Explaining Things

Explaining Things ©

By

Michael Casey

I put a link on my site earlier in the day for a piece I had stumbled over in the Guardian, it’s a newspaper not a Security Guard’s trade magazine. Which ties in with what I want to talk about today, explaining things. The piece in the Guardian which I stumbled over was about a film, it was interesting and I may have even seen a piece of the film in one of my past lives. I am very eclectic, or nosey so I like finding out things, maybe I should have been a gossip, or Dickens or Shakespeare.

Some Americans have written a new book about plagiarism and Shakespeare and by using modern software they claim Shakespeare stole from some other guy, North I think his name was. You can find out more yourselves. As for Dickens I have him as a screensaver with him sat in his chair in his study, one day I hope to have such a study, though maybe only in the Afterlife, not unless Rupert Murdoch is reading this.

You have to realise Shakespeare’s background, growing up as possibly a secret Catholic, being in the family wool trade. I mentioned this in a restored piece on my site and 259 people or so mainly from Poland read it in just a few days. It was only when I Googled that I discovered Poland’s love of Shakespeare going back as far as Shakespeare’s own time. They even have their own new Globe theatre in Gdansk, so go and visit.

So by explaining things light and life is given to ideas. It’s the explanation that makes the difference. Or as Frank Carson the comedian used to say, “you have heard them all before it’s the way I tell them”. And that is so true, he visited CPNEC Birmingham hotel when I was there and when Roger drove him to the airport Roger nearly crashed the van as he was laughing so much, crying with laughter. Because of the way Frank Carson told them.

Which all brings me to my point, communication matters and style too. You may not be clever enough to understand some things in the news or at school or University, but if they are explained in another way the penny drops and you have a “whoosh” of knowledge. In grammar school in Geography I could never understand contour maps. If Mr Hughes my Geography teacher had brought in an orange or a potato or a football, and then drew on it in felt tip he could have explained contour maps to me. In 5 minutes I would have understood.

Visual aids do aid, and you can be very creative, an Art teacher might draw a contour map on a naked bottom, and then shade it in ready for Mardi Gras, which is only a week away now. So hello to all my readers in South America, but you would not have enough paint to paint my bottom.

I hope by using laughter I can reach the parts others may not reach, and now I’m talking about your brain not your bottom. Women  know this too, the quickest way to a man’s heart is via his stomach. Or as Gabrielle once joked, with a carving knife straight through the jugular. Boris, Lech and Gregorgi know this too, as their wives have great knife skills that’s how they fell in love, the Trio were so very impressed by their future wives butchery skills. Which brings dual benefits, the lads are always well fed, and they never never never upset their wives, they just love them. If ever they did upset their wives then they would wake up as women, need I say any more?

So now by using humour I have spread the message of fidelity in marriage. Don Camillo would approve I think. In For Your Penance which is Chapter7 of The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker I have Patrick organising a Fete for the children’s home. Why because he got his girlfriend pregnant, and the priest gave him it as a penance. There is also a little blackmail thrown in, the priest blackmails the local Police Inspector, we don’t have statute of limitations in UK.

Now if I was clever I’d use long words and over elaborate explanations to explain matters. But I’m not clever enough to do that, and I hope you all prefer my way of explaining things. If you just think I’m too facile then perhaps you should just stick to your own newspapers and kindly leave my page. Now where was I, all alone in my study, ok my front room with the vacuum cleaner noising above my head in one of the bedrooms. If you make things understandable then you can reach and touch more people, either as a singer or a priest or as a politician.

This is where Style comes in, and yes sometimes its all style and no substance. Like Reality TV, you can think of your own examples. I thought of the Kardasians immediately, then I remembered what I said about contour maps earlier on. If you drone on as a teacher then the battle is lost, or as a Dr of something, the benches are banged and nobody pays attention. And yes I witnessed that once. The reverse is true if you know your subject or if you hold an audience spellbound. And then other Drs of something come and listen, they flock even, and I’ve witnessed that too.

You can do more good with a quiet word or a joke than by screaming at people. If somebody screams at me I walk away, why should I listen? But if you seduce me with words and laughter I’ll draw up a chair, comedy clubs are there to help sell more beer after all. I even see posters for stand up comedy in my local Polish store. Which reminds me I need to pop out to the local Polish shop before the rains starts again.

I hope I’ve explained things simply just as Star Trek used to do back in the 1960s, there was always a moral in the story too. You enjoyed the show and there was a fable too which got you thinking, in my case only after I’d enjoyed the show. That’s the best form of entertainment, you really enjoy it and the message, if any is sugar coated. None of us wants North Korean Propaganda, which is dull and boring. Though after the revolution which will come we wouldn’t want K Pop non stop. Though I could teach all of North Korea how to speak English with my posh Birmingham accent. And maybe Irish dancing too, as they seem to all have got so much rhythm already, they just need to change the piper.