Things that go bump in the night

Things that go bump in the night©

By

Michael Casey

D-day 6^th June 2014 commemoration was very emotional, probably the last one, the lads are so old now. 30 years ago I happened to be in Normandy, 1984, so I was able to see the parades and so forth. So that’s the time line. Max Hastings wrote a great piece about it all, so I won’t even try to comment today.

So what am I going to bore you all with tonight? Well I’m going to talk about things that go bump in the night. We had great weather over 6^th June, this percolated thunder and lightning. Before the thunder and lightning arrived there was a big crash and a big boom.

I awoke to discover my bed had broken in two, and no nothing to do with flatulence, my bed had collapsed beneath me, or rather one side of the bed had snapped in two. I had a new bed nearly 3 years ago, and there was a tiny crack in it, but I’d built the bed in 90mins so I was not going to un-build it. Everything would be ok, I was a bloke so I would not send it back.

The thing about cracks is that they spread, and over time if you toss and turn in your sleep as I do, and you weigh as much as me, what will happen, you awake with a bang in the night.

So that bang in the night set off a whole train of events, firstly I had to prop up my bed so I could finish my night’s sleep. Luckily I had an old plastic sack full of family photo albums, from 30 years ago and less just behind my bed. So I used them to prop up the bed for the remainder of the night.

Then an hour or so later the rumbling and the tumbling and lightning began. I can confirm Nature made more noise that my breaking bed.

Though I have to confess this is the 3^rd bed I’ve broken. The first breakage happened 8 years ago as I tripped over the duvet as I put my daughters to bed, so my full weight came down and destroyed the bed. Then when  I retired my old original bed after 20years of service, so I thought I’d try a silver coloured metal bed. However with my weight the bed did the splits, so I used the photo albums to keep the bed up. When I decided to replace it I put the splits metal bed outside the house, where we have “Sky Burial” it was soon picked up by a passing welder who was very happy with his treasure.

So I decided to get a really posh Lecco bed, that was nearly 3 years ago. It was really nice, and I am good at bed jigsaws. So in an hour I had a posh and very sturdy and heavy new bed. It did have a tiny crack in it, but I thought all would be well. I liked the Lecco so much that when my daughter wanted a new bed I got her the single bed version.

Then the bump in the night, 7^th June 2.40am, things have changed since I last put a bed together. Arthur my arthritis has arrived. First of all I decided to dismantle the Lecco, and so have the room ready for a replacement bed. You can do physical things, but afterwards you pay a price for it, your body makes you pay the pound of flesh.

So what do you do with your broken old bed? Well the header and footer as they are called, look like an old fashioned farm gate. Then there was a gap in our garden fence, so with a bit of ingenuity I had improved the fence, thanks to a recycled bed.

So I went and had a look at beds in my local store, I wanted a really strong one obviously. However the price of a good one looked too high. So I had a look online, picking one from Argos for a finish.

I slept with the mattress on the floor for 2 nights, until today the new bed arrived. I nearly forgot that my daughter decided to decorate my room while I making a fence in the garden with the recycled bed parts.

We had a bit of paint left over too, so we splashed a bit of paint here and a bit of paint there. So my room was now all tarted up. Though it’s like working in slow motion really. The room does look 10 times better now.

 As for the door with drawings scrawled all over it from when the girls were younger, I decided to keep that. If ever they become famous artists I will sell that door and buy a new house with the proceeds.

The new bed arrived and it was huge, one section would not go up the stairs, I had to use a box cutter to remove all the packaging before I could get the bed parts up the stairs. I was all grunts and groans as I got the parts upstairs. Everything seems to take longer now, it took hours to construct my bed. I had to have a rest too, though it was a hot day as well.

Today was inoculation day for my daughters, ready to see grannie in Shanghai, so when they returned the could see the results of my labours. They complained that their arms hurt, I replied that at least they have some idea of what Arthur does to my hips and back and a variety of other places.

As for the bed it really does look the bees knees, very posh like a hotel bed, so I’m exhausted and pleased. So that’s today’s story, and the proof will be in the sleeping, Nite Nite Everybody.  

Beat the Clock

Beat the Clock ©

By Michael Casey

So you are dying and have not much time left for this world, so what would you say? You’ve got 30 minutes to say what you should have said, I Love You. Her train is coming and then she’ll be gone, how would you change her mind, even if you were not dying?

Famous last words, or words that could be the beginning of a whole new line in a Royal family, or any old family, your family. How can you stop Time itself so that you have a chance, a new beginning. Any beginning.

It’s hard its difficult, its 25 minutes before Midnight, before the beginning of a new Season. What would you do? Would you hold her tight and kiss her, would you try your puppy dog eyes like Nicolas Cage, or the cat in Shrek.

I’d try and make her laugh, she’s not interested in looks, she didn’t choose you in the first place just because of looks. If you make somebody laugh they remember you, they look forward to seeing you again, over and over again.

There’s only 20 mins before Midnight now, the train, the plane approaches, whatever words you have must count now, those words are Life Changing words, so speak up and be plain.

Only you stutter, you always stutter when you are nervous, she laughed at you and then fell for you two seconds later. So now you pretend to stutter before you start to sing. Right there in the waiting room you sing to the girl you love. You have to make her stay or make her want to come back anyway.

So you sing badly, deliberately badly, so she laughs and everybody else in the waiting room laughs too. But that does not matter, she remembers the first time you sang to her. It’s a memory, its love, she can’t refuse you anything.

Her heart melts, she’s yours, she’ll always be yours, she kisses you. Everybody in the train station applauds.

So she’ll go now, but she’ll be back soon. Singing for your supper, for the meal that is life that is love. You’ve beat the clock, she’s yours and always will be.

Radio Head No.1

Radio Head  No.1

By Michael Casey

Well if that Allan Bennett can do it on tv it should be easier on radio, no pictures to get in the way. Radio is louder than tv anyway, so it shouldn’t be too hard. I know he’ll be licking his lips now as he gets ready to pounce, to slice and dice what passes for my intellect.

He can’t see my face as this is radio, so he won’t be able to read my body language either. So that’s him sorted, like putting a suitcase on the shelf in the concierge room. I’ve attached a label too, if he loses his ticket then he’ll stay up there on the shelf gathering dust, like a long lost library book.

So we know HE is clever, I just try and hide amongst clever people then I appear clever, a bit like a zebra hiding on a zebra crossings. This is good cover until people pretend they are the Beatles and take photos, so I the zebra have to gallop, ok more like waddle away. But I have lost half a stone, just by drinking less fresh orange juice, from concentrate, I’m not made of money, I’m not famous like HIM.

So you write a play, so I am a playwright too, ok not so famous, but I can still put it on my Linkedin, IF I were still on Linkedin that is. Or I could put it on my Facebook, Michael Casey Playwright, from Birmingham. Does HE have a Facebook page, telling of all the drinking and carousing he does on a Friday night up Broad Street, or up any street?

I suppose when you are as well-known as HIM you have little parties at home, you have a caterer come and pass amongst you, with smiles and trays to reflect all the smiles in. I do have an entry so if it rained and I was having a Summer Fete in the back yard we could all shelter in the entry. And talk about the old abandoned ladders hanging from the metal rungs in the entry.

And what about the actual writing? Well I always say my Shoplife is so much better than Trollied on TV. Mine was written back in 1988 when the Olympics were on. The it WAS called “sparkling, very real, great fun, hilarious, we could not stop reading it. We hope to produce it not this Season but next.” Did Allan Bennett ever get such praise? No, he got a Tony in 1963, when I was 5, and the list is as long as your arm, and two legs.

Good job, this is Radio, or he’d see my Green Envy, and the silent tears of If Only, If Only. Where does he get HIS imagination from, it’s not as if it’s on special offer in Aldi or one of those other discount shops. Though some of the things you see as you go up the high street would really open your eyes.

So I did write a couple of other Plays, seeing if I could, where would my pen lead me. Though I never use a pen, I’ve typed since 1978. Thank God this is Radio, or you’d have the camera pausing over my pieces of paper, and everybody would scream at the screen, “He cannot write” my penmanship is dire after all.

Thank you for your pieces of paper was the first put down I received, I’d neglected to use a binder, don’t laugh at me, I was young and just starting out, I was under 30 then, still in my 20s.

Pagination and Page numbering is a big thing I suppose, but you just want to pour the story out on the page. Puke it out more likely I can hear Allan saying, as he butters his crumpet and pours his morning Green Tea. But a beginning IS a beginning.

So you are writing a play and you think it needs a few more pages, so you go downstairs to make a cup of coffee and have a breath of fresh air in the garden. You see a sparrow on the washing line, next to your pants, but it gives you an idea, but not about pants. So you go back upstairs to your Atari 1040 and write “watching not part of it, like a solitary sparrow sentry on a washing line.”

I’m sure HE never got inspiration from his washing line, he probably has a Mrs Hudson who does all that for him. Though if I ever made a few bob from Writing I’d have a housekeeper, it’s a perk it’s a nice thing to have.

Sorry I can’t meet the deadline today or this week. I have to go to Costco to stock up on toilet paper, 48 rolls for £14, a bargain. Then I have to sew the hem on my trousers, and I really must do the vacuuming, I got so carried away with the play I haven’t vacuumed in 2 weeks. So you’ll just have to wait. I know you’ll understand. If ever I make a few bob like HIM, then I’d have a Mrs Hudson, just how my domestic life would change. Forget the awards, I could have a cleaner for 10 hours a week.

So is all this going through my fellow writers minds as we slave away over a hot computer?  Must  write another 10 pages so my agent gets his money worth, paid by the page, just like piece work and tonnage that my dad endured in the Steel Works, The District Iron and Steel, Brasshouse Lane, Smethwick.

So I think I’ve said all I wanted to say for today, I can see Allan reaching for the tea cosy to throw at the radio. Cheek and Insolence, the perfect driver and concierge team from a hotel.

Did I tell you I did actually work in a hotel, but I was a good boy there, really good. Employee of The Year, well almost, close runner up, very close runner up, read the citation. Even won a prize, a trip to Cambridge, never went though. The wife was not feeling so well, turned out she was pregnant with our comedian 2^nd daughter.

So this is the end of my Radio Head No.1 piece, I hope Allan liked it, put that radio down Allan, don’t throw it out the window, you’ll miss the Shipping Forecast.

Study Methods

Study  Methods ©

By Michael Casey

My daughter is studying in the room behind me, she’s “driven” so says her school, which is good, because you can only do the work yourself, nobody will do it for you. It reminded me how I studied.

If I go all the way back I can remember my brother studying to get into University. He used to have a reel to reel tape recording of Cream music screaming out of just one speaker. I have that speaker in the room behind me, with some fake flowers on top. So it’s amusing that his niece is studying with the silent speaker near her.

Another brother inherited the speaker and took it to University with him. As for me, I just did a bit of the OU, though I did meet Eric Clapton himself, my brothers were the cream academically, but it was me who met the man from Cream.

I got a cassette recorder in 1973, we all went to Digbeth Civic Hall for an auction of household stuff, and it was part of the load my dad bought. We also bought a high stool with red seat. That was the stool that I perched a typewriter on when I started to write a decade later.

Now what did I do with the tape recorder? I copied Status Quo’s Caroline album to a tape and then listened to the tape while I did my homework. I also recorded my French and Spanish vocabulary to it, along with some History notes when I was getting ready for my O Levels. I think I was the last class to do O Levels before GCSEs were invented.

My brother had left home, so I was all alone in the homework room, or middle room as we called it, so music was company, along with my BBC Radio4 and Folk Weave on Radio 2.

There was a tv programme on that said don’t study too long, break it up, otherwise you forget what you have just learnt. My brother’s wise words were “a little bit often.” However in those days I played rugby, so Saturday was a rugby day. So I gave myself off that day, which meant I did all the work on a Sunday.

Now if I had listened to my brother I would have done even better, but I still did do very well. Now the next generation is studying. The girls have a fancy Blik Dab Radio in their room, I was able to buy it with some vouchers I had. It’s small with a great sound, so I donated it to them and I kept an old one.

So music and study continues in the Casey family, though Katy Perry and Capital radio is preferred to Cream and Clapton now. They say that Classical music is good for the brain and helps it work better, I’ll have to wait for the research into Katy Perry and brainwaves to come out.

My small daughter loves to read and she loves having a class of 40 soft toys lined up as she reads to them. This is her study method. When she grows up she wants to be an Animal Biologist.

Oxbridge and Still Cannot write an Essay

Everybody is doing their A Levels including my nephew so I've brought this back

Oxbridge and still cannot write essays? ©

By  Michael Casey

I had been thinking about my latest  blog here on the Daily Telegraph and on my own site www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com then I spotted the article, so that’s why I’m writing this. My own brothers were Oxbridge, me CPNEC was my university along with the good old OU. So I’m saddened that nobody can write, if I were in charge of Oxbridge I’d do a Maths and an English test, and if they fail the test I wouldn’t let them in.

How can somebody 18plus not write a good essay? I was lucky because Frank Brown from County Tyrone was our lodger and he donated a radio, an old Bush radio to me and my brother. You all remember the Bush radio with the marzipan strip carry handle and the saucer size tuning dial, and don’t forget the domino size frequency buttons, and the huge battery inside. That radio was part of my education, we used to listen to The World Tonight, Douglas Stewart reporting, followed by The Book at Bedtime. I can still remember falling asleep during the Ghost and Mrs Muir. I must have spent 20years listening to Radio 4 constantly, and it was only then that I started writing myself, and it took me a year to get it right. Now I have 6 “masterpieces” on Amazon Kindle.

So why can’t students write? Is it too much cannabis or other Class As, or alcohol.No of course not. Is it too much time playing computer games? Too much sport or sex? Or didn’t they have to write an essay a week in English. We had to write an essay a week for Mr Noon, here’s the title, now go write two pages. We had a book list of 40 books we had to work our way through too. I was a natural reader, I read nearly everything on the shelves by my school desk in Primary school. I continued reading through my Grammar school days, then on through my twenties. Does anybody actually read nowadays?

I’ve done a bit of Esol teaching, I’m available right now too, but with Esol you encourage people to listen to Radio4, to practice ten new sentences a day, to read the free newspapers on the bus, to watch BBC news. Lots of simple things can help a foreigner pick up the language, one of our family friends is off to Oxford in the Autumn, her English is perfect, just like Helen Bonham Carter yet she was not born here, she is Chinese. So the obvious point is why can’t people born and raised here do the same.

Essay writing is all about a beginning, a middle and an end. You have to prove your argument too, why was this important, why is History really about Geography. History is Geography, because one leader wants to steal the other country’s resources, Hitler wanted living room, Napoleon wanted to conquer Russia too. In a History essay you’d make the bold statement and then you’d give proof, Facts, Detail, Proof, Latin as I once wrote down on a piece nearly 40 years ago. Once  you have proved your point you can then give lessons for the future, the past shows us the way NOT to go again, a do not enter sign. History repeats itself, is another phrase, we all chase the blond who’ll slap our face, but still we follow her. Monroe is, was, and always will be a honey trap, History shows us many Monroes, if we could control ourselves and keep our hands to ourselves then we’d learn the lessons of History, and we wouldn’t need living room, just stick to our own girl in our own bedroom.

It would be nice if people read and listened to the radio, I fear I’m the final generation of radio lovers, radio is great if only those Oxbridge students listened to radio then they might be better at writing essays. Or they could pay me £xx an hour and I’ll teach a few classes. I’d teach them to love words, to adore words, no not as good as having Monroe in your bed, but at least you’d pass your exams, and that would keep the Dons happy.

Letter from a Scammer

Letter from a Scammer ©

By Michael Casey

First of all let me say I am not Michael Casey, my real name is John Doe Barrister, Mr. John Doe Barrister  and I don’t make coffee in any of those delicious but over priced establishments. Just email JDBarrister666@nosuchemail.com and all will be revealed.

Thank you most sincerely My Beloved, I could not answer earlier as I was having my life saving surgery. As I lay here close to death I have decided to choose you to  have all my worldly goods on the occasion of my death. And it will be an occasion with 1000 mourners all dressed in black, I don’t believe in this new thing of wearing colours.

So all you have to do is phone +44 5555 55555555 and ask to speak to Mr Kickthebuck Barriers at Barrister’s chambers in Barristers’ Row in London England, around the corner from the  High Court. But don’t tell anybody about the details of this email as its top secret. Everybody will want my billions, my £100000000, which I worked so hard for working in Las Vegas as a male stripper.

So just reply to this letter giving your full name, address and phone numbers at home and work, not forgetting your DOB, better still photocopies of your passport and all legal documents. Better still just put everything in an envelope and post to me.

I forgot my postal address is care of the Governor Wormworth Scrums Prison, London England. I have to go now, association time is over. But remember tell nobody about this email.

You will be a very rich man, soon.

Pray Like a Child

Pray Like a Child©

By Michael Casey

When you are a kid you believe, it’s only as you grow older you get cynical and become a don’t know. As a child mum makes you say the Rosary together, the family that Prays together stay together.

“Dear Baby Jesus, can I have a bike, Amen.” Then you jump under the covers and are fast asleep in seconds. Your mum tells her sister, and you get a scooter, one of those that you push with one foot while you stand on the thing. They are very popular again now, 50 years on. As for you the child, proof that prayer works.

You get older and exams beckon, so you pray with renewed vigour, or rather your prayer life is renewed, after falling fallow, but you dig out the Rosary beads and ask for help. You mum joins in and asks the Saints to make the examiner miss your mistakes on the exam paper.

You pass your exams and then prayer is forgotten again. You can’t find a job, so the prayers start again. Your atheist brother says why not try computers, so you do. This results in a good job with good pay for 21years.Is God having a joke? Or has your mum blackmailed the Angels and Saints. A bit of both really.

So life goes on, your mum with her hand in her pinny saying the Rosary as she watches Dallas. Next you need a house, so the prayer restarts. While taking the dog, Goldie, for a walk the dog stops to pee on a garden gate. You look up, the house is for sale.

When you get home you tell your dad, he jumps on the bus to see the house. Dad cannot contain himself so he bangs on the door of the dog pee marked house. He has a look around. He sails home triumphant, “Michael Buy That House.”

So I did.

Working shifts is hard work, lots of night shifts, 14 years of them. Get over it, is what ignorant people say, to this and everything. There is a bonus though, you get to see Dawn over central Birmingham. This really is God’s Creation, 14 years of seeing dawn, some only ever see it when they stagger home from the pub.

So life good on. Mum dies suddenly, 8 weeks later dad should die, but your brother saves him with CPR. Dad is given a week to live and he will not be resuscitated if he has another heart attack. We sit in my sister's house picking hymns for his funeral.

Now today 25^th May would have been Padre Pio’s Birthday. Back then in 1996 I’d heard of him. So I prayed, I asked him to intervene. You are breathless, speechless, lots of things are in your mind, and there is nothing in your mind. Opposites. But there is also something else inside you, your mother has died but weeks before but she left 

you something, she left you Faith, faith of a child.

I put a photo  of Padre Pio under dad’s pillow. 19 people on a heart ward, 18 died. My dad did not. My dad said he heard the doctor say “wheel him to the end of the ward, he’ll be dead soon.”

That’s when dad woke up, and the doctor dropped his tea in shock. Dad spent 3 months, 12 weeks in Dudley Rd hospital or City Hospital as it’s called nowadays. I wrote about it in full in an essay Padre Pio and Me, it’s on the Internet.

So prayer goes up and down, like the swell on the sea, prayer has tides just like the sea too. Pio used to say “the prayer I say tomorrow, will have helped you yesterday.”

Ian Botham was in the news yesterday about he’s attitude  to his own sick dad, I totally understand his point of view. With our dad I visited every single day, as did my sister and other siblings visited loads too.

Now you have your nice house, and you’ve always wanted a wife and perhaps a family. However all you do is visit your dad so you’ll never meet anybody. So you say your prayers and again you ask Padre Pio to help, as if he was a marriage bureau. Then after 3 years who do you meet? Your Shanghai wife.

Kids would be nice, so you get 2. So some will say this is luck or coincidence. I chose to believe Padre Pio is in Heaven having tea with my mother. Though the pair of them might be having a look at my sister in Lourdes today, Happy Birthday Padre Pio, thanks. 

a photo from 9 years ago maybe