Dead Good Bonding

Dead Good Bonding ©

By

Michael Casey

Well after yesterdays events today was much much nicer. I am as you know Home Alone with my teenage daughters while my wife has a well deserved holiday in Shanghai visiting her mum. Today while queuing at the store a man said “gesundheit” when somebody sneezed, so I obviously asked was he Jewish or American. He looked a bit like a tidied up version of ZZtop, “NO” he replied, “British as far back as Saxon times.” So you have good vocabulary and like History was my reply. He smiled and did not reach for any imaginary axe. On leaving I though he’d like the BBC4 program about Sir Francis Drake. So reciting what I’d learnt from the tv History docudrama I said Sir Francis was Pirate. Mr Saxon ZZtop replied, “Yes but in the Service of the Crown” So I just told him to watch the show on BBC4 catchup tv.

Now Mr Saxon ZZtop is the kind of person I love to bump into, I’m guessing but I bet he’s a History whizz too. Anyway he’d given me an idea for a story, maybe I’ll write it tomorrow. What did I buy in the store? Well I bought cheap pasta sauce on offer and mushrooms, also on offer. This is because my big daughter wanted to make pasta for herself, and me I decided to join in to save cooking for myself. My small daughter is on a sleepover with her little Indian friend, so with 2 of the girls in my life away for the night its very quiet here. Apart from Totoro our cat jumping around everywhere.

Once home my big daughter was talking to Shanghai, my wife was telling us about her day with grannie. There is an eight hour time difference, my wife is still a bit jet lagged as her flight was delayed 17hours in Paris. She had managed to escape Birmingham’s snow only for to get delayed by a bird strike in Paris. Now she was telling us of her nice Shanghai time, while we prepared pasta.

Me an my big daughter ended up cooking together, it was not planned, I just wanted to make sure the mushrooms were cooked nicely before they and sliced chorizo were added to the cooked pasta. My daughter thought it was nice. I also tried the wife’s new cooking knives, the one’s with the Pac-man like figures on the side. I avoided cutting my fingers off twice, otherwise they are great knives. Then you cook the unwashed mushrooms with the chorizo. My daughter was disturbed by the lack of washing but my view is if you are cooking them so hot any germs will be killed. Remember my old Uncle Patrick used to collect mushrooms by cow pats in his fields for breakfast.

So we had our pasta and I poured a jar of on offer pasta sauce all over it, all in all a nice bonding exercise as we cooked and ate food. Though if anybody uses the word bonding to me I really would call them Pretentious. Afterwards my big daughter helped me tidy up some old papers I’ve had festering in my drawers for years. We had a bin,keep and tear session.

Now as you all know my daughter hopes to go to Medical school in 2019, so while we had a bin, keep and tear session through my old papers my daughter listened to some music. Well actually it was not music, it was a podcast. As I’ve told her she must do at least do 2 hours study a day, even on a rest day or holiday. 2 hours at least, 8 hours at least on study days. It’s here own choice to be a Doctor, so that’s the standard.

I impersonate my own dad and say in his voice “Michael, I have no education, I don’t know what to tell you to chose, do what you like,but DO YOUR BEST” I tell her that was what my dad said to me so I repeat it down the generations to her. My dad would have been a teacher if he did not have to leave school at 14 and then become a blacksmith in Rathmore County Kerry Ireland. So I tell my daughter she has to keep on studying that hard, but if she wants to work in a sweet shop I’ll agree with her. She should just do what she loves.

What was on the podcast? Well it was different with lots of machine sound effects. As we sorted though paper and binned or kept it, we listened to a medical podcast. It was a Post Mortem, yes a Post Mortem. Luckily there were no pictures or I’d have puked all over our living room carpet. Together we sorted paper, like undoing a jigsaw to put in a bin, while we listened to an actual post mortem on a podcast. It was very interesting, the lead doctor was a very jolly sounding woman.

Occasionally they stopped to saw and drill. We heard the head come off and a brain being taken out, breastbone being removed and broke. I had that done when I had my heart operation 3 years ago. We heard about Kidney problems too, so obviously that interested me. My GFR is 32 now, ask your own doctor what that means, its not good. So I drink citrus drinks now, as I read it helps.

It was a nice look into my daughter’s future, as she want’s to do Pathology. The doctor on the podcast actually said HE had learnt most from a pathology room. I just remembered when I bought my house years ago my lawyer was the Coroner for the area, he rung up somebody and asked didn’t they have a phone in the Pathology room. I can also remember looking from his office window at a butcher’s shop, little did I then know The Butcher, The Baker and The Undertaker would be my first book a couple of years later. And now my daughter want’s to be a butcher, a “pathologist” though surgeons are called butchers in the medical world.  

Do you think God plans all this or does he just start the ball rolling? Well me and my daughter finished my paper autopsy as we listened to the real thing on the podcast. Luckily she does not play them on the speaker when she’s on the bus to 6^th form. She did say she’s love an autopsy on me, when I’m dead, she’s not going to attack me with a knife. I said I just want to be left alone and buried, Trinity Rd Church next door to the Sikh Temple is my chosen spot over the road from the steel works where my dad used to work. However the graveyard is closed and my wife would probably want cremation as that’s the Chinese way, they have 1,000,000 deaths a year. So my daughter’s friends would cut me up, before my wife would cremate me. Then I’d be put in some “ashtray”. But at least my daughter would be doing the job she loves. Either that or she’ll be a Maths teacher instead.