCartney and his new wife. This time it was in New York, the red carpet was rolled out, though I couldn’t actually tell from the photos was the carpet actually rolled out, a la Oscars. But the theme is the same, you are important, so the red carpet comes out, I’ve just had a look at Google for the history and Wikipedia says something but remember Wikipedia is not Gospel, look me up and see how inaccurate it is.

A  red carpet makes us feel important, as does a fawning flunkey, Dickens captured it all with Uriah Heep, and no I’m no Dickens expert, I just know 2 sentences about everything, which is one sentence more than the average guy, if I’m lucky. Or if any of you are old rock stars then Uriah Heep was a ROCK band. A new carpet has bounce and as we all know it’s the underlay that makes the difference, and more importantly than that it’s the carpet fitter, the bloke with the gripper  who turns  a house into a home. I saved up and had all my house done 6 months after I moved in, that’s 25 years ago now. It wasn’t red carpet but I felt important, I  was bouncing around my house, my red carpet home for weeks afterwards. Now years later and I’m married with girls in the house, we had to replace a chair so when the square yard it had sat on was revealed after decades of darkness the square was pristine and bouncy, as bouncy as a bouncy castle. So my girls enjoyed the bouncy square until the new chair arrived.

If you stand while you work as I’ve done in several jobs then a touch of softness underfoot is so so welcomed, whether it be red white or blue. I used to stand for 12 hours a day walking on marble in the hotel, CPNEC. We did 4 12hour shifts, the first day off I’d hobble down the stairs at home, I needed recovery time. So if ever I get the red carpet treatment, I will really enjoy it, but I do hope it has masses of soft underlay.

Red carpets are noisy they shout and scream at you, I am George Clooney, worship me, me I do actually look like George Cloony, google “michaelgcasey” and then hit images. Oh I was a bit economical with the truth during that last sentence, but  I do look like the Welsh news anchor on the BBC, well my wife thinks so. Yes, where was I, on the red carpet, would it make any difference if the colour was changed? I think it’s the concept of an outdoor carpet, we could have wallpaper on the outside of our homes, that would be extravagant, here in UK we have Blue Plaques to show/honour famous people and where they live. Just up the road from where I am talking is The Birmingham Oratory, and it has a blue plaque, John Henry Newman lived there, if you go a few hundred yards further up the road there is a blue plaque for JRR Tolkien, I doubt if there will ever be a blue plaque to me, MichaelGCasey. 

So will I ever be smiling from the red carpet walking arm in arm with my three girls, as they talk in Mandarin as we walk the red carpet in Shanghai, my books  translated and filmed, the top show in China, probably not, but if anybody has any carpet going spare, my living room now needs a new carpet, any colour accepted.