A Straight Piece

A Straight Piece©

By Michael Casey

The Summer hols are over and my daughters are back at school, one is even a Prefect now, but I remind her that I was Head Boy at Primary school, fast approaching 50 years ago. Though I was really Head Jailer, locking up the school at dinner time while the caretaker had his dinner.

So you will have noticed how I wrote a large number of pieces over the holiday, in various styles as the mood or inspiration took me. Yes I don’t bother with stage layout, or script layout. Too many colons and speech marks just annoy readers. 

Yes, they do, don’t argue with me. What was that line in Amadeus, too many notes.

Go ask your kids and they will say they hate Plays because of the way they are laid out. I also write for your ears, remember my 20 formative years listening to BBC Radio4 , or BBC World Service if you cannot get BBC Radio4.You should be listening to me not reading me.

My point being purists will hate the way I write as in the technicalities of my writing, because they had to suffer English at Eton or wherever so I should suffer like them too. But the Jeremy Corbyn Grammar School did serve me well.

Which brings me on to today’s piece a Straight Piece, when I use the word Straight you the reader, yes you hiding under the bedclothes with your Tablet in hand.  You, immediately think of other words, and you are making up your own story before I have even started. Gill from StatsMR, this was my University by the way, far higher standard than Trump University, he will become President but will be impeached in 18 months is my  prediction. Not unless he suddenly gets a dose of Humility.

Sorry I got side tracked, anyway Gill with a G once said I led people up the garden path, but if the roses smell nice then I’ve done my job as a Writer. It’s the journey which matters that’s what story telling is all about, I have that in common with Jeffrey Archer, I am a Storyteller.  If only I had a photo copy of his Monet as well.

So the question is what do people prefer?  Do they want sauce, more sauce than HP, or do they want laughs, or do they want clever stuff, assuming you think any of my words are clever.  The story is as funny or as serious as the story allows it to be. It’s like a cake recipe, if there are no fruit in the recipe then there are no fruit, it will be fruitless, and it’s fruitless to suggest the story would be better with them in. 

I was once told by a reader that the funny stuff was better than the serious stuff. So should I just stick to that and not try and be a pseudo intellectual. Once I finish looking in the dictionary to see what intellectual means I’ll answer that question.

Now before I started I had the end sentence or two in my head, because tradition dictates the story ends with a joke or a reference to the beginning, that’s what Will Shakespeare told me. So as you read my stuff are you guessing what the end will be?

If you do and you get it right then you are cleverer than me by far, as I like to go with the flow and choose the end as I get there. A bit like being at a bus station and jumping on any old bus on a whim, rather like they vote in elections in USA perhaps, or am I being cruel or topical. I’m just helping Literacy Archaeologists so they know when this piece was written, or should I just cough a lot.

So the end is coming now, why because I need to go and eat, if somebody had left a Cadbury’s Crunchy on my desk then maybe you’d get a paragraph or two more. Just think of Mozart, what was left on his piano, I’m sure it wasn’t chocolate, and was Prince Mozart reincarnated.

Now that could be a very interesting story, so all you Eton boys out there, go write it, and the 3 winners get to visit the Jeremy Corbyn Grammar school.