Forgiveness

Forgiveness ©

By

Michael Casey

I wanted to write something new today as I’ve skipped a few days due to the pain monster. So I hadn’t thought what to write, sorry talk to you about. I’ve just seen the end of the Johnny Cash film so when it finished I thought there’s a theme, forgiveness.There’s all kinds of forgiveness, and I’ll see where the words take me, so if you are sitting comfortably, or if you have finished that bottle of vodka Boris then I’ll begin, can’t you put something else in your mouth?

Now on a point of comedy I don’t need to say any more to Boris, as if I said this or that you’d all think of the other, so sometimes you don’t even need to say one word as the audience or the reader is ahead of you,or with you. Which reminds me of an old Les Dawson joke, but you can google and Utube him for yourselves. Les was my size but wider and not as tall, if that’s not a contradiction in terms, and sometimes he was dressed as an ugly woman forever rearranging her bussoms, in the best Panto tradition. So forgive me for sidetracking myself.

Now I’ve taken off my mother’s old clothes and am sat naked here talking to you via the computer, luckily I have no camera or you will all be sick over your screens. This is the joy of radio comedy, you have this mental picture in your mind which is always far better than a tv image. So do you forgive me?

How many times do you forgive your girl for cheating with the milkman or the postman, until it is you having the special delivery 9 months later? Are girls not allowed to cheat? Men cheat but girls cannot, that’s the rule, men are in charge after all. Is that what you believe? See I’m asking you to question yourself and your beliefs. This culture is better than that culture and so on. Or do you think we are all naked and equal before God, that’s if you believe in any God.

See I was almost serious for a sentence, but you prefer the comedy so I’ll ask you to follow me down the garden path, past Gill from Stats MR my old university of mirth. You will forgive some but not others, why is that Because of the twinkle in their eye, like Jim I know, his twinkle allowed him to get away with a lot more that the average person. Or that girl’s smile would melt any heart and allow her to get away with blue murder.

I’ll never forgive those bastards they drunk the last of the milk in the staff fridge. I’ll cut their balls off. Obviously she didn’t, she just peed in the milk bottle and left it there for the night shift crowd to find. The next morning there was a note on the fridge from the night shift. An apology? NO. Just a question, where could they buy such delicious milk again. So she did the same trick, left her pee in the fridge, and again a similar note the next day. This went on for a week. Till finally a clear blue pregnancy test was glued to the fridge door. Congratulations you are pregnant.

Did she forgive the prankster? She stopped overnight to confront him, only he had such a twinkle they ended up making love in the paper store. And yes then she really was clear blue, but she did forgive him.

My brother actually did do something similar, he peed in the bottom of the old glass pop bottles, because he knew I always drunk the dregs. I suppose it was his revenge for me putting a red hot poker on his leg, other that that we were very close, well close enough to put a poker on his leg. At least he did not do an Edward II on me.

Forgiveness comes in many forms, big and small. After wars great forgiveness is needed, political movements are needed, and the EU began as a effort to heal the divisions on the European continent. Though now some would say the EU hates the UK for being the child that says the Emperor is naked. And will never forgive us for breaking up the party. Though History tells us that nothing lasts forever.

I shoved in a serious paragraph to get you thinking. I’ll finish for tonight with the most obvious of statements. The person you need to forgive the most is yourself. Look in the mirror and change if you like. We all need to let go and forgive. I did not say the right thing today, or yesterday or these past few years. People misunderstand me and I’m too old and tired and sick to waste my time explaining things. Why is the world so fast nowadays.Nobody listens.

We can only do our best, and each new dawn, whether or not we watch from the night shift window over the Blues ground for 14 years or just a random morning when we get up early for a pee, each  dawn gives us a chance to forgive ourselves and everybody we meet. Without forgiveness we have a cancer inside us, like rotten cheese we forgot to take out of our shopping bag. We look high and low for the stink but cannot find it, finally its in the back of an old cupboard. And yes 25 years ago I really did have a rotten cheese in a bag, really no metaphor.

So laugh at Michael Casey the fat silver haired writer in shades from Birmingham England. If you are laughing at this now wherever in the world you are then you have Forgiven me my Trespasses. If you you can forgive me the stupid writer then you can forgive yourselves. Then Boris and Doris can stop leaving pee in the fridge, and make love and babies, but please get a room you are squashing all the paper, how can I write stories on squashed paper?   

The Trouble with Technology something from 2001 when my dad was still alive

The Trouble with Technology (c)

                   By

          Michael     Casey

The trouble with technology is that we all use it, now if we just left it all alone then we all have no problems. Simple really but we all just can't leave it alone, we all just have you use it . In the beginning if we wanted water we'd fetch the bucket and drop it down a well. My mother was born just  30feet from the sea, but they were fortunate because they had their own well, so they went outside and dropped the bucket down the well and then they had water. Then technology comes along and we just turn a tap and we have clean water instantly. We have hot water too, at the turn of a tap. In one generation so many changes. However technology then works against us, because we assume it will always work and that there will be no problems

We don't even know where the stopcock is, so our homes flood and then we discover we are not covered by our insurance.

My mother grew up with an oil lamp hanging above, no luxury of gas lamps for her, as for electricity, that was just a dream. Nowadays how could any society manage without electricity, its impossible to believe life without electricity. No tv, no radio, no freezers, no street lighting, no traffic lights, the list goes on and on. As for indoor plumbing, the luxury of a hot bath, the WC in the home. My mother grew up with no indoor plumbing, if you needed the bathroom as the American's say, then you'd leave the house and pick your spot in a field with the cows gazing on, as for toilet paper you had a blade of grass to wipe your  %^**. As for me we did not have such hardships, we had an outside WC, which we did not have to share with any other family, just 8 Caseys sharing our outside bog/toilet. There was a yard light to illuminate the way and a light in the toilet too. Which was sheer luxury compared to my mum's and my dad's childhoods. My dad would always come home and immediately switch off the yard light because it was wasting electricity. Then a shout would go up "Put the light on", and my dad would always say "I didn't know". Then there was the indignity of running out of paper. My brother Tony had a very good sense of humour so it was always the case that I'd shout from the yard "More Bog Roll" which is the English slang for toilet paper. Tony was kind so he'd always bring out a fresh supply  of paper, only he liked to tease so he'd push one sheet, just one sheet of paper under the door and say that's all there was in the house, and that mom said I'd have to use my finger. Then he'd go away laughing. He always left a full roll of  paper on the doorstep, much to my relief.

Simple technology, we all take for granted, water and electricity. What does all this technology do for us ? It gives us independent comfortable lives, we have clean water, hot water, light and warmth. Then with the miracle of TV we can all watch the world go by, from the comfort of our homes, or the local bar whichever is our true home. We are now a global village as has often been said, but then we become  anti social as its easier to watch tv than to interact with real people, we'd rather watch fiction on tv than have a real life. But with technology we can send an email to our neighbour across the  road, with pictures and video, rather than leave our castle homes, rather than going over for a coffee and a bar of chocolate.That's one view the optimistic view says that we truly can break down barriers by using the miracle of email to keep us connected though we are thousands of miles apart. I have to hold my hand up and admit that I am an email Junky, I did send  up to 5 emails a day to my friend in another part of the office, because we were both having fun. Then when I fell in love with my one true love it was ONLY because of the miracle of email that our love survived.I sent my girlfriend  long long  emails everyday for 6 months. She was in Shanghai while I was in Birmingham. My heart was breaking with love and hope until finally she came back to me. I'd come home from work at 3am and hit the keyboard, with luck because of the time difference we'd actually be live  and talking almost in real time.You cannot imagine how heart rending it was to come home to an email, to get up in the afternoon and read an email before going on night shift.I think whoever invented email should be made a saint, without email our love would not have lasted. An exchange of letters takes 14 days from Birmingham to Shanghai, so thank God for email and God himself KNOWS just how much I mean that, Sainthood is not high enough reward for the inventor of email.Is it Saint Bill Gates ? The telephone is fantastic, but too expensive, I know my phone bill reached 4 figures, but an email can be read over and over again, and even printed off, so it is a letter.

So I confess email is the most important leap in technology of the 20th Century, as far as I am concerned.

The next stage in the technology story   are mobile phones that send/receive video and tv, so we are literally wired up where ever we are in the world science fiction becoming science fact. We all used empty match boxes to pretend we were Captain Kirk  communicating to the Enterprise but now they are here for real. If you have been in a theatre,church,hospital and these things bleep you have to decide for yourself are they useful  or just a real pain in the *&^%. On balance they are good, but people have to be a lot more considerate, nobody else wants to hear their conversations if they are in church or at the theatre or even cinema. I remember a conversation I had at dinner on Xmas Eve just gone, the guy sat next to me happen to design mobile phones, he was very very good at his job, but I did warn caution about saturation point being reached. Then today 4months on, I am proved right, the mobile giants are in trouble, why, because of saturation point now being reached.

I don't want to end on low note, so I'll tell another anecdote, we all remember when we had our first colour tv, how wonderful it was and how we all marvel and the colours. The BBC started showing snooker because of the colours, and now tv without snooker would be unimaginable. Then remote control came in, so we'd try different positions and even outside the house and through the glass into the room where the tv was. Technology makes us all like children, its supposed to be a triumph of engineering and technology but really its our greatest toy, and our greatest joy. On Saturday my dad will come out  of the old peoples home to spend the day with me and my Chinese wife in our home. I'll be able to show him the internet and I hope  I can bring tears of joy to his eyes as I show him County Kerry on the computer monitor. Sitting in my living room in Birmingham he can read the Irish newspapers and see his homeland where he started as a blacksmith  in the 1930s. This is how we should be using technology.

                                              End

To the Very Gates of Hell

THIS IS A WORLD EXCLUSIVE I'VE HAD THIS IS MY HEAD FOR A FEW YEARS NOW READ ON
DECEMBER 11TH, 2014 13:02
To the Very Gates of Hell
By michaelgcasey
To The Very Gates Of Hell ©
By Michael Casey
Mrs Murphy watched in horror, just yards in front of her Fr. Dan was going to be slain, the Columbians had him surrounded. Their guns were drawn and there was no Hope, he’d be as dead as a doornail in seconds. He was her favourite priest no he’d be gone to meet his maker. She could see his face, his eyes were fixed on hers, Pray for me he begged.
Fr. Dan  was not afraid of the Columbians, but he was afraid of his Final Judgement, he has killed two men in anger when he was younger. He had confessed this to Mrs Murphy when telling her that her soul was spotless as driven snow compared to his.
Some thugs had teased him and tortured him, trying to make him say bad things about Mary, the Virgin Mary. They had carved curses on his back with knives, but he would never say bad things about Mary. When his chance came he broke free and used all his Martial Arts skills to survive. Only he killed 2 of them and crippled 2 more with the other 2  running for their lives.
Jesuits know how to put the Fear of God into bad people, but   Fr. Dan feared God too, he had committed a mortal sin, thou shalt not kill, and he had killed twice. Now he was afraid, afraid for his soul, at this moment of his death he was afraid. His eyes were beseeching, Mrs Murphy would witness his death and his soul would burn in Hell’s fire for all eternity.
Mrs Murphy wanted to charge the Columbians down and run at them, but they had their guns ready, the situation was hopeless. Mrs Murphy did have Faith though, the Faith of a Child, as the bullets flew her heart broke, her womb exploded in love and fear, she lost her mind, but she kept her Faith.
I’ll go to the Gates of Hells and I’ll jump in the way, like jumping under a bus, I’ll catch Fr. Dan’s soul and stop it going into Hell. I’ll wrap my Rosary around the Gates of Hell, keeping them closed. God is good, God is good, it cannot be the end for Fr. Dan he’s such a lovely priest.
In Hell it was so dark and cold, the deepest of deep space, she couldn’t really see further than her hands holding her Rosary. If only she had her friends with her they would weld the gates of hell closed, nobody would burn in hell ever. She knew how to pray, she knew how to pray.
She felt heavy cold as ice breath on her neck, she could hear mocking laughter, but she could not see anybody. She tried to say her Rosary only her lips stuck together it was so cold, she tried to move her fingers though the beads, her mind was numb, it was like being turned into an ice cube. There is no love in hell, no love at all.
Mrs Murphy stumbled to her knees, the laughter, the icy laugher increased, the cold, the numbing cold went down her neck and to her very core. She had to force herself to remember why she was there. She was there to save a soul, she started with the Our Father. She continued with the 1st Hail Mary. Fr. Dan was a good priest, he had refused to say bad things about Mary, they had tortured him, they had tortured him.
Jesus, Jesus forgive him, Mrs Murphy wanted to scream but it was so cold, so very cold. If only she had somebody saying the Rosary with her. The Gates of Hell cannot withstand the Power of The Rosary, he mother and her grandmother had told her. Mrs Murphy was using her best beads, the  ones that had been repaired when she was praying for Big Sid when he was shot. But now she was praying for a soul, not just a life.
Mrs Murphy managed to move her lips, it was just so cold, so very cold in the dark space of hell. Hope sprung from her lips, Jesus, Mary and Joseph she managed to scream, a scream that would be lost in the dark cold depths of space that was Hell.
Mrs Murphy’s head was spinning, her womb had exploded, she had lost her mind, she was dizzy, she wanted to vomit. But she had to pray on, she reached the 2nd Hail Mary on her Rosary. Her mind was playing tricks on her, she could hear her grandmother praying, she could hear her old dear friend Mrs Casey praying, she could hear Mrs Noonan praying.
On she prayed, it was just so dark and cold in the deep space of Hell. But then in the very distance she saw a light, a tiny tiny flicker, like the lights in the window of houses in Cromane at Christmas, like the lights in Dingle over the bay. Help was on its way, help was on its way.
Warmth seeped into Mrs Murphy’s body, the Darkness flickered and with an explosion of Love the cold and dark of Hell disappeared. Saint Michael the Archangel smiled and caught Mrs Murphy as she fainted. I thought it was all over she said, Michael laughed, it’s never over, it’s never over. Mary, Mum heard the Rosary so she sent me to investigate. Every Rosary everywhere is felt by her, by her womb. He hasn’t got a chance against the Rosary, never has, never will. And is he wants the argue he’ll have to talk to my sword said Michael as he brandished his sword.
But, Fr. Dan is dead and his soul must be heading to Hell, Mrs Murphy interrupted. Saint Michael the Archangel smiled and cried at the same time. God is good, and as you know his mercy is infinite. Come now I have to put you back together. But Fr. Dan’s soul is in peril, he must be shot and dead in the gutter by now insisted Mrs Murphy not understanding.
Time is just a joke as far as God is concerned, explained Saint Michael as he gathered up Mrs Murphy. He had to get her back to Earth and save Fr. Dan’s life in moments. Brandishing his sword Saint Michael flew through deep space on his way to Birmingham.
The observatories noticed a bright light from the deepest deepest part of space, it was moving fast, too fast. Many times faster than the speed of life. It was heading for Earth, if it hit earth it would be the end, the end of Civilisation and everything. It was impossible, where had it come from?
Michael did an orbit of the moon and had a look at the space station, one lonely astronaut had lost his love of life, Michael could feel the lack of love. So Michael waved at the astronauts before heading for Birmingham. Birmingham the centre of the universe, well for this one night.
Saint Michael gently lay Mrs Murphy down, her body and soul and heart united again. Saint Michael strolled towards Fr. Dan the Columbians had pulled the triggers, the bullets were flying, the bullets were flying. Saint Michael winked at an unbelieving Fr. Dan, Michael wrapped Fr. Dan in his wings and started singing, Ave Ave Maria, it was all angels’ favourite song.
God is good Dan, said the Archangel, and Mary said she was so proud of you too, she’s never stopped praying for you. You have many decades of work to do, just don’t be too hard on yourself. And as for the Columbians, they have no idea what’s going to happen next.
&&&&&&&&
ok folks, this is part of the finale to Tears for a Butcher which I haven’t even finished writing. I may never get around to it either. This would be chapter 12
I’ve written 1.5 chapters so far and have

***
another rediscovered piece

This Love is for Eternity

This Love is for Eternity ©
By Michael Casey

This Love is for Eternity
This Kiss is from my Heart
This Touch is full of Warmth
This Sigh shakes more than an Earthquake
This Whisper crashes Louder than the Sea on the Shore
This Caress is Deeper than Thunder
This Look is Brighter than Lightning
This Desire is greater than the Grand Canyon
This Song sings louder than birdsong
This Hope reaches beyond the Stars
This Love is mine freely given to the one I love
This Love is yours freely returned like the Tide itself
This is us, not one but two, but one again
This is all I can offer, this is my Prayer
This Love is all I have, my heart is Empty now
As I look to the Stars I hope my prayers have been enough
For this Love is Eternal
For it is my very Soul


**************

just stumbled on this when I was looking at old photos, my words were attached to a  photo somehow

A New Day or Get Up and Start Again

A New Day or Get Up and Start Again ©

By

Michael Casey

I’m yawning I’m had my breakfast and the pain is subsiding, yes it’s boring for you to hear this you just want to hear the next story, but pain does slow the Writer, me, down. So today I’ll talk to you about Sleep, I just decided 2 seconds ago after the yawn that I’ll be sleep talking, or rather talking about sleep. Yes my ideas are as clever as that, so let’s see where the story will take us. If I were clever I’d sweat over the words the meaning and the commas. As this is Radio I never worry, and frankly its what the words are and how they flow off the page, or from my mouth that matters. Note to writers who cannot write, I won’t read anything that is badly written, no matter how good the ideas. I got that tip from Mary a radio producer at the BBC maybe 30 years ago. And the rest is History.

I’ve probably sent you to sleep by now, but sleep really is so important, I speak as somebody who wakes every 2 hours, and on some occasions when I wake I say “that was deep sleep” or if I have to get up because of the pain after an hour or two up I go back to bed when I’m so tired I’ll sleep through the pain. Sorry I’m boring you again, by the way Boris in Poland YOU never have that problem because you work so hard you sleep like a baby. Besides which your wife helps you sleep.

When we are kids we don’t want to go op bed we want to stop up and watch Grimm on Tv, so dad has to carry us up to bed and tuck us in. This is all fine and good, but carrying kids up the stairs to bed when dad is tired is dangerous. Once in the children’s bedroom I tripped over the bedsheets while still carrying a child, and fell heavily on the bed. Breaking the bed. Yes really. If suddenly 115 kilos falls on a bed it will break. In The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker Patrick and June break the bed and have to superglue it back together,but that was while creating a baby, before June was carrying a baby inside her. And that was 30 years ago when I wrote it, then Patrick was made organise a fete for the children’s home as a penance set by his priest, go read the book.

So sleep is so important, especially for kids, nowadays just switch off the Wifi and they will soon go to bed and sleep. In the old days we would listen to the radio and fall asleep with it on bedsides us. I got hooked on radio when I was maybe 8, and I remember missing the end of The Ghost and Mrs Muir on the Book at Bedtime, my brother had to tell me what happened, we had the radio in bed with us.

Gentle music does aid sleep,as does gentle lighting, nobody had screens and phones and so on when I was growing up 50 years ago, yes I’m that old, but still so handsome, swoon all you ladies out there, ok just remember to rinse your false teeth and put them under your pillow. You do have to prepare for sleep, wash your feet at least, and any other important bits. We used to wash in the kitchen sink, an old Belfast sink as they call them, then a bath at the weekend. Yes the good old days, but we did get an inside toilet when I was 10. Before we got rid of the lodgers from the family house my dad used to carry down a piss pot belonging to an old lady struck off doctor, yes such sweet memories.

Yes, darkness is needed to sleep, so thick curtains might be needed like they have in hotels. But you may hate total darkness so you leave a chink in the curtains, or you sleep with the landing light on. All of which is great until your cat becomes a teenager, 2 in our years. So I am on my 2 hour catnap, and then Totoro wakes me up, not the children or anybody else, just me. She claws at the window, its not a burglar, just a cat wanting a tin roof because she’s so hot. I wake suddenly so I have to let her out the window, telling her not to come back pregnant. In actual fact we think she’s adopted a little Polish boy a few doors away, or it could be the Indian corner shop owner, we’ll never know as cats don’t tell,  they are as quiet as the Sicilian Mafia, or the grave.

Meanwhile I go back to sleep, back to my one sided position, my scars don’t allow me to rotate like a kebab on a spit any more. Sleeping in the nude means my scars on my legs rub together, and lately my nipple on the left chest is mega sensitive. If you blow on my nipple I’ll scream and jump 2 feet into the air. Apart from that I have perfect blood pressure. Then I drift off dreaming my dreams. We all have our dreams but I’ll keep mine to myself. Some things I don’t share.

Most people toss and turn in their sleep,its almost like watching sailors using flags for messages, all the various positions. Beds and sleeping are so much nicer nowadays.Though I have broken 2 other beds.My main bed, a pine bed lasted over 20 years. I replaced it with a metal one, only it buckled under my 17.5 stones, or 112kilos of tossing and turning, that was when I could toss and turn and rotate like that kebab on a spit. So we left it outside, the legs like a collapsed giraffe. A passing Pole in a van took it away, then once he was at the corner he took it out and banged it back into position. I’m sure he must have though that fat bastard is just too fat, this’ll do for me and my Maria. So God Bless him, and Maria and all their babies.

The other broken bed was actually a wooden one, it had a tiny crack in it when I put it together, then 3 years later the crack kept on growing. BANG. In the middle of the night it broke on one side and I was in a mattress sandwich. So then I bought an industrial strength bed. I could barely lift it and fix it together. This was over 3 years ago, before the heart business. Its a really nice looking bed, but if ever we do finally move house, it will stay in the house as I could never shift it. Some days I can barely carry the shopping home, remember my breast bone was cut open to fix my heart, and the arthritis comes and does so I limp or don’t limp.

Anyway lets get back to bed, now there’s a offer, no Boris not you, I only really like Oriental girls, my wife is a Shanghai girl remember. So in the old days Duvets were not even invented.You just had 6 blankets on top of your bed in winter, that’s why you have such strong arm muscles, pulling the blankets over you. You really need a pulley to pull them. We did have an eiderdown 50 years ago, just the one on my brother’s bed. But duvets were not even invented. Just a note,when you went on holiday you had to bring your own sheets and pillowcases, so as a family we had 6 cases for the Casey’s bed linen.

I remember now I had a fold up metal bed, that I used to strum on the big springs at the side, thinking I was musical only for one of my brothers to shout shut up we want to sleep. I spent a lot of time in bed when I was unemployed, then one day I just decided to changed and then my Protestant work ethic kicked in, I’m catholic by the way Boris, hence my 1,200,000Words sending you all to sleep.

The other thing about my own sleep experience is shift working, I did 14 years of night shifts. So I used to go to bed at 9am and sleep till 5pm, this really does ruin your body. But I did get to see naked Dawn every morning, the Sky Boris not the girl in the flat opposite who never closes her curtains. As children Christine at the bottom of the garden always used to undress as far as her bra and knickers before only then retreating out of view, this was our sex education. She would be 80 now. But Dawn, in the sky was fantastic and we all used to stop work at 5am or so to watch her over the Blues’ ground.

You are always tired when you work shifts,the 1^st day off is recovery day, then you enjoy your other days, but suddenly you are back on nights again, 50% of my working time was nights. My mother once woke me with the news that John Paul II had been shot, I remember crying before I’d even got out of bed.

I could tell you more about sleep or is it beds or sex education? But I have to eat now and eating always important, you cannot sleep or work or even enjoy sex on an empty belly. Though I’m sure Boris in Poland and his cousin in Ukraine have stories of their own, maybe they’ll start their own blog instead of reading mine, or are they just stealing them and calling themselves Boris Casey the Pole in Birmingham? I don’t know, so long as I can see a few readers on the score board, sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite. One final thing Boris, I used to work another shift pattern when I got home at 3am. We discovered it was the perfect time to conceive, so you can either get a job as a bouncer and come home and play doctors and nurses at 3am. Or set your alarm clock. Sleep tight Boris and wife, but in 9 months time you will only have sleepless nights…

The Perils of House Hunting our year 2017

The Perils of House Hunting ©

By Michael Casey

Well we saw a couple more houses today, though I actually missed it as I was seeing the GP, my kidneys are falling apart now, I sound like a right wreck, but I still look like George Clooney, I bet you are all so jealous. I can also see the irony that my daughter wants to be a doctor, and I may need my own private doctor such is the state of my body, but God is Good as my mum used to say….

Now house hunting does improve your geography as you say where is that all the time, thankfully www.rightmove.co.uk has maps so you can look and see where a place is. Oh it’s in Harborne or in Winson Green with a great view of the prison, such a historic place, or near the city centre and all such places left right and centre LIE the estate agents. So you look on the map and see where it really is. Or its in Edgbaston they say when really it’s in pretend Edgbaston or pretend Harborne, less Rolls Royces and more white van man territory.

If you can decide on a map which area you really want to live in then it’s easier, in our case it must be walkable to the girls’ school. My sister chimes in that she had to walk for 30 mins there and 30 mins back for 7 years to her convent school, our two would never walk so far. For me it must be within 10 mins walk to a shop just so I can get milk and bread, rice and toilet paper comes in bulk so we never run out of that. It must not be up too steep a hill either, my walking anywhere as if I were a Sherpa are sadly over. But at least we now know geographically where we want to live.

The only problem is that the houses disappear like mist or spray off a shaking dog’s back. The last 4 went in a week, though I hope that this means our own house goes just as fast, and maybe just maybe I’ll get more for it when I flog it. Note for American readers flog means sell, it has no sexual connotations, though that does give me some ideas…

You look online and the specs look good and the pictures look even better, so you go and look and the room size is always wrong. The 3^rd bedroom is always the right size for a pigmy, or a child of 7, then the estate agent neglects on purpose to mention the central heating boiler which takes up half the space on one wall. I know from bitter experience all about central heating boilers. Mine was condemned and had a do not use sticker stuck to it, this was when I decided that I’d have it serviced, this was a couple of years after I’d been using it decades ago. British Gas were more than happy to overcharge me and install a new one, this was equivalent to 2 months salary.

Never accept a house with a boiler in a bed room, you may just die of carbon monoxide poisoning, or it could be safe but would you let any child of yours sleep in such a space? And yes have a gas safe certificate done before you move in, don’t be naïve as I was decades ago.

Yes this house has a tree in the garden, it’s so lovely to hear birdsong in the mornings. Yes that is true, but not if you can barely open the kitchen window because the tree’s branches are pushing against a window. And Robins are sweet at Christmas but not with their beaks against your kitchen window. Once I actually saw a house like that, the house cost 5K that’s how long ago it was.

Stairs are nice, they help you get to the bathroom, and I know all about needing bathrooms grace a mes kidneys, but if they are so steep you need a rope and oxygen to climb them, then that house should be crossed off the list, you will grow old and never reach the bathroom but pee on the bottom step of the stair. Ditto with zigzag stairs that are so narrow, stairs should be manageable when you are drunk or chasing your girlfriend to bed. You don’t want to fall over and bang your head and spend the night unconscientious on the stairs instead in bed with your girl. That would be a memorable night but for all the wrong reasons.

A garden is nice, but not one which is more like the Battle of the Somme, or the reverse where the garden is like a NCP car park, low maintenance garden, they mean Paddy and Mick poured concrete all over it, or their cousin Shamus tipped the left-overs from where they were working into your back garden.

Always look at the roof too, the stars at night are such a pretty sight, but you should go outside to view them, not look up from your living room window. Talking of night, at night you switch the lights on. And if the plugs and switches look like something from Dad’s Army the wartime comedy then maybe but maybe you may want to reconsider buying that property, or adding it to the costs the house will incur.

I cannot explain what a house means to me or to you, it’s just a 15min decision that you end up paying 25years for.  Children cost more money and you never stop paying for them, though kids are always more fun than houses. I’ll let you into a secret how did I choose the house we all live in now. The dog lifted his leg and peed and only then did I notice the for sale sign. So I bought the house.   Yes really, my sister in law who’s a lawyer did suggest that I borrow her dog and maybe he could pee on the right house for us. As you all rush out to take the dog for a walk I’ll go and cock my own leg and go to the bathroom, 2 toilets are a good idea when house hunting too. Just be careful where your dog pees, I hope its love at first sight, the house he pees on that is.