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.