Forward Planning

 Forward Planning (c)

By Michael Casey

I don't plan these stories, maybe 10% I do, so it's more like fishing from my mind. If you are disappointed, then all I'll say is I can only Write what I Write, and do it my way, you can always do it your way. I do hope it sounds like Radio, no boring words on a page. And  yes I did really spend 20 years listening constantly to quality speech radio, that was before I picked up a pen. And yes I have total confidence in my writing, because I learnt the hard way. And yes it's even harder still to find a backer, who has confidence in my words. Me, I'm, well you can answer that better than me.

Writing feeds my spirit and it is all I can do, as my body is worn out, though if I met that speed typist Kpop girl I'd have 4 more children and form a Kpop band, or a martial arts school. As I sit on the sofa playing with the kids as I dictate more books, until the grim reaper finally gets me. I cannot complain, I've had nearly 6 years extra time, and statistically I may get 5 more years, as 11 years is the average extra time after a quadruple heart bypass. So I do tell my daughters to enjoy me while I'm here, though death won't have me without a fight, and lots of Movelat pain killer gel on my clicking arthritic left shoulder.

But you know all this already if you have been paying attention, and not just sending me rubbish from all over the world, with due respect.  Now to the theme, Forward Planning. Tonight one daughter has travelled to see the Dentist, so in the future I may get free brush and go, after he qualifies in 5 years time. Meanwhile daughter number 2 is thinking about University already. She has only just started her A Levels, but you have to think about where to go for you Degree. So she is already thinking about a Long Shot, but it's far closer and one of my brothers went there, otherwise she'd have to go far far away, to the University of Shrek maybe, or even over the border where men  are in skirts.

So I'm telling her how in 1974 my brother invented the Gap Year, by being a Coal Miner, and she is the Coal Miner's niece. How here grandfather was a blacksmith back in Kerry, and her Irish grandmother was born "in a stable" well almost, see photo attached, though it has since been demolished when my cousin's son took over the land. How her uncles came from the inner city and touched the spires of learning. How her mum is from Shanghai, thus making her bilingual. As for me, I was as strong as an ox but now just smell like one. Though they have a cat called Totoro too, as a reward for me having a bypass, it would have been a dog if I died, as I promised before my totally unplanned quadruple heart bypass.

She can also tell any interview panel how dad has written so much, and keeps on going. So can they please give her a chance to study Anthropology and maybe me, her dad is the greatest ape she'll ever study. So that's the back story, though less than 20 places to study there, where  her uncle fell in the river passing by, and ran half naked through the streets carrying his clothes, it was the 1970s, era of the streaker.

So that's the Hope for today, we've had a look on the internet, and it would be great, and it would be fun to do that there. Though both daughters would be away for a year, and just me and Totoro home alone. She could even do it where the Dentist is studying, so she would finish at the same time as he qualified as a dentist. She promises not to steal away the big sister's boyfriend, should she end up studying there.

So the Moon is a balloon, as David Niven used to say, it's a great read by the way, what will happen I'll find out in a year or so, if she gets an offer. But then she has to get the grades, not unless the back story of her life helps, inverse snobbery. My brother had 4 straight As by the way, but being a coal miner swung it, maybe. So there you go, a Hope, a Prayer, another piece of the Lego that forms my storytelling. 

But strange things do happen, and I can help somebody get through the eye of a needle, if only they take a chance on me. So Glam up Everybody, just as Pinsent Masons Law Firm in Birmingham used to do every Christmas Time, they also hired a coach to go help folks with their reading.

Nobody knows the Future, but we can all Reach for The Sky, just as Douglas Bader did, he should inspire everybody.