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.

Laughter Before Bedtime

Laughter Before Bedtime ©

By Michael Casey

“They’ll be Tears Before Bedtime”  is what a wise mum might say, and she’ll be right, mums are always right after all.

However in our house its Laughter before Bedtime. I can remember growing up and hearing the banshee like laughter from my mum as we all squeezed into our small living room, I smiling now as I think back over 40 years. We did have a few laughs, my dad used to tell stories too and I really really enjoyed them.

I spent a long time talking to my dad and hearing  these stories over and over again. When I left home of course I visited often, I’d come for the dinner. I’d be in the living room talking to dad and my sister was in the kitchen talking to mum. Before my sister drove me home in her car we’d swop parents and share more news. Normal family business, I hope you all share that same kind of love. Naturally an hour or so after the family dinner I’d go and have a kebab, which is the normal lad thing to do.

Sharing laughter is a great family experience, who did what and where they did it, and just how stupid it all was, is a natural family experience. I really find it hard to believe when some people say “I hate my dad, or my mum’s the pits” whatever happened to love each other. If you want a little peace form a Christian family. Or form a Sikh family or Muslim family. The key word is family, which means a group of people of the same blood who love each other and share things together. JKRowling’s new book is about the opposite thing, though she’s forgotten to send me a copy of her new book.

We imitate old uncle John with his walking stick and big boots, we love him but when he’s gone back to Manchester we make fun of him of him. It’s normal. If anybody else makes fun of him we’d him them with a walking stick, but he is our uncle, our blood so we laugh at him, but we really love him. He gives us  10p and says go buy some sweets, he’s forgotten that Deciminalisation was 40years ago, the price of sweets have gone up, penny liquorice  cost 50p now.

Family laughter is the chains of love that keep us together, once on holiday in France me and my sister met a priest who went to school with our dad’s brother, this would be back in the 20s and 30s, the 1920s and 1930s. It turned out that the priest’s family were quiet rich at the time, so the future priest had a bicycle so the Casey boys would steal it and ride it. This was 1981, the story stuck in the back of my mind, so 10 years later I had the idea when writing my comic novel that a priest blackmails a police inspector because the police man stole the priest’s bicycle when the police man was a teenager. In England we don’t have the statute of limitations, so in theory the police man could be charged and go to jail.

You don’t know when an old story can bubble up in your mind and you can use it again. Tonight we were laughing about pillows and we were stealing each other’s pillows from the beds because we wanted the new super soft and comfy pillows for ourselves. I had tried an old new pillow that had been in the cupboard, it was too hard, grandma had sent it  to Birmingham from Shanghai  telling JJ to take it back to England as she did not want it. And why didn’t grandma want it? Because when you sleep on it, it blocks off the blood supply as you sleep and you wake up with a funny arm, all the blood has stopped circulating. You have to shake and shake your entire arm before it goes back to normal. So I told my 3 girls this as I was trying to get them to go to bed, they just laughed at me, like I was some kind of fool.

Internet Story

This is an older piece but I've brought it back. You can have somebody say "Awesome"  about a piece which is very flattering, and then somebody else moans about the punctuation. Then you read their stuff and its banal. So don't believe any of it, just the balance sheet, that's if you make any money.

Michael  Casey

Email michaelgcasey@hotmail.com

http://butcherbakerundertaker.blogspot.co.uk

www.michaelgcasey.wordpress.com

http://www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com 

                  Internet Story ©

                       By

                   Michael Casey

So all I had to do was send an email, and then I’d be a writer, my book in every shop, my face smirking from cardboard cut outs of me holding my book aloft. My book had a great title, so it was bound to sell. A Nation Of Shopkeepers was a great title, if only people could remember their History, were people interested in History, and for that matter my book. It wasn’t a history book, would people think it WAS a history book, and then not buy it. It was a comedy drama, about a street of shops, interconnecting short stories, for all the family, but would people notice the levels, the strands of humour, or would they say it’s a Ma & Pa book, and miss the joke, just as one publisher called  did?

I decided to keep the title, though I had a reserve title, The Butcher, The Baker and The Undertaker. Then I realised the US market would rename it The Butcher, The Baker And The Funeral Arranger. You don’t think about such things when you are writing the book, you’re just happy, on a roll, in love with your own intellect, or just surprised you actually DO have any intellect, then you discover that you are dyslexic, you really are dyslexic, thankfully not a really bad case, just dyslexic. As you proof read you see you have put BUT instead PUT, LEAD instead of READ, things like this and other strange things. Sure there are spellcheckers but or is it put, you have to check it anyway. As you read you are surprised at your own ability. You didn’t waste 4years in journalism school, but your writing is GOOD, Did I write that? Then your chest filled with pride you get somebody else to read it, and guess what? They think its crap. So now you have to decide, should I give up or should I carry on?

I gave up for as while, while is a unit of years in my  case, my life took another path, so the writing was forgotten, it lay dormant for years, then like a phoenix it arose, or more truthfully, like a tortoise awaking from hibernation, sleep still in my eyes I slowly poked my head out, then back in, went back to sleep again, then finally with the pangs of hunger in my stomach I just had to do something. In my case it was eat, as in really eat, then I turned to my old Atari and realised it was not PC compatible, so I bought a new, or rather an old new Atari which was PC compatible. Then I spent a day copying my files so that I could read them on a PC. Then I wrote a few more pieces before I realised I’d get nowhere in England. The chances of being published were 1 in 2000. So like a bear, I went back in my cave and slumbered.

Meeting my wife Jing Jie was a turning point in my life, and not just because it was like Thunder as Jing Jie calls it, it was a turning point because I had a professional opinion on my writing, from a journalist at the very top of the tree. Her uncle is an editor in chief, so his comments were and are like gold, worth more than my first coffee and Cadbury’s chocolate, the pleasure rush I treat myself to every day, his comments really were that important to me, and I really DO like my Cadbury’s, so being better than Cadbury’s is the highest praise I can give. So I knew the quality of my writing, even if others said and say its crap.

Getting a modern PC and internet connection was another turning point. Email in our house is like water and eclectic in any other homes. Jing Jie can “talk” to her mum in Shanghai every day. To friends all over the world as well. Birmingham IS the centre of the universe.So with hope and fear I had to transfer my files from my old Atari to the new PC. The floppy discs were  old and battered, several were unreadable, finally my work, my babies were safely on the new PC. Just to be on the safe side I set up a web site, so now my work was on somebody’s server in the US, thousands of miles away , safe from fire or theft. I could also put our new baby’s photos on the web site so that my Chinese family in Shanghai and Miami and friends all over the world could see Annie and Jing Jie and me, they could even read my work too.

So now all I had to do was market my work in the US, simple really, soon I’d be doing something useful with my life, making people laugh. I’d be a writing whore, I’d get paid to make others laugh, the best job in the world. So how would I set about it? I got a list of radio stations from the internet and started sending emails galore. I’m talking in the hundreds now, to radio stations the length and breath of the US.They could publicise my site then eventually I’d get published, or my play would get produced. It was simple wasn’t it. So merrily I went about my business, sending emails galore. Years before I used to send off big heavy envelopes with my work in, with more persistence than hope in my heart.”Thank you for your pieces of paper“was the best put down. I once even met a writer and he agreed to to read my play Shoplife, then he wrote back calling me a plagerist, because it was so good. So I used his note as toilet paper, Shoplife was so good because I had 20years of experience given to me by my sister, I just improved on it, but yet I was called a Copyist, so naturally I was angry and used his note to wipe my bum.

I wondered why my strike rate was so low with my emails to radio stations, then somebody casually mentioned, “You do know they will just delete anything with an attachment”. In these days of viruses or worms which I’ve discovered is the new trendy word, nobody can risk their PC, so I merrily send and they merrily delete. I’d been wasting my time, but not my money because I’d got a 24/7 package on my internet from AOL.However one radio station did read Shoplife. The DJ or is it Host, he called it hilarious and he could not stop reading it. It turned out he was an actor as well, though isn’t everybody an actor in the US?

So I thanked him, and quoted him in my future advertising.Humour is a funny thing. The things that make English people laugh are not the same as the things that make Americans’ laugh. We are constantly told by people on tv that English TV is the best in the world, the US material we see is the top 10%, the rest is rubbish. But I know I’d never get my foot in the door in England so I had to persist with my American campaign, so now I pasted in my material, no attachments. Just get them hooked, then paste in a sample then direct them to http://butcherbakerundertaker.blogspot.co.uk/ & www.michaelgcasey.wordpress.com

Then bingo part2 of my life could begin,I’d be the man that made America laugh, a naïve sentiment, but it was honest.Only AOL turns things into zip files and some people cann’t unzip your files, its like wanting sex but your zipper is broke and you cann’t get your trousers off. Such a strong urge, but no forfillment .

I switched to MSMAIL and pasted in my stuff, things started to happen, my files weren’t being deleted or too zipped up to be read. At least I wasn’t frustrated any more. Now I had an agent interested, and a new magazine, even a theatre replied.All praise to Bill Gates, and to a Christian called Pat Verato who pointed me in the direction of a few good sites.However some of the sites that I trawled through were just, so very American. Hey, you too can be a writer, just send me 10 dollars and I’ll send you my book “How to make 10 dollars” ,  and he does. Then there’s magazines you can subscribe to, yes you’ve guessed it, just send another 10 dollars “Writing for Beginners”. There’s all these agents too who are so successful, persuading tap dancing bus drivers to write about Tap Dancing For Bus Drivers, the complete self help book, costs 10 dollars. The agent gets 20percent, and the bus driver pays 5000dollars to print 500 copies, then he can boast he’s a writer, not just a bus driver, and guess what if you pay 10 dollars you can learn to tap dance too.

As for me, what do I think of all this? I’d say just keep on writing, stop your selling, or attempts at selling, just write a bit. Add to your catalogue of 3 poems and 2 short stories, then search for an agent. Believe you’ll never be published and then you won’t be disappointed. There is one final thing you can do though, just tell everybody to go to my site   www.michaelgcasey.wordpress.com  

http://butcherbakerundertaker.blogspot.co.uk/

And help find a publisher for my book, and then you’ve guessed it, just send me 10 dollars!

                      End

 p.s. The BBC banned this piece from their website as they thought is was begging for money, or "soliciting" to use their verb. "Beam Me Up Scotty" is all I can say.

Philip Pullman Thank You

By michaelgcasey

Philip Pullman he was on the BBC news channel last night, but the video clip went wrong. He has his new book out, Grimm Tales for young and old, my daughters had heard of him, I have to admit I had not. Next time David Cameron comes around our house for tennis I read some to David so he can pop up the road to Waterstones to get a copy for his own kids. Or he could get the Chief Whip to get it, he has a big basket on his bike, perfect for fetching books for kids. The more I think of it the better the idea seems, just send the chief whip out to get books for kids, and a 1 litre bottle of Baileys for the WPC  he was nasty to. Perfect.

Now I ordered my copy of Grimm Tales for Young and Old last night, I then ordered a copy of the Grimm brothers collection. It’ll be 1200 pages combined. I did the look inside on Amazon this morning and whoosh I was back over 40 years when I last read a book of Fairy Tales. I read the Golden Bird, and it was great. It’s on a par with when I reread Don Camillo after decades, yes that good. I’m going to hide them from my daughters until I have read them all, they are both like vacuum cleaners as far as reading goes. Its like a Birthday/Christmas present for myself. So forgive my ignorance of you Philip Pullman, I looked at 4 Tales too on the Amazon look inside. I will encourage people, young and old to read your stuff. That’s when I’m not playing tennis with David Cameron, I live on Magna Carta Road.