Days of History

Days of History ©

By Michael Casey

Well today even more History is being made here in England, the fallout from the EU vote goes on, Corbyn loses 172 to 40 and still clings to Power. But I’m not going to talk about that, Keanu Reeves turned up at Parliament, I’m sure he’s going to star in a Bio of Corbyn’s life, all, everything happening is not for real we’re all in some altered reality. Has Part 4 of Matrix started but nobody told us, we are in fact all staring in it.

Days of History, when I got my first pair of long trousers, a pair of puke coloured cords, my mum sat in the yard and hemmed the legs up. I have short fat and hairy legs just like Ernie Wise. She was sat on an old barn chair with the back sawed off. I have one like it upstairs, it may even be the very same one.  It may be the one I sat on when I wrote my 1^st book, The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker. So I ran up and down the garden admiring my new long trousers. I was 11 and it was the summer before starting at Grammar school. Yes I had to wait that long, and the trousers were hand me downs. For me though it was a very special day.

Buying a hifi was another special day, it cost me a week’s wages, £30, but it really did sound so good. I had it for years and years. I gave it to my sister in the end when I bought a Technics hifi, an all singing and dancing hifi. Which cost close to a month’s wages, it was the hifi my burglars stole over 25 years ago. Someday God will punish them, that’s if the drugs they bought hasn’t killed them already.

A day of history you remember all your life, because it is a stand out day, such as your wedding day, or the day you took your first girl to bed. Though for balance I must say other forms of partner are available. So special days are just that, special days.

Getting my house was a big day for me, because all the years of scrimping and saving had a result, I was sitting in my own home, with my own chairs and things surrounding me. I got a new bed and my family helped me put it together, one of those pine beds, we’d never had those when I grew up. It was a large scale jigsaw. Then we tested how strong the bed was by hurling my mother on top of it. She was 15stones, so if it held her weight then it’d be strong enough for me. We even have a photo of the event, we laughed so much.

Holidays are big events in our lives, though people take them for granted nowadays, they think it’s a Human Right, such as Broadband and Internet. Well it is NOT. As a child we had to take suitcases full of bed linen with us to Abegele in North Wales, and as we are a large family, that meant lots of suitcases, the old cardboard like ones with the old latches on them. We went to the same street and same group of houses for maybe 10 years. But at least the beach was a hop and skip and jump and spit away.

Now I’m getting older, and lucky to be alive too, I’m told I was 2 hours from death, as my heartbeat went up to 230 beats a minute after my bypass. Anyway now I look at my girls and the eldest already thinking of University, Medicine at Cambridge is her hope. My hope is to pay for it all, if only I could sell some books. Suddenly my small girls have grown up, you can tell they are growing up as there is less and less money in you pocket.

So what other Days of History would I like to see? Just to stay alive is enough, I’m sure it must have been the Queen behind me in Aldi stealing my line, I always say I’m still alive, or still fat when the cashier in Aldi asks how I am today. So Mrs Windsor, was that you behind me with the Scots Whisky and garlic bread?

Yes to be able to shop for free in Aldi would be a great thing, maybe they’ll read this and offer it as a prize in a competition, but they can give me an Aldi Always Card just for suggesting it. I’d eat loads of low fat garlic bread, washed down by cranberry juice, and their sliced Mediterranean chicken. Ha, what a thought my biggest day in history, a free Aldi Always Card. Though to be honest that’s all I need to keep me happy, because like the Queen I’m still alive.