Picking a Winner

Picking a Winner ©

By

Michael Casey

It’s hard enough picking a font to use, I tried a different word processor program and it let me use Amiri, my new favourite font, but it then double spaced it, so I’ve gone back to another one, which sometimes freezes your computer, if you are not careful, but otherwise its nice to use. What has that got to do with anything, what am I waffling on about as some unkind people used to say. Well it proves my point for me without me giving any evidence, things that should work, and should be easy, can prove difficult and not give the required results.

I’ll give that girl a bunch of roses, girls love flowers. Only she has hay fever, you should have saved your money. And yes I know a girl who has hay fever and I do save my money. So you try a potted plant, only nobody bothers to water it, and it dies on the kitchen window sill. My mother who would have turned 100 this week, had green fingers up to her elbows. She would “borrow” a cutting from a sea side town and throw it in a plastic bag sprinkled with water, after the holiday it was planted in her garden and it grew. Whatever she picked literally, became a winner in her front or back garden.

So it is with words, if I use this word or that word you may not like it, and some words are overused, such as Legend and Hero. Common expressions are reversed in an attempt to be different, the white and the black of a situation, the zag and the zig, you can pick your own expressions, while I pick my nose. At least I know what I am doing when I pick it, which is different to picket. Word plays are fun, ask Will down the Shakespeare pub, or Will Shakespeare himself if you are a Thespian, or a Les Dawson fan. I do miss sitting on a bench with Les, my legs wide open, man spreading while dressed as a mature woman, with huge bosoms, showing my silk stockings and garters. Foreign readers can Google Les Dawson.

So what words should I use and chose, or is it chose and use, see you are divided already, so I divide and conquer. Then you criticize my grandma, or is it grammar? Remember I am talking to you, everything I write is a piece of radio, or rubbish if you want to upset me, and make this not a Good Friday but a bad day, on a Friday, though it is actually Good Friday.

Words have weight and power, you can say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or just the right words. Or just being there in silence is the right thing to do. You give a hug, a kiss, or just hold somebody’s hand. And think you have done nothing, but in fact what you have done is better than perfect. Others are just like marooned boats in low tide, but you are a life raft of hope and help.

Sometimes, or often in my case, the words appear for the situation, well on paper anyway, and you don’t know where they come from, so people say it’s a gift, as common place as rain in Manchester, they don’t know or appreciate the now 50 years love of words, since watching Robin Day on tv back in the 1960s. So how do you know what words to pick, well you don’t, you have to be an instant quote machine. You pull words from space, the space between your ears. I’ll give you a few examples. I was talking to somebody and they thought they knew the situation. So as we have a squared pattern carpet, the words sprung to mind via the visual stimulation. It’s like the first square, you have to look at all the squares, like in a chess board you have to read all the squares and pieces. Don’t assume you know everything just from the first square.

Likewise words appears from audio stimulation, Genesis are singing behind me, and a word or phase they sing is like a ball bouncing around in my head, like a pinball machine, which will lead me to words and phrases. It happens at the speed of thought, despite earwax, and appears on the screen equally as fast, its like a damn bursting with words and ideas. I just wish I could draw and then I’d have Cartoons made from Words, as one of my Blogger sites is named. It really is quick, so some call it a Gift, but as I said before 50 years love of Words equals a Gift, as if I’ve stolen Will Shakespeare’s folio, I’m too much of a Falstaff to steal.

Now when I began, I had to stop dead just then, my words becalmed, the Pain Monster appeared from out of nowhere. It’s like an elephant sitting on my left shoulder. So I just slapped on the Movelat pain killing gel on my clicking shoulder, and my face feels as if the elephant’s trunk gave me a slap. This is my normal, my sine curve of pain, so my words shared with you are an oasis of Hope and Fun for myself. Ok, it’s like dirty puddle or is it puzzle to you, that splashes on your best trousers.

Let me try that paragraph again, now when I began you all assumed I’d be talking about horses and racing, The Sport of Kings, as only they can afford it. No doubt my UAE, Saudi, and Qatar readers will have wished for that at any rate, not unless the Queen is a secret reader. I will finish with a horse, as you may remember my dad was a Blacksmith in County Kerry Eire. He began at Rathmore. The store in 1995 had been turned into a hairdressers, some 60 years after dad was there, we visited on the final Grand Tour before my mother died. Dad had bought his ticket and came to England in 1944, he could have gone to USA his sister Mary had or was about to send him money to come to Chicago, but Thomas Cooke had sold him a ticket so his Fate and my Future was decided.

Dad was very intelligent, and he liked watching Politics on TV, so as I grew up I watched with him. And it’s for that reason I love words. When I wrote The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker I did not want to insert dad into the story as I loved him too much, however Big Sid the butcher is my dad. Not the character nor behaviour, but the deep love of kids inside him. I did not even realise it as I wrote Big Sid but when I’d finished I know he was my dad. So I am very fortunate this Good Friday, because I had the winning pick for parents, and as any Arab will tell you a good horse and blacksmith is worth more that all the grains of sand in the desert, even if they were gold.