Michael Casey Bed(c)

Michael Casey Bed©

By Michael Casey

I was just reading in the DT that a Uni is going to start a comedy course, a degree in being funny. Today’s title refers to a teaching degree but I’ve  typed it in wrong to make a point, would you take the teacher seriously if Bed was after their name instead of BEd?

Yes you can teach the business side of comedy, comedians are the new millionaires after all, and some new comedians are just not funny, but they still make loads of money to steal one comedian’s catchphrase. Eric Morcambe used to say if it was funny then it was funny, don’t analyse it. There are some genuine funny people who’ll crack everybody else up with a look, a phrase, a voice, just about anything. If anybody else did the same it just would not work. Frank Carson used to say “It’s the way I tell them” and he was right, Roger Burton our old driver nearly crashed the van as he took Frank to the airport, because Frank was so funny and Roger was crying with laughter. Jim the other driver could say something and he would get away with it, and evoke gales of laughter because he was funny.  I was part of that playground too at CPNEC, it was such a fun play the three of us together, not forgetting Phil, my phone a friend Phil.

If you try and catch up with a laugh it’s too late, timing really is everything, and you either have it or you don’t. I went on  a Presenting Course in 1998 because I hoped it’d help with my comic writing, it did help me learn to present and ultimately to teach. I try and practice my comic timing while I’m in the queue in Iceland or Aldi, I listen to what’s happening at the front of the queue and then see if I can make the checkout girl laugh, most days I can. Three years of banter with the lads at CPNEC does help you a lot.

Now writing comedy is another thing entirely, you may be able to write but performing is another kettle of fish, and if you get it wrong it really does stink as much as a kettle of fish. I mentioned teaching, I have used my writing skills to make students laugh and to teach  at the same time. I prefer the writing side but I have performed as well, some say I was good, but I laugh too much instead of being the straight actor. You have to have discipline while you act, you know the funny line is coming you must not kill it, it has to come out and be enjoyed.  Some people kill the punch line by interrupting the story, that’s always a bad thing, let the storyteller tell the story.

My friend Andrew was a brave man, he had severe problems with his legs and used crutches, he worked our switchboard, now he knew how to deliver a line. If we had a quiet period in the mid afternoon and I wasn’t sent elsewhere to help out at the hotel then we’d share a joke or two. I’d feed him a line and wait, he’d pause and look back at me  from his position at the switchboard then deliver a perfect put down, his lips pursed and his glasses perched on his nose. I was the ball machine and he was the ace returning grand slam player. It was fun, I’d be the straight man and he’d be the slammer. Working the Concierge desk in the evening I had a chance to practice my lines with every new guest that appeared. Perfect place to practice.   I also spent 3 years at a law firm, I practiced words of a different kind there.

But what of words? Words are like sweets, like drops of rain, a kiss and much much more. Comedy is strange, what makes me laugh may not make you laugh. An In joke, Inns of Court jokes jokes appeal on different levels to different people. Every job, every profession has its own jokes, the knack is to write so that you can touch base with as many different people as possible, use special language and draw people in to different strands of life, of laughter. In a way laughter is about pain because we are laughing at others misfortune.

Every joke or story has degrees of laughter and pain attached, it’s though laughter we can live through pain. I wrote about my bad back maybe 3 years ago, Crawling Like a Worm in the Dirt I called the piece, it’s funny because we can picture the scene. A  good writer is drawing pictures in the readers’ minds, creating cartoons. Now will a Degree be able to teach all of what I’ve spoken of? I’ve spent 45 years to get where I am now, 20 years listening to BBC Radio4 and 25 years holding a pen. Humour varies from area to area and from country to country, from person to person, one man’s meat really is another man’s poison. I think it’s time for Michael Casey to go to B E D.

Books and Investment

Books an Investment ©

By Michael Casey

I used to read by the yard, I sat next to the school library, 5 shelves of books, so I read almost all of it, literally reading by the yard, we weren’t metric then, reading by the metre would sound strange.

We’ve just had half term, so I bought a few books for my girls, Lemony Snicket 13 book boxed set was great value from one site on the internet. I even bought a cheap huge Spanish dictionary which will help my daughter,  she can stand on it to reach to academic heights. Internet is great but books still need to be read, the touch and feel of books is such a nice sensation, the smell too is nice, it does encourage learning. Curling up with a book is nice. You can hide under the duvet while the rain lashes down, while the snow blankets the streets and rooftops, a nice book and a warm drink, perfect as the cat purrs at the bottom of your feet.

We all went on a trek to Spring Hill library, only the library was shut, so our brother said “you’ve seen the library then”, we turned tail and walked the 2 miles back to the house. There was a little sweet shop next to it but we had no money for sweets. That was before the flats were built, before the big Tesco store too, the library is still there, a listed building. Thinking about it I remember getting all the Sherlock Holmes from the Spring Hill library, 40years ago and more, the John Creasy books too. Nobody had books in their houses then, so a trip to the library really did open doors, doors in the mind.

I   remember 35years ago and more when I was unemployed, I’d buy an LP, CDs weren’t invented then, so I’d buy an LP, John Denver Back Home Again and a few books and that would keep occupied until the next dole payment. I read all the John Wyndham books and filled a bedside cabinet. In Birmingham city centre we had Hudson’s book shop on New Street. This was a rabbit warren full of books, the Hobbit meets books. JRR Tolkien was a Birmingham man after all. After that reading break I applied for one computer job and got it and stayed for 21years.

On holidays I’d find the book shop and buy a ton of books to keep me busy while we sat on the beach at Abegele or wherever. I found the Don Camillo books that my History teacher had recommended so it was such a trill to discover them. 30 years later I rediscovered them and bought second hand copies on Amazon, there are a few Don Camillo stories online too, so take a peek. Today I’ve ended up reading the Grimm fairy tales, and they are so good, we watch the Grimm tv detective show on Sky and those are great too, based loosely on the brothers Grimm stories, so maybe indirectly they have led me to reading the brothers Grimm, and yes watch the tv show its on at 9pm on Sky.

Books have other uses too, you can use them to prop up your bed when the bed leg breaks, we used a tin of beans and an old metal iron, the kind used 100years ago to iron, to prop up my brother’s bed, but books work too. So support your mind and support yourself and your bed. If you forget to get the toilet paper from the store you could always use a page or two from a book, assuming you’re not going to reread a book.  The ultimate critique of a book, use it as toilet paper. Books can get musty and dusty and go horrible so make sure you don’t keep them next to a damp wall.

If ever I sell any of my 5 books I will buy my daughter a bookshelf, she has 130books piled up against the wall by her bed, I have Grimm and Don Camillo by my bed, and a Dab radio. A prayer book or a Bible is next to some people’s beds for as we all know in the beginning was the Word.

Clocks go back and I’m sad

OCTOBER 27TH, 2012 19:26

Clocks go back and I’m sad

By michaelgcasey

Clocks go back and I’m sad(c)

By Michael Casey

Well I went around the house putting the clocks back and I was saddened to find out that my Seiko chiming  clock had a problem. I’ve had that clock for maybe 15years  now, it works off a big torch battery, D size. When I came to adjust the time I discovered that the little plastic wheel that you turn to adjust the hour was missing. I went down on my hands and knees in search of the plastic wheel but no luck. So I had to try and do it with my finger nails, I could  have just taken the battery out and waited. It’s probably my prize possession, so I’m disappointed, if my house was bigger I would have had a Grand Father clock all those years ago, so I compromised with a chiming clock that sits on the mantlepiece. It cost 80quid which was a lot of money then and still is now. If anybody has a spare plastic wheel thing just let me know. A chime is the heartbeat of a home after all

Dancing with Dustbins

Dancing with Dustbins©

By

Michael Casey

I was taking our smallest to school the other day, a Wednesday which is our bin day. In the old days as my daughter calls them, nailing me into my coffin already, in the old days when I was her age we really did have bins. We had dustbins made of steel, they were heavy old things. The dustmen used to come up the entry and grab the bins and carry them away up the entry, then when they got to the dustcart they’d hurl the contents inside then return quickly, I can remember the crashing sounds as the lids came off the dustbins were moved about. The cart itself was a curved shape with sliding doors coming down to keep the smell in, there was no such thing as a compacter back in the 1960s. Progress was plastic bins replacing steel ones.

Moving away from Birmingham, just over the border so to speak, I had to buy plastic sacks for the dustbin which you have to buy yourself. The water tasted different too, culture shock so to speak, different water and put out your own bins. Where we live we have foxes too, so it was  a Nature Programme at night, you could see and hear the foxes raid the plastic sacks for food. Our dustbins were their fridges so to speak, an all you could eat buffet for foxes, and cats too.

Time moves on so now we all have wheelie bins, they are visual litter as some folks leave them in their front garden, it’s such a depressing sight, wheelie bins galore, save the planet and destroy the visuals. You have 3 wheelie bins, rubbish, recycle, and garden waste, not forgetting 2 smaller containers you get for food waste. God help us, bring back Garde de L’eau.

When its dustbin day it’s like a swat team or an old fashioned gunfight at the OK Coral, the lads appear, the recycling dustcart moves slowly and menacingly along the streets, bin men to the front and bin men to the rear. One goes ahead and swings the wheelie bins into order so they can be trotted out and executed, or should I say lifted up and emptied before being swung back on the pavement. The lads are very fit, the way one lad moved the bins about convinced me he should be on Strictly Come Dancing, effortlessly he grabs and swings, swings and grabs. The fluidity of his movements is the key, I spent 3 years in a hotel, I know what he knows, you have to swing it, otherwise things are as heavy as they are, but with a swing things are lighter. Just picture the scene dustbins changing into dancing girls, dancing with dustbins, dancing with dustmen, ballet dancers falling down like leaves around the compacter. I was positively vetted by a ballet dancer myself but that’s another story……

Happy Dreams |Sleep Tight Nighty Night

Happy Dreams Sleep Tight Nighty Night©

By Michael Casey

It’s in the press today how a psyco psyco  psychologists can read us while we sleep, they are still guessing while we are awake so now they know us while we are asleep, know not in the Biblically sense that is.

Positive body language, negative body language, neutral body language, open posture, closed posture. Snappy answers to stupid questions, to name but one Mad Magazine book. All this the psychologists know while we are awake, while we are being interviewed for that high powered job. At my GCHQ and MI5/MI6 interviews I sat there and folded paper into aeroplanes and threw them this way then that, just as James Bond in Skyfall did. He was interviewed after me you know, I gave him a few tips, SHAVE, Gillette G3 is good, one blade lasts      6 months.   I passed of course and I will spy for GB, I will be 0099 on account of my enormous belly and a love of 99 ice creams.

I did have the sleep test too. I totally confused them. I start lying on my belly, then I switch  to my back, I crunch up, then I do star jumps while I sleep. Then I get all angry and swear in my sleep, Judy Dench M my arse, she just stole my best dress, it should have been me M for MICHAEL.  I then fall into a deep deep slumber, after 2 hours I rise up in bed and scream “Launch the Lifeboats”, before falling back down. I sleep soundly, moving backwards and forwards over my bed, all the shapes the psychologists think they can read, I move like the ebb and flow of the sea. Suddenly I raise my left leg and let loose a rasping roaring fart, which reverberates for 10 full seconds. Now that really gets the psychologists thinking, and I resume my slumbers.

So as I can now reveal, the psychologists have investigated my slumbers, they can come to no other conclusion. M is for Michael, Judi Dench sling your hook.

mummy who's my sperm daddy

Mummy Who’s My Sperm Daddy©

By Michael Casey

I just read in the Daily Telegraph about an idea for a celebrity sperm bank, so people can have the pick of the "best" sperm daddies. I thought it was an   April  Fool and then I realised it was October, so it cannot be true. Can it be true, can it be really   true.  I did think of the Nazis too.

I always say that beautiful parents have ugly kids, and ugly parents have kids the gods themselves would adore. My own kids are very pretty, in fact when we've been in Shanghai visiting grannie we even had people taking photos and videos of the kids as was went around Shanghai zoo, yes treating my girls as if they were animals in the zoo. Our Army Uncle as we call one of the relatives, he was a political officer in the Chinese Red Army, anyway when he was taking the girls out for a treat would stop all the attention by saying "get lost, they are from Tibet" or other such words. By the way he really is a very nice man, you'd respect and admire him instantly if you meet him.

But why this obsession with looks, or I want Einstein's baby, will men be attacked in the street so women can have the perfect baby.  A new form of mugging in the street. It a horrible thought.

God's lottery is the one and only lottery as far as I am concerned. I am blessed, or is it cursed with three beauties in my home. I often sing "If I was a rich man" from Fiddler On The Roof. Only I change the world and act "why was I cursed with 3 witches", we are near Halloween after all. Our girls have great Chinese eyes and hair you'd kill for, but then God's lottery gave them Western features. My eldest daughter looks exactly like I did at that age, obviously with more feminine features. The smaller daughter, 9 this week, looks like a classic beauty.

So this is how my kids have turned out, but I never call them pretty "ugly mug" is what I used more often than not. And they never have this obsession for mirrors. Now our USA uncle, his daughter married an American. They just had their 1st child so her parents wondered just how their granddaughter would turn out. Would they perhaps look like our kids? Their granddaughter looks totally Eastern, a pretty totally Eastern baby, no Western looks at all.

What does all this prove? God's lottery is the best and you never know how your kids will look, what combination. Somebody once joked " Michael she wants to breed with you." Why, not because I look  great but because my girls look nice, my wife is a beauty too. The fun is see in how the children look. He's got dad's face, she's got your nose, her smile is like grannies. All the things we notice when a child is born, and then when kids grow up all the changes, and all the similarities that appear.  The DNA  lottery.

But most of all what is the most important thing? It’s the love we give the child, it’s the Grimm's fairy tales we read to it, it’s how we build and form their mind, so that they have a spirit that will reach for the sky, that will visit you in the old people's home, and not abandon you because you are old. I met my own wife in the old people's home, she was cleaning my dad’s room, I  didn’t abandon him, and see how I was rewarded.

What I have IS ME

What I have IS Me©

By Michael Casey

What I have IS Me, say some, I am ME without anything say others. So where do I stand?  It’s nice to have a bit of comfort my dad used to say, he’s gone 10years now, we weren’t rich but we weren’t poor either. We had very loving parents, so we had riches beyond compare, I hope I don’t sound like an evangelical, I slam the door in their face if any come aknocking at my door.

So what makes me ME, is it the clothes I wear, the out of fashion everything, if its 2XL then that’s all I need, though I do have a few nice clothes, though I’ll never wear the Emperor’s New Clothes.  So what makes me ME, I used to wear jeans with a shirt and tie, so I looked like Status Quo, that was my look, it wasn’t planned, I just liked ties. That was in my computer room days. So clothes are an aspect of personality, they mirror or highlight what we are. Big clothes, big personality, perhaps.  You can hide behind clothes too,  you can dress frumpily if you want to hide your curves.

 If you are a  body builder you’ll wear tight Tshirts to show off your bulges, if you are a tattoo fan then you’ll show flesh to show the tattoo, the fact that the human body is perfect  as God made it does not matter, some like to trash their own body with a tattoo. I’ll be chased down the high street now for having an opinion. If Michelangelo's David had a tattoo now that would make it so much more interesting.  So these changes to our own physical bodies make a statement, I can even change the fundamental nature of my own  body, I control me. Though lots of us don’t control ME, because we are too fat and then we look at Michelangelo's David and we wish we were like Michelangelo's David a kind of perfect US.

The female form in art is celebrated forever, but girls will have tattoos too, to prove they are just as good as boys. In fact girls are far better, so they are lowering their own worth by copying the boys. I did know a very pretty girl who had tattoos, I think she once said if she was unemployed the dole office would help to have the tattoos removed to help her get a job. As she was working she’d have to pay herself.

Hair colour makes a statement too, I don’t dye mine though some have said I should. My hair has got whiter and whiter, very silver white now, it started 20years ago. Girls change the colour of their hair to make a statement, to match a mood. Blondes have more Fun, goes back to Monroe, now the colours can be of all the colours of the rainbow. I grew up through the 70s so when I see all the bizarre and weird colours that men and women have I just think its just a repeat from ages, a generation ago, so its just not original.

Swearing in the street is commonplace now, I’m old fashioned so I think girls should not swear, they should stay as ladies. The age of swearing is lower and lower, but people think it’s impressive,  I’d just boring.

I swear on occasion, but it does not define ME, it does not trap me in a Cul de Sac.  All of the examples I’ve given show how we as people like to tinker at the edges of our  form. But what makes us different. If we were all nudists how could we tell each other apart, I’ll wait while you snigger. Personality defines us and personality is not the cut of our jib, if we were blind we’d not be hampered by the overwhelming nature of sight. Speech defines us in a big way, if we were dumb we would not be hampered by our petty like or dislike of accents. Then we have touch, shaking hands, rough or smooth hands make an impression, but what if we had no touch. If all we had was thoughts, how would we be? You could say Email is just that, just as you are reading this you are not hampered by any preconceptions of me and what I am like.

So we have taken the walls down bit by bit, till there is nothing. We have attempted to make ourselves anew by having our tattoos, our hair styles, our clothes. But in the end what makes me ME. I’ll try and explain. If you look in your own soul and accept yourself as yourself and say “ well God this is me” then you don’t need clothes and tattoos nor hair dyes or even clothes. No I’m not saying we should all be nudists. We are who we want to be, we are who we can be. A bit of music here, humming a tune there, a shared smile, making a new joke every time you are in Iceland, a nod a glance as you walk down the high street. Talking to the little old lady in the street, having a bit of compassion as you pass through this life. This makes ME and this makes YOU.

Or you can have a wall, and hide behind everything, being afraid of looking into the mirror. Clothes don’t make the man, the man makes the man. Everything else is a distraction.