one of the many perks of not working in a university any more, is a proper recognition that you can work from home when you job is just looking at a pooter all day. Of course a lot of that may be down to me telling people to work from home, but you know it all still means the same thing.

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.

Liverpool got a star! see we are always winning stuff, capital of culture, worst performing council, the list is …. well two things really.

I took some time at lunch time today, to absorb some more of the city’s culture. Me and a few others from the web team went to see and Hear Ben Johnston work on and talk about his latest painting. the “Liverpool City Scape”, I’ve blogged about this picture before, but today was the first day I’ve seen it. all be it from a distance of about 10 feet, because you can’t get close. it’s still not finished.

I’ll probably sound all pompous now, but listening to Ben talk about how he came to paint these types of painting and how he came to be painting in Liverpool was really interesting. I’m thinking I should start sending the designers (and even the developers) in the web team to art galleries. Not so they can start making websites that look like a cityscape, but it’s more of an indirect thing, when you see a group of people being so overtly creative, it rubs off and you leave feeling all creative. pity i then had back to back meetings for the rest of the day.

You can see the progress of the painting with this photo set, and they even have a webcam.

Some things I wondered on my way to work.

1. Why is there a kissing gate on Lime Street?
2. Is the new penny farthing the seediest pub in Liverpool?
3. what benefit is there in getting to town at 8:30 and then spending 30 minutes in a coffee bar?

So we are sitting in our house contemplating our own parenting stupidity. Tonight we as a family went to the Liverpool 08 - People’s Opening outside St George’s Hall. It was a bit of a last minute decision, but we did plan the first bit quite well.

We go to the car park next to Lime Street at around 6:30 which meant we actually got to park real close, and when we arrived it was busy but not heaving so we contemplated where to stand and picked a nice spot next to the empire.?

the next challenge was keeping Daisy occupied for 1 1/2 hours, while nothing much (or nothing at all) happened. There was lots of picking up and putting down, and quite a bit of shinning a torch up daddies nose to see if it was OK (happy to report it was).

up until around 7:20 it was fine, we where troubled by the odd drunk who had obviously drained the nearest pub and was in need of another pump to stick his mouth under. But then it started to get really packed. Ruth had Henry tied to her front and i was carrying daisy in my arms.

Then it got really busy and people where knocking us, Ruth was standing over a street sign so Henry was snuggly asleep but even this go to bumpy and at around 8:00 (8 minuets before the start) we realised the error of our ways and left.

leaving was actually even scarier, it turned out that the street behind us was even more packed than the bit we where standing in, I used Daisy like a big snow plough, and basically pushed people out of the way. Most people where fine they could see I had a child who had?enough and they just squiged out of the way. One woman was all sarky, but I didn’t and still don’t care.

there was a point when i considered getting to the police car i could see in the middle of the crowd and putting daisy on the roof, but by the time we got to it, we actually where close to the edge of the crowd, so we darted out and back to the car.

We got to the car just as it started. Shaken and quite frankly thankful that we left before it started.?

we knew it would be busy, just not that busy, and the Friday drunk factor didn’t help. I for one am sitting here now, thinking we where stupid, taking the kids was a BIG mistake, but at least we go out, and that’s something we won’t do again. ?

?

I’ve been quite skeptical about all this culture malarkey, but even I am getting excited by the goings on outside St Georges Hall, the Big Screens either side of the hall are huge, and I have never really seen so many people and so much equipment being put into one location.

And tonight I got to see them practicing the spinning people around on cranes which looked quite cool too. I think I am going to go to the opening event, after all it’s not every year that the city you live in is the European Capital of Culture

I’m not 100% sure the culture year has started properly yet, the opening weekend is next week with a big open air thing and something at the arena, but I’m going full steam ahead - if i do all my cultural stuff in the first two weeks i can float about for the rest of the year and not feel like I wasted it.

This week I visited the Walker Art Gallery, basically because it was cold, and i didn’t feel like going straight back to the office. The current special exhibition is Joseph Wright of Derby, who did portraits and specialized in light paintings (paintings where the light source was different for example a candle).

The quality on the paitings?is fantastic especially when you read that he was knocking out the portraits at around one every nine days. It’s a stark contrast to the?art in the Turner, which ‘look’ like it took about 5 minutes to do.

heavy theory alert! I thought about it a bit, and i think it’s a reflection on how society has become much more about thought then action, back in 1760 the actual act of painting was the thing that people admired, the quality of the brush stokes, now it’s the quality of the thought, so a stick stuck in a pie is a prize winner, if you have thought about it lots first.

Still, there is a place for proper pictures in today’s world. a picture?I am really looking forward to seeing is the Liverpool City Scape by Ben Johnson. it’s a huge but amazingly detailed picture of liverpool’s skyline. you can see the work in progress from these photos.