A Rainy Saturday

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 2^nd 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.

Data Mining

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.

Stuffing Tony

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.

Internet Window Shopping

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!

All Things Bright and Beautiful

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.”

Pain Fear and God

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.

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.