Healthy Wealthy and Wise

Healthy Wealthy and Wise©

By

Michael Casey

I was doing a bit of reading about exercise, no not just because I'm 17.5 stones, I just need a bit of information for a talk I'm going to give. I know the general outline but the DT crowd can give me a few juicy sentences. Juicy sentences go down well and grab an audience’s attention, they sit up and listen, they put down their knives and forks and stop talking amongst themselves, and they listen to the speaker.

So I can say they don’t need to become body builders, they can be fatties that walk, say the school run, 15 mins up the hill and 15 mins down the hill and maybe an extra 10 mins if you drag the kids around the shops on the way home. I should add that chocolate and crisps may be bought as a treat for the kids but for the parent or grandpa as I’m wrongly called, the parent should not indulge in Cadbury’s crunchy, that would only reverse the effect of all the walking. As I walk down the road we can play the what’s in the window game, where the children look in the window and then turn away from the window and try and remember what was in the window. If you remember your Dirk Bogarde he did this as a child and he went on to be a photographic interpreter in the war. So this method exercises the mind while exercising the body.

To lose weight you have to stop what’s going in your mouth, if you exercise only you’d need to exercise as much as an Olympian to make any difference. Now I have heard of the water diet, where you drink lots of water, so your belly is full and you don’t eat anything which will help the belly stay like a fat belly. Of course you eat normally as well, but if you top up with water, perhaps with a little squash in it then you’ll see the difference, and so will your friends and family. Yes I have tried this and  the have a mug of squash routine has helped me get back to my fighting weight of, 17.5stone, in my hotel days that was handy when I was throwing bags about, some say I look only 15 stones.

Orange juice is my big thing too, I just love orange juice, and yes there is a difference between the orange from different supermarkets. I got hooked on orange in 2006 when we were in Florida meeting that branch of our Chinese family. I was also at my heaviest ever because I’d switched from my 25miles a week walking at the hotel job to my sitting in front of a PC, Life Insurance job, yes really, and I do see the irony. After the Life Insurance I had 3 years standing up all day job. Perhaps we should all pick a job which is best for our health. I’d like to be a professional writer, then I’d get a dog, when I’d done my quota of words for a day I’d be off out with the dog. Maybe I’d do the morning school run with my girls and our new dog and then I’d go home for breakfast and writing, then in the afternoon me and Subway the dog would pick up the girls again, once home I’d do a few more pages. Now this is the life I’d like, me a dog and a PC, you can find my books on Kindle as of today, if only I sold enough to be a full time writer, now that would be good my health.

Michael Casey’s Books are now on Amazon Kindle Books

Michael Casey’s Books are now on Amazon Kindle Books

By michaelgcasey

Just in case you haven’t heard, anybody can now upload their books to Amazon’s Kindle’s Book Shop.

It really is easy to  use, in fact it is Michael Proof.

So once the process is sorted you can all rush to Amazon Kindle Store and buy 4 of my wares.

You are offered 30% Royalties or 70% Royalties. And you can set the price. So in effect everybody out there in Daily Telegraph Land can become self published. Now whether or not you get any sales is another thing entirely.

Best of all it costs NOTHING,  self publishing in paper form can be dangerous and you can lose your shirt but Amazon’s Kindle seems easy peasy, so why not try it for yourselves and see if you can out sell Jeffeory Archer, 330,000,000 is the target, easy. But IF you do outsell Lord Archer you too can have a Monet of your living room wall.

Me I’d settle for straight wall paper, thanks for listening.

Michael

Glee

Glee by Michael Casey

I don’t know about you, but I like Glee. It’s harmless fun on the telly on a Monday night. It’s all about a Glee club in America, where kids sing and dance.

I don’t think we have them over here in UK, but we do have choirs and stuff. My own two daughters are in a church choir, there was a legacy left to help pay for music. So my girls get to do something they like and then at Weddings they get a few quid.

Back to Glee, the singing and dancing is very good, it warms the cockles of your heart, well mine anyway. If you can sing then you can pack up your troubles in an old kit bag, and smile smile smile. There are also jokes in Glee too and it has a whole collection, or should I say a mixed bag of people and their problems. Young actors acting 17 years old and so on.

There are too many ads in between Glee but at least I can flick to the news channel while I’m waiting for them to finish. What more can I say? If you grew up watching all the Hollywood musicals then Glee is for you. Just remember to put on a happy face.

A Child's Eye View

A Child’s’ Eye View ©

By

Michael Casey

My small daughter had made a  dangly thing, I don’t know how to describe it really. It’s a piece of coloured plastic which has holes in. Well that much is straightforward, then there are flowers and coloured wires hanging from it. A kind of bad hair day made from plastic. In effect its like those doorways which have strips of material  handing down to separate one room from another. There must be a word for it but I’d know it, but I’m  sure somebody will tell me. In films its chip shops and barbers who have these “doors”, I hope you get the picture.

Now that I’ve confused things, let me continue with the tale; though I should add that I have good news to share, I’ve rediscovered Don Camillo again. So I’m expecting a delivery of a Don Camillo omnibus in the post. With such a good feeling I decided to please my small daughter an d find somewhere to display her “art”. WE did think of hanging it in our living room/ kitchen  area, I was about to find a chair to stand on and tie the “art”   to an old curtain rail, but we were overruled by the Voice of Reason which is otherwise know as The Shanghai Mum. If you don’t know Shanghai mums are very strict and don’t appreciate “art”, so me and my daughter were banished from the living room.

We retreated upstairs and we scoured the girls’ room for a location for the modern “art”, in the end we decided if we tied a piece of string to the art we could then hang it up underneath a picture that was on their wall. So we found a ball of string and cut it to the right length, and then attached it to our plastic thingy or watsit, and I was given the task of attaching it to the string that was holding up the painting.

Unfortunately the picture fell off the wall, and even when I found a hammer, all I did was make a mess and the picture fell off the wall again.

So I had failed, Andrew Graham-Dixon would have been moved to tears, so we retreated to my room and hung in on my wall. The plastic “art” was forgotten, the hammer was put away. All that is left are the marks on the wall where the picture had hung for many a year. But at least the girls have a new location where they can put a poster, all they need is gluetac, which is far easier than hammer and nails.

  

Why do Men think they are Perfect?

Why do Men think they are Perfect? ©

By

Michael Casey

What do men do when they are surrounded by beautiful women?

I am in that position myself, a model like wife and 2 very beautiful bilingual daughters.

Having a Shanghai wife who could have a been a model only she was not tall enough, even though she was very very pretty.

Her parents did hold her by her legs and shoulders and tried pulling her, stretching her, but it was no use. 5feet 1inch was all she stretched to. The agency did say she could be a model for children’s clothes, but my wife, or should I say future wife said no. 

I would have said yes myself, though my waist is almost as big as her height, well almost, or bigger than if I listen to her. I do have a  Chinese name, Panzi, it means FAT FAT BOY.

I may be fat though in my brain I AM thin. So I will dance around the living room to MTV, dressed as a Sumo, I mean just because I am 17.5 stones doesn’t mean I cannot dance, I do dance well, and even if our neighbours have called in a structural engineer that does prove anything.

And if I do leave a trail of toast crumbs all over the carpet from the kitchen and to the living room and even as far as this computer desk, what does it prove? It proves I need a wife to love me. Her nagging is just a form of courtship, her Chinese wagging finger just makes me laugh, so I just wiggle my bum to her copying Beyonce moves, I really am such a good dancer.

I hog the computer seeing how many people are looking at michaelgcasey, how many are looking at my blogs today. Then another burst of loving, I am kicked off the computer so my all adoring wife can read the recipes on Chinese and Japanese web sites. I retreat to the living room and watch 503 and 501 and 509 and even 506, which are the news channels. Then I’m kicked off the tv so she can watch a Date with LuLu, it’s a daily chat show from Taiwan, not a wee little Scots singer. So I return to the computer to write my blog for the day, behind me our bilingual girls play on the piano, I get them to play a bit quieter as I need to focus while I write.

However as I’m writing right now I’m listening to Shakespeare’s Sister, perhaps I should be reading their brother.

Words have such power, was it that which brought Birmingham to Shanghai. Was it my good looks, was it my immense waist, was it my smile, I do have such a nice smile, was it my laughter,

Or were the Angels on angel dust when they heard my prayer for a wife?

Thousands of children ‘not ready for school’ at five

Thousands of children ‘not ready for school’ at five

By michaelgcasey

I was so not ready myself that I ran after my mother down the school drive, 1963 was the year I think. Years later I was the Head Boy of the school.

As for the general population, am I old fashioned in thinking some parents don’t love their children. You don’t have to have children, there are pills before and after, and men can even do something, so there are no excuses for having children, IF you don’t want them.

But IF you do have kids then LOVE THEM. I had a humble beginning, if you find the photo of my mum’s home in Cromane Lower back in 1920s then you’ll see just how humble her beginning was. The difference between now and then is just how poor my family and millions of others were.In Andrew Marr’s show last night, which made me seasick because it jumped so much, his observation was that the village comes to town, to mega cities, and it is that which binds communities together. Obviously I was looking out for Shanghai as that’s where my wife is from.

When our girls were born, Ma came all the way from Shanghai to be with us here in Birmingham, on each occasion she stayed six months to help out. Sadly in the modern era there is no granny, or granny is a party animal in Ibiza or is on a fly drive in USA.

So you don’t have an extra pair of hands, as granny wants her freedom, this means 5 year  olds miss out on granny’s love. 5  year olds get lots of plastic rubbish with batteries, but love, where no batteries are required, that is sadly missing.

Yes people have to work,  I’m content that we love our kids, and there isn’t any money for plastic rubbish, and as for batteries…              I used to sit at the top of the stairs and have a “social” with my mum, then she’d pat my bottom and send me off to bed, I was happy because I was loved.

My kids are lucky because I’m from a large Irish family, so they have lots of uncles and aunts who love them, give them plenty of crayons and paper, 600 crayons was the last audit of all things for drawing. A pencil and paper IS enough to set a child’s mind free, when you unite this with Love from mum and dad and uncles and aunts, what do you get? You get happy kids, Granny in Shanghai is not forgotten either, with the wonders of the Internet granny can talk to our kids every  Saturday and together they read the Bible and teach granny more English, as for my girls they practice their Chinese.

Is this old fashioned and not all hip and groovy? I don’t care, I have great kids who love me, and their Chinese/Irish family nothing is better than that, and guess what, batteries are not included.

Attachment: Padre Pio and Me.doc

Easy Listening

Easy Listening

By michaelgcasey

BBC4 had a great programme tonight, Easy Listening. I don’t know about you but for 20years and more radio was my best friend, Radio4 and Radio2. It all started when my brother went to work at a coal mine, after a year he went to Cambridge, he had a gap year before they were even invented.

So there I was in 5th year with an old Bush radio for comfort as I studied for my O Level, radio was a constant companion. I listen to Radio2 and Folk weave and all manner of programmes, I also heard a stack of Radio 4 stuck. The Bush radio did wonders for my intellect  and it was a great comfort as I really missed my brother.

Easy listening from the radio, plus in later years having a record player and then a very cheap hifi, it was just a record player with 2 speakers, but it was so soothing. John Denver, The Eagles, Jean Michel Jarre, and anything else with a nice album cover, all of them  were my companions, especially when I was in between jobs.

Music is soothing and a great companion, listening by headphones is a different experience too, if you haven’t tried it then try it right now, steal some headphones from your teenagers. My own kids are still too young to have headphones, mind you tonight my girls were really enjoying their Blik radio as they both read JacquelineWilson books.   I had bought the radio for myself but instead I donated it to my girls and I kept the old ugly looking DAB radio.

Music is good for the soul and you can submerge yourself in music, just as you can wallow in a hot bath for an hour, easy listening like Smooth Radio, Real radio used to be great until it went off air. I just adored the music with no ads annoying me, that’s what easy listening is all about, its like the bubble from bubble bath that cover and sooth at the same time. Easy listening is like a good massage given by an expert, or if you cannot get a Chinese doctor, buy a book and get some oils and donate it to your wife/boyfriend/girlfriend or whoever and just lie there with the music playing your favourite Carpenters track, or Adele.

Easy listening should almost send you to sleep, which is good because its so relaxing. My journey started with a Bush radio and now its a DAB radio or my computer with nice Logitech speakers, if music be the food of life play on.