How to Teach a Nine Year Old Long Division

How to Teach a Nine Year Old Long Division ©

By

Michael Casey

Well my daughter only has 2 more years in primary school, year 5 is what they call it. So my Shanghai wife is pushing her to learn maths, 11plus beckons next year.

I remember I was called the “Ready Reconner”  by the lady in the butcher’s shop, Marsh and Baxters. The shop had a variety of changes over the past 45 years but now it is once more a butchers, a halal one. I was 8 or younger at the time me and my mum would go to the butchers and buy the meat for the 8 of us, sawdust was on the floor in those days. The lady in the shop would write down all the separate items on a piece of paper using her pencil. Then she’d try to add them up, remember it was pounds shillings and pence in those days. 12 pence to a shilling, and 20 shilling to the pound, 240 pence in one pound. If you did not know your  12 times tables then you’d be lost. Mr Gallagher my old school teacher  threatened us for months with a times table test. He sprung it on us and the result was 4 of the best, a pump on my bum. The next time he tested us I was perfect. So with a stinging  bum as a reminder I was red hot as far at times  tables and sums were concerned. Hence I was the ready reconner 

We  always paid the right price for our meat, the tills were huge monsters in those days with big symbols appearing in a glass window, watch Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours and you’ll see one.

Now how do you teach division to a 9 year old. Well my wife starts in Shanghai dialect, then I interrupt in English giving a metaphor or two, upside down stair is how I explain. Then we jump on Utube and you get lessons galore, 360 maths lessons is what I hear. Though its American so is Math lessons, I was boasting as they explained long division that  I had shown our daughter the correct way, but Utube had another set in the upside down steps, by basically I was right. I then reassured our daughter if she did 100 examples then she’d get it. If you know how to multiply then you know how to divide. More encouragement is given in Shanghai dialect. As for our daughter she heads for her room and Galaxy on her DAB radio, perhaps if she counts the stars in  the  Galaxy then she’ll  have her head in the stars.

Dr Who at The Proms

Well the girls were out at Choir practice so I thought I'd have a quiet evening. I stumbled over BBC3's Dr Who at the Proms. It really was a great show, I recorded the 1/2 I saw and I hope I'll cat the repeat. If the BBC sells this show it should do really well.

THey have Dr Who in the USA now so I hope they get to see the show there soon. Classical Music is an acquired taste, you have to learn it. I know lots of Classical buffs will contradict me immediately, I can only speak from my own experience. I was chasing a girl a long time ago and she introduced me to Classical Music. The Dr WHO show at the Royal Albert Hall tonight on TV married together Science Fiction and Classical Music. For the girl I was chasing she'd never marry me, it would be like Science Fiction.

Music really does touch the soul, the composer said he loved Dr Who and AMY so it was easy to write music with them in mind. When I wrote The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker (www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com) I had Julie Walters in mind for the part of Mrs Murphy, now 22years on she is the right age for the part, I can also reveal that she used to live just up the road from where I am sitting right now. Its a small world.

As for Dr Who he's been brought back to life these past few years, and its our hearts which have been touched and we cry tears on occasion. In the audience tonight on TV I did see a lady crying, that is the highest compliment anybody can give to a performer.

Sometimes words are not enough, sometimes a hug says more, sometimes silence has to be broken. I'll finish tonight with this:-

Let There Be Light ©

By Michael Casey

　

Let my tears be my words

Let the candle light be my eyes

Let the flowers in bloom be my lips

Let their scent be my blood

Let the wind be my breath

Let clouds be my mood

Let children’s laughter be my hope

Let widows’ sighs be my conscience

Let a stranger’s prayers be my delight

Let the bees be my wisdom

Let the trees be my strength

Let my patience reach to the stars

Let me be always remembered in your prayers

My Mouse is Drunk

My Mouse is drunk ©


By

Michael Casey
Well my mouse is drunk, I did see the warning signs and I hoped and prayed that it would get back to the straight and narrow, but it did not. The mouse is a drunkard and that’s all there is to it, its not that I live in a windmill with the sails producing electricity for our home our windmill home. It would have been just fine if the mouse wore cloggs and did a bit of break dancing. Living in a windmill would be fun too.

I am of course talking about a computer mouse, not any Nick Park creation. Our computer was waving goodbye as you can see by my previous post, but now the mouse was joining the strike in sympathy, all for one and one for all.

Can you remember the last time you were on a double decker bus up stairs and drunk?
I can remember being on the Metro in Paris Feb 1998 drunk and very happy, but that’s another story. So picture that in your mind and that’s just how my mouse is behaving. Scrolling an
d jumping and highlighting  galore, could be like a scene from an old film, Easy Rider perhaps, and yes I remember seeing that at the cinema, 2pound a week pocket money so I could go to the cinema at the Grove.
You think you can master a silly little mouse but you cannot, its like a jockey verses a giant, the jockey is wiry and nimble so its very hard to catch him and lay a punch on him. Exactly how it is between me and my mouse. I was to do a few things before the new needed replacement computer arrived, but it was a battle of wills and the mouse,  the computer mouse was winning. I need to renew my house insurance so I thought I could do this online. I had rung up my existing insurance company and they immediately offered a 40% discount! But it was still cheaper to change so I had been looking online, but with the mouse playing up it was like being in an Irish Pub on Saint Patrick’s day, one giant jelly mass of people, me and the mouse were just like that. Finally I had to give up I was getting seasick. 4 of us use this computer and the mouse has been battered for years, so now it was time to put it out of its misery, the only decision was whether to bury the mouse in  an old shoe box or just cut off its tale and give it to the with. kids to play

We're having a baby

We are having a baby ©

By

Michael Casey

We are having a baby, after much though and heartache we have decided to have a baby, it will be our 3rd. Now in Google search that’ll be condensed so everybody will be mislead until they click and read the full version. Yes we are having a baby, and yes it will be our 3rd, but not a baby baby, which would indeed be our 3rd. No we are not trying for a boy after having two girls, we are just having a 3rd baby, I mentioned it to my eldest daughter on my way back with a coffee in my hand, she said it wouldn’t be a 3rd baby, it would be a 4th baby, or even a 5th baby. You see we had a new Tv after ours gave up the ghost after 16 years, so the new Toshiba was a baby, and our new noisy whistling kettle was a baby too. What I’m really saying is that our computer has reached the age when it should be replaced. The baby I’m on about is a new Emachine computer, a baby computer because it should be so much smaller than the original one from over 7 years ago. Best of all it was on offer, 200 off. If it wasn’t on offer it would have stayed in the shop, but we really need our computer so thankfully a cheap one has popped up to save the day.

As for our current Emachine that’ll find a new home with somebody who had our last old baby, a tradition is forming, he has our old cache which saves him cash. Its nice if you can recycle things, and I’m sure our friend will spruce it up to make it better than we had it. I know somebody who has a computer who has never done a disc cleanup, but that’s another story. As for us I now have to backup our old files, can you imagine how many 1000 photos you take when you have a young children; you have to send them to grandma in Shanghai and friends in Toyko and Taiwan and Singapore, and the most exotic Stourbridge and Reading and Frankfurt. You do have some on the family website but now as change is in the air you must backup everything, you cannot lose your children’s childhood snaps.

Yesterday I looked at USB sticks they can be pretty expensive, finally I worked out how much stuff we just had to backup and move. Play.com turned out to have the best offer for 16gig flash security. Lets hope it’s a simple as I think it is to back things up, I have 14gig of stuff to backup. As you can imagine I have to keep my other babies safe, my stories my writing, which are dreams in themselves. I had them on floppy discs scattered all around my house. I do have my site  www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com  so my “masterpieces” will survive fire and floor and even nuclear war as the are on a server on a different continent. However I still need them on my new baby computer my new Emachine, so my 16gig flash storage will have a mission. There is one thing to remember though I remember somebody saying if you don’t dismount/unload you media properly then you lose what’s on the flash media. Well I’ll find out about that soon enough, Wednesday will be my security day.

Then once everything is safely loaded I can breath a sigh of relief. But what else do you have to do once you have your new baby, your new computer. Get connected to the Internet, without being swamped by viruses because you forgot to get an anti virus program. Set up accounts on the computer, I have my side and my wife has her side. With a Shanghai wife though I get stray Chinese characters appearing on our current computer, and strange things have happened. So I need to keep a clear head while I get things as I want them to be, however give it a fortnight and China will have invaded my side of the computer and stolen all the duvet. I still dream of  having my books in Waterstones and sold as Ebooks for all these new devices, but most of all I want a computer just for me!

 

From A to B From Sat Nav to Blocked Sink

Well I hope you are all fine this morning. For us the Sat Nav debate continues.

In the old days a Black Taxi would not be seen using an AtoZ, it was beneath his dignity. He'd done the Knowledge and it was all up there in his head. Jack Rozenthal wrote a great play about it, was it 30years ago? Maureen Lipman was his real wife.

Delivery drivers have and egg and bacon butty in one hand dripping egg on to the AtoZ in their other hand while they try and deliver a chest of drawers, with 5 days growth of beard for good measure.

Bus drivers know their route, so once they've done it a while its automatic, they know what they  are doing. All they have to do is put up with kids trying to use a 3 day old ticket, and not get too high from all the cannabis on the bus. Or remember when they have switched routes because that can lead to strange directions.

Door to door salesmen all those years ago, with the rap at tat tat on the back door had their route carrying the suitcase with samples in. I can vaguely remember one at our back door did my mum buy a clothes brush? But that must be 45 years ago.

So basically we all know what we want and where we are going. Going further back  they say people only knew a six block radius around their home. Going to War changed all that as  did radio and then more importantly tv. Tv being our eyes on the world, previous to that only Merchant Seaman knew of the world. My own granddad was a merchant seaman, I sometimes wonder did he ever get to Shanghai

Or was it me, his grandson who got there first. Had he visited at the turn of the 19th/20th Century 100years and more ago.

Which brings us back to Sat Nav. Me I use a bus which is fine apart from the pot heads who sit next to you on the bus and all I want to do is puke. My wife is a car driver, so she and our girls love the car. But my wife has borrowed a Sat Nav and likes the ease of it so now she wants one of her own. The result is that I’m being nagged to provide one. You pay, me pay, yes you pay, why me pay, because you are the husband so you pay, no way me pay, you pay you pay yourself, I say. And on the ding dong, sing song goes. Which is the fun part. Me I no pay, use computer I say. You can get perfect directions off the computer all you then have to do is print them off, if our printer was still working we’d be doing that. So really all the wife has to do is copy them down, in English.

She’s  busy with the wok as I talk to you, she’s compromised now, she only wants me to pay half. So I say I’ll be doubly generous and double the share I won’t pay, I’ll pay zero and she can pay 100%. That’s the true spirit of negotiation, now I have another thing to resolve, she’s blocked the sink, so pardon me now as I take the plunge, or rather take the plunger to the sink, no need to use a Sat Nav to get there, its over my shoulder in the next room, just turn left at the tv and go straight on to the sound of bubbles. Love is everywhere don’t you know it, just find it, no Sat Nav required.

Read My Mind

Read My Mind ©

By

Michael Casey

I just read in the Sunday paper that soon they’ll be able to read my mind, everybody’s mind. A computer firm is scanning brains so that in future you can control your computer with just a thought.

“Where do you do to my lovely when you’re alone and in your bed, tell me the thoughts that surround you” as Peter Sarstead sung in the old and very good song.*

Now the song was a great song, perhaps they’ll play it on Magic again soon.
But our thoughts are private like the sunglasses of our mind. They ring fence our brain and keep strangers out, they hide our boredom when at Company events, the same speech and the same director laughing at his own jokes while as one we all think “what a plonker”. A whole hall wishing he’d stop so we could get on with the entertainment, free bar and circus.

Politicians lie, we all think they do, and if we could read their minds we’d all throw cabbages at them, or eggs or just manifestos. We heard what Gordon really though of that lady and it helped lose the Election for him. Then the apology shambles, you cann’t take back something like that. If somebody could read Gordon’s mind they would have dived in to save him before he even said it. Politicians need to be clear but they never are. Why have clarity when you can have deniability. Let’s just wish Gordon a good relaxing next 5 years.

But what of you and what of me. You see a girl, you see a boy, you’ve got your shades on, you take a good hard look, the object of your attention cannot see your eyes, you try and look cool and not move your head an inch. But you lust after him, you lust after her. Choose your own words as to what you are thinking, or are you lusting. Well they’ll never know because they cannot read your mind. But  if they could, they’d be a few slapped faces that’s  for sure. Or they’d be a few sudden    snogs in doorways and in bus shelters or on the top decks of buses. And all because we can read each other’s minds. Perhaps in the future the gismo to read minds would be attached to your shades, so you’d look cool while they drool.

What about your mum if she could read your mind? She’d be sending you to bed without supper, she’d scream and shout “get out of my house.”
What about old gran and granddad, they’d know what you really think of them. Do you love them or are you just playing along to get their money when they die.
Reading Minds is a dangerous thing, we need protection from ourselves, a stray  spoken word can hurt, but luckily our words are locked up in our minds and they can be chosen and picked and used with caution. But if they were there all naked in front of us, no nuances, no clarification then we’d all be in big trouble. I believe we think
 4 times faster than we speak, but speech is our filter so that we DO pick the right words, we don’t say the wrong thing. Reading Minds can be dangerous, yes it would be great if you could walk down the road and have all the girls dreaming of you, but what if you were walking down the road and you could heard everybody’s  inner voice saying I hate you. What You Don’t Know Cann’t Hurt You, so as far as I’m concerned I’ll Fortune Telling  to Gypsies.

*Peter Sarstead Copyright.

Good Will Hunting Again

I just watched Good Will Hunting on tv, I'd seen it before. I do in fact have a few cousins in Boston, one is a cop. 

Anyways this time it got me thinking about my grammar school days back in 1970. WE had one lad who was just like the star of Good Will Hunting, his name was RP he had brains to burn as they say in Ireland. Unfortunately he had a deformed back, Esmerelda and the bells were no doubt said by us, though I never actually remember hearing it. RP was especially great at Maths and Sciences, years later at a school reunion, thanks to physio he was alright. He was writing computer games somewhere. God Bless him I say now and I said then.

All this brings to mind just how great God and genetics really is. As I've mentioned in other blogs things can run in families, maths or music or painting or writing, good looks or lack of them. Then every now and then Nature can play a binder. Look at the Mozarts of the world. Remember the film Amedeus, I can remember looking back and seeing 2 people crying in the audience at the old Futurist cinema in Birmingham. So why are these geniuses thrown up. Is it  God saying, just when you lot thought you knew everything I throw a googlie or a curve ball, or whatever sporting metaphor you care to choose, or does God bend it like Beckham.

I think it is for a reason. Perhaps to make us Mankind humble, to make us realise we don't really know much after all, we may have jumped of the 3rd rock from the sun and had a day trip to the moon, but really we are all still chimps banging two rocks together to make a fire.

Great Art, such as the Cistine Chapel the very sparks of Creation and of Intelligence now this  does show us many things. A cow grazing  on green green grass, giving us milk which really is a great invention,now that's something we all overlook.

Life really is a great invention, junkies think they see great things when they shoot up, but I'm sure God can take their hand and lead them to a beautiful garden and from there they can see the movement of the spheres, see planets form and reform, see erupting super novas. All of God's creation, then finally we are all shown a mirror and we see ourselves, our so small selves. It is only be having Mozarts that we can aspire to be better than being chimps on a rock hurdling though space and time. Can you hear the music?