Pain in the Night

Pain in the Night ©

By Michael Casey

Well I just had to get up such is my pain, other pains are available, but I can only speak of mine. I’m writing this from the very edge, if I cannot get to sleep because of the pain then I may as well tell it into another story. I had my quadruple heart bypass 15 months ago now, and I’m still screaming in pain.

I was fit and healthy until the surgery, or so I thought, but without it I’d now be dead, more than likely. So what gets me screaming, the Beatles or am I a Stones man? You get a dull pain in the centre of your chest, and it gets bigger, it’s like a craw hammer pulling you apart, as I was telling the nice lady the other day. Then just for fun you’ll have a stabbing feeling right to the heart, like stabbing yourself with your pencil. This is due to the fact that you’ve been split open like a Kentucky Fried Chicken so that the surgeon can work on you.

I hope I’m not putting potential heart patients off the alternative could be death or major heart attack. I was talking to my priest, he did try and hide in Aldi to avoid me, but anyway he said that at our age it could be 3 years before recovery. I’ve just jumped out of my seat as I had a twinge. The whole of my left chest is a danger zone, one touch or even a lick from our cat would be enough to make me scream. My heart team guy said just consider what has gone on in there.

I now have a party trick, if I put an ice cube on my right nipple it is really really cold, but on my left nipple I can hardly feel a thing. I don’t have any nipple tassels so get that idea out of your head. What else can I do, I can convulse in pain and scream at the same time. Muscular Skeletal pain it’s called, I get it in my left side, though my pet name for it is BASTARD, I was recovering really fast from my bypass surgery when that came along.     

Arthritis joins in for fun, it’s a race around the track for all my pains, up down and around, which does sound like a song title. Which part of the body gets it first and where will it share to. I can be limp and then not limp at all. I can have it in my shoulders and then my hips, but never on my lips so far.

I have paracetalmol  for my heart and a slap on pain killer for other bits, the paracetalmol gives you man boobs after a bit, so you end up stealing your daughter’s bra. Movelat is for other areas and is fast acting, which is just you want as a freezing pain slides down from your shoulder to your heart. Then you have another pain, but that’s just constipation, which you get as a result of all the pain killers.

Now I am recently getting a pain in my knee and my leg scars have joined in just for fun, while you folks think I’m just a pain in the arse.

 So try and keep on smiling when you can hardly think and breath due to the pain. I’d also like to know what did they leave in my chest, as sometimes when I move I can feel as if I’m being stabbed from the inside. Or maybe it’s a pacemaker, or it’s somebody’s remote control, I’m told in the future I’ll have fun at airports because of the metal stitches inside me.

I didn’t intend sharing all this with you, but its either that or stay tossing and turning in bed, and screaming at the moon, the local wolves have started to complain I’m putting them out of a job.

Why do I see Nick's Photo

May 13th, 2016 15:04

Why do I see Nick’s Photo

By michaelgcasey

Hello, I was in a very warm waiting room for most of yesterday, so today I feel terrible and a bit dizzy. Other than that I’m still fat, and alive, which is what I say  to the girls in Aldi. Now we’ve had our fun with Robert Peston, I didn’t get an invite either, sob.
As you know I google my name everyday just to see if I’m alive, no Times Obits for me, you can see how the tides are moving by a quick google.
Now I keep on getting Nick Robinson’s photo in 3rd position, no this in not Nick in tights, though his extension has to be seen to be believed, its a dog shed with an ice cream cone flue, and he is always coughing all over John Humbries, and how he got that morning breakfast gig after all he did in that shop of his, until he was served a good pint of Stella Artois. Where was I, art tois, or are 4, you’ll soon get the five of it.
Ok, that’s enough of the bad radio4 puns.
Just tell me Nick, why are you number 3, or is that you talking a number 1 and a number 2 at my expense..

Robert Peston and Me

May 9th, 2016 20:45

Robert Peston and Me

By michaelgcasey

It’s been decided that Robert’s Sunday show needs a lift. So I’m coming to the rescue, the Birmingham equivalent of Roland Rat is there just to steady the ship, should the rats leave then that is another matter.

Big Bad Russell Grant in his wobbly jumper is not available, and did you know Russell is named after the Autumn leaves, anyway he’s really thin he just pretends to be fat to give himself gravitas like that other political reporter, the famous one whose name I cannot remember, well him anyway.

So just as I used to watch a bit of breakfast tv after my night shift in the computer room, I will now be doing my bit for daytime tv. But instead of watching I’ll be delivering a Postcard from Birmingham each week on  Robert Peston’s show go to www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com  for a sample.

Now if you believe that then you should be watching Andrew Marr instead, Politics makes you go  blind,  no wonder people vote the way they do, they cannot see the paper, it’s all a load  of BALLOTS.

Pussy the Pain Eating Cat

Pussy the Pain Eating Cat ©

By Michael Casey

Pussy was a moggy, a battered and abandoned moggy, thrown over a high wall next to a stream, expected to drown and die. Cruelty beyond words, absolute evil cruelty. They say cats have nine lives, this one must have had 99 x 9 lives.  Pussy landed in the grounds of an old people’s home, Eve spotted the sack of rubbish and scooped it up and was going to put it in their trade dustbin, only the sack shivered.

So Eve took it inside and placed the cat by the radiator in the day room, the residents looked at the wet and shivering cat. A cat was a novelty, something new to brighten their day. Something to cheer them on the long or short journey to the end of their time. One by one the residents came to look and wish the pussy good luck. I hope she survives, I hope she gets better they all prayed. Old Annie was knitting a scarf and decided the cat, their new friend would be better with it on her. So old Annie tore it off her needles and covered the cat with it. As she did so she shed a tear, the  tear fell on the cat like a splash of Holy Water.

Now a cat knows what Love is, so Pussy as the cat was christened, felt the love all around her. After a month Pussy was back to her normal self, and having a Home as a home was great.  Pussy was like Goldilocks trying all the chairs and beds for comfort, the residents in the home had new focus now, a cat was something special. The Love between them grew and grew, you don’t have to be a genius to know that people, old people need love too, a gentle kind of love, a patience kind of love, the kind mentioned in the famous Bible passage about honouring your father in old age. 

Pussy knew which resident needed an extra bit of love, so she’d sit on their lap or on the armrest of their chair. Pussy purred and the residents smiled back, it was a symbiotic relationship. The mood lifted with Pussy around, Eve loved her residents they were her life, watching them as they slide to their death, she really loved them, now Pussy shared in the loving.

Georgia was an old West Indian lady who must have been in her nineties, she had loved to laugh, she had been full of stories, but now the big C, cancer was attacking her. She had regular pain killers, a supply of morphine which Eve administered, Eve hid her tears from Georgia her smile was her armor. Pussy could tell, an animal can always tell, so Pussy decided that Georgia needed extra special treatment.

Pussy sat on Georgia’s lap and purred, it was cat prayers, the cat was not sitting on the mat, the cat was sitting on the lap. Georgia sang from her heart from her very soul, quietly ever so quietly, she was old and in pain, but she still believed with all her pained heart, so she sang spirituals. Pussy purred the chorus. There were only two of them but they were a choir.

We all know about the power of love, Jennifer Rush has sung about it, we have all been moved by song. So the rest of the residents watched and were moved. If only they knew the words. They gathered around and listened, badly singing the words, out of place and out of time. It was like a scene from the Studio Ghibli film, Ponyo, where the old people live under water.

Love and Hope and cat purring, Pussy was a conductor, the residents were the choir, old Annie clattered away on the knitting needles. They would make old Georgia better, she had to live at least until she got a telegram from the Queen for her 100^th Birthday, nothing less would do.

Eve went to Mass and told her friend Undoopa from the Shona choir about the events in the old people’s home. Undoopa was intrigued and said if Eve wanted to invite her to tea then she’d be more than happy to come. So next Tuesday afternoon Undoopa would come.

Undoopa arrived with her sister Sondoopa in tow, Shona sisters stick together. After helping with the resident’s tea they went to see Georgia, Pussy was there purring away. Then the singing began, Georgia’s quiet prayer accompanied by Pussy’s purring. Now a Shona sister is a strong and powerful thing, one is dangerous, two is like an earthquake.

LOUD very LOUD singing erupted from the Shona  sisters, at first Pussy was scared, but then the cat became a lion and began to roar. It may have been because Pussy had a  lick of the morphine, but whatever the reason this cat was COOOOOL, for 5 hours he sang with the Shona sisters. Love and Hope and Pray erupting from them like a volcano, the residents rocked in their armchairs, banging spoons on their trays. Georgia smiled more and more. The bastard cancer would never beat her spirit, she was on fire and the whole of the brigade would never put her out.

Georgia was so happy, the Shona sisters said their goodbyes, then Eve shared a bottle of Baily’s Irish Cream with the residents to calm them down from their high. Pussy got the dregs from the bottle, this cat had got its cream and licked it.

Now the Shona sisters prayed for Georgia every day, then when they were singing at a wedding for Fr. Cownley they told all the rest of the full Shona choir. So as they were all there they jumped on the bus and went to the old people’s home.

40 Shona singers with drums too invaded the old people’s home, Pussy fled to on top of the bookcase. But the sound of the low like distant thunder singing encouraged Pussy to sit on Georgia’s lap as usual. Then the women began to sing with drums beating too. Now how this worked I do not know, I am just a writer not a doctor, but I do know that love is the best medicine, my own dad came back from the dead 20 years ago, after we had picked hymns for his funeral.

So the sound of music mixed with Shona love cured Georgia’s cancer, and she went on to live till she was 110, she got her telegram from the Queen and 10 more, making 11, Georgia always said as she was West Indian she’s need 11 cards, enough to make a cricket team.

As for Pussy the cat, she lived till she was 30, the residents loved her so much they willed her to keep on living. None of the residents seemed to have any pain after the Shona had cured Georgia with their Christian singing, Eve said Pussy ate all the pain, she wasn’t a mouser she was the pain eating cat.

The Family Divided By Television

The Family Divided By Television ©

By Michael Casey

Well I haven’t written anything new for a day or two, and I wasn’t going to write anything tonight either, that was until we became a family divided by television. I’ve come to the family desktop to escape watching the 2^nd half of a film my wife first  watched 10 years ago when I was working at a hotel by the airport at the NEC, this being at the other side of Birmingham from where I live.

The Core didn’t look too interesting so I’m here instead talking to you all. Our girls are upstairs eating chocolate while the cat Totoro is pretending to be Goldilocks, and sleeping in or on or under all the beds, such is her life. The last day of April 2016 is like winter again, she has just discovered my room, so as it’s the warmest thanks to it being South facing and having a mass of central heating pipes running through it.

Yes, we are a family divided by television. If we don’t agree on what to watch we set a recording going while one or another of us watches what they want. As I’m a news junkie, I can just watch BBC or Sky news on the computer while the girls watch what they want. As we can watch Chinese tv too my wife can watch a serial on Phoenix should she want to.

A couple of years ago there was a really gripping serial we all loved about a romance it was very funny, especially as the boy worked in the marriage office. His ex wanted him back but in the end true love conquered all, which is what my own mother told me, little did I know I’d end up marrying a Shanghai girl, with the help of God and two policemen as my mum used to say.

Sky+ divides and unites families, you can record your favourite shows and watch them together when you are all home from work or school. If you have a student in the family, or a budding Dr to be, then you can record the important tv and it can be watched at a later time. Then being able to stop the live show as well that’s a godsend, because toilet breaks and rushing to the fridge for more fuel can be accommodated, this really a great innovation. 

When I grew up we only had 2 channels in black and white to start with, and the cat slept on the microwave size/shape tv, because it was so hot after an evening viewing.  Now with slim lcd tvs cats no longer do this.

Families do come together for chocolate and favourite shows:- Grimm, Blacklist, Elementary. Then Peppa Pig must be watched, this is now a cult programme with teenagers, why I have no idea. I’d eat Peppa Pig  on some nice bread with ketchup, but for my girls and their friends Peppa Pig is a cult.

All tv is suspended while the wife watches the BBC weather report, it’s an addiction of hers, luckily the advert breaks are so long you can watch the BBC weather while the adverts are on. Ditto I can watch the headlines before we can switch to the start of our favourite programmes, or we hit record then rewind to the beginning if we’ve missed a bit.

As I talk to you my wife has abandoned the Core and I can hear the Bee Gees singing in the next room behind me, either that or the neighbour’s cat is being castrated, so high are the high notes. If I hear anything good I can return to the living room to view for myself, I sit in the corner on the naughty chair. The irony is that we were buying new furniture from Argos prior to my bypass op, then when I got out of hospital it was too low and soft for me to sit on. So I sit on a hard dining chair in the corner, so that I don’t irritate my chest scars.

Obviously as a bloke I’d love a huge tv with a sound bar etc,  plus all the Sky film channels,  when I win the lottery I’ll have one in my mansion, Toshiba of course as they make great tvs. Then we can watch the Sky tv 6 part adaptation of my novel The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker, well all in my dreams. Though the family might never want to watch it, you know what they say about a prophet in his own town, a  man and his tv series might be the same. For we are a family divided by television.

Inspiration and Science

Inspiration and Science ©

By Michael Casey

First of all blame my daughter for this piece, I asked which should I write about, Inspiration or Science, and she said both with a smile, an inscrutable smile, she is ½ Shanghai Chinese after all, the other ½ being Kerry Irish by way of Birmingham. So here goes, but before I forget hello to my reader in Mexico and Austria, the readership seems to be getting far flung, or maybe they are just trying to avoid me by traveling far and wide.

The Casey Clan is vast, I do have 40 first cousins after all, I am the nearly youngest of all of them. So I have a load of stories past down to me from my dad, and from my trips to Kerry too. I’d love to go back and do a tour, but I need a driver and maybe a jeep to get to all the places, but if I win the lottery or Amazon’s Flying Car Pit show ever goes I could tag along tied to the roof rack. It would give my silver hair a great blow wave look.

So what about Inspiration? It’s something that Inspires, yes I’m stating the obvious, but do allow me to sound sophisticated, in my own imagination for a nanosecond. If you witness events they can either scar you or give you great dreams, or even nightmares, but the spark they give does lead to something, even if it’s just the exit, fast.  

Fear of my teacher lead me to reading lots, this then led to 20 years of BBC Radio 4 listening which then led to being a writer these past 30 years. 50 years of my life just flashed by in a sentence, I cannot complain though as I’m still alive, and hoping to reach my 1,000,000 Words written in the next eighteen months. I discovered I was 2 hours away from death after my quadruple heart bypass as my pulse went up to 200 to 230 beats a minute. Others have died I’m still here, perhaps its god punishing my readers for not talking to him and reading my rubbish instead.  There you are, reading as punishment. Who would you make prisoners read as punishment for their crimes? Charles Dickens  or JK Rowling or even Terry Pratchett? You can have fun in the office talking about that by the coffee machine.

Now as my daughter said write about Science too perhaps I should say a few words on that topic. My small daughter  is a really great writer, she’s told me she’s better than me and I agree with her, any dad want’s his daughter to be greater than himself. We joke that her English teacher wants to adopt her as she is so good, the fridge is covered in praise slips. For balance I should reveal that my other daughter is top in the entire year group in Science, is that 90 or 120 pupils, it’s all Greek or is it Science to me. Though mum, my wife does have a Chemistry degree.

Now what shall I say about Science? Well I grew up with Apollo, no not the Greek god, though I do love Kebabs, I mean the Space Race. This was so exciting, and it was all in black and white. Ali was dancing around the ring, American politicians were all getting shot and so forth.

The music or soundtrack to all our lives was unbelievable, The Monkees, the Beatles, Sonny and Cher all kinds of everything, and not a manufactured boy band in sight, Simon Cowel is younger than me, so he would have been in school in short pants and getting bullied, and having his pants pulled down in the middle of the playground.

Science really is the future, I was watching a programme about Gravity and how they are trying to “see” by using the disturbances in gravity. It was really interesting, some of it was almost beyond me, but BBC science programmes really are so well presented/produced. 

The other thing is that fact that a man in his shed, usually in England really do have the first ideas about science. Though as usual England does NOT have enough money for the research so USA “steals” the talent and makes the big bucks. So I’d suggest our Lotto invests in science, put £500,000,000 into Science instead of clog dancing for the Welsh or sewing classes for welders in Scunthorpe. Near where I am we had a £40million Art Gallery called the Public, it was a white elephant, a fancy design which should have been on Peppa Pig. It folded and has now become a school after they built classrooms inside the original building. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-29144730

My Physics teacher Mr R he was such a good teacher and we always enjoyed the experiments, if the teaching is fun then difficult topics are understood and enjoyed. A good teacher really does make a difference, as does proper discipline, such as no phones to be used in school, it is NOT a human right to have and use a mobile.

We stumbled over my old school reports from 40 years ago and to my surprise I was great at Chemistry, I got 80% in an exam, but then I dropped it in 3^rd year, this is Year 9 in today’s parlance. At school if you are guided well by the teacher who knows their onions, and is more than 2 chapters ahead of the class then little acorns can grow into might oaks.

Well that’s enough from me for tonight I have to watch the Press Preview on Sky, it’s my form of entertainment. I’ll never be on tv, but I still dream of being on Radio reading out my short pieces…..