Guess what?

My bad bad returned, so i'm in agony, can barely walk. i haven't had an episode in a while, just all the other stuff, a merry go round of pain.

so here's something from 6 years ago while i reach for the pain killer...

A Child’s’ Eye View ©

By

Michael Casey

My small daughter had made a  dangly thing, I don’t know how to describe it really. It’s a piece of coloured plastic which has holes in. Well that much is straightforward, then there are flowers and coloured wires hanging from it. A kind of bad hair day made from plastic. In effect its like those doorways which have strips of material  handing down to separate one room from another. There must be a word for it but I’d know it, but I’m  sure somebody will tell me. In films its chip shops and barbers who have these “doors”, I hope you get the picture.

Now that I’ve confused things, let me continue with the tale; though I should add that I have good news to share, I’ve rediscovered Don Camillo again. So I’m expecting a delivery of a Don Camillo omnibus in the post. With such a good feeling I decided to please my small daughter an d find somewhere to display her “art”. WE did think of hanging it in our living room/ kitchen  area, I was about to find a chair to stand on and tie the “art”   to an old curtain rail, but we were overruled by the Voice of Reason which is otherwise know as The Shanghai Mum. If you don’t know Shanghai mums are very strict and don’t appreciate “art”, so me and my daughter were banished from the living room.

We retreated upstairs and we scoured the girls’ room for a location for the modern “art”, in the end we decided if we tied a piece of string to the art we could then hang it up underneath a picture that was on their wall. So we found a ball of string and cut it to the right length, and then attached it to our plastic thingy or watsit, and I was given the task of attaching it to the string that was holding up the painting.

Unfortunately the picture fell off the wall, and even when I found a hammer, all I did was make a mess and the picture fell off the wall again.

So I had failed, Andrew Graham-Dixon would have been moved to tears, so we retreated to my room and hung in on my wall. The plastic “art” was forgotten, the hammer was put away. All that is left are the marks on the wall where the picture had hung for many a year. But at least the girls have a new location where they can put a poster, all they need is gluetac, which is far easier than hammer and nails.

A Talent to Amuse

A Talent to Amuse ©

By Michael Casey

A Talent to Amuse was the title of a book I read 20 or 30 years ago, it was written by Sheridan Morley and it was about Noel Coward. We were watching the Italian Job on TV when I thought about the book, one thing connects to another and then hey presto you have a memory reload. So today I’m going to talk about what amuses us, we have amusement arcades and they are supposed to amuse us, but they just take our money for nothing, which is a name of a song too, but that’s another memory connection.

We find in our house that our youngest daughter amuses us the most, why, because she is spontaneous and so inventive. I think she must have come out of the womb with a Blue Peter badge already in her hand. She can make things out of paper and old cardboard boxes, she was given a dolls house for her birthday by her aunty, so that inspired her to make more dolls houses out of shoe boxes. Your own daughters probably do the same, our daughter is a comedienne too, her Chinese grandfather was always very funny, so we believe she inherited from him. She was actually in the womb, in Shanghai,  listening to him before she was born, sadly he died 9 months after she was born. However such a talent to amuse must have come from somewhere, so we thank him.

Children mimic and exaggerate their parents’ and uncles’ and aunties’ mannerisms, this always makes families laugh. However come the teenage years it’s the parents who imitate the sulks, the  moans and the its not fairs as teenagers slam doors and go to their rooms. Thankfully our daughters have not reached that age and stage, for it is an act, so I have something to look forward too.

Back to amusing though, at the concierge desk 10 years ago I had a minute to deal with a guests query, to sort them out and to keep them happy. You can read a guest by their body language, the trick is to know if you can be quick or be slow, are they happy or are the hurried. By keeping the guests happy they will come back and the hotel will be successful, which in turn is good for you. It was a new build hotel, a 4 star, we actually opened the hotel as they say in the business. We were known as a happy hotel, Roger, Jim and me were  the 1^st point of contact so it was up to us to break the ice and give guests a good experience. We’d crack a joke as we greeted the guests, this is important, why, because nobody wants to come into a funeral parlour, people like to have a good feeling wherever they are. Our manager once went to another hotel and stood there to see how fast the front of house team were. Twenty minutes later he was approached and welcomed, at CPNEC when I was on duty it would be 20 seconds, I was Employee of The Year, very close runner up after all.

Back to amusing, it’s not hard to lift an atmosphere, how do you do it? Smile, just smile and you will feel happier yourself. Imitation works too, as well as mime, or even Irish dancing. I have a teacher friend who does a jig if the students are turning off, then once she’s got their attention she goes back to the lesson. Actually in Teacher Training they ask what kind of teacher you are, Lion tamer  or Entertainer, as well as other styles. When I’ve done Esol English teaching I’ve been an Entertainer to get them interested, then you go through the work, but you have to like a boat on the water and react to the wind so to speak. Mix and match to circumstances, some even said they’d never forget me, I just told them to forget me, but remember their English.

I did get excellent, excellent and exemplary on my external appraisal for teaching too.

Amusement does work as a tool, but you have to balance it out with knowledge. I wrote a play called Shoplife which was called “Sparkling, very real, great fun, hilarious, we could not stop reading it, we hope to produce it, not this season but next” it’s on Amazon Kindle  by the way. Now that’s an out and out comedy which I hope somebody will pick up some day when they cancel Trollied perhaps. 

 Now on a Laugh and Learn basis, you can teach customer service by getting staff to read the play. Shoplife is a comedy and the customer service in it is terrible, that’s why it’s so funny. So you break the play down and say what customer service disasters can you see, what health and safety rules have been broken. All very amusing, but, as a  teaching tool far better than a boring list. You could package it with a dvd and  health and safety material, and yes I’ve thought about this for years, so that people are amused and they learn. Then after that perhaps in reverse order the play  finally gets on stage. John Cleese did have a training company once, so I can follow in his footsteps.

A Talent to Amuse is a great book it may be in a library somewhere, so please go and read it. As for me I’m no Noel Coward, but I do hope that like him I do have a talent to amuse.

Morning All 29th Oct 2017 the sunday after the clocks went back in UK

Well hello all, glad you joined me. I've had my rest more or less so I'LL TRY AND WRITE A NEW PIECE A DAY, or something like that, I need to slow my typing so I don't hit the caps lock again.
Hello Netherlands thanks for stopping by. Ireland seems to have returned too. As well as the usual suspects poland,ukraine uk usa and more.
Windows 10  Creators Update finally worked, but its a bit strange on the family PC I use here sat in the window.
I still haven't won the lottery nor any billionaire wants to invest in my teaching english via humour idea, nor seduce me, a female billionaire I mean. what was that film years ago. Indecent Proposal. I've just googled it was in 1993. 24 years ago.

So I continue writing that's all I good for, 1,188,221 words according to the tally under the coffee stains, with 56,611 words written for 15 Down which will be the next book. And yes the obvious title for book 16 will be Sweet 16, though I'll be 60 by then. Yes I look a only very fat 40ish,but my body feels 90, though in my head I'm 20, you work all that out.

Young at Heart, though with my  unplanned quadruple heart bypass...
So stay tuned as bugs bunny might say.
That's it I need to SSS , shower and shave, I've done the first S already.

Michael
p.s. and if you are that billionairess ....

Sentimentality in Life and in Films

Sentimentality in Life and in Films ©

By Michael Casey

I’ve just watched Hope Floats on the telly, an old Sandra Bullock film it was nice and sentimental and had some nice comic moments in it. Meanwhile this morning my daughter had to go back and collect the keys she had lost while out with an artist friend the day before. Thankfully the security crew had found them, and yes we gave her merry hell last night, as we would have had to change the locks on our doors. So we let her waste 2 hours this morning on 2 buses there and 2 buses back till she retrieved her keys. You don’t get a chauffeur from mum if you make such a stupid mistake.  I told my daughter yesterday that we’d laugh about it in the future, and it would become a treasured memory. Once the screaming finished there would be laughter.

Today dawned and a new day and a new life was born. My wife’s  boss’s wife gave birth to their first child today. So the lost keys gave way to the joy of life. The key to life is babies and family after all. No doubt in future the baby may be baptised.  I mention this because Paul the Vicar was talking to me yesterday and he said the narrowboat trip was cancelled, and that once he cycled into the canal in Birmingham. I smiled as I said it must have been a form of baptism for him. He replied it was the filthiest water he had ever been in. I thought  he’d not met some of the Souls I’d worked with  over my life.

We can be sentimental after the event, at the time in real time things can be  murder. I know from bitter experience how  the Wall, not the one  when you run a Marathon but the one in Life can be very hard or high, but afterwards the Relief is so great. Then you can sit around and laugh as you have a  beer or just a coffee and biscuits and think just how did you survive. Our police, nurses,  teachers, bus drivers, mothers and fathers all have memories that take them to the brink of disaster, mainly other people’s that they have to sort out, our live with. Then afterwards in bed as they talk through the day with their lover or partner, they realise how lucky they were to survive that day. Then they can laugh, even laugh till tears fall.

At a funeral we can say, I hated that bitch, but I loved her, she was terrible to me, but I’ll miss her so much, she lent me that money to start my business but refused to accept payback. She said pay for my funeral instead, that’s why we have 6 black horses, and a hall for 1000 people and a gospel band here at her funeral. Mom I really miss you, all the things you made me do, like always polish my shoes, like always but always shave. And I was just a mechanic, until she pushed me, I ended up with a Limo hire business, and I diversified into the funeral business as I liked the cars so much. That’s  why she said pay for her  funeral.

So life is hard but we are very sentimental about the smallest of things. Nobody dare throw out that old chair, cos uncle always used to sit on it, and he used to tell such outrageous stories, did he really have 27 children? Or was he a liar? The old ladies used to blush when they saw him, and lots of  boys and girls used to come and stuff  ten pound notes in  his top pocket, he was their dad and granddad and great-grandad. He must have has 1000 pounds in that pocket alone. Then when  the priest and the  rabbi and  imam came by he always slipped money into their hands asking for prayers for his soul.

WE are sentimental when we remember old stories and they can hit us like a bullet just when we least expect it, I told a story about how my uncle was visiting from Boston USA and he hadn’t told mum that he was coming so he came in the back door with her sister Hanna and Joe her husband. Then mum turned around to see her brother who she had not seen in years, so she dropped a bowl full of crockery smashing them. Remember then we did not have a phone, mobiles had not been invented and a twice yearly letter was what all you got. A simple ordinary story but when I told my daughter the other day I started to cry. Why? Because I remember the Family Love, my mum, my uncles and aunt and my dad. I have a snapshot of it in my mind, like I’ve said before, even if I don’t have Total Recall I am a vacuum. So emotion gets sucked up too.

All of you reading this all over the world, and especially in Poland have these great great family memories, so you can think of you own family and friends and remember the laughter and anger then laughter again as family life unfolds, and sometime vomits like a baby on the Page of Life. So swop stories as you have a meal today and say Michael Casey encouraged you to think of the Sentimental Times, the Laughter Times. See who has the funniest  story, the stupidest story. 

And when you are in bed with your wife you can share other stories, just use your imagination. Then the children will ask mum and  day why were you laughing so much in bed last night. You can tell them as Clare Moore once did, when her dad asked her why she was laughing so much in her bed room. Its Michael Casey he’s making me laugh, she was reading  my stories.

Alternative Swearing

Alternative Swearing ©

By Michael Casey

Swearing is the norm nowadays, but if it defuses anger and prevents physical violence  then I’d say it’s a good thing, it’s a safety valve. In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe “Belgium”   was the worse thing that could be said. Nowadays everybody swears in films, American TV is very strict so that when it comes to films all the swears that could not be said on tv are said on film. I remember watching Saturday Night Fever when it first came out and thinking they don’t need all this swearing, and later the film was edited so that it got a lower certification and more people could enjoy John Travolta, as you all know I am Birmingham’s answer to John Travolta.

Now how to we prevent the air going blue, so that the ladies don’t blush and aren’t offended by all the language. I was talking  to Bernard Manning the other day, well in my imagination anyway, and he gave me loads of ideas, as did Lennie Bruce, they share a cloud together in Heaven, it’s a blue cloud of course. You aren’t calling me a “flowering petal” are you? I’ll be very angry if you are,  “you’re just a custard cream anyway” Now don’t look at me with that tone of  voice or I’ll “dip  your biscuit in my tea” and there won’t be any “sugar in it either” Are you calling me a “Politician, take it back you  table you” ok, so we’ve all calmed down a bit.

“Politician” is the rudest word of all in the alternative swearing dictionary, though don’t broadcast this but I was once called “A lollypop lady”, I nearly used a “liquorice” on the person who called me it.  Our local MP is a bit of a “custard pie” it must be true it’s written on all the bus shelters. Tell me why he is a custard pie, that I cannot deny, he really IS a custard pie. What do politicians, real politicians call themselves?  Honest as the day is long is what politicians call themselves, but in reply the press corps  call them “A bunch of Daylight Savings, fiddling with the minute hands” which sounds about right. Just a moment I can hear my phone ringing, no not another metaphor, my phone really is ringing.

I’m a bit flustered, that phone call was the worst I’ve ever had in my life, an hour of heavy breathing, then the lady called me, I can’t bring myself to repeat what she said, it was so shocking, an hour of heavy breathing from a lady I can handle, but she just called me a “political WRITER”.

this was from May 2012...

The Clocks go back tomorrow

GMT returns tomorrow, if that is the correct term.
Anyway an extra hour in bed.
I wish I could turn back the clock on my health 2013
Before Arthritis and  unplanned Quadruple Heart Bypass
I'm still alive but as well as my daily bread I have my daily pain
And nightly my bed of pain
Pleasure in bed would be fart more fun.

So
I'll write something new tonight or tomorrow, depending on whether or not I find some good films to watch.

Sadly News is stranger than fiction.

Look at North Korea, and today the UK government said it was them who attacked our NHS

I wrote that fact down weeks ago in a piece.

If you have decades of experience in a subject then you can see what others cannot see
or want to admit.

So I really do hope, Peace can be maintained or its the Devil's Alternative

Which nobody wants and History will blame everybody.

So 8million die or 330 million die.

The logic of insanity says blaze of "glory" may be the only exit.

So I pray that the scruffy monk, Padre Pio does indeed intervene or Uri Geller like abilities can help stop missiles from flying.

Making love to North Korean Army girls and boys would be much more fun,  but maybe I'm just an uncurable romantic.

All I want to do is make people laugh, everywhere, as laughter takes down peoples defences, we are naked before each other. And wouldn't you want to go to bed and not to war.  

Now play Frankie Goes to War's Relax and go to bed with your local North Korea Army girl, and use your personal missile technology to create babies via love.

And yes that is a metaphor.