A Walk with a Clown ©
By
Michael Casey
I was limping up the street and a local builder smiled hello, so I told him I was practicing my limping before I added don’t get Arthritis. He just looked at me quizzically, probably making a mental note to avoid me and my street in future. That’s the trouble with humour people don’t get the joke all the time. I said to my doctor once maybe 40 years ago that as a child I’d given a doctor a bruise, if a doctor puts a needle in you what will you do. I punched and kicked the doctor, I was 4 at the time.
The doctor I told the story to thought I said HE was on the booze. In actual fact he was, he died of liver problems years later. One of our family used to serve him 2 bottles of whisky every weekend at the posh local off licence. Humour can and will get you, or me in trouble because people don’t listen, they are too busy with their lives to listen to a fool. But at least I can write about it later. I remember making a remark in a meeting once and only Fiona our maths wiz boss got it, so she told the other 30 to think about it, 10 seconds later a second wave of laughter.Or as Tony Cole once said 40 years ago, Michael is on the 3rd joke.
So there I was walking up the road and my limp left me, maybe my limp did not get the joke either. It’s what happens, it comes and goes and come back again, like a drunk demanding a free pint. Pain comes and goes in other places though, just for fun, or is God punishing me, that’s if you are a fundamentalist, or maybe I should just run for President?
So I see this bright faced young white man in a white shirt with a black backpack. Could he be? Might he just be? Was God punishing me already? A Mormon bearing down on me, I was debating should I put my Italian accent on and say No Parare Inglese, that’s if I’ve spelt that right. Speaking is far easier than writing, maybe that’s what you all read is Speech not Writing. I’m not clever enough to write, so I talk.
So the Mormon strode towards me, maybe he’d thrust something in my hand. Before I could choose which language to deny him in, the cock crowed twice. Or rather somebody honked his horn twice,it was the undertaker, a dear friend of mine. Anyway the Mormon approached and he asked me the way to Amarillo, of course he didn’t this is Birmingham after all. He wanted to know where the Woods were, I sniffed he did not smell of dope, so maybe he just wanted the teddy bears picnic. I am Silverlocks after all.
I told him I thought he was Mormon and that we crucify Mormons on the lawn in my area, we are very welcoming after all. He laughed and replied in posh English the he was from Wales, so I used my two words of Welsh on him and asked could HE pronounce the name of the station Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch
he just smiled nervously,he was not that kind of boy after all. He said he went to University in Wales, I told him if he stayed in Birmingham he could have still drunk Welsh water, as we steal it from the Welsh via a pipeline.
I said did he go Aberystwyth because he could not get into Oxford or Cambridge? He laughed, so I told him my brothers went there, though I was the failure with 15 books on Amazon that nobody buys.
As he was a good Christian he asked for my name, but maybe because he really wanted to get to the Woods, he was just humoring me. So we continued up the road and then I pointed, just like Moses but all I had was an Iceland carrier bag and not a staff. Follow your nose up the hill and you will find your destination, which made me sound like the local soothsayer we have near my house. And with that has rid of me, maybe in the future he’ll be the Prime Minister,if he can survive 5 minutes in the street with me then he can do anything.
I then had a rest on the bench in memory of John Thomas Beddall and together we shared a prayer in the quiet of the churchyard. Eurovision beckons tonight and we must be ready, but at least we have no crucified Mormons cluttering up the lawn.
p.s. let’s see how many people I’ve upset with today’s piece, they may never knock on my door again…
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