Let
Smiles Sing (c)
By
Michael Casey
Well I need to let some sunshine in, and not just because
it's raining here on my hill, the temperature has dropped 15 degrees too, so
I've got my 2 jumpers on and the window is firmly shut. Any hot air from my
farts are welcome to warm me up, though even our cat Totoro refuses to
enter the room, and she is such a smelly farter herself.
So
already you are smiling or disgusted already, so let me continue. I really do
need to cheer myself up at the moment, mind you, so does the whole world. So I’ve
decided today to get back on track with the comedy, or humour if you don’t laugh
as much. I was going to do a bullet point list, but I’ve decided to be more
expansive, fill more space, just like my
farts. And yes on a night shift many years ago, over 30 in fact. We set fire to
a fart in the dark of the office that was going to be renovated. So that flash
on the night time horizon was me, or rather my behind, and so nothing has changed
in the passing years.
Now why
do we smile, or why do we laugh. It’s the old banana skin in life that makes us
delight at others’ misfortune, at least in comedy shows on tv. In real life it
can happen too, such as when you reach for a light switch, only to feel a girl’s
breast by mistake. Yes, I’ve really done that. Let me explain. We had the office
space reconfigured and there was a dark passage. So I reach around the corner
of a door to put the light on, only on the other side was CC, and as I reached,
she was coming around the door in the dark, so I didn’t find the switch just
something far softer. I’ve just remembered didn’t John Cleese also do the same
thing in Fawlty Towers episode, go Google
Fawlty Towers and all will be revealed, or felt. This was 35 years ago maybe.
Moving
swiftly on, being caught on the toilet
because you did not lock the door is
another embarrassing situation, as is being trapped in the toilet on the Paris
to Calais express, and yes I did remember the French for help, I’m trapped in
the toilet. And it took 5 laughing French train guards to let me out, luckily
my luggage has not disappeared when I finally
got back to my seat. So never drink milk and eat baguettes for breakfast
on a train, without checking the state
of the toilets, or just cross your legs like a frog and think of England.
About
the same time I met up in Paris with my little sister and one of my brothers. My
brother worked in Paris for a few years, and my sister was on her year abroad
in Normandy, so hello Yvettot and Caudebec en Coq if you remember my smelly socks
in the hotel.
So we had
a week of fun in Paris, and I ate cheese every day. One night we went to the cinema on the Champs Elysee if memory
serves, we saw Christine the John Carpenter film about the red car. Afterwards
I raced my brother up the street, to the
lamppost, and then to the next lamppost. I could still run then, it was 1984. Meanwhile
our sister was further and further behind. Was it 2am as we’d seen the last show
of the film? You can guess what happened. A car slowed and asked our sister was
she “free”, we’d forgotten about her as we had fun racing each other up the
road. We did joke about it, and she was livid, so don’t tell her you read this
tale.
The
point is that a banana skin in life brings about laughter, even if for the
wrong reasons. Still in Paris, but it was 1998 now, I had not married yet. JC
said go to Gard du Nord area, it was cheap and nice. Only he was wrong. I ended
up in a red light area of Paris, Film Blanche on store signs, which is how the
French describe dodgy movies. Anyway I had a good week in Paris as I really
needed a break as all I did was visit my dad in the old people’s home and work.
JG gave me this lifesaving advice, but JC had recommended the wrong area.
Luckily my French was good enough, though on the bus people muttered Flic Almond,
because in my leather coat I looked like a German copper.
The first
night I had a Chinese, and broke my camera so I asked the girl in the booth at
the base of the Eiffel tower could she fix it by putting her little finger in
the aperture of the camera where it was stuck.
I also had too much wine so I was muttering and swaying as I spoke my
French on the metro. The Eiffel tower girl could not fix the camera, so after
pottering about looking at Paris in the moonlight I went back to the hotel. On
the way I spotted a Kebab shop, so being a lad I had a kebab, this would be on
top of my wine and Chinese.
I got
back to my hotel and in the night I was promptly sick everywhere. My bathroom
was actually an all in one, like climbing into a wardrobe with the shower
practically over the sink. I have never been so violently sick than that night,
I would have gone home, instead I puked and poohed in the wardrobe called the bathroom.
In the morning all I wanted was asprin. So I made my way to the pharmacy. In France
then condom machines are on the wall outside, like bubble gum machines in
America, perhaps America should chew over that idea.
So I went
into the Pharmacy and asked “avez vous des asprin de bas priz” and I was given
a tube, like a tube of extra strong mints. I looked and read what it said on
the packet, “asprin tamponee” What? It’s my head I have a pain in, after food
poisoning. I opened the tube, no string, I took a large mint out, I drunk some
water to wash it down. I fizzed, without bucks. I looked like a rabid dog on
the street next to the condom machine, in my German copper leather jacket. As
all you students of French know, Asprin Tamponne, means asprin in a tube, but I
did not know that, as my head just my head, hurt so much.
So I
hope I’ve made you smile and laugh at the memory of my discomfort. I told the
story a few months later on a Presenting Couse, and they cried with laughter.
Then I
went off to Czech, and that really really was another story, I ended up staying
with a gay doctor as my pen friend had
no room at her place. I also met a professional model, who later visited
Birmingham for a month, and I taught her English, Patricie does she remember me?
The next year I met a Shanghai girl, who was 10 times prettier, then, oh I
married that one. But as you can see My Life is One Big Story. Will I meet that
Kpop Korean girl and dictate Tears for a Butcher, or will my life end in tears,
who knows, just watch this space.
a stretched photo of me
