Internet Window Shopping

Internet Window Shopping ©

By Michael Casey

 

Well the Internet really is such a joy, I know this to be true,  I also know it really is a great for window shopping. If you’re stuck at home for any reason you can still go shopping, or window shopping just for fun. We have Internet at home for 12 years now. At first I just had a blue Sky Keyboard, it’s probably a modern antique now, but with having a Shanghai wife we graduated to a computer, you have to talk to mum after all.

Now Internet lets your fingers do the walking, just like the Yellow Pages adverts of old. There are major pitfalls though, you can melt the plastic, and you can end up buying junk at the wrong price. I know of somebody who was addicted to Internet shopping, spending their lunch breaks buying stuff and then filling their house till they couldn’t move with heavy oak furniture to take one example. Then you have to put it back on Ebay to get rid of the stuff again, sometimes making a loss. So you need to be careful.

How do you go about Internet shopping? You do it slowly and you must stay within budget, yes there are bargains, Christmas trees at Easter and such like. Buy your winter coat in the summer or spring, I am actually waiting for winter coat to be delivered as I speak to you, Sierra Trading Post is a good place for stuff, as is Cotton Traders. The whole world is your oyster  so take it easy and enjoy the Internet experience, you could even invite a few friends over of coffee and cake, make an afternoon of it. Go to the old people’s home and rig up the computer with a large screen or us the tv in the day room as a monitor. Then you can begin.

Ok, who wants what? Get the sizes and narrow down what you are after, the Internet is like a supermarket with traps, not sweets and gum by the checkout, but other ways to make you spend more. Previous users also looked at this and that, you even get emails saying they spotted what you were looking at last time so would you like this. If you are looking for extra large thermal knickers, then enter that as a Google search and you are off. I did actually find a place that does do big warm knickers, ask my neighbour he’s seen our washing line. Open a few windows/tabs and compare winter socks or tvs or whatever you are after, beware though there is rubbish and cons galore on the Internet.

Recommendations are best when surfing the web, where surfing came from I do not know, window shopping is a nicer word. So you’ve found your stuff, or the friends have all come over and the sandwiches are finished, so all you have to do is to give your credit card details, then sit back and wait for the courier to come. Now you can go window shopping in earnest, you’d always love to live where the rich people live so you can go to rightmove.co.uk and enter a postcode then you can peek inside through the curtains at other people’s homes. You will all be impressed or laugh at what other folks have in their houses, then if you like a particular house you can save the photo as your own desktop background. I have one very nice house as my desktop background, its near where our daughter will go to her secondary school in the Autumn, its only worth 4 times what our house is worth, does anybody have any good numbers for the lottery?

Once   you’ve found your new home, assuming you do eventually win the lottery, then you can furniture your dream house from the Internet. You can pick furniture and fittings, large screen tvs, family size fridges and so on, Indesit is my own favourite fridge, self -defrosting too. Beds are important so you can pick your Lecco beds, and go on Utube to see videos of beds and matresses and all kinds of everything. You can decide what kind of garden furniture you want, pick plants and shrubs for your dream home, plant a cherry blossom tree in a corner. All this can be done through the Internet. You can also cut and paste everything into a word document, so your castles in the air have a soft landing in a scrap book.

Well my courier has not arrived yet, but I hope you all get what you need, don’t forget to send me some good lottery numbers too!

All Things Bright and Beautiful

All Things Bright and Beautiful ©

 By Michael Casey

 

I haven’t written a non-pain piece in a while, so I’ll try and forget the pain and write something new. We’ve just had the half time holidays and my girls have been playing “shop girls” as they call it. They even have a sign on their bedroom door saying “open” or “closed”. They steal my wife’s clothes and prance about upstairs. Our eldest daughter has bigger feet than my wife now so that’s a relief as she cannot steal my wife’s shoes any more, but it does not prevent her younger sister  from wearing mum’s shoes. There is also the matter of the beret with silver sequins, that’s an absolute Fashion Must.

Me, I’m not fashionable at all, three girls in the house is enough, if I gave in to them they’d be beading my eye brows, I do wear pink on occasions, so that’s as far as I go. If I were maybe 3 stones lighter I’d try other things, I did see a nice cord jacket in Cotton Traders 48R, it was bright blue, Kingfisher Blue, my girls called it a “Clown Jacket”. With encouragement like that what am I supposed to do? I did say if I win Euromillions I WILL buy the jacket. My wife has a nice light brown one, although as she is a woman there will be a more accurate colour name, men don’t do colours. If you think of it its black and white, blue, green, orange as far as men go, but women at least another 40 names for colours. As far as my hair goes, its silver, though a friend used to say I was an old man with white hair. As the colour of our hair change it’s the 7 ages of man.

I remember Ali saying why wasn’t it “Whitemail” instead of blackmail. We are in the Pink if we have good health, I long  to be back in the pink myself. We say  we hope be back in the black not in the red when we do company accounts, we look for the silver linings. We look look look for the rainbow as the song goes, we may find the crock of gold, all our troubles may be over and we can pack them up in the old kit bag. Hope springs up within us, it is now Spring after all, and as Chance the Gardener said “in the Spring there will be growth.”

Pain Fear and God

Pain Fear and God ©

By Michael Casey

 

Today is Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified. Hugo Chavez is praying for his life we are told. So it makes me wonder when do we, all of us pray? I have to declare an interest straight away, I've had tennis elbow for nearly 4 months now and boy oh boy does it hurt. I cannot lift anything, not even the kettle. This would bed bad enough in itself but for the fact that I've ricked my back badly. In fact the pain is the worst I've ever had in my life.

 

So Hugh is praying to be spared, I'm doing a bit of praying too, but my breath is being taken away by pain. The smell of Deep Heat fills our house, the girls retreat to the garden for fresh air. I can stand for 10 mins or sit and write here for 30mins, after that I have to lie down because the pain is so much. I don't want to pop pips so Deep Heat and hot baths are my tools of choice. My mother used to have bucket loads of pain killers for her bad back but she never took them, she just used to collect them over the pantry door. "Jeekus" she used to wince and half scream through her pain. So I hope its not hereditary.

 

We all pray when we are in pain, we pray the pain will end soon. Perhaps pain helps teaches us humility, everything sure is in perspective when all you can think of is your elbow or your back. My back has been playing up for 2 weeks on this occasion, how people live in pain and in wheelchairs makes me wonder. My Aunty Mary was in a wheelchair for the last 13years of her life after a stroke,  her rosary keep her sane. We have test cases for the right to die, after my own pain filled recent experiences I see things more fully, through the prism of pain. I applaud pain relief experts, I have to lie down now  for a bit before I write any more.

 

My daughter just threw "TonY" her toy at me so I'll get up and finish. Pain can destroy us, but it does clear the clutter of our daily lives, it makes us remember and enjoy the real things in our lives. I really enjoy the taste of food, the experience is heightened, ordinary food tastes like a 5star restaurant experience, and I may just be talking about a bit of toast and peanut butter. If when I finally get better I can remember the real values, of nice simple food, and enjoying watching tv with my kids then all the pain will be worth it. Yes I know I'll get negative replies to this but, I always learn the hard way which is the best way. Yes I hope I'll never be in such pain again,  but if all our lives we live a feather bed existance then we are not really experiencing life.  Life includes pain.

Pain Fear and God ©

By Michael Casey

 

Today is Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified. Hugo Chavez is praying for his life we are told. So it makes me wonder when do we, all of us pray? I have to declare an interest straight away, I've had tennis elbow for nearly 4 months now and boy oh boy does it hurt. I cannot lift anything, not even the kettle. This would bed bad enough in itself but for the fact that I've ricked my back badly. In fact the pain is the worst I've ever had in my life.

 

So Hugh is praying to be spared, I'm doing a bit of praying too, but my breath is being taken away by pain. The smell of Deep Heat fills our house, the girls retreat to the garden for fresh air. I can stand for 10 mins or sit and write here for 30mins, after that I have to lie down because the pain is so much. I don't want to pop pips so Deep Heat and hot baths are my tools of choice. My mother used to have bucket loads of pain killers for her bad back but she never took them, she just used to collect them over the pantry door. "Jeekus" she used to wince and half scream through her pain. So I hope its not hereditary.

 

We all pray when we are in pain, we pray the pain will end soon. Perhaps pain helps teaches us humility, everything sure is in perspective when all you can think of is your elbow or your back. My back has been playing up for 2 weeks on this occasion, how people live in pain and in wheelchairs makes me wonder. My Aunty Mary was in a wheelchair for the last 13years of her life after a stroke,  her rosary keep her sane. We have test cases for the right to die, after my own pain filled recent experiences I see things more fully, through the prism of pain. I applaud pain relief experts, I have to lie down now  for a bit before I write any more.

 

My daughter just threw "TonY" her toy at me so I'll get up and finish. Pain can destroy us, but it does clear the clutter of our daily lives, it makes us remember and enjoy the real things in our lives. I really enjoy the taste of food, the experience is heightened, ordinary food tastes like a 5star restaurant experience, and I may just be talking about a bit of toast and peanut butter. If when I finally get better I can remember the real values, of nice simple food, and enjoying watching tv with my kids then all the pain will be worth it. Yes I know I'll get negative replies to this but, I always learn the hard way which is the best way. Yes I hope I'll never be in such pain again,  but if all our lives we live a feather bed existance then we are not really experiencing life.  Life includes pain.

Swimming Baths and Painting Eggs

Swimming Baths and Painting Eggs ©

By Michael Casey

Today, Saint Patrick’s Day was new day for swimming for my big daughter. It meant I couldn’t have a lie in, I had to take here and her sister to the Baths, luckily they are at the bottom of the road. She’s in the big pool now as she’s progressed with her swimming. So me and my small daughter went up to the gallery to watch, the big pool used to have a diving board many years ago when my brothers went there to swim, maybe 40 years ago. So Time is catching up on me, my big daughter has my exact features, spooky, it’s like looking into my own past as I look at her face. Though twice today when I looked at her face at the baths and afterwards when we went shopping, she looked Chinese to me. Yes my wife is a Shanghai girl, but normally our girls look so Western, so it was the Gene Pool reminding me of her mixed heritage.

Swimming finished and then there was the 30mins delay while she changed, lads are so much quicker, so any dads out there who take their girls out for sports bear this in mind. I should say a big thank you to the folks at the pool who teach swimming, this really is such an important thing. Two of my brothers swim like seals, my niece has  even swum 2 kilometres; the last time I tried swimming I could have drowned in the hotel pool, but it was 20 years after I last swum and I was at my heaviest ever.

Girls and shopping always involves the stationary shop, felts and glues and coloured pens and so forth. If they don’t become artists of some sort I’ll be very surprised, so when I look at houses I always think where we could have a studio for them, all I need is a lottery win or to finally sell a few books. I’m in the quiet of the other room while they are painting an egg. It’s the Easter project for year 3, whatever year 3 is. My mother said all she ever got was a boiled egg for Easter, 9 people living in a stone shack in Cromane Lower County Kerry, the photo is on my site, so when we all eat too much chocolate and some think Easter is a Cadbury’s invention think back to 1920s Ireland  this Saint Patrick’s Day.

The girls  are quiet now while they wait for the glue and the papier-mâché to fix, they always give me inspiration for a blog, so I thank them. I hope when I’m gone they can look back and read all these blogs, maybe 220  so far, and laugh at themselves and their dad. I’m tired now, the lack of beauty sleep has tired me out. Mind you how much beauty sleep a Shrek like dad need?  

Judging a Book By Its Cover

Judging a  Book By Its Cover ©

By Michael Casey

“He’s a scruff, I don’t like him,” said the girl in the street.

“She’s a dog,” said the boy looking at a photo of his friend’s sister.

“He’ll never be Prime Minister,” said people stopped in the street by Mori.

“If he lost 4stones then maybe,” said the women in the hairdressers.

I was looking at a few covers, and I thought what DOES make a difference? I can remember reading Dr No while I was in primary school, I had to make a cover out of brown paper to hide the silhouette of a naked woman on the cover, it was 1969 or 1970 and I was a very big reader. The sex bits in James Bond were boring, but I had to make the cover for a quiet life.

We all look at the cover when we are in book stores, I can remember reading Tom Sharpe’s books 25years ago, the cover was a front and back cartoon telling the books’ story.  It was a good way of getting people to pick up the book and read a bit. Yes, I will mention my own 4 books. I decided to put my own face on the front of them, so just what will people think of my face and my book. He looks stupid, so we won’t buy his books, or it must be funny because he looks funny. Will anybody think I look sexy just like Right Said Fred, and decide to buy my cheap books on a whim or will they just think, what a loser  and scroll past me on Amazon Kindle. Will my fuller figure excite the women or even the men, or will both conclude, fat B£%^&*. I’m sure marketing departments think about such issues constantly. Even old JKRowling’s books were reissued with different cover so to catch an older audience.

 

I could have liposuction to make me ever so sexy, and then with new and airbrushed photos I could make it as a cover boy on my own books. I would be fully clothed of course, with my M&S best clothes, in sizes for the bigger man. I can hear laughter in my mind, anybody who knows me or has ever seen me, and that may be 100,000 people, as I did work in a hotel for 3 years, everybody would just laugh.  Laughter is the intention of all my books, but getting people to laugh with me is a challenge. So even if you don’t want to buy any of my books, just go to Amazon Kindle and see does your mental picture of me match any of my words. But most of all don’t judge a book by its cover, even if it has my photo on the front.

Judging a  Book By Its Cover ©

By Michael Casey

“He’s a scruff, I don’t like him,” said the girl in the street.

“She’s a dog,” said the boy looking at a photo of his friend’s sister.

“He’ll never be Prime Minister,” said people stopped in the street by Mori.

“If he lost 4stones then maybe,” said the women in the hairdressers.

I was looking at a few covers, and I thought what DOES make a difference? I can remember reading Dr No while I was in primary school, I had to make a cover out of brown paper to hide the silhouette of a naked woman on the cover, it was 1969 or 1970 and I was a very big reader. The sex bits in James Bond were boring, but I had to make the cover for a quiet life.

We all look at the cover when we are in book stores, I can remember reading Tom Sharpe’s books 25years ago, the cover was a front and back cartoon telling the books’ story.  It was a good way of getting people to pick up the book and read a bit. Yes, I will mention my own 4 books. I decided to put my own face on the front of them, so just what will people think of my face and my book. He looks stupid, so we won’t buy his books, or it must be funny because he looks funny. Will anybody think I look sexy just like Right Said Fred, and decide to buy my cheap books on a whim or will they just think, what a loser  and scroll past me on Amazon Kindle. Will my fuller figure excite the women or even the men, or will both conclude, fat B£%^&*. I’m sure marketing departments think about such issues constantly. Even old JKRowling’s books were reissued with different cover so to catch an older audience.

 

I could have liposuction to make me ever so sexy, and then with new and airbrushed photos I could make it as a cover boy on my own books. I would be fully clothed of course, with my M&S best clothes, in sizes for the bigger man. I can hear laughter in my mind, anybody who knows me or has ever seen me, and that may be 100,000 people, as I did work in a hotel for 3 years, everybody would just laugh.  Laughter is the intention of all my books, but getting people to laugh with me is a challenge. So even if you don’t want to buy any of my books, just go to Amazon Kindle and see does your mental picture of me match any of my words. But most of all don’t judge a book by its cover, even if it has my photo on the front.

Oxbridge and still cannot write essays? (c)

Oxbridge and still cannot write essays? ©

By  Michael Casey

I had been thinking about my latest  blog here on the Daily Telegraph and on my own site www.michaelgcasey.multiply.com then I spotted the article, so that’s why I’m writing this. My own brothers were Oxbridge, me CPNEC was my university along with the good old OU. So I’m saddened that nobody can write, if I were in charge of Oxbridge I’d do a Maths and an English test, and if they fail the test I wouldn’t let them in.

How can somebody 18plus not write a good essay? I was lucky because Frank Brown from County Tyrone was our lodger and he donated a radio, an old Bush radio to me and my brother. You all remember the Bush radio with the marzipan strip carry handle and the saucer size tuning dial, and don’t forget the domino size frequency buttons, and the huge battery inside. That radio was part of my education, we used to listen to The World Tonight, Douglas Stewart reporting, followed by The Book at Bedtime. I can still remember falling asleep during the Ghost and Mrs Muir. I must have spent 20years listening to Radio 4 constantly, and it was only then that I started writing myself, and it took me a year to get it right. Now I have 4 “masterpieces” on Amazon Kindle.

So why can’t students write? Is it too much cannabis or other Class As, or alcohol.No of course not. Is it too much time playing computer games? Too much sport or sex? Or didn’t they have to write an essay a week in English. We had to write an essay a week for Mr Noon, here’s the title, now go write two pages. We had a book list of 40 books we had to work our way through too. I was a natural reader, I read nearly everything on the shelves by my school desk in Primary school. I continued reading through my Grammar school days, then on through my twenties. Does anybody actually read nowadays?

I’ve done a bit of Esol teaching, I’m available right now too, but with Esol you encourage people to listen to Radio4, to practice ten new sentences a day, to read the free newspapers on the bus, to watch BBC news. Lots of simple things can help a foreigner pick up the language, one of our family friends is off to Oxford in the Autumn, her English is perfect, just like Helen Bonham Carter yet she was not born here, she is Chinese. So the obvious point is why can’t people born and raised here do the same.

Essay writing is all about a beginning, a middle and an end. You have to prove your argument too, why was this important, why is History really about Geography. History is Geography, because one leader wants to steal the other country’s resources, Hitler wanted living room, Napoleon wanted to conquer Russia too. In a History essay you’d make the bold statement and then you’d give proof, Facts, Detail, Proof, Latin as I once wrote down on a piece nearly 40 years ago. Once  you have proved your point you can then give lessons for the future, the past shows us the way NOT to go again, a do not enter sign. History repeats itself, is another phrase, we all chase the blonde who’ll slap our face, but still we follow her. Monroe is, was, and always will be a honey trap, History shows us many Monroes, if we could control ourselves and keep our hands to ourselves then we’d learn the lessons of History, and we wouldn’t need living room, just stick to our own girl in our own bedroom.

It would be nice if people read and listened to the radio, I fear I’m the final generation of radio lovers, radio is great if only those Oxbridge students listened to radio then they might be better at writing essays. Or they could pay me £xx an hour and I’ll teach a few classes. I’d teach them to love words, to adore words, no not as good as having Monroe in your bed, but at least you’d pass your exams, and that would keep the Dons happy.

excuse my convict haircut

Only 2 quid each my 4 books

New for National Book Week

my "ouvres" or books in plain English now at a lower price of £2 or $3 or 2.70 something Euros.

Tell all your friends.