Influencing the Writer

Influencing the Writer ©

By Michael Casey

I was having a lazy day today, the pain monster came last night so I thought I deserved it. Last night was good on tv as The Lady in the Van was on the telly, its a famous play by Allen Bennett. I do in fact have a copy of the book, it’s on my garden wall waiting to be taken away by passing scholars, or tramps in need of tissue paper. I’m sure Allen will praise me for my recycling efforts. I bought the book cheap but never got around to reading it. Then the play was on the telly last night, the film version with Dame Maggie Smith, she got an Oscar for the Prime of Jean Brodie.

So now the book is on the garden wall awaiting recycling, but I’ll keep an eye out for the rain as nobody wants a mushy book, in all senses of the word. Speaking of words Allen was interviewed in a documentary and the foul words he used en passant, if he used more of such words then he might attract a more working class audience, if I might steal some of the style in some of his stuff. I did email him once but I don’t remember did he reply, though I do send rather a lot of emails.

As you can see I am influenced by what I’ve seen on tv or read in the Press or on the radio, but then again a look out the window can provide an idea. Though lots of material I choose not to write about. Yes really. Today I bumped into our dog walker, I asked why he and his wife was so thin, recently both of them have lost a stone+ each, or 10kilos if you are handicapped by metric. See I add a throw away line just to annoy people, or to see if they are awake.

Our dog walkers are a form of clock for me as a I look up from the keyboard as they walk past. It turns out his wife has also been doing step ups, no she hasn’t been polishing her doorstep which was big in the 50s, no she has used the step up method. And no this is not a form of contraception for tall people, love should have no barriers. I could go on and on I do have a Doctorate in BS after all, I know you know already.

I’m still chewing now I had to grab a bite so I had fish fingers a la Birds Eye, they are the best you know, with a squirt of BQ sauce on top, wrapped in a slice of whole meal bread. I am Gordon Bleu you know, and where my 3 girls, they were at an Italian restaurant eating boring pasta. Meanwhile upstairs pussy, our Totoro the 4^th female in the family was fast asleep on a duvet. I’m sure she’ll give me fleas one day.

I’m waiting for the kettle to boil now and I wonder does Boris my Eastern European Everyman understand the style, or does he think Bloody Foreigners, I’m not letting my daughter go to England, or certainly not Birmingham. They are strange people, as he rehangs his Putin calendar on the fridge, chest exposed.

As I talk to you I wonder was I really Ronnie Corbette’s and Joyce Grenfell’s love child, would that make me Gerald Wiley? Life is strange and you have influences all over the place. Coffee is warming me now and I’m glad I resumed drinking it after a year or was it two break. 50 years plus a coffee drinker. Only instant, Kenco Rappor, do you think I could afford anything more? It is my guilty pleasure.

I pause for a sentence, perhaps Allen Bennett will knock the door and proffer one. Only its just the mad christian people, knocking at my door on a Sunday, have they got nothing better to do? I have a good mind to tell them to Allen Bennett off, I am a man and I have history, I know how to swear, I find it clears the air, and gets rid of unwanted callers at your door. I bet Allen is writing all this down in his notebook, under never to be used. I hope he falls off his bicycle.

I need another coffee so I’m going to leave it there for today, I was going to add just one word after “off his bicycle” it would have been so much more dramatic. But Allen would say it was a stunt, so I controlled myself and let the crude comic alliterative possibilities alone, sometimes you have to do that or people think you are just a …

 ps. I forgot about the book as the rain fell, so the Lady in the Van is all mushy