Just how cute is she? I may have taken a lot of photographs over the weekend, around 150 i think, but i got at least one stunner.

This is daisy playing in the long grass of sefton park. She thought it was fantastic. She’s now at the stage where she is sure enough on her feet that walking on the spongy undergrowth was no problem for her; but you have to be careful, when she gets on to the path, she just takes off.

I think We had our fist afraid of the dark incident last night. At around 12:30 daisy woke up, not to pleased with the world around her. This in it’s self is a rarity, as we’ve said before we are blessed with a sleeping baby.

Even when daisy does wake up, she will either go back off before we have moved out of bed, or in bad cases were we have to get up, Dasiy will sit on your knee for a minute, and then say bed, (with the hand on the side of the head and everything) and then back she goes. We learnt quite early on, that putting daisy back without this hand signal is a recipe for disaster.

Last night, it wasn’t the going to bed she minded, it was the dark afterwards, it took three goes, lots of stories, and a light on in the hall, with daisy’s door open before everyone in the house was asleep, and all I can say… How quickly you forget, and become use to sleeping all night.

One of the things we use to do when I worked at the university*, was to give prospective employees a tour of the building; “here is a floor of people”, “here’s another floor of people”… Not very exciting I grant, but we use to end the tour with the machine room.

Now depending on your background this was either impressive or just mildly interesting, if you where a placement student or someone working up the it ladder from say a small company then the ex bullion vault of an old bank, jam packed with expensive computer kit, looks like a nerds dream. To someone who’s seen it all before, you would just go; oh you’ve got that Halon gas stuff too.

Google however, could never fail to impress if during an interview they took people on a tour of there server rooms, two the size of football pitches with four story cooling towers; it turns out this is exactly what you need to make the world go around.

*I really must stop using this phrase.

As is traditional for any international game, the countries at the world cup have been swapping Pennants before the matches. All very nice, but really isn’t it just an empty gesture, that no one really thinks about?

I think everybody should follow the example of Iran, who gave Mexico what looks like a Persian rug, framed with the flags of the counties in. Other countries should give gifts pre match that represent there country; I’ve no idea what we would give.

It’s not spoken about much, so you’re never quite sure, but I’ve just read an article on the observer web site, from a new Dad who actually wants to spend time with his daughter but is worried about his career, and it appears at least I’m not the only dad, who is franticly trying to minimize the impact of work on there family time.

Now as Ruth has already mentioned, you have to be carefully what you tell people they can have, because sometime it can be a bit too much. For me I don’t want it all, given half a chance I would walk away from my career tomorrow, if it meant I could spend more time with Ruth and Daisy, and live within our means. At the moment It’s only that second part that drives me to work.

I find it very hard to express, I either end up sounding terribly pompous, or like somebody who is living under an enormous weight, but I only go to work; to keep Ruth and Daisy in the manner to which to be quite honest they deserve. At it’s worst I don’t see this as a burden, more of an inconvenience which means I have to go away five times a week.

I may just have moved jobs, but I have no qualms telling people where my priorities lie, and it’s not in work. To some extent I’ve chosen that, after all I’ve stayed in the public sector for a reason, family come first; working for a private company, while challenging and more profitable, would have almost certainly meant more hours, more stress, and less Daisy, something I’m not prepared to tolerate.

You shouldn’t get the wrong impression I do like my job, I enjoy it loads, in some respects I’m a bit like a footballer (maybe not as fit or as ‘fit’), I get paid for doing something I enjoy, and I suspect just like Wayne Rooney, if I stopped getting paid for it tomorrow, I would still do it.

So when people talk about understanding employees ‘letting’ them leave at 4:30m I just think, I leave at 4:30 because I started at 8:30 and I’m only contracted to work 35, gosh I’m lucky.

Greenbank Park Panorama
Originally uploaded by Fraser Brodie.

Not my piccie this one, but it’s of my favorite park, infact it looks like it was taken from the bench we always sit at.

Ruth will be holding me back from running down there to take some of my own.

Rant number 43 of the world cup, when a player gestures to the referee that he should book somebody, they them selves should be booked.

the referee in the Serbia, Holland game agrees with me. As does Alan Hansen.

63 mins: Ognjen Koroman wins a free kick on the edge of the box but is booked after once again waving a pretend card at the referee to try and get an opponent yellow carded. The free kick comes to nothing. [bbc]