Peace Corp

Peace Corp ©

By

Michael Casey

I heard about The Peace Corp on the radio4 this morning, it was a good programme. I didn’t know it was 50years old. It did get me thinking which is a good sign for any programme. JFK was the man behind it, the thing that changes the most is the soul of the volunteer, soul being the right word. To think that your gift of 2 years of  your life, your work for 2 years is a soul changing thing, and the place where you are working benefits greatly too.

DC is on about having community service here, if it worked that would fun for the youth and society could benefit too. The thing is though, do people in general want to be the Good Samaritan to Society, or are we all so selfish nowadays? Are we ready to have our soul changed? Years ago we had a guy at work he took a year off to travel around the world, when he came back he hadn’t change an inch, so I think it was a waste of a year. It might be my Irish blood but we tell a tale when we come back from Aldi  just up the road, our Chinese Irish kids are that way too. You have to connect with the world before you can change yourself and your surroundings wherever that may be. You cannot be Peace Corp unless you travel first to yourself, the Inner Journey is the biggest and best journey.

 

The journey within means you know yourself, you know your own heart, once that is known you can set out on whatever   course you want to take. Sometimes in a life you do have the Dark Night of the Soul, but once you pass through that you do have an even greater insight into yourself. Naïve dreams give way to realities, you stop trying to run before you can walk, you plan, even if its on a piece of paper stuck to the fridge. The Peace Corp idea may have been first sketched out on the back on an envelope, but it grew and now its 50years old. Over here we have The Duke of Edinburgh scheme and The Prince’s Trust, next time I have a beer with the Duke and the Prince, or more likely in The Duke or The Prince pubs, I’ll have to ask them did they think their soul changing schemes would make a difference. If you can discover or touch your own soul then you can have a little peace, peace will have a chance and John Lennon will smile again.

flying lessons

Fashionistas Strike Again

Fashionistas Strike Again ©

By

Michael Casey

Well my daughters struck again, they knew my wife didn’t really like my black jeans. So I was encouraged to donate them. Well what can 2 small girls do with one large pair of black jeans? First of all they cut the legs off, they always said I should wear shorts in the Summer. So now I had a pair of shorts. I tried them on, one leg was higher than the other, or is it one leg was shorter than the other? Either way, one thing was certain, I now had my first ever pair of shorts.

As for the girls, my smallest now had a skirt,  it was made from one piece of one leg, there was a problem though they had managed to put a hole in the back of her new skirt; inspiration came and they slid on another piece of  leg on top of the first, now she had a more stylist skirt, with a more fashionable design. As for my bigger daughter she had turned one piece of leg into a fashion bag, she had sewn up one end and then with a thin strip of leg she had made a strap. To make it even better she had added a spangle broach to it.

I had seen the results and had given in and tried on my new shorts, while they did the catwalk in the living room, Gadaffi was forgotten, they had more important things to do, catwalk. I gave in and donated another pair of jeans, in seconds I had a 2nd pair of shorts. What will the girls produce with the 2nd donation? I’ll find out tomorrow no doubt. I did have an interlude in the afternoon sun, my daughter cut my hair, it was a bit of fun, I do have 2 weeks left before my holidays are over, so my hair will grow back before I return to work. I suppose I look like the gay designer in The Devil Loves Prada, but my hair does  grow very very thick and fast, but white.

With that thought I’m  off to bed,  maybe I’ll add photo tomorrow. For we are a Fashionista Family.

From Lenny Bruce to Innuendo

From Lenny Bruce to Innuendo ©

By

Michael Casey

I was thinking about words and their power the other night as I drifted off to sleep, Lenny Bruce’s name drifted through my mind. I was thinking about how we use words  and perhaps I was thinking about my next blog. How nowadays nobody has a vocabulary, just F(*&^ or &*^%, that’s what you get if you remonstrate with anybody under 30. I won’t bore anybody with my take on the past week’s mayhem.

I have a friend called Jim, we worked together at a 4star deluxe business hotel, Jim had worked very hard all his life,  he had a tongue on him and he knew how to use it.

The thing though was that he could say anything and could get away with it, why, because he had charm, an old rogue’s charm, so instead of getting the sack guests would say, a la Dick Emery, “you are awful”. So if you like his use of words was acceptable.

If you rarely curse then it has more power when you do. But 15 year olds can and do curse ad infinitum, so although we can say its bad in fact its more boring than bad.  In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Belgium is the worst word you can use. Perhaps we need to invent a few more words, Politician, NofW, Wall Street, Stock Market are just a few that spring to mind. If somebody has “stock marketed” you, its akin to some kind of rape, that has left you battered and bruised, spiritually, mentally, financially.

No doubt I’ll be criticised for my last sentence, which proves that people don’t bother to read things in context.

Over here in England we have Innuendo, we have camp and other styles of comedy. In USA Irony is not understood, and you even get attempts at using irony, and you get the joke backward telegraphed and the star saying “I was being Ironic”, when really they were getting it wrong. Innuendo is a good form of language. You can say so much while saying so little. I like the comedians who used it so well in the past, I like words used as weapons of laughter, think back to the Goons and Around the Horne. Kenneth Williams and Duncan and Sandy invented Camp humour BEFORE it was invented, I hope USA readers will Google all this they could make a comic discovery for themselves. 1950s, 1960s  were light years ahead of the game. You don’t need an overpaid fast talking guy looking at his own reflection, just go back to the old days, and they really were the good old days for comedy. I have been told myself that some of  my stuff leads people up the garden path, which is all you need to do.

Lenny Bruce said, “ have you ever Blaaaed a Bla, or have you ever Dooed a Do” I think that’s a line from the film. It makes me remember too just how good Dustin Hoffman was/is 2 Oscars and  loads of other stuff. The point is though that you don’y have to curse all the time, I think its just boring and lazy. I did a post called Metaphor This a few weeks ago, that proves that language is a balloon that can be twisted this way and that way to form a giraffe.

A sex scene when written down does not need to be graphic, a metaphor can be far funnier. He touched the scales of justice, he adjusted the weights, he was pleased with the result, law was duly served, he pleaded his innocence, but he felt the full force of justice, and he was fully processed, then he was taken down to the cells, he was relieved. That’s how I showed Romance between a lawyer and a milkman/baker in my novel The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker. I’m no Jilly Cooper you can go to Amazon Kindle and Judge Me for yourselves.

Yes I do curse on occasion and when I write my actors may curse too, but words are like a cloak, they are clothes for my actors, and words show more Fashion and Class than some moron who can only “Daa a daa,” and doesn’t know his arse from his elbow.

Why is everything getting smaller?

Why is everything getting smaller and smaller? I bought a personal DAB radio 6years ago and it was as big as a pack of fags. 2 days ago I got an MP3 player from Amazon (£13.50 a bargain)_ and that is about the size of my thumb, or smaller than a box of matches. You can get 600 or so tracks on it AND it has an FM radio. You do need a magnifying glass to read the LCD display, luckily I do have one. I'm old enough to remember the windup gramaphone player we had, this was as big as  a small fridge, I even remember breaking it up when it ceased working. So from the size of a fridge to a box of matches in one lifetime. 

For more go to www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com

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Fridge Family Casey

Fridge Family Casey ©

By

Michael Casey

　

Our fridge died on us. My wife had been nagging for ages about our fridge, finally I gave in. I agreed we needed a new fridge, and we could afford it.

So I started looking on the Internet to see where are the bargains were. Argos, Currys, Comet, John Lewis, these were the target sites, not to mention loads of others the google search gave us. But with something like a fridge, or rather a Frost Free Fridge Freezer, you really have to go to the shops and look at the offers.

So Sunday was Family Fridge Day. It began with my wife and girls going to their church, with a promise of a visit to Costco afterwards. I hadn’t decided which of my 3 churches to go to, it all depends on how tired or lazy I am, that’s why I’m here there and everywhere, so I have 3 priests praying for me. My wife and the girls go to the C of E while I stick with the Catholics. I forced myself to go to my local church around the corner, this is where our Topol look alike priest sings to us. Don’t take my word, go and attend.

My wife was surprised when she returned that I’d been out to Mass, and why had she returned instead of directly going to Costco, the simple reason, what did I have in my pocket? My wallet. So off the family went to Costco.

I like Costco because you can have a beef hotdog and a soda, with soda refill for only £1.50, yes really. While we were there we spotted a fridge freezer, so we had a look, trying all the doors and so on. There was one problem, we have a galley kitchen so we had to think, would the door open fully, if it couldn’t then we

couldn‘t buy it. We bought our stuff from Costco and I enjoyed the hotdog.

Next we were off to Wing Wip, he’s a major Chinese food hypermarket, several of my wife’s friends work there, Mr Ying Yip himself, one of the brothers waved us bye bye as we left the store. I’m told "byebye" is originally a Chinese word.

Afterwards we went to Sainsbury’s in Selly Oak, which is a student area, next to Birmingham University. There my wife met more or her friends who happened to be shopping.

So the next port of call was over the dangerous road behind Sainsbury’s that’s where Comet and Currys and Homebase are.

We looked up and down the aisles we had a good play with the fridges. Ma, my mother-in-law in Shanghai had admonished us to get a big fridge because the kids were growing and would want more food very soon. There was a nice big Indesit a silver colour, immediately we agreed on that. But we still needed to look in the shop next door. So that’s what we did, in the next shop my wife eyed a very big Bosch which blew the budget out of the water. So we looked at it and pulled and pushed all the drawers and doors open and closed. Then we went to Homebase but they don’t have fridges in the shop, only online.

The final problem was the lack of space in our galley kitchen, really we needed a tape measure to measure from the back of the fridge to the door wide open position. So we thought we’d come back the next day with our measurements and compare to what was in the shop. These are the things the Shanghai Family Casey have to do out of love and madness. I suppose we are like the Adams Family when we hit the shops.

Safely back home we decided to take our measurements down, once we had these we were half way home. But I don’t know about you but wouldn’t it be easier to just do it online? So armed with the 55cm measurement we went searching online. Hey presto we found an Indesit Frost Free Fridge Freezer that matched our 55cm figure. To be honest it was the very same fridge I had suggested a couple of days before, only I’d been overruled, which meant the Adams Family had to go playing hide and seek while we looked for a fridge.

Family meeting was held and our two girls looked at the Dixon’s offer. Yes that was the one. I hit return and bought the fridge freezer, frost free too. That was Sunday, though it felt not like a Sunday more like a Bank Holiday, a family day out while we looked at fridges.

Today Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, the lads rung us up early and said they’d be with us in 10 minutes. Then hey presto they appeared with the new frost free fridge freezer, our Indesit. They stripped all the packaging away in the street and they carried in the new fridge,

a bit like undertakers, but carrying in instead of out. They did carry away our old fridge, and in a matter of 10 mins we had a new addition to the family.

Our girls could not wait to try out the new super freezer, so after 4 hours, which is the wait time before you can switch on a new freezer, I was told this, I didn’t know this. So once it was ready me and the girls made up some blackcurrant squash and poured it into the 24 ice cube slots. They were impatient to see the results of their experiment, several times they opened and closed the fast freezer box. Finally all was revealed, we had cracked it, we had flavoured ice cubes!

The girls say they have lots to grow now, as they measure their height against the fridge. Doesn’t everybody’s kids, or is it in this Shanghai Casey’s family only? The new fridge is 1.74 metres, or up to my eyebrows so IF the girls grow that tall then they will be Models, they are pretty enough already, the wife could have been a model too, only she wasn’t tall enough, and turned down a chance to be a model for childs’ clothes in Shanghai.

How she married me is another story, I think it was my ability to chose fridges that swung it for me.

Cooling Off

Its really hot here in Sunny Birmingham.

I was thinking of filling the bath with beer and lying in it. I could have a couple of straws to quench my thirst.

I could then get my Shanghai wife to top up the beer by throwing buckets of beer all over me.

I could get the neighbour's dog to wag its tail to cool me down.

How much beer would it take to fill the bath.

Or maybe I could just use double strenghth squash as  my bath filler.

Though beer would be best for my hair, beer shampoo is something the girls know about.

I've never tried orange squash shampoo, but it would be far cheaper than any celebrity hairdresser's products.

Hang on, is that the icecream van outside.

I just bought 20 99s so if I rub them all over my body I'll cool down for sure. When the cold dissipates the neighbour's dog can lick it all off, maybe a few cats too.

The wife has just shouted to me, she's filled the bath with beer, I can jump in now, all the Nectar points have finally come in useful

So SPLASH.

Waiting In

Waiting IN ©

By

Michael Casey

We all wait in for workmen or gas man to come and read the meter or whatever, and one thing can be certain, they never but never turn up on time. Waiting for a parcel or a home purchase delivery can also mean waiting forever.

You wait and you wait, you will the man to arrive, you hope and you hope that it will arrive, you may even pray, the first time in years. Dear God make the DHL, the UPS or the Royal Mail man arrive, I really am looking forward to enjoying my latest lump of plastic gismo which will make my life worthwhile. How I lived without it I’ll never know, I’m holding in my pee so I don’t have to go, I don’t want to miss the delivery man again. Once I was in the bathroom and I missed him and then it was 3 more days before I got my stuff.

This week we had a deliveryman convention, the van stopped and my wife was so happy jumping for joy, only it wasn’t for us it was for a neighbour. A huge big thing, the delivery man was just wanting to offload it, any house would do, so long as he gets a scribble on the form or the  new electronic machine they all now use. So reluctantly my wife was palmed off with somebody else’s rubbish and not her own.

My wife was waiting for a Sat Nav, she’d looked everywhere online, and they were sold out, Tom Tom had gone gone gone. So finally she found Best Buy and they were the only place with stock and 10quid less than anywhere else, and a  10quid voucher too. So she was using tom toms to tell the world where to shop. As for me I spotted a Clarks online sale, so while she waited for a Tom Tom I was waiting for a pair of ½ price G fitting size 10 shoes. We were taking bets on whose stuff would arrive first.

I won the bet and danced around the living room with my ever so light and comfy shoes. My wife just heckled from a settee. I told her that the Sat Nav was delayed because the courier could not find our house.  The next day, very late in the afternoon her treasure arrived, she had her Tom Tom, and why is Tom Tom called Tom Tom, did the inventor have a stutter, or was the product so good it was named twice the same as New York New York.

I was given a 2 hour lecture or is it a joyful nag on the joys of Sat Navs, our kids thought it was a good toy too, it even talks to you, turn left, turn right. Almost as good as a mother-in-law in the back of a car.

I decided to take refuge in another room and wait for another pair of shoes. I hadn’t ordered any more, I was just making an excuse to avoid the wife’s advertising for Tom Tom.  My waiting in was really waiting for her joy to end. I did ask her though could the Tom Tom give a route to Ma in Shanghai.