From Fireworks to The Grave

From Fireworks to The Grave ©

By

Michael Casey

The girls were singing at  a Wedding Yesterday morning, they came home telling us about the bride and groom. They also heard that there was a fireworks display that night. They  asked could they go, so I said yes if they behaved.

They behaved all afternoon, so at half past six I nagged them top put on full winter gear, hat, coat, scarf and gloves. They wouldn’t believe me that it would be that cold outside but I explained it would. So reluctantly they put all the layers on. The witch as we call my wife drove up to the firework display. It was behind the church where they had been singing a few hours earlier. My wife, or the witch said she’d collect us a few hours later, she said I could ring her. Only I had forgotten to bring the mobile phone, I have only acquired a mobile phone this year and I don’t really know how to use it, an I don’t really want it either, its for emergencies, its on the Asda tariff because that’s the cheapest. Its my wife’s 1st phone. Anyway we said goodbye and we went to watch the firework show.

Only there was a problem, the price to attend was too much, I have to watch every penny at the moment and I didn’t think it was worth it anyway. So we stood on the pavement in front and to one side of the church. From that vantage point we enjoyed the fireworks display, a bit like watching tv though your neighbours window. There were a  few other families who did the same. So we watched the fireworks while my 9 year old filmed it on our old digital camera, she was very pleased with her efforts. I promised them we’d buy sweets and pop to make up for not seeing the fireworks display officially. My girls understood and after 20mins of illegal watching of fireworks we started to walk home. As I had forgotten the phone we’d have to walk and not get a lift from mum. But I do know how to improvise, it’s a gift I do have.

We stopped at the 1st sweet shop and they roamed around, but girls being girls they could not make up their minds, so they left that sweet shop with nothing. Now from the church to our house is a good 25min  walk and is twisty and curvy and runs alongside the woods at Warley Woods and golf course. So as its was the Eve of Haloween I asked them did they want to walk through the dark woods. No they  both said, but I knew they would like it so we crossed on the crossings which cross the race track of a road. The boldly we went a few yards into the dark dark woods.  We were only there for a minute but it was a good thing to do so close to Halloween. Then we crossed back to the safer side of the road. My smallest daughter wanted a rest so we stopped at a bus stop  and sat on the plastic seats, I told them that I had a bus pass, would they like me to leave them there while I jumped on the bus.

After a couple of minutes rest we resumed our trek back, were we like the Von Trapp family, no Swiss mountains for us, only the long and winding road. The kids could see the retaining wall of their school, from that point on, even in the dark they knew their way home. Spirits lifted I had an idea. My big daughter’s friend lived just down the road on a side road. So when we were outside her friends house we did ghostly noises, just like in Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I thought I made the best screams. Sadly no lights went on in the house, not unless we had given her nan a heart attack.

Further down the road by the light of a front room we could see a child in a witches 

Hat he was pretending to be a witch. It turned out that he  was a friend of my other daughter,  this was too good an opportunity to miss, so again we made ghost and ghoul noises. The child inside lifted the curtain to check was the devil outside, no it was only us. My big daughter laughed and laughed when she say his face appear, she hid beneath the high retaining front wall and then ran laughing to use further down the road.

We went to Thimbermill and got our chocolate and Dr Pepper, we had had some fun after all. My small daughter had said when we were in the dark dark park that she had

Seen a cross, we were in a graveyard. I think it was the support posts for a sapling, not unless it was….

Finally home we decided to scare mum, our resident witch, so my big daughter did her big scream and she managed to scare the neighbours over the road.

but mum had the last laugh, she was sitting in dark watching a Chinese movie on the internet so when we entered the house she scared us.

Well that’s how we enjoyed our Saturday night. Tonight 31st Oct 2010 we had several trick or treats at the door, so I just screamed back I’mdead,” followed by my best Vincent Price scream/laugh. But the kids and parents weren’t impressed. Today does mark an anniversary, its 11years since I was made redundant from CAN    been a few varied years, and best of all I have two daughters whom I can stroll in the dark with

Don’t tell anybody though, my witch is more like Bewitched

My Armchair

I did actually bust my armchair the other day. My kids do sit on the arm rests with me while we watch films, Camp Rock, High School Musical etc for the zillionth time.

My wife used to sit on my lap in my rocking chair, the rocking chair lasted 18 years. So the current armchair may be 6 years old. I was lucky with the rocking chair because it was part of a suite, in fact it was the only reason I bought the suite.  As  for the current armchair it was part of a suite too but the customer did not want it so I picked it up cheap for £45, yes only £45. All my girls do squeeze onto it while they watch Phoenix TV, now the bottom has fallen out of the chair, we've had to put a big cushion under the seat of the chair. So that'll do until we can save up for a new armchair. I had a quick look in two furniture shops and its £200 plus just for a single armchair. I will go back to the same furniture shop where I picked up my bargain 6 years ago, but I'm not holding my breath.

Rocking chairs are great and I'd love to have another furnished rocking chair, perhaps I could be a rocking chair tester, or the NHS could send me one of their new vibrating chairs. A good chair is a thing of beauty in itself, and the rocking is very soothing too, and with a nice drink in your hand then that is poetry in itself. Cue Queen's Song We Will Rock You.

When our dog long ago broke its pelvis he was saved by the vet, and we placed him in our dad's old armchair when the dog came home. When our dad came home from the steelworks the poor dog got out of the armchair because he knew it was dad's chair, I remember it so well. Our cat used to enjoy an armchair too, soft and cosy, she'd fall asleep purring like a Jaguar car.

So the point of all this musing? Enjoy your armchair, because your kids and wife and finally grandkids love that chair too, in one object you capture the word family.

p.s. cross your fingers so I find a cheap replacement

Michael 

www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com 

The Simpsons are modern Shakespeare

The Simpsons are modern Shakespeare ©

By Michael Casey

I just read a piece in this morning’s DT it was about the Vatican’s newpaper and the Simpsons.

The DT comment button did not work so I’ve written this piece instead.

Shakespeare touches all of us, once we learn or are taught how to understand it. It may mean a West Side story experience. It may mean Shakespeare in Love or a  modern version with Leonardo di Caprio.

But it is all Shakespeare, yes I know the literati  will moan as the always do, but underneath it is Shakespeare. It’s the universality of it, www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com for my stuff, more like an Ealing Comedy. But back to today the Vatican/Jesuit take on the Simpsons. My girls tease and say I’m like the dad in the Simpsons, I tell them I’m much much slimmer. Comedy pokes fun and draws us closer together as we laugh at what’s happening, and a big part is laughing at others’ suffering, PC people will spin in their  graves, and the sooner the better.

There was  a really good series on tv about Shakespeare and how he could have been a secret Catholic amongst other things, not to mention his eclectic background, he could touch bases with so many things because of his life experience. So the Simpsons touch bases with us because it highlights the worst in us all, and then we laugh at ourselves, there is no “I couldn’t possibly  be like that” because we ARE like that. I suppose in the New Testament the common touch in the language/life draws us towards the Divine, The Simpsons could it be called the common man’s Bible? I don’t know, you’ll have to read more of the Bible and watch more of the Simpsons. And ask the Jesuits who write the Vatican newspaper, me I’m going to find my deck of cards you may remember the song.

Mongolia Mines and Hearts

Mongolia Mines and Hearts ©

By Michael Casey

 

I was reading The Daily Telegraph today and there was a good article in it about Mongolia and its mineral  wealth. Basically China its buying up all the mineral reserves.

Next door in Russia there are tons of reserves too. Black Gold or oil is washing its way from Russia to China. I remember what somebody once said to me, History is Geography, or maybe a History teacher said it in a class. But it is so so true, History is Geography.

China has invested its time and money around the world trying to secure its mineral resources as well as the oil that its economy needs. It is not trying to export democracy or anything else. As Cuba has learnt you can export doctors and you’ll gain brownie points, China builds schools and infrastructure, it builds the things that will aid China. The Big China is the key the way forward and nothing will get in the way. Having a Shanghai wife I’ve seen directly and indirectly just how busy China is with its development. Forward is the motto for Birmingham where I’m talking from, it is also the motto for China.

Everybody wants to progress, see the photo below that’s where my mum was born and lived till she was 12 years old, along with her 6 siblings and her parents. My mum’s brother Tim died  of rickets at age 7

 So now the wheel of History has turned, China wants to progress. In the 1870s we had the scramble for Africa, it was literally a carve up look at the straight lines on the map of Africa. Everybody wanted their place in the sun, now its 2010 and it’s an economic place in the sun. Offering Democracy and baseball is a bit naïve, or reminding people of Laurence Of Arabia is naïve too. What matters to people is clean water and schools, if you start there then expand from there perhaps you stand a better chance of winning hearts and minds.

Technology may have to be given away too, if you want to save the planet then industrial  nuclear technology will have to be shared. I read recently about some element that when used powered a nuclear plant without weapons grade leftovers. I think it was in the Telegraph. It seemed to be a magic wonder pill. Technology is the future for the traditional industrial powers, they need to get over having their clothes stolen by China and other emerging powers. My dad started as a blacksmith in County Kerry Eire and then spent his life in a steelworks in Smethwick. None of his children worked in factories, we the next generation move on. My novel is set in Old Forge and Singing Anvil as a tribute to my blacksmith dad, it also evokes a time a period that no longer exists, that’s the charm of it. In the real world though the sun has risen in the East.

Which Way Do You Look?

Which Way Do You Look?

By

Michael Casey

Which way do you look? I’m thinking of this because it’s an anniversary today, so it got me thinking.  I also heard today about the funeral arrangements for  our old priest, he was the priest who came to the house to confirm that our mum was indeed dead, when my dad saw him enter the house with my brother and sister my dad started to cry. So now we cry for that priest.

Events make you look this way and make you look that way. Events touch us and pain us, events make us laugh and make us sigh. Today in Chile the whole nation screams in celebration, to be honest the whole world smiles too, we are the world.

When you look in a mirror which way do you look? If you are a girl or a lady you look at your body and wonder is it as you want it to be. Is your hair good this way or that way, do those clothes  really suit you or should you take them back to the shop to exchange them, you’ve tried 20 things to match them but they just don’t work with your wardrobe. Yes you’ll take them back, I mean your mirror is so much better than the one in the shop, and why don’t husbands understand about clothes.

Men look in mirrors for 2 seconds as they drag the comb through their hair, they never seem to notice the stubble on their chins, or the paint on their jumpers, they shame their wives.

Do you look forward or do you look backward? It depends  on  how your life is doing. If you’re on the dole with no hope you may look backward to when you had a job and the money that went with it. You’re afraid to look ahead it’s looking into the gloom, its like the Titanic, all  fog and mist. Some take refuge in drink or worse, glass ½ full or glass ½ empty, or maybe the glass is just not big enough. Your prospective influences how you cope with things.

You can look forward by looking at the property pages on www.rightmove.co.uk if only you get more money then you’ll move house, even if it would really be a lottery win amount of money. You can look forward  more realistically by looking at argos and currys and comet and do some window shopping for the things you really need to replace once the money comes in again. A new cooker perhaps, a new living room carpet, perhaps a fridge, or just upgrade the central heating boiler. All these are looking forward.

I look back a fair bit, because I have lots of memories  and spent a lot of time with my dad in his good years and his fading years in the old people’s home, you can find out more by reading Padre Pio and Me on www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com I have almost total recall for my family events. I’m the one who remembers  all the family growing up things. When my brother went to University he bought our little sister a tricycle, it was £5, that was good use of student grant, over 40 years ago. Now my own daughter has ambitions to go to that University. My younger daughter had a tricycle too, I got it as a gift from a toy show that passed through a hotel where I was working a few years ago.

I think having memories is good, it certainly means I have material to write about, growing up with lodgers for example. I look back with love and think just much love we got from our parents. “You are as good as anybody” is what I can remember my mum saying, proud and defiant she was, for her love was a nuclear weapon. Mothers know how to use nuclear weapons, their love really is that powerful. I have an  idea for Tears For A Butcher my 3^rd book, if ever I get to write it. A mother’s Nuclear Weapons will feature, I just hope I get to share it with you, let’s look forward together.

 Me and the wife In Frankfurt Aug 2008

  

Steptoe and Son

Steptoe and Son

By

Michael Casey

I was watching the telly and Steptoe and Son was on one of the Sky Channels, it took me back years, almost as many years as to when I was as old as my kids are now. So a long time ago, 40 plus years ago.

It was the episode where the dad was sick in bed with a bad back, I’ve hurt my back in the past so I could empathise. But it was the humour where the dad was exploiting his son, Harold was at his dad’s beck and call. “Harold” this and “Harold” that. Finally the son realised what was going on, somebody had drunk his lager and he was sure it wasn’t the horse, so it must be his dad upstairs. Harold got his revenge  and gave his dad a blanket bath with surgical spirits, which was like setting fire to his naughty bits. So he ended up sitting in the kitchen sink to douse the pain.

Last week it was the famous episode where the old dad and the son were playing scrabble, X certificate scrabble and the Vicar came to visit. The vicar got Harold to write a history of Rag and Bone Men. The dad sulked but did a cross word puzzle for the Vicar’s magazine. When the magazine was published the Vicar was arrested because the cross word puzzle was obscene.

This is classic  comedy and I’m glad Sky has it on one of their channels. It takes me back to when I was young. It also reminds me just how well it was written, some of modern comedy is just not funny. Personally I don’t find the Office funny at all. I still dream that someday some of the comedy I write gets on tv. If Steptoe still makes  us laugh then it is a testament to just how good it is. My kids saw a bit of tonight’s show they laughed, so that’ll be 3 generations of Casey’s who like Steptoe, I can remember my mum laughing like a banshee when it was on. If there are any producers out there Shoplife would make great tv and be a cash cow at the theatre www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com is where it can be found.  Old iron, old iron…..

 

Dr Who

Dr Who

I remember watching Dr Who when I was a child, where have all those years gone?

It is more of a film now than TV. It is great family entertainment too, but don’t  say it’ll make kids interested in science and change the world. Yes one or two may get an interest in science because of it, but it is what it is, entertainment.

The scripts vary a lot, you can get rubbish episodes, such as the fat monsters that went into space, those white little bars of soap things. I think Steven Moffat’s  episodes were the best written as a whole, not unless he wrote  the fat one.

Saturday’s wouldn’t be Saturdays without a bit of Dr Who, I think his name is Sue, as in the Johnny Cash song.

The Dr Who confidential shows are interesting and do show just how committed everybody is to the show, but they also display a  flaw. When they rehearse and talk about the episode their passion is far greater than when you see the final thing on a Saturday night.

Perhaps they cannot see the wood for the trees, or perhaps I’m just a little too old to be caught in the spiders web the story spins. I know from my own tv viewing that a  film can never match an original book. I know when I write and think how my stuff might appear on tv/film that the nuances die when transfered to film, a book and a film are very different mediums.

Dr Who with Matt Smith is good and I loved how Amy’s boyfriend waited 2000 years for her and punched Dr Who on the chin, she WAS worth waiting for. The threesome  does work and I’d love to be in it as the fat guy sat on a bench slobbering over his food  as Dr Who or should I say Sue walks by, I do look a bit like Alfred Hitchcock after all, and he was in all his own films.

A Winter's Tale

A Winter’s Day
As I look from my window I see the blue blue sky. Birds dive and soar better than any circus acrobat, they are painting a picture with their wings. Tiny tiny whisps of white cloud remain, like left over candy floss on a childs face, like white whiskers on a very old woman’s face.
Curtains are pulled open and windows are inched open too, daylight and fresh air to bedrooms shuttered down against a cold winters night. People stand and yarn and scratch too as they struggle to wake up fully. Then one or two realise they don’t wear any pyjamas so they hurry away from their windows, their wives, their husbands, their lovers laughing at their stupidity. At least old Mrs Jones may have had a thrill.
The sounds of morning, of daylight rise. Slowly the sound of the milk float, the sounds of milk bottles clinking together as the milkman does his rounds, this way and that. The sound of of Mrs Murphy walking her dog, the dog panting in the cold winters air. He doesn’t have a sheepskin coat to keep him warm. He has his own fur coat but this winter is a cold one, so Goldie the dog could do with an extra coat too.
People dance down their door steps to their car, nagging children to hurry up as its cold. Children write their name in the frost on their neighbours’ cars before being told off. John the neigbourhood jogger rushes past, the kids stick their tongue out at him, he does the same, they all laugh, only for John to miss his stride slip on an icy patch and fall to the ground hurting his elbow as he does so. Still laughing the kids get inthe car and are taken off to see grandpa, John is rubbing his elbow and his bum as he gets ups gingerly.
The lads, we are so hard, appear from their homes to noisily attack the day, Sunday is for shouting, but not too loud, as they have headaches and hangovers, did they really chat up that ugly fat girl, but they gave her his brother’s mobile number and not his own. They stride off to the news agent for The News Of The World, just for the sports pages, their mums can read the scandal section and the horoscopes.
One or two black people wearing their Sunday best pass by on their way to church, a throwback to decades before when people still went to church and when people still wore their Sunday best. People used to dress up to go to the theatre too, but now, but now.
I reach for the kettle and have my first coffee of the day, coffee with milk and no sugar, the way English people have coffee, not the American way, just the soft English way. My kids want toast and peanut butter, or cheese on toast, so my 3 slices of toast become one slice of toast as I feed my girls. I nag them to put slippers and socks on, yes we have nice carpet but in the winter’s weather they are always getting colds, so I nag them, I nag them. My wife nags them in Chinese too, or Shanghai dialect. The phone rings, its Germany calling, or rather my wife’s best friend who’s calling from Germany, the cackle or hens, of chickens clucking is the noise these 2 Shanghai girls make, as they talk in Shanghai, when are we coming back to Germany is the message. Cluck cluck cluck.
The sky has changed the blue has changed to grey, will the snow return, its been a snowy winter over here in Birmingham, some parts of the country have had the worse weather in 20years. The children have quietened down, my wife has relented and put a nature program on the tv for them. As for me I was going to try and write a poem but instead you see what’s before you. I’m half listening to Mike and The Mechanics a cd I’ve loaded to the computer, “give me the simple life” he sings, I suppose my life is a simple life too. But if we can see the poetry in life then we enjoy the simple things which make up all are lives. All our lives are poetry if only we take the time to watch and listen, while we’re making toast for the kids.

Afternoon Atheist

I spent the afternoon with my friendly atheist he was condemning God, he thought God existed but only as a bad and evil thing. He assumed a lot about my faith, and was wrong about it and me. Now should I bother to try and convert him? Should I point him in the direction of his local church where he could find himself a nice wife. Do  people go to church to finds wives, now that's  another question. Or should I let him carry on until he  stumbled over his own direction. I did explain how I stood by my fridge and asked God to intervene in my life, my 3 wishes so to speak, its in my essay Padre Pio and Me  on my site. And then as if by magic I met my Shanghai wife. However atheists put themselves in a box, a cold steel box and throw away the key, and they are not Houdini's who can escape, they are like collapsed dead stars deep in the cold of space.
Does family make us believe in God? Wishing for a family was one of my 3 wishes. I got all my luck in one go is what my Kerry cousins say. You ask for anything will do and you get the best, better than all the rest as the song goes.
THe autumn leaves fall and Life will soon die, winter will come and cold will desend, but in the spring there will be growth as Chance the gardener. How to plant a seed where there is forever autumn as another song goes. How do you plant a seed in an atheist's heart does he have to suffer  a dark night of the soul before  like a caterpillar  he emerges as a beautiful butterfly?  Its a difficult question especially when I got my faith at the nipple. Others of many faiths learnt their faith when they were toddlers, the trendy I'll wait till they grow up so they can decide for themselves always strikes me as child neglect of the worst sort.
Christmas  is a happy time full of innocence and hope, perhaps I should drag my friend to Midnight Mass and let him hear carols, silent night holy night. When we sing and remember our family members who have gone ahead. Should I make him look up at the stars overhead twinkling to eternity, for there is always hope. Hope springs Eternal.