Pleasing an Audience

Pleasing an Audience ©

By Michael Casey

I was listening to John Denver on the computer using the Groove feature which sounds better than Windows Media Player to my ears, judge for yourself, assuming you have your 5 John Denver albums loaded to the computer. Some of the tracks I remembered well, I was a fan 40 years ago, me a book and a John Denver album till my next giro for unemployment came through. Thankfully I got my break in computers, and the neighbours were spared non-stop John Denver. Or me stopping up late at night reading all the Alistair MacLean books.

These were the simple pleasures that pleased me all those years ago, in my reading by the yard days. My girls read by the metre nowadays as they are modern and ½ Shanghai Chinese, though I will say invest in a cheap Kindle for your child, it is a godsend. Amazon must be wondering what kind of person I am judging from the reading habits, it’s not me it’s my daughter who is reading all these strange books, some I’d find to horrid to read. I would like to find a way to put my 12 books on her Kindle without having to pay for my own books, though I would get a Royalty payment for each, but I’d still be paying 30% of the cover price.

Tonight’s theme is about pleasing an audience that’s why I mentioned my own reading habits 40 years ago. My other girl likes watching operations on her computer, stuff with more blood in it than any late-night film. So now that the government is watching everybody even more they must be wondering what kind of household we are. We have a doctor cum pathologist wannabe in the house, hence all the gore.

Not forgetting Japanese videos on makeup that the wife watches. Me I mainly watch news and newspapers. So we each have something that pleases us the audience. But what if you are the information provider, what if you are me, yes me the fat silver haired writer from Birmingham who shops every day in his local Aldi.

Well and I did say I’d use well instead of so, well should I try and please my audience or just write for myself. I spotted that Russia was reading Michael and The Chink in the Wall an hour or so ago. That piece got high praise when the old Daily Telegraph posting place still existed, so I smiled when I noticed Russia was reading it. I also thought should I or could I write more stuff like that. Actors don’t like to be typecast and I suppose writers are the same.

So should I be a writer of sensitive pieces or hard sarcasm, should I be shy or should I be all Trumpian, the new President has entered the word vocabulary now. I like the variety each day brings me, look out the window and there’s another story approaching, just as the seagulls land on the neighbours roof. Where do seagulls go for a change of scenery, Birmingham, the furthest point away from the sea in Britain.

Should I have a notebook and work my way through the alphabet writing about this and then writing about that.  Should I pretend to like football in an attempt to get a Knighthood, to be honest I should never accept any honours. Being alive every morning is the greatest honour I get, and that comes from God, so nothing personal Marg, I’ll stay Mr Michael Casey, the fat silver haired writer from Birmingham.  

It’s nice when people like what you write, even if it’s, a you??? Total unbelief that a fat silver haired Birmingham guy who’s dad was a Kerry Blacksmith could write such words that touched and made them laugh or cry. I loved the film Amadeus, I loved the idea that a scruffy mad common man had been touched by God. Mozart was God’s imagination turned into sound, get the film out on video wherever you are in the world. I remember being dragged to the Futurist cinema in Birmingham to see it, in a corner a woman was crying.

You see God really does have a sense of humour, Ivan why has Mikail  got the prettiest wife in Saint Petersburg you know it’s true. Because even though he has that limp and a stammer too, what has he got that nobody else has got? He has that look in his eyes, and he listened to the BBC World Service and learnt a trick. If he sings he loses his stammer.

So he sings night and day to Olga, his eyes are like a puppy dog begging, but when he sings women all women, the whole of Russian Womanhood want him. But she Olga has him, he is hers. He was just her driver but he became her husband, because her mother and grandmother loved him and his singing. Yes it was madness but isn’t love madness? So Mikail married the daughter of a Saint Petersburg billionaire.

Ivan knows this to be true and if ever I finish Tears for a Butcher then true love overcomes any disability, in my story that is. Perhaps in Saint Petersburg there is a billionaire’s daughter married to a singing driver with a limp, is it just in my imagination or can it be true can it be really true.

I should finish there but just a sentence to say you can see how I went with the flow and wrote something to please my Russian readers, there are hundreds of short stories in my books, you never know what you will find, a bit like Ivan’s stew, he is such a  terrible cook, once he boiled his football boots with all the vegetables, but it was the best stew he ever made, his mates thought the laces were noodles.

How his football boots ended up in the stew pot is another story, if you can write it then Ivan will give you a bottle of his uncle’s best vodka, just invite him to dinner for the next 77x 7 weeks.   Why 77 x 7 because if you remember your Bible that is the number of times you should forgive me.