Catching Up

Catching Up ©

By Michael Casey

I was up in the middle of the night again, I did have a few weeks without the need but last night or rather this morning I had to get up. I discovered an old piece on the computer, remember I have 1200 to 1400 stories in my back list, so if I’m too dazed by pain I may just pick an old story to keep you all interested, and then just post it.  I posted a piece in pain at 4am or so which was very funny but it’s from Easter 1998, so later on when I got up for a drink I decided to remove it. It had 20 views but I could not see any more details for some strange reason. So I had a drink and went back to bed. Then when I was fully rested I got up for breakfast and beta blocker, just so that my heart does not tic itself to my death. Remember too I wake every 2 hours, such is my life, but it’s better than being in a cold grave and pushing up the daisies.

After breakfast I wondered where the people from the story are now. I tracked one down on the internet and sent an email greeting, but would any of you want anything to do with the likes of me? Especially after 19 years.  We will see. I went shopping too and a little Pakistani lad was in the queue with his dad, I told the dad I was Santa and would be growing my beard for Christmas. I was dressed in red trousers and red coat, and I do have silver or white hair already. The dad laughed, later on as I walked down the road the child spotted me and told his dad it was Santa, so I told the dad conspiratorially not to tell his infant where I lived. Other than that  I’ve not really thought of Christmas, though Ocado send me an offer, so I filled or fridge with it. They are very nice people after all.

Which brings me to today’s tale. Catching Up, when you meet old friends or enemies and you shoot the breeze. With friends it’s all about how’s life and where are you working or living now. How are the kids and so on. You share a joke about that fat slob of a guy with the body odour you all used to work with. Then your friend’s face drops, I married him, she pulls back her coat to reveal her pregnant belly. I’m having his triplets. So how do you respond to that? Do you pretend not to have heard what she said? Or do you limply say Three must be your lucky number. To which she replies, it is, this is our third set or triplets. What can you say to that? I suppose he must work very hard at his job. He does, he invented a new kind of deodorant, must dash now, one of the servants is picking us up in one of our Rolls Royces. A red Silver Shadow stops and a uniformed chauffeur helps your friend into the Rolls Royce. You wave weakly. She gives you the finger, just as the Queen might do.  That’s the trouble with friends you never know where they might end up.

Me, if anybody sees me, they blank me, or pretend not to see me, or maybe that’s just my Priests. 17 hours in the confessional once, the Priest told me to go away and never come back, I was using reverse logic on him, it was very revealing. I have enough material for 3 books at least. But my lips are sealed. Do you doubt me, would I lie to you I am a writer or over 1.2 million Words  now? Liars make the best writers after all, or is it Imagination, you’ll have to ask your own priests.

But where was I, here explaining Catching Up. Now parents love their children but as children grow older they love their parents less. They are busy with their own lives now. But when you meet an old friend you lie and say how wonderful your kids are and how much they spoil you. They are forever sending Ocado to your door with food galore. Even if you haven’t spoken to them in a year. You pretend that you still have a relationship when really there is only mutual hatred. But they do still send you Christmas cards, so that is something. But to your friends you lie and lie and lie. You can’t lose face can you, and you are not even Chinese. You have to have a good memory if you lie a lot, so your tales of great children are more and more disjointed. Your friends know you are lying but some are kind and remind you of your own lies so you can get the story or rather the lie straight. Others are just evil bastards you should not talk to anyway but it is a spiral of your own making.

There is humour when you catch up too, like do they remember when you nearly fell in the canal, I rocked back on my chair laughing so Barry had grab the chair’s arm or I’d be Jacques Cousteau in a  Birmingham canal. We do have more canals than Venice you know, but not as nice. Steve said Barry only saved me because it was my round next, he’d have been pintless, so he saved me. I did tell you that the vicar Paul fell in with his bike once, it would have been a Baptism for him, but I digress.

If you have been reading Chapter One of The Butcher the Baker and the Undertaker on this site at the end there is a bit about a drunken man Patrick trying to chat up a girl, who claimed she was really a man. Well I wanted to add a hook to that chapter 10 years after I’d written it, and as the  real event happened on April Fools’ Day 1998, in fact just before I went on my Czech misadventure I think, but it was April’s Fools’ Day. Well it was me, as I cannot handle alcohol, I am that April Fool. If I can find the story I’ll post it. But take it from me the event really happened and is immortalised in my stupidity at the end of Chapter One of BBU. So you can imagine  people can laugh at me forever. But it does make the book funnier and hopefully gives chapter one a good ending which will make you all want to read more.  

So if people who know me from my computer room part of my life when we catch up that is always remembered, and if they forget I’ll tell them about it. Life is more than Catching Up, it’s about loving up. It’s about your mates down the pub, at work, in your band, in your football team, or in your chess club or even in your stamp collecting club. Whatever binds you together, will always be part of your collective memory. Like the time fat johnnie saved that girl from being mugged, by throwing a dustbin at the potential mugger. He was too fat to chase after him but he got his photo and the police did the rest. Everybody said he was stupid spending that kind of money on a phone. But it did the job, the girl’s dad turned out to be rich and gave fat johnnie a job when nobody else would.  Fat johnnie was so grateful he turned over a new leaf and became a body builder, he lost 4 stones or 30kilos. Last time I caught up somebody said he married the girl’s younger sister, his new phone is twice as expensive. And all because he threw a rubbish bin at a mugger. Yep Life is funny that way.