Laughter Before Bedtime

Laughter Before Bedtime ©

By Michael Casey

“They’ll be Tears Before Bedtime”  is what a wise mum might say, and she’ll be right, mums are always right after all.

However in our house its Laughter before Bedtime. I can remember growing up and hearing the banshee like laughter from my mum as we all squeezed into our small living room, I smiling now as I think back over 40 years. We did have a few laughs, my dad used to tell stories too and I really really enjoyed them.

I spent a long time talking to my dad and hearing  these stories over and over again. When I left home of course I visited often, I’d come for the dinner. I’d be in the living room talking to dad and my sister was in the kitchen talking to mum. Before my sister drove me home in her car we’d swop parents and share more news. Normal family business, I hope you all share that same kind of love. Naturally an hour or so after the family dinner I’d go and have a kebab, which is the normal lad thing to do.

Sharing laughter is a great family experience, who did what and where they did it, and just how stupid it all was, is a natural family experience. I really find it hard to believe when some people say “I hate my dad, or my mum’s the pits” whatever happened to love each other. If you want a little peace form a Christian family. Or form a Sikh family or Muslim family. The key word is family, which means a group of people of the same blood who love each other and share things together. JKRowling’s new book is about the opposite thing, though she’s forgotten to send me a copy of her new book.

We imitate old uncle John with his walking stick and big boots, we love him but when he’s gone back to Manchester we make fun of him of him. It’s normal. If anybody else makes fun of him we’d him them with a walking stick, but he is our uncle, our blood so we laugh at him, but we really love him. He gives us  10p and says go buy some sweets, he’s forgotten that Deciminalisation was 40years ago, the price of sweets have gone up, penny liquorice  cost 50p now.

Family laughter is the chains of love that keep us together, once on holiday in France me and my sister met a priest who went to school with our dad’s brother, this would be back in the 20s and 30s, the 1920s and 1930s. It turned out that the priest’s family were quiet rich at the time, so the future priest had a bicycle so the Casey boys would steal it and ride it. This was 1981, the story stuck in the back of my mind, so 10 years later I had the idea when writing my comic novel that a priest blackmails a police inspector because the police man stole the priest’s bicycle when the police man was a teenager. In England we don’t have the statute of limitations, so in theory the police man could be charged and go to jail.

You don’t know when an old story can bubble up in your mind and you can use it again. Tonight we were laughing about pillows and we were stealing each other’s pillows from the beds because we wanted the new super soft and comfy pillows for ourselves. I had tried an old new pillow that had been in the cupboard, it was too hard, grandma had sent it  to Birmingham from Shanghai  telling JJ to take it back to England as she did not want it. And why didn’t grandma want it? Because when you sleep on it, it blocks off the blood supply as you sleep and you wake up with a funny arm, all the blood has stopped circulating. You have to shake and shake your entire arm before it goes back to normal. So I told my 3 girls this as I was trying to get them to go to bed, they just laughed at me, like I was some kind of fool.