Sweet Sixteen ©
By
Michael Casey
Well today 10th Jan
2018 I’m starting on my sixteenth book, as I start the tally is
1,230,000+ words, or 3600+ plus pages. I don’t watch the tally like a
speedometer, but as it’s there I’m telling you. Sweet 16 will be the
next book to amuse or bore you all with. Online I’ve had 58,000 plus
readers, when I was on Google+ I once had 300,000 but I did not believe
it. What matters is book sales, but sadly nobody buys a book as they can
read me online, maybe I’m just too innocent like a sweet sixteen. But I
can direct the world to Amazon in vain hope people do finally buy my
wares. Or you can all just google me, michaelgcasey the fat silver
haired writer in shades. Don’t be confused by others with the same name.
Well
it’s 10 to 10 and the wife is out visiting some new Chinese friends
while on her trip to Shanghai over Christmas. So like the good housewife
I have heated the bath water so she can have a soak when she gets in.
She is the breadwinner now, I am derelict now, well some say that or
assume that. Though I still have some useful functions.Like a discarded
toy you discover and realise it’s still worth keeping, that’s me I
suppose.
When
you are 16 you are naive and full of hope, though I must say in my own
life I was 10 or 11 when I grew up. Because I grew up in one way I
retained my child like innocence in another way. My sense of imagination
and hope, some would say it was a defence mechanism, I’d just say you
adapt to what’s around you.
When
you first go to work you follow one person just like a bird imprinting
on the first thing you see. I can vaguely remember a guy called Steve
Jay Callaway, he’d be 70 now maybe. My brothers at home scolded me for
quoting him all the time. Steve this and Steve that, I seem to remember
he wanted to become some kind of preacher. Though he could be dead or in
jail now. If you read this Steve I’m sure you’ve had a nice life, but
frankly you wouldn’t want to know me now.
As
you grow old you are not as naive, though I was naive in another job,
and that led to tears on my dad’s birthday. I know who they are and
maybe if ever my words are famous I can tell the whole tale. Basically
its about prejudice and abuse of power. See I bet you are intrigued now,
but I’ll let it be till my 27th book.
When
you earn a few pennies you rejoice and I hope you help out your mum and
dad, or at least offer. It’s the thought that counts, if you don’t even
offer that really is where the child has abused the parents’ love and
care for them. You don’t have to hug and kiss, the love can be far far
deeper, but do remember your parents, and never treat them as cleaners
in a hotel where you never pay the bill.
They
say the greatest joy is in giving, not spending 1000 on a new phone,
then giving your dad a 5 quid tie, which he’ll never wear, so you wear
it yourself. I once bought my dad a made to measure suit, there was a
Jewish tailor in Smethwick who made it for him. So we should all praise
the tailor and remember him in our prayers, and my dad too who’s
anniversary looms.
My
dad used to come home from the pub at weekends with cheese and onion
crisps stuffed into his sports jacket, I can remember pulling them and
his snotty handkerchief out as we all tried to get the crisps out. This
innocent memory sticks with me over 50 years on, it is sweet. Yes I have
many more memories, more than 16, more than 1600 even. Perhaps I can
boast that each word is memory, so is that 1,230,000 plus memories?
We
should all try and stay sweet and sixteen, I always say I am 20 in my
head, though my birth certificate is nearly 3 times that, and as for my
body, well that’s battered and gives me plenty of pain at times. If we
try and maintain a young outlook we are happier, even if there is lots
of pain in our lives.
I’ll
finish with a story from 50 years ago. I was climbing the old air raid
shelter and slipped, so I landed on the bolt that held it together. It
went right into my left buttock. I put my finger in the hole and
fainted. My sister just laughed, she remember this tale exactly as it
happens, and she was 5 or 6 at the time. Dad took me to hospital, the
same one I’m going to next week for a kidney scan. I sat on my belly for
6 hours before finally a few stitches were put in. Then we came home
and dad distributed the cheese and onion crisps. It was a Sunday and Bob
Hope was on tv, with a kid in a cage in a film.
When
my big brother came home from Oxford I had to show him my bum and the 2
feet of plaster from my waist to the back of my knee. And he laughed at
me too. I had to sit side saddle for months till it healed, it could
have been over the summer holidays. Maybe that explains why I used to
sleep on my belly, until my quadruple heart bypass and now I can only
sleep on my right side.
All
this is sweet and innocent mishaps in a family, so I hope my readers
everywhere know that this the first story in my book Sweet Sixteen
really is a bum story.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC
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