Picking Things be it your nose or your clothes

Picking Things be it your nose or your clothes ©

By Michael Casey

I was watching this tv programme about 2 gay dads last night, my wife picked the programme and I watched along with her. Hello to them just in case they are reading this. In the programme the dads were picking clothes for their daughter’s Prom, so it got me thinking about how I help my own daughters pick things. In my case we rush through the  girls’ list on website PerfectPerfectClothesForKids.com.co.uk and we chose and it’s all done and dusted very very fast. The irony is my wife does in fact work for a high end children’s fashion company, the kind the two dads might shop at.

I don’t know about them but I’d lose the will to live if I had to spend too much time shopping, so my way is quick and painless. I tell the girls not to tell mum, that I’ve got them stuff. That way they can plead clothes poverty and she’ll get them stuff too. Any clothes they have grown out of we put outside on the garden wall and some lucky child gets them. Sometimes I accost passing strangers and force Aldi plastic bags full of clothes into their hands. You have girls, you have this. As I look like a demented 17 stone bouncer I am never refused, ok I’m lying I sometimes use a different brand of plastic bag.

Back in Aldi if I see anybody struggling to decide which kind of bread to buy I put my best concierge voice on and say that Brown Bloomers are best, cos they are, besides you like your wife’s bloomers don’t you, then I stroll away waiting for the penny to drop, or the bloomers, the brown bloomers from the high shelf I mean, what were you thinking?

Sometimes there is a dangerous child doing something dangerous, so then I pick my teacher’s voice, yes I was a teacher once too. Do you want to die, if you keep doing that then you will die, get out of the road, or stop pulling the high stack of shopping baskets on top of your head. While the parents are on their mobile in the queue to pay, instead of watching their treasure, their kids.  If they thought about the 1000s of Child Tax credit they would lose with a dead child, then  they’d watch them more.

WE pick lots of things, we pick the one we love, or it’s the girl you always see at Church, or in the queue at the dole office, or maybe she picks you. He’s such clot, he’s totally useless but when he gives me that look, I just want to have his babies. Attraction is attraction, whether you like black girls, white girls, Japanese/Chinese/Korean girls or it must be a fat ginger girl because it’s her who plucks your heartstrings. Things happen and you are picked before you can pick, it’s the urge as the Irish say.

You may be having a sneaky pick of your nose and she sees you across the room, she is coming towards you, it’s nearly Midnight, the New Year is about to begin, she is going to snog you, it’s all or nothing, the urge is  upon her, she has served you bacon butties in Greggs for a year, she wants a slice of you. So what can you do with that snot on your finger, you raise your finger and half think about putting it back up your nose. She sees what you are doing and laughs. The clock strikes Midnight, a New Year Dawns. She takes your finger and rubs it on her breast, holding your finger there. She looks deep into your eyes, before grabbing you, it’s snog time.

With a beginning like that they just have to marry and have a heap of children, and when in the future the kids ask how did she meet dad, she’ll tell them I wiped his snotty finger on my breast, then held it there while I snogged him into the New Year. Or she could lie and say he dropped his wallet in Greggs and she tracked him down and he took her to Burger King to thank her. But the truth really is his snot on her breast.

  

Trash TV an older piece

Trash Tv ©

By Michael Casey

I’m hiding in the other room while my girls watch Trash Tv, by which I mean a tv show that is so bad it makes you cringe. It might be KUWTK or anything else which has z listers in it trying to make enough to get out of the trailer park and back into an apartment, overlooking the trailer park.

You have girls, or should I say Botox pumped girls poured into swimsuits who keep on bending over to reveal their assets, front and rear, along with their gleaming painted white teeth. We all love pretty girls, otherwise the human race would just disappear. However a classic beauty of any size and combination is always far far prettier than a Trash Tv girl.

 You have men too, pumped full of iron and their designer drugs, with muscles and designer stubble galore, not to mention the latest shades, and bulging shorts, with or without shuttlecocks if you are old enough to remember Wham.

No I’m not jealous, I know a pretty girl is pretty because of her smile, because of her eyes, and not what lies between her….. As for men, girls want a bloke who’ll stick around and talk and actually listen to her. Then passion is better, it’s not fast food where you feel hungry afterwards, it’s more like a banquet.

However on Trash tv it’s all fast everything which just leads to heartburn and heart ache. Yes we all watch the rubbish tv, just to see did they really say that do they really love their reflection that much, is the high life really that high or just the arrogant self-centred people high on their egos.

It’s nice seeing nice places, just like in the James Bond movies, but what would be really nice, really really nice would be seeing him give the z listers a push, and not into a swimming pool but somewhere far far deeper, such as the Grand Canyon. 

Vanity isn't Fair

Vanity isn’t Fair ©

By Michael Casey

As I sit here talking to you I am squeezed into an old pair of suit trousers, they have lined legs so they last longer, when you bend  your knees don’t poke through the lining, that extra layer makes them last years long.  Ask your dad or granddad if you don’t believe me, you’ll have to shout because he’s dead 10 years, ha ha, everybody like to be a joker. So these trousers belong to a suit I had maybe 17 years ago, sadly lined legs don’t make me taller though 5feet 10 is tall enough.

We buy suits for interviews, nobody just wears a suit, not unless they are Beatles in the 60s, then it was trendy to wear a suit. I wore this suit for interviews post 1999 I think, when my big job ended and I was cast out into the real world, instead of the surreal world where I had worked for 21years as a computer operator.

We look into the mirror and see does our bum stick out and our legs short and stumpy, the answer is yes in both cases for me. Maybe I have some African genes so I am able to carry a baby on my back/bum otherwise my legs are very strong, I did play in the scrum at rugby and I have stood for decades in my working life. My Shanghai wife always  says I have  strong legs, this came in useful as veins were harvested for my quadruple heart bypass.

So as a good looking man, ok I’m lying, as a man, a George Clooney look alike, ok I look like Huw Edwards of the BBC, yes really, go google if you don’t believe me. So as I was saying before all you doubters started to laugh, I don’t look in the mirror all the time, I just comb the dandruff into a line and then I leave the house. As I walk down the road I may occasionally look at my reflection in the shop windows, and whisper encouragingly to myself, you look so hot, so very hot, then I spin around on my heels and do a John Travolta pose. Now am I being serious or am I joking, you will never know, though the Chinese take-way does have the best window for posing as its all black glass, apart from the menu in white on the inside.

Now are women as a breed more sensitive of their image, and do they look in the mirror or at their own reflections in shop windows more than men or less? Could be a feature in the Daily Mail, I must say I do enjoy Kevin and Andrew on Sky’s Press Preview, but I’ve side-tracked myself now, I must be careful or I’ll trip over Jeremy Corbyn sat on the floor obstructing my access to the toilet, he mustn’t do that with my Ckd.

So if a couple are walking down the street, concentrating on trucking right, what it means  I haven’t a clue , it was in a 10cc song years ago, anyway as they walk who admires themselves the most. And while we are talking about it why do men forever check to see if their zipper is fully up.

When you finish trucking and you meet your friends in the restaurant, ok at Burger King, why do you lie and say, you look wonderful, when in fact she looks like the dog’s dinner, but you are so happy she does, this makes you a winner. This old thing, you say as you twirl so she can admire your red dress, the one you got on eBay for £19.99, you lie and say it cost £100, but your husband  insisted on buying it for you, he didn’t know you used his card online.

You and your friend look around Burger King and slag off other women’s clothes, it’s your hobby for the last 30 years since you met in isolation at you old school. You were both put there for uniform violations you both wanted your school skirts to almost reach your navel.  After your spell in isolation you went the opposite way and became known as the nuns throughout the school, it was satire really but nobody noticed. 

So on it goes, people are really sensitive to some comment about their height, or weight, or in my case my hairy back, though I don’t care, it keeps me warm in winter. I also have very hairy eyebrows, as a child of 4 or 5 I cut them off when I found the family scissors. We just laughed and they grew back again. 

Years later when I was learning some French for Grammar school , I was 13 or so, I paced backforwards, that is backwards and forwards in English, as I learnt the French. I started plucking my eyebrows as I did so. In the end I had all my French but none of my eybrows. They were pluck away, they had almost all disappeared.

I’m not vain, but after my family stopped laughing they helped me alter my appearance, by painting eyebrows on me with mascara. I went to school and did the test, got 18/20, and nothing for my painted on eyebrows. 

Nobody noticed at school. However they 2^nd day my painted on eyebrows were spotted, though nobody dared taunt me, I was the biggest kid in the class. I told them it was Chemistry experiment that blew up in my face. This was a lie, and my priest will no doubt laugh and give zero penance, and tell all his friends, as it was not covered by the seal of the confessional. Later that week a man beckoned to me on my way to school, he gave me an old Chemistry set from his garage, yes even God was laughing at me.

So what is Vanity? It’s when we love our body and clothes too much. When the look rules all, when really it’s the soul that matters most. Some of the prettiest people I have met in my life are not the models male or female, but the characters who make you laugh, the guy who always has a story. The girl who’ll stay late to get the job done, they have true grit and they are really worth knowing. As for me I’m off to pluck my eyebrows, they have never been the same since grammar school, or am I just vain?

   

 my girls the wife and 2 daughters April 2013

Pain and Prayer

Pain and Prayer ©
By Michael Casey

Let my Pain be my Prayer
Let my Screams be the Chorus
Let my Pills be the Verse
Let my Winces be my Supplication
Let my Pain bitten lips be my Hope
Let Sleepless Eyes be my Testament
Let my Aching Limbs be my Mantra
Let the Ringing in my ears be my Peel of Prayer
Let the stabs of pain in my heart reach high heaven
Let the fog of pain in my brain be lifted by God’s Grace
Let me down from my cross because you have already been on yours.


**** sorry for reposting this but today is a pain day, and if Laborore es Orare then my poem is valid.

for those who don't know I had an unplanned quadruple heart bypass 18 months ago, plus I have the joys of Arthur my arthritis

From Joyce Grenfell to Family Traits

From Joyce Grenfell to Family Traits ©

By Michael Casey

First of all apologies to David, I said this story would be online by 4pm, but as its 3.55 and I’ve only just started he’ll have to forgive me. David is the church organist for the choir the girls are in, he and his wife are also the Godparents for the girls.  So think of Al Capone who can hit a high C but rides a bike to and from Aldi, and yes that’s where I just bumped into him. He was also a member of the Inland Revenue or IRS as they say in USA, and as we all know it was the IRS who finally put Al Capone away, hence the circle, the wheels on David’s bike.

Now where was I before David led me astray or is it ashtray, it must be astray as we are both non-smokers. So today I’m going to talk about Family Traits, the things that make us alike to our siblings and parents, assuming you were not adopted after being left on the doorstep at Aldi in a Moses basket, slowly drifting away in the puddles of water that gather in the ally leading to the car park.

When I talk to you or write these stories I am speaking to you all as I hope eventually my stories will be broadcast on radio, so once they are written  I post them on www.michaelgcasey.wordpress.com and on https://butcherbakerundertaker.blogspot.co.uk/  then once I’ve done my security I shout to the girls who are watching Peppa Pig in the next room, do you want to hear the latest story.

They always say yes dad, because they want me to continue buying chocolate biscuits from Aldi for them. Then I read aloud the latest story, and it’s here that Joyce Grenfell comes in, because as I read a story back for the 1^st time I realise that Joyce Grenfell a dotty comedienne from 1950s and 1960s+  is reading the story, or rather the writing style is her performance style. No I have not copied her and as her material is not broadcast in decades it’s as if she has percolated inside me without me realising it. Now I want you all to go and google her and watch old black and white material on Utube, I only discovered it was there a couple of days ago when the idea for today presented itself.

Welcome back from your googling, which sounds like a real dirty word, something that a lady like me should not use, ever. See  that was Joyce Grenfell herself speaking not me, perhaps it explains why I like dressing up in women’s clothing, thank God David has never spotted me in the bargain basket in Aldi with my bum in the air as I root in the bottom of the basket.

There is a manner a way of talking that adds something to my words, to everybody’s words, the little touches that makes the difference. It’s the way I tell them as Frank Carson  used to say, he nearly died in Birmingham you know, Roger our driver at the hotel was taking Frank to the airport and Frank was cracking so many jokes that Roger nearly crashed the van he was crying with laughter.

So as I read back my stories the intonation has been influenced by Joyce Grenfell, directly and indirectly. We are all influenced by our surroundings, by the voices we hear and by the way in which words are used. I am talking to my girls and quiet often I’ll stop myself and say I sound like uncle X or uncle Y my brothers. How can this be? WE are all related that’s for sure, but sometimes out pops something even though you only see this relative at Christmas. It’s in the breed as my dad used to say.

So is it the rhythm of life itself, as I’ve shared a womb and we all share rooms or offices we share the same sounds and vibrations, just as we do in the womb itself. So we have a similar sense of humour and enjoy similar things, we are mass produced if you like, mass liking for this and for that. So family traits come about, those Caseys are all like this or all like that.

By coincidence the sound of the womb plays as Depeche Mode sing the next song in the background, music and football add to family and group traits, both have tremendous passion and influence, the heartbeat of life itself. With the heartbeat fading in the background of the Depeche Mode song I’ll finish for today, tomorrow they’ll be another story. What it’ll be about and which style it’ll be in I don’t know, but it will be different, as David might say Michael Casey is different, very different. What does he mean by that? Come back get off that bicycle, I want a word with you, where’s my Police Whistle as Joyce Grenfell might say.

Thanks to France and Germany for reading my stories, if its Mr Aldi reading them in Germany don't forget my idea to teach English via humour in www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com 

Free Software

Free Software ©

By Michael Casey

I don’t know about you but I do like a bit of free software, and no I’m not talking about ladies knickers either. I mean the programs that you can get off the Internet, the browsers and so forth. Some are faster than others and they have better defences from all the rubbish out there in Cyberland. An adblocker is so useful, as is the ability to click and make something your desktop background, in my case it’s a house from Rightmove.co.uk, I usually pick B17 with a radius of 1 mile, this is where I hope to live when my boat finally comes in, though in my case it’s the Titanic.

Word is like water for me being a writer, though some may choose another word beginning with W, yes Worker as Mr Corbyn would call me, what were you thinking of? I have  Word2010 we got it from a nice Northern Irish company, if anybody wants to give me the latest super duper version I will be very happy, though I did get Libre Office 5 off the Internet just in case of emergencies. You have to have another word package just in case your own package does not work.

You can also get photo viewing software off the Internet too such as Fuji MyFinePix Studio, if you have kids you will no doubt have 1000s of photos of their childhood. In the old days we all had bookshelves of photo albums, nowadays they are on a hard drive on the computer. Behind me up a corner on the bottom shelf of the book shelf are my own original photo albums, I even had dark hair they are so old, I was 20, really 20. I rescued them from a plastic sack under my bed to a place of honour at the bottom of the book shelf next to our Miele vacuum cleaner. We did have boring vacuums but they kept on breaking so in the end we upscaled to a Miele, though I am not allowed to use it as I am just a man.

   

With software you can have fun changing people’s faces and colours, nowadays on tablets you can do the same thing. See software is good, it makes you feel good about yourself, I am talking about the fact I wear women’s under-ware now, what I hear ½ of you exclaim, while the other ½ say I just threw that sentence in to see if you were listening. Maybe I was or maybe I wasn’t, cross dressing is fun after all, it makes my wife cross when I wear her clothes.

There is a bad side to everything, not just cross dressing, ask Eddie Izzard, I won’t speak to him myself. Where was I, I got lost on the page, perhaps I need some satnav to bring my sentence structures  back to where they should be, the point. Ok I’m back to the point now, if you download any rubbish you get a VIRUS, and that’s a right pain in the butt. You can lose everything, such as your mind, your work, your business.

So to start with an antivirus is a must, Avast, Avira, AVG are just three beginning with the letter A, Microsoft has its own one too. You can get free versions as well as full featured ones. 360Degrees  is a Chinese one, that’s super dooper but it has issues with some Microsoft programs, you can have fun trying the software and see if it does what you want it to.

As for browsers Firefox is nice but so in Safari and Opera, does anybody actually use IE or Edge. The thing about software is that it is monitoring you so that they can sell you stuff or advertise to you. Does that make Cortana the local gossip and spy, the little old lady at the back of the church who bitches about everybody as she queues for Confession. You have to make up your own mind on that.

 It’s the same with email, they don’t read it, but they scan inside it, just so they can advertise to you. Try sending a message with the subject line of Michael Casey Birmingham Comedy Writer On Amazon and put a few lines in the message content,  

 http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1     

then send it to a few friends.

Now this is two things, firstly you are spamming your friends telling them to buy my 10 books, that’s the joke within a joke. But it is also something which will be scanned by your email provider and within days you’ll get messages from them with some vague connection to me. I get messages about funerals, and life insurance, I don’t know which order they should really be in, all because they have scanned my emails.

So you get free email accounts that promise never to read your mail, but they all do, of course I would use Hillary Clinton’s server but there is no room on it, besides which as so many emails get lost, my local butcher may lose my order for a Christmas Turkey.

However the good part of free email is that you can store your words of wisdom on the cloud inside your email. So my books are in my email accounts, so if my PC gets hacked and some days it’s so slow I think it is being used as a BodNet, anyway my 10 books my 900,000Words plus are safe on the Cloud as a precaution.  I have to check the chicken in the oven I’ll be back.

Well my chicken is nearly cooked, 3quid  from Aldi, bird in a bag, just cook for 1hour 40, should feed 4 with loads left over. Free Software  is like the chicken it should feed your mind and provide amusing conversation while you consume it, you may argue over who has the leg and who pulls the wish bone. Most important of all scan it before you use any software, otherwise you’ll be stuffed like the chicken. Security is Everything.