Writing with Dave

Writing with Dave ©

By Michael Casey

Well you have so much more free time now, and you can have decent holidays in nice nice places, no more pretending you are DAVE anymore. The kids had so much fun with that, mum where’s dad, there’s only Dave over there hiding behind those red boxes, do they have designer meals in those red box things, just shove in the microwave and feed all of us.  Or mum can we ask Dave to stop being Dave and be just Daddy again, that really is the best D word. Though it was funny when he used the D word against that Geography teacher with the beard, DUNCE. How we laughed.

So I’ll meet you in the park on the 3^rd bench along, the one kept warm by that large man with the dog. You must have been important, once, if you have an official bench warmer with a big dog. Anyway to business, do I call you Dave or is it DC. DC so be it, I love a bit of intrigue, and those films with Iron Man were just fab, pity you were no Iron Lady, but I can lend you some of my iron tablets if you like, but beware they do turn your pooh black.

So how is the biography going along, you have adopted a style I hope, something for ordinary people to enjoy, you do want to outsell Tony Blair after all. If you just write in the boring tone of a boring politician you’ll just bore the common man. You are writing for History and not just Norman Smith and Laura K, and old four eyes Nick, as Alex S like to call his best friend.

It may give them orgasms all the political stuff, but the audience, the real people just want to know was Nick Clegg a biscuit thief, did he eat all the pies, he did get a bit porkie after all. And where did you stash your Stella Artois so you could have a sneaky drink after a hard day’s night, you couldn’t keep on running upstairs to the flat all the time.

Now you know all about keeping it punchy, and having at least one joke every two pages, it’s not Jilly Cooper with bonking galore, but you have to keep the readers’ interest, they are not a bunch of lawyers, and yes that is a metaphor. And the title of your tome should be a good one, such as DC my Time in Number Ten, not super long titles that they have on books featured on Fox News. For example, DC my Time in Number Ten, the History of a great man leading a great country until I was shafted by Nigel. Though I do realise some may consider such a title not very humble, but Americans do like to make a lot of noise, and as for Nigel, they may ask what a Nigel is, or even is it a verb. As you know 2 peoples divided by a common language.

It’s nice that the large man with the dog brings us sandwiches while we sit here and I correct you lack of writing skills, eating lettuce and prawn sandwiches together. Luckily for him he has a large dog, otherwise the lady in the sandwich shop may try and accost him to put up a few shelves for her, he’s so much nicer that Barry, and she does love Policemen.

So where were we, yes style, if you comb your hair nicely you’ll never have Donald Trump hair in the future, though when he becomes president everybody will want hair like him. Hillary has to start punching her weight if she really wants to have the office her husband used, it has been sanitised now. It’s a pity Bloomberg didn’t run, he’d my man but I can’t vote over there.

Now where were we, yes style, it is important because personally I don’t give a monkeys if the story is good if the telling of it is bad, come here let me whisper in your ear. You look shocked, yes I’m telling the truth, I just cannot read that writer. If you could write as well as the writer of The Book Thief then you would be the greatest writer ever, but that’s just my opinion, and I am no politician, and nor are you now, cast out and rejected returning to the Back Benches, or park benches with me as your guide.

Try and set yourself a target for the number of pages you write in a week, but never force it or you will hate it. Yes you are doing it for the money, if anybody says they are doing it for History they are a liar and they can go and play James Bond. So enjoy it, be natural, write in the nude if you like, just don’t frighten the big man’s dog, police canine officers are very sensitive, are difficult to replace. Politicians are ten a penny but police dogs are a unique resource, and yes add Police Dogs to your charity list, and if you haven’t taken the kids to see a police dog display then why not.

Now basic things about your writing. Always but always back it up. So you email it to your publisher and 10 times to yourself and your lawyer and the wife and your secretary. Have usb copies too scattered everywhere, hide one in your daughter’s dolls house. Post one to yourself as well. Send one to Alex S too, he’ll just throw it on top of his Welsh dresser in disgust but at least you will have some off site security. You could send a copy to Nick Four Eyes, Alex S’s best friend, he might help you with the spellings.

So I hope I’ve been of some help to you Dave, it’s a privilege to be allowed to call you that, or are your wife and kids and the large man with the dog treating me like a silly bitch?

  

Choosing is So very hard to do

Choosing is so hard to Do ©

By Michael Casey

Choice is such a strange thing, the more choice we have the more difficult it is for us. If we don’t have any choice then we complain, you can have any colour you like so long as it is Black is what Henry Ford said, didn’t do his business any harm. The hardest thing I do every day is pick what to talk about, hoping the well doesn’t run dry, this story will be number 815 I think, I don’t keep a tally but Blogger does, that’s the only way  I know, I’m up to 912,000 words now as well, I don’t sit here with an abacus counting, Word just tells me.

Choice spoils us and ruins us, my other daily activity is visiting Aldi and doing my walk, you are supposed to walk, or exercise after your surgery to keep your heart pumping. Other exercises with  female Korean Pop stars would be better, but as I look like the Gangham Style singer that won’t happen and my Shanghai wife would not approve, she’d just laugh herself silly at the very thought of it. I’m so fat as she tells me constantly, just because I’m nearly 3 times her weight.

Back to choice, if you have more choice you just cannot decide what is best, or if you are me you pick something and stick with it till you are sick of it, and then you make another choice. I did eat lettuce and prawn sandwiches for years and years in my computer room days. Barry got scared of going down to collect the sandwiches as the lady in the sandwich shop had designs on his body, so in the end I went down all the time. The sandwich lady thought Barry would be the perfect filling for her, with a dash of pickle on top. She always needed a man to come around and help her put shelves up. She must have had more shelving than the British Library.

Clothes are a big choice especially for women, what style or colour should you wear. You must never wear the same outfit as anybody else, and shoes, can only go with this or that outfit. Men are such idiots not to know what a big difference a colour makes. As for me I can sometimes be like the man in the film The Fly, I have 5 or 6 outfits exactly the same. Or in my case trousers are blue and my shoes are all brown, Clarks of course but all brown, shoes are cheaper if you choose brown, besides the days of me wearing formal black shoes are long over. So the choice I make is to be exactly the same, though I do add a splash of colour, then again the days of me wearing my orange polo are gone, see photo attached so you can wave it goodbye.

Some choices you don’t like, but they have to be made, do you tell the Truth or Lie, Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil my mum used to say with a promise not to hit you. That’s where my morality comes from, and if you look at the picture attached to this story you can see where mum’s Faith comes from, 1920s Cromane Lower Kerry Eire. A choice should always be the right choice for you, never follow the herd, it’s always better to die as you lived, never accept the rule of lemmings.

The final choice is when you pre-book your funeral, as my parents did, the undertaker takes you up to the cemetery so you can view where you will be for all Eternity. Only you end up with your neighbours following you even to resting in peace around the corner from you, which may or may not be a blessing. Personally I don’t want to be buried in a filing cabinet which rack and stacks the last mortal remains of people.

So to be modern you can all start a hashtag Bury Michael Casey in Trinity Road Churchyard. This is in actual fact a closed graveyard, it is right next to the Sikh temple, the biggest in Europe, and opposite Brasshouse  Lane where my dad worked in the steel works for 40 years. It has road, rail, and canals passing by, and when I go if I make it as a big writer then folks can visit. Before you all start the hashtag, I would like to live as many years as possible first, though one or two of you may choose to start the hashtag as soon as possible. But that’s your choice.

Appearances Are Deceptive

Appearances Are Deceptive ©

By Michael Casey

Well the pain has ebbed away now, its 11.36 on a Sunday in September, I was thinking of writing about Pain again, but that probably bores you all, so I was thinking what else to talk to you about, I read the headlines in the DT and I did have a few ideas, so this is what I’ll talk about today.

As I sit here I am wearing women’s PJ bottoms,  light blue with red roses galore on them, plus a thin sweat shirt top, and as I feel a bit chilly a chunky red jumper, and my Clarkes blue trainers, which are my house slippers. I haven’t shaved for 2 days so I look a bit vagranty I will shave later on, but I do look like a very good Bruce Willis in Die Hard mode. I don’t wear vests ever anymore, I wrote a story called Real Men Wear Vests but that was over a decade or two ago, Sir John Major may have inspired it.

So if you saw me what would you think? A sad sack of an old man, I bet he farts constantly too, I’ll have you know I was once called a burnt out old has been, though I went on to write 10 books and as for my accuser I believe he became a vagrant, yes really. My other thought is that God’s sense of humour dictates that people like me, the unwashed and unloved DO achieve great things, His Folly is greater than Our Wisdom. Well that’s what I tell myself, and I think we all should as well.

There are many examples where people surprize us, to the good and to the bad, I spotted a piece in the newspaper about The Hairy Angel, that great singer Susan Boyle, she is an example where God has touched somebody with his Grace and they have a great Talent.

If you saw my daughters and then I said I was their dad you would think I was a liar, because I look like their Granddad, the white hair and so on, but I am in fact their dad. Their accents are very posh English too, so you may say it was impossible for them to be half Shanghai Chinese, when they speak Chinese, they speak it with a posh English accent, oh and the family is Irish, Casey.

You see a fat man, but put him on the dance floor and he will glide and slide, Strictly Come Dancing has a lot to answer for, and am I rooting for Ed Balls, no, with a name like that he should be a juggler in a circus, or a Chancellor or something.

We all have party tricks that we amaze or even bore people with. I’ve just remembered my old one, I could drink a pint of water from an old milk bottle faster that the works coffee machine could fill a plastic cup with coffee. I remember showing Mike Whale that trick nearly 40 years ago, Mike went on to work in the Arab world in computing, so hello to him if he ever reads this.

It’s when people or our masters proclaim they are holy that you have to watch them. Too Good to Be Wholesome is a truism, but it has proven to be so true. It may be that after their fall that our masters do their best work, being Humbled leads them to be better people. As for me I’m in the gutter with Oscar Wilde, but at least I’m looking at the stars, and best of all the pain has ebbed away for today. See God is Good as my mum used to say.

Physical Comedy

Physical Comedy ©

By Michael Casey

I was watching somebody clean their front door and as I watched I could see the Comedy involved. They did not hold the handle of the jug of water, they just gripped the rim, a disaster waiting to happen, and before I could say I bet he drops the jug or he’ll spill it all over himself, he did exactly that.

Splash all over his tee shirt, and onto his jeans, the air went blue even from my side of the street I could hear him curse. So he tore his top off and threw it into the rose bush in his garden. A couple of little old ladies stopped to see the show and his body, he was a body builder after all, and their husbands had not looked like that in 3 decades, if ever. Your pants are wet too the old ladies observed, so Colin, Colin is his name, pronounced Colin, not CO Lin as your General in USA called himself.

So Colin tore his pants off too, this was too much for Mrs Lynch, she fainted, so Colin who is a gentleman after all stepped into the street to assist. A large bodybuilder in just his posing pouch. The girls in number 54 came running out, they had had their eyes on Colin for years, now he was here in the fresh, so much flesh too. Up the road Rob and Guy the street gay couple came out to assist, they just had to see what was going on. Even Peter the traffic warden came out for a look.

The whole street united as Colin had dropped water all over himself and a little old lady had fainted, the other old lady could have had a stroke but she was not close enough. Now these are the ingredients, you have to picture it all for yourself, and if you were re-enacting this in your garden with your friends  who would you be, or would it descent into a water fight, or a flour throwing fight, or tomatoes or any of those other festivals the world over.

Observation gives you the ingredients, and it’s up to you to put them together, it’s like a jigsaw that appears before you, and you just start fixing it in mid-air. And how did today’s words come about, am I the bodybuilder or maybe I’m just the little old lady, I do look a lot like my mother. Or am I just one of the bystanders? No I’m just the writer, though my daughter nearly dropped a jug of water all over me, on her way to washing our front door 15 minutes ago. Art follows life, or a jug of water.

Paxman, The Mature Times and Me

Paxman, The Mature Times and Me ©

By Michael Casey

So I did what you told me to do, I sent them my Elevator Ad and offered my services. Maybe if I was a bull they would have reacted better, as a bull’s services are always of great value. You are a countryman at heart Jezza, we both know that, and have your waders dried out yet? If you just stuff them with the free issues of The Mature Times from the hotel lobby then leave them upside down in the corridor by morning they’ll be dry. The absorption qualities are really amazing, you’ll be glad I gave you this tip, I bet you’ll steal loads of copies of The Mature Times in the morning, just to dry out your boots in future.

Be careful though, they do say the Hound of the Baskervilles was written in your hotel, Sir Arthur had been on a bender, you know what Medics are like, drinking from sample bottles and so on, my own daughter wants to be a Dr, so God help us in the future.

Now how is the writing coming along? Mary Beard sends her love and says she’ll meet us at The Trader in Old Forge and Singing Anvil, not next week but the one after. The Comedy Writers for Beginners continues in the back room of the pub, in the snog, I mean snug as they used to call it. We have a new member joining us, he’s a bit shy  but he does have a lot of time on his hands now, he goes by the handle of DC, like those American Comic Books, he said his last career ended in failure so his wife is encouraging him to start over.

I read in the DT, the real newspaper for old people, that, I forgot what I was going to say next, let me think.  I really have forgotten now, perhaps after I go to the toilet and have a coffee then I’ll remember. It’s the girls being at home all Summer, its worn me out, should have had my children before my 40s. Anyway I do miss our evenings together, if you asked nicely maybe the BBC would give you your old job back. 

Or maybe you could get a job writing for a supermarket magazine, such as Aldi or even Waitrose. Don’t be angry now but The Mature Times did offer you a position, and you would get as many copies as you like, perfect for drying out those waders. Or you could let me do it for you, I could be your nom de plume, and when did you get an offer like that? In a Tom Sharpe novel, oh.