Getting Ready

Getting Ready ©

By Michael Casey

We all get ready, for this, for that and for lots of different things.  Our cat is getting ready, Totoro is asleep on the armchair in front of me, she is getting ready for the snow that is predicted, by having a good sleep. Sleep is good, it refreshes us and in the morning we will be bright eyed and bushy tailed. Sounds like Watership Down meets Bazil Brush, a funny British expression, bright eyed and busy tailed, I bet many of my overseas readers will have to google it.

But sleep is good, especially if you don’t get pain when you lie down or wake up every 2 hours, just giving you a glimpse into my life. I always say to myself I’m getting ready for the Undertaker, as the title of my comic novel is The Butcher, The Baker and The Undertaker, the irony does make me smile. As do the emails I get from folks advertising Funerals or Life Insurance, or even new homes in USA, but I’m in Birmingham England.

What else do get ready for? We get ready for Christmas, but as today is 12^th Jan 2017 Xmas is past. I have returned our crib, which my sister brought from Bethleham, from the front window to behind the tv in the back room. So instead of Christmas, we now getting ready for the rest of the year. One of my daughters is doing her GCSEs in the Summer so she is working hard to get the right results so she go to a good 6^th  form college. As dad I am doing my part to help her, by buying chocolate ready for when she gets home every day.

Today my daughter got her Mock results back, she was disappointed because in Maths she was short by 2marks of getting a 9, which only the top 2% in the entire country will get. She is very high in maths. She also wants to gets really high marks in everything. My only advice is the same advice my parents gave to my sister, you can always get a job in Woolworths, just be Happy.

Outside the storm is brewing though more on the tv news than on our doorstep, so the cat is curling up dreaming of cardboard boxes she can hide in and play in. Whenever we have packaging Totoro just loves to play with it. Now she is sleeping happy and relaxed, she needs to sleep for all her nine lives. Sometimes I envy her, able to sleep anyplace anywhere anyhow.

So what else can I get ready for? I get ready to be discovered as a writer, ok stop laughing all of you, or I’ll throw some of my million words as you. And some of my words can be very sharp, as sharp as Totoro’s claws, she is an attack kitty after all. In USA these past few days I’ve had 100s of viewers on a daily basis, have you guys got nothing better to do, or are you CIA?

https://butcherbakerundertaker.blogspot.co.uk/  so perhaps one of you, has a 

connection and I can get exposure in the media. Ok, wise guy at the back, go outside naked in the snow and then Michael Casey from Birmingham England, you’ll have lots of exposure. I’m not Jason Bourne.

The thing about writing is that you may go to the John and when you come back and read back the previous sentence you have another idea that leads to this or that. You have to be ready to use whatever comes your way, fair wind or foul, and depending on what I’ve been eating it could be foul, very foul. Speaking of eating Aldi now has Kiln Baked Salmon, I try and eat salmon twice a week as part of my post quadruple heart bypass diet. And best of all it is ready to eat, opening the vacuum sealed pack is the hardest part of the equation.

Life arrives and you just have to follow the path and hope you get someplace nice, life repeats itself and hopefully you get better at it. This is good for 90% of your life but for 10% you are never ready. You cannot be ready for 10% of your life, you just have to react. That 10% is what divides the sheep from the goats. I think if you have had a varied life you are quicker at reacting. A fireman or a policeman has to deal with strange things everyday so when something happens they will be ready. Working as Front of House in a hotel also sharpens your reactions, you have to be ready for anything.

Even you the reader has to be ready, you have to expect the unexpected. Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition as Monty Python said in the 1970s when I was at school. And none of you, not even the wise guy from the CIA or FSB, I do have Russian readers too, none of you  expected me to head for the kitchen and a final drink of the night, and that my last word is COFFEE.

If Tom Ford donates a suit I'll  wear it in all my snaps in future otherwise silly snaps