Beat the Clock

Beat the Clock ©

By Michael Casey

So you are dying and have not much time left for this world, so what would you say? You’ve got 30 minutes to say what you should have said, I Love You. Her train is coming and then she’ll be gone, how would you change her mind, even if you were not dying?

Famous last words, or words that could be the beginning of a whole new line in a Royal family, or any old family, your family. How can you stop Time itself so that you have a chance, a new beginning. Any beginning.

It’s hard its difficult, its 25 minutes before Midnight, before the beginning of a new Season. What would you do? Would you hold her tight and kiss her, would you try your puppy dog eyes like Nicolas Cage, or the cat in Shrek.

I’d try and make her laugh, she’s not interested in looks, she didn’t choose you in the first place just because of looks. If you make somebody laugh they remember you, they look forward to seeing you again, over and over again.

There’s only 20 mins before Midnight now, the train, the plane approaches, whatever words you have must count now, those words are Life Changing words, so speak up and be plain.

Only you stutter, you always stutter when you are nervous, she laughed at you and then fell for you two seconds later. So now you pretend to stutter before you start to sing. Right there in the waiting room you sing to the girl you love. You have to make her stay or make her want to come back anyway.

So you sing badly, deliberately badly, so she laughs and everybody else in the waiting room laughs too. But that does not matter, she remembers the first time you sang to her. It’s a memory, its love, she can’t refuse you anything.

Her heart melts, she’s yours, she’ll always be yours, she kisses you. Everybody in the train station applauds.

So she’ll go now, but she’ll be back soon. Singing for your supper, for the meal that is life that is love. You’ve beat the clock, she’s yours and always will be.

Radio Head No.1

Radio Head  No.1

By Michael Casey

Well if that Allan Bennett can do it on tv it should be easier on radio, no pictures to get in the way. Radio is louder than tv anyway, so it shouldn’t be too hard. I know he’ll be licking his lips now as he gets ready to pounce, to slice and dice what passes for my intellect.

He can’t see my face as this is radio, so he won’t be able to read my body language either. So that’s him sorted, like putting a suitcase on the shelf in the concierge room. I’ve attached a label too, if he loses his ticket then he’ll stay up there on the shelf gathering dust, like a long lost library book.

So we know HE is clever, I just try and hide amongst clever people then I appear clever, a bit like a zebra hiding on a zebra crossings. This is good cover until people pretend they are the Beatles and take photos, so I the zebra have to gallop, ok more like waddle away. But I have lost half a stone, just by drinking less fresh orange juice, from concentrate, I’m not made of money, I’m not famous like HIM.

So you write a play, so I am a playwright too, ok not so famous, but I can still put it on my Linkedin, IF I were still on Linkedin that is. Or I could put it on my Facebook, Michael Casey Playwright, from Birmingham. Does HE have a Facebook page, telling of all the drinking and carousing he does on a Friday night up Broad Street, or up any street?

I suppose when you are as well-known as HIM you have little parties at home, you have a caterer come and pass amongst you, with smiles and trays to reflect all the smiles in. I do have an entry so if it rained and I was having a Summer Fete in the back yard we could all shelter in the entry. And talk about the old abandoned ladders hanging from the metal rungs in the entry.

And what about the actual writing? Well I always say my Shoplife is so much better than Trollied on TV. Mine was written back in 1988 when the Olympics were on. The it WAS called “sparkling, very real, great fun, hilarious, we could not stop reading it. We hope to produce it not this Season but next.” Did Allan Bennett ever get such praise? No, he got a Tony in 1963, when I was 5, and the list is as long as your arm, and two legs.

Good job, this is Radio, or he’d see my Green Envy, and the silent tears of If Only, If Only. Where does he get HIS imagination from, it’s not as if it’s on special offer in Aldi or one of those other discount shops. Though some of the things you see as you go up the high street would really open your eyes.

So I did write a couple of other Plays, seeing if I could, where would my pen lead me. Though I never use a pen, I’ve typed since 1978. Thank God this is Radio, or you’d have the camera pausing over my pieces of paper, and everybody would scream at the screen, “He cannot write” my penmanship is dire after all.

Thank you for your pieces of paper was the first put down I received, I’d neglected to use a binder, don’t laugh at me, I was young and just starting out, I was under 30 then, still in my 20s.

Pagination and Page numbering is a big thing I suppose, but you just want to pour the story out on the page. Puke it out more likely I can hear Allan saying, as he butters his crumpet and pours his morning Green Tea. But a beginning IS a beginning.

So you are writing a play and you think it needs a few more pages, so you go downstairs to make a cup of coffee and have a breath of fresh air in the garden. You see a sparrow on the washing line, next to your pants, but it gives you an idea, but not about pants. So you go back upstairs to your Atari 1040 and write “watching not part of it, like a solitary sparrow sentry on a washing line.”

I’m sure HE never got inspiration from his washing line, he probably has a Mrs Hudson who does all that for him. Though if I ever made a few bob from Writing I’d have a housekeeper, it’s a perk it’s a nice thing to have.

Sorry I can’t meet the deadline today or this week. I have to go to Costco to stock up on toilet paper, 48 rolls for £14, a bargain. Then I have to sew the hem on my trousers, and I really must do the vacuuming, I got so carried away with the play I haven’t vacuumed in 2 weeks. So you’ll just have to wait. I know you’ll understand. If ever I make a few bob like HIM, then I’d have a Mrs Hudson, just how my domestic life would change. Forget the awards, I could have a cleaner for 10 hours a week.

So is all this going through my fellow writers minds as we slave away over a hot computer?  Must  write another 10 pages so my agent gets his money worth, paid by the page, just like piece work and tonnage that my dad endured in the Steel Works, The District Iron and Steel, Brasshouse Lane, Smethwick.

So I think I’ve said all I wanted to say for today, I can see Allan reaching for the tea cosy to throw at the radio. Cheek and Insolence, the perfect driver and concierge team from a hotel.

Did I tell you I did actually work in a hotel, but I was a good boy there, really good. Employee of The Year, well almost, close runner up, very close runner up, read the citation. Even won a prize, a trip to Cambridge, never went though. The wife was not feeling so well, turned out she was pregnant with our comedian 2^nd daughter.

So this is the end of my Radio Head No.1 piece, I hope Allan liked it, put that radio down Allan, don’t throw it out the window, you’ll miss the Shipping Forecast.

Study Methods

Study  Methods ©

By Michael Casey

My daughter is studying in the room behind me, she’s “driven” so says her school, which is good, because you can only do the work yourself, nobody will do it for you. It reminded me how I studied.

If I go all the way back I can remember my brother studying to get into University. He used to have a reel to reel tape recording of Cream music screaming out of just one speaker. I have that speaker in the room behind me, with some fake flowers on top. So it’s amusing that his niece is studying with the silent speaker near her.

Another brother inherited the speaker and took it to University with him. As for me, I just did a bit of the OU, though I did meet Eric Clapton himself, my brothers were the cream academically, but it was me who met the man from Cream.

I got a cassette recorder in 1973, we all went to Digbeth Civic Hall for an auction of household stuff, and it was part of the load my dad bought. We also bought a high stool with red seat. That was the stool that I perched a typewriter on when I started to write a decade later.

Now what did I do with the tape recorder? I copied Status Quo’s Caroline album to a tape and then listened to the tape while I did my homework. I also recorded my French and Spanish vocabulary to it, along with some History notes when I was getting ready for my O Levels. I think I was the last class to do O Levels before GCSEs were invented.

My brother had left home, so I was all alone in the homework room, or middle room as we called it, so music was company, along with my BBC Radio4 and Folk Weave on Radio 2.

There was a tv programme on that said don’t study too long, break it up, otherwise you forget what you have just learnt. My brother’s wise words were “a little bit often.” However in those days I played rugby, so Saturday was a rugby day. So I gave myself off that day, which meant I did all the work on a Sunday.

Now if I had listened to my brother I would have done even better, but I still did do very well. Now the next generation is studying. The girls have a fancy Blik Dab Radio in their room, I was able to buy it with some vouchers I had. It’s small with a great sound, so I donated it to them and I kept an old one.

So music and study continues in the Casey family, though Katy Perry and Capital radio is preferred to Cream and Clapton now. They say that Classical music is good for the brain and helps it work better, I’ll have to wait for the research into Katy Perry and brainwaves to come out.

My small daughter loves to read and she loves having a class of 40 soft toys lined up as she reads to them. This is her study method. When she grows up she wants to be an Animal Biologist.

Oxbridge and Still Cannot write an Essay

Everybody is doing their A Levels including my nephew so I've brought this back

Oxbridge and still cannot write essays? ©

By  Michael Casey

I had been thinking about my latest  blog here on the Daily Telegraph and on my own site www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com then I spotted the article, so that’s why I’m writing this. My own brothers were Oxbridge, me CPNEC was my university along with the good old OU. So I’m saddened that nobody can write, if I were in charge of Oxbridge I’d do a Maths and an English test, and if they fail the test I wouldn’t let them in.

How can somebody 18plus not write a good essay? I was lucky because Frank Brown from County Tyrone was our lodger and he donated a radio, an old Bush radio to me and my brother. You all remember the Bush radio with the marzipan strip carry handle and the saucer size tuning dial, and don’t forget the domino size frequency buttons, and the huge battery inside. That radio was part of my education, we used to listen to The World Tonight, Douglas Stewart reporting, followed by The Book at Bedtime. I can still remember falling asleep during the Ghost and Mrs Muir. I must have spent 20years listening to Radio 4 constantly, and it was only then that I started writing myself, and it took me a year to get it right. Now I have 6 “masterpieces” on Amazon Kindle.

So why can’t students write? Is it too much cannabis or other Class As, or alcohol.No of course not. Is it too much time playing computer games? Too much sport or sex? Or didn’t they have to write an essay a week in English. We had to write an essay a week for Mr Noon, here’s the title, now go write two pages. We had a book list of 40 books we had to work our way through too. I was a natural reader, I read nearly everything on the shelves by my school desk in Primary school. I continued reading through my Grammar school days, then on through my twenties. Does anybody actually read nowadays?

I’ve done a bit of Esol teaching, I’m available right now too, but with Esol you encourage people to listen to Radio4, to practice ten new sentences a day, to read the free newspapers on the bus, to watch BBC news. Lots of simple things can help a foreigner pick up the language, one of our family friends is off to Oxford in the Autumn, her English is perfect, just like Helen Bonham Carter yet she was not born here, she is Chinese. So the obvious point is why can’t people born and raised here do the same.

Essay writing is all about a beginning, a middle and an end. You have to prove your argument too, why was this important, why is History really about Geography. History is Geography, because one leader wants to steal the other country’s resources, Hitler wanted living room, Napoleon wanted to conquer Russia too. In a History essay you’d make the bold statement and then you’d give proof, Facts, Detail, Proof, Latin as I once wrote down on a piece nearly 40 years ago. Once  you have proved your point you can then give lessons for the future, the past shows us the way NOT to go again, a do not enter sign. History repeats itself, is another phrase, we all chase the blond who’ll slap our face, but still we follow her. Monroe is, was, and always will be a honey trap, History shows us many Monroes, if we could control ourselves and keep our hands to ourselves then we’d learn the lessons of History, and we wouldn’t need living room, just stick to our own girl in our own bedroom.

It would be nice if people read and listened to the radio, I fear I’m the final generation of radio lovers, radio is great if only those Oxbridge students listened to radio then they might be better at writing essays. Or they could pay me £xx an hour and I’ll teach a few classes. I’d teach them to love words, to adore words, no not as good as having Monroe in your bed, but at least you’d pass your exams, and that would keep the Dons happy.

Letter from a Scammer

Letter from a Scammer ©

By Michael Casey

First of all let me say I am not Michael Casey, my real name is John Doe Barrister, Mr. John Doe Barrister  and I don’t make coffee in any of those delicious but over priced establishments. Just email JDBarrister666@nosuchemail.comand all will be revealed.

Thank you most sincerely My Beloved, I could not answer earlier as I was having my life saving surgery. As I lay here close to death I have decided to choose you to  have all my worldly goods on the occasion of my death. And it will be an occasion with 1000 mourners all dressed in black, I don’t believe in this new thing of wearing colours.

So all you have to do is phone +44 5555 55555555 and ask to speak to Mr Kickthebuck Barriers at Barrister’s chambers in Barristers’ Row in London England, around the corner from the  High Court. But don’t tell anybody about the details of this email as its top secret. Everybody will want my billions, my £100000000, which I worked so hard for working in Las Vegas as a male stripper.

So just reply to this letter giving your full name, address and phone numbers at home and work, not forgetting your DOB, better still photocopies of your passport and all legal documents. Better still just put everything in an envelope and post to me.

I forgot my postal address is care of the Governor Wormworth Scrums Prison, London England. I have to go now, association time is over. But remember tell nobody about this email.

You will be a very rich man, soon.

Pray Like a Child

Pray Like a Child©

By Michael Casey

When you are a kid you believe, it’s only as you grow older you get cynical and become a don’t know. As a child mum makes you say the Rosary together, the family that Prays together stay together.

“Dear Baby Jesus, can I have a bike, Amen.” Then you jump under the covers and are fast asleep in seconds. Your mum tells her sister, and you get a scooter, one of those that you push with one foot while you stand on the thing. They are very popular again now, 50 years on. As for you the child, proof that prayer works.

You get older and exams beckon, so you pray with renewed vigour, or rather your prayer life is renewed, after falling fallow, but you dig out the Rosary beads and ask for help. You mum joins in and asks the Saints to make the examiner miss your mistakes on the exam paper.

You pass your exams and then prayer is forgotten again. You can’t find a job, so the prayers start again. Your atheist brother says why not try computers, so you do. This results in a good job with good pay for 21years.Is God having a joke? Or has your mum blackmailed the Angels and Saints. A bit of both really.

So life goes on, your mum with her hand in her pinny saying the Rosary as she watches Dallas. Next you need a house, so the prayer restarts. While taking the dog, Goldie, for a walk the dog stops to pee on a garden gate. You look up, the house is for sale.

When you get home you tell your dad, he jumps on the bus to see the house. Dad cannot contain himself so he bangs on the door of the dog pee marked house. He has a look around. He sails home triumphant, “Michael Buy That House.”

So I did.

Working shifts is hard work, lots of night shifts, 14 years of them. Get over it, is what ignorant people say, to this and everything. There is a bonus though, you get to see Dawn over central Birmingham. This really is God’s Creation, 14 years of seeing dawn, some only ever see it when they stagger home from the pub.

So life good on. Mum dies suddenly, 8 weeks later dad should die, but your brother saves him with CPR. Dad is given a week to live and he will not be resuscitated if he has another heart attack. We sit in my sister's house picking hymns for his funeral.

Now today 25^th May would have been Padre Pio’s Birthday. Back then in 1996 I’d heard of him. So I prayed, I asked him to intervene. You are breathless, speechless, lots of things are in your mind, and there is nothing in your mind. Opposites. But there is also something else inside you, your mother has died but weeks before but she left 

you something, she left you Faith, faith of a child.

I put a photo  of Padre Pio under dad’s pillow. 19 people on a heart ward, 18 died. My dad did not. My dad said he heard the doctor say “wheel him to the end of the ward, he’ll be dead soon.”

That’s when dad woke up, and the doctor dropped his tea in shock. Dad spent 3 months, 12 weeks in Dudley Rd hospital or City Hospital as it’s called nowadays. I wrote about it in full in an essay Padre Pio and Me, it’s on the Internet.

So prayer goes up and down, like the swell on the sea, prayer has tides just like the sea too. Pio used to say “the prayer I say tomorrow, will have helped you yesterday.”

Ian Botham was in the news yesterday about he’s attitude  to his own sick dad, I totally understand his point of view. With our dad I visited every single day, as did my sister and other siblings visited loads too.

Now you have your nice house, and you’ve always wanted a wife and perhaps a family. However all you do is visit your dad so you’ll never meet anybody. So you say your prayers and again you ask Padre Pio to help, as if he was a marriage bureau. Then after 3 years who do you meet? Your Shanghai wife.

Kids would be nice, so you get 2. So some will say this is luck or coincidence. I chose to believe Padre Pio is in Heaven having tea with my mother. Though the pair of them might be having a look at my sister in Lourdes today, Happy Birthday Padre Pio, thanks. 

a photo from 9 years ago maybe

Backwards Talk

Backwards Talk ©

By Michael Casey

My small daughter and me love fizzy pop, my Shanghai wife is against this. So my small daughter has decided to backwards spell what she wants, so Dr Pepper becomes reppep rd. It’s hard enough for me to follow, the plan is that for my wife’s Chinese brain it will be impossible.

So the theory goes, but the wife and the Chinese are very very clever. So I have to sneak out without being spotted. Then come home victorious, hiding the pop up my jumper.

Come and have your medicine I call from another room, then conspiratorially me and my small daughter have Dr Pepper. I perhaps should explain one daughter is Western frame and looks like a clone of me. Whereas the other daughter is much smaller and much more Shanghai wife in size.

Our plan has worked we are enjoying the Dr Pepper together, only my small daughter gives the game away. BURP, she burps like a Sumo Wrestler, which is what  I’m compared to on occasion.

A dad’s job is never done, I am ordered to sneak out to the store for chocolate, fruit and nut by Cadbury’s is the current favourite, so again I have to sneak out like a burglar in reverse. Then I return like an all-conquering hero and do a lap of honour around the living room, as I break and share the chocolate.

My girls love chips as a treat, why? Because they follow Shanghai diet, which is rice with everything. There is also a lot of fish and chicken, white meat as it is called. So dad has to be persuaded to go to the chippie, or to buy roast potatoes that you bake in the oven.

I am a modern hunter gatherer, thought I don’t have a spear and a hide to cover myself with. My wife would tan my hide if she caught me ruining our girls Shanghai diet. So I have to sneak out.

In the interests of diet supervision the wife has to eat 1/4 of the chips and/or roast potatoes. So parenting is all about spelling snacks backwards, now GoGo, which means go to bed/sleep, though it could mean OGOG.

Building Memories

Building Memories ©

By Michael Casey

So do you build memories with your kids? Do you do anything so that your kids will always remember it? I hope you do, if you don’t you are BORING. Any little thing can be used to create memories, magic memories.

So the local seagulls flew over and dropped their bombs on my open bedroom window, SPLAT. Like a custard pie but much much worse. Yes we do get seagulls in Birmingham, the most inland part of the island of England. They come here just to dump on us.

So now you have a problem, how do you clean the window, the way it opens means it difficult to do. Then I think of turning it into an opportunity, just like in all those self-help and management manuals. Though this is much better fun and not as pretentious.

I dug out the water pistols and started to fill them with water, we would use seagull pooh as target practice. See inventive humour at work, just like my Linkedin Profile says. Only the water pistols leaked, and leaked over me.

I had hoped that by pushing my window even further open, the  rain would act as window cleaner, only that did not work. So the water pistol idea. So then I went to plan B, I am better than the chancellor as I do have a plan B, not about economics, but about cleaning seagull pooh from my bedroom window.

So I got my small daughter to close the bedroom window, while I filled a plastic jug up with water. As I flung the water in an attempt to clean the window she taunted me with her nose pressed against the bedroom window.

The first one or two throws hit the seagull pooh target, and my small daughter laughed, and taunted me in her newly discovered

Irish accent. Half the family is Irish so it’s funny to hear my ½ Chinese daughter practice her soft Irish accent.

I tried a few more flings but my aim got worse and ½ the water went over me, such is the geography at the back of the house. So I had another idea, my netball playing bigger and taller daughter.

So she came out and had a go. See I’m a good dad letting my daughter practice her netball shots, by flinging water from a jug at a seagull poohed bedroom window.

None of this really worked, I just ended up dribbling water back into our kitchen. BUT one thing did happen, I have created a memory that will live on after I die. Which won’t be for decades I hope. So don’t think I’m the stupidest person in the world, I am an inventive humorist, just as my Linkedin Profile says.  

A half Chinese Girl Learning Spanish

A half Chinese Girl Learning Spanish ©

By Michael Casey

My daughter was going over her Spanish ready for a test, I was listening and was happy I could remember mine. I did the exam nearly 40 years ago, though I did relearn it in 1998/1999 prior to my trip to Barcelona. So it brought memories back.

Barcelona was my last trip away before I met my Shanghai girl, I spent 15 minutes talking to a girl I met in a Tapas bar, before she told me she could speak English. She said it was good for me the Spanish practice. I met another girl in a bar and she had an American accent, and great hair but a broken nose.

The next day who should come dancing across the stage, only a ballet dancer with great hair and a broken nose.  It was the girl from the Tapas bar, I had gone to see the Russian ballet in Barcelona and there she was dancing for me.

A few months later I was again watching the Ballet, this time in Birmingham with the friend who had introduced me to Ballet. There it was the massed ranks of the Ballet, loads and loads of dancers at the NIA. Who should I spot, only the girl from Barcelona.

When I met my Shanghai girl she told me that she had met a girl at church, the church next door to my old Grammar school. This girl was her friend and she would give me the once over to see if I was nice enough for my Shanghai girl.

So we met in a back street bar, The Queens Tavern, in the China quarter. Next to the Hippodrome which was the home of The Birmingham Royal Ballet, and yes you’ve guessed it she was a Ballerina. I was positively vetted by a Ballerina.

Which brings me back to Spanish, my daughters are bilingual, I am not. So as my daughter was practising we both had the same thought, we should teach her little sister Spanish. So then I would be bilingual with them, in Spanish. Then they could continue being bilingual in Chinese with mum. A perfect family comprise.

Life is a compromise after all, but if you have another language you can talk privately with your family while you are out. Nobody knows what you are saying, not even other Chinese as you are speaking Shanghai dialect.

So language brings families together and its fun, as for me I cannot wait  till my small daughter learns Spanish.

Spots

Spots ©

By

Michael Casey

Spots, now where shall I begin, when I started shaving perhaps, when I was 14, I am part gorilla after all. So I started shaving and made a mess of it, or rather my face. So I had cuts to the right cheek and for balance to my left cheek. So you put a styptic pencil on it and scream, and then pieces of toilet paper, or a strip from the newspaper.

Your face heals and the wounds fade, but the wounds are infected and you get a nice spot full of pus, which is so so tempting. So you squeeze it and decorate the mirrors around the house. The wound just will not heal, so it’s your duty to squeeze it, again and again and again.

It becomes a hobby, squeezing your spots. Eventually the wounds heal and the pus is drained and squeezed out of existence. The mirrors are polished to perfection by mum, pledge and cloth removes everything.

They say that only pubescent boys and girls get spots, this is a lie, to me having a spot is a badge of honour. I AM still young, even if I have reached part two of my life, the descent to the grave part. There is the joy of squeezing the spot, on a par with having an illegal fag in the bike shed.

You have to wait for the spot to be ready to be squeezed, it has to be plump enough, or the experience won’t be as good. You have to have self-control, like waiting for your first kiss, control yourself and the joy will be even greater.

After a day or two of self-control, you cannot resist it any longer, it does not matter if you are at work. You sneak to the bathroom, or the gents as we say over here in England. Then waiting for your moment you lean forward, as you would for your first kiss, but this one is all alone.

You take hold of the spot and squeeze, just at that moment half the office enters the gents, they all laugh and your zit goes all over your best shirt and leaves an almighty stain of pus and blood. Totally humiliation.

Later that afternoon you are giving a presentation, you put your name badge over the stain. The presentation goes well until the badge falls to the ground. So you improvise. You take your shirt off and dab the new cleaning liquid your company is marketing all over the stain.

Cheers and applause, and best of all, all those years of pumping iron and squeezing spots have giving you a look real men would kill for. The ladies in the room are smitten, good job you put a clean vest on that morning.

So the spot is gone, on your face and on your shirt, your spot in the presentation has impressed the client. Spot the difference it has made to your life. Spot on, and on the spot you have a new girlfriend, and yes you’ve guessed it, she is covered in spots.  

Flowering

Flowering ©

By

Michael Casey

I put a photo of my pot of shamrock on my site recently, it was more than shamrock but some red flowering plant as well. Then also crammed into the pot were some sweet peas. The red flowers had almost died then now today they are reborn, 4 small buds reappearing in brilliant red.

This is a bit of colour to the room where I write, and scent too sweet pea are really smelly. Now what I really want to talk about is flowering of talent. My eldest daughter has developed an interest in architecture, so we watch the tv programme which has people building their own homes, their own grand design.

The programme highlights people following their own design dream. In fact the end result tonight was the best of the maybe 15 programmes I’ve seen so far. We all have a dream but here on tv we watch people follow their dream. Perhaps I should start singing “Climb every Mountain.”

Some of the self-build people or should I say self-design people nearly end up going bankrupt. With architecture you have to get it right and have to have deep pockets. Things do go wrong, even having thieves break in and steal the tradesmen’s tools.

In the end though we see the flowering of a dream , a home, a perfect home for the couple who have dreamed and strived so much. The end result is a physical thing, a house.

But what about non-physical things ? Talent is a strange thing, people are jealous if you have talent, you did not work for it, you have what they don’t have. It’s never that straightforward, even Pele had to practice,  as did Georgie Best. So talent is an ability to do something well, really well. It appears effortless because Pele or whoever have practiced and yes there is the God given bit as well.

A talent that is flowering has to be nurtured, it has to be watered just like my plant pot besides me. Now what is so wonderful is when you can see the progress, when you can see the improvement each time you observe.

We never let our girls have all those computer games we encouraged them to draw instead. So now after years of drawing and maybe 800 crayons and felts and other writing implements our girls can draw, really draw.

You may have a son who bangs a ball against a wall for hours, or practices with a basketball hour after hour. The skill, the talent can be seen growing every day, every week. Now sometimes this is a tragedy, because the child is being forced to be a tiny Tiger Woods or whatever. Decide that one for yourself.

When you write you know if you’v produced a good piece or an average piece, or if you missed it. Sometimes though you nail it on the head and  when you read it through when you have finished you know that’s one of the really good ones.

Form applies to writing as it does to riding a horse or dancing or doing gymnastics. You have to be “on form” and then you come up smelling of roses. The sense of satisfaction when you nail a piece of writing is like a sugar rush.

A parent with their own kids, all of us that is, are in a unique and perhaps holy place as we nurture our kids and see them grow as individuals with a flowering of skills. Learning to walk, to talk, to hold a crayon, to remember  things and so on. And to puke all over the parent along the way.

A teacher too is in  a special place as the teacher opens young and old minds to learning, the book is opened and the blank page is filled with learning. It’s when you can see the lights go on in students’ eyes, they understand. Then some actually thank you, if you remember the story of the 10 lepers from the Bible, only 1 came back to say thanks.

The flowering of a mind and the new connections it brings between you and your children, or you and your students IS the thing that makes your hard work worthwhile.

It just depends where you work as a teacher as to whether you are fighting a battle or leading like a merry Pied Piper. In my own teaching time I tried to be a Pied Piper, but if students misbehave, throw them out, 7 expulsions in one 3 hour session was my record, or rather their sad record.

Confidence grows and flowers grow, and as with flowers this attracts bees, who fly and pollinate the other flowers. A good buzz will ignite a class and great results can flow.

But back to family, time is the most important thing you give to your kids. In today’s busy world all I suggest is switch the tv OFF. Talk to your kids, spend time looking at their homework, encourage them to read, to watch intelligent tv. Peppa Pig is a reward it is not an excuse for being a lazy parent.

A child’s mind is a great great thing, and as Eric Clapton sang “Let it grow, let it grow, let it blossom let it grow.”

Cover Letter

Cover Letter 2014 ©

By

Michael Casey

I was talking to somebody about cover letters today, I can see the irony as I talk to you, as I won’t be needing one myself any more. However Pitch Letters are a different thing, and I do expect to have to do some of those.

So what about Cover Letters, they are part of the job search process, without one you may not get a job, or it may swing it for you. So you have to write a cover letter. I looked at my old cover letter today and realised it was too long.

A CV should be two pages and no more, the cover letter that goes with it should be just one side. HR people and job agencies are always in a hurry, they won’t even look at a multipage opus. Into the bin it will go, literally or on their PC.

So what do you do? You iron out he rough spots, and raise the molehills to mountains, and vice versa. The Cover Letter is your chance to shine, it’s like your Facebook home page. Or your paragraph on the Dating Website. It’s all about you.

So you say what you were great at, you never say “I was a bit rubbish at X Y Z” followed by but. Your Butt would be kicked out before you even start. It’s a Positive Only piece, it’s your chance to get a great job, or any  job and be able to afford to pay the rent or buy a new set of golf clubs.

So tell them what you are great at, and think differently about yourself, put yourself in their shoes, the Saint Augustinian Way, and Sell Yourself. You may not think  that visiting the sick is anything special, its your good deed. This proves to an employer exactly where your heart is, he may be a hospital visitor himself, yes him in the £2000 suit.

You may be embarrassed by your kindness but it lets the employer know just what kind of person you are. Your Community Actions do make a difference.

I

n your job it may have been you who trained all the new people, and wrote the basic Bible for the job you all did. Nobody else could have been bothered, but you did it. So put it in the Cover Letter, you have Training Experience, so boast about it.

You may speak several languages, and the office staff may have poked fun at you for it, but it’s you who speaks to all the truck drivers when they arrive from all over Europe. Tell everybody as the Billy Joel song goes, you may even overlook it, because it’s only a few minutes. But only you can do it, so boast about it.

Write a list of everything you can do, and everything you do do, then write a flow chart of it, and join the dots with words. If you sell your house you put everything down in a positive way, so on a Cover Letter you do the same, but about yourself.

I am fat and have white hair, this describes me. In a Cover Letter it becomes I am distinguished looking with silver hair and a strong athletic build.  Ok the athletic may be stretching it too far. You are painting a picture, a pretty postcard showing just how great you are, so you get that job.

All this has to be done on one page, it’s a sprint and the winner gets the job, so don’t be shy give words a try.

Counting Your Chickens

Counting Your Chickens ©

By

Michael Casey

They say don’t count your chickens before they hatch, and why do we have that truism, because it is true. Then there is opportunity and lost opportunity, and hope beyond reason too.

I suppose my life is close but no cigar, which proves I’m close, but I am a non-smoker so maybe a cigar would just may me sick. It’s like winning the lottery, you had all the numbers, but you forgot to place the bet. I was a trainee betting shop manager in one of my previous lives too.

Which reminds me about my Tarot reading. My friend did a tarot reading after we had chips in the computer room rest room. So for fun I picked the cards and all the answers had money connections. Sadly none went in my pocket.

I did my 21 years in that computer room, then my next jobs all had a money connection:- Insurance, Finance Dept, Bookies, 4 star deluxe business hotel, Life Insurance, Law Firm, private school Esol teacher.

o close to money, but none in my pocket. Some say you lost a million or ten million because  you did not put your money on the lottery or because you did not join that company or sell your book at the right time.

I disagree, IF it’s not in your hand then it’s not in your hand. Some say God did not want you to follow that path and another path, a better path will arrive. I’m inclined to believe that, when you deserve your reward at that point you will get it.

And if you don’t get your reward don’t worry about it, it may have not been worth waiting for in the first place. In the past few months I’ve assumed things would go one way then they didn’t. This proves I have Hope, I can wait, I have to. Don’t be bitter or even jealous, all good things come to he who waits.

You meet this man or this woman and they’ll help with your dreams, they don’t, they cannot even if you had hoped they could. It’s like waiting for the bank manager to agree that business loan or that mortgage. Your life in their hands.

Networking is about building, friendship, trust and even love. There can be business partnerships or life and marriage partnerships, love in other words. For your dreams the partner the investor must share your dreams, then he risks his money for a fair share of the profits.

You can frighten partners away by the way you look or by the way you sound, or the way you dress. Some partners want you to brown nose as they say in America. Some want fun, if they are truly independent they can spit in their hand and you shake on it and it’s a deal. They can afford to lose some dollars so your project is just fun for them.

Politics plays a part with other potential partners, you are too left of field for their image, you may damage them. So they walk away from some fun, and hard work, but it should be fun if you are investing so much time in a project.

Remember what Bill Clinton said somewhere, now he wasn’t President he could say what he liked and enjoy himself more. Which gives me an idea, has anybody got his email address, do you think he’d invest in a fat writer from Birmingham. I won’t count my chickens before they hatch, but you do have to crack eggs to make and omelette.

Creature Comforts

Creature Comforts ©

By

Michael Casey

We all like to have nice things, we save up for them, we are excited when we get them, it’s just nice. We may scrimp and save so that finally we can have a house, a home of our own. Then we make our home into a home, by adding our creature comforts.

One creature comfort may actually be nothing, because we no longer live at home with mum and dad so we no longer have to wear PJs. Mine always used to spit as I’m active when I’m asleep. I move about a lot, so my PJs always split.

So my creature comfort was being able to sleep in the nude, it’s much more relaxing being naked in bed. Ok I know half of you reading this have just had a really horrible picture put in your mind. That’s your own fault by having too good an imagination. In reality it’s like a gorilla in bed,  but even  hairier.

Moving swiftly on, nice Egyptian sheets from John Lewis also make the sleeping experience so much better. To top it all recently Aldi the discount shop had real duck feather pillows, these ARE the best pillows  I’ve had in my life. So my sleep experience is so good now.

There are other creature comforts, such as soft toilet paper, growing up we could not afford the softest, we even sometimes had to use old newspaper. At least you had something to read while you did your business.

We did have an outside toilet too until I was 10 I think, my eldest brother would have been at University. Dad always used to knock the yard light off, as it was wasting electricity. The same switch also switched off a 2^nd light inside the toilet itself. “Put the Light On” was shouted from the cold of the toilet. In winter we had a little oil lamp to heat the pipes so they would not freeze over.

Funny what you think of when you sit down to write something before bedtime. Slippers are a creature comfort too, at home we had lino up the stairs to the bedrooms. So at bedtime we used to split our legs so we could stand on the wood at the side and not the lino. Why? Because lino was so cold, absolutely freezing. We did not get central heating till I was 12 or 13.

This was the norm when we grew up, it was the same for everybody in the 1960s and 1970s.  Baked bread was a treat too, not the sliced variety. So we’d tear the crusts off and leave a lump of exposed and naked bread. Mum would rescue it and use it in soup another day. I still have our old metal bread bin, it’s under the sink in the kitchen behind me. An antique now.

Simple little things make us happy, like a few sweets bought on a Saturday at the market, or glazed ring donuts. Can you all remember those?  How about Madeira  cake all nice and yellow on a Sunday?

These are simple creature comforts, I did not expect to write this, I was going to be more consumer goods orientated, but as I just sat down this is what came out. I suppose it’s all the Love I’m remembering. A connection said just a few days ago that I made her cry because I had evoked a memory that reminded her of her own dad.

So if when I write this happens it’s the greatest thing I can possibly do. If I can steer everybody else  back to the Love they remember when they were young or memories of things past, then I think I’ve found my true vocation, my 3^rd wish granted from Padre Pio.