Green

Green ©

By

Michael Casey

Well I thought I’d write something more main stream today, that’s if anything of mine is main stream. My favourite show is on tv at 7pm, 100 Days Plus, a 2 hander about USA/Uk politics so I have an hour to paint green all over the screen. Why Green? Well I just wondered to myself could I write about anything, and Green popped up, so this is my self imposed challenge.

Green in big in Ireland and I’d call myself Irish having Kerry parents, though others might say I’m just a Plastic Paddy, having been born here in Birmingham, just down the road from where I’m speaking. If you Google earth you can actually see me stood outside my house, my white/silver head stands out, not green at all.

We say the grass is always greener someplace else, when in fact once you get there you are sadly disappointed. Then you pine for the green green grass of home, though having Tom Jones as a neighbour might be a pain what with all the ladies knickers scattered all over your lawn. So your lawn is never green, more like pink and frilly. Though Tom did ask his dad what he was doing, he was getting ready to go to work down the pit. So Tom said, never again, so his dad retired on the spot. I don’t know did his dad spend his retirement cleaning up knickers off the lawn,we’ll have to ask Tom, Sir Tom Jones that.

When you are new to something you are green, just as a sampling is, with time the sapling grows into a tree, and birds nest high in its branches, with just Totoro our cat finding blood sport in its branches. The tree blossoms and its leaves spreads providing shade on the grass below, this is where Casanovas of all ages take advantage of green girls on the grass, and so a new generation, my generation is born, on the green green grass of home.

With experience we all all no longer green, or maybe just our abandoned clothes. Life gives us experience so we go from a novice to an expert in our chosen profession. You might be a bottle washer in a bar or a hotel, the crash of failure sprinkles the floor, the floor sweeper gets more experienced too as you work together. With experience you are less clumsy, you make Tom Cruise in Cocktail look like a clumsy clown, you can grab toss and throw and cage your bottles like a circus performer. You are no longer green, you are a star shining silver and bright. As for your colleague, with his broom he looks like a soldier on parade doing tricks, but with a broom not a riffle, almost like a ballet performance, or something from Cirque du Soleil, all with his broom. Obviously the two of you marry and then its back to green grass.

Green is of course the Irish national colour, and Pakistan uses a version of green too. Then there is my old school uniform, yes that too was green. So you can discover my old Grammar school now. People used to be green with envy when you got into grammar school, before spite began to raise its ugly head in education, you can discuss that amongst yourselves.

So life begins with green, and as you take the hard knocks of life its like a bruise which goes through all the colours of the rainbow before it goes. I’ve been punched in the head, don’t cheer you horrible people at the back of the class, so I know all about how a black eye works.By the way the French say un bleu, and porn films are called film blanch, ask your green French teacher about that in the morning and see just how red she goes.

So you have a black eye or whatever they call them in Thailand or Korea wherever you are reading this, and it changes colour and goes through all the colours of the rainbow, so life too goes through various colours and hews. As you grow up and get some education in a good school, or through listening to life and Radio4 your brain expands, without any substances, just experiences that colour you and your life.

You may get a mentor directly or indirectly, it might just be the bus driver on the way to work or school, he’s always happy and perks you up,so you decide to be like him. Its very easy to be sad and blame everybody else for the black storm clouds in your life, you have to say &^^**( that I’m going to be happy. I’ll be like Bobby the bus driver, that’s his real name, I was not using trashy alliteration, maybe I’m colouring my words for effect, to add colour to their meaning. So you go off and make money and have a limousine hire service like Smoking Joe Frazier did, you remember Bobby and you go back and give Booby a job or just look after him. Why did you help Bobby, because when you were green he encourages you to go for Gold, so you remember his kindness. You repay him 1000 fold.

Yes we all start green,or waiting for life’s light to turn green, then we can crash over the barriers like a Bolt, and flash through silver to gold and reach for the stars. So enjoy the colours of your life, the red white and blue, the green and gold, whatever they are. How you colour your life is up to you, always remember that it takes all the colours of the rainbow to make a full life, and if you are lucky you will find your pot of gold at the end of your rainbow, And if you don’t there’s always a metal detector, and I don’t mean a sport star’s wife.