Balance in Life

Balance in Life ©

By

Michael Casey

Well I haven’t written a new piece in a couple of days so I think you are overdue a new story. Spare Us O Lord I can hear you all mutter, which is not very kind, one day your kids could be forced to read me. Why has it gone all dark in here, has somebody slammed the lid of their laptop closed? Come on let me out, I’m afraid of the dark. Totoro, Totoro help me escape. I’m shaking the cat treats, Totoro will force the lid of your laptop open so I’ll be able to continue annoying you all.

I’ll ignore class 5B2, they were always the wicked group at school, now where was I? Yes, Balance in Life. We all need our Work, Rest and Play, and yes it’s Shakespeare’s Birthday in the morning, 23^rd April 2018. He must be getting a really good Pension now after all these years. We all need a Balance in life, especially if we are Grocer, we have to have our Ying and Yang,and even our Ying tong iddle I po . you may be wondering what is that fat silver haired writer in shades from Birmingham the one in England is on about. So here’s a link, listen to it then come back to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nebe1zuEtbc 

And that is the Humour Prince Charles grew up with, little wonder the Queen rolls her eyes when HE calls her Mummy. As for me I got the repeats years later, repeats as in bathroom repeats, or do I mean radio repeats. Which brings me back to today, we all need a balance of work, rest and play. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy they say. We all need a release, otherwise we explode, and no I’m not talking about the size of my belly, or my bathroom noises.

If you work in a library all week, or an accountancy office which is even quieter than a mortuary. I’m not lying I once temped in an accountancy place, it was quieter than the graveyard. Well if you work quiet then you play noisy. You will be in the Abacus Five a Heavy Metal band at the weekends, just to break the silence, or you may just eat loads of kebabs, either one will do. You scream and shout and let it all out, because in your day job you are just so QUIET, screamingly QUIET. Its A BALANCE.

I mentioned elsewhere that we hope for good news tomorrow, which Fate has decided is Shakespeare’s Birthday. However Fate has also brought some sad news to us this weekend, so that has cast a cloud us, so it is Life’s Eternal Balance. Like you finally get that promotion at work in the Embalming and Morticians Society, but your girlfriend leaves you the very same day, because she thinks you are cheating on her. She thinks there is another girl on the slab only there is not. So  your joy at promotion and recognition is worthless because you have lost the love of the girl you love.

So you drown your sorrows and end up falling into the canal at the Gas Street Basin in Birmingham. You would have drown, but for an off duty policeman and his sister. He has just come out, and his sister is supporting him in his decision. They both hear the splash and they drag you out. Together they give you mouth to mouth. This leads to an award to the off duty Policeman, his colleagues are so proud of him. He has the courage to tell them he is coming out, they all cheer, they are all detectives after all, so they already knew for months.

But what of the sister? She was doing morticians foundation course with a view of joining the craft. So obviously she is smitten and yes, in due course they make love on a slab in the grave yard. The living giving the dead a peek show. Balance in life is so important, and especially so when you are on a small gravestone.

If you can laugh and take break from all your serious and challenging work, then you are the better for it when you return to your job. Bricklayers and Crane drivers on massive building sites may be ballet fans on their off days, they put on a suit and go watch the ballet at the Birmingham Hippodrome. The beauty and romance of the ballet with wonderful music being such a change from being 200metres up in a crane just with a bottle to pee in. You don’t think he’ll climb all the way up and down just for a wee wee do you?

Or laying bricks in the freezing cold, with just your wife’s tights below your work jeans, to stop your assets being frozen so much, not even your wife could unfreeze them. So there you have it, the macho of macho men can and do go to the ballet, which reminds me of a story I have ready about Ballet, I may have even written it already, I write so much I have to check my lists. From be bad and tough builders to ballet nuts, and ballet fans know all about nuts, its the very tight tights.

We all need an escape, something to take the pressure off. A swearing bullying transport manager, trucks don’t just drive themselves, they need a bit of encouragement, and the Queen’s English has to be augmented from time to time. Well so what will Dave or even Florence do at the weekends? They will teach sign language to the Deaf, because their mum or aunty who they adored was deaf, so at weekends they spend their time in utter silence teaching sign language. And when the lads at the Depo found out, what did those bunch of truckers say? They insisted on learning signing too, especially curses, just for fun. Though today the London Marathon had 14 truckers running for a deaf charity. To save energy they used signings to curse each other as they ran the 26 miles.

This is Ying and Yang balance in life, it brings out the best in all of us, and it saves us all. So I hope tomorrow as you all quote Shakespeare to each other that you remember some of Shakespeare is absolute funny filth, and other parts of Shakespeare are and always will be the sweetest and most beautiful language in the world. So I’ll bid you all farewell for tonight, I just hope I can sign it right.