Christmas Kerry

Christmas Kerry ©

By Michael Casey

I got my first Christmas card today from a cousin in Ireland. 

It brought a tear to my eye.

It reminded me of all the good times I had in Ireland at that cousin's house.

It reminded me of my aunty who drove me there.

It reminded me of all my cousins in Ireland, of all my uncles too.

 The Christmas fun I had in Ireland, getting lost in and out of Tralee.

The beach at Ballyheigh, mum's own beach at Cromane.

Puck fair and dancing in the street at Midnight.

Going out to the pub at 10pm, to drink fizzy pop and an occasional beer.

All the kindnesses from all those uncles and aunts. They are all gone now, all lie still in their graves.

But their memory I always have in my heart. I can see them dancing, I can hear them laughing.

I can see the mountains of food they fed me. So much love and laughter almost like a Leo Sayer song.

All of them so big and strong, farmers and sons of farmers. Laughter constant laughter, that’s what sings in my soul.

 All the good people of Kerry.

So yes a card brings a tear because of all the love it reminds me of.

Past Present and Future, but always Kerry.

Christmas on a bus

Christmas On A  Bus ©    By            Michael Casey

 On a bus coming home the Christmas Story revealed itself to me, ordinary events on a cold  Winter’s evening.

 There was a large man squeezed into a seat sitting crossways as he was so large, I squeezed in next to him, the two of us like boulders abandoned.

 A small African child was singing a carol to her mum who was weighed down by worry and a carrier bag  larger than  the child, behind a bigger child was swinging her feet off the seat.

 In front of me a child with  a large bright pretty ribbon in her hair was talking excitedly to her nan. Her nan was all wrapped up against the Winter weather, she was more like a parcel than a person She was giving sage advice to her granddaughter, don’t expect too much this Christmas.

 There was a pretty teenaged too, she was  moving her ankle in her new clean boots, perhaps Christmas boots, she was speaking confidently to her ugly friend, pretty girls always have either a fat or ugly best friend, its Nature’s balance.

 The African family got up it was their stop at the bus stop, I told the child to hold on tight to the rail as she moved forward only she was too small to understand fully.  My children are about their age I said to the child with the ribbon in her hair and her nan.

The large man squeezed in next to me started doing sign language to me, it was only then that I realised he was deaf and dumb. So I signed back to him. A few stops further on the dumb man as big as Gabriel himself got up as it was his stop, we exchanged goodbyes, “Good Luck” I said, he got off and waved goodbye from the street.

 I heard a voice on a mobile, “we’ve got to go then or the graveyard will be shut, I want to give mum some flowers for Christmas.”

All this represents Christmas,your Christmas, My Christmas, Everybody’s Christmas. So take time out to speak  to the deaf, to share a smile, to remember your mum, for Christ is Born.

Stand Up Writing

Stand Up Writing ©

By

Michael Casey

I read a few minutes ago on Linkedin that there would be a writing competition, a kind of XFactor for writers, you read for 2 mins, then you are judged. So what do you think of that? Me, I think writing is more than bubble gum that you spit out when the flavour goes. However I do think that writing can be like chocolate, something almost as good as sex, that you enjoy and then you get back to day to day reality.

So how would the show go? Would it really be the writer with the best blurb who’d win? Would it just be battle of the blurbs? Writing is so subjective. I bought Shadow of the Wind and I really wanted to read it, because of the blurb. Sadly I did not like it at all and then I stopped reading it ½ way through, and there are not many books I’ve dropped in my life. Then there is The Book Thief, which I regard as one of the best books I’ve read in my life, it’s so poetic, so touching, I cried as I read it, I even think it should be on schools’ book lists.

My own first novel is a slow starter as there is a large cast, however it is a rattling good read once the cast is introduced. So at Book X Factor should I read a blurb, or should I stumble as I flick to the climax. We have  starters and soups, then the main, and finally dessert, with a coffee and mint we finish the meal. Then arm in arm we leave the restaurant and head home for play, only we are so full of food we both fall asleep on the sofa. So much promise but no fulfilment.

Books are such fun, it’s really great when we discover a new writer. I can remember being introduced to Tom Sharp maybe 25years ago, before he was on tv. Then 5 years ago I can remember the IT guy at the Law Firm  saying how he’d just discovered Tom Sharpe. Books and Writers are candy for the mind, they do open our mind to laughter and tears and hope. The Book Thief is one such book, but would it win on XFactor for Books?

I can remember  my History teacher, Mr Trout, he said try Don Camillo. I did and I loved Don Camillo, I have an omnibus edition  in the bookcase behind me, next to the piano. Would Don Camillo win the XFactor for books, probably not, but it is a book you can reread over and over.  The spirit  in Don Camillo is the thing. Don Camillo may argue and fight with the Mayor, but they are still brothers.

Sorry you won’t be going through to the next stage of the competition. Not enough sex, nor violence. Great description of a sledge called “Rosebud” but it’s just not commercial. 500 or 600 pages for a first novel, 160,000 words, I think we’ll run out of ink if we try and publish it. No could you just take a few characters  out, could you miss the bit where somebody saved the undertaker’s son’s life. And you know the bit where……

It would be like being asked to save only one member of your family when the ship sinks. Words have meaning, words have power, and if you remove your false teeth your words have no bite.

Shaving

Shaving ©

   By

Michael Casey

Shaving is a chore, we cut our faces to pieces in order to look nice, or is it in order not to look dirty. Look at the water when you shave after not shaving for a day or two. Its dirty, no wonder woman don’t want to kiss a stubble faced man.

I was useless at shaving, I had a cut on both cheeks, at least my face was symmetrical, little wonder I grew a beard. I was 15 or so at the time. In them days we all used a safety razor, that’s a joke in itself. I was spurting blood like in a horror movie. All down my vest too, we all wore vests in them days, perfectly matched blood and  toothpaste stains.

Then you’d put pieces of toilet paper on your face, to soak up the blood, as you put your shirt on you’d hope the blood didn’t stain your collar. But it always did. At least the stains, blood and toothpaste, were on your vest where nobody could see them.

Though sometimes in haste you brushed your teeth with your shirt on, then you DID have white marks on your shirt. So you positioned your tie to cover the toothpaste stains, perfect, all was well, then on the bus to work you pull the toilet paper from your face. Only to arrive at work with blood streaming down your neck onto your white collar.

So you improvise and take your shirt off and wear it inside out, with your tie lengthened to hide the fact that the shirt was on inside out. Jerry Lewis did something like this in a film of his. Ask a French film buff they’ll explain.

As you get older you get better at shaving, technology arrived, its 40 years since I started to shave, or rather self-mutilate would be a better description, but technology did arrive. We had disposable razors made of cheap lightweight plastic. Only this gave me the chance to cut myself with two blades and not one.

Saving foam and save gel made an appearance in my life, in all of our lives. I’d been using a shaving brush and soap, but gradually after years of practice I got better at shaving. I had tried an electric razor but that just pulls your beard off your face. My mistake was using cheap throwaway razors, really you need a bit of weight in the razor.

Salvation came when I paid for a decent razor, a Gillette Mach 3, and Aldi’s own shaving gel. Gel is always better than foam, gel helps the razor glide. So once I had the proper tools I no longer looked as if I’d been cutting my own throat. Problem solved.

Over the years I’ve tried a variety of different blades, makes me sound like a circus knife thrower, and they did the job. However the Gillette Mach 3 is my favourite, because it works. But what should a man do with his clean face? He now has to copy his wife and put lotions and potions on his face.

Men’s beauty, sounds like a contradiction in terms, men’s beauty is big business. So your wife or girlfriend gives you a bottle of something to slap on your face. Only it stings and you scream, but you cannot swear as it’s a gift, given with love. Your daughters tell you that you must stay looking young, even if you are already called “Grandpa” when you do the school run, because of your silver hair.  

So now you look at the beauty products in the shops, shop assistants smile at you, they wonder why is grandpa looking at those products. The shop assistants  wave helpfully in the direction of Just For Men, hair dye. But you would never dye your hair, would you, could you. So you settle for £1 face balm, at least it won’t sting.

Boys Don't Knit

Boys Don’t Knit

Boys Don’t Knit ©

By

Michael Casey

Boys don’t knit, your nan does, your mum did, your aunty does, but boys don’t knit. I do confess when I was 9 I did try it. Mum had knitting needles in the back of the dinner table’s drawers. A heavy mahogany table with curvy ends  with holes in, it’s probably an antique now, it’s still in the old family house. It weighs a ton and a ton of food passed over that table over the years.

So having found the needles I went in search of wool, I found it in mum’s plastic wicker basket which was in the back of the pantry under the stairs. So off I went knitting. Only my knitting was totally linear, I filled up one needle then another. My knitting did not grow, or whatever is the official word for it. Iwas no Kaffe Fassett I could only produce one line, it would be ok if I were making a jumper for a caterpillar, but for a human, my knitting just would not do.

So that was 40 years plus ago, now we have a new knitter in the family, my eldest daughter. And she knows how to make her knitting grow, I am so impressed. She got a knitting set and soon ran out of wool, she made a scarf, not as long as Dr Who’s but just as nice. I was impressed.

Being a good dad I had to go and find more wool for her. A man asking for wool does raise eyebrows, but a modern dad has to do what a modern dad does. I found some in the plastic shop, it’s a shop that sells all things that are made of plastic, and everything else, a modern bazar. Then I wondered would our local market have a wool section.

In the market, halfway up on the right I found wools galore. All sizes and colours, you cannot imagine the variety of wools there are.  Sparkly wool, fluffy wool, fat wool, thin wool, neon coloured wool. I’ve never noticed this on the sheep when we’ve driven past in the car, the sheep must keep their secrets to themselves, until they are sheared.

So my daughter has knitting as a hobby now, she says its relaxing, after all the choir and piano practice, not to mention maths and book reading. I know she’ll never starve as she can always knit jumpers as an occupation into her old age, imagine 80 years of knitting.

My mother used to knit for all of us her children, I can remember her holding up the knitting against my back to see how much more she had to knit. We had so many jumpers in the house. We used to have a corner cupboard that held all our jumpers. One day when mum was out, just for fun we made our little sister wear all 9 or ten jumpers. There were so many jumpers that my sister could not put her arms down. Her arms were outstretched, she was like a letter T. Mum was not happy when she came home to see our little sister standing like a letter of the alphabet. T.

Nobody knits nowadays; it’s cheaper to buy jumpers in the shop. Which is such a pity, as knitting is so much fun, especially if you don’t sit on the knitting needles!

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flying lessons 2 years ago

Radio Waves

Radio Waves ©

By

Michael Casey

Radio had been a big thing in my life, it still is but to a lesser degree, though I only bought my cheap mobile phone because it had a radio on it. Radio is a conspiracy between the announcer and the listener. As kids we listened under the bed clothes, then when we had an ear piece we listened with the radio on the bedclothes beside us.

Earpieces is the operative word because you only had one thing to go in your ear, headphones had not been invented. And you shared an earpiece and ear wax with your brother. Yuck.

We were given a huge Bush radio, the one with the saucer dial and the domino like controls, now these radios are retro and stylish, but back in the 60s they were huge. Me and my brother shared a double bed and the radio lay between us as we listened to The World Tonight, Douglas Stuart reporting, which was BBC Radio4 late night news. Followed by the Book at Bed Time.

For me that radio changed my life, and improved my intellect. 20 years  of listening to clever people talk and explain things. Perhaps that’s why I have a Posh Brummie accent, though having a Shanghai wife means I have to try and talk clearly otherwise she’d never understand me.

Due to the repeats on the radio I have a broader view on life, and on comedy on the radio. Round the Horn and ITMA, even some of the Goons. The Goons had a young Peter Sellers as part of the crew before he became an international film star. I also heard 100s or 1000s of plays. If you work shifts and your days off are midweek what can you do? You listen to Radio4 of course.

Radio has more power than tv. If you hear an item on the radio and later on you are watching the same item on  tv the words don’t seem as “loud” or as forceful on tv. Why? Because the pictures get in the way of the words. Did anybody ever listen to Marilyn Monroe, no, they were too busy looking, proves my point, pictures get in the way of words, or eyes outvote ears.

When we listen to our favourite music we close our eyes, it sounds better in the dark, just as kissing is better in the dark, or power cuts or blackouts if you live in New York. Radio does send out waves of love and music to us. Radio must have been invented for music. As well as speech radio I always listen to lots of music. Nowadays on my PC or on a UBS stick  in the cheap but good Hifi behind me.

Radio has been splintered nowadays, we have stations for this and stations for that. You have Hip Hop radio, you have Reggae radio, Smooth radio, Jazz radio, radio for every faction under the sun. Though Breakfast radio always seems to have 2 hyper people, a boy and a girl, talking about themselves,  and talking over the music.

I have tried getting my Shorts on the radio and this is very hard, because we have Format radio. A man , a dog and a playlist, that’s what they always do and that’s what they always do. Radio stations play it safe they don’t want to lose the advertisers, adverts rule OK?

Dab radio and satellite radio are new things that bring quality listening quality to us. I got my 1^st Dab radio 10 years ago perhaps. My sister said the radio sounded like a HiFi and it did. So my hope is that now that we can all hear in such great quality, as if all of us have had our ears syringed, let’s hope the radio owners put

quality material on their stations. And may I drop a hint

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Laughter Track

Laughter Track ©

By

Michael Casey

Laughter plays a big part in our house, I hope in yours too. If you can laugh then you are alright, if you cannot then tension hangs in the air. So what can you do to break this tension, you could fart, or pretend to fart, by blowing farts on your arm.

Air from the heart, otherwise called a fart, as my old Killarney aunt used to say. She was the kindest woman you could meet, and one with an explosive laugh. She was a Jack of all trades. Cook, cleaner seamstress, ambulance driver, washer of the dead, petrol pump attendant to name just a few.

She was 5feet 1 inch tall but 17stones plus. She could bake great cakes too. At a drop of a hat she’s put up with me and my sister and drive us around to see all the Casey Clan, and back to Cromane to see mum’s side of the family. Say 1000 miles in 2 weeks. She knew the back of beyond and its brother. Sat Nav had not been thought of let alone invented.

She was a genuine character, a big kid perhaps but had a heart so full of love. I can still hear her laugher as I talk to you, she was such a character, she loved that word too. A Sir somebody  who lived in Killarney asked for a few cabbages from her, and called her a character. She lived in the shadow of the seminary and the alley courts.

My mum had a funny laugh too, that went this way and that, if you make me really laugh, I sound like a seal too. People say throw a fish at him. As they wipe the tears from their eyes.

Laughter is so important in our lives, all of our lives. It’s a shared experience,  it joins us together as family and friends. Grief has to be broken by laughter. Maybe 35 years ago Rich’s dad died and nobody knew what to say when he came back to work, Rich had a neckerchief around his neck, so I just said “you look like a Rice Crispie  character straight off the box.” It broke the ice and all was well.

I find if people can’t laugh at themselves  then they are too stiff, I don’t want to be around such people. I had plenty of time while I was at CPNEC Birmingham, to practice making people laugh. Maybe 100,000 people saw my face, so I tried to raise a smile from everybody who came to stay. Me, Roger, Jim and Phil on Security were the first faces people saw. We were the friendly hotel.

Laughter is a glue that binds us all, the staff up the road in my local supermarket they all know about laughter. You don’t want a robot serving you, you want a real person, I hate those self-service tills. A chat or a laugh while you shop is how it should be. Nobody needs a piece of paper glued inside the till saying “eye contact and smile” when you have really funny/nice people serving you.

The laughter track to our lives, is what defines us. It can even lead to marriage. I only married my wife because she made me laugh, even though nobody believes this. Having a wife with model looks is the cross I have to carry, but I only married her because she made me laugh. Honest, trust me I’m a writer, or can I hear you laughing. 

photo is the wife and our 2 daughters April 2013 in Malta