fell over this when looking at some incredibly nerdy websites for work..

Microsoft have added 3d version of Liverpool in their maps.? it’s takes an age to load, and is a bit clunky, but still it’s all in 3d and you can fly around it.

Apparently there’s some form of cultural thing going on in Liverpool this year, so we decided today (it being the first day of the year and all) to go and absorb some culture, as a way of getting ahead of the game. Maybe if we do loads of cultural stuff dead quick we can slob about for the rest of the year and not feel guilty.

Today we did the Turner Prize Exhibition which is being held outside London for the first time. Now the Turner prize isn’t really to everyone’s taste and this years exhibition hasn’t really be well received even by those who claim to know more about it than me. but we are an open minded lot so we went to see it.

Now that there are four of us, getting somewhere is as much of an event as what ever we are going to see; especially when we choose to go by public transport. today we got the train into town and walked down to the Albert Dock.

Daisy loves trains, although she is still going through her ‘to loud’ phase and spent most of the journey with her fingers in her ears, Henry is completely unfazed by it all and had his lunch on the way there and just looked out the window at his reflection all the way back.

The Tate

Now I said we we’re open minded, but i think it’s only fair to tell you that I do find most modern art trash. but we are cultural don’t you know - so we tried.

There are your standard strange bits (twigs with what look like flames made from leather), pointless video bits (like the bear in a museum in Berlin), odd photographs and even the occasional good bit (the holes in the wall with lights and mirrors is … well interesting.

The best bit of the exhibition is actually the comments room, where you get to write what you think on a card and stick it on the wall - obviously people don’t hold back, my favorite was

“I will never like bears again”

As for the rest of the Tate; Well Daisy liked the Wavy pictures, and the ones with Dots, she took a strange fancy to a fluorescent tube through a mattresses, but at the end of the day when we asked her what the best bit of the Gallery was she said “the caf?”.

Your first bit of randomness for the year.

getting sucked into all the hype (or indeed the google search results) it would be easy to think that Liverpool is the European capital of culture for 2008 - but in fact there are two.

There used to be only one capital each year but with the enlargement of the European Union, they decided to have two a year, makes a bit of a mockery of the term capital (especially since pre 1999 it was the European City of Culture). anyway 2008 is the second such year of two capitals so lets not forget the Stravander Region in Norway which is also European Capital of Culture 2008.

No the postal strike is over, should start getting post any day now. not that we’ve missed it. It took a few days before we noticed, but it’s surprising just how quickly you learn to live without post - and just how the world doesn’t end.

We bank on line, all our bills are direct debits and if people want to tell us something they phone or email. So it’s not like we need mail. our blue bag/black box (for we live in one of the ’strange’ areas of Liverpool with odd colored recycling) is still full, mainly of pizza leaflets, it’s just not overflowing as usual.

In fact thinking about it I don’t want the mail to start up again, can we just block up our letter box?

Update: We’ve just gotten our first piece of mail in weeks - one letter, from SKY trying to sell us more TV and telephone lines.

Look :

The Gaston Leisure center pool now open at 8:15 on a Sunday - who said I sat around all day doing nothing?

[Swimming Debacle]

It’s OK. We did sit out side for a bit after being mislead by the council website (someone should sort that out), but after a quick drive around South Liverpool to distract us from the fact that the Pool was shut, we got to go swimming.

It has been a shamefully long time since we took Daisy the swimming baths, mainly because she hated it, Not so much the water then but the changing rooms. For quite a while she’s had a thing about echoy rooms with no natural daylight. and when she was little it use to freak her out so much that we really didn’t like to expose her to that.

This time was much better, Daisy was widely excited when I suggested swimming this morning, so much so that I’ve never known her to get dresses so fast, and that’s why we where out the door by 7:30. All the way there I got tales of how we would go down the red slide, and how she saw the swimming pool with Granddad. I’ve got no real evidence to back it all up - and to be honest until we got there and the slide was indeed red. I thought she was making it all up.

Given Daisy’s confidence in water has increased quite a bit since the last time we went (paddling pools and standing up in the bath!), she was no trouble, and just bounded in to the pool, heading right for the slide of course. we went up and down the slide about 20 times, before we then decided to explore the rest of the [little] pool - bouncing is fun, as is jumping in off the side, although we are still a bit freaked out by the water jets in the floor.

As always getting out was a bit traumatic, but master stroke from Ruth, we took bananas and if Daisy has a weak spot it’s food.

All in all a great trip to the baths (once it opened). Daisy want to go tommorow, I told her I couldn’t take her because I’m going to work, so she said she would go on her own.