The 900 year Old Man

The 900 year Old Man ©

By Michael Casey

Get your eyeballs here, deep fried and fresh from the battle field, nice and crunchy, eyeballs, eyeballs get your eyeballs here.

I’ll have one, but they better be crunchy or I’ll kill you old man or not.

And were they crunchy? Yes, best eyeball I’ve had in many a year. What’s the recipe?  I collect the oil thrown down from the ramparts and reheat it and let the eyeballs simmer for 5 minutes, I throw in a bit of heather too. You like heather don’t you Highlander? I do can I have a few to take away, just put them in my sporran. That’ll be one gold piece. That’s a bit steep. I saw you take 2 sacks of gold from those corpses over there, you would begrudge an old man a bit of money. 

Here take your money from my sporran, just because you are an old man.

Yes I’m 900 years old. The Highlander laughed, me too, see you when you are 1000 years old. I’ll be here waiting for you laughed the old man. The old man looked at the gold coin and hid it in his boot, these eyeballs were selling really well, maybe in a  few hundred years’ time he’d have a chain of fast food restaurants  selling eyeballs. Eyeballs to Go with a cartoon of a bloody eyeball, it was a great business model.

The old man heard a funny noise going in and out of his head, and a blue flashing light.  An object appeared in the middle of the battle field, a strange man appeared. Fancy an eyeball asked the old man, help an old man, buy an eyeball. I’ll have two answered the strange man in a Scottish accent. And where have you come from in that strange box with the blue light on the top?

I’ve been here and there, I’m the Doctor answered the Doctor  as he chewed on the eyeball. The Doctor wolfed down the 2^nd one as they were so tasty. Do you make theses yourself you could found a chain of restaurants they are just so tasty.  What are the made from? From the Battle, whey let the carrion have the best bits. You mean you mean, you’ve turned me into a cannibal?

Food is food, don’t be squeamish Doctor, replied the old man, holding out his hand for payment. Sorry but I never carry money replied the Doctor. That’s fine I’ll won’t kill you replied the old man, I’ll just have your eyes, I can sell those. Have a heart begged the Doctor, ok I’ll have one of your two hearts answered the old man.

How did you know I have two hearts? I have very acute hearing I can hear them both ticking replied the old man. 

Look what’s that over there misdirected the Doctor, as the old man looked the Doctor ran away, all the old man could hear was the noise from the strange box and the flashing of the blue light on top of it. The old man thought the Doctor was just a snack thief, an eyeball snack thief. The Doctor was sick in one of the 50 toilets in the Tardis, what had he eaten, was he a cannibal, if only he could consult a Philosopher. So he decided to go and visit the very first Dalai Lama,  and at least he wouldn’t be eating human eyeballs.

Another Time, battle rages, Highlander spots the 900 year old man stealing from the dead, which is the norm in battle after all. Old man how did you get here? I have a donkey, just like Sancho Panza replied the 900 old man. I bet you stole it from him really laughed the Highlander. No I gave him a meal in a bottle same as I gave all the French you see lying dead here. So you poisoned everybody laughed the Highlander. No I was in charge of catering that’s all, bullets and bayonets killed these  French, NOT my cooking.

So you must be a Time Traveler then, or you follow  a really good diet. What about yourself Mr Highlander   replied the 900 year old man. Me, I just say my prayers at night, I do not know why I live so long. At that moment there was a flashing blue light in the sky and a strange noise. It was the Doctor. Hello Highlander said the Doctor, before turning to the 900 year old man. You are still alive then? Of course we all are, but how is it possible?

Oh no, oh no, oh no screamed the Doctor. I thought all the Dalai Lamas were playing a joke on me, they ALL said I was one of three. I thought they meant regenerations, but no it’s something far far worse than that. WE ARE BROTHERS. The 900 year old man laughed, but why have I aged and you two have not? It must be all the eyeballs, they keep me alive but I lost my youthful face.

I just travel in a straight line through time said the Highlander, I always end up on a battlefield and I always meet the 900 year old man. I just go all over the place in space and time, but I keep on meeting you guys. It’s strange I don’t understand it.  Perhaps we are just pawns on a chest board and are being moved about us even realizing is. Or is it some altered state of reality? All three stop. Can you hear the Music, Keep on Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough it’s from Michael Jackson’s History Album.

You don’t mean, yes we’re trapped inside the screen on Michael Casey’s computer, he’s listening to the History Album while he writes story 866, WE are just Figments of his IMAGINATION.

p.s.if you don't like the story you can always look at the pictures of this 900year old man

From Fast Cars to Bicycles

From Fast Cars to Bicycles ©

By Michael Casey

I am not a car driver, I do not even hold a licence, I do have a bus pass, that’s my mode of transport, but to be honest walking is what I do all the time. Every day I walk to and from Aldi and a little bit more, it’s my daily exercise and I get to amuse/annoy the staff too. As kids we all have bicycles, only I have short stocky legs, so I never learnt to ride a bicycle.

Thought that is not totally true, I did learn to ride a bike after a fashion maybe 20 years ago, I cannot believe it’s that long ago. Jon the Hippy taught me, Jon the Hippy was a guy I used to work with. Jon was a character, and he taught me 2 things, to drink and to ride and bicycle, don’t do both at the same time or you will fall into Selly Brook. After riding on the grass I did try riding on the tarmac only I went too fast and got scare, and nearly went in the brook. Jon also taught me to appreciate a pint, or a girlie as Dom the barman called my pint of shandy. Dom was a very nice man indeed sadly he died as a result of a fire, so he will be forever young.

Jon the Hippy also got the Birmingham Office pay parity with the Oxford office, so I ended up with double glazing, and a huge nicam stereo tv, when they first came out. You see I saved up the extra money and it paid for my double glazing, you ring up the companies who do double glazing and ask can they double glaze a whole house for X pounds, and when they say no you hang up. Finally one company will take your X pounds and do the entire house, that’s the limit of my negotiating skills, they did throw in a new front door too. The fitters said they did the job at cost and made no profit, which was very pleasing to know.

Boys buy boys’ toys, back in the days I was in a computer room Kevin had a nice little sports car, it was small and nice I cannot what brand it was. I  just remembered he lost his licence too and it really was not his fault. I think he was giving Rich as lift and Rich may have been a bit tipsy and was hanging out the passenger window waving, if I remember rightly Rich was a Mick Jagger look alike. So Kevin grabs him back into his car, only the car wobbles a bit, and yes you guessed it a copper was standing right there. So Kev was charged with driving without due care and attention. He ended up losing his licence.

These were the lads I worked with in the 1980s, when I didn’t have any white hair. So what did  Kev do with his car? He sold it to a giant. Somebody even bigger that me, much much bigger than me. Chris was a computer programmer and we were producing graphs which was cutting edge 30+ years ago. He was being paid a lot of money to write all the programs, at the time it was a big deal, we even had a fancy camera to take photos too to produce colour graphs.

So picture the scene Kevin is 5feet 5 or less, and Chris is 6feet 5 with a 56 inch chest, I look out the office window and Kev is showing Chris his car. Chris has to practically sit in the back seat to control the pedals. It’s like a car a child would have and an adult is trying to get into the car. I can’t remember did Kevin finally sell his car to the giant, but he did sell his car because he did lose his licence.

So that’s another memory shared with you all, I think it may even be the most I have ever talked about my computer room days. They were very hard work the first 10 years there and the people were full of life and alcohol, for it was a market research company into alcohol sales, and we were so good ACNielsen bought us up, and not a lot of people know that.

  

Having a Soak

Having a Soak ©

By Michael Casey

I’m going to have a soak in a minute, I may even shave too, it could even become a SSS, or rather SBS, you can work out the letters for yourself. I did once say Americans never have a bath to some of our touring musician guests, before I explained we knew they preferred to shower, showers not baths. I had to show them the fiddly way the bath/shower attachment worked, and yes they did give me a funny look until I explained.

I prefer baths myself,  and on that note I’m going to have my bath right now, I shall return like a prune to finish this story. See the great lengths I go to just to give you the right flavour to my writing. If anybody wants to give me some Stella   Artois I’ll willingly write about that, its  months since I had any alcohol, but now I have to wallow like a hippo in my bath while I listen to Country Music drifting from the tv nearby.

Its 20 hours later, no I haven’t been in the shower, sorry I mean bath that long, I was tired after my soak so I went to bed. I’m now going to resume my soaking story. I read somewhere that Bobby Kennedy used to have meetings while he had a soak, did the stenographer sit at the edge of the bath? Now all the Political Families seem to have ended in USA, perhaps they have all dissolved in their bathwater.

As you soak you get to muse on life and the universe and why is your razor always blunt, I do live with 3 girls and a female cat after all. Why are there so many different shampoos, pre-shampoo, shampoo, post-shampoo and then there is conditioner. And conditioner for this hair or that hair, normal, greasy, thin or thick. In the old days all there was was carbolic soap, and I used to wash my carbolics with it. You had to pick out the small curly hairs first then rinse the soap under the hot tap before you started to wash yourself, it was a red kind of coloured  soap, with a strong smell to it, but everybody always knew who’d washed recently because of the smell.

As you turn into a prune you examine the state of the ceiling and remind yourself it is time to decorate, in our case we just have, as we hope to sell our house. My daughter has a friend who is very artistic, so I thought he was exactly the man to be our housepainter or rather bathroom decorator, his name is Mr Hitler, only joking his name is Anon. Mind you many years ago when my sister was doing her year abroad as part of her degree she did meet Mr Hitler, no my sister is not in her 90s. This Mr Hitler happened to be a French café owner, yes really.

Submerging yourself under the water is fun in the bath, if you have a decent size bath you can put your head beneath the water, almost like a baptism but you are in the nude and there is nobody applauding you and saying welcome to the Christian faith. Your hearing goes funny and it’s just like in films where people are drowning , then after counting to as high as number as you can to see just how long you can hold your breath, you emerge like Archimedes, triumphant and spilling water all over the bathroom floor.

I am lucky as our bathroom floor is concrete, and I am no Cadbury’s flake girl, even if I shaved my legs. More like a sheep dog who has been dipped I shake the water off myself,  the scene frightens our neighbours as I never close the blinds, I am a sight to behold, or rather enough to put people off their dinner. Screams fill the air as I slowly get dressed, only to cease when I switch the bathroom light off. Though I am told old Mrs Morecombe from number 96 does enjoy  the sight, she does have  a powerful pair of binoculars after all, her husband was a seaman.

So I leave the bathroom, as I lie on my bed dreaming of a publishing deal with a radio deal too screams drift to me, you pig  you wet the floor, why you no clear up, mop up your mess, I’m going to have the bath removed and only have a shower. Then you cannot wet my beautiful floor. She forgets I’m a bad shot when I use the toilet,  we have such a beautiful life together, if only we had 2 bathrooms, then she’s  be twice as happy.  

Premium Rate

Premium Rate ©

By Michael Casey

What exactly is Premium Rate? Well immediately you may think of those naughty phone calls where nubile women talk breathlessly to you. They are in fact a group of Senior Citizens making a few quid by pretending to be young nubile young women, and suckers are ringing them on Premium Rate phone lines. I’ve just remembered about a guy called Colin or was it Tony who  used these phone lines and the works phone bill went through the roof, Tony or was it Colin was later sacked. 

I also remember 2 other things about him, this was 30 years ago maybe, but I’ll leave those rest in peace. We had a whole range of characters work with us, I have not used any or many as source code for stories, or should it be sauce, what went on outside the computer room I did not care about.

Now why am I talking about Premium Rate? Well my newspaper, The Daily Telegraph has put up a partial paywall. It’s called Premium Rate, it’s like going through a curtain, a fly curtain at the back of the barbers to a whole new world of delights. Or like in the Man From Uncle, you go into a fitting room and pull down the hook, there you enter a whole new world.

In the case of the Daily Telegraph you start reading a story, Tim Stanley, Dr of History he is, and you are about to get to the meat when the plate is pulled from you, your chin dripping with gravy. If you want to read any more you have to pay to be on Premium. It’s like the old electric meters where you have to put a shilling in, the lights have gone out just as you have climbed into the bath. So to continue your bath with Tim Stanley you have to put a shilling in the meter, or rather join Telegraph Premium crowd. Is it worth joining Premium on the DT, and have Tim Stanley hog the hot end of the bath and use all your bubble bath? I don’t know I haven’t joined yet.

It’s like being on the settee and you and your girlfriend are getting excited, when her granny come in and sits down and says, don’t mind me. So you have to wait till she falls asleep before you and you girl can get all busy and hot.  Then your mum comes in with tea and biscuits, to keep your strength up, and aren’t custard creams from Aldi so nice. At least grannie does not wake up.

Premium rates interrupt the flow, your mojo can’t get in the groove with all the interruptions, I know  the Daily Telegraph will say why not just pay and then you’ll be in the groove all the time, just you and your girlfriend, no interruptions for a sleeping granny nor custard creams. You know it makes sense go Premium with the DT, hang on what’s that screaming,  its Tim Stanley he’s got his big toe stuck up the hot tap again, Boris was never this much trouble.