The look to Match Your Words

The Look to Match Your Words ©

By

Michael Casey

I’m chilling this morning as the pain monster ebbs away, I’m just a Canute in front of his computer commanding words into order. I spotted a piece in the DT that caught my eye about writers and their style, clothes style that is. I would have looked at it only it was behind the pay-wall, so Rupert send an email to the Barclay brothers, I need to  get over that pay-wall. Or I could just stand on Rupert’s shoulders and peek over it, you have a cartoon in your head now, I am still 17.5stones, or more than a heavy-weight boxer.

My title is obviously less pretentious than that in the DT, I am a humour writer after all, if I said comedy you’d expect more or better jokes, so I stick with humour. Can somebody slap Boris, he was about to interject. Boris is a device that has slipped into my writing and to be honest I do enjoy a bit of Boris. He’s a Polish/Ukrainian/Russian man of the people, like the child that spots that the Emperor is naked and not wearing new clothes. But less of Boris or he will demand equal pay with the old woman who is writing this stuff.Me.

Style in writing is the most important bit of style there is, if the style is rubbish and I nearly said the C word then I just cannot read it. I could mention a very famous writer whose style is so bad that me and my girls just cannot read their stuff. And I’m not just talking about Dan Brown, miaow.

Once you have made some money as a writer, obviously not at the BBC, then you can afford decent clothes. Though some persist in wearing Oxfam’s best bin, because it makes them trendy and at one with the Youth of today, whatever that means. Though it could mean people with Degrees who continue working at MacDonalds because there is nothing else. A degree is worthless nowadays because everybody has one, you can discuss this at Burger King, I’m told the food is better there.

You have people dressed in all kinds of everything being interviewed by the presenter on BBC, an overpaid male presenter, or a 1/2 overpaid female presenter. We have the BBC gender pay storm raging at the moment so I’ve slipped that in for the cultural historians if they find this in 100 years time, in some slush pile, by the juice machine in MacDonalds.

I am a writer. Ok I’ll pause there while Boris and his clan have a laughing fit, I really must learn how to curse in Eastern European languages, if I didn’t pay at the Polish shop I’m sure I’d find out, I’d get battered by 5 of the girls who work there. Luckily I’m on good terms with the almost identical twin brothers who own the place, you can only tell them apart as one shaves his head. Their place is great, and yes I really mean that.

Ok, so I’m a writer, so does that mean I wear my shirt open to the navel, do I dress like the 70s, do I walk like John Travolta holding that tin of paint. I walk like that of course, but I cannot carry any heavy things any more. Do I have a dictionary in my hand, do I stand on it to reach the top shelf, Boris stop it. Stand on it to reach for the pickles in the supermarket, what else would I reach for. I’ve just reminded myself now to buy some Branston Pickles now, so it’s not been a waste of time talking to you all.

A writer will go one way, then another, Boris I’m not talking about cross-dressing, I mean he’ll follow one path, no not Church of England, he’ll see where the story leads him, then if that dos not work, he’ll scrunch up his paper on his typewriter and start again. Though this writer won’t do that. Because it would be a waste of paper, and for decades now I use a computer. There is another reason why I don’t waste an idea because of the dysfunctional way I think, no Boris it doesn’t mean I have the sh__s, though CkD is similar. What I mean is I bounce an idea around my brain, like a pin ball machine, and lights and buzzers come on. Then I follow the new path. Why waste an idea when it can fill more of the page?

As a result of all these words, and all these words is a line from a John Denver song. I’ve just set him singing now, so beware JD references might slip in, just like farts from Boris. As a result of words you paint a  picture and you may not bother to get dressed, you just want to attack the page. In our house we are mostly like refugees in PJs until we go out. The page is dressed but the writer is not, the thought of me naked sat here talking to you just flashed though your mind, luckily you can puke into the waste paper basket, you can blame the cat.

So the writer dashing off yet another 1000 words means he is the mad scientist of prose, and has no time to pose. He could do with a wash and shave and the 3^rd S, before going out to Aldi, SSS complete, no more smelly feet the writer, the writer is fragrant as he skips through the frozen food aisles of Iceland.

I started wanting to write my opinion of writers and their wares, or what they wear. As usual I’ve bounced this way and that, like a rugby played without a jock strap, or Erica Roe. Then my thoughts have flowed, but they do return to rugby as the writer did spend years just wearing a Polo Rugby shirt, the orange one I bought at Sawgrass Mills Florida in 2007, I bought 3 in fact as they were very cheap.

Which brings me back to what I wear. I wear what is comfortable, I won’t be buying any more clothes though as I don’t expect to wear out what I have got. Replacement chairs to sit here talking to you is all I imagine what I’ll wear, because my weight is such that after a year a chair has had enough. Wear and Tear on my chair.

The words we write, they clothe us, all of us, if I can sound pretentious for a moment. For it is what we say that makes the most impact, how we phrase our words, what is actually heard. As a radio person, as a lover of words, I listen to the words as a lawyer does. In the end all we have our our words. If you use words all barriers come down, clothes included, and you are making love to the one you want, not because of the suit of clothes, or the suit of armour. Or the nice shoes or even the very nice perfume. It's because words count far more than clothes, and with the right words you can take a bull by the nose.