Let Smiles Sing

 

Wednesday, 23 September 2020

Let Smiles Sing

 Let Smiles Sing (c)

 By Michael Casey

Well I need to let some sunshine in, and not just because it's raining here on my hill, the temperature has dropped 15 degrees too, so I've got my 2 jumpers on and the window is firmly shut. Any hot air from my farts are welcome to warm me up, though even our cat Totoro refuses to enter the room, and she is such a smelly farter herself.

 

So already you are smiling or disgusted already, so let me continue. I really do need to cheer myself up at the moment, mind you, so does the whole world. So I’ve decided today to get back on track with the comedy, or humour if you don’t laugh as much. I was going to do a bullet point list, but I’ve decided to be more expansive, fill more space, just  like my farts. And yes on a night shift many years ago, over 30 in fact. We set fire to a fart in the dark of the office that was going to be renovated. So that flash on the night time horizon was me, or rather my behind, and so nothing has changed in the passing years.

 

Now why do we smile, or why do we laugh. It’s the old banana skin in life that makes us delight at others’ misfortune, at least in comedy shows on tv. In real life it can happen too, such as when you reach for a light switch, only to feel a girl’s breast by mistake. Yes, I’ve really done that. Let me explain. We had the office space reconfigured and there was a dark passage. So I reach around the corner of a door to put the light on, only on the other side was CC, and as I reached, she was coming around the door in the dark, so I didn’t find the switch just something far softer. I’ve just remembered didn’t John Cleese also do the same thing in Fawlty  Towers episode, go Google Fawlty Towers and all will be revealed, or felt. This was 35 years ago maybe.

Moving swiftly on, being caught on the  toilet because you did not  lock the door is another embarrassing situation, as is being trapped in the toilet on the Paris to Calais express, and yes I did remember the French for help, I’m trapped in the toilet. And it took 5 laughing French train guards to let me out, luckily my luggage has not disappeared when I finally  got back to my seat. So never drink milk and eat baguettes for breakfast on a train, without checking  the state of the toilets, or just cross your legs like a frog and think of England.

 

About the same time I met up in Paris with my little sister and one of my brothers. My brother worked in Paris for a few years, and my sister was on her year abroad in Normandy, so hello Yvettot and Caudebec en Coq if you remember my smelly socks in the hotel.

 

 So we had  a week of fun in Paris, and I ate cheese every  day. One night we went  to the cinema on the Champs Elysee if memory serves, we saw Christine the John Carpenter film about the red car. Afterwards I raced my  brother up the street, to the lamppost, and then to the next lamppost. I could still run then, it was 1984. Meanwhile our sister was further and further behind. Was it 2am as we’d seen the last show of the film? You can guess what happened. A car slowed and asked our sister was she “free”, we’d forgotten about her as we had fun racing each other up the road. We did joke about it, and she was livid, so don’t tell her you read this tale.

 

The point is that a banana skin in life brings about laughter, even if for the wrong reasons. Still in Paris, but it was 1998 now, I had not married yet. JC said go to Gard du Nord area, it was cheap and nice. Only he was wrong. I ended up in a red light area of Paris, Film Blanche on store signs, which is how the French describe dodgy movies. Anyway I had a good week in Paris as I really needed a break as all I did was visit my dad in the old people’s home and work. JG gave me this lifesaving advice, but JC had recommended the wrong area. Luckily my French was good enough, though on the bus people muttered Flic Almond, because in my leather coat I looked like a German copper.

 

The first night I had a Chinese, and broke my camera so I asked the girl in the booth at the base of the Eiffel tower could she fix it by putting her little finger in the aperture of the camera where it was stuck.  I also had too much wine so I was muttering and swaying as I spoke my French on the metro. The Eiffel tower girl could not fix the camera, so after pottering about looking at Paris in the moonlight I went back to the hotel. On the way I spotted a Kebab shop, so being a lad I had a kebab, this would be on top of my wine and Chinese.

 

I got back to my hotel and in the night I was promptly sick everywhere. My bathroom was actually an all in one, like climbing into a wardrobe with the shower practically over the sink. I have never been so violently sick than that night, I would have gone home, instead I puked  and poohed in the wardrobe called the bathroom. In the morning all I wanted was asprin. So I made my way to the pharmacy. In France then condom machines are on the wall outside, like bubble gum machines in America, perhaps America should chew over that idea.

 

So I went into the Pharmacy and asked “avez vous des asprin de bas priz” and I was given a tube, like a tube of extra strong mints. I looked and read what it said on the packet, “asprin tamponee” What? It’s my head I have a pain in, after food poisoning. I opened the tube, no string, I took a large mint out, I drunk some water to wash it down. I fizzed, without bucks. I looked like a rabid dog on the street next to the condom machine, in my German copper leather jacket. As all you students of French know, Asprin Tamponne, means asprin in a tube, but I did not know that, as my head just my head, hurt so much.

 

So I hope I’ve made you smile and laugh at the memory of my discomfort. I told the story a few months later on a Presenting Couse, and they cried with laughter.

 

Then I went off to Czech, and that really really was another story, I ended up staying with a gay doctor as my  pen friend had no room at her place. I also met a professional model, who later visited Birmingham for a month, and I taught her English, Patricie does she remember me? The next year I met a Shanghai girl, who was 10 times prettier, then, oh I married that one. But as you can see My Life is One Big Story. Will I meet that Kpop Korean girl and dictate Tears for a Butcher, or will my life end in tears, who knows, just watch this space.

 

  a stretched photo of me