Growing Up For Dads

Growing Up For Dads  ©

By Michael Casey

Does anybody remember Algebra? My daughter is doing lots of maths and she asks me to help. Arithmetic I can do and I remember getting 4 of the best on my behind by the teacher with a pump, for not knowing my times tables. Next time he asked I knew them. I was 8 at the time. I did do my Maths exam one year early along with English but that's a long time ago. My wife was a toddler then, I do have a young wife. But its at the edge of my memory when I am  asked questions by my daughter. She moves to 2ndary school in September and having an 11year old in the house is amazing. And it only feels like seconds ago when she was born in the middle of the night.  So time and tide and algebra waits for no man. Arithmetic is spontaneous, I don't even know just how do I know the answers.  I just do, and that's great because I can help my daughter. She looks exactly like me, a I look at her face its like looking into a magical looking glass and I'm seeing myself as a child, though she is a femine version of myself. So I have grown older with silver  hair, a sign of wisdom I hope, but in her face I see the future again. I hope I'll be of use as she progresses through 2ndary school. I had to visit the school today to fill a few forms in, I walked it so I could tell her just how much time she'd need to get there. I ended up walking 5miles or 8 k today, good for my fat belly no doubt. I was able to answer questions on Quakers and The Society Of Friends, I was even able to tell her that Dame Judy Dench, M, James Bond's boss was a Quaker.  So I'm not totally useless after all.

 

Look in the mirror and what do you see?

Look in the mirror and what do you see? ©

By Michael Casey

 

Looking in the mirror what do you see?

Do you see yourself looking back at you?

Do you see grey hairs or are you still black?

Do you see yourself pretty and young?

Are you 20 or 30 or 40 or more?

Does a mirror show your age or just your rage?

Does your bust stand proud, or has it sagged?

Does your stumble look white, are you balding and white?

Is your hair receding to match your pot belly?

Does your corset hold everything in?

Do younger men still look at you, are you still young enough to

blush?

When you look into your eyes are you sad and grey?

Have the lights gone out in your eyes?

Or is there a glint, a bit of mischief too?

Or are your eyes sad and lonely, all hope gone?

When the kids come home do you dispare?

Or is there joy and life in your eyes and heart?

Does a kiss make you want to hold her tight and ask for more?

Is your spirit like a leaf blowing across Autumn skies?

Does your spirit reach for the sky?

When you finish putting on a tie and you look into the mirror to

see if it is straight, do you smile or do you  frown?

The eyes are the mirror of the soul, so be you man or be you

woman let the lights flicker in the mirror of your soul.

From Bedworth to Bookshelf and Beyond

From Bedworth to Bookshelf and Beyond©

By Michael Casey

 

The title sounds like a Buzz Light Year saying in Toy Story but its not. I’m just wondering why when I Google stuff it keeps on popping up and saying I’m in Bedworth when I’m always in Birmingham. Any offers? Am I a botneck or whatever where your computer gets taken over? I don’t think so, and its not all the time, its just irritating. I have antivirus and so forth, so why oh why does Google say I’m in Bedworth.

Perhaps there’s a GCHQ in Bedworth, perhaps they have an interest in my writing. But michaelgcasey.multiply.com has all my stuff on it, and I annoy Daily Telegraph readers by posting there and on Facebook too. So why Bedworth, can’t they wait to read my bi-weekly posts?

I also stumbled on something during my regular random Google searches, don’t do a writing course, just write. A famous SciFi writer is quoted as saying that, I’ve never heard of him myself, but he’s never heard of me. I think if you haven’t got an imagination no amount of courses can give you one. As for style, that just makes me sick, people are all taught to write with the same style, the teacher’s style. Watch some American tv and read a little, and see how the style is all the same, I’m not just talking about writing but about reporters reporting style. They all sound like undertakers with a death wish, “hey man be happy you are still alive” I want to shout at them.

So you write and you put 4 books on Amazon Kindle, you have 300unique blogs on your site, but you don’t make a bean. Why is this? Because the only people who make money are those writers who cannot write and just write writers self help books. Or coffee table books written by Z listers  boasting about their sex lives with Y listers, so of course they sell 2,000,000 copies. Though 1,000,000 copies are remaindered, and you can buy the 20quid opus for a fiver in the Works.

Perhaps I should write a sex on the coffee table book, which would sell 3,000,000 copies, but that would be too boring to write. Perhaps I should go on the after dinner  speaking  circuit, I could warm up the audience for Tony Blair or George Bush, I’d do an hour and get 100quid, they do 30mins and get 20,000. My speech would be funnier but nobody would come for me, I’m just the warm up man, but at least I’d get a great free dinner.

See its nice to dream, I hope it proves I have an imagination, which might mean I should be a writer after all.

Ad Skipper - Life Skipper

Ad Skipper – Life Skipper ©

By Michael Casey

I read in the news that Dish TV wanted to skip the ads in the tv it bought for its viewers, really its trying to get a discount from Fox, but this is their bargaining ploy. They have a machine that will skip the ads, now as in all things American its in the hands of the lawyers.

We have a Sky+ box at home and we use it to skip the ads, we record a lot of tv so that we as a family can watch it at a later date. A one hour show is really 50mins, we skip the ads when we watch the show at a later date, its fun watching ads at x30 when we are skipping back to Glee, skipping and Glee do go together, don’t forget the 90min show in 3 days time. Films not on the BBC can have 20mins of ads in the middle or at the end when the film has really finished but the next show has not started.  So perhaps Dish subscribers should just watch everything an hour later and then use a Sky+ box or equivalent to avoid the ads. With the US Election in full swing that in itself is a good reason to time shift.

But what if you could Life Shift or Life Skip, what would you avoid? Would you fast forward past your first broken heart, fast forward through the month of tears, a month of cuddling  up to your old teddy bear, fast forward calling all men “BASTARDS” or all women “WHORES”? Would you fast forward past all the comfort eating, the days of not shaving and not caring, the days of tears?  What about when your pet gerbil died and it was buried with full honours in an old shoebox in the garden, you had plucked a few rose petals and thrown them over its grave. In the night you hear the foxes in your garden and your beloved gerbil had become their take away or rather dig up and take away.

Would you skip your first bump on your brand new car, a 10 year old mini, your pride and joy, you spent days polishing it, and then you had a run in with old Mr Jones a 85 year old, and it was your fault. These are the events that mark us, the events we wish never happened, your mum says it’ll all come out in the wash, and all you want to do is drown yourself, in the bath. Instead you compromise and drown your sorrows and then get done for drink driving on your way home from the pub, you get banned for a year and have to sell your car.

If there was a machine just to edit out the bad parts of our lives that would sell. We’d all have perfect lives, we’d all be like Hello Magazine people, perfect just perfect. No beer bellies and 5 days worth of growth and not enough deodorant, we’d be perfect just like Prom Kings and Queens in Glee.

Do we learn from the bad bits, the unedited bits of our lives, the slow and painful bits, the embarrassing bits that seem to last forever? I’ve had more than my fair share of less than perfect times, learning the hard way is the best way, even though at the time I wished it was over. There is a Shakespearean sonnet where he speaks of the value of a good friend or partner who will stick with you through thick and thin, a bit like wedding vows, for richer for poorer etc. You DO know who your friends are when things get sticky, we cannot fast forward real life,  only tv can be fast forwarded. That’s why art imitates life, and not the other way around.

Pens and Penmanship

Pens  and Penmanship ©

By Michael Casey

 

I just read a piece in the BBC magazine online, it was all about fountain pens. Now I immediately have to confess my writing is terrible, and no I’m not pretending, as far back as 40 years ago at grammar school I was told off for it. In fact I was told off in Primary school too, they even got me to write a few rows of “a” and of “b” and so on, it failed to improved my writing, I was a massive reader at the time, for one year I was practically left alone to read, perhaps  it was then that my writing died. In grammar school my friends said my writing was like drunken spiders, or in today’s world my writing is like spiders on acid. So there you have it, my writing is bad, very bad. So bad perhaps I should be a doctor.

Once you have bad hand writing people take the mick when you tell them you are a writer, as did the nice lady from the neighbourhood office a couple of weeks ago when my daughter went to collect a prize for drawing. Both my daughters draw and paint, they are very very good at it, they have a collection of 700 crayons and paints and pencils, not to mention felts and gel pens and all things that can make marks on paper. My daughters always need more, so that’s dad’s job to provide more artists material. I am of course very jealous of their skills, if I bit the top off my thumb and used that to sign my name that would be an improvement on my signature.

So what can a writer who cannot write do? He can type, I remember learning to type in 1978, I stood at the bus stop moving my fingers and trying to remember the qwerty keyboard. Now I’m a fast typist, when I’m writing my stuff, I’m not so fast  as a copy typist, nothing is more boring than typing up somebody else’s stuff. I remember one of the more mature ladies at the law firm who said “I was once clocked at 100wpm” and so she was, and that why one of the partners gave her two crates of champagne as a personal thank you for her typing, at that speed the paper would catch fire no doubt, if we still used the old typewriters.

So how can this writer improve his writing? I use different fonts on Word, and hope people like the look, looks do make a difference. If I can give a silly example, the ASDA near us uses a big bold font, but the size is too small and the letters touch other. This means to my eyes it’s terrible, and that’s the only complaint I have about the store, but I’m sure if any ASDA people read this they may change it. A sign encourages us to buy or to laugh, when we leave stuff out in the entry for Sky Burial I leave a note encouraging people to take our junk away. “Sit on Me” for a chair, and “sleep with me” for a bed, as I look out the window our gay neighbours are getting a new bed.

We get loads of junk email, if we had an open fire we’d never need to buy fuel, we’d just toast our bread on junk mail. Junk mail tries to look appealing and is printed on glossy paper, glossy paper is very heavy as I can remember when I carried bags at CPNEC, homes abroad salesmen had cases and cases of the stuff. So writing and communicating  all needs words, good words from a writer, but how those words are written and displayed has a massive impact, ask any politician. When  contracts are signed it’s done on quality paper that is bound together with a heat bind seal, and it’ll be a red seal if the contact is for Chinese clients, I know I’ve done 1000s. So presentation is king, you don’t want “thank you for your pieces of paper” when you send stuff to a publisher, and yes 25 years ago I did get that putdown. I hope you are all enjoying this Bookman Old Style, but I know just how important type setting is, another putdown a really good snide one was when I was turned down for a job and the HR lady replied in flowewry type face  and yes I do know her name.

All I can say is thank God for word processors, 1988 was the year I bought an Atari520 just for the word processor and it was very very expensive, it did play a big part in my life, I had Shoplife accepted by a theatre, I wrote it in Aug 1988 when the Olympics were on. Yes I’d love to be able to write, but I can write but not handwrite, so I hope any future readers will accept a rubber stamp when I do any book signings, my daughters will be on hand to draw a cartoon on each book.  

Alternative Swearing

Alternative Swearing ©

By Michael Casey

Swearing is the norm nowadays, but if it defuses anger and prevents physical violence  then I’d say it’s a good thing, it’s a safety valve. In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe “Belgium”   was the worse thing that could be said. Nowadays everybody swears in films, American TV is very strict so that when it comes to films all the swears that could not be said on tv are said on film. I remember watching Saturday Night Fever when it first came out and thinking they don’t need all this swearing, and later the film was edited so that it got a lower certification and more people could enjoy John Travolta, as you all know I am Birmingham’s answer to John Travolta.

Now how to we prevent the air going blue, so that the ladies don’t blush and aren’t offended by all the language. I was talking  to Bernard Manning the other day, well in my imagination anyway, and he gave me loads of ideas, as did Lennie Bruce, they share a cloud together in Heaven, it’s a blue cloud of course. You aren’t calling me a “flowering petal” are you? I’ll be very angry if you are,  “you’re just a custard cream anyway” Now don’t look at me with that tone of  voice or I’ll “dip  your biscuit in my tea” and there won’t be any “sugar in it either” Are you calling me a “Politician, take it back you  table you” ok, so we’ve all calmed down a bit.

“Politician” is the rudest word of all in the alternative swearing dictionary, though don’t broadcast this but I was once called “A lollypop lady”, I nearly used a “liquorice” on the person who called me it.  Our local MP is a bit of a “custard pie” it must be true it’s written on all the bus shelters. Tell me why he is a custard pie, that I cannot deny, he really IS a custard pie. What do politicians, real politicians call themselves?  Honest as the day is long is what politicians call themselves, but in reply the press corps  call them “A bunch of Daylight Savings, fiddling with the minute hands” which sounds about right. Just a moment I can hear my phone ringing, no not another metaphor, my phone really is ringing.

I’m a bit flustered, that phone call was the worst I’ve ever had in my life, an hour of heavy breathing, then the lady called me, I can’t bring myself to repeat what she said, it was so shocking, an hour of heavy breathing from a lady I can handle, but she just called me a “political WRITER”.

Bring Back Barter

Bring Back Barter© By Michael Casey

Should we bring back barter? I got an ad for something a few mins ago, so I offered to trade my 4 books for some nice Adobe software. Could I write a poem for a loaf of bread and some shopping. Could I pose as a George Clooney lookalike in exchange for some orange juice, and I do love my orange juice. Could I hop 100yards in exchange for some vegetables or stand on my head for a bottle of milk. Should I wear my clown hat in exchange for a nice Jorg Gray watch, the nice blue hands one on Amazon, President Obama has one but  the one I like is cheaper, 84quid. Should I sit on the wall  outside my house and tell stories, I was once called Jackanory when I was at a law firm, no I'm no lawyer. Would people leave scraps in a bowl for me, would I earn coins and maybe notes, food of all kinds as a reward for being a modern fool. Would Prince Charles say "off with his head", would I be thrown into a dungeon, would I be chained to a wall till my beard was 10feet long and my nails were long and curly. Would people  people come and mock me in the dungeon. Or would I just be ignored, the fool on a hill, and I do live on a hill. Who knows or do I have a talent to amuse, just as a book on Noel Coward was called.  Maybe I'll be famous when I'm dead, and no don't send a hitman to get me, my girls need me, if only to get the bike out from the shed.