To Touch A Beating Heart

To Touch a Beating Heart  ©

By

Michael Casey

I was watching Jools Holland’s show and later on I watched Glee, its just finished in fact, Music has such an effect on me, I hope on everybody else too. Music DOES Touch a Beating Heart. Music is like a heart beat, it offers rhythm to our lives, it goes fast and it goes slow, and when it ends we are dead.

Obama is in Ireland and now on his way here, he will have no doubt heard some music just as the Queen did, I imagine that as he has tea with the Queen they’ll both remark on their Irish trips, and I’d guarantee that Music will be part of that conversation.

My dad discovered Elvis in his 60s, he watched all of Elvis’s movies over a Christmas break, my dad was impressed. Musicians do touch our beating hearts, their power is so great, within 2 seconds a piece of music can get to you. If I’m very lucky within 30seconds I’ve touched somebody with my words, but music is still at least 15 times faster. I am of course so very very jealous, I can hear music on the Phoenix Chinese TV station and even though I know no Mandarin the music and the Chinese words still can touch my beating heart. I am lucky that a window has been opened into another kind of music, I wasn’t expecting that when I found my Shanghai wife.

So what is it with Music,  when the first cave man made love and heard the beat of his mate’s heart, did it fill him with wonder and then did he copy the beat with bones banging on the skull of his enemy who’d he recently eaten?  Whatever the reason I am so so jealous, a beat a rhythm a song or just the roar of the sea or even of the wind itself, all of this is music.

I’d love to be able to write songs, I have produced a few good poems, and some say my writing is poetic, but really the way I write is the way I write, I’m not clever enough to analyse my style, it is what it is. I  am lucky though if I get a few good reports, but I’d rather touch a few beating hearts.

Look at Me I'm a Nobody

  

Look at Me I’m a Nobody ©

By

Michael Casey

Well the Injunction Saga rolls on, out of curiosity I spent 30seconds online and found the name of the footballer. His wife no doubt knows who he is, perhaps he is begging her not to divorce him. Millions are at stake, but it would be nice to think he and she do both love their kids, and its them they are trying to protect.

We all want our 15 mins of fame as Andy Walhol once said, even me, but in my case its just to get my comic novel published and be a paid blogger for The Daily Telegraph. Not even in a million years will this happen. I have blogged a lot these past 2 years and I feel my writing skills have been sharpened, so that is good. I discovered that one of the regulars on MyTelegraph is having his book published in September, so God Bless him and good luck.

Returning to my theme, being famous for 15 minutes has now reached STUPID proportions, people become instant celebrities, their specialities being NOTHING.

Then real celebrities lust after the new celebrities, and that leads to sex and Injunctions.

You should use celebrity to help folks, I think one guy won Big Brother and gave the prize away. On the opposite scale a criminal won the lottery and that led to him being in jail and he lost all the cash too.

So what does this all tell us? To me it tells me we should get back to basics, don’t believe in all this S)*)(" in the media and the magazines that we find in hairdressers. Its neither real nor important, loving our kids now that is important.

But if you are really bored read The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker on my site, though some may say its just too old fashioned, you’ll just have to read it and see for yourself.

 

Attachment: Padre Pio and Me.doc

Space Galore

Well I worked out how to make more space on my DT site, I know you'll all be groaning now. I was 99% full, now after deleting my images I've not even used 1%. If you are desperate to see images then go to my website.

Google has been copying the world's Literature so all of us will be saved for Eternity. I hope there is no atomic pulse to destroy everything, and I hope New Technology 100 years from now enables us to read what we secure now. Time and Tide waits for no man  so I hope technology doesn't forget our age, we think we are the bees knees but in the future. If we started in 1920 when my mother was born what did she have then? No running water, but a well outside. Now gas, no electricity, plenty of Hope and Love but technology, it did not exist.

Law firms have  so much technology, every piece of paper is monitored and saved, an IT department who's job is to save everything, think back to Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol working away at a ledger. If he was transported to today he'd scream, the Luddites tried to hold back Progress but even they failed. Now everybody at home has a computer and a free website somewhere too. We all take and treasure photos of kids and family. In my family I was the photographer, with film cameras before digital arrived. So when our mother died just over 15 years ago I was able to produce a photo album for all my siblings so we could all remember her. A photo is such a treasured memory, nowadays with digital you can have 2000 photos on one 2gig chip, can you imagine it? Kodak does not make film any more, but with your computer you can take a photo and print it off on Kodak paper in under 2 minutes. Now that is fantastic in my book, go back 90 years and my mum's family would think it was the work of the devil.

Space on your PC and on a free website such as multiply.com is such a great thing. You can give digital frame picture frames to granny or your book publisher, so they both are reminded just how much they love you.

Space  Galore is almost as good as Whisky Galore!

At the Bus Stop

At the Bus Stop © 

By

Michael Casey

I catch the bus to work, I’m lucky its only around the corner from our house, so I can give the kids and sometimes the wife an extra kiss goodbye before heading for work. A last laugh and hug before I catch my 1st bus to work. We have a good service in Birmingham, my brother once said it was the best bus service in the UK, he used to travel a lot, so I’ll take his word.

At the bus stop the occasional pig smokes in the shelter, sharing his pollution, his cancer, I don’t know about you but any bit of smoke makes my lungs hurt. I think execution is not good enough for smokers, and as for the cannabis smokers who come on the bus either innocently or brazenly, I wish aliens would come and take then away. Cannabis reeks and the smell stays on the person, yes I wish they’d grown up and stop the habit, but on my bus route, on that stretch of road, its more common that the white lines.

At the bus stop lipstick is applied, and smoothed down by a finger, a final look in the mirror, girls are ready to face the world, girls of all ages. Somebody makes a final call to say how much they love their still sleeping partner. An old lady as regular as clockwork appears with her little Jack Russell, the dog leaps towards me under the walls of the bus shelter, he’s just saying hello, I smile to the little old lady.

I swing my heavy bag from one hand to another as I wait for the bus, and I wait and wait, today the bus is very late, normally there are buses every 10 minutes, today I wait 20 minutes. Not to worry I’m always up to an hour early for my new job, the hour gives me time for an early coffee, a chat, and plenty of photocopying. Today I finally get the bus, I can abandon the bus shelter, only there’s a log jam of traffic on my cannabis scented road.

Once in town, I head for my 2nd bus stop, its outside Saint Michael’s the Polish church, and yes I do smile as I wait outside the church named after me. I sometimes used to attend there when I worked Sundays in the city centre, but that’s a long time ago, 15 or 20 years ago maybe. I just missed my choice of 3 buses, but after a further wait my 2nd bus arrives and I climb on. So I’m happy as I look at my watch, when I do arrive I’m 20 mins early instead of my usual hour.

So another working day begins, I still have time for my coffee, and did you know that if you want to cut your coffee consumption all you have to do is use a smaller spoon, or have only half a spoon of coffee, and best of all it still tastes good. No I’m not a health freak, I just have a nagging Shanghai wife, perhaps we should all have Shanghai wives and then we’d all be healthy, wealthy and wise I don’t know about.

The photo is of me, a very tired me, the hat is from Czech, I gave it to my sister in 1998, now its come back to me

Things to do before I die, Part I (c)

MAY 16TH, 2011 19:52

Things to do before I die, Part I (c) 

by Michael Casey

The article was on about a blood test to say when we’d die.

I’d get carried up a mountain, in Lady Gaga fashion, and look at the stars, here in Beautiful Birmingham we have a black square of gardens so we have a great view of the stars, but to go somewhere great  and view the stars, now that would be great. I have this theory that Hell is really a black hole, with no light and no stars to gaze at, no music and no touch, no soft touch of the one you love. No cold  drinks in the Summer and no hot drinks in Winter, no snowball fights, no nothing.

So if Hell is that and I know how many days or weeks or even years I have, then I would shake myself and do something. I might rush myself to finish writing Tears For A Butcher. Maybe I’d spam the entire world so that they have to read my book, or their email would never ever work again. www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com is where you can go if your free will directs it, just in case I am dying and that email lands on your doorstep.

I’d watch my favourite films again and again, I’d watch Little Women and cry when the professor says “I have empty hands” and she takes them in her hands and says “they are full now.” Simple little pleasures. Perhaps I go to Lourdes for a cure, though it is great fun in itself, the parading and the candles, the torchlight processions in the dark, the singing, the electricity, as well as the cafes and the Irish hotel with the singing and the late night drinkiung. Wearing a beret badly, climing over the fence into the grotto at an ungodly hour. Drinking the water and even having a bath in it, all in the hope of a cure, but Lourdes really is a fun place, so much joy, ask anybody who has been as a helper and they will confirm that it is a great place.

I’d go and see as many live bands as possible, music really is God’s breath, I used to see a ton of bands 20 years and more ago, so IF I knew when I’d croak I’d see as many bands as possible. I’d also try and learn to sing, Singing really is when are hearts are happy,   Saint Cecilia  sai to Sing is to Doubly  Praise, not my words but my singing sisters. Now I even have singing daughters. I would like to read my obituary before I croak, a Nobel moment, I even wrote a post Nobel and Me 2 years ago, but if I am to die my vainity would be satisfied if I had a Nobel moment.

I’d pick the hymns, the songs for my funeral,  my wife would put a DAB radio in my coffin, perhaps they invent a battery that works and is charged by perpetual darkness, a solar cell in reverse. That’s Part I of the things I’d do before I die. If I live I’ll write more, though I’m sure some DT readers are swearing, die you B((((( die.

For Telegraph and Sun Readers and anybody else who finds this

These are my books, if I sold 1% of  what Jeffrey Archers sells I'd be a happy man.

The selection of blogs is perhaps only 1/2 of what I've written.

Tears For A Butcher is my 4th book, I'm on Chapter 2, Old People's Home.

I have met some very nice people over the Internet, and some very very negative people too.

So IF you want to laugh read on.

AS USUAL JUST TO REMIND EVERYBODY EVERYTHING IS MY COPYRIGHT.

A little bit of Paris in Birmingham(c) by Michael Casey

A little bit of Paris in Birmingham©

By Michael Casey

I have my lunch in a little café up the road from where I work. They have these little round tables and when you sit down you immediately struck by the sight of all the cakes, cakes galore so to speak. They are mouth-watering strawberry cakes, everywhere! 

I was away over the Easter holidays and the shop had a total  refit, new windows, new doors, new floors, new furniture. New display cases for all the cakes, even new tables and chairs.

What hadn’t changed was the cakes and all things lovely. I walk through the door and they say hello and start on my beef panini, I grab a drink from the fridge point to it and start drinking. I talk a lot in my job so I need a drink, I finish half my drink before my panini is ready. I’m in heaven, the food is great, the brothers in The Pastry House are very nice. People come in for English tea or Arabic tea, people shake hands and say hello, cakes are chosen and eaten. You hear several different languages, there is laughter in the air, there is debating, there is friendship, there is fun.

For me it’s a quick and nice bite to eat before I dash back to work. I asked Zain where did he get the money to pay the Polish workers to do all the changes, “did you win the lottery,” I asked. 

“No,” he replied, “it was a scratch card.” I laughed at his reply, he may have been joking, he may have been telling the truth, I’ll never know. But I do know, for me, this café on The Coventry Road is my oasis of peace on a busy day, the world may pass by, but for me, for a few minutes, I could be in Paris, Paris in Birmingham.