Prayer and Dreams and What they Mean

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Prayer and Dreams and What they Mean

Prayers and Dreams and What They Mean ©

By Michael Casey

I was thinking about I should write about on my way home from Aldi and up popped Dreams, then when I got home I saw a piece of research about Near Death experiences and how they reckon your entire life flashes in front of you. I’ve known for over 35 years how when you are electrocuted all your life DOES flash by. Richard Hudson can confirm this, assuming he is still alive, he was a guy I worked with in my early computer room days, he told us after HE was electrocuted.

Perhaps torturers in North Korea will use another method in future as electrocution sounds too much like a trip to the cinema or a flick through the family album. One man’s torture is another mains or should I say man’s joy.

But what about dreams, why do we have them? In a dream you can be a hero, Heather Small is singing in the background that’s why the word HERO popped up. So in a dream you are a hero and you get the girl, or boy or both, we are living in a Liberal world after all, so in a dream you can be or do anything you want. I’ll pause there so you can have a cold shower, as they say “on y soit qui mal y pense”, forgive any mistakes with my French.

You can have high hopes, which is also a song from an American musical, you’ll have to Google all the references for yourself, I am just the signpost, but the trouble with being a signpost is that dogs come and pee on you, and cats scratch. Our dog peed on the signpost, the for sale sign post and that’s how I bought this house, which was my big dream. See life is strange, or is it just my writing?

A dream or an ambition is a good thing to have as it gives you a target, you’ll get a better flat, you’ll study for AAT or become a nail technician, or you’ll stop squeezing those spots and give up all the fast food. A dream does not have to be “one day I’ll be President” for such dreams lead only to sadness, people will hate you, wherever you are President, and even if it’s just president of the book club they’ll always be total bores like Michael Casey insisting that all his books should be reviewed and stocked with bumper sticker saying also available on Amazon worldwide. Irony and Pathos you get it all in my short pieces.

Once you have the dream, the target, are you prepared to work hard for it? Will you make sacrifices for it or do you think it will fall all in your lap. I suggest that people nowadays want things now, and don’t want to work for it, like I did and previous generations did. The Utube generation, the Geordie Shore generation think life is reality tv, well actually it is not.

The other sad thing is that once you have achieved your dream, what do you do next. Me I started writing, so I can say one thing led to another. If you don’t have an After That, what are you going to do? You won’t win the lottery and be live happy ever after. Or you could grow up with no qualifications and marry you friend’s cousin, as a way of escaping you own family. Then you have kids you don’t really want, who are dragged up. Sounds harsh, walk down your own street and see if you can spot people like that.

This is where Prayer comes in. A prayer is like a dream but with more effort involved. As you work all the hours and shifts that God sends you are sticking to your dream, and sticking is the right word, if you hold to a dream it might slip away from you, you have to glue that dream to you. Or nail that dream to you. I know cos my dream took me 10 years and more to achieve.

Now somebody once said “form a Christian family if you want a little Peace” and yes you can substitute Jewish/Muslim/Buddhist or even Doubting in front of family. The thing is though that Family is Glue and it will save you when life’s ocean swamps you. And if you are one of these families with perfect teeth and a nice dog, who have never had any trials and tribulations, all I say is I may have to pee through your letter box later and I bet you’d blame the dog and have him put down.

The thing about Perfect Families is that they are not, Money is all they love, the average Common family, and I include myself, a common family, or Common People, which may be a track by Blur from the 90s, go Google, they will look after each other, we may be muck but we love each other as Mrs Brown from tv might say.

Which brings us back to prayer, a dream is an extension of yourself, but Prayer is an extension of God that reaches into us.  You can get your 5 year old to draw a cartoon of it. House, roots into earth this is Dream. House, roots into God, and God is everywhere, this is Prayer. Perhaps I should copyright that as a Tee shirt idea, and then I make my first 10 million. Ha, how do you copyright God. 

We are his copyright after all.

Help With your Homework

_{Help with your Homework} ©

_{By Michael Casey}

_{If you have been following my words then you will know there are several teachers in my family, I even did a bit of English as a Foreign language teaching myself, and I do have a Shanghai wife too. Any billionairesses out there who want English lessons and who can come to Birmingham for a month do get in touch.}  

_{Back in 1998 I did in fact teach somebody for a month as my house guest. Now what I really want to do is talk about essay writing.  My big daughter has done her mocks and the next few months she has to revise and then write essays galore. So tonight I’m going to give you a bit of advice, its up to you if you take it.}

_{First of all Cut and Paste will get you a FAIL. If you have to write an essay on sausages all you have to do is Google Essays on Sausages. Your get a ton of results I imagine, what you then do is read 10 of them. You will then be a sausage  expert, or I can introduce you to Big Sid the butcher who is in The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker. This is simple basis research.}

 _{In the old days you would have to lift encyclopaedia which were as big as paving stones and weighed just as much. At Primary school, the encyclopaedia were on a shelf just to my left and I did have to look through them  to research projects. Nowadays there is the Internet, and you can always buy lots of sausages from your local butcher and he’ll  tell you loads of stuff. Then you’ll write the perfect essay on sausages.}

_{If you know how to interrogate Google then you can get the best and varied results so you have plenty of reading material. Remember too Fake News is not just confided to Facebook and other social media, you can get dodgy information  about sausages  on the Internet, that’s why you need to cast your net wide.  Remember an intro and then facts, detail and proof followed by a conclusion, and end with a good quote.  Now its a very long time since I wrote a serious piece. I like to write humour, comedy even, but the format does have similarities with serious essays.}

_{In an essay you have to write in an interesting way about the given topic. In the study period of 1 to 4 years you should have built up a knowledge of your subject, in my case I know all their is to know about why Stella Artois makes me fart if I  drink 17 pints and forget the cheese and onion crisps. In your case you know all there is to know about Shakespeare’s Sonnets, so you will start with a few lines from a Shakespearean Sonnet, I used to love her lots until she gave me the pox from washing all her socks, which is Shakespeare’s last but one Sonnet, then he died suddenly, nobody knows exactly why, perhaps a research student will find out.}

_{After the opening quote you will answer the question about Shakespeare with depth and  knowledge, as much knowledge as you have for Manchester United and the record goal tally of Wayne Rooney. With as much passion as you have for Man U and the girl behind the bacon slicer in the deli you will pour out your knowledge onto the page. You will give every ounce of your being on the page, you will sound like Will Shakespeare’s agent, as I was when I wrote an essay back in 1975.} 

_{Nothing will be missed, the end result will be a masterful essay, and as a reward the girl behind the deli will give you a free slice, of your favourite something.}

_{If you have revised well you will have the knowledge to answer anything the examiner throws at you in all of the subjects you are studying. You are prepared, the subject knowledge is in your head, and if you have mastered essay writing everything  will look perfect on the page.}

 _{It is just like flower arranging, you may be a 240kilo Russian weight lifter, but when you write your essay on Choral Singing, or Farm Management or Nuclear Fusion, with hard core Chess as a sub subject, whatever it is your words on the page are as beautiful as the flowers in the vase you keep by the picture of your dead mother.} 

_{Anything is possible if you have revised and you know all the tricks of essay writing, you can even Google “the tricks of essay writing” for you are  ready and your mother in Heaven will throw salt in the eyes of the examiner just in case your answer on Choral Singing was not quite good enough for a A. For I’m sure Russia mothers are just the same as Irish mothers,  they never give up.}

_{I think I’ve more or less covered everything, study, practice, read wide, never cut and paste, and make sure to tell your mother you love her, whether she is Russian or Irish, mum’s like to hear it, especially if they are dead, then they can boast to the Angels just how clever their 240kilo sons are, now that they have opened a flower shop, to take their mind off Nuclear Fusion, which they  teach at University.} 

_{For Variety is the Spice of Life.}

Lessons in Listening

Lessons in Listening ©

By Michael Casey

This should be about the World’s events this Jan 29^th 2017, but there are enough people talking about it so I’ll let others do that. I will say though, and you all just knew I’ll say that I’d just say. I live in Birmingham, my parents were from County Kerry Eire, and they came here in 1944 when the war was on. My wife is a Shanghai girl and we have 2 bilingual daughters, one of whom dreams of being a Doctor, the other may be the next Julie Walters or a PhD in something else. My best friend is a little Indian guy who has a PhD too, if you hang around with clever people you appear clever by association, oh by the way my friend’s family were from Calcutta.

I’ve started a new paragraph so you can skip the 1^st if you have low tolerance for major news stories. I decided tonight to write about Listening, obviously we all listen every day, and you can guess what my last sentence might be before I’ve even started on tonight’s piece.

So why do we listen? To get what we want and to give what we want, we listen. Can I have a Cadbury’s Crunchie please? And Neil in the corner shop, who is Indian, will give you a Cadbury’s Crunchy. He also give you your change. Every simple interaction in a shop is about asking and receiving, we do it all the time when we go shopping.

When I’m in Aldi I’ll ask the crew where is this or where is that and they will tell me and I’ll go away happy with my precooked in a Kiln Salmon pieces, and they are delicious by the way, and I don’t explode the salon in our microwave any more. Life is all about asking and then receiving. Seeking and then finding, doors are even opened for us, such as fridge doors in Aldi. The religious amongst you will have spotted the Biblical reference.

The point being that by being courteous we have a smoother Society, I listen to you and you listen to me. I know from experience that listening does make a difference. If you work in a 4 star deluxe hotel for 3 years as I did then all day every day you are listening. You are there to please the guest, if you do its good for the hotel and they come back.

Ours was a new build, I even had my interview in a porta-cabin. The thing we are taught and learn is that people like to be listened to, it takes no effort and does make all the difference, especially when they are complaining wherever you are working. If you let people blow off steam then they calm down sooner, ask any Police you know they will agree.  

The week I started at the hotel was the week my dad died, I went to visit him on the Tuesday the 2^nd day of the new job and he died on the Saturday, so Joy and Pain all came calling in the same week. The hotel and Jonathon Walker were very kind to me. I had spent years visiting my dad every single day in the old people’s home and there I listened to him. It’s now 15 years since he died.

You are company for your old dad or mum or aunty or the old cantankerous woman in the flat above. Listening and sharing a cup of disgusting tea DOES make a difference even if its just that you appreciate a good cuppa after your sacrificial cuppa you force yourself to drink with the horrid lady upstairs. There are millions of people the world over who appreciate a kind word, or help finding white bread on the shelf in Aldi when their eyes are too old, or they don’t read English.

For me listening isn’t just about being charitable, its about being Irish, as having Irish blood means I enjoy a story, little wonder I’ve ended up as a writer with one million words on the page. I did spend decades talking to my dad enjoying all the stories even if I’d heard them many many times before.

Listening to BBC Radio 4 is all about listening as its speech radio, not music or background music. I smile when I see kids heading for cramming courses nearby I want to tell their pushy parents to buy a radio and glue the dial to BBC Radio 4. Its worth a 2 grade improvement in itself. Why waste your money on a crammer, best of all when 5000 people apply for the 500 places at grammar school. In passing our local school is in the top 2% in the entire country, Discipline makes a difference, as does Listening to the Teacher.

The greatest thing we do in life is listening to another person, and when we listen our defences are lowered. If you can make somebody laugh then barriers come tumbling down, they want to listen to you because you make them laugh, you make them happy.

We appreciate each other and then because we have listened we can love. If you like making love is the perfect act of listening, which may explain why real ugly comedians have the prettiest wives.

  

Words Past Present and Future

Words Past Present and Future ©

By Michael Casey

Its Chinese New Year 2017, no doubt my wife will tell me which animal it is this year when she comes home later. I think I’m a dog even though my Chinese nick name is Panzi or Pig, but at least I’ve never been called a Dog. Words mean something and they have weight and value, though some may say a Politicians words are as worthless as a Used Car Salesman or an Estate Agent or Double Glazing salesman.

So you can see Words mean so many different things, to you, to me and to the World. I’ve only ended up talking about words today as Theresa May our PM is traveling the world drumming up trade, the irony is that Napoleon dismissed England as just a Nation of Shopkeepers, and look what happened to him. A Nation of Shopkeepers was the original title of my 1^st book a comic novel, in the end it became The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker.

Why are words so important, because of the actions that follow them. He’s all talk and no trousers is one expression, I remember hearing it in a 1960s film perhaps, I know what it means but I don’t know what it means. Was it originally a girl commenting on a man’s lack of sexual performance or was it just that the man just talked but then did nothing. It’s about lack of action, whatever sort, you can all Google it for yourselves.

Red Lines are another favourite of Politicians, but if a Red Line is crossed and then there is no action afterwards then the Politician is seen as weak and feeble, no matter who they are, you can pick your own Politician wherever you are in the world reading this.

Cursing and Coarse words are very strong and effective, we all use them and if you are telling me you have never used such language then I’d say you are a Posh Panda, which is the worse thing a Shanghai zookeeper can say, believe me I was at the zoo17 years ago this very week. A curse can save a life, being called a Posh Panda in Mandarin saved me from being dumped on by a giraffe, and that would have been load of pooh from a great height. You all have a cartoon in your mind now of my head and a giraffe’s rear end, see cartoons made from words.

Your Word is your Bond, though not shaken nor stirred, if you say you are going to do something then you should do it. In different Cultures words mean different things, other cultures like to haggle and bargain that’s why Westerners seem dull and boring because they just pay the price. The Haggle is the most important part of the day for the trader in foreign lands. Words are his toys, he goes home and tells his wife the top 10 haggles of the day, English people tend to be the most boring as far as he is concerned.

That was until he met my sister on one of her travels. This looks like a load of crap she’ll begin with, though she’s posh as you expect her to be, so she says R U B B I  S  H spelling it out, just so the trader can hear. He’s reading Time magazine, he did a Masters at the LSE before coming home to run his dad’s stall wherever. Then my sister will walk away and look at another stall, tut tutting, the rubbish here is unbelievable. 

She’s set her heart on a scarf of pure silk, not viscose, she knows the difference at 100 metres, she is an international traveller after all. So she goes up and down the stalls lambasting the quality of their stock, I wouldn’t even donate this stuff to a jumble sale.

It’s a dull day, it has been raining and trade has been very bad, so my sister is like a shark circling, she’ll have a bargain or bite their arm off. After stopping for street snacks she deigns to walk past the 1^st stall, her target, her prey. How much do you want for this dirty rag, the scarf not your Time magazine, who is that blonde on the cover, never mind, how much for the rag.

The stall holder says 10 she laughs and walks away, ok 9 he offers. My sister laughs even more, she does teach Drama after all, so her wicked witch laugh is legendary. The laugh unsettles the entire market, the stall holders are afraid and one even rings the priest. Resistance is futile you will be assimilated blares from a tv above the  market, the stall holder gives my sister a scarf , she pays 5. In his haste and fear he give her a scarf worth 20, and the stall holder mumbles goodbye my sister turns back, half the other stall holders duck in fear. I always have a GOOD BUY.

So from the legal, decent and honest example of my sister’s use of words, or did I just make it up, anyway from the example you can see how we can use words to negotiate to get what we want. Now we have Theresa May negotiating for UK and some may ask why does she wear red and all the fancy fashion.

Well for two reasons, she is a woman, and when she wears red that it to hide the blood of her victims, sorry I should be more diplomatic, her negotiating partners, her opposite numbers. And why all the heavy circular jewellery, its remind men that she will crush their their, just as Sir Francis Drake did after he finished his bowls.

 Need I say more, or has my lack of words been more than enough. Less is more and as her admirers may say, she may only be the vicar’s daughter, but you haven’t got a prayer, as resistance is futile, or is that science fiction?

The Return of the Paint

The Return of the Paint ©

By Michael Casey

Well I had my 2 pain days and so I thought that today I’d catch up on my painting, yes I am quite a Picasso, streams of Oriental models pass by so I can paint them. I look more like Einstein than Picasso, and the nearest I come to Picasso is when I scratch my derrière. No unfortunately I cannot paint, the rest of the family can but I cannot. The painting I was talking about it painting done with a big pig’s bristles paint brush, wall painting.

I haven’t done any painting in ages, but I thought I’d do a few touches before we try and sell the house. We did do up the bathroom, a friend of my daughter’s is doing Graphic Design, so I used him to paint our bathroom, I did of course pay him well and feed him too. Today’s painting was something I thought I could do myself, a Polish builder friend of the wife who we might use in the future he advised I use 3 coats of paint for the job in hand.

I have to be very careful when I do anything physical, as I might strain myself. A neighbour had a heart attack and died because he did too much gardening. So I do a bit have a rest and then do a bit more.  It’s horrible having to admit you are not as strong as you used to be. But I am alive and my daughters like that, they got the cat and not the dog, if you remember my promise of 2 years ago before my quadruple heart bypass.

The Prep is the hardest bit of all, you can look at a job and estimate just how long it will take. Then you have to prep and make space, and throw away stuff that you should have thrown away before. Then there is the sink of the paint itself. The ladder, the 30 year old aluminium ladder creaks under my weight, but at least I did not spill the paint. As I painted I estimated I’d have enough for the 3 coats spread through-out the day. I did not spill any paint and slightly out of breath and slightly high due to the paint fumes I stop  and have  a rest.

I am allowed 4 hours rest because the paint needs 4 hours to dry between coats. In actual fact I’m more tired than I thought I’d be so I have 6 hours rest. This includes 45 minutes trying to get paint off my fingers. Washing powder, the stuff you wash your clothes with is best for cleaning your fingers it’s the grit in it that does the trick.

Totoro had been sleeping and awoke to investigate what the smell was, so I had to say NO, to prevent her from turning herself into a paint roller. Then I chased her away and had a break. You need more breaks after a heart op, I’m told by my priest it’ll be 1 more year before I’m back to normal whatever that is. All in all I’ve very pleased with my efforts, I didn’t spill any paint on the carpets, and after the second coat of paint I was more skilled at cleaning my hands than I was the first time around.

The house stinks of paint and I do wish I was Picasso, not because of the Oriental models queuing up to be painted by me, but rather that if I were Picasso just one signed menu could bring in enough to buy a house in itself. Besides which my wife is an Oriental model, though I didn’t marry her for her looks but none of you would believe that.

As for me I still have the vain hope of getting columns in a newspapers world-wide. I can paint with words of many colours, and maybe I’ll start in the East and then go West, just like the sun. From Izvestia to the Sun now that would be an achievement, not even Churchill could have matched that.