This is me the writer 31st Aug 2016

This is me the writer 31st Aug 2016

31/08/2016 Hello this is me eating cereals  this evening, and yes the clock on the wall is in the front room above the family desk top. That’s where I write, so have a read and buy my 10 books on Amazon

THIS IS MY ELEVATOR  AD  AS  THE AMERICANS CALL THEM

Hello , how about a Verbal Cartoon for Radio and all other media

I grew up listening to the radio, we all used to hide under the blankets and listen when we should have been fast asleep. Radio did change my life, a lodger gave us a radio when he had to go back to Ireland to look after his sick mum. In fact he left all his stuff and caught the first boat home. Months later he came back to see us and said me and my brother could have his old Bush radio. I spent 20 years listening to radio. That and being afraid of Mr Gallagher when I was 8 changed my life, and improved my intellect.

Today after 20 years of radio and 29 years of writing, 49 years in total I think I'm a good writer, and thank God so do others. Yes I'm 57 now, in my head I'm 20, though my wife would say 12.

I met my Shanghai wife in the old people's home, she was cleaning my dad's room. I was positively vetted by a Chinese Ballerina  from the Birmingham Royal Ballet, now we are married with 2 bilingual daughters. I am the token male and English speaker in the family.

Now here's a few samples, what I'd like to do would be to read my shorts/blogs on your radio. Each piece is about 90 seconds long, 90 seconds with Michael is the idea, simple idea. I have gained 17,755 views on Funny or Die for a sample.

1^st chapter of Tears for a Butcher which will be my 8th book. Only the other day a publisher said my book of shorts 300 and Not OUT was very funny. In fact I must have 800+ shorts, enough for over a year. I have recorded 207 of them so far, 11 hours plus of audio.

I have started recording all my Shorts and have put 50+ of them on www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com  I have a new mike now too, so listen in reverse order.

My  10 books are on Amazon Kindle

 http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

 and  www.michaelgcasey.wordpress.com   is my site.

Here's the samples for radio or print.

LinkedIn Profile  and  CV ©

By

Michael Casey

We’ve all been on Facebook and LinkedIn, we get to know people and make “friends”. On LinkedIn it’s more about connections and maybe business connections. So we have to rely on the Profile, my LinkedIn profile tells my story, as I am a writer. But how accurate are these Profiles?

I am a born leader.

Means he was the firstborn boy in a family of 11 girls.

I created the supply chain structure.

Means he decided to use a clipboard and notepad instead of just his memory.

I optimised the sales among target audiences.

He chatted up all the girls, he was kind to seniors and went to church.

I was inventive and creative in gaining new sales.

Means he designed a flyer and went street to street delivering them.

I was never afraid of going the extra mile for the business.

Means there was a street gang chasing  him after he was at  the bank

I am great at communicating the business message.

He just would not shut up, so the boss got him to tidy the fruit outside the ma and pa store.

I always try and improve myself.

Means he has no friends so he reads a lot.

I created the new scheme to optimise the business cash flow.

Means he took the store’s cash and put the money on a horse.

I am now looking for new opportunities to excel

Means he got fired, cops not called as the owner married to his sister

I created a great new idea for centralising purchasing delivery.

Means he was a guard for the money delivery company, crash helmet and visor.

I created my own start-up company

Means he stole the money from the cash delivery company and started his own company.

I am now on a learning sabbatical before resuming my career

Means he is in jail, working in the library.

So when you read those LinkedIn profiles or reading a CV or resume think what do they really mean. Check the photos out too, the reality can be far different. Just like actors, photos can be 10 or 20 years old, and they are. Dig deeper.

Me, I google and check people out, as far as you can on Google. Google me(michaelgcasey) and my sites and think for yourself. I am on a sabbatical myself, no I’m not in a library, thought we have plenty of books in the house, no it’s called arthritis, which comes and goes and makes me scream sometimes. But at least I can sit here and make some of you laugh, as I Google everybody.

Let There Be Light ©

 By Michael Casey

Let my tears be my words

Let the candle light be my eyes

Let the flowers in bloom be my lips

Let their scent be my blood

Let the wind be my breath

Let clouds be my mood

Let children’s laughter be my hope

Let widows’ sighs be my conscience

Let a stranger’s prayers be my delight

Let the bees be my wisdom

Let the trees be my strength

Let my patience reach to the stars

Let me be always remembered in your prayers

           

                The Dead and The Living (c)

                           by

          

                     Michael  Casey

     I first saw a deceased when I was nine years old, my father said not

 

     to worry as the dead are the same as the living, only the  laughter

 

     has left them, the sparkle has gone from their eyes, the worry has

 

     been lifted from their shoulders, and their voice has vanished  to

 

     eternity.

     In paradise the sparkle will return for it is the  twinkle  of  the

 

     stars, the laughter will return too for it is the morning breeze and

 

     the turning tides are their sides shaking with laughter.

    

     I treat the deceased with the same courtesy as I give to the living,

 

     though I find the deceased are always more polite. My father also

 

     had a few words to say about the living.

     He said that the living are only the caretakers of the soul ,  yet

 

     they think their existence is everything, that they know everything

 

     because they experience many things with their senses.

     What the living don't acknowledge is that their time is short  and

 

     when I lay their bodies to rest then their souls  continue  without

 

     them, without their strong, without their weak, without  their

 

     beautiful or even ugly temporary form, to where I cannot say, only

 

     that it is a better place.

 

     Percy the undertaker placed the lid on the coffin, the soul was free

                          THE  BEGINNING

     

 

Sleepover©

By

Michael Casey

Sleepover is exactly that, your sleep is over, you have laughing kids invading your house, and driving you out of your minds. Well not always, but it is very distracting. You can’t remember what you were doing and where has that file gone on the computer. This is the 2nd time I’m telling this story, why, because my Word, or upon my word, the story died or rather Word did not close properly, so now you’re getting something different.

Total strangers, or strangers to you arrive at the house and kind of invade it for a night. You do shout up the stairs, keep them out of my room. Not because you have anything worth stealing, but they are stealing your privacy, and that’s all you have left if you have daughters in your house.

Then the smell of nail varnish drifts down the stairs and permeates everywhere, its worse than mustard gas from the Great War. You scream up the stairs, open all the windows fully, what about your room, dad? Especially mine.

Its then that your inner sanctum is breached as they bring their friends to help them open the window. They see the Teddy Bear that you’ve had since you were 6 years old, the invader laughs. She also sees the deep heat by your bed, And he complains about nail varnish.

Dinner time arrives and you have to feed the cuckoo, only she doesn’t eat this or she doesn’t eat that, on principle. So you say, you’ll have to stave then. Your daughter, the host, is horrified, so you relent and flick a pound coin at them, cholesterol free oil used to make the chips. So a compromise is achieved.

You put Sky Sports on to watch the match, they say Qatar is going to build underground stadia, novel idea. You are settling down to see Rooney when they arrive back chip laden. Her friend just loves the ballet and Sky Arts has Bolshoi on, so could they please please watch that. You say you’ll record it for them. But you are as bad as a puppy murderer even for suggesting it.

So being a nice dad you let them watch the ballet on your 46inch tv, while you retreat to watch the match on the laptop upstairs. They never tell you about this at parenting classes, just how to change nappies. Let’s hope William and Kate are told.

After the ballet they retreat upstairs for girlie music, and what were you doing in their room on the laptop. Didn’t you know you are just a dad not allowed in the inner sanctum. The Hits is switched on  their dab radio at volume 13, you retreat to watch the after match talk on the big screen.

Later its bath time, so you have to wait 2 hours for all the girls in your house, including the cuckoo, to pollute the bathroom before you a mere dad, and bill payer, can have a shave. Only your last razor has been used to save somebody’s legs.

So everybody goes to bed, all is well, holding your teddy bear, you sleep soundly. Until 3am, when a banshee screaming wakes you, your wife and all the neighbours. It’s the cuckoo, she’s having a nightmare, it must be the chips, and the cholesterol free oil from them. Or half waking up and forgetting where she was.

So remembering to put on your dressing gown you have to calm everybody down, and answer the door, to the police, as the neighbour from neighbourhood watch has rung them. So the police come in and have a look. Flatulence is written down in the Police note book. As you let the police out the house again your smallest daughter hands you your teddy bear, its ok dad, it’s only a sleepover.

How do Men Shop? ©

By Michael Casey

There is a difference between Men and Women, and thank God for it. But how do men shop? Shopping for men is about getting what you need, my shoes have a hole in them so I’ll go to the shop and buy another pair. A man will buy a new pair of shoes that are exactly the same as his old pair of shoes, or if he’s being adventurous he’ll have a pair of shoes which are exactly the same but with grey laces and not black. Now to a man this is being fashion conscious. If a man wants a new pair of trousers he just goes to the shop and sees if they have his leg/waist size and then tries them on, making sure they don’t split when he bends over and that his package is not squeezed. If a man needs a suit he checks the trousers before putting on the jacket, the jacket must be able to be done up without his belly exploding the buttons off. A man will never button up his suit jacket, but he needs to know that the buttons won’t fly off and hit anybody in the eye, if ever he does.

If a man needs a shirt he checks the neck size, 18.5 in my case, and then he sees if its full fit or not. Then he buys 5 shirts exactly the same all  in plastic . For a lazy shopper he’ll go straight to Slaters and get what he wants. In and out in 30 mins for everything. Then he’ll go to the pub and meet his mates and have one pint too many and leave all his shopping in the Queens Tavern. Luckily they are honest there and his shopping is saved, otherwise he’s have to waste 30mins in Slaters, before going back to the pub.

This is basically the difference between men and women. Woman shop, men pick up clothes or whatever like an order picker does, without any passion.  A man gets home and puts his shopping away and forgets about it. Just like in the film The Fly where the man’s wardrobe contains suits all the same colour, clothes are just a thing so they are all uniform.

As for women shopping s something different, the clothes have to be tried on and they must make the woman look perfect, her bum or boobs mustn’t be to big or too small, everything should be right. To help the woman chose her clothes she brings two or three mates or her children with her. Her man is forced to come too, but he plugs Radio5 Live into his ear and listens to the football  while she is choosing. Men know 5 colours, red, blue, red, green, yellow or maybe one or two more; as for a woman there are at least 50 colours, and just as the eskimos have 30 words for snow a woman has 10 words for each colour and its hews.

This brave man, or am I stupid, I just give my wife the debit card and say leave me in peace, so she goes off with a smile with the girls with her, they are young Fashionistas after all. I decided years ago what a wife needed was space to shop and not constant looks at my watch. So that’s what she does and her bulging wardrobe will testify to the wisdom of my decision. When a woman comes home its 2 hours of mix and match to make sure that the new clothes match the old clothes, the husband tries to watch the big match on tv but his wife is prancing around the living room asking “does my bum show” and various other questions. It’s a penalty, and you sit on the edge of your seat, the wife appears and blocks your view, so you miss seeing why  your side was relegated. Normal life in homes up and down the country.

The next day you watch the match again in peace, you remembered to record it on Sky+ and as for the wife she’s gone back to the shop to return ½ of what she bought because it doesn’t match her shoes. And it’s your fault because you wouldn’t give her your debit card again so she could buy cheap £100 shoes.

All Things Bright and Beautiful ©

 By Michael Casey

 I haven’t written a non-pain piece in a while, so I’ll try and forget the pain and write something new. We’ve just had the half time holidays and my girls have been playing “shop-girls” as they call it. They even have a sign on their bedroom door saying “open” or “closed”. They steal my wife’s clothes and prance about upstairs. Our eldest daughter has bigger feet than my wife now so that’s a relief as she cannot steal my wife’s shoes any more, but it does not prevent her younger sister from wearing mum’s shoes. There is also the matter of the beret with silver sequins, that’s an absolute Fashion Must.

Me, I’m not fashionable at all, three girls in the house is enough, if I gave in to them they’d be beading my eye brows, I do wear pink on occasions, so that’s as far as I go. If I were maybe 3 stones lighter I’d try other things, I did see a nice cord jacket in Cotton Traders 48R, it was bright blue, Kingfisher Blue, my girls called it a “Clown Jacket”. With encouragement like that what am I supposed to do? I did say if I win Euro millions I WILL buy the jacket. My wife has a nice light brown one, although as she is a woman there will be a more accurate colour name, men don’t do colours. If you think of it its black and white, blue, green, orange as far as men go, but women at least another 40 names for colours. As far as my hair goes, its silver, though a friend used to say I was an old man with white hair. As the colour of our hair change it’s the 7 ages of man.

I remember Ali saying why wasn’t it “Whitemail” instead of blackmail. We are in the Pink if we have good health, I long to be back in the pink myself. We say we hope be back in the black not in the red when we do company accounts, we look for the silver linings. We look look look for the rainbow as the song goes, we may find the crock of gold, all our troubles may be over and we can pack them up in the old kit bag. Hope springs up within us, it is now Spring after all, and as Chance the Gardener said “in the Spring there will be growth.”

Cheese and Chorizo ©

By Michael Casey

 The thing about girls is that they steal your stuff, you think they are nice and sweet smelling, but they are not. If they get up before you they’ll raid your side of the fridge and eat your cheese and chorizo. Cheese and chorizo on toast, with hot chocolate to follow, this is how your daughters treat you. This is how my girls treat me.

Yesterday mum bought biscuits, and did she share them? NO. The girls got some but I got none. They were  the ones I really like, its always the ones you really like. I looked high and low, just like an Ah Ha song, but nothing. JJ the wife just laughed at me as I went from pillar to post looking for a biscuit, the Tunnock ones. See this is how the 3 girls in my life treat me, I am biscuitless. Finally after much derision my small daughter showed me  where the biscuits were, a new hiding place, that’s why I could not find them. So I was victorious, I sneaked a biscuit into my pocket and slipped away to eat it in peace.

Shoes are a big thing, so our small daughter walks around the house in mum’s shoes, mine are too big so thankfully they are left alone. However having two daughters who like Textiles, which is the fancy word from school for sewing and making things. If they like textiles then your clothes are not safe, they drag a shirt or two out of the wardrobe and say they want to turn it into something. Jumpers are not safe either, they can cut them down to make a dress  or even a handbag. And as for needles, it’s like having a porcupine in the family, DANGER. You only realise that after you have sat on a needle or two, the wife just says its free acupuncture, no need to asked Dr Hu to pay us a visit, and yes he really is Dr Hu, not Dr Who, but Dr Hu.

Now that our 11year old is 5feet tall, as big as mum, she wants to wear her clothes, but you can imagine what kind of clothes a Shanghai girl wears. So there is debate in Chinese, I cannot understand a word, but SANINGONGA is heard quite often which means no. Which also means my girls, our girls will return to steal from my wardrobe again. In a way it’s like having moths, but instead of holes in your clothes, entire items just disappear. BUT it’s not just the girls, its mum too, she’ll decide that the Fashion Police would not like this item or that item, so it  disappears.  When do I find out? Never, or nearly never, until I walk past a charity shop and see a tent sized item in the window, it’s my clothes.

So if you want to keep the clothes on your back, don’t have daughters. If  you want your favourite food safe in your side of the fridge, the none Chinese side of the fridge, then don’t have daughters. If you want to save your pennies, don’t have a Shanghai wife. But then life would be boring, just make sure you look before you sit.

From A to B from Sat Nav to Blocked Sink  ©

 By Michael Casey

 Well I hope you are all fine this morning. For us the Sat Nav debate continues. In the old days a Black Taxi would not be seen using an AtoZ, it was beneath his dignity. He'd done the Knowledge and it was all up there in his head. Jack Rozenthal wrote a great play about it, was it 30years ago? Maureen Lipman was his real wife.

 Delivery drivers have and egg and bacon butty in one hand dripping egg on to the AtoZ in their other hand while they try and deliver a chest of drawers, with 5 days growth of beard for good measure.

 Bus drivers know their route, so once they've done it a while its automatic, they know what they are doing. All they have to do is put up with kids trying to use a 3 day old ticket, and not get too high from all the cannabis on the bus. Or remember when they have switched routes because that can lead to strange directions.

 Door to door salesmen all those years ago, with the rap at tat tat on the back door had their route carrying the suitcase with samples in. I can vaguely remember one at our back door did my mum buy a clothes brush? But that must be 45 years ago.

So basically we all know what we want and where we are going. Going further back they say people only knew a six block radius around their home. Going to War changed all that as did radio and then more importantly tv. Tv being our eyes on the world, previous to that only Merchant Seaman knew of the world. My own granddad was a merchant sea man, I sometimes wonder did he ever get to Shanghai

Or was it me, his grandson who got there first. Had he visited at the turn of the 19th/20th Century 100years and more ago.

 Which brings us back to Sat Nav. Me I use a bus which is fine apart from the pot heads who sit next to you on the bus and all I want to do is puke. My wife is a car driver, so she and our girls love the car. But my wife has borrowed a Sat Nav and likes the ease of it so now she wants one of her own. The result is that I’m being nagged to provide one. You pay, me pay, yes you pay, why me pay, because you are the husband so you pay, no way me pay, you pay you pay yourself, I say. And on the ding dong, sing song goes. Which is the fun part. Me I no pay, use computer I say. You can get perfect directions off the computer all you then have to do is print them off, if our printer was still working we’d be doing that. So really all the wife has to do is copy them down, in English.

 She’s  busy with the wok as I talk to you, she’s compromised now, she only wants me to pay half. So I say I’ll be doubly generous and double the share I won’t pay, I’ll pay zero and she can pay 100%. That’s the true spirit of negotiation, now I have another thing to resolve, she’s blocked the sink, so pardon me now as I take the plunge, or rather take the plunger to the sink, no need to use a Sat Nav to get there, its over my shoulder in the next room, just turn left at the tv and go straight on to the sound of bubbles. Love is everywhere don’t you know it, just find it, no Sat Nav required.

My other idea is a book of shorts, 40 stories with 40 translations

on facing page plus 40 audio of me reading my stories on usb stick.

Perfect to teach English as a 2nd language, via humour.

As I have written 800+ stories this would be a series of 20 plus books

So we could have Mandarin/Japanese/Urdu/Spanish/Hindi/Russian etc

This would be a world wide hit, angel investors needed

Thanks for reading this, that’s if Junk did not get it. I have come close and not got a cigar many times in my life, so I decided to try you. Radio is the medium for my words, 90 seconds with Michael, could go nationwide, it’s a simple idea, with great words, mine if I can be boastful. I have already recorded 207 of my 800+ shorts, 11 hours plus of audio.

some can be heard at www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com

Cheerio, Michael Casey 

Email michaelgcasey@hotmail.com

 www.michaelgcasey.wordpress.com

www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com  to hear 50+ stories

10 ebooks and 3 Printed on Paper Books

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Picking Things be it your nose or your clothes

Picking Things be it your nose or your clothes ©

By Michael Casey

I was watching this tv programme about 2 gay dads last night, my wife picked the programme and I watched along with her. Hello to them just in case they are reading this. In the programme the dads were picking clothes for their daughter’s Prom, so it got me thinking about how I help my own daughters pick things. In my case we rush through the  girls’ list on website PerfectPerfectClothesForKids.com.co.uk and we chose and it’s all done and dusted very very fast. The irony is my wife does in fact work for a high end children’s fashion company, the kind the two dads might shop at.

I don’t know about them but I’d lose the will to live if I had to spend too much time shopping, so my way is quick and painless. I tell the girls not to tell mum, that I’ve got them stuff. That way they can plead clothes poverty and she’ll get them stuff too. Any clothes they have grown out of we put outside on the garden wall and some lucky child gets them. Sometimes I accost passing strangers and force Aldi plastic bags full of clothes into their hands. You have girls, you have this. As I look like a demented 17 stone bouncer I am never refused, ok I’m lying I sometimes use a different brand of plastic bag.

Back in Aldi if I see anybody struggling to decide which kind of bread to buy I put my best concierge voice on and say that Brown Bloomers are best, cos they are, besides you like your wife’s bloomers don’t you, then I stroll away waiting for the penny to drop, or the bloomers, the brown bloomers from the high shelf I mean, what were you thinking?

Sometimes there is a dangerous child doing something dangerous, so then I pick my teacher’s voice, yes I was a teacher once too. Do you want to die, if you keep doing that then you will die, get out of the road, or stop pulling the high stack of shopping baskets on top of your head. While the parents are on their mobile in the queue to pay, instead of watching their treasure, their kids.  If they thought about the 1000s of Child Tax credit they would lose with a dead child, then  they’d watch them more.

WE pick lots of things, we pick the one we love, or it’s the girl you always see at Church, or in the queue at the dole office, or maybe she picks you. He’s such clot, he’s totally useless but when he gives me that look, I just want to have his babies. Attraction is attraction, whether you like black girls, white girls, Japanese/Chinese/Korean girls or it must be a fat ginger girl because it’s her who plucks your heartstrings. Things happen and you are picked before you can pick, it’s the urge as the Irish say.

You may be having a sneaky pick of your nose and she sees you across the room, she is coming towards you, it’s nearly Midnight, the New Year is about to begin, she is going to snog you, it’s all or nothing, the urge is  upon her, she has served you bacon butties in Greggs for a year, she wants a slice of you. So what can you do with that snot on your finger, you raise your finger and half think about putting it back up your nose. She sees what you are doing and laughs. The clock strikes Midnight, a New Year Dawns. She takes your finger and rubs it on her breast, holding your finger there. She looks deep into your eyes, before grabbing you, it’s snog time.

With a beginning like that they just have to marry and have a heap of children, and when in the future the kids ask how did she meet dad, she’ll tell them I wiped his snotty finger on my breast, then held it there while I snogged him into the New Year. Or she could lie and say he dropped his wallet in Greggs and she tracked him down and he took her to Burger King to thank her. But the truth really is his snot on her breast.

  

Trash TV an older piece

Trash Tv ©

By Michael Casey

I’m hiding in the other room while my girls watch Trash Tv, by which I mean a tv show that is so bad it makes you cringe. It might be KUWTK or anything else which has z listers in it trying to make enough to get out of the trailer park and back into an apartment, overlooking the trailer park.

You have girls, or should I say Botox pumped girls poured into swimsuits who keep on bending over to reveal their assets, front and rear, along with their gleaming painted white teeth. We all love pretty girls, otherwise the human race would just disappear. However a classic beauty of any size and combination is always far far prettier than a Trash Tv girl.

 You have men too, pumped full of iron and their designer drugs, with muscles and designer stubble galore, not to mention the latest shades, and bulging shorts, with or without shuttlecocks if you are old enough to remember Wham.

No I’m not jealous, I know a pretty girl is pretty because of her smile, because of her eyes, and not what lies between her….. As for men, girls want a bloke who’ll stick around and talk and actually listen to her. Then passion is better, it’s not fast food where you feel hungry afterwards, it’s more like a banquet.

However on Trash tv it’s all fast everything which just leads to heartburn and heart ache. Yes we all watch the rubbish tv, just to see did they really say that do they really love their reflection that much, is the high life really that high or just the arrogant self-centred people high on their egos.

It’s nice seeing nice places, just like in the James Bond movies, but what would be really nice, really really nice would be seeing him give the z listers a push, and not into a swimming pool but somewhere far far deeper, such as the Grand Canyon. 

Vanity isn't Fair

Vanity isn’t Fair ©

By Michael Casey

As I sit here talking to you I am squeezed into an old pair of suit trousers, they have lined legs so they last longer, when you bend  your knees don’t poke through the lining, that extra layer makes them last years long.  Ask your dad or granddad if you don’t believe me, you’ll have to shout because he’s dead 10 years, ha ha, everybody like to be a joker. So these trousers belong to a suit I had maybe 17 years ago, sadly lined legs don’t make me taller though 5feet 10 is tall enough.

We buy suits for interviews, nobody just wears a suit, not unless they are Beatles in the 60s, then it was trendy to wear a suit. I wore this suit for interviews post 1999 I think, when my big job ended and I was cast out into the real world, instead of the surreal world where I had worked for 21years as a computer operator.

We look into the mirror and see does our bum stick out and our legs short and stumpy, the answer is yes in both cases for me. Maybe I have some African genes so I am able to carry a baby on my back/bum otherwise my legs are very strong, I did play in the scrum at rugby and I have stood for decades in my working life. My Shanghai wife always  says I have  strong legs, this came in useful as veins were harvested for my quadruple heart bypass.

So as a good looking man, ok I’m lying, as a man, a George Clooney look alike, ok I look like Huw Edwards of the BBC, yes really, go google if you don’t believe me. So as I was saying before all you doubters started to laugh, I don’t look in the mirror all the time, I just comb the dandruff into a line and then I leave the house. As I walk down the road I may occasionally look at my reflection in the shop windows, and whisper encouragingly to myself, you look so hot, so very hot, then I spin around on my heels and do a John Travolta pose. Now am I being serious or am I joking, you will never know, though the Chinese take-way does have the best window for posing as its all black glass, apart from the menu in white on the inside.

Now are women as a breed more sensitive of their image, and do they look in the mirror or at their own reflections in shop windows more than men or less? Could be a feature in the Daily Mail, I must say I do enjoy Kevin and Andrew on Sky’s Press Preview, but I’ve side-tracked myself now, I must be careful or I’ll trip over Jeremy Corbyn sat on the floor obstructing my access to the toilet, he mustn’t do that with my Ckd.

So if a couple are walking down the street, concentrating on trucking right, what it means  I haven’t a clue , it was in a 10cc song years ago, anyway as they walk who admires themselves the most. And while we are talking about it why do men forever check to see if their zipper is fully up.

When you finish trucking and you meet your friends in the restaurant, ok at Burger King, why do you lie and say, you look wonderful, when in fact she looks like the dog’s dinner, but you are so happy she does, this makes you a winner. This old thing, you say as you twirl so she can admire your red dress, the one you got on eBay for £19.99, you lie and say it cost £100, but your husband  insisted on buying it for you, he didn’t know you used his card online.

You and your friend look around Burger King and slag off other women’s clothes, it’s your hobby for the last 30 years since you met in isolation at you old school. You were both put there for uniform violations you both wanted your school skirts to almost reach your navel.  After your spell in isolation you went the opposite way and became known as the nuns throughout the school, it was satire really but nobody noticed. 

So on it goes, people are really sensitive to some comment about their height, or weight, or in my case my hairy back, though I don’t care, it keeps me warm in winter. I also have very hairy eyebrows, as a child of 4 or 5 I cut them off when I found the family scissors. We just laughed and they grew back again. 

Years later when I was learning some French for Grammar school , I was 13 or so, I paced backforwards, that is backwards and forwards in English, as I learnt the French. I started plucking my eyebrows as I did so. In the end I had all my French but none of my eybrows. They were pluck away, they had almost all disappeared.

I’m not vain, but after my family stopped laughing they helped me alter my appearance, by painting eyebrows on me with mascara. I went to school and did the test, got 18/20, and nothing for my painted on eyebrows. 

Nobody noticed at school. However they 2^nd day my painted on eyebrows were spotted, though nobody dared taunt me, I was the biggest kid in the class. I told them it was Chemistry experiment that blew up in my face. This was a lie, and my priest will no doubt laugh and give zero penance, and tell all his friends, as it was not covered by the seal of the confessional. Later that week a man beckoned to me on my way to school, he gave me an old Chemistry set from his garage, yes even God was laughing at me.

So what is Vanity? It’s when we love our body and clothes too much. When the look rules all, when really it’s the soul that matters most. Some of the prettiest people I have met in my life are not the models male or female, but the characters who make you laugh, the guy who always has a story. The girl who’ll stay late to get the job done, they have true grit and they are really worth knowing. As for me I’m off to pluck my eyebrows, they have never been the same since grammar school, or am I just vain?

   

 my girls the wife and 2 daughters April 2013

Pain and Prayer

Pain and Prayer ©
By Michael Casey

Let my Pain be my Prayer
Let my Screams be the Chorus
Let my Pills be the Verse
Let my Winces be my Supplication
Let my Pain bitten lips be my Hope
Let Sleepless Eyes be my Testament
Let my Aching Limbs be my Mantra
Let the Ringing in my ears be my Peel of Prayer
Let the stabs of pain in my heart reach high heaven
Let the fog of pain in my brain be lifted by God’s Grace
Let me down from my cross because you have already been on yours.


**** sorry for reposting this but today is a pain day, and if Laborore es Orare then my poem is valid.

for those who don't know I had an unplanned quadruple heart bypass 18 months ago, plus I have the joys of Arthur my arthritis