fireworks, not yesterday

I’m really just trying something, but if you are looking for information about the fireworks in Liverpool this week, you should look at the Liverpool08 site.

In summary: Sefton Park, Newsham Park and Walton Hall Park all start at 7:30pm. They used to have a show at 6:30pm but they don’t do that anymore; I think that was from the years when they had a backlog of fireworks, from when they kept cancelling everything.

We won’t be going this year, because Daisy is still scared. After last year, when she just froze to my shoulder, we are looking for some quieter fireworks.

It’s just a bit annoying that the Liverpool fireworks aren’t publicised properly. It’s always a bit of a chore to find out when and where they are… and remember, I work for the council!

Oi! Ringo, No!

the man at the end of the best put down I’ve ever heard, Ringo Starr has just said he’s not going to sign anything or read his ‘fan’ mail anymore, because he has “to much to do”. maybe it’s just to many people from Liverpool asking him if there are anymore topiary figures they can chop the head off.

I don’t know what I find more shocking – a) that he gets fan mail or b) he has a website

oh and can he stop doing the peace thing everytime he says anything? it’s sad.

the big spider

La Machine is the next big thing to hit the city, over the next 3 days the big spider is moving (yes it moves – i think two people will actually sit in it). around liverpool, as part of open air theater. ending with the spider running down the mersey tunnel (full details in the press kit from the site). lots of snow apparently.

anyway, I would have said I’m not to afraid of spiders (they don’t buzz around your head). but I’m not sure now. there are bound to be 100′s of better photos on the internet but you can see some of the ones i took on flickr

click No, and you’re done, “thank you very much for taking the time to complete this survey”.

(a) a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale (£2,500), or
(b) imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months,

So as far as i could tell if a police officer stopped Ruth, Daisy and Henry in the street and told them to disperse – there refusal (because they would refuse) would result in either 3 months or £2,500. I’ve read the legistation and I don’t see how you appeal against any of this.Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. really are anit-social.

it should also be noted that it was the 13th July – the last day of the order – when our street was filled with police because people where drunk and throwing vases at each other. arguably the removal of the order has made the area safer,

I’ve found the merseyside police newsletter that tells me about the order although it really doesn’t tell me much, and all that did is got me worked up about that stupid flashing smiling speed sign.

Surely it’s more of a distraction having a flashing face by the side of the road?. We went the Isle of Wight last month and they’ve removed speed bumps / chicanes and replaced them with speed signs – which don’t flash and smile at you – and that works. not smiley happy faces for me to look at while I hit the man on the bike!!!

grrr arggg…

More importantly, it occurs to me that we’ve not had much news on the children recently so: Henry is cruising the furniture, and seems quite taken with the idea of walking. Occasionally, he tentatively lets go to see what happens – looks stricken for a moment, then holds on again. He seems to be going from the Finally Crawling Properly stage to the Starting to Walk stage quite quickly, but that impression is based on the assumption that I can remember how quickly Daisy did it. I know real, independent walking happened at about 15 months, and I can imagine him getting there before that, at his current pace, but I don’t know, really.

The Witt-Twit family home,
in the neighbourhood of Figgy Woggo

Daisy is currently obsessed with a new computer game – The Sims 2. I’d have to admit to being the one to introduce her to it, but considering it’s heavily menu-based, and therefore quite wordy in places, she’s playing fairly independently. She much prefers the creation of people to actually playing the game, and she makes up random words as her characters’ names, which I then have to try to transpose phonetically into some kind of written word. She also likes the building/decoration/furnishing of houses, and has made some fairly extraordinary aesthetic decisions on that basis. Today she paved over an entire garden with grey block paving. And the attic. And the cellar. And bits of the ground floor. She hasn’t really come to terms with the need to play the game for long enough for someone to go to work, to earn money, to facilitate further building works, but I’m working on it…

This is the last week of term, which, perversely, affects us hugely. None of my children are old enough for school, irrespective of the fact that neither of them are going anyway, but all the activities we do engage in grind to a halt in the summer. So, six weeks of wondering how on earth to fill the day are stretching ahead, in a slightly daunting way.

The result is 127 superlambbananas all over the place, all different, and the one thing that everyone in Liverpool is talking about; and that’s not just the marketing “everyone” it really is. on the train, in work and when ever you see anyone they talk about the superlambbananas.

I did a little lambbanana hunt on Friday and took a load of piccies, and today after lunch we did a drive by lambbanana hunt (for daisy honest). I have yet to see a lambbanana that didn’t have at least one other person taking photos of it. Driving through town is actually quite dangerous because every other car will randomly stop so someone can take a picture.

you can see all of my LambBanana piccies on flickr

Yesterday, Daisy learned about the Beatles. We were driving back from Yellow Sub (which is the name of the soft play), and she asked me why it was called Yellow Sub. So we talked about the Beatles, and the fact that they came from Liverpool, but were famous all over the world, and that one of their songs was about a Yellow Submarine. Then I had to sing it. Then I had to stop the car to look for the CD, so she could hear THEM singing it (she didn’t believe that it was as short as I’d made out, though it is). By then, we were nearly home, and the same CD played Penny Lane just as we turned the corner onto Penny Lane, so we talked about how they wrote a song about a road near our house – she knows where Penny Lane is, so she was quite impressed.

I love conversations like that. I love introducing her to a whole new world, which she may be only casually interested in, or she she may equally take it on as part of her identity. It’s all part of her becoming the person she’s going to be, and I find it fascinating.

I can sit at my nice big desk, with the windows wide open, and almost no disruption. We’ve got a bit of a resourcing issue at work at the moment; namely we have loads to do, and not enough people to do it. So it’s drastic action time as I am coding – hence the whole at homeness of it all.

One thing about working from home is you can get into the zone. I’m sure you all have your different zones, with programming it is said it takes 15 minutes to get into the zone and only 10seconds to get pulled out of it again, So sitting alone is a good way to go if you want to get something done; it’s a lousy way to go if you want to talk to anyone, or not get a bad back.

That’s why today I made sure I took lunch. If I was in work, i reasoned, I would take a break and go for a walk to clear some space in my head. It’s just when you are home it’s a much nicer walk – I went to greenbank park, and I took my camera.

I did get quite a lot of work done too. mainly through the process of ignoring my email. I’m a bit scared to look actually.