To Lose and then to Find ©

Michael Casey (PM)

Its been a strange week, the pain monster comes and goes, I was thinking of putting (PM) behind my name every time I wrote and the pain monster was bad. However it might confuse some of my readers, Michael Casey PM, since when has there been a change in leadership in the UK? We know he dresses in drag, but he has silver hair and the real PM does not, besides he has boring size 10 extra wide shoes. Not those fancy ones she wears.

So I lost that idea and came up with another. Though I did get some praise this week for something I wrote, so that was nice, though the breath of what I write means you can LOVE one thing, then hate another. Writer’s don’t want to be pigeonholed just as actors don’t.

Typecasting kills an actor’s spirit, and if I had to write the same style or genre over and over it would just be so boring for me the writer.

So I’m going to talk about losing and finding tonight, its 10.40pm as I look up at the clock and yes the pain monster has decided to come out to play, it’s so random, up and down and around and around striking anywhere on my body. Like playing battleships but my anatomy instead of a grid reference.

You can lose lots of things. Like your innocence and then realise you were used, or that it was an anticlimax and a waste of your time and dignity. Until years later you find love, and there is a difference in the whole experience. I’m sure philosophy students can discuss it, or girls down the hairdressers, or lads lyingly boasting down the pub.

You lose your ignorance too, you cannot read and once you learn then a whole new world beacons. Lord Jeffrey Archer funds education in prisons I believe, because it’s a lack of education that can lead to crime. What a difference a book can make.

I’m thinking of my mother now, she taught me to read by showing me the cartoons in the Birmingham Evening Mail. So blame them and Chipper for me being a writer of 1,300,000 words and counting. I did read 100s if not 1000s of books before I started writing 30 years ago. I also did listen to BBC Radio4 for 20 years before I ever picked up a pen. So its a 50 year love of words that you get the dubious benefit of.

Other lost and finds, as today is the Ascension, you can lose your Faith and it comes back to you. Though I know for most people in UK there is no Faith to lose in the first place. Faith is a habit that has to be kept going, by attending church or Mosque or Temple you hear words that should inspire and guide you. Providing that the preacher is not a bore. I’ve been watching https://www.churchservices.tv/churches so I’ve seen several different churches and priests all over the country. As well as a lifetime of church going. No I’m far from Holy. I can see a good sermon and a bad one. I invite all of you to watch and see for yourselves. I don’t know do other Faiths have the same facility, you can all google for yourselves.

My point about Faith and Ignorance is that if you don’t get enough information you can be led astray. Some say Church of Scientology is a con, and frankly I’d agree, so by saying this Tom Cruse will never invite me to help out at his chip shop here in Birmingham on the Coventry Road.

So you lose the scales from your eyes but you know the truth now, and you open your own chip shop on the Coventry road. And that’s where you meet a film star who has had her eyes opened too. So she comes to work for you because your chips are so much better than Tom’s and then she marries you. She does make Hollywood films every now and then but, her heart in in Birmingham and the chip shop on the Coventry Road.

Which brings me to food, we all like simple things, such as my writing, or rather chip sandwiches with brown sauce on top. Or bread and butter dipped into cocoa milk and sugar, which was a speciality of mine as a child. Then we lose the attraction of it. We start to go to Michelin Star restaurants, we develop a palate for fancy stuff. We think nothing of paying £100 each for a meal. Well if you are a Politician that is.

However after your quadruple heart bypass, or bankruptcy whichever comes sooner you wish you had stuck to your dunking bread in cocoa milk and sugar in a pint mug. You lose your smugness, your arrogance and return to being a humbler nicer person. It is a growing arc, from naive but happy to arrogant and rich and thinking you a are happy till finally you return back to your roots. Which might also mean that you stoop dyeing your hair and let those grey hairs run riot. As you will have observed from all my photos I always let my silver locks blow in the wind, it’s the answer to everything after all.

So it’s time for bed now its 11.26pm now, I’ve given you all another piece to read, not a story story but a collection of thoughts. However what are we all made up of? We are all a collection of thoughts held together by hope and family. We can be lost but we find our way home, just as all drunks do. If you are lucky you never get lost, but life is a circle they say, and as I always seem to discover I have a SatNav for stories which always brings me to the bottom of the page. I just hope you all enjoyed tonight’s journey. And if you didn’t then they’ll be something different tomorrow or the next day.

Michael Casey (PM)