Inspiration and Science

Inspiration and Science ©

By Michael Casey

First of all blame my daughter for this piece, I asked which should I write about, Inspiration or Science, and she said both with a smile, an inscrutable smile, she is ½ Shanghai Chinese after all, the other ½ being Kerry Irish by way of Birmingham. So here goes, but before I forget hello to my reader in Mexico and Austria, the readership seems to be getting far flung, or maybe they are just trying to avoid me by traveling far and wide.

The Casey Clan is vast, I do have 40 first cousins after all, I am the nearly youngest of all of them. So I have a load of stories past down to me from my dad, and from my trips to Kerry too. I’d love to go back and do a tour, but I need a driver and maybe a jeep to get to all the places, but if I win the lottery or Amazon’s Flying Car Pit show ever goes I could tag along tied to the roof rack. It would give my silver hair a great blow wave look.

So what about Inspiration? It’s something that Inspires, yes I’m stating the obvious, but do allow me to sound sophisticated, in my own imagination for a nanosecond. If you witness events they can either scar you or give you great dreams, or even nightmares, but the spark they give does lead to something, even if it’s just the exit, fast.  

Fear of my teacher lead me to reading lots, this then led to 20 years of BBC Radio 4 listening which then led to being a writer these past 30 years. 50 years of my life just flashed by in a sentence, I cannot complain though as I’m still alive, and hoping to reach my 1,000,000 Words written in the next eighteen months. I discovered I was 2 hours away from death after my quadruple heart bypass as my pulse went up to 200 to 230 beats a minute. Others have died I’m still here, perhaps its god punishing my readers for not talking to him and reading my rubbish instead.  There you are, reading as punishment. Who would you make prisoners read as punishment for their crimes? Charles Dickens  or JK Rowling or even Terry Pratchett? You can have fun in the office talking about that by the coffee machine.

Now as my daughter said write about Science too perhaps I should say a few words on that topic. My small daughter  is a really great writer, she’s told me she’s better than me and I agree with her, any dad want’s his daughter to be greater than himself. We joke that her English teacher wants to adopt her as she is so good, the fridge is covered in praise slips. For balance I should reveal that my other daughter is top in the entire year group in Science, is that 90 or 120 pupils, it’s all Greek or is it Science to me. Though mum, my wife does have a Chemistry degree.

Now what shall I say about Science? Well I grew up with Apollo, no not the Greek god, though I do love Kebabs, I mean the Space Race. This was so exciting, and it was all in black and white. Ali was dancing around the ring, American politicians were all getting shot and so forth.

The music or soundtrack to all our lives was unbelievable, The Monkees, the Beatles, Sonny and Cher all kinds of everything, and not a manufactured boy band in sight, Simon Cowel is younger than me, so he would have been in school in short pants and getting bullied, and having his pants pulled down in the middle of the playground.

Science really is the future, I was watching a programme about Gravity and how they are trying to “see” by using the disturbances in gravity. It was really interesting, some of it was almost beyond me, but BBC science programmes really are so well presented/produced. 

The other thing is that fact that a man in his shed, usually in England really do have the first ideas about science. Though as usual England does NOT have enough money for the research so USA “steals” the talent and makes the big bucks. So I’d suggest our Lotto invests in science, put £500,000,000 into Science instead of clog dancing for the Welsh or sewing classes for welders in Scunthorpe. Near where I am we had a £40million Art Gallery called the Public, it was a white elephant, a fancy design which should have been on Peppa Pig. It folded and has now become a school after they built classrooms inside the original building. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-29144730

My Physics teacher Mr R he was such a good teacher and we always enjoyed the experiments, if the teaching is fun then difficult topics are understood and enjoyed. A good teacher really does make a difference, as does proper discipline, such as no phones to be used in school, it is NOT a human right to have and use a mobile.

We stumbled over my old school reports from 40 years ago and to my surprise I was great at Chemistry, I got 80% in an exam, but then I dropped it in 3^rd year, this is Year 9 in today’s parlance. At school if you are guided well by the teacher who knows their onions, and is more than 2 chapters ahead of the class then little acorns can grow into might oaks.

Well that’s enough from me for tonight I have to watch the Press Preview on Sky, it’s my form of entertainment. I’ll never be on tv, but I still dream of being on Radio reading out my short pieces…..