Times Tables

Times Tables ©

By Michael Casey

It’s the turn of the New Year, 2016 is here and I’m amazed by all the fuss in the Press about Times Tables. The Government want kids to know them by the age of 11, and we get a Teaching Backlash in reply. I learnt mine when I was 8 and that was late, and how was I incentivised? I got 4 of the best on my bum, so the next time of asking I knew them. We were classed as the clever 4 in the class so Mr Gallagher expected us to know them, he threatened to test us for ages, until finally he did. As I said the next time I knew them, and I started to read by the yard, so he did change my life for the better.

I do believe in learning by rote, it works, so use it. I do believe in using any trick in the book, if it works use it. I do believe in a little bit often. That’s how I learnt my Spanish again after a gap of 25 years. I was also an Esol English teacher for a year, and I even got called excellent twice and exemplary on my external assessment. With my students I told them to fit their studies around their day, and reward themselves with chocolate, or loser’s forfeit anything to make learning fun. Learn 10 sentences a day, that’s 70 a week of 280 a month, which is a very good grounding. The thing I stressed was they should read things aloud, and when speaking put on a fake English accent just for fun, because it really does help.

Coming back to Times Tables, they are such a fundamental thing, I’d say kids should know them by 7. Learn them by rote, take a whole week to learn them. Then explain about a family of octopuses needing to know their Times Tables, how the number 10 and money connect…. All very simple fun stuff, but get the bedrock down first. Once the bedrock is down then you can build on it, it’s a shallow excuse to say it’s too hard, it’s the a b c of maths, we teach  a b c to kids as soon as they come to school, so why don’t we do the same with numbers?

There is too much technology and that can blind us, make us lazy and kids lazy in turn. Kids don’t believe you when you say nobody had a phone at home, only the rich. Tell kids you remember colour tv coming out, not to mention remote controls, and having a 4^th tv channel was amazing, they just won’t believe you. Our kids are the Google generation, the cut and paste but know nothing generation. We’ve also read in the Press that some foreign students just cut and paste, I know some of my students just looked at me as if I was an idiot if I explained exam standards. But Sir, we have to cheat, how else would we pass. Integrity and Pride were not in their dictionary.

Which brings me back to Times Tables in schools, they are so important, without the firm foundations things just topple over. Another figure in the weekend’s Press, 20% of students fail to get the 5 good GCSEs. Teaching is not a democracy, it does not have to be a dictatorship, but pandering to kids or students is a mistake.

You are here to learn, not play games and have pretty work books, nor demand old statues should be removed, you are here to learn. Technology is great and modern schools are like PC World, but if kids can’t work it out in their head or with pen and paper then their time has been wasted at school. Examples such as what is the best value in a shop, it’s not always the big box is cheaper, or this 4 pack of lager is better that 4 pack. If you don’t know your times tables you’ll be less drunk by the end of the night.

The basics are always the foundations which lead to glory, 50 years after getting the pump on my bum, I still know my times tables. 40 years after my 0 Levels I still know my French. Mr Notzing my French teacher tested us every week for the 4 years I was in his class. Everybody groaned when we heard him tearing up paper to give us before he tested us, every week for 4 years.

Primary teaching is different, I come from a family of teachers. Without teaching the basics and making it fun kids never learn anything. Then as you grow older you should realise you need to put more effort into your own education, the teacher does less and you do more. The teacher is a signpost, and not just a human Google, you have to balance what you read and evaluate it, with their guidance.

That’s all for today, I could say more, a year ago I started tests in hospital, without all the hospital specialists I may have not been here today to talk to you. So thanks again to City and QE hospitals Cardiac Crews, I sure they all know their Times Tables.

More Bad Habits 2016

More Bad Habits 2016 ©

By Michael Casey

Well its January 1^st 2016, a Friday, and we’re all still alive. I won’t bore you too much but 2015 WAS the worst year of my life, if you go by pain. I really would like those football billionaires to each put a million in a pot and use it for something useful, instead of just massaging their egos. So I’ll say pain relief centre would be a great investment, if only because it would help get their star players back on the pitch faster, and it would help Joe Bloggs too. So think about it.

Now one of my many bad habits is looking at www.rightmove.co.uk and B17, why, because that is where I’d like to live. I change my desktop background regularly, when I see a nice house I put it as my background, then when it’s sold I change my background to another nice house. Sad, maybe, but it does cheer me up, though when our new carpets arrive that’ll be nice, until our elephants destroy them.

I will still look at the nice houses in B17, it is my hobby, when I have enough energy I may even walk around the neighbourhood and pretend I live there. I still only have so much energy in the day post-surgery and with arthritis attacking me. This is very annoying, as I walked 20 miles or 30k a week a year ago before I had my operation. Yes up to 4 miles or 6k every day. So I’m a shadow of myself. I’ve turned into a spokesman for pain, not the job I envisioned but if it makes some of you think then that’s good.

Now, other bad habits, as children we may have picked our nose and rubbed it on the wall. My small daughter used to enjoy that habit, luckily she was too small to rub it on the paintings on the wall, it would have made grass look much greener, more lifelike.  Her sister has her own bad habits, such as leaving a trail of paper everywhere, so her boogies are gift wrapped, and stuck down the side of all the chairs, or on the floor. But at least that is an improvement on rubbing them to wall.

Your kids always run around the house barefooted, so you spend your time screaming “slippers and socks” as they never seem to realise where their colds and sniffles come from. There is no Snot Fairy who delivers them, directly up their nose, it’s the Barefoot Fairy who creeps up from the floor and up their spine and then to their nose. Before mum or dad has to carry them up to bed, and if you are lucky they don’t puke all over you. It’s at times like these you wonder why did you want kids in the first place. Then your child sleepily asks for a kiss, before rolling over, and farts in your face.

In today’s world the mobile phone, or just phone as kids call it, because doesn’t everybody have a mobile? The phone is a big big big BAD habit. My kids don’t believe me that we never had a phone in our house, it was after I had left home that we got one. When our lodger had his final heart attack and I was pumping on his chest, I was only 20 at the time, I had to run to our neighbours and ask them to ring for an ambulance.

So nowadays your kids are always on the phone. They used to ask for more money for credit, all the time, so you just stopped giving it to them. But this does not stop the phoning, why because there is Snapchat or some other invention of the Devil. So long as you have Broadband in your house they can talk to their friends, which is good in a way because YOU do not have to pick up their phone bill.

You have strangers in the same house, as everybody is on their phone talking to their friends or Pinteresting, and  not talking to their mum or dad or brothers and sisters. I hate the word siblings, sounds like a disease you get if you don’t put on your slippers and socks, and you end up puking on your dad or farting in his face when he puts you to bed with a case of siblings, brought on by not wearing your slippers or socks.

Well I’ll leave it there for today Friday 1^st January 2016, one bad habit I should break this year, I should remember to thank God  more for still being alive, though sometimes the pain is unbearable. So any football people reading this, a national pain centre would benefit the players and all the Joe Bloggs fans.  

Furniture Jigsaw Puzzle

Furniture Jigsaw Puzzle ©

By Michael Casey

You can buy anything on the Internet and have it delivered to you, and you get a good price. Though there is one snag, certainly if you are buying furniture, it does not arrive as you see it on your screen, on the Internet, no it arrives like a jigsaw puzzle. What I mean is its all flat-packed and you have to grunt and groan and curse your way through it till it is assembled.

As I have a funny stairs I had to have pine beds as ordinary beds just would not fit up the stairs, I did want a pine bed anyway but to have to assemble it was a small challenge. A pine bed is one thing as it is just a rectangle with slats in the middle, however when you move to different items of furniture it does get more complicated.

My bed was a success, and I remember my mother launching herself onto the mattress, all 15 stones plus of her, to prove we had built it properly. It was only 3 days later that the shop discovered they had forgotten the central support. Other than that the bed lasted over 20 years, my children were conceived in it. I can remember as a child how you used to need a spanner, as the beds were made of metal with a spring section attached with enormous and very heavy head boards.

So we have all progressed with our pine beds that are nice to look at and to sleep in. Though I must say the mattress should cost at least double the cost of the actual bed, I am heavy so maybe I’m prejudiced, but as a rule of thumb I think I’m right. As my dad used to say, buy rubbish and you end up paying more as you buy twice. So save money by buying quality, and you can get quality from the most unexpected sources, so don’t be a shop snob, though having said that I do have my favourite store.

So the thing arrives and you tear open the box, I used to use a pen from my computer desk, here in front of me from where I’m talking to you from. Until I kept on breaking the pens, so I advanced to a box cutter, you can open anything in seconds.  Then you spill everything on the floor and kick something under a chair, it takes half an hour to find it, you curse and curse and blame the cat, until finally you find it.

Or that used to be the way I did things, nowadays I’m like a surgeon, I open and lay out the bits, the screws and Alan Keys , the wood and metal bits. The long and the short and the round bits, and any other weird and wonderful parts to my set of drawers or office chair or bed, or whatever it is. Once laid out, a bit like cutlery at a state banquet, I begin. At a banquet I believe you start at the outside and work your way to the inside, and remember not to wipe your mouth on your cuffs.

As for making an office chair you just follow your nose, and never read the instructions, does anybody ever read assembly instructions. They may as well include a bag of sweets instead of the instructions, nobody ever reads them. Until things go wrong, or at the very end to see why you have 4 extra screws and where on earth should they go. Or just to hold up the instructions defiantly and spit in them and throw them in the bin, you are a winner, who needs instructions, or pictographs that only Egyptians from 4000 years ago would understand, and was it them who invented Ikea in the Valley of the Kings.

Carpet Buying for Beginners

Carpet Buying for Beginners ©

By Michael Casey

We have decided we have, as in have to buy a new carpet. I carpeted the whole house six months after I moved in, but that was 28 years ago, when I was single and without any wife and kids. When I could both do as I pleased, and could then afford to. Kids and a wife do shrink your life and lifestyle, and your wallet, so now approaching 2016 a new carpet just has to be bought.

You can cheat by buying a rug from Argos, a ½ price rug, then throw it over the worn out Axminster where lazy feet and elephants have made a hole in you lovely carpet. I did do this, only I quickly realised the rug wasn’t big enough, it was like a badly fitting wig or rug that  Nick from down Bingo has as he holds the microphone close to call out the numbers, as if he were some famous BBC reporter. Anyway our floor is bigger than Nick’s head, so I improvised and put the small rug in the other room in front of the computer, where there were far smaller wear marks.

I then went online, with the small rug under my feet as I surfed Argos and bought a bigger rug. Perfect to cover all the wear and tear, and elephants in our living room. Then I reserved my purchase before going up the road to Argos. Luckily it wasn’t too heavy so I could carry it on my shoulder down the road to our house.

And have it installed as a fait accompli on our living room floor before the wife got home from church. If I was lucky she’d drive to Waitrose so I’d get a free Sunday newspaper and a luke-warm coffee, which I could spill on our new rug.

This was a year or so ago, so now another wear or almost tear mark has appeared in the traffic area next to our fridge and galley kitchen. So there is no alternative but to buy a new full wall to wall carpet, you cannot put elbow patches on carpets and say its trendy, though an old coat of Prince Charles’s may do.

I trawled through the Internet and finally decided on one, now I had to persuade the Shanghai wife, this involves going all around the houses until she decides that her decision is best. Then you point out that her choice is 50% dearer than yours, then she notices the price and colour of mine is almost the same as hers. So she accepts the decision I made 3 days previously, just changing the colour, otherwise we are in agreement.

Now the debate over who is to pay, I pay, you pay, no I pay, no you pay, no I pay, yes you pay, ok I pay. And so she will, with my money. We should have a Chinese chancellor, the Shanghai girl is always good with money, it must be true she always tells me so.

So now we await the man to measure up. The thing to remember is that underlay must be bought with decent carpet. And underlay may cost £6 a square metre  and higher, which some people may only pay on their carpet on the floor price. Never forget the carpet fitter and all his gripper too, the fitter is £90 or so.

I remember sitting in a new dentists once, the carpet has grooves and hills in it, more like a sand dune which had been blown by the wind. It was almost paper thin too with no underlay, and it was on top of concrete, neither the carpet nor the dentists lasted very long.

I have laid a carpet or too, and romping on carpet is nice too, provided there is enough support beneath. So if you want to spare your bum use a good underlay and fitter.  

Christmas 2015 and I'm still here

Christmas 2015 and I’m still here ©

By Michael Casey

This is the Christmas I could have missed, but the heart people at City and QE hospitals sorted me out. So I’m still here to bore you all. I can remember chasing DM and Vincent up our road after we had served Midnight Mass. Throwing  snowballs at the pair of them. Vincent was a happy man though a little slow, he died early. But that night he used his umbrella to protect him from the snow balls.

DM raced away and nearly fell on his bum, we chased after him, Vincent was just relieved that he was not getting any more snowballs thrown at him, so he put his umbrella down only to get hit in the face. DM got to the sanctuary of his front door, put I shot a final snow ball at him as the door closed, it bounced off the wall and hit his mum in the face.

Those were the days 45+ years ago. Danny and his sister both went on to Oxford, their dad was a Labour supporting bus driver. Danny later joined the Diplomatic Service and went to South Africa before later running for Parliament, and only just losing by a few 100 votes, he was a Tory by the way. My big brother was already at Oxford, and my other brother later went to Cambridge, our dad was a blacksmith and spent 40 years in the steelworks in Smethwick.

But then it always seemed we had cold and ice and snow. I’d go to bed and listen to A Christmas Carol on the World Service, tears streaming down my face. Our mother would be stitching up the turkey ready for the feeding of the 5000 in the morning. Really it was only 13, the family plus the lodgers. Through Jean the cat once stole a bite from out huge turkey, so mum cut a bit  out and the turkey went in the oven.

Another Christmas, I was maybe 25, a week or so before perhaps, the snow was heavy and part of the chimney came down, so we called the Fire Brigade. I had made a big snowman, so the Brigade put their spotlight on top of the snowman and pointed it up at what was left of the chimney. Just like 20^th Century Fox at the start of the films. Then dad punished a bottle of whisky and gave the fire crew Irish tea and Irish coffee. They lost track of their lump hammer in the darkness, so came back the next morning to collect it.

Christmases were full of such memories, as we got older mum or dad would not come to the Midnight Mass as they were too tired. Then we had moved out so I’d hitch a lift with my sister, and go to Midnight Mass together. Afterwards we’d have late night fish and chips and exchange good wishes. Simple innocent things, age reaching out to us, now I have children of my own and they sing as we have sung in our youth.

The presents don’t matter a damn, it’s the chasing your neighbour up the road throwing snowballs which is important. Its hearing the carols at Christmas, and remembering your dead parents, it is The Silent Night, it’s the smell of the incense and the candles.

It’s getting a hug from old  Mrs D & Mrs M, your mother’s old best friends, both now over 90. It’s thinking back to your old innocence and faith, to your hope beyond reason. Its asking God to polish you as you are in need of cleaning. And most of all its realising every morning is a new dawn, and yes there is no need to ask as the Light is always switched on.