Supermarket Shopping

Supermarket Shopping ©

By Michael Casey

As you all know I visit Aldi on a daily basis, it’s part of my exercise routine and it gets me out of the house and I get some fresh air. If you are reading this in China you would be so jealous of all the fresh air we have. 40 years ago and more, in 1973 in fact the family house had to give up its open coal fire as Birmingham declared a smokeless zone where we lived. So dad had to get central heating, and it cost a lot of money. Dad also got the guy to rewire our house too by paying him in cash to do the 2 day job on top of installing the new central heating.

So we don’t get smog any more, I can never actually remember a smog event but I’m told they happened and my memory goes back over 50 years. This is just incidental, so I walk up the road to Aldi every day and buy what we need on a daily basis. The girls always want chocolate, and as you know the Cadbury factory is  just a few miles up the road from or house.

Speaking of houses I discounted one from our list today but as if by magic another probable turned up. www.rightmove.co.uk is the site to look at, B17 is my preferred location with a radius of 1 mile, if you can access the site from wherever you live in the world you’ll see just how green Birmingham is, everybody seems to have a tree in their back garden. You’ll also see that I need a lottery win if I ever do get to live in the B17 postcode, but the 1 mile radius is more affordable.

Back to Aldi, my local one is full of bearded men, like ZZ Top revisited, the men were just allowed to have them, so they have all en masse grown beards. In the interests of equality I’m sure Aldi women are allowed to  grow them too but so far none have done so. The staff work incredibly hard and the manager a pretty little Indian girl has a Law Degree or so I am told, she has a great giggle too.

In Aldi I get my chicken and salmon which are my staples post my unplanned quadruple heart bypass. I used to live on frozen food for decades but that is verboten as the Germans say. It could have been my lifetime of frozen food bought from many different stores, with its MSG in it that blocked my arteries, or it could be hereditary, I don’t know the full answer. I just thank God and hope I can live long enough to see my daughters grow up and then see my grand-children. I’m happy so long as they are happy. 

They say you get 20 years extra time after my op, though considering all my aches and pains from my Arthur, arthritis, and cKd, I am glad I’ve had these 2 years extra time so far to reach my 1,000,000 Words.

Today was another pain day so forgive me for mentioning it. Back in Aldi its fun watching the staff work so hard. I spotted the fact that one was a rugby playing by the way in which has stacked bread on the shelves. Another flicks the customer separator thing as if he plays snooker, and when I  asked I was proved right, he was a snooker player. Yes Michael Casey is the Sherlock Holmes of Aldi, I spot things. It keeps me amused.

It’s also nice trying out a new joke every day while I’m in Aldi, the staff may or may not wish I’d stop or go over the road to Iceland, but 90% of the time they laugh. Though they may just be incredible kind, perhaps their giggling manager gives them giggling lessons each morning before they hit the shop floor. I wrote a play called Shoplife back in 1989, it could have made me rich and famous, instead I am in Aldi trying to make people laugh, one person at a time.

The other reason I shop daily at Aldi is because I cannot carry a ton of shopping anymore, so I do a daily Aldi shop instead. If the staff really hated my jokes I’m sure they’d club together and buy me a shopping trolley with wheels, then they’d only see me once a week. I did have an idea to share my jokes with the Aldi motherland in Germany. A book of 40 stories with 40  facing page translations on facing page plus my audio. I’m still waiting for Aldi to reply, they could roll out the idea all over the Aldi world.

Or maybe Aldi German will just buy a trolley with wheels for me, then they can forget me. I was in Frankfurt for a week back in 2006, it was great, in Offenbach, an old meat factory turned into a hotel. And right next door was a nice little supermarket, I don’t think it was an Aldi but my love of all things German started there. Sert Gudd, forgive the bad German, I did try leaning it 15 years ago but it was too hard for me. I can do French and Spanish and I even suffered 5 years of Latin, and my wife is a Shanghai girl, and our two daughter are bilingual. 

So why can’t Aldi help me get Germans laughing and learning English. I have to go now the Rolling Stones are gathering moss on my hifi, so it’s time for bed. Gutten Nach. 

Clearing Out

Clearing Out ©

By Michael Casey

We all clear out from time to time, our children never clear out, they keep everything. If you look under a child’s bed you will find many many things, I’m sure Dippy the Dinosaur lived under my daughter’s bed for at least two years, either that or my daughter needed more fibre in her diet. Odd shoes and various bits of school uniform are abandoned under a child’s bed, as are half eaten jam sandwiches and half-drunk bottles of fizzy pop. Though it might just be that Paddington Bear has sneaked into your house and is living under the bed. Perhaps as your child’s lodger, living in a storage box.

Grown-ups have lots of rubbish too, they never leave it under the bed, apart from discarded dirty underwear, or your lover’s clean but abandoned underware reminding you of your wild abandoned nights. Empty bottles of champagne, or Stella Artois cans litter the space under their bed. The rats in the cheap house where you live don’t eat the cheese in the traps, they just die of alcoholic poisoning, they are dead but with a smile on their face.

In the corner of one room where you the teacher mark all those boring papers is a pile of Sunday supplements which you hope to read when you finish all the boring marking and lesson planning. Lesson Planning sounds like some Norwegian scientist who knows all there is to know about Global Warming, as for Global Warming that sounds like some Chinese billionaire, if only we were one of my relatives, he is from Shanghai after all.

So you, me, us accumulate, accumulate means too lazy to throw out, we hoard all our rubbish. You never know when it might come in useful. I collect electrical plugs or cables, as you never know when they might come in useful. I don’t just bin an old hairdryer, I have to first castrate it by cutting off its plug, or if it’s from an old radio, I keep the entire cable.

Cups and saucers seem to breed in our kitchen cupboard, if one of the family has a new cup then they’ll give us their old one. Then there are novelty ones which I buy or the kids buy or are given as presents for Christmas or Birthdays. The famous Love Bird tea set was the first set I had when I set up home, now those Love Birds seem to have filled the cupboard with bastard cuckoo mugs everywhere, maybe 20 of them. Have they not heard of contraception or do they think it’s a Mexican folk singer.

Coats seem to breed too, as we always keep the one we were replacing as there might be a bit more wear in the old one, so now we have 2 coats, or 3 or 4 depending on your fashion needs. My wife has said when I die all my clothes will go to the Charity Shop, we have 13 at least where I live. So my parting will have a supply of tent like clothes becoming available to all and sundry, All and Sundry sounding like the owner of a Kebab shop, and yes we have many of those where I live.

If we can finally find a house we can all agree on, then the biggest clear-out ever will begin. I would be first on the skip outside the house, but my wife cannot lift me, so I’m safe for now. I may have to leave some of my plugs behind, or any of my underpants where the elastic has given up the battle against my derriere. My old shoes will have to be abandoned, or rather left in the street for even poorer people to take. 

Any cracked crockery will be left behind too, the Love Birds are over 30 years old, maybe they’ll produce more crockery if we just leave them behind too.

Any sadnesses will be left behind too, it’s pointless bringing them with us, start afresh, new hopes and new dreams.  Just remember to put all the bolts in the bed before we use it, otherwise Padding Bear could be in for a surprise.  

Contact Unknown

Contact Unknown ©

By Michael Casey

We are having a lazy Sunday here in Birmingham, our house hunting is still fruitless and we’ve had another valuation on our own home. Why take 5 mins when 30 will suffice, is the rule for estate agents, though personally I give them short shrift, but it’s a Pantomime we all endure when we look for a new house.

So today we are relaxing and I’m having a lazy look at the newspapers. One thing that was of interest was an Irish guy who had an email correspondence with David Bowie, not knowing for ages that it was the man himself. Then one January it was all over, that was a year ago now. I read that Ronald Reagan had a penfriend who used a code on the outside of the envelope so that the letters could get to him quickly. I believe this went on for a number of years, but you can ask Google or the Reagan Library to confirm this.

So this got me thinking, what if I had the Queen as a pen friend, would we exchange views on paint. Everywhere the Queen goes there is always the smell of paint, as everybody tidies up before she comes. I just wish she’d visit my girls’ bedroom, then it might be tidy. Or perhaps visit our house, all of it, then somebody might decorate it before she arrives, which will help us sell it. Not unless the Queen, or Marg as she prefers to be called, not unless Marg, Majesty,  decides she wants to stay at our 3 bed house while the Palace is decorated. Which could be 10 years.

Would the Queen confide in me, spill the juice on Theresa May, do they slag each other’s fashion. Then laugh like drains before having a pint of Guinness, with their schedule they would need it. Or do they swop tips via email? I’m sure Mrs May wouldn’t tell me a thing but if I posted some pork scratchings to the Queen, maybe I could bribe her. Marg loves pork scratchings, she shares them reluctantly with the corgis, and Al the Alsatian who follows her around with Dennis the dog handler.

What else could she tell me about being called Marg, she did insist on being called Marg you know, she told me in one of our emails that Ken Dodd insisted and she allowed it, just before she reached for her sword. Ken started to run away, falling over his tickling stick in the process, he had flashbacks about being in court for tax evasion as the Queen raised her sword. But she only knighted him, arise Sir Ken Dodd. I thought you were going to run me through said the new Sir Ken. I’m the Queen or Marg to my friends, I don’t run anybody through, I leave that to the granddaughters, mind you in that fat ginger singer’s case, I could be tempted. Then she laughed like a drain.

I did exchange tips about schools and so forth, all the teachers in my family and the high levels my family achieved. But then she changed the subject, so I told her I knew all the words to “ I’m walking backwards for Christmas across the Irish Sea” but I forgot some, turns out she is a Spike Milligan fan, that Prince Charles of hers led her astray or is it ashtray. So me and Marg have a nice little penfriend thing going via email.

Of course we have special email names, mine is anon678904423423@lamberthwalk1945.org.com and Marg’s is 1945to1812Overture@lamberthwalk1945.org.com so that’s about it for tonight really. I have to run to the Polish shop for bread now, one day I’ll learn Polish, but a smile always works, Marg told me that, just keep on smiling.

Oh I forgot what does the Queen, or rather my friend Marg keep in her handbag? She has a Kindle with all my books on. https://www.amazon.co.uk/MichaelCasey/e/B00571G0YC  and a packet of pork scratchings of course, food for the mind and for the dogs, though I’m not sure which she thinks is which.

Nights in Malta

Nights in Malta ©

By Michael Casey

Before I start I should tell you I had a great week in Malta in 2013 and I long to return, even though it was there that my Arthur my Arthritis started to hit home. I was overjoyed that I could buy Deep Heat in Malta. Now its 4 years on and my unplanned quadruple heart bypass has overtaken me. I was told it was a triple but it was a quadruple I discovered 6 months later.

My cKd needs to be watched too, I’m telling you all this so that you can understand just how important it is to me that I can WRITE, its food for my Spirit even if you lot like it or not. So now I’m going to share part of a story that’ll become part of a chapter in Tears for a Butcher my full length sequel to The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker.

Now read on and apologies to Navy Seals everywhere, please don’t leave a horse’s head in my bed, a Subway one foot long sandwich would be better……

So it was all true, Tiny wasn’t mad or just battled out at all, he really was a seer, he saw it all the time, but when he wrote that picture in pencil and crayon the Admiral had to make a decision, so Tiny was grounded, his flippers taken away. So that’s when he became a bodyguard for that zillionaire’s old mum, lucky for there he was there he had to take care of her. He was more like a son to her, and that’s why she always wears a scarf, somebody got to her, before Tiny got to them. It covers the scar.

So what happened in Malta? Well Ester made a friend with this Irish woman in Birmingham, the one in England. You know how she likes to have real friends not people sucking up to her son, or trying to get a foot in the door. So when she heard about the triple birth, that was impossible, you’ll have to ask a gyno doctor to explain it. Anyhow Ester prayed like crazy, as only a Jew can pray. And her friend prayed like only an Irish Catholic can. But most of all Rita in Malta who was Mrs Murphy’s friend she prayed like only the Maltese can pray, and after what they put up with from those Nazi SOBs in the war they know how to pray.

So these triplets were born in Birmingham, in their Dudley Road hospital. And it was impossible, I can’t explain everything as we haven’t got the time. But it turns out that Rita’s son was the lead gyno  doctor. He had renounced his Faith went his dad had died and he with all his medical knowledge could not save him. But when the triplets were born they each had a Maltese cross birthmark on their shoulder. Mrs Murphy and Rita had met and done a deal, if one helped her friend have a child, just one pregnancy, then Mrs Murphy would pray that her son came back to the Faith.

So Almighty God killed two birds with one stone. He sure did, then Ester jumped out of the shadows, she’d flown non stop from Vegas just to be there. Everybody was so excited, Mrs Murphy was crying because she had not kept her side of the bargain. Then the doc revealed himself and it came out that he was Rita’s son. He was an old bachelor, but his nurse had loved him for years. You’re having me on, no for sure, Almighty God was settling all the scores in one day.

So they decided to go back to Malta immediately and marry before his old mother died. Only the French air traffic control were on strike, those SOBs are always on strike. So Ester through a bitchy fit, she got Tiny to press the red button on his phone. 14 satellites bleeped and the War Room went to condition amber. He son makes all the military satellites, its a bit like chipping your dog, but with Norad answering.

So to keep it short, a Nato war game was interrupted and 4 assault and recovery helicopters descended on down town Birmingham. Took the doc and his crew to Birmingham airport. They put the helicopters on the K734ASD plane and headed for Malta with F15 tomcats as escort. That Zillionaire really loves his mum, and the Joint Chiefs of staff love her too. Mrs Murphy did insist on visiting the duty free at the airport, it frightened a few people, Special Forces ambling through the duty free. But Mrs Mrs Murphy did insist on getting Rita and the soon to be newly weds a few presents. One of the forces chatted up the girl at the checkout and , well that’s another story.

My that’s a busy story. It ain’t finished, Ester’s son rang to hire the entire Hilton, only he got suspicious of their tone of voice. So he brought up the Hilton on 3 of his satellites. The Mafia were holding a meeting at the Hilton. When Tiny and the Special forces were informed they just smiled and jump straight out of the plane and cleared the mafia from the Hilton, so it wasn’t a waste of a day as far as Special Forces were concerned.

So that’s the end? No. Everything went well and the doc married his nurse in Malta, Rita and Mrs Murphy were overjoyed. Ester’s poker club in Vegas were annoyed because Ester had left them so suddenly. So she set her phone up so that her Vegas friends could play poker against some old Maltese men.

It was then that it happened. One of the Mafia had been hiding in a cupboard and sprung out. It was a room full of people and kids too. Tiny was going to do his stuff and save everybody but he was afraid that some kids would get hurt by stray bullets. So he’d have to smother the Mafia guy, Tint would probably die, but everybody would be safe.

Ester looked at the statue of the Virgin Mary in the corner of the ballroom, us 2 Jews alone in a room full of Gentiles. Let it be me that dies, I’m old, let it be me not Tiny, he’s like a son to me, he never got that girl he dreamed about. He drew her picture on paper, so pretty, then all red in the left hand side of her face. Please Mary, as one Jew to another, save all these Gentiles.

My granny used to ask me to sing for her, why don’t you sing for me.

Ester stood up as requested by the only other Jew in the room, so Ester sung something all the Gentiles would love. She sung the Ave Maria, Ester sung the Ave Maria. One by one they all got up and defiantly sung the Ave Maria. The Mafia guy was astounded, a wall of sound, Phil Spector producing Ave Maria.

Tiny could see this might give him an edge,and he edged forward ready to leap, ready to save everybody. At that moment Ester’s  prayer was answered, Tiny got to see his girl, for a waitress entered through the far door. She was beautiful beyond compare, and on the left side of her face was a port wine stain birthmark. Now the girl had been teased all her life because of her mark of shame. But she too had had a vision, or rather a voice in a dream. A man from the sea will marry you, the bravest man in the world is the only one good enough for you.

At that moment Tiny saw his girl and they both knew the prophecy had been revealed. Would it all end in death. Both begged the Virgin to save the other, let them live even if they died. At that same time  the girl, Rose was her name, she grabbed a saucer and threw it like a frisbee hitting the Mafia guy on his adam’s apple. As he choked Tiny flew with Saint Michael the Archangel himself flapping his wings behind him. The Mafia guy was disarmed and bundled away.

So that explains why every Navy Seal in the service is heading for Malta. Its true, we had to ask the Commander in Chief for special permission. He only agreed when we told him that Rose knew Tiny’s service number, she had dreamed it all those years ago.      

yes it does read like a pitch, and its all my copyright

Quiet Time

Quiet Time ©

By Michael Casey

I’m sitting in my chair all wrapped up against the cold, the washing is scattered around the house on all the radiators, I’m in warm clothes, outside I can see the bare bush branches move in the wind. I’m glad I’m inside and not exposed to the raw cold, I haven’t put the radio on, so far this morning I’m all alone in the silence. It does feel different, all I can hear is the humming of the central heating, or is it the PC at my feet.

Now some writers will continue with a slow process of explaining what they see with alliteration galore, for me life is more a game of Ping Pong, especially with a Shanghai wife, and 2 daughters. Serve, Return, Serve then Return. Or is that tennis, or is it alley as they used to call a variant of squash in Ireland. The seminary was over a high wall next to my aunt’s cottage in Killarney, 21 Saint Mary’s Terrace, you can find it if every you get to Killarney. My aunt is long gone, 30 years and more.

Now Silence does make a difference, ask Paul Simon, there really is a Sound to Silence. Stop what you are doing, if you are in an office stand on the desk and say you ae going to do an experiment, a prize of a four pack of Stella Artois to the winner. Now for 10 minutes can everybody be silent. I know if it’s an accountancy office they are already as silent as a grave, I once temped in one such place, before unemployment followed by Arthritis came a calling, though I did have an interlude as an Esol English teacher for a year.

So Let There Be Silence, which could be a poem, instead in that second I’ve decided what I want you all to do. Just be silent for 10 minutes. No phones, nor computers, no chatting, no lusting at that boy over there, you know the gay one that you don’t know is gay. No eying up that girl, the girl with the big personality, who’d love you to ask her out but you think she’s not in your league. Anyway SILENCE.

After 10 minutes break the silence, and Micky I really don’t want you to break wind, that is not the sound of silence, just ask Paul Simon, he shops in Aldi you know, all the best people do. So now did it feel good? Ok now you can all write down a few words about the silence. Where did you go to my lovely when you are alone at your desk, if we paraphrase Peter Sarstedt, where did you go and did you feel anything? And no I’m not talking about playing footsie under the desk.  

Then you all read out your words, and take a vote. The winner gets the 4 pack of Stella Artois, and if you cannot decide just send it to ME. So what does this all prove? That you are idle people not doing any work, all you do is play games? Maybe. Or it illustrates the fact that when we get off the merry go round of Life we can see and feel things differently. No need to pay 100s to a Life Coach I’ve just taught you all for free, apart from the Stella Artois which I expect in the post.

We all do need time to look inside ourselves and find our soul, our soul Micky, not anything sounding similar, just our soul. Having spent decades in computer rooms I had plenty of waiting time, especially on a weekend night shift. So if you want to become a Writer, then get a job working too many nights, perhaps be a security guard, I did 14 years of nights myself. So assuming you are not a moron you will have plenty of time to play spiritual hide and seek, or alley or squash.

You may just spend your night shift playing games on your phone, but 40 years ago games on phones, or even the phones did not exist. So you can listen to the ghetto blaster all night, and we did, or you can develop an interior life. Is this important?  It is because as we age friends come and go, jobs come and go, even girlfriends taken back to the office in the middle of the night even they come and go.

Not unless you marry one because you have to or because its true love, carpet burns included, but that never happens in USA nor Russia nor Germany nor any of the other of dozen places where you are reading this from. You need to have rooms in your brain and in your heart for you, for your friends and for your family and for your love or lovers, depending on how much like a rabbit you are.

If all you are is a vacuous self-serving person then who is going to help you when you are down, who will be the good Samaritan. Who will say its Micky, we have to help him, you remember Farty Pants himself, its Sarah we have to help her. Why?  Because whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren you do to me.

Or in plain language, they used to make us laugh so much I peed my pants. In a way that’s the answer to everything, if you can make people pee their pants, then when your hour of need comes they will come, just as Dr Watson did for Sherlock the other night. So today I’ve filled this quiet time Friday the 13^th Jan 2017 time with some words to feed our souls, soul Micky soul SOUL, you really need to get a hearing aid MICKY.