I imagine it's not the Iceland frozen food shop up the road, nor the supply of frozen curries. By the way the best curry in the world can be found here in Birmingham, so that's another reason to visit us here in Birmingham England.
Though with a Shanghai wife I'd prefer Chinese myself.
I was going to talk about Telling Tales today, but first of all let me shut a window, the air has gone really cold today, or it could just be rigor mortis.
Now how do I write a story. I sit here at the computer, pick a theme and away I go. Usually after an hour it's done. Remember writing a book takes a year of your life, and I don't have the energy to do that. So if you are a speed typist, then say hello, because I could dictate a book in 3 months. Otherwise I'll just stick to the short stories.
Weaving material together is what Bangladesh is famous for, so you all know about the skill and hard work required to do that. You may even whistle or sing while you work. It's a pile of material that is cut to size then all the pieces and sewed together to make the garments. The skill of the cutter gets the most value from the material, as little waste as possible. In a modern factory a laser cutter or some other fancy computer controlled machine is used. Then when all the work, all the sewing is done you have the most perfect garment. Or it may just be Mo in a corner of the family house doing everything himself.
Now with story writing, now, 30 years on since I started I have those tailoring skills in my head, yes it's chalk dust not silver hair on my head. So I have an idea, like the stars in a dark night sky, then I sew the ideas together. If you look up at the night sky you may not see the dots that form the Plough or any other star pattern. It can be hard to spot them, but once you know then you know, It's like a baby learning to speak, slowly then more fluently with time. And that's the tailor's skill, and that's how I write. Mo in Bangladesh may have a few coloured buttons in a jar that the toddler knocks over, as Mo tidies up he decides to add the buttons as decoration. And that's how Mo got his lucky break, because of the added buttons to his garments.
When I write I may look out the corner of my eye and see something and that leads to another idea. In Iceland when they are not using whales as surf boards, or climbing mountains without ropes, ropes are for girls. Though the girls in Iceland as well as being Vikings, can climb mountains too. They have Polar bears as pets, no Alsatian dog for them, it just has to be a Polar bear. The favourite name for a Polar bear is Michael, the same thing my wife used to call me, Polar bear, or is that in reverse?
I just stopped for a hot drink, in Iceland they do of course only eat hot food as they live on volcanoes, so it must be a great place to live in. I did write a story about love in a deep freeze, not Iceland but inside a real deep freeze, its in my comedy Shoplife which is on Amazon Kindle.
So as you can see my writing goes this way and that, like a iceberg that floats past Iceland, though my sister did sink through the ice in Iceland up to her waist,but that's another story. There is always another story and I do thank God for that. So thank you Iceland and Bangladesh fro visiting today, this has been your story.
Michael Casey
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