What is his worth?

What is his worth?(c)

By Michael Casey

“What is his worth?” asked the King.

“He is  a she my Lord,”  replied the servant  as he removed the hat to reveal a woman’s face.

“How long has she been dead?” asked the King.

“Her body is still warm,  sire, ” replied the servant.

“But what is her worth, she was just a woman.” continued the King.

“ She suckled you when you were born, as your  mother the Queen was dry,” replied the servant.

“I don’t remember that,” replied the King.

“ It was  her who taught you to read, it was her who taught you Latin and the sciences.”

“So she was of  some service,” mused the King.

“ She  hid you when the castle was besieged, she dressed you as a little girl, she saved your young life,” continued the servant.

“So she was of some service,” mused the King.

“She ate the poison that was meant for you,” continued the servant.

“So she was of some service,” muttered the King.

“She cared for the King, your father in his last years, when his mind was gone, it was her who helped him keep his dignity,”   the servant said.

“So she was of some service,” muttered the King.

“She held your mother’s hand,  the Queen’s hand, during her dying days, while  you were away at war.” the servant added.

“So she was of some service,” spoke the King.

“She saved your son and heir, when he refused to come into this world naturally,  it was she who cut him out. It was she who saved you wife, the Queen too. It was she.”

“So she was of some service,”  spoke the King

“It was she who taught your son and heir how to read, it was she who taught him Latin and the Sciences,” continued the servant.

“So she was of some service,” spoke the King.

“I was she who saved your daughter’s  life, the Princess’s life when she fell in the river,” continued the servant.

“So she was of some service,” spoke the King.

“She did many more services for you Sire, too many too recount,” said the servant

The King looked down at the crumpled figure  of the old woman before him,  all these things this little woman, this mere woman had done. Now the memories came back to him. “What was his  worth” he had asked. But now, but now he knew,  this little old woman, crumpled up in death had  been a good and faithful servant. And he, and he, he had not had the eyes to see.

The King kneelt down and kissed her still warm cheek.

“Let he be buried in a place of honour, for I know her  worth”

Just back from Good Friday Service

Just back from Good Friday Service©

By Michael Casey

Just back from Good Friday Service. We had the Shona choir there too. On Good Friday you go up and kiss Jesus's feet on the crucifix. When I got back  to my seat the Cantor-like singing finished and  the Shona choir kicked in. There is something very special about Shona singing, it goes straight to my heart and  brings tears to my eyes. It really is beyond words, as I watched the rest of the congregation  file up and kiss Jesus's feet all I could feel was raw emotion, was it musical Faith that was touching my heart and soul. I was being reminded just how Faith should be by these Shona singers. Afterwards you have communion, again we had more Shona singing  after the traditional  singing. Again their  Faith, their Shona Faith rocked me. It was not full force Shona singing as  it is Good Friday, I imagine the full force will be saved for Sunday, Easter Sunday. It was more than powerful enough for me today. I was reminded where my Faith is, and I could compare it to  the Shona, Lord grant me more Faith is all I can say.  We finished with a rousing traditional hymn. I'm looking forward to Easter Sunday, then more Faith, Hope and Love can wash over me. For Christ is Risen. Christos Aneste

Cheese and Chorizo

Cheese and Chorizo ©

By Michael Casey

The thing about girls is that they steal your stuff, you think they are nice and sweet smelling, but they are not. If they get up before you they’ll raid your side of the fridge and eat your cheese and chorizo. Cheese and chorizo on toast, with hot chocolate to follow, this is how your daughters treat you. This is how my girls treat me.

Yesterday mum bought biscuits, and did she share them? NO. The girls got some but I got none. They were  the ones I really like, its always the ones you really like. I looked high and low, just like an Ah Ha song, but nothing. JJ the wife just laughed at me as I went from pillar to post looking for a biscuit, the Tunnock ones. See this is how the 3 girls in my life treat me, I am biscuitless. Finally after much derision my small daughter showed me  where the biscuits were, a new hiding place, that’s why I could not find them. So I was victorious, I sneaked a biscuit into my pocket and slipped away to eat it in peace.

Shoes are a big thing, so our small daughter walks around the house in mum’s shoes, mine are too big so thankfully they are left alone. However having two daughters who like Textiles, which is the fancy word from school for sewing and making things. If they like textiles then your clothes are not safe, they drag a shirt or two out of the wardrobe and say they want to turn it into something. Jumpers are not safe either, they can cut them down to make a dress  or even a handbag. And as for needles, it’s like having a porcupine in the family, DANGER. You only realise that after you have sat on a needle or two, the wife just says its free acupuncture, no need to asked Dr Hu to pay us a visit, and yes he really is Dr Hu, not Dr Who, but Dr Hu.

Now that our 11year old is 5feet tall, as big as mum, she wants to wear her clothes, but you can imagine what kind of clothes a Shanghai girl wears. So there is debate in Chinese, I cannot understand a word, but SANINGONGA is heard quite often which means no. Which also means my girls, our girls will return to steal from my wardrobe again. In a way it’s like having moths, but instead of holes in your clothes, entire items just disappear. BUT its not just the girls, its mum too, she’ll decide that the Fashion Police would not like this item or that item, so its disappears. When do I find out? Never, or nearly never, until I walk past a charity shop and see a tent sized item in the window, it’s my clothes.

So if you want to keep the clothes on your back, don’t have daughters. If  you want your favourite food safe in your side of the fridge, the none Chinese side of the fridge, then don’t have daughters. If you want to save your pennies, don’t have a Shanghai wife. But then life would be boring, just make sure you look before you sit.

Give us a job I can do that

Give Us a Job I Can Do That©

By Michael Casey

The BBC are closing tv centre and moving on to new premises, so stars are all nostalgic, and giving a swipe at the new management classes.  John Cleese says they have no experience of comedy, so really they cannot be trusted.

This made me think, what is comedy? As I speak a sample chapter of  Tears  for a   Butcher my 6^th book has gained 9000 views on funny or die. So why do folks in America like chapter one so much? I wish I knew, I suppose it should inspire me to finish writing it.

You try and explain what you are writing by comparing it to this by comparing it to that, in the hope what you say connects enough so people want to read your rubbish. Really your rubbish is more cherished than your old grannie, but you just want to get something published, in ink or in cyberspace.

Yes this piece will appeal to a Lesbian audience, of course a Jewish audience will take it to their hearts. As for a Christian audience, they’ll say it’s a ma and pa book, and as far as alcoholics or should I say journalists go, they will just lap it up, just as they do their beer.

And is it all PC, as it must be nowadays, of course it is, the Law Society will swear by it. So that covers all the bases, all kinds of everything as Dana would sing, all kinds of everything remind you of Michael Casey and his writing.

You feel like Bod Geldof trying to screw the music industry into doing the right thing. Only you just want them to spare 90seconds of their life to change your life. 7 seconds away was a song, but now for you its 90seconds that you need. If only they read one thing then  they’ll  read another, and you’ll or I’ll get published or get that column in the paper online or in print, I just don’t care.

So you analyse each item and try and think how suitable is this for Lesbians, will Jews like this, will a boring broadsheet like that? As a concierge I had just seconds to hit the right pitch, to try and ease in with the next guest, so they felt welcomed and at home. I was very good then, but now all they see are my words on paper or rather words on a screen. If I were still a concierge I could see their face, I could read their body language, back then I could do it in 20seconds. But what of now?  I’m a writer now I have to put a picture in their mind without them seeing me as a fat Lee Evans in a tight suit, just by my very words I have to impress.

In the end I can only be myself, I say my writing is like a bus, for everybody, omnibus.

Fairy Tales and Tall Tales (c) by Michael Casey

Fairy Tales and Tall Tales ©

By

Michael Casey

Phillip Pullman is dead right in the piece in today’s Daily Telegraph, Fairy Tales should not be forgotten. I have his book and The Brothers Grimm on the shelf behind me. Telling Tales should be encouraged. My own dad used to tell us tales all the time, that's one of the reasons that I've ended up a writer myself. Switch the tv off and hide the games consoles, he also says read the Bible too, all of these things happen in our house so one of my girls will become a writer too. Community and spirit is built by gathering around the fire and swopping stories. It’s a natural thing in my life and in my family’s life. So gather around with fizzy pop for the kids and something stronger for mum and dad and let’s see who can tell the best tale. Memories created in the hearth are chains of steel that bind us together and will save us in the future when we need a friend. A memory will make us strong in the dark of the night and those who shared stories with us will come to our aid, because we are bound together by love, chains of love and laughter from our youth will last forever.

DIY Subway

DIY Subway ©

By Michael Casey

 We just had a DIY Subway, this is where you buy all the ingredients at the supermarket, especially lovely bread, a bloomer, then you go home and with the bread knife prepare everything on the glass coffee table which is our table. Then with crumbs dripping everywhere on the floor, me Annie and Eve have our feast while mum makes noises off from the kitchen while she stirs some Chinese concoction, which has been avoided because I fed the girls first. Then afterwards we have toffee popcorn. Followed by orange juice, but I do need a nice cup of tea to follow.  All in all a good afternoon. Yes gifts are good, food being the best because it nourishes us all, and brings harmony. I'll put the kettle on now.

Music v Words

Music v Words(c)

By Michael Casey

Vangelis does film music. I'm listening to some now. So how can a few notes stir us so much? From the age of cave men music has touched us, I'd kill my best mate, then I'd mate with his girl, after dinner, his body we'd play with his bones then realise what a great beat you can get by banging his arm bone on the top of his skull. Now this must have been when drumming began, Buddy Rich's forebears.That's when music entered our collective mind. As the bones mounted up, we discovered different sounds, and so many years later the fluke of whistle was discovered by using different selections of bones that had holes in them. But back to Vangelis how can he make us feek, really feel just by a collection of noise that becomes notes. Power is invested in notes, love is invested in notes. I was talking to my new neighbour and her mum recently and I was saying just how jealous I am of muscians. My neighbour plays violin, and my own girls are leaning piano. My point though is that in seconds a noise, a tuneful noise can touch our hearts and our very souls. Me if I write something here and say Elaine likes it that is very touching, but its slow. A writer needs 30 seconds to touch somebody's soul, as thats the reading time, as for music, its like drugs straight to the heart, as immediate as what the doctor injects to a heart attack victim. So I am and always will be in awe of muscians. Chung Kuo is playing on the Vangelis album now and I can feel my heart stiring.I am a meer writer, I will never be a muscian. Sometimes as I sit here I dream another section of what will be Tears for a Butcher, I dream of the music that will go with it if ever it becomes a film, or as I listen to music I think yes that will go well with that scene I have in my head. Words on a page are an idea, but add a bit of music then you have passion. Perhaps I am being the director and musical arranger as I write a new scene or dream of a new scene. I cannot at the moment commit myself to a year of writing another book, if you like I am lazy and post here twice a week instead. Vangelis is playing The Tao of Love now, he is fillling my mind and heart with pictures, because he is music and I am only words.

  the music in my life

I live in other's memories

I live in others’ memories ©

By Michael Casey

We remember  things, that’s what makes us smile, the remembrance of things past. It can be a good cup of coffee, it can be the French toast we shared with our daughters this very morning,  it can be memories from a faded photo of our long dead mum. Things remind us of love, of hate and war, of death itself. As I lie dying here  I know my girls will remember me, they even tell me they’ll be red roses on my grave every month, so I can die happy, though I tell them not to shed any tears.

I live in people’s memories, Omer one of my students said he’d never forget me, never, I was touched, I told him to forget me and just remember his English. I did give him a big hug and said goodbye, I suppose it was touching. The naughty students remember you too,  when you are gone they want to know where you are now. I feel a bit like Nanny  MacPhee,  though which of us is the more attractive I’ll let you decide. I live in people’s memories so I’ll never die, my grammar school mates still remember when I stunk the bus out because of my smelly feet in the wellies back in 1972.

I live in people’s memories,  the guests at CPNEC back in 05 said I was the best thing in the hotel when they heard I was leaving, that was very touching and I DID work very very hard there. The guests for the Spring Show they were  very very nice people, one lady reminded me of Bet Lynch from Coronation St, “hello Michael, give us a kiss, show us the photos” and I’d show her the latest photos of my then small daughters. That lady really was a lady and she and  her crew really did work so hard at the show, so it was nice to look after her. Another guest would say “honey I’m home” when he got back to the hotel after 10 hours of hard work at the Spring Show, they live in my memory and I’ll be tell my girls and their girls how much fun hotel work is, and how much hard work too, because it lives in my memory.

I  live in other’s memories because I hope I care, because I really am an altruist, because it is nice to go that extra mile, to see the penny drop when you teach somebody something new. Or to see you have surprised people with your writing, “did you do that, did you write that” now that will stick in their memories. A piece of writing especially a song or a poem, now that really is something specially. I know a little old lady in USA who’ve I met via Facebook  who’s poetry lives in my memory, who’s words  make me realise, never judge a book by its cover. As she reads this I know I haven’t described her correctly, the only correct word for her is Poet, with a capital P.  Today we spoke and she said “niche”, as in we all have a “niche” and I suppose that’s how we each live in people’s memory.  Perhaps  I should be on a niche in a church with candles burning in front of me, as I get more and more sooty. A good car mechanic has his niche and that’s why we go back to him because he is so good and by word of mouth he gets good business, he lives in other’s memory.

So when I finally die, for we all do, what would I like to be remembered for? I hope my girls will say he loved us so much, he made us laugh, he wasn’t that fat, he never dyed his hair black as we nagged him to, nor trimmed his wild eyebrows either. I  hope  people have finally bought my books on Amazon Kindle, I hope we finally did get that nice big house. And as the light   from one life fades, I hope I can say “I did my best, I was almost as good as my own dad.”

mum's house where she lived till 12 with 6 other siblings and parents

Cromane Lower County Kerry Ireland

The Photograph

The Photograph ©

By

Michael Casey

I heard Rankin on Desert Island Discs this morning, he was a good guest, engaging and interesting. Should I go to him for my passport photos, or get him to take a few family snaps, normally I’m not in the shot as I’m holding the camera. So if Rankin is free he could do the honours.

Joking apart, a photo is a big thing, it is a memory, it’s more than a memory, it’s part of our love for the person in the photo. When my mother died I complied photo albums for my siblings so that we each had  some memories. There is a photo of mum playing to the camera with the dog’s dinner bowl in her hand, three of us have a copy A4 size, so whichever house you are in it reminds you of mum and the original family home.

When we grew up we didn’t have a proper camera,  mum had a box brownie kind of camera, it’s probably still in the family home somewhere.  In those days you had to take the camera to the chemist and there the film would be put into the camera. Film used to be like a scroll, cartridges did not exist, and as  for digital, that wasn’t even in Star Trek. Technology has changed so much. My brother collected lolly pop wrappers and sent ten shillings or less to the address on the lolly wrapper and a few weeks later we had a plastic camera. I still remember we went into the middle room and closed the  curtains while he put the film in the camera.

The processing at the chemist  gave you small photos with a white border, or later on you could send away you film in an envelope and get one large photo with two passport sized snaps at the side. I can also remember our lodger, he had a camera and he took photos of all of us playing in the gardens, without him there would have been hardly any photos of us growing up.

I became a bit  of a snapper and took loads of snaps of the family and friends at work.  My boss even said the camera was “surgically attached” to me. We stuck the photos to the fire doors, snaps of us at the pub and loads of squirrels snaps from the woods. It was very homely, years later we had a refurb so they all had to come down. The photos we have in our homes say a lot about us, do we have a sense of humour, how many kids and grandkids do we have. We can have photos of our judo club, I am of course a judo black belt and  brown braces. Our life, our loves are displayed in our collection of photos.

Technology now means we are all digital, we take a snap in minutes or even seconds you can put it on your computer and/or upload to Facebook. It also means we have to be careful or you are caught out and you are on Utube when you don’t want to be. Students try and catch you acting the fool or telling them off then with their camera phones you are immortalised. Photos are framed and the framing adds to the value of the photo, and now we have the Photoframe the technology that allows you to rotate 100s of photos instead of having one fixed frame. So much change from when photography was invented.

A home without photos is a home without love, nothing has touched that person, nothing has  been memorable, nothing has been shared, there is no proof, there are no photos. We do have Facebook now, and I suppose the Internet and  Cyberspace have becoming our living room wall. Smiles with teeth showing these are the happy photos, I’ve seen too many people trying to look “hard” or “cool”, even judo black belts show their teeth when they smile, they have nothing to be afraid of after all. So all I am saying is be open, be open to love, be open to life, and let the photograph record and share that love.

Keys

Keys ©

By Michael Casey

This is my first post of March 2013, I noticed that an estate agent was trying to open the vacant house over the road, what he didn’t know was that the locks had been changed, so I smiled. From my vantage point here in the window I see the whole world and its mum promenade before me. All kinds of everything happen before me. Today it was keys, so I thought could I write about keys? Do I have enough memories of keys? As I talk my big daughter, and she is now bigger that mum, she is playing the keys on the piano, sometimes very well, sometimes more practice is needed, but she has 2 weeks before the next piano lesson, playing the keys every day before  the piano teacher returns.

We used to have the ceremony of the keys when I lived at home, my dad used to get me to lock the entry door, and bar the gate at the bottom of the entry which opened into our yard. We’d also lock and bolt our house doors before dad took the keys to bed with him, along with a small westclock alarm clock, it was gold with a green face I seem to remember. As I look up through the window somebody is taking a look at the house over the road, this time the right keys, the new keys are in the estate agents hands. As for my daughter she is playing God Save the Queen, it’s in her music book. And the Queen has left hospital too, do you think she has house keys of her own for Buckingham Palace? Tony one of our old security team at the law firm told me he used to do guard duty at the palace, he revealed at night the army guys put trainers on, they don’t want to wake the Queen up after all. Imagine waking up the Duke of Edinburgh, the air would be blue, red, white and blue, but mainly blue. I suppose that’s why folks like the Duke, he calls a spade a spade, and he’d tell you exactly where to put that rifle if you woke him up in the night.

The key to a good life is a good wife, or so she tells me. Barry White is singing to me now, the first, the last, my  everything.  Dance on all the major keys of life, the high notes, the low notes, the notes in between, tickle your wife’s fancy, a little bit of what you fancy does you well. Everything has  to be done so you have the key to a good life, love life and laughter, then you have all the keys, no doors are barred to you, your life  is like music, all the keys in order.