A Multi-Tasking Man

A Multi-Tasking Man ©

By

Michael Casey

Let me start by saying I hate the phrase, its a relatively new phrase, I can remember when it did not exist, and would prefer it to stay that way. But I am multi-tasking myself this morning. I’d had my breakfast, and morning meds, I was told to take them with food, hence the breakfast, I’m not just greedy. While I wait for the hot water to heat up I’m listening to REM’s Automatic for the People album. Drive is the 1^st track and I’ve just been reading in DT about the new clean car initiative, where will the Govt steal more taxes from us if petrol is no more, as dead as Monty Phython’s parrot. I am also talking to you, so that is 3 things I’m doing, waiting, listening and talking/writing to you.

Does this mean I qualify as a woman and can have my gender reassigned without talking to a doctor or wearing a dress for 2 years?

I’ve just thrown a cat amongst the pigeons there, could that qualify me for the Olympics as a hammer or cat thrower or swinger, without being a swinger myself that is. Are you counting all the elements of my multi-tasking now?

I try and teach my kids to be like hotel workers, the hardest job I ever had but the most fun. 2002 to 2005 I was at CPNEC Birmingham. I was big and strong then without any heart problems, nor arthritis, nor CkD. But to the point if you are in a hotel, a 4 star business hotel at front of house you HAVE to run around like a blue arse fly, this was the original phrase before pretentious multi-tasking arrived. You have to be busy and seen to be busy, you are on security camera everywhere.

So you look to the left , you look to the right, you pick up that piece of paper, you tidy your area. If there is something more then you get on the dect phone in your pocket and ring Vicky to come and do her magic. You wanted our hotel to look immaculate, and as far as us staff were concerned it was OUR hotel. So I say to my kids tidy up as you go along, tidy and wipe the place, you are not a guest in a 4 star hotel paying 30 to 300 a night depending on the season. Keep it nice and clean, even if Totoro our cat wipes her tail on the coffee table to clean it. Don’t walk over your own mess, tidy up. What did your last maid die of? Very much what my own mother said to me and our tribe as we grew up.

Mothers can multi-task too, a slap or a sweet thrown at you at breakneck speed. Just like the nun in Blues Brothers hitting the boys with her stick. The smell of burning interrupts me, my girls, all girls think they can make breakfast and be on their phone at the same time. They can, but that’s how the fireman became a regular visitor to our house, first to put out the kitchen fire, and then as a boyfriend. So make your kids put the toys away while they are in the kitchen. Leaving a phone on a microwave is a bad idea too, as the microwaves could scramble the chip inside. Was it Tom O’Connor whose entire joke collection was lost because his PC was right next to the microwave.

The flies are circling me, and Totoro is attacking them, so I think I need to finish my green tea and have a bath. I’ve had showers recently so I miss a good old soak in the bath, though I have to careful as the arthritis and my chest scars can inhibit movement. I don’t want Fireman Sam my daughter’s new and imaginary boyfriend releasing me from the bath. His sister Sara also a fireman, is forever releasing Andrew LLoyd Webber’s toes from his bath tap. Now that’s a private joke, I don’t even know if ALW has even read it yet. And fireman, firegirl, firefighter Sara is another cat amongst the pigeons, how many of you were offended, should I apologise to the Word Police Chairman who is a woman.

I multi-task with words to keep you and me both amused, to see if you can spot the 3^rd joke. Tony Cole who had a daughter called Natalie once said Michael is on the 3^rd joke. Though most of you may say Michael is the 3^rd degree. If you excuse me I have to multi-task in my bath, to shave not just my face but also my legs,as I make bubbles.

With the bath bomb I’m about to steal from my girls while they are on their phones. If you are in Birmingham you may see me at Celine Dion’s show tomorrow, I am the support, I do a Diana Ross impersonation, hence the need to shave my legs and other regions. And if you believe that then you believe in fairies, but they can multi-task too, ask Tinkerbell he may be sprinkling his fairy dust over my work. Or maybe I need to call Vicky on my Dect phone.

    

Thinking about it

Thinking about It ©

By

Michael Casey

Well I’m all alone the girls have gone to take a look at the fair, and maybe the woods too. I’m just thinking what to write write about, usually its a quick decision then away I go, but today I’m tired as I was up in the night and I’ve written 2 short pieces already today. So I’m using it as a way of writing about, the thought itself as a piece of writing.

Sounds like something trendy people at a French or German University might do. The Nature of Thought, instead of writing a new good Tin Tin story. Writing about writing instead of doing some actual writing. You could say I prepare all the time, prepare for my writing break in the Mass Media, only my back list gets bigger, swollen almost and I have a zillion copies of all my stories scattered all over hyperspace. Over 1,108,000 words now copied and saved for Eternity.

I stop to scratch my nose and watch a pretty girl pass my window, this could be a metaphor but I’m not that clever. I’m good at misdirecting you up that garden path to nowhere. I’m tired so you won’t get any direction in this piece, though some may say there never was anyway.

I look outside and see the blue blue sky and our gay neighbours are in their bedroom as I look up, but I’ll respect their privacy. The flowers are all in bloom, cars glint in the summer sun, which can just be one day as we are in England after all. Gerry Rafferty is singing in the background, I feel like an ice-cream, so I may just head for the fridge and get one. But I remember we finished them yesterday, so I’ll settle for some Ribena.

These are the things you think about when you are too tired to produce something new, these are the random thoughts of this writer. So long sings Jerry Rafferty, I think I’ll say the same and leave it for today. 3 pieces in a day is enough. I did the surreal in an email and then something else, so this is your lot for today. You have plenty to read on my site https://michaelgcaseyfrombirminghamengland.wordpress.com 

So I’ll head for the settee and put my lazy feet up. You can also go to

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC 

For a cheap buy, from this cheap boy.

With that I’ll bid you good afternoon, form this buffoon.

Michael

A serious piece

I was up  in the night for a pain killer and I went to the computer and had a read while I was writing for it to kick in. I spotted a piece so I wrote an email to the person concerned. Now that was a surreal piece of writing, as serious stuff is ignored, so cereals are better.

Word play plays part of writing, ask Will down the Shakespeare pub, and its more fun as the writer and hopefully the reader gets it. Eric Morecambe used to say don't analyse the joke, if it works then that's good, its done its job.

You also get too many people wanting to get to the punchline, and in doing so they kill the joke, a joke must be allowed to breathe. Let the audience titter in anticipation, and then give the punchline, if you are very good you can even get 2 or 3 laughs from the same piece. Its the way you tell them for sure. Or the way you write them.

Boris has appeared in my writing as a device, a Polish/Ukrianian/Russian man of the people or a Peppone figure if you have read your Don Camillo. This is not me trying to be clever, and I can hear a snigger from Dr P in my head, an old school friend of 50 years, being heckled already,  who needs Boris. What's to be writ will be writ, and in my case the long and winding road of mirth will follow its own path along my funny bone to yours.

So forgive me if you expect one thing and get another. Look at my own life it has been a strange tale, or even stranger brew if you are a Cream fan.

So stay with me for the adventure and  if you read my earlier books you get the more family funny material. the later stuff has emerged as more, well just more, or moorish whatever that word is.

we have to hang out my dirty knickers now, the washing machine has finished cleaning them,they are visible from space you know.

Michael 25/july 2017

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

  

A Glimpse of Stocking

I wanted to give you something more today so here's a piece journalists should laugh at from March 2017

A Glimpse Of Stocking ©

By Michael Casey

Well yesterday was Ash Wednesday so I hope you are all still there, you may have given me up for Lent. I think we need a little levity so that’s what I’ll try for today. There may be pauses as the pain demands attention like a spoilt brat, or a North Korean leader, I’ve thrown in a political joke just for the journalists reading this. You think I’m a girl mentioning the pain, I’ll throw a few adjectives at you or even a metaphor if you are not nice to me, I’ll tell my Polish fans to come and hack you. 7000 plus hits in less than a week from Poland, maybe only they find me funny. So move to Poland, you really are so cruel, I’ll come a live next door to you. I knew that would shut you up, call yourself a sub editor, emphasis on the SUB.

Now that we’ve sorted out who is the boss shall I begin, and see I’m posh I use shall. We wish you used more deodorant. Silence in the ranks, I look like the Elephant in the Jungle Book, or is that just the smell. If any of you mutter anything again I’ll send you to Donald for a spanking.

Now spanking is a key word in English, those naughty boys, the SILENT naughty boys smile at the very mention of the word. If you have seen the Carry On Films then I need say no more. What I want to talk about today is how values have changed so much. Personally I think it’s all in the mind, what? It, it is all in the mind. You don’t have to lay it all on, or swamp everybody with it, it not IT, there is a difference. You know it, or shall I shout  IT, and I mean IT and not IT. Sometimes the Press pack are so deliberately boring. Donald give them a really  good spanking from me. I know MATT the cartoonist has whipped his crayons out already and you have a queue, or Line as they say in USA of journalists waiting to be spanked by Donald.

Ok I’ll leave that idea in your mind and I bet it’ll appear somewhere in cartoon form within a week, I am Mr Cartoons made from Words after all. Now where was I, yes I’m sat here talking to you all, and I have to confess I get Russian readers too, Putin reads me, yes he does, his MAD magazine got stuck in the post somewhere so he started reading my column, Nelson his press secretary put him on to me.  That’s what a bushy eyed man told me by the frozen peas in Aldi yesterday, or he may have been asking me to putin the peas into his basket. I just wish I was a linguist, LINGUIST, you lot are so slow sometimes.

Yes, what I really want to talk about today is the wanton use of sex in the media. In days of old a glimpse of stocking was classed as shocking but now anything goes. I think I saw it performed at the Good Old Days on tv. What is amusing us all at the moment is a feminist deciding to flash or half flash, her upper bits, I won’t use any words as it may upset nanny. I can hear the sound of the cane in the distance, Donald is spanking the journalists in the distance. They should have saved the DC Digger Metro Edition, not because its second hand bargains were the best in the whole of USA, and the supermarket coupons inside were always for the best shops. But because if you stuff it down the back of your trousers no amount of spanking by teacher will hurt.  

So rather than talk about the level of nudity, let’s look at this sideways, and sometimes you have to because the way things are published. Should I, moi Michael Casey from Birmingham England, should I have a shirt split to the navel to expose my quadruple heart bypass scar. Should I wear see-through pants, as you call trousers in USA, should I expose my short fat and hairy legs to show off my scars. The scars run from my socks and stop at my, well too high to mention, only my nurse has examined those regions. In today’s world the   Stars show everything, only a butcher shows more, laying in his shop window, and if the Stars were naked in a butcher’s shop window could you tell one piece of meat from another? And no I’m not suggesting the butcher lies naked in his shop window only holding his cleaver.

What if in the future the circle turns full circle. You wear a suit with cut outs exposing your elbows, just your elbows. The screams from women in the street as they faint with shock. Exposed elbows, terrible, shock horror. Somebody take him to Donald’s office for a spanking, he must be a terrible journalist or some such thing. Then even worse a suit with exposed knees, otherwise totally totally formal but the knees exposed, the utter depravity of it, exposing your knees in public. The absolute worse of the worse would be shoes, patent leather shoes with the big toe exposed and wiggling for the whole world to see. Off with his head, somebody call the executioner, what Mr Pierpont is on holiday. Donald will have to give him a double spanking instead. Where is Pierpont? Oh, he went on a Nudist holiday to Brighton in England.

Oh just for the record Donald is a She, in these days of gender equality anybody can be called anything they like. Donald is the President of the Bad Grammar Corrective Ink Party. A private members club for Journalists in DC. What were you all thinking, I told you it’s all in the mind.

The Bickers

 an old story

The Bickers ©

By

Michael Casey

The Bickers were in fact Mr and Mrs, but I’m not going to tell you their name as The Bickers was what they were know by, ask the post man and their long suffering neighbours. Why The Bickers? Was it rhyming slang for No Knickers, no. They were an old couple, a couple of old dears, and no that’s not rhyming slang either. They were called The Bickers because they lived next door to the Vicar’s, well no that’s a lie, they did live next door to the Vicar’s, but they were called The Bickers because they were always bickering. BICKERING. It became a place on the map, well known to delivery drivers, better than any Sat Nav, The Bickers.

Have a parcel for anybody on that stretch of the B82 then just drop it off at The Bickers, they’ll sign for anything. And Mr Bicker would, it was his way of having contract with the outside world. People would drop by for their parcel and give him a bar of chocolate or a few lines of chat, it did not matter what, it was nice to meet people, anybody.

Mrs Bicker had a cleaning job in various places, so she was always out and about, she always smelt of Pledge, forget Chanel no.5.Pledge was her perfume. Though she was given plenty of Chanel no.5 by very satisfied customers, she was a good scrubber in the best use of that word. So she hated the dirty boot marks from all the couriers who past by her house, Mr Bicker even gave them a quick tea, he always had his fast brew kettle on the hob. So the bickering as a result of their different life styles.

She was always cleaning, and he was always dirtying, she even complained about the amount of toilet paper he used. He just retorted when he died he’d make sure it was on her best floral carpet, image getting the marks of death off that. She said she’d buy him rubber nappies so if he died while she was out, they’d be no mess on the floor. Treating me like a Death Row Prisoner about to be executed, shouted Mr Bicker. That’s too good for you, if you ruin my new carpet from John Lewis with your coffee, I’ll put you over my knee and spank your bare arse. Do it now then retorted Mr Bicker.

So there he was spread over Mrs Bicker’s knee in her new Parker Knoll chair with his bare arse in the air, when Mrs Knowit, the local gossip came in for her parcel. The doors were never locked as he was always in and ready to receive parcels. Mrs Knowit gasped and grabbed her parcel. In 5 minutes the whole village Knewit, SPANKING, and at their age. However the Agatha Raisen was a newcomer to the village so she was impressed, very impressed and knew 1/2 the village would be giving it a go that very night. But I digress.

I’ll put the sterile gloves on next time, she said when she had finished giving him 6 of the best, Mrs Knowit was still outside gasping for breath, so she heard that too. However she looked at her watch, if she hurried the local Post Office and general store would still be open, she was sure they sold sterile gloves.

The Bickers loved to Bicker, it was their form of tv, they did have a tv but stopped watching when Arthur Negus was no longer on talking about furniture. So they listened to BBC Radio4 instead, and yes for them Nicholas Parson and Just a Minute was King. The Vicar always seemed to appear naked having his shower when Nicholas Parsons was on the radio. They always spotted him from the snug in their cottage kitchen, his bathroom overlooked their kitchen. And with BBC Radio4 Extra, Nicholas Parsons was a daily event, as was the naked vicar in the shower.

The Bickers would bicker about repetition, deviation, though  thanks to Mrs Knowit’s observations all the village were all learning about repetition and deviation. In the best context of a stable and caring relationship, jut ask the stable girls, but I digress.

One day the Bickers were bickering so much the whole village heard. It had been Amazon Prime Day, so there were stacks and stacks or parcels to collect. They gathered outside for a couple of hours, all they could hear was the crash and bang, crash and bang, and bang and crash. After 3 hours, they were very polite people after all the Vicar suggested they all went to his bathroom, not to baptise them but so they could look down in to the Bickers’ kitchen.

What they saw shocked them, I could not possibly put it on the page, it would singe the very page. Ok, I’ll tell you. The parcel men had clubbed together to get them a present for their 40^th wedding anniversary. It was Karma Sutra for beginners, the Bickers had been trying it out all around my house, and other places and positions. This was much much more then mere spanking.

The villagers crept down the stairs only to trip over the vicar’s bondage gear, he said he was minding it for somebody who was in jail. Mrs Knowit, winked, she would return after dark. As for the rest of the villagers, they hurried to place orders on Amazon Prime, it was a primal instinct in them. What was good enough for the Bickers was good enough for them. Agatha Raisen would fit in perfectly in this village.

The look to Match Your Words

The Look to Match Your Words ©

By

Michael Casey

I’m chilling this morning as the pain monster ebbs away, I’m just a Canute in front of his computer commanding words into order. I spotted a piece in the DT that caught my eye about writers and their style, clothes style that is. I would have looked at it only it was behind the pay-wall, so Rupert send an email to the Barclay brothers, I need to  get over that pay-wall. Or I could just stand on Rupert’s shoulders and peek over it, you have a cartoon in your head now, I am still 17.5stones, or more than a heavy-weight boxer.

My title is obviously less pretentious than that in the DT, I am a humour writer after all, if I said comedy you’d expect more or better jokes, so I stick with humour. Can somebody slap Boris, he was about to interject. Boris is a device that has slipped into my writing and to be honest I do enjoy a bit of Boris. He’s a Polish/Ukrainian/Russian man of the people, like the child that spots that the Emperor is naked and not wearing new clothes. But less of Boris or he will demand equal pay with the old woman who is writing this stuff.Me.

Style in writing is the most important bit of style there is, if the style is rubbish and I nearly said the C word then I just cannot read it. I could mention a very famous writer whose style is so bad that me and my girls just cannot read their stuff. And I’m not just talking about Dan Brown, miaow.

Once you have made some money as a writer, obviously not at the BBC, then you can afford decent clothes. Though some persist in wearing Oxfam’s best bin, because it makes them trendy and at one with the Youth of today, whatever that means. Though it could mean people with Degrees who continue working at MacDonalds because there is nothing else. A degree is worthless nowadays because everybody has one, you can discuss this at Burger King, I’m told the food is better there.

You have people dressed in all kinds of everything being interviewed by the presenter on BBC, an overpaid male presenter, or a 1/2 overpaid female presenter. We have the BBC gender pay storm raging at the moment so I’ve slipped that in for the cultural historians if they find this in 100 years time, in some slush pile, by the juice machine in MacDonalds.

I am a writer. Ok I’ll pause there while Boris and his clan have a laughing fit, I really must learn how to curse in Eastern European languages, if I didn’t pay at the Polish shop I’m sure I’d find out, I’d get battered by 5 of the girls who work there. Luckily I’m on good terms with the almost identical twin brothers who own the place, you can only tell them apart as one shaves his head. Their place is great, and yes I really mean that.

Ok, so I’m a writer, so does that mean I wear my shirt open to the navel, do I dress like the 70s, do I walk like John Travolta holding that tin of paint. I walk like that of course, but I cannot carry any heavy things any more. Do I have a dictionary in my hand, do I stand on it to reach the top shelf, Boris stop it. Stand on it to reach for the pickles in the supermarket, what else would I reach for. I’ve just reminded myself now to buy some Branston Pickles now, so it’s not been a waste of time talking to you all.

A writer will go one way, then another, Boris I’m not talking about cross-dressing, I mean he’ll follow one path, no not Church of England, he’ll see where the story leads him, then if that dos not work, he’ll scrunch up his paper on his typewriter and start again. Though this writer won’t do that. Because it would be a waste of paper, and for decades now I use a computer. There is another reason why I don’t waste an idea because of the dysfunctional way I think, no Boris it doesn’t mean I have the sh__s, though CkD is similar. What I mean is I bounce an idea around my brain, like a pin ball machine, and lights and buzzers come on. Then I follow the new path. Why waste an idea when it can fill more of the page?

As a result of all these words, and all these words is a line from a John Denver song. I’ve just set him singing now, so beware JD references might slip in, just like farts from Boris. As a result of words you paint a  picture and you may not bother to get dressed, you just want to attack the page. In our house we are mostly like refugees in PJs until we go out. The page is dressed but the writer is not, the thought of me naked sat here talking to you just flashed though your mind, luckily you can puke into the waste paper basket, you can blame the cat.

So the writer dashing off yet another 1000 words means he is the mad scientist of prose, and has no time to pose. He could do with a wash and shave and the 3^rd S, before going out to Aldi, SSS complete, no more smelly feet the writer, the writer is fragrant as he skips through the frozen food aisles of Iceland.

I started wanting to write my opinion of writers and their wares, or what they wear. As usual I’ve bounced this way and that, like a rugby played without a jock strap, or Erica Roe. Then my thoughts have flowed, but they do return to rugby as the writer did spend years just wearing a Polo Rugby shirt, the orange one I bought at Sawgrass Mills Florida in 2007, I bought 3 in fact as they were very cheap.

Which brings me back to what I wear. I wear what is comfortable, I won’t be buying any more clothes though as I don’t expect to wear out what I have got. Replacement chairs to sit here talking to you is all I imagine what I’ll wear, because my weight is such that after a year a chair has had enough. Wear and Tear on my chair.

The words we write, they clothe us, all of us, if I can sound pretentious for a moment. For it is what we say that makes the most impact, how we phrase our words, what is actually heard. As a radio person, as a lover of words, I listen to the words as a lawyer does. In the end all we have our our words. If you use words all barriers come down, clothes included, and you are making love to the one you want, not because of the suit of clothes, or the suit of armour. Or the nice shoes or even the very nice perfume. It's because words count far more than clothes, and with the right words you can take a bull by the nose.     

Gender pay Gap

I think women are better than men.

I have two very clever daughters.

Equal pay for equal work.

Now at the BBC we have this row over pay.

If you have a better agent who may take 25% you get more pay.

But it seems Women are paid a lot less.

So do you increase their pay to match men's?

Or do you say all those in the media are prima donas.

So FREEZE men's pay till women catch up?

Or halve men's Pay?

Or  have a 150K ceiling on all pay at BBC?

If you have a ceiling it might encourage new talent.

As the overpaid leave?

A star on Low Pay earns 10 times that of a bus driver?

So kill two birds with one stone, no gender joke, but

IF pay is too high then LOWER it and let new people come in.

Or am I just Jealous of these highly paid people?

And  isn't  the Love of Money the Root of all Evil?

Or am I just a sad jealous man ?

Discuss.

The ideas expressed in this post are Talking Points, make up your own Minds.