Love and all that

Love and all that ©

By Michael Casey

Today I’m to talk about Love, I could say it’s a many splendored thing, and it’s all you need but you can watch Moulin Rouge for yourselves, it really is a great film.  My favourite bit is where the black member of the troupe punches the Count, who is a right pain, see I avoided the obvious joke, I am capable of doing that you know, though you have all thought of it for yourselves now that I did not mention it.

What is Love, read everything from Plato onwards and you may just scratch the surface, and no Plato is not the new player for Manchester United, they could not afford him, he’s off to PSG next. So what exactly is Love, well the Irish call it the Urge, this is more exactly when your body says I must be united with another body and start having children. In Star Trek Spock had the Urge and took over the Enterprise he just had to find his mate. Though in the end Spock commented that The Desire is Greater than the Need, things fall flat and everybody is disappointed.

Though Love can be eternal, and when you lay your husband to rest you wonder just who are you going to argue with now, the old bastard died on me and I hadn’t finished talking to him. Some do go to the grave every day to talk to their lost love, some are buried at sea just to avoid such a fate, your eternal rest should be your eternal rest.

We also love things, we have passion for a thing, you may have a collection of  National Geographic magazines, though I must say my 2 daughters do enjoy them  and its very educational. Some collect elastic bands, each band a different colour, each one represents a different music festival you attended. So just by looking at the elastic band all  the memories come flooding back.

The orange and yellow band was the best festival of all and that’s where you met the girl who became your wife. So you treasure your pieces of elastic as you grow older the elastic bands are testament to your Hippy Youth. Then your daughters grow older and snatch them to tie their hair back. Only the bands break and you start to cry, your mum has to tell you that each band was such a special thing.  So your daughters spend days on the internet finding replica elastic bands to replace those split and damaged.

Then as a Birthday present dad gets 22 coloured elastic wrist bands, cost 2.99 plus 58p postage. Dad is overjoyed it’s the best thing he ever got in his life, apart from his wife’s garter on her Wedding night. See a piece of elastic having so much Love and Power behind it.

Some people collect Bath Bombs and then use them up in a splash of colour and scent, so they really do come up smelling of roses. We could have used them when my own dad came back home from the sweat of the steel works, the District Iron and Steel Brasshouse Lane Smethwick. Girls love soaking in the bath with flavours of scent surrounding them, a bath is much more fun than a boy anytime, not unless he is covered in chocolate, can somebody explain why chocolate is so important to women.

So on it goes people have a love  for things, Love is a very strange thing, I do like shoes myself, not as much  as Emelda Marcos nor Theresa May but nice shoes are good, especially if you have to stand for 12 hours a day on marble as I did for 3 years at CPNEC Birmingham. So we love things because they give us pleasure and they have such great memories attached to them. We all remember Rosbud the sledge that Citizen Kane remembers on his deathbed. Sometimes it’s the simplest and most innocent of things  that brings the most joy in our head, so make love before you are dead.

photos are of me, Michael Casey the Birmingham England writer, my people are from Kerry. I am NOT the economist from Dublin, nor the Monk, I'm far far fatter and funnier. 26 Sept 2016 

Lazy Sunday

Lazy Sunday ©

By Michael Casey

Well we’re having a lazy Sunday, kind of, I wrote a piece about Jeremy Paxman earlier today and I’m going to double up and talk about something else now. For any foreign readers and I can get up to 100 a day I should explain that Jeremy Paxman was for 25 years the Rottweiler, the toughest Political interviewer in UK. 

So since I wrote that piece I’ve been doing a bit of research on the computer, all will be revealed later, no I’m not a nudist, well I am but don’t tell anybody.

So today we are having a lazy Sunday. My wife, or the witch as me and my girls call her, is doing her homework in Mandarin, my small daughter is reading, or trawling judging by the amount of books she reads. 

Her bigger sister has finished doing swat thrusts in the garden, this really frightens the squirrels, the magpies just laugh and the local cats just feel sorry for Totoro our cat, living with such strange strange people. Totoro for her part just swears at them in Chinese, she is such a clever cat after all, she does have a Japanese name too. Grannie had said that my big daughter was a bit porkie, which makes us all laugh as she is so thin by Western standards.

So now I’ve been told off for letting the kettle boil over and whistle too much which disturbs small daughter’s reading concentration. I was not even in the house, I slipped out to buy eggs from the Polish shop, their eggs are so good by the way and so yellow. Big daughter comes down to make her peppermint tea before disappearing again, she’s studying, 10 more years and she’ll reach her target, Dr Casey. Chinese people always say you should have a Dr in the family, or an accountant, grannie is an accountant in Shanghai.

I look for a stray biscuit to feed my Muse, only they are not there, small daughter has liberated them. Totoro had discovered how to open all our cupboards so we had to tape them shut, but it was not her who had freed the biscuits from the cupboard, I did once actually find her in a cupboard once, before we started taping the doors shut.

Spotify has radio station mode too, so I’m listening to Tom Petty as I talk to you, I’m sure Paxman is listening too as he sits in his chair in his study and practices his casting with his pole, he may even have photos of politicians on the floor and he tries to scratch their faces as he practices his casting. It might be a nice way to spend an afternoon while he waits for his tricycle to have its slow puncture fixed, it just hisses too much as he trundles along with his fishing kit in the trailer behind him.

All the hissing might encourage him to do Panto, Greville from Strictly Come Dancing has been pestering for 3 years to come off the fence and be a Panto star, there is good money in it after all, more than the BBC ever paid Paxman. If the old James Bond, the one whose name I forget, if he can be a baddie in Hot Fuzz then why of why cannot Paxman do a bit of Panto. It could be just the thing to spark his dull life along.

So it’s just gone past 5pm now it’s been a sunny Sunday, we are all quietly contented with our day, despite not winning the Lottery, if only we won, we’d love to live in the Toblerone house, a house we spotted on a property website, it has so many triangular shapes in it, hence why we call it the Toblerone house. It’s nice to dream even if we’d need all 6 numbers before we could afford it, though social housing like the White House is very nice, that’s how Joe Biden described where he lived.

At this point in a story I read back what I have written to see how it reads, or rather how it sounds. If I have a good sound I finish or I may add a sentence or two more. Otherwise it is the end. I just need to visit the fridge and have a slice of Cajun chicken from Aldi, it’s very nice.

Though Totoro our cat recognises the sound of plastic wrapping paper being opened and is faster than Kim Jun Un to the cheese plate, like a whippet or faster than Hussain Bolt she bolts down the stairs and gets her big eyes out. She wants some, and she does have such imploring eyes, so she always gets her way, rather like a wife or somebody else’s wife, be careful out there in readerland.

So it seems like a good place to finish now, maybe I should go to the Finnish Sauna I might meet Jeremy Paxman in there but that was the previous story, or it could be Jeremy Corbyn cleaning his slate, again.

enjoy the photos this really is me, i was in a dark computer room for over 20 years hence the shades, 

Paxman's Pants

Paxman’s Pants ©

By Michael Casey

I was just taking a gander at the newspapers when I came across Paxman being interviewed now that his Autobiography is coming out. How does an Autobiography Come Out, is the book Gay, or does it mean it is being revealed, so does that mean the Autobiography is a Flasher of some sort.

I always said if I wrote my autobiography I’d wait till my siblings were dead first so I could not upset anybody too much. I am the near youngest of the brood, then what happens it’s Me who could have bit the dust first, is it God’s way of saying Don’t write the autobiography, God the greatest Literary Critic.

Though I am writing my 11^th book now, so what sort of sense of Humour does He have? I was once told by a female priest that she thought I should write short pieces, and that’s what I do as I approach my 1,000,000 Word. Or did the priest have a short attention span or was she in league with the Lord.

So there is Paxman dressed in his Toga at the Woodcock Street Baths and Sauna in downtown Birmingham, a slave throws water on the coals, while a scribe write down his every word. An old woman in a piny wiping her snotty nose on her elbow, gives him his change with a dirty look, the look is free, the sauna is 6.99 plus 2 quid for a once spotless towel. It was used once by Arthur Dent, the motorway builder.

So Paxman tells how he was bored for 25 years, the slave looks up interested, bored does not mean bored you fool, can somebody whip him, no don’t bother he’d enjoy it too much, just put more water on the coals, I want steam. Peter Gabriel looks up from his position on the floor, and starts singing. Paxman gives him a withering look and Gabriel runs away crying, he’ll go back to Genesis.

If only he was by a river bank, with his rod, no slave nothing to do with punishment, though Rod Stewart music IS punishment.  Perhaps Paxman should use the word pole, a carbon fibre 20 metre pole, no you clot a pole not a Polish Pole. Why are slaves so one dimensional, you can’t get a good one for love or money.

Having dictated 20 pages to the scribe Paxman has a dip in the pool, before emerging like god from the water. He is peckish now after all the sweating, normally it was Politicians sweating, but those days are over, Paxman is so humble now, he could form a humble club with Donald Trump.

It was outside the Woodcock street baths that I bumped into Paxman, he did ask for my autograph but I refused, but I said I knew a good pub, The Churchill and he could bring his Black Dog with him. He was going to use a big word on me but he knew I was dictionaryless,  I probably couldn’t even spell serendipity let alone know what it meant. Go on, but not the Churchill, my Black Dog is not with me today anyway.

So I took Paxman to the Trader in Old Forge and Singing Anvil and introduced him to Wayne the barman, I suppose he’s named after John Wayne intoned Paxman. Actually I am replied Wayne as he took Paxman downstairs and showed him his cellar. Paxman returned 20 minutes later with tears in his eyes and holding a tumbler of 70  year old whisky, that’s unbelievable he mumbled humbled as if by almighty God himself.

Now that I’ve got your attention maybe you’ll listen to this business idea, Paxman looked up a freshly opened bag of pork scratchings in his mighty palm, anything anything I’m at your disposal. Wayne winked at me as I broached the idea. David Beckham has retired from advertising  for Marks and Spencer, so would you be interested in advertising  their pants.

photos

so if Paxman sees me in the street he can run the other way.