Study Methods

Study  Methods ©

By Michael Casey

My daughter is studying in the room behind me, she’s “driven” so says her school, which is good, because you can only do the work yourself, nobody will do it for you. It reminded me how I studied.

If I go all the way back I can remember my brother studying to get into University. He used to have a reel to reel tape recording of Cream music screaming out of just one speaker. I have that speaker in the room behind me, with some fake flowers on top. So it’s amusing that his niece is studying with the silent speaker near her.

Another brother inherited the speaker and took it to University with him. As for me, I just did a bit of the OU, though I did meet Eric Clapton himself, my brothers were the cream academically, but it was me who met the man from Cream.

I got a cassette recorder in 1973, we all went to Digbeth Civic Hall for an auction of household stuff, and it was part of the load my dad bought. We also bought a high stool with red seat. That was the stool that I perched a typewriter on when I started to write a decade later.

Now what did I do with the tape recorder? I copied Status Quo’s Caroline album to a tape and then listened to the tape while I did my homework. I also recorded my French and Spanish vocabulary to it, along with some History notes when I was getting ready for my O Levels. I think I was the last class to do O Levels before GCSEs were invented.

My brother had left home, so I was all alone in the homework room, or middle room as we called it, so music was company, along with my BBC Radio4 and Folk Weave on Radio 2.

There was a tv programme on that said don’t study too long, break it up, otherwise you forget what you have just learnt. My brother’s wise words were “a little bit often.” However in those days I played rugby, so Saturday was a rugby day. So I gave myself off that day, which meant I did all the work on a Sunday.

Now if I had listened to my brother I would have done even better, but I still did do very well. Now the next generation is studying. The girls have a fancy Blik Dab Radio in their room, I was able to buy it with some vouchers I had. It’s small with a great sound, so I donated it to them and I kept an old one.

So music and study continues in the Casey family, though Katy Perry and Capital radio is preferred to Cream and Clapton now. They say that Classical music is good for the brain and helps it work better, I’ll have to wait for the research into Katy Perry and brainwaves to come out.

My small daughter loves to read and she loves having a class of 40 soft toys lined up as she reads to them. This is her study method. When she grows up she wants to be an Animal Biologist.

Oxbridge and Still Cannot write an Essay

Everybody is doing their A Levels including my nephew so I've brought this back

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 6 “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 blond 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.

Letter from a Scammer

Letter from a Scammer ©

By Michael Casey

First of all let me say I am not Michael Casey, my real name is John Doe Barrister, Mr. John Doe Barrister  and I don’t make coffee in any of those delicious but over priced establishments. Just email JDBarrister666@nosuchemail.com and all will be revealed.

Thank you most sincerely My Beloved, I could not answer earlier as I was having my life saving surgery. As I lay here close to death I have decided to choose you to  have all my worldly goods on the occasion of my death. And it will be an occasion with 1000 mourners all dressed in black, I don’t believe in this new thing of wearing colours.

So all you have to do is phone +44 5555 55555555 and ask to speak to Mr Kickthebuck Barriers at Barrister’s chambers in Barristers’ Row in London England, around the corner from the  High Court. But don’t tell anybody about the details of this email as its top secret. Everybody will want my billions, my £100000000, which I worked so hard for working in Las Vegas as a male stripper.

So just reply to this letter giving your full name, address and phone numbers at home and work, not forgetting your DOB, better still photocopies of your passport and all legal documents. Better still just put everything in an envelope and post to me.

I forgot my postal address is care of the Governor Wormworth Scrums Prison, London England. I have to go now, association time is over. But remember tell nobody about this email.

You will be a very rich man, soon.

Pray Like a Child

Pray Like a Child©

By Michael Casey

When you are a kid you believe, it’s only as you grow older you get cynical and become a don’t know. As a child mum makes you say the Rosary together, the family that Prays together stay together.

“Dear Baby Jesus, can I have a bike, Amen.” Then you jump under the covers and are fast asleep in seconds. Your mum tells her sister, and you get a scooter, one of those that you push with one foot while you stand on the thing. They are very popular again now, 50 years on. As for you the child, proof that prayer works.

You get older and exams beckon, so you pray with renewed vigour, or rather your prayer life is renewed, after falling fallow, but you dig out the Rosary beads and ask for help. You mum joins in and asks the Saints to make the examiner miss your mistakes on the exam paper.

You pass your exams and then prayer is forgotten again. You can’t find a job, so the prayers start again. Your atheist brother says why not try computers, so you do. This results in a good job with good pay for 21years.Is God having a joke? Or has your mum blackmailed the Angels and Saints. A bit of both really.

So life goes on, your mum with her hand in her pinny saying the Rosary as she watches Dallas. Next you need a house, so the prayer restarts. While taking the dog, Goldie, for a walk the dog stops to pee on a garden gate. You look up, the house is for sale.

When you get home you tell your dad, he jumps on the bus to see the house. Dad cannot contain himself so he bangs on the door of the dog pee marked house. He has a look around. He sails home triumphant, “Michael Buy That House.”

So I did.

Working shifts is hard work, lots of night shifts, 14 years of them. Get over it, is what ignorant people say, to this and everything. There is a bonus though, you get to see Dawn over central Birmingham. This really is God’s Creation, 14 years of seeing dawn, some only ever see it when they stagger home from the pub.

So life good on. Mum dies suddenly, 8 weeks later dad should die, but your brother saves him with CPR. Dad is given a week to live and he will not be resuscitated if he has another heart attack. We sit in my sister's house picking hymns for his funeral.

Now today 25^th May would have been Padre Pio’s Birthday. Back then in 1996 I’d heard of him. So I prayed, I asked him to intervene. You are breathless, speechless, lots of things are in your mind, and there is nothing in your mind. Opposites. But there is also something else inside you, your mother has died but weeks before but she left 

you something, she left you Faith, faith of a child.

I put a photo  of Padre Pio under dad’s pillow. 19 people on a heart ward, 18 died. My dad did not. My dad said he heard the doctor say “wheel him to the end of the ward, he’ll be dead soon.”

That’s when dad woke up, and the doctor dropped his tea in shock. Dad spent 3 months, 12 weeks in Dudley Rd hospital or City Hospital as it’s called nowadays. I wrote about it in full in an essay Padre Pio and Me, it’s on the Internet.

So prayer goes up and down, like the swell on the sea, prayer has tides just like the sea too. Pio used to say “the prayer I say tomorrow, will have helped you yesterday.”

Ian Botham was in the news yesterday about he’s attitude  to his own sick dad, I totally understand his point of view. With our dad I visited every single day, as did my sister and other siblings visited loads too.

Now you have your nice house, and you’ve always wanted a wife and perhaps a family. However all you do is visit your dad so you’ll never meet anybody. So you say your prayers and again you ask Padre Pio to help, as if he was a marriage bureau. Then after 3 years who do you meet? Your Shanghai wife.

Kids would be nice, so you get 2. So some will say this is luck or coincidence. I chose to believe Padre Pio is in Heaven having tea with my mother. Though the pair of them might be having a look at my sister in Lourdes today, Happy Birthday Padre Pio, thanks. 

a photo from 9 years ago maybe

Backwards Talk

Backwards Talk ©

By Michael Casey

My small daughter and me love fizzy pop, my Shanghai wife is against this. So my small daughter has decided to backwards spell what she wants, so Dr Pepper becomes reppep rd. It’s hard enough for me to follow, the plan is that for my wife’s Chinese brain it will be impossible.

So the theory goes, but the wife and the Chinese are very very clever. So I have to sneak out without being spotted. Then come home victorious, hiding the pop up my jumper.

Come and have your medicine I call from another room, then conspiratorially me and my small daughter have Dr Pepper. I perhaps should explain one daughter is Western frame and looks like a clone of me. Whereas the other daughter is much smaller and much more Shanghai wife in size.

Our plan has worked we are enjoying the Dr Pepper together, only my small daughter gives the game away. BURP, she burps like a Sumo Wrestler, which is what  I’m compared to on occasion.

A dad’s job is never done, I am ordered to sneak out to the store for chocolate, fruit and nut by Cadbury’s is the current favourite, so again I have to sneak out like a burglar in reverse. Then I return like an all-conquering hero and do a lap of honour around the living room, as I break and share the chocolate.

My girls love chips as a treat, why? Because they follow Shanghai diet, which is rice with everything. There is also a lot of fish and chicken, white meat as it is called. So dad has to be persuaded to go to the chippie, or to buy roast potatoes that you bake in the oven.

I am a modern hunter gatherer, thought I don’t have a spear and a hide to cover myself with. My wife would tan my hide if she caught me ruining our girls Shanghai diet. So I have to sneak out.

In the interests of diet supervision the wife has to eat 1/4 of the chips and/or roast potatoes. So parenting is all about spelling snacks backwards, now GoGo, which means go to bed/sleep, though it could mean OGOG.

Building Memories

Building Memories ©

By Michael Casey

So do you build memories with your kids? Do you do anything so that your kids will always remember it? I hope you do, if you don’t you are BORING. Any little thing can be used to create memories, magic memories.

So the local seagulls flew over and dropped their bombs on my open bedroom window, SPLAT. Like a custard pie but much much worse. Yes we do get seagulls in Birmingham, the most inland part of the island of England. They come here just to dump on us.

So now you have a problem, how do you clean the window, the way it opens means it difficult to do. Then I think of turning it into an opportunity, just like in all those self-help and management manuals. Though this is much better fun and not as pretentious.

I dug out the water pistols and started to fill them with water, we would use seagull pooh as target practice. See inventive humour at work, just like my Linkedin Profile says. Only the water pistols leaked, and leaked over me.

I had hoped that by pushing my window even further open, the  rain would act as window cleaner, only that did not work. So the water pistol idea. So then I went to plan B, I am better than the chancellor as I do have a plan B, not about economics, but about cleaning seagull pooh from my bedroom window.

So I got my small daughter to close the bedroom window, while I filled a plastic jug up with water. As I flung the water in an attempt to clean the window she taunted me with her nose pressed against the bedroom window.

The first one or two throws hit the seagull pooh target, and my small daughter laughed, and taunted me in her newly discovered

Irish accent. Half the family is Irish so it’s funny to hear my ½ Chinese daughter practice her soft Irish accent.

I tried a few more flings but my aim got worse and ½ the water went over me, such is the geography at the back of the house. So I had another idea, my netball playing bigger and taller daughter.

So she came out and had a go. See I’m a good dad letting my daughter practice her netball shots, by flinging water from a jug at a seagull poohed bedroom window.

None of this really worked, I just ended up dribbling water back into our kitchen. BUT one thing did happen, I have created a memory that will live on after I die. Which won’t be for decades I hope. So don’t think I’m the stupidest person in the world, I am an inventive humorist, just as my Linkedin Profile says.  

A half Chinese Girl Learning Spanish

A half Chinese Girl Learning Spanish ©

By Michael Casey

My daughter was going over her Spanish ready for a test, I was listening and was happy I could remember mine. I did the exam nearly 40 years ago, though I did relearn it in 1998/1999 prior to my trip to Barcelona. So it brought memories back.

Barcelona was my last trip away before I met my Shanghai girl, I spent 15 minutes talking to a girl I met in a Tapas bar, before she told me she could speak English. She said it was good for me the Spanish practice. I met another girl in a bar and she had an American accent, and great hair but a broken nose.

The next day who should come dancing across the stage, only a ballet dancer with great hair and a broken nose.  It was the girl from the Tapas bar, I had gone to see the Russian ballet in Barcelona and there she was dancing for me.

A few months later I was again watching the Ballet, this time in Birmingham with the friend who had introduced me to Ballet. There it was the massed ranks of the Ballet, loads and loads of dancers at the NIA. Who should I spot, only the girl from Barcelona.

When I met my Shanghai girl she told me that she had met a girl at church, the church next door to my old Grammar school. This girl was her friend and she would give me the once over to see if I was nice enough for my Shanghai girl.

So we met in a back street bar, The Queens Tavern, in the China quarter. Next to the Hippodrome which was the home of The Birmingham Royal Ballet, and yes you’ve guessed it she was a Ballerina. I was positively vetted by a Ballerina.

Which brings me back to Spanish, my daughters are bilingual, I am not. So as my daughter was practising we both had the same thought, we should teach her little sister Spanish. So then I would be bilingual with them, in Spanish. Then they could continue being bilingual in Chinese with mum. A perfect family comprise.

Life is a compromise after all, but if you have another language you can talk privately with your family while you are out. Nobody knows what you are saying, not even other Chinese as you are speaking Shanghai dialect.

So language brings families together and its fun, as for me I cannot wait  till my small daughter learns Spanish.