Physical Comedy

Physical Comedy ©

By Michael Casey

I was watching somebody clean their front door and as I watched I could see the Comedy involved. They did not hold the handle of the jug of water, they just gripped the rim, a disaster waiting to happen, and before I could say I bet he drops the jug or he’ll spill it all over himself, he did exactly that.

Splash all over his tee shirt, and onto his jeans, the air went blue even from my side of the street I could hear him curse. So he tore his top off and threw it into the rose bush in his garden. A couple of little old ladies stopped to see the show and his body, he was a body builder after all, and their husbands had not looked like that in 3 decades, if ever. Your pants are wet too the old ladies observed, so Colin, Colin is his name, pronounced Colin, not CO Lin as your General in USA called himself.

So Colin tore his pants off too, this was too much for Mrs Lynch, she fainted, so Colin who is a gentleman after all stepped into the street to assist. A large bodybuilder in just his posing pouch. The girls in number 54 came running out, they had had their eyes on Colin for years, now he was here in the fresh, so much flesh too. Up the road Rob and Guy the street gay couple came out to assist, they just had to see what was going on. Even Peter the traffic warden came out for a look.

The whole street united as Colin had dropped water all over himself and a little old lady had fainted, the other old lady could have had a stroke but she was not close enough. Now these are the ingredients, you have to picture it all for yourself, and if you were re-enacting this in your garden with your friends  who would you be, or would it descent into a water fight, or a flour throwing fight, or tomatoes or any of those other festivals the world over.

Observation gives you the ingredients, and it’s up to you to put them together, it’s like a jigsaw that appears before you, and you just start fixing it in mid-air. And how did today’s words come about, am I the bodybuilder or maybe I’m just the little old lady, I do look a lot like my mother. Or am I just one of the bystanders? No I’m just the writer, though my daughter nearly dropped a jug of water all over me, on her way to washing our front door 15 minutes ago. Art follows life, or a jug of water.