M2 collection of words

WaitingMay 7, '12 9:23 AM

for everyone

Waiting ©

By Michael Casey

Waiting, we all wait, for this for that and for anything else in between; we may have even suffered Waiting For Godot while at grammar school, which is ten times worse than double Latin on a Friday afternoon, two hours of Latin, I know I was that man. Waiting they say is good for the soul, wait for your exam results, wait for the bus to come, waiting for the girl to give in. All sorts of waiting, each of which brings out  all sorts of emotions, how could waiting have so much power over us? Are we impatient?  Do we want things now, are we the now generation?

We are the Internet Generation, my girls ask me questions and I try my best but if I don’t know I direct them to Google, “dad you are our Google” is what they say, as usually I do have some answer. Waiting for the postman to bring news from  some foreign field, each letter treasured, then one day it’s not a letter but a telegram, a dreaded telegram, a telegram means death. Sadly all over the world this is still what’s going on, death in a letter, then waiting for the pension, waiting waiting waiting; sons can go to war but their sacrifice is not recognised, their wives and kids can wait and wait and wait until finally the pension letter arrives. Why did they have to die?

Is something better if you have had to wait? True love, sex, that car, that house, that job, does it taste sweeter if you have had to wait? I remember my cousin’s wife telling me that her husband really treasured their children as marriage and family came late to him, so he loved them all the more. Perhaps fifteen years later, “the urge” as they call it in County Kerry  came knocking on my door, waiting was over I have a family myself, my Irish cousins say I got all my luck in one go, the waiting was over, I have a family, a Shanghai wife and 2 daughters. Now I am forever waiting for them, 3 girls in the house is fun, but you wait a lot for them, waiting while they change or comb their hair, what’s the nursery rhyme? Dan Dan washed his face in the frying pan, combed his hair with a leg of a chair? Well that’s me, but my 3 girls, I’m forever waiting, but at least it’s not as bad as Waiting for Godot.

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A Rainy SaturdayApr 28, '12 2:19 PM

for everyone

A Rainy Saturday ©

By Michael Casey

It’s another rainy April day,  mum is out for the day so I’m left with the girls. So we can catch up with our films on the Sky+ box, we watch Charlie’s Angels together, it’s very funny with lots of tongue in cheek humour, one or two jokes for the grown ups too. We like the kung fu too, we are a Shanghai/Birmingham family after all.

My big daughter is mad for pencils, so she persuades me to order a propelling pencil set, she uses it to draw with too. When you have an artist in the family you have to have the right kind of pencil, the fact that she has 500 pens, pencils and crayons already does not matter, she must have the latest one. She was given 10 new pencils the other day by somebody we met while we were sheltering from the rain, but that was not what she needed, she always “needs”  the exact thing she wants. She is a great sketcher though.

As for her small sister, she was upstairs near her beloved dolls house, it now has two bright plastic chimneys, red and blue, old building blocks were added to make her dolls house more distinctive.  I shout up the stairs reminding her to read too, I ask what page she’s starting from so I can gauge if she is doing enough reading. She does 70 pages plus in a day, she’s a very fast reader. Now that she has mastered all her times tables I am a happy dad, the 8s were the hardest, I reminded her I was beaten by the teacher, so  I got mine right the 2nd time he asked me, which was an incentive for her.

Piano practice was also part of the day, my big daughter can play a little, but she and her smaller sister need to practice practice practice.  The piano will be a good investment IF in the end they can both play, we did get a letter from my big daughter’s new secondary school offered music lessons and instrument lessons; we are lucky though because Betty from the choir gives them singing and music tuition, all this means is that they are better at the piano thanks to Betty. Perhaps I should nominate Betty for an OBE or something, along with the lollypop lady.

The girls have both retreated upstairs so they must be making stuff or drawing, I do know when to switch the tv off and to switch the computer off too, a balance between fun and creative arts is a must to my way of thinking. I don’t need Dr Spock’s book, didn’t he say he was wrong years later anyway?  I have to finish now, my big daughter says she wants to write a story. We’ll turn into a family of writers, now that would make all my dreams come true.

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Data MiningApr 27, '12 1:32 PM

for everyone

Data Mining ©

By Michael Casey

So you look on line and you buy a great new watch, say its automatic,  that’s one of my weaknesses, I just love watches. I should say that I had 20 watches in 20 years as I was always carrying boxes around computer rooms or print rooms. Once the glass fell out of a watch so I glues it back, only I glues the second and hour hands together, I wrote about it in The Watch and Me which you can find on my site www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com

Though today I want to talk about Data Mining, you know where you are offered something free, but you end up paying through the nose, or rather you are led by the nose, like an old bull because you’ve fallen for their bull. Win a free ipod or whatever, but then you have to join this or join that. If you’re stupid enough to fall for it you then have to provide information. Your name and age and date of birth, where you live, your salary bracket, how many kids you have and so forth. I get 20 plus emails a day, junk emails that is, I am on Funny or Die so folks over there must feed in my email so I get all sorts of rubbish from USA. Be a proctologist , be a F16 pilot, join the KKK family discount available, pay $300 and away you go. Respect ME and we can steal $15,000,000 from Sierra Leone just email me  at my private email, it’s probably a jail, and we’ll be millionaires together, just send 1000USD to cover expenses. The expenses are cheap whores, recommended by the Secret Service, so they must be good.

Surveys online are another way to data mine, then you get thousands of  junk emails, I know, I get them all the time. When you buy things they ask for too much information, just so they can sell you more stuff, or just collect 1,000,000 email addresses and sell them to marketing people. It’s too much, Big Brother 1984, has anybody read that book, I did at grammar school. I always say I’m 100 years old and live at the Vatican, and that I’m a Pagan. But the data miners persist, they want to know your weight, your height, your inside leg measurement, I even hear that they want a blood sample, a hair sample, a sperm sample too, does my photo look so good that people want to breed from me?

Just tell them to go away that’s what I say.

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Stuffing TonyApr 25, '12 9:58 AM

for everyone

Stuffing Tony©

By Michael Casey

Stuffing Tony, what am I talking about, no not our tame turkey whom we've decided to eat, nor anything else. Tony is in fact a soft toy, he's my small daughter's favourite, the one she loves the most. He's a white tiger, he was in fact he was her sister's Birthday tiger from a few years ago, but she cried until she owned him. Tony is a very washed out bleached kind of tiger. Tony has been through the washing machine a couple of times, he was very very dizzy when he came out. Yesterday Tony got a brother, his brother is a ginger tinger, now christened Ginger. Ginger makes us laugher because Ginger is how English people call my wife if they cannot pronounce  her Chinese name.

Tony is one of 40 stuffed toys the girls have, they live up a corner behind the sofa which is just behind me. They are allowed out to form a class when my small daughter plays teacher, afterways they climb back into their Iceland bags and go to sleep. There is a problem with Tony though, he's lived in the fast lane and lost a lot of weight. So following strict instructions, today I have done a stuffing transplant, which is like a heart transplant but much more important and dangerous. Today without any sedative I have made Loony Chick donate some stuffing to Tony. I took the scissors and make an incision   in Loony Chick’s behind, I then proceeded to remove the stuffing. I had previously made an incision in Tony’s neck at the back, it was then  a process of removing from Loony Chick and stuffing Tony.

The whole procedure lasted 20mins, Tony now looks very plumped up and proud, as the leader of the pride should look. As for Loony Chick, he, she or should I say it now looks as if he’d had a few dodgy kebabs, very slim, but at least the head still looks plump. When the girls come home from school we’ll decide what to do with Loony Chick, should we stuff him with chopped up old clothes, or bubble wrap? Or should he face the death sentence and be sent to a Charity shop, I  know it sounds cruel, but since he came back from Shanghai in 2009 he’d mainly been a cushion.

These are the very serious things a modern parent has to deal with, luckily I know how to sew, and I have a special relationship with all the toys. Now that Tony is full and looks like a weightlifting Tiger I hope Ginger won’t be jealous, otherwise one of them may have to end up in a zoo, or the closest equivalent, in one of the 13 charity  shops near our house.

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Internet Window ShoppingApr 19, '12 8:22 AM

for everyone

Internet Window Shopping ©

By Michael Casey

Well the Internet really is such a joy, I know this to be true,  I also know it really is a great for window shopping. If you’re stuck at home for any reason you can still go shopping, or window shopping just for fun. We have Internet at home for 12 years now. At first I just had a blue Sky Keyboard, it’s probably a modern antique now, but with having a Shanghai wife we graduated to a computer, you have to talk to mum after all.

Now Internet lets your fingers do the walking, just like the Yellow Pages adverts of old. There are major pitfalls though, you can melt the plastic, and you can end up buying junk at the wrong price. I know of somebody who was addicted to Internet shopping, spending their lunch breaks buying stuff and then filling their house till they couldn’t move with heavy oak furniture to take one example. Then you have to put it back on Ebay to get rid of the stuff again, sometimes making a loss. So you need to be careful.

How do you go about Internet shopping? You do it slowly and you must stay within budget, yes there are bargains, Christmas trees at Easter and such like. Buy your winter coat in the summer or spring, I am actually waiting for winter coat to be delivered as I speak to you, Sierra Trading Post is a good place for stuff, as is Cotton Traders. The whole world is your oyster  so take it easy and enjoy the Internet experience, you could even invite a few friends over of coffee and cake, make an afternoon of it. Go to the old people’s home and rig up the computer with a large screen or us the tv in the day room as a monitor. Then you can begin.

Ok, who wants what? Get the sizes and narrow down what you are after, the Internet is like a supermarket with traps, not sweets and gum by the checkout, but other ways to make you spend more. Previous users also looked at this and that, you even get emails saying they spotted what you were looking at last time so would you like this. If you are looking for extra large thermal knickers, then enter that as a Google search and you are off. I did actually find a place that does do big warm knickers, ask my neighbour he’s seen our washing line. Open a few windows/tabs and compare winter socks or tvs or whatever you are after, beware though there is rubbish and cons galore on the Internet.

Recommendations are best when surfing the web, where surfing came from I do not know, window shopping is a nicer word. So you’ve found your stuff, or the friends have all come over and the sandwiches are finished, so all you have to do is to give your credit card details, then sit back and wait for the courier to come. Now you can go window shopping in earnest, you’d always love to live where the rich people live so you can go to rightmove.co.uk and enter a postcode then you can peek inside through the curtains at other people’s homes. You will all be impressed or laugh at what other folks have in their houses, then if you like a particular house you can save the photo as your own desktop background. I have one very nice house as my desktop background, its near where our daughter will go to her secondary school in the Autumn, its only worth 4 times what our house is worth, does anybody have any good numbers for the lottery?

Once   you’ve found your new home, assuming you do eventually win the lottery, then you can furniture your dream house from the Internet. You can pick furniture and fittings, large screen tvs, family size fridges and so on, Indesit is my own favourite fridge, self -defrosting too. Beds are important so you can pick your Lecco beds, and go on Utube to see videos of beds and matresses and all kinds of everything. You can decide what kind of garden furniture you want, pick plants and shrubs for your dream home, plant a cherry blossom tree in a corner. All this can be done through the Internet. You can also cut and paste everything into a word document, so your castles in the air have a soft landing in a scrap book.

Well my courier has not arrived yet, but I hope you all get what you need, don’t forget to send me some good lottery numbers too!

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All Things Bright and BeautifulApr 17, '12 7:47 AM

for everyone

All Things Bright and Beautiful ©

 By Michael Casey

I haven’t written a non-pain piece in a while, so I’ll try and forget the pain and write something new. We’ve just had the half time holidays and my girls have been playing “shop girls” as they call it. They even have a sign on their bedroom door saying “open” or “closed”. They steal my wife’s clothes and prance about upstairs. Our eldest daughter has bigger feet than my wife now so that’s a relief as she cannot steal my wife’s shoes any more, but it does not prevent her younger sister  from wearing mum’s shoes. There is also the matter of the beret with silver sequins, that’s an absolute Fashion Must.

Me, I’m not fashionable at all, three girls in the house is enough, if I gave in to them they’d be beading my eye brows, I do wear pink on occasions, so that’s as far as I go. If I were maybe 3 stones lighter I’d try other things, I did see a nice cord jacket in Cotton Traders 48R, it was bright blue, Kingfisher Blue, my girls called it a “Clown Jacket”. With encouragement like that what am I supposed to do? I did say if I win Euromillions I WILL buy the jacket. My wife has a nice light brown one, although as she is a woman there will be a more accurate colour name, men don’t do colours. If you think of it its black and white, blue, green, orange as far as men go, but women at least another 40 names for colours. As far as my hair goes, its silver, though a friend used to say I was an old man with white hair. As the colour of our hair change it’s the 7 ages of man.

I remember Ali saying why wasn’t it “Whitemail” instead of blackmail. We are in the Pink if we have good health, I long  to be back in the pink myself. We say  we hope be back in the black not in the red when we do company accounts, we look for the silver linings. We look look look for the rainbow as the song goes, we may find the crock of gold, all our troubles may be over and we can pack them up in the old kit bag. Hope springs up within us, it is now Spring after all, and as Chance the Gardener said “in the Spring there will be growth.”

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Pain Fear and GodApr 6, '12 11:56 AM

for everyone

Pain Fear and God ©

By Michael Casey

Today is Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified. Hugo Chavez is praying for his life we are told. So it makes me wonder when do we, all of us pray? I have to declare an interest straight away, I've had tennis elbow for nearly 4 months now and boy oh boy does it hurt. I cannot lift anything, not even the kettle. This would bed bad enough in itself but for the fact that I've ricked my back badly. In fact the pain is the worst I've ever had in my life.

So Hugh is praying to be spared, I'm doing a bit of praying too, but my breath is being taken away by pain. The smell of Deep Heat fills our house, the girls retreat to the garden for fresh air. I can stand for 10 mins or sit and write here for 30mins, after that I have to lie down because the pain is so much. I don't want to pop pips so Deep Heat and hot baths are my tools of choice. My mother used to have bucket loads of pain killers for her bad back but she never took them, she just used to collect them over the pantry door. "Jeekus" she used to wince and half scream through her pain. So I hope its not hereditary.

We all pray when we are in pain, we pray the pain will end soon. Perhaps pain helps teaches us humility, everything sure is in perspective when all you can think of is your elbow or your back. My back has been playing up for 2 weeks on this occasion, how people live in pain and in wheelchairs makes me wonder. My Aunty Mary was in a wheelchair for the last 13years of her life after a stroke,  her rosary keep her sane. We have test cases for the right to die, after my own pain filled recent experiences I see things more fully, through the prism of pain. I applaud pain relief experts, I have to lie down now  for a bit before I write any more.

My daughter just threw "TonY" her toy at me so I'll get up and finish. Pain can destroy us, but it does clear the clutter of our daily lives, it makes us remember and enjoy the real things in our lives. I really enjoy the taste of food, the experience is heightened, ordinary food tastes like a 5star restaurant experience, and I may just be talking about a bit of toast and peanut butter. If when I finally get better I can remember the real values, of nice simple food, and enjoying watching tv with my kids then all the pain will be worth it. Yes I know I'll get negative replies to this but, I always learn the hard way which is the best way. Yes I hope I'll never be in such pain again,  but if all our lives we live a feather bed existance then we are not really experiencing life.  Life includes pain.

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Swimming Baths and Painting EggsMar 17, '12 12:38 PM

for everyone

Swimming Baths and Painting Eggs ©

By Michael Casey

Today, Saint Patrick’s Day was new day for swimming for my big daughter. It meant I couldn’t have a lie in, I had to take here and her sister to the Baths, luckily they are at the bottom of the road. She’s in the big pool now as she’s progressed with her swimming. So me and my small daughter went up to the gallery to watch, the big pool used to have a diving board many years ago when my brothers went there to swim, maybe 40 years ago. So Time is catching up on me, my big daughter has my exact features, spooky, it’s like looking into my own past as I look at her face. Though twice today when I looked at her face at the baths and afterwards when we went shopping, she looked Chinese to me. Yes my wife is a Shanghai girl, but normally our girls look so Western, so it was the Gene Pool reminding me of her mixed heritage.

Swimming finished and then there was the 30mins delay while she changed, lads are so much quicker, so any dads out there who take their girls out for sports bear this in mind. I should say a big thank you to the folks at the pool who teach swimming, this really is such an important thing. Two of my brothers swim like seals, my niece has  even swum 2 kilometres; the last time I tried swimming I could have drowned in the hotel pool, but it was 20 years after I last swum and I was at my heaviest ever.

Girls and shopping always involves the stationary shop, felts and glues and coloured pens and so forth. If they don’t become artists of some sort I’ll be very surprised, so when I look at houses I always think where we could have a studio for them, all I need is a lottery win or to finally sell a few books. I’m in the quiet of the other room while they are painting an egg. It’s the Easter project for year 3, whatever year 3 is. My mother said all she ever got was a boiled egg for Easter, 9 people living in a stone shack in Cromane Lower County Kerry, the photo is on my site, so when we all eat too much chocolate and some think Easter is a Cadbury’s invention think back to 1920s Ireland  this Saint Patrick’s Day.

The girls  are quiet now while they wait for the glue and the papier-mâché to fix, they always give me inspiration for a blog, so I thank them. I hope when I’m gone they can look back and read all these blogs, maybe 220  so far, and laugh at themselves and their dad. I’m tired now, the lack of beauty sleep has tired me out. Mind you how much beauty sleep a Shrek like dad need?  

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Judging a Book By Its CoverMar 14, '12 10:10 AM

for everyone

Judging a  Book By Its Cover ©

By Michael Casey

“He’s a scruff, I don’t like him,” said the girl in the street.

“She’s a dog,” said the boy looking at a photo of his friend’s sister.

“He’ll never be Prime Minister,” said people stopped in the street by Mori.

“If he lost 4stones then maybe,” said the women in the hairdressers.

I was looking at a few covers, and I thought what DOES make a difference? I can remember reading Dr No while I was in primary school, I had to make a cover out of brown paper to hide the silhouette of a naked woman on the cover, it was 1969 or 1970 and I was a very big reader. The sex bits in James Bond were boring, but I had to make the cover for a quiet life.

We all look at the cover when we are in book stores, I can remember reading Tom Sharpe’s books 25years ago, the cover was a front and back cartoon telling the books’ story.  It was a good way of getting people to pick up the book and read a bit. Yes, I will mention my own 4 books. I decided to put my own face on the front of them, so just what will people think of my face and my book. He looks stupid, so we won’t buy his books, or it must be funny because he looks funny. Will anybody think I look sexy just like Right Said Fred, and decide to buy my cheap books on a whim or will they just think, what a loser  and scroll past me on Amazon Kindle. Will my fuller figure excite the women or even the men, or will both conclude, fat B£%^&*. I’m sure marketing departments think about such issues constantly. Even old JKRowling’s books were reissued with different cover so to catch an older audience.

I could have liposuction to make me ever so sexy, and then with new and airbrushed photos I could make it as a cover boy on my own books. I would be fully clothed of course, with my M&S best clothes, in sizes for the bigger man. I can hear laughter in my mind, anybody who knows me or has ever seen me, and that may be 100,000 people, as I did work in a hotel for 3 years, everybody would just laugh.  Laughter is the intention of all my books, but getting people to laugh with me is a challenge. So even if you don’t want to buy any of my books, just go to Amazon Kindle and see does your mental picture of me match any of my words. But most of all don’t judge a book by its cover, even if it has my photo on the front.

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Oxbridge and still cannot write essays? (c)Mar 5, '12 6:23 PM

for everyone

Oxbridge and still cannot write essays? ©

By  Michael Casey

I had been thinking about my latest  blog here on the Daily Telegraph and on my own site www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com then I spotted the article, so that’s why I’m writing this. My own brothers were Oxbridge, me CPNEC was my university along with the good old OU. So I’m saddened that nobody can write, if I were in charge of Oxbridge I’d do a Maths and an English test, and if they fail the test I wouldn’t let them in.

How can somebody 18plus not write a good essay? I was lucky because Frank Brown from County Tyrone was our lodger and he donated a radio, an old Bush radio to me and my brother. You all remember the Bush radio with the marzipan strip carry handle and the saucer size tuning dial, and don’t forget the domino size frequency buttons, and the huge battery inside. That radio was part of my education, we used to listen to The World Tonight, Douglas Stewart reporting, followed by The Book at Bedtime. I can still remember falling asleep during the Ghost and Mrs Muir. I must have spent 20years listening to Radio 4 constantly, and it was only then that I started writing myself, and it took me a year to get it right. Now I have 4 “masterpieces” on Amazon Kindle.

So why can’t students write? Is it too much cannabis or other Class As, or alcohol.No of course not. Is it too much time playing computer games? Too much sport or sex? Or didn’t they have to write an essay a week in English. We had to write an essay a week for Mr Noon, here’s the title, now go write two pages. We had a book list of 40 books we had to work our way through too. I was a natural reader, I read nearly everything on the shelves by my school desk in Primary school. I continued reading through my Grammar school days, then on through my twenties. Does anybody actually read nowadays?

I’ve done a bit of Esol teaching, I’m available right now too, but with Esol you encourage people to listen to Radio4, to practice ten new sentences a day, to read the free newspapers on the bus, to watch BBC news. Lots of simple things can help a foreigner pick up the language, one of our family friends is off to Oxford in the Autumn, her English is perfect, just like Helen Bonham Carter yet she was not born here, she is Chinese. So the obvious point is why can’t people born and raised here do the same.

Essay writing is all about a beginning, a middle and an end. You have to prove your argument too, why was this important, why is History really about Geography. History is Geography, because one leader wants to steal the other country’s resources, Hitler wanted living room, Napoleon wanted to conquer Russia too. In a History essay you’d make the bold statement and then you’d give proof, Facts, Detail, Proof, Latin as I once wrote down on a piece nearly 40 years ago. Once  you have proved your point you can then give lessons for the future, the past shows us the way NOT to go again, a do not enter sign. History repeats itself, is another phrase, we all chase the blonde who’ll slap our face, but still we follow her. Monroe is, was, and always will be a honey trap, History shows us many Monroes, if we could control ourselves and keep our hands to ourselves then we’d learn the lessons of History, and we wouldn’t need living room, just stick to our own girl in our own bedroom.

It would be nice if people read and listened to the radio, I fear I’m the final generation of radio lovers, radio is great if only those Oxbridge students listened to radio then they might be better at writing essays. Or they could pay me £xx an hour and I’ll teach a few classes. I’d teach them to love words, to adore words, no not as good as having Monroe in your bed, but at least you’d pass your exams, and that would keep the Dons happy.

excuse my convict haircut

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Only 2 quid each my 4 booksMar 1, '12 11:30 AM

for everyone

New for National Book Week

my "ouvres" or books in plain English now at a lower price of £2 or $3 or 2.70 something Euros.

Tell all your friends.

2 Comments

Alistair Alcohol and MeFeb 26, '12 4:46 PM

for everyone

Alistair Alcohol and Me ©

By Michael Casey

I’ve just watched Alistair Campbell’s Panorama piece on Alcohol. I found it too understated. He should have actually shown people covered in their own pee and sick, bleeding too. Yes there was a little of that, but it was too cold, a programme an Oxford Don would have given

Wednesday May 23rd 1979 it was 3pm I’d only just got out of bed, I’d been on night shift, I worked for a Market Research Company, we deal with Alcohol sales. Quick Quick screamed Mrs Madden, she was our lodger from the house next door, so I tucked my shirt in and ran next door. It was Andy, her husband and loveable alcohol. He was on his back and gurgling. So I tried a bit of CPR, I realised quickly tah an ambulance was needed. I ran up the entry and banged on Mr Dixon’s door, he had a phone we did not, nobody did in our area at that time. Quick get an ambulance I shouted to Mr Dixon, I frightened him a little. His son was a policeman, yes, all those Evening All jokes, but it was an ambulance we needed.

The ambulance arrived and I had to open up the doors so they could come through the house. They tried the black bulb with face mask attached but it was too late, too much booze and 3 previous heart attacks now was the death chime for Andy, the loveable drunk from the catholic club down the road. I helped put Andy on the chair and he was taken away by the ambulance lady and a man. My brother came home from school while all this was happening, then I looked down the road and I could see my mother coming up the road with her leather shopping bags full of food for us the 5000 her large family. So they had missed it, I had had to deal with it. It was then I cried, you don’t cry while its going on you are too busy, throwing the furniture out the way so you can try and do CPR with Andy lying flat. But it had been to no avail.

Our other lodgers were nearly all Born Again Alcoholic, so I’d say to Alistair Campbell, tell it as it is, squalor with a Capital S. Get up, go to work, go to pub, go to bedsit, get up, go to work, go to pub, home to bedsit etc etc, occasionally have a wash. I can tell many tales of alcoholism, I’ve seen it at close hand, as you can imagine none of us Caseys ever became drinkers. I think I used to average 24pints, no not a week, but maybe in a year. So what do I say about alcohol, yes enjoy it, Jesus’s first miracle was water into wine after all. Don’t be a Puritan, enjoy a beer or two, but also remember me a half asleep 20year old having to do CPR after getting up after a night shift.

If one person, just one person reading this has 2nd thoughts about alcohol and/or any other addiction then Andy’s death won’t have been in vain.

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Spring FamilyFeb 26, '12 11:14 AM

for everyone

Its really nice here in Birmingham, I had to go up the road to buy bread before we all had breaksfast, we like Warbuttons best, the orange wrapper one. After breakfast we knew we'd have to go out and buy another loaf, so that job was left for me. 2nd trip up the road to Iceland I had to buy eggs as well, JJ is going to be cooking. The other family highlight is choosing a mobile phone for our biggest daughter, she'll be off to grammar/secondary school in the Fall as you folks Autumn. So she'll need a phone for safety and "grownup" reasons. The costs are stratospheric, no wonder only the President can afford a Blackburry. Though some of the electronics are very nice the Iphone 4S et al. The built in cameras are better than regular cameras too. It woud be a nice present to win in a raffle. Then there is which tarrif to have, pay have you go with a nice phone. Me I don't even  have a mobile, two cocoa tins with a length of string attached would be fine by me. Or smoke signals, like Red Indians, or I could just use telepath.  Telepath could be fun, though I could get my face slapped too.

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Am I a girl? Feb 24, '12 9:57 AM

for everyone

Am I a Girl?

By

Michael Casey

Am I a girl? I just bought some hand cream from Superdrug. I have cracked skin and its almost bleeding, eczema perhaps. The 3 girls in my house use lotions and potions on hands and faces, they said I should get some, I'd not bothered for years so finally I bought some. There's so much choice, I nearly bought baby oil stuff, finally I spotted  a product that boasted to work fast and was clinically proven and best of all was it was only 3quid for 400ml. It does smell a bit like woodwork glue. So I can call myself a carpenter and not a girl.

2 Comments

To Be a Writer or 2B a Preacher?Feb 18, '12 6:00 AM

for everyone

To Be a Writer or 2B a Preacher ?

By michaelgcasey

To Be a Writer or 2B a Preacher (c) By Michael Casey

When you start writing you think you are the bees knees, then everybody says you are total c(*&, which makes you cry and you want to put your head in the oven, only its electric so you end up with a tan like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters.

Then you join a critics club where you all sit around and try and destroy each others ego. So this makes you so angry that you join a gun club. Your anger finds an avenue so you end up in the Olympics shooting team, and all you really want to do is write. 

But still you want to write so after 3 Olympic golds you get bored with shooting and return to your first love. So you write about assassins, you are an expert on shooting after all, no Pulitzers but you do have 3 Olympic Golds. You get fed up of writing about sad and lonely losers who get a gun and shoot people, or about high powered 007 types. But you are such an expert, and the money rolls in.

You discover God and decide to be a preacher, and If they don’t believe you could shoot them. You find a niche and become a great and good preacher, you write all your own sermons and they are good, but 10 pages isn’t as good as 500pages of block busters. But it is a beginning. You get married in your own church with you doing your own service. The Church of I Forgive Myself Ministry. You have a few kids and seduce your secretary on the side, and her sister is so hot too, so you cann’t resist her, and you get her pregnant in the office behind your church, and then there is the cleaner. Preying is your speciality, not praying. You have your mid life crisis and run away, emptying out the bank accounts while you leave.

And if only you sold all your books on Amazon Kindle, none of this would have happened. But it does give you an idea for a new book. No not your own life story, that’s always boring for a writer. No you’ll write about stamp collecting.

End

Well folks I really do have 4 things on Amazon Kindle, only 8dollars each so go take a peek, you can try The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker first

then maybe I’ll become a writer, a paid one.

Or do you guys want me to be a Preacher, with a Birmingham England accent?

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And Today's Blog IsFeb 14, '12 6:58 PM

for everyone

And Today’s Blog Is ©

By Michael Casey

I was wondering what to write about today, I had already mentioned Dickens the other day, so what should I write about. I have put Dickens picture as a desktop background to inspire me, though I do change my background every couple of weeks. I normally spot a house I’d love to live in and it becomes my desktop background, even though it would take a lottery win to live there. It’s always best to live in hope, to dream of the nice house and now with a mahogany desk like Dickens’ from which I could talk to the world. You can get some really really nice desks, just google and you will be amazed. We have the bog standard computer desk which you get from PC World for 30quid, but should my dream come true I’d really go to town, it would be a sensual experience to be in front of your desk as you write/talk to people.

I had to have a cigarette just then as my imagination was working overtime, though the cigarette was in my imagination too. Perhaps Rupert Murdoch will give me a slot in the Sun when he visits over the weekend, just on the website, I do have a Chinese wife just like him…. Inspiration for writing comes from everywhere, the girls were baking cookies at their Godparents house this afternoon, they returned with cookies all wrapped in plastic and sealed with a ribbon, very professional. This could be a subject for a blog in itself, David and Fran are very good to them.  I could blog about my shamrock which seems to be killed off by the very harsh freezing Winter nights, and now one week later they are so forlorn. I could mention clover, which is similar to shamrock, but I mean Clover the spread from Iceland which is ½ price at the moment, a good spread on top of crumpet is so so nice as the Clover drips down your fingers.

I had to go and make some crumpet just then, or so I will tomorrow, as I neglected to buy any crumpet today, I just used my imagination, yes I use my imagination a lot, I’m dreaming of a nice new job where I can be useful and have fun. Well it’s time for bed now so I’ll dream of Rupert Murdoch giving me a job, though I’d write for anybody, soul for sale, no I just like talking to the world as I did in my concierge days.

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Dickens, Christmas and all that (c)Feb 5, '12 11:08 AM

for everyone

Dickens, Christmas and all that ©

By Michael Casey

I was reading a gushy piece in the ads so of course I hated it. I switch off if I read gushy stuff. If I meet pretentious people I hate them immediately too. Style is a very difficult thing, my own developed and that’s what I and readers are stuck with. People nowadays do have a smaller attention span, and if you watch satellite tv then you will see what I mean. It really is a bad thing, no wonder Americans go to cinema in droves, the tv is so bad and with all the adverts on top, heaven help us.

Now reading is a very personal thing, as is soaking in the bath with just you and your thoughts for company, or maybe a radio in the background. I used to stop up late to finish the latest Alistair MacLean, I read all his books 30 years ago, some in one session till 1am or 2am. I love radio so I spent 20years plus listening to Radio4 too. Finding a book you like and an author too is great. I read all the Sherlock Holmes books when I was 10 or 11 so I was a fan. I watched the new and great tv series set in today’s world, so I rushed back to the books, sadly after over 40 years I just could not read them again. Sometimes its best to keep the memory and not go back.

Dickens is big, we all love A Christmas Carol, I have even cried while listening to it on the radio after Midnight Mass, I think we may have had to read some in grammar school, Oliver Twist or something. My own view is that students should be given a week or two to read the set text before starting to do English Lit on it. English Lit can kill a book, we did Over the Bridge by Richard Church, all I remember was that he wanted a piano, and was he ungrateful for all the hard work his parents had to do to provide it. Correct me if my memory after 40years is wrong. Over my shoulder we have an electronic piano, so I’m smiling as I talk.

Dickens used to be serialised before his work appeared in book form, nowadays we all blog and then hope people go to our site and then read more  and final buy a book or two. The modern method of writing would I think appeal to Dickens, he could travel and perform and after a busy day  blog away with his thoughts ablaze, a strong drink on his desk. If ever I get lucky I’d have an old fashioned desk and a big sturdy chair, and space for a pitcher of orange  juice right beside my computer screen. I’d have a  nice old fashioned clock on the desk too, so that I could time how long it took for people to comment on my newest blog. 200years from now I’ll be dust, but perhaps my great great grandchildren will still wonder why my hair was so white and why did a Shanghai girl marry me.

I hope it’s a great story just like  Charles Dickens.

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Tree StoryJan 31, '12 2:18 PM

for everyone

Tree Story©

By

Michael Casey

I had a tree at the bottom of my garden for maybe 20 years, it was a Laburnum tree, or Golden Chain. My mother had one at the bottom of her garden for years and years, I don’t know where she got it from, but every May it was glorious, golden chains of flowers, really really pretty.

When I got a house of my own I decided that I wanted a Golden Chain or Laburnum of my own too, so I  took a sapling from my mum’s garden and planted  it at the bottom of my own garden, I think I must have taken the 4 foot sapling on the bus to get it to my house. After a year it flowered, glorious and yellow, a sight to behold, a perpetual memory of my mother who had green fingers as far as her elbows. She could dive into a hedgerow or into a municipal garden while on holiday in Weston-Super-Mare  and take a cutting then throw it into a plastic bag with a bit of water and then take it home 2 weeks later where she’d plant it and it would grow for her. Anybody else would have a dead plant, not my mother, she passed on her green fingers to my eldest brother who has a show garden.

Trees grow and twist and bend as they grow, wonderful shapes and patterns just like a contortionist at the circus, but so much better. So the tree always reminded me of my mum and her love for all her big family. I also have Shamrock growing by the wall outside my back door, again I brought it to my home from the family home, and again it reminds me of my mum and my old aunty from Ballyheigh in County Kerry, it was Aunty Mary who had sent us some maybe 35years ago. So plants and trees are a token of Love, I’m sure everybody can remember planting something with somebody, together something was shared and is special because it was shared together.

Yesterday I cut down my Laburnum tree it had outgrown the space there was for it, I don’t know shall we dig it up and replant or just scatter seeds all around, and have a scented blossom plant grow on the grave of the Laburnum. I’ll consult with my two daughters, we can wait a month for the cold snap to stop biting at our ankles and then we can decide on colours and smells. Having said all that a Cherry Blossom tree would be nice, just like they have in Japan, after all we are a  Shanghai family , and we do really have Japanese neighbours just 2 doors away.

Flowers and plants are really expressions of love, learned men and poets and gardeners will explain it far better than me. My mother’s parting gift was white flowers all over my sister’s front garden, our mother had died and a few weeks after she had died white flowers popped up all over my sister’s garden. Mum had sneaked up to the house and planted seeds, so after her death they were a smile from Heaven. And Nature itself is God’s smile.

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EbooksJan 30, '12 12:06 PM

for everyone

Ebooks©

 by Michael Casey

Just read DT, a bit about Ebooks. First I must declare an interest, I have 4 for sale on Amazon Kindle. Now to ebooks, I’ve seen a few people on the bus reading them and I have to agree they are great. Its so simple to upload, and then away you go. Getting folks to go and read your stuff is another matter entirely if you are a writer, but the technology is so sexy, and just like the article said its instantaneous.  In Roman days it was orgies on tap, now you have books on tap, satisfying the brain instead of any other organs. The ability to read everything ever written, and in such a small package; only the rich could read and own books, then we had Gutenberg and the printing press, it changed society forever, as will the ereader.

We all watched Star Trek when we were small and we were fascinated by the gadgets, just what did Ohoora have in her ear. Now we have delivery men and women with an electronic  signing form, the gas man has a computer to take readings, in the near future all readings will be sent down the line. So ebooks will dominate, but yes I too like the feel and touch  of  book, the smell too,  just as the Romans liked the feel and touch of their pleasures , as readers of books we all like  a nice book, something to cuddle up with, but let’s leave the Romans to their vices.

Mr Trout my old History teacher at grammar school advised reading Don Camillo and I did, it was a wonderful experience, I found a nice book shop in Blackpool while we were  on summer holidays  and I got all the books.  I rediscovered them 30 years later and I have an omnibus to the right of me, I’ve ½ read or should I say reread it. It really is such a joy, I read it in English , but you can also find it published online too, who knows in the future  it will be an ebook.  The technology for ebooks will I hope make us cherish them more in the future;  I have The Outline Of History by H.G. Wells on a shelf to my right, a present from when I left primary school, perhaps my grandchildren will have ebooks and ereaders on their shelves.

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Chinese Mother I live that lifeJan 28, '12 8:10 AM

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Chinese Mother I live that  life ©

By

Michael Casey

I was just looking at the Daily Telegraph when I spotted a piece about a book Chinese Mother, I scanned it and thought, I don’t need to read this I already live this, I have a Shanghai wife, so for 13years I know all about Chinese things. The work ethic, the saving ethic, and the religion ethic, what did he just say the religion ethic? Yes the religion ethic, if and when you meet a Chinese Christian you will be amazed. I don’t know if they are all converts or just how many generations of Christians they are, but I do know when they believe they really believe.

I’m a Catholic  from County Kerry, 1st generation born in Birmingham, but my Faith goes back 100s of years, from  the nipple for generations, very very poor but a faith so rich, see photo Cromane Kerry. Now when you visit Chinese church you may see a lesson going on, lots of adults doing Bible study, the students in their 30s and 40s may all be PhDs, 12 students as many as there were disciples with one teacher, who is of course a PhD too. Once we were at a meeting, and the great thing is there is always food afterwards, just imagine that. Anyway you may ask is he a PhD and the answer is yes  yes  yes and yes, you notice somebody empting the bins, is he a PhD, no not him, he is a Professor, Andrew may smile if ever he reads this. The point is they are committed to what they love, their love of God, just being average is no good, just being good is no good,  being very good may be acceptable, but being the best of the best is their target, it’s the norm for Chinese Christians. That’s why they study Bible so much, we have 3 or 4 Bibles in our house 2 in Chinese, and one is bilingual Bible, my kids are encourages to study it every day. I’m classed as the pagan because I don’t daily read the Bible, I just remind my convert wife that I have heard the Bible in Mass for over 50years now. I did used to read it on Sundays too, but that’s no good for a Shanghai wife, I am a pagan, I may as well be wearing wode and dance around the garden naked. If I can’t pass A level Bible studies with an A******* then I’m useless. This really is the standard Chinese Christians try to attain.

In other aspects of life Chinese people  want to be the best, computing for example; we had a problem on our home computer and we ended up with a totally clued up kid come and fix it for us. The point to all this is that we have to emulate, compete and try and be better than them, and yes it can be done, we just have to raise our game. I’m fortunate because my Birmingham/Shanghai daughters have a head start because of a nagging, lovingly nagging mother,  I’m the more relaxed one in the family. This of course means that I’m classed as useless, however my girls have inherited the love of writing from me, or it could be from their Chinese granddad and a Political Editor Chinese  Great Uncle. In the end though it’s the Love from everywhere, from Ireland from China from Birmingham from Shanghai, THIS is always the key, without Love there is nothing, there is a famous Bible passage that states all this. If I were Chinese in a nanosecond I’d quote the chapter and verse of it all this, I think its Paul’s letter to somebody or another. I’m no Bible Scholar after all, I’m just a writer looking for a publisher.