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?