Praise and Reward

Praise and Reward, its a sticky question. Some things don't ask for praise or reward. Like if your kids do a small chore for you, they don't ask for a pound, they are just happy to help you, because they love you. If you are thirsty they'll fetch you a drink, they won't charge you for it, they'll do it instinctively. Just as my daughter did this evening when she watched me decorating, or rather my attempts at decorating, she even sacrificed her fizzy pop for me, she knows how I prefer pop to alcohol. Sometimes I'll offer a reward and she'll turn it down. For me this shows I'm bringing her up the same  way I was brought up. I know the majority of people reading this will think I'm old fashioned. I do know  that her Irish grandparents would be so proud of her if ever they saw her, Irish grandad did hold her in his arms but after 7 months or so he was gone, as for my mum she went early to make the tea.

Encouragement does work and should be used all the time. My youngest daughter just loves Matilda the fillm based on the Roal Dahl book. Why does she love it? Because its funny, and because the little girl does find love with the teacher.The teacher loves and encourages. Just as everybody reading this does love and encourage their own kids, even if at the moment the encouragement is to move out of the way of the tv so all dad's mates can watch the world cup, and isn't the garden a great place to be and dad will give you some money for pop from the corner shop If only the kids get out of the way of the tv.

My daugher has joined a sunday choir, so there she is praising God, and she gets rewarded with a few quid for singing.

They do say we all have to sing for our supper, just like Little Tommy Tucker.

The Windmills of My Mind

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas makes us all think of Snow  and Love and the film with Bing Crosby, not forgetting Family. A few bars of a song and we are away, our minds are somewhere else. Mind you in  today's world its a few drugs, or so called legal highs and the youth of today are away. Their minds turning to mush.

Me I like to use my mind and not destroy it. I've been thinking about Tears For A Butcher which will be the follow up to The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker. Words, ideas,dreams  float by and I sew them together, not with a needle and thread but with imagination. It takes time and a lot of energy to create a jigsaw that is a story which turns into a book. Its like word association, or an old photo thats discovered and brings back memories. We found a photo of me in shorts and wearing glasses I was alongside my tall brother, we were in Oxford visiting my brother at University. An angelpoise lamp was in the photo, the same angelpoise lamp thats sat in a corner of my brother's house today. Pictures lead to memories and in some cases to more futures, dreaming of the spires of learning, but thats another story and another university. When I write its with passion, I really am taken over by the words, by the thoughts, sometimes its like an avalanche and I'm right in the middle of it. I couldn't be all clinical and planned and precise. I'm not an architech, I am a dustman, I pick up what I find and use it, I transform it, and If I can be pretentious, it transforms me too. We have a friend who just loves music so I emailed him my best 3 poems and to  his surprize he now now thinks I'm a poet, in fact his wife just rung my wife, about some recipe no doubt. Chinese folks are just mad for their food. Anyways with Poems they sneak into my mind and then I sit down with the idea and I finish it off. BUT Poems are in charge of me and now me in charge of them. In Nov 1987 I wrote a poem called The Dead and The Living because I wanted Percy the Undertaker in my novel to be a man of great tenderness, a poet in fact. The idea came to me on a bus as I was on my way to my Sunday shift as a computer operator. I knew then that I would never write anything better than those few lines. However last year I had a line come to me while I was in Saint Phillips Cathedral having a rest and a sit down. The line was Let my Tears be my words. When I got home I sat down and finished the poem with my daughter sat on the edge of my chair. When I finished I realised that I'd just written something better than the Dead and The Living, it had taken 22years. Such is the nature of Poetry. As for my comedy writing I start somewhere and a connection will take me somewhere else, a bit like being a ball in a pinball machine, I get knocked and flipped and nudged until I end up in quite a different place to where I began. It is very tiring. Two hours is like a 12 hour shift, because I'm using all my juices. I have toyed with the idea of writing Tears for A Butcher, in fact the 1st chapter is down on paper and in cyberspace. But I don't want to commit myself to a year of writing, If I sold some of my other stuff then, or if I had a fan base, then yes. But for the moment no, so I am content to be a windmill in my mind, and yes it really is my favourite song.

my stuff can be read for free at www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com    which is where you are right now

 

Kung Fu Fighting

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting

Marrying a Shanghai girl brought many changes to my life. The sound of chickens clucking for one, Chinese really does sound like chickens in a hen house, if you listen to the wife talk to her friends over the Internet or on the phone or when a few are around the house.Chickens, chickens,chickens. The Mandarin for it is "quock quock quar" or something like that. Just ask ask your own Chinese friends and they will agree. They'll also tell you that Panzi my own Chinese nickname means FAT FAT BOY, not a fat boy, but FAT FAT BOY. I finally get married and have a family and I get called Panzi. Weighing 3 times as much as the wife or mother in law, has nothing to do with it, honest I'm a priest you can believe me.

Films brought us together and we still enjoy watching films on tv. If I could afford Sky Films I'd love to have it, and a Sky+ HD box. Our Sky+ box is always filled  with films for all the family, Over the Hedge, Bride and Prejudice and all manner of stuff. Occasionally we have to cull the films to make room for more. Sky+ really is a godsend for any family. I was just watching Kung Fu Hussle  which had Steven Chow in it. It really was great fun. Lots of Kung Fu action and lots of fun , and I do mean fun.It was in Chinese with the bottom of the screen cut off for the sub titles. I was really laughing, it was on Film4. Chinese Kung Fu films are like ballet and yes beyond belief but great great fun. If you don't normally watch subtitled films then please take a chance on my review skills. Do watch and laugh along. I won't tell you anything else about it I don't want to spoil it. Previously there was another film on the tv, it was called Red Flowers, again in Chinese with subtitles. This was about a nursery and how a child was dumped there, it had no Kung Fu in it, but it was really charming. How they got all the small children to act in it I'll never know but it was well worth a watch. I was asking my kids just how much Mandarin they each understood, one was busy reading the subtitles while the other seemed to understand a great deal of it. Having 2 languages I hope will pay dividends for my kids. In the future they can bring Crunchies and Dr Pepper to me when I'm retired, they should be able to afford them if them keep their language skills up. Their heart they get from me and their beauty from my wife.

I'll leave it there for tonight, lets hope England can win the football tomorrow.

 

Singing Songs

To sing is to doubly praise, Saint Cecilia said that. My sister says it too on occasion. Singing makes us all happy, it lightens the load, it helps pass the time, if we are happy we'll whistle or hum or sing. Just ask any workman, though workmen still like to whistle, or should I say wolf whistle when they see a pretty girl. "Hello Darling"  rings out from high up an unfinished building, followed by laughter when the girl turns around and the girl is in fact a boy with a girlish haircut.

But I was talking about singing. My girls were singing "A sailor went to sea, sea sea, to see what he could see see see." so obviously I jointed in. My youngest was amazed that I knew it,so I told them that that rhyme must be at least 50 years old. So on they sang, doing the hand clapping that accompanies it. It took me back, where have all the years gone, I really hope I can last till 100 then I'd have more time with my girls and any grandchildren or even on great great grandchild. But that's up to God, the girls Great Grandpa is alive and kicking into his 90s, he's on his 3rd wife now having worn out the 1st 2, Shanghai diet in a warm China may explain it.

Grandma does sing Jesus songs with the girls over the Internet from Shanghai, and my big daughter has just joined the choir at Saint Hilda's down road from the woods. Google tells me Hilda  was very wise and lived a monastic life. My daughter did an audition and was let into the choir.  They even pay a small stipend. My own sister has been singing over 45 years, despite us telling her to shut up.  Me and my brothers were altar boys, none of us getting any reward for this church work. Perhaps we should have stopped being Catholics and moonlighted for the Protestants. I was also a reader for 7 years, so I can remember passages from the Bible, as well as hearing them all my life these past 50 years.

Singing songs is very very touching, a song will touch the heart and my sister is right, to sing is to doubly praise. Songs at funerals which open the floodgate, Angels by Robbie Williams is very popular now, it was played at my cousin's funeral; songs at the last night of the Proms which make you proud and happy. As I talk to you I listening to music, Hotel California from the Eagles, 34 years ago that was out. I never guessed I'd spend 3 years in an hotel. Hotels have music to kill the deadness of an empty foyer/reception area, as do bars. Songs that you can sing too give a place a good vibe. Gay bars play lots of Abba I'm told, again because its great happy music, it helps the fun on a cold Tuesday evening. I'm listening to an old Elton John album now, Made in England, its worth digging out, its from 1995. Classical music and opera touch us too, even when we cannot understand a word. Pavorotti, and that blind Italian singer Andrei Bocelli, both can touch us. I remember in 1966  when the whole family went to Lourdes, we were singing Ave Maria in the darkness, holding up our lighted candles, perhaps 40,000 people singing in the dark. Now that is really touching and uplifting. I suppose other Faiths do things their way which are no doubt just as powerful.

As you have all no doubt gathered through these blogs, I do like my music, a pocket DAB is always close to me, in fact after 5 years its a bit battered, so I have to save up for a replacement. When you're happy and you know it clap your hands, is a song we sing when we are kids, we are all so free. We sing when we are in the shower, we sing when we are in love.

Song is the Spirit that cannot be broken, we sing  to babies in the crib, babies can hear before they are born, its singing that creates love.

So sing, sing, sing. For we are alive.

Attachment: Padre Pio and Me.doc

As these tears fall

As these tears fall, we remember we have been here before.

As these tears fall, the love we feel hurts so much more.

As these tears fall, we are stunned and don't know what to say.

As these tears fall, we must remember them all.

As these tears fall, we think of the smiles.

As these tears fall, we remember the laughter.

As these tears fall, we remember the kisses.

As these tears fall, we touch their things that will never be used again.

As these tears fall, we finish ironing the shirt or the trousers that will never be worn again.

As these tears fall, we feel a hole in our heart that aches so much.

As these tears fall, we remember their touch, comforting and more.

As these tears fall, we are heartbroken for our lost futures.

As these tears fall, we give thanks for what we did have.

As these tears fall, love carries on, we will meet again.

Having a Heat Wave

Well the sun has shone on Birmingham, my wife took the kids to a fancy pool with slides and so forth. I had said just go down the road, 200 yards to the local swimming baths. The kids wanted slides so off she drove. Only the Stourbridge centre was closed. So she soothed the kids with magazines. I just laughed when they got back, the kids didn't want to try the local baths as they now had something to read. So the back garden was now the beach, a pink umbrella was now a sun shade, pink hats were worn and sun tan cream was spread everywhere. The plastic kids chairs were also dragged out into the garden, the bedspread from one of the beds upstairs was also dragged into service. The fish radio would also have been pressed into service only the batteries have fallen out. As for me I went out shopping when the edge had gone off the heat. It was a DIY Subway brought into the home, so we had wraps that we filled with mayonaise and ham and spicy stuff. Washed down with fizzy pop and coffee. Ice cream and cones were ready in the fridge. We had a pudding if thats the right word of ice cold pineapple and its juice. If you've never had pineapple and its juice chilled right down, then do try it. It was family affair then we settled down for Dr Who on tv, we cannot decide on the new Dr Who, he just seems silly, we want him to be great but he isn't.

A kind neighbour knocked the door to tell us the car window was still open, the kids had left it that way when they were out searching for a pool. So at least the car will still be outside in the morning. My girls are off to join a choir in the morning, so you can imagine what that'll lead too. I can remember my sister singing and 45 years ago and more "shut up"was how us Casey boys responded, she's still in that church choir. So If I reach 100 my own girls could be singing in the Warley Woods choir. So that's our day today, tomorrow is Pentecost which is when the Holy Spirit came to the disciples, its a kind of birthday, the birth day of the Church. It was a beginning and Pentecost can be a beginning for each and everyone of us, we don't have to speak in tongues or do miracles. Just saying hello to somebody on the bus or in the street, a simple smile can be a beginning, breaking down barriers with love.  

                                         thats us in florida in 2006

As I Look Out My Window

As I look out my window the breeze gently rocks the rose bush in my front garden. Loony Chick the teddy bear or should I say the teddy chick big and bright yellow sits in the front window. He or is it she, came all the way from Shanghai last Summer now Loony Chick sits in the window of our Birmingham home. But at least Loony Chick can still hear some Chinese every day and still smell Chinese food. So Life is normal for him or is it her? So what is normal? Having your own bed to sleep in and not some hotel far far away, not grandma's house in Shanghai, not an uncles house in Shanghai. Just normal, ordinary Birmingham. The clouds are so bright, the white white candy floss with all its funny shapes. The grey clouds are trying to group together to form rain clouds and then in the middle is the blue blue sky. This is Nature and is a Free Show, just as  the breeze can be like a kiss on the cheek, the flowers beginning to bloom, the buds on the buds on my neighbours apple tree next door, the golden chain at the bottom of my own garden. Transplanted 20 years ago and more from  my own mum's garden. The technicolour green grass in the garden, the bluebells in the flower bed and a few stray ones in the lawn itself. Grandpa's flower too, as we call one lone tulip which holds such memories for us. There are a few weeds too and some wild shamrock that survived  this harsh Winter just gone, scattered chalks in the yard, or should I say patio, which has drawings all over it, thanks to my artistic girls. Then there is the view of the washing line with small small clothes on it, untill  you see my "flags" giant items blowing in the wind, my clothes  are so big compared to my girls things. When I was in Shanghai the 1st time, now over 10years ago, we could locate Ma's house by my flags hanging from bamboo poles from the window ledge 4 stories up.

And the point of all my musings? Today everybody wants to talk about the new PM and the New Politics, and there will be much noise made. So instead of worrying about that, why not just sit sit back and have a nice cup of coffee and a Cadburys Crunchy Bar too. Look outside in the garden and see the bumble bees bumbling, see the magpies dance about, they may even steal your Crunchy Bar wrapper. Watch the clouds amble through the sky, listen to that ticking clock on the shelf besides the hugh Chinese/English dictionary, bound in red of course. The Tick Tock is soothing compared to the whine of the PC  processor at my feet, I can hear the back door close as my wife brings in the washing. All these are ordinary things BUT usually they go unobserved, take time out, if I dare mention a rival chocolate bar, take time out just to enjoy life. None of this costs any money nor takes any effort, BUT will be good for your Spirit, failing that just reach for the Johny Walker Red Label, or in my case the Dr Pepper.