Marking Your Own Report Card post 900

Marking Your Own Report Card ©
By Michael Casey

Well its that time of year again when we look back on our Year and think how we did, were we good or were we bad, will Santa come to our house or will he pass over us. I know already that Santa won’t come to our house, we have central heating so there is no chimney for him to come down, the Water Babies never came to clean it out, you can google Water Babies if you don’t know the Literary reference, see I’m giving you pub quiz information already, 2017 will be your best ever year for pub quizes.

So how will you mark your own year end report, will you give yourself all tens or 10s if you are a Bo Derek fan, see a film reference thrown in for good measure. I'll shut up now with the explanations, it spoils it for you. So are you honest in your own 360 degree appraisal, and can somebody tell me where the little degree symbol is on the keyboard. Do you mark yourself honestly or even harshly, or do you cheat? Some students reply, how do you expect us to pass if we don’t cheat. Some teachers tease, just make sure you sit close to a clever person.

But I’m talking about self-appraisal, were you good to your mum and dad, did you beat your kids, did you spoil your kids. Do you put your kids first even though they were/are and will forever be ungrateful bastards. STOP. Just think about that. Are you as good as your own parents, is the last generation always better than the current. Just a few thoughts for you, when Big Ben strikes and 2017 arrives perhaps you will be thinking these thoughts.

Do wish you were bolder and followed that girl into the paper store room, I could tell you tales about one of my old companies, but that’s another story, I am just the writer not the priest hearing confessions. Do you wish you stood up to that lazy idle boss, you were doing everything and they were hiding in the store room, alone no girl or boy included. You should have got the recognition, but you said nothing, you had to protect your job as you were the main breadwinner in your household, so you bit your lip when you should have bust his lip, and maybe had your own moment of glory in that store room, luckily there were no security cameras in there. But if they were one or two people could have become film stars, but not the kind of films shown at cinemas.

Did you give a penny to a beggar in the street, even just to impress that girl you loved, or did you brush the beggar out of the way, you had feet of clay. Your romance ended that day, but that day you vowed to change a modern Ebenezer Scrooge in the making, you swore never to lose another girl that way. However fate is cruel, you had lost that girl  good and proper, it was as if a sign about you said MISER, now no girl wanted you ever and that one was the prettiest girlfriend you ever had.

So you marked yourself down on your report card, you were stuck in your own personal Groundhog Day. But you were good to beggars forever more, and they all echoed God Bless to the sound of your footsteps, but still no girl appeared on the horizon. Over the road from Aldi was a opticians and every day for a year a girl in designer specs watched and smiled as you furtively gave alms to the beggars. Without knowing it she was loving you more and more, she was an optician and she had her eyes, her 4 eyes on you.

So one day you had just given a packet of chocolate biscuits to a beggar when May ran across the road, I’ve had my eye on you she said, then she just grabbed you and kissed you in the street. Her horoscope had said be decisive so she was, 5 minutes later she dropped you on the pavement, she was a black belt in Judo martial arts so when she grabbed a man they stayed grabbed.  Consider yourself to be my boyfriend she said, as she flicked her red hair back into place, or do you want me to break both your arms?

So for a finish what we do in secret can be the very thing that  brings the greatest results,  if you give biscuits to beggars you may find yourself a Judo black belt for a girlfriend, and free glasses thrown into the bargain. Because God sees everything and rewards us.




this is post 900

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Outside First

Monday, 19 December 2016

Outside First

Outside First ©

By Michael Casey

We’ve all seen that great cartoon Inside Out, they do in fact use it in the classroom at school to teach psychology, my daughter just an A* that’s 90% plus in her mocks, which is expensive as I give her a tenner for every A*, if only she were stupid then I’d be richer.

I’m not talking about psychology today, though indirectly I am, I will be talking about house hunting instead. The first thing when you are looking for a house is to look for the NEGATIVES, my brother told me that a very long time ago. It’s easy to fool yourself and end up buying a rubbish house that leaks. So think NEGATIVE.

Today I had a look at house that had possibilities, they all have possibilities don’t they. I had a wander around the roads where the house was, checking for level of litter and dodgy people, not to mention the level of shoddy parking. If an area looks like a tip it won’t suddenly get nice if you deign to live there. If there is a prostitute chewing gum by the bus stop, or men angrily screaming in the street then it may be wise to cross that area and that house off your list.

If you have a chip shop as neighbour, that may be nice but when the potato lorry delivers your parking space may be blocked, and do you really love the smell of frying chips all day everyday, not to mention a posy of pussies trying to break into the dustbins to get at the fish.

These are basic things that you investigate before you look inside a house. Is there a school nearby, that may be handy if you have school age kids, but nasty parents blocking the entire street while they pick up their beautiful children, noise and mayhem twice a day, and if you are a shift worker who needs his sleep.

And what if the kids are visiting that chip shop at dinner time too. Or what if Brenda the sexist prostitute in the area lives about the chip shop. Cries of passion while she batters her client above while the fish are being battered below in the chip shop. Local colour maybe, all right in Islington in yet another photocopied Hugh Grant film, but in real life?

So don’t drive to the house and look and buy without walking around the area. You may be spending the rest of your life there, so make sure you want battered fish from the chip shop and even from Brenda above the chip shop, but also make sure you don’t get battered, assaulted and battered by local criminals.

I know lots of busy Yuppies never walk anywhere but this fat writer of one million words DOES walk everywhere, so be observant, as observant as you are with whatever belief you have, be careful don’t buy rubbish, a wife or girlfriend may be easy to change, but a house is a much more difficult proposition, and propositions you’ll get in plenty if you end up living next door  to a chip shop with a battering prostitute living above it.

Now that I’ve taught you all the pitfalls I hope you realise that shoe leather is the most important part of house hunting. Look at the pretty picture of the house on www.rightmove.co.uk then immediately check the map, you need to know where you will be living. Then check google earth and satellite view, walk around your new neighbourhood, and see what you can see. If you are afraid of the Dead then don’t buy a house by your ever so quiet neighbours, if everything seems ok then look at the pictures of the interior of the house.

Then if that seems ok go and look at the outside and check the neighbourhood out, there may be a right of way, a path outside that leads to a Scientology meeting hall, so you have 1000s of them walking by your house. If you are a Tom Cruise fan that may be interesting, but otherwise it may not be your cup of tea, or you may love Dune.

So now I’ll finish, I hope you all realise God is good, but house hunting is the work of the Devil as it drives you mad and ruins relationships, so you may decide go back home and live above the Chinese takeaway with the girl of your dreams. Rather like me and my Shanghai surprise, my egg fried rice, and me her Panzi.  

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Taxi Drivers

Taxi Drivers ©

By

Michael Casey

It’s the Sunday before Christmas, so that’s 18Dec2016 if you are keeping track, I was thinking about what to talk about today when I noticed a Toyota Avensis taxi outside, they are built like a tank and are so great for taxis. I did want my wife to buy one a few years ago when we changed our car but she insisted she was not a taxi driver. So she got something prettier instead.

So what can I say about taxis and taxi drivers? Well I did have a taxi home from work every night for a year, and I did run the taxis for 3 years when I worked at the hotel. So I think that gives me some experience, I don’t remember seeing the film Taxi driver with De Nero though I did enjoy the comedy Taxi with Danny de Vito.

So what can I say about taxi drivers, they are very sensitive and shy and unassuming, who would not say boo to a goose. And if you believe that you’ll see pigs flying pulling that sleigh in a week’s time. Though my graveyard taxi tended to be quiet as it was 2.30 in the morning when I finished work, I used to have them pick me up but after a couple of weeks I decided to walk down the road to the taxi office, then I had to wake them up so they could take me home.

If you don’t drive and don’t even have a car then a taxi is like a luxury, a bit smelly, nearly 20 years ago smoking hadn’t been banned in taxis, by passengers or by drivers. The roads were quiet at nearly 3am, apart from huge trucks delivering to supermarkets, we did nearly get totalled a couple of times by a supermarket lorry on a narrow stretch of the road. Iced by an Iceland truck, at least our bodies would have been preserved.

Getting home at 3am meant you could never sleep straight away so you have to unwind and have a drink and a snack before going to bed at 4am. I went to bed at 4am for a year, just like Sinatra no doubt. When I left that job, my wife was pregnant, it took me 3 months to deprogram my body to sleep before 4am. Though if any of you are hoping for a family 3am to 4am might be worth a try.

It cost a lot of money having a taxi for a year, lucky on the Friday I tended to get a lift from one of the crew at SMBC. I moved on and it was at CPNEC Birmingham that I ran the taxis. We had a great restaurant, then it was Brian Turners, but still the guests wanted to try other things, so I’d arrange the taxis as well as local food options. All I’ll say is that you have to be quick, very quick to keep the flow going, keeping the customer happy. If a guest wanted another pint  then I’d try and move up the taxis so my drivers didn’t have to wait 30 mins. You have to mix and match guests and drivers.

And yes I was very good at all this, the drivers were very sad when I left because I looked after them. If I looked after them, then they looked after the guests, so it was a win win situation, common sense really. In hotels the evening rush is something which has to be seen to be believed, there is a buzz you get, but you thank God when it is over.

You really do have to peel off your uniform and make the dash through the NEC to the train station, then the bus, then the walk home. I did this for 3 years, but if you have 2 toddlers you do what you have to do, standing up for 12 hours a day makes your legs strong, is that the irony, that’s why I had good veins for my quadruple  heart bypass 10 years later.

Another irony that I’ve just remember, Michael is the name of the old taxi driver in The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker and it is he that leads the charge to save the life of an Indian corner shop’s daughter. You have to read the book for yourself. So circles in my mind lead to circles in my life. We had a neighbour called Mr Mann who was bigger than Jabba the Hutt who drove an old Humber taxi, when our lodger was drunk and fell and burnt himself on a gas cooking plate it was Mr Mann who drove my dad and a screaming Barney Rooney to the hospital.

Of course as it was Christmas Mr Mann was plastered and drunk himself, he had not expected to be an ambulance after all. But he did get Barney to the hospital, Barney lived another 40 years and drank and smoked like a trooper, and died the day after his 83^rd Birthday after my dad and sister gave him a Birthday card in hospital. Mr Mann did offer to drive dad home, he lived 3 doors away, but dad decided to walk home, I seem to remember him once telling us that they were nearly totalled as they steamed down the main road, they were steamed up, or drunk after all.

So I’ll finish for now I have to go to Aldi, no alcohol required, 12 pints a year is about my limit, if you grow up with alcoholic lodgers you see what a waste it is. Which brings us full circle, my regular driver died, alcohol was to blame.  

Into the Light

Into the Light

Well this is me 17 Dec 2016. going into Heaven as my daughter says. The watch is a cheap Precimax one, if ever I have money I’ll get a Cartier Diamond Bleu Automatic, but I’m more likely to die before that ever happens. But if anybody out there wants to send one to me in return they can have a photo of me  wearing it. My Prayer for Everybody this Christmas is that they have no pain, physical, mental, or spiritual, or relativesal, Life should feel like a warm bath and a soothing drink. So if your life is not like that its time to change something if you can. If you cannot, then remember Labore Est Orare or/&                Pain may be Counted as  Prayer too if you are too sick to properly pray.
Don’t forget to put those strings vests on, and to layer up your clothes, it really does make a difference. And if you hear some screaming in the night it may be me or some of your own relatives, so be kind to them. Remember Long Life to those who honour their sick relatives. Or if you know whats in the Will………

The Lies We Tell

The Lies We Tell ©

By Michael Casey

Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat, the cat is ravenous so seal the cat flap. We all tell lies, to our girlfriends and to our wives and then to our Priests in confession. It can be very confusing depending on how many wives and girlfriends you may have on the go at the same time, and even more confusing or even dangerous if your wives meet your girlfriends.

We all seen stories in the News of The World or National Enquirer, a fat silver haired man in shades with bad breath and body odour is somehow some sex dog, and dog is the appropriate word even though I just mistyped it instead of god. Hey I think I may have just described myself, or rather if you see my photo you may think of what I’ve just typed, you are very very cruel and hurtful, I’m telling my priest on you. You could have at least lied to save hurting my feelings,

Which brings me to my theme, we all lie. Obviously I don’t because I am a writer, I save my lying for the page. Writing is lying on paper after all, and the better the writer the greater our belief in his lies. So if you don’t like my writing it must be because I’m such a bad liar, and such an innocent. Or on the other hand because I’m such a good liar on paper you’d like to find out am I News of The World material, or not, as the case may be. I hope I’ve made that all as clear as mud, as my Latin teacher  Mr Proctor used to say in our 2 hour Latin class last thing on a Friday afternoon, see I have suffered so how about some sympathy.

I was in Aldi earlier on today, they can email me and I’ll reveal which one. Anyway as its cold I was wearing a bright red top, with my matching white hair. So I looked like Santa doing his last shop before Christmas, wearing shades so that children did not recognise him, or is that me. So I said to a couple of toddlers that I was Santa and I would grow my beard back in time for Christmas, I threw in a couple of HO HO HOs.

So you can just imagine the looks I got from them. Their children were amazed, don’t forget just how big I am when all dressed up in my winter clothes. I told the Irish checkout girl the real Santa never came to my own house as I had central heating.

We lie to our kids because it keeps them quiet, we have power over them, especially when Santa is due. Rooms are tidied and you can actually see the carpet as the sea of paper and crayons has been tidied up, as if Moses had banged his staff. We say a huge fat man will fly around the world in one night and deliver presents to all the  good kids.

Sounds like something only a politician would say, not unless the dear leader of North Korea is really Santa Claus, now that explains a lot, the Hermit Kingdom is really Santa’s workshop and all the toys are shipped to China for made in China to be stamped on them before they are sent to all the good children.

Now that is the truth but don’t tell your children, continue those lies about the North Pole and so on. Though in Birmingham around Aldi little children think its me, or my brother, now his beard is bigger than Santa’s every day of the year, whatever you believe don’t forget to HO HO HO when you switch off the lights at night, or Rudolf won’t know where to land, its all the HO HO HOs which are his SatNav, and that’s no lie.