Bits and Pieces

Bits and Pieces ©

By Michael Casey

My daughter was polishing her school shoes ready for school tomorrow, Easter is over and tomorrow and the next 7 weeks are the most important of her life. She takes her GCSEs, they were called O Levels in my day 40 years ago, these exams will allow her to study for her A Levels and that she hopes will lead to Medical School. Everything in life is connected even if we don’t know it at the time, so by doing this it leads to that.

I know where all my bits and pieces are, I save odd shoelaces just in case I need them, I even know where I have left them. Which is good as my daughter broke a shoelace after she polished he school shoes, 7 weeks and she won’t need them any more school will be out for Summer. And I did tell you I did meet Alice Cooper when he stayed at our hotel when I was working at CPNEC Birmingham.

Knowing where your bits and pieces are is a very useful thing. Wait till you have kids of your own and they break things or lose this or that. My mother used to say of my brother “he’d lose his arse if it was not tied onto him” so by saving your bits and pieces you can save the day.

Washers for taps and bits of string are very useful, as are plastic bags, and fuse wire and paper bags. These can be saved in a plastic bag hanging from a nail at the back of the pantry door. All these magic items are ready and waiting until they are needed. Once you get married though your Shanghai wife will throw them away as they are just rubbish, so you have to hide them somewhere else only you forget where that somewhere else is.

I do in fact have our old green metal breadbin, it’s under our kitchen sink, like a treasure chest, full of laces and string and not to mention a spare shower hose, it must be 60 years old now. If I told my wife it was an antique she’d probably try and sell it, but as it also holds the shoe shine kit then she’ll keep it.

Children’s clothes get kept too, we even have some of my wife’s original clothing from when she was a baby in Shanghai, though now as Fashion is a Circle it would be classed as very very Classy. These clothes as kept for years, especially as our girls love Zara, then when the cupboards are groaning we have to clear them out. Children’s clothes never have any wear on them cos kids grow so fast.

Then the girls are forced to prove the clothes are too small, each item held up against their body before being put on the Throw pile. Some could be saved for our grandchildren my wife says. Only that could be 20years away, or never. So reluctantly the Throw pile is taken downstairs, now usually I’d take them to the Charity shop so some lucky child can have our old nearly new clothes, some sent by Grandma in Shanghai to the girls here in Birmingham. However the nearest Charity shop has closed down.

I can improvise though, so the garden wall becomes a clothes rack and passing parents and kids can help themselves. Or I watch like a hawk and any parent with children is accosted in the street and I hand them a bag of girls’ clothes. Before returning triumphant to my perch inside our front room. So all the girls bits and pieces get a second chance, a second life.

Everything can have second life, even me, I’ve produced 5 more books these past couple of years, since my unplanned quadruple heart bypass. And after I see 2 more consultants maybe my Kidneys can be rescued, all they have to do is play with my bits and pieces, there  is even a song by that title you can find it on Utube, fadeout to that Music.