Culture -- The Jumps : Home of Kevin and Ruth Jump

bananas about the superlambbanana

posted on Sunday, June 22, 2008 by Kevin in [Culture, Liverpool, Piccies]

being the in the cultural capital of Europe has up until now, been something you could be forgiven for thinking was all about big adverts covering derelict buildings, at 60s music acts singing at football staduims, but since last monday there has been a new cultural event in town. goSuperlambbananas is a simple enough idea get a load of 1/3 size casts made of the superlambbanana give them to local artists to do with what they want, then put them all around Liverpool.

Terminator LambBanana?

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.

Rock LambBanana

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

Learning some culture

posted on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 by Ruth in [Culture, Daisy, Liverpool, Music]

Yellow Submarine sculpture,
Liverpool

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.

Is it me?

posted on Monday, June 2, 2008 by Ruth in [News & Media, Politics, Ranty]

Have a read of this, if you’ve not read it already, and then explain to me:

Are they really proposing the make a law that says you can do this sometimes as long as you don’t do it too often?

I mean, really, what kind of insanity is that? And how often is too often? Twice a week? Twice a month? Twice a year?

Really, is it so difficult to decide what’s illegal, and enforce it? We already have offences relating to antisocial behaviour when drunk - ancient ones. Drunk and disorderly, drunk in charge, whatever happened to those? Don’t they work on teenagers?

In any case, “persistently possessing alcohol in public” - even if you don’t drink it - is a ridiculous pseudo-crime, and that way madness lies. If madness isn’t what we’ve already stumbled into. Tsk.

The trials of going counter-cultural

posted on Friday, May 2, 2008 by Ruth in [Culture, Daisy, Home Ed]

Yet, again, today, I have found myself trying to grapple with the biggest challenge of home educating a three-year-old - persuading her that she doesn’t want to go to school.

School is endemic in our culture. Everyone goes. Everyone assumes that Daisy will go. CBeebies devotes hours per week in attempting to brainwash her into wanting to go. No matter how hard I try, the rest of the world is making school sound so utterly appealing, that I’m having some difficulty in getting her to accept being home educated.

Don’t get me wrong - she’s three. She doesn’t have anything like enough information to make an informed choice, and I’m the parent; I’m the one who gets to make the choice, and I have no problem with it being a unilateral decision, particularly in the early years. But it would certainly make my life easier if the whole of modern culture wasn’t preoccupied with trying to make school seem fun.

Most of the children who GO to school, of course, would describe it at “boring”, and not fun at all, but since it is seen as an inevitability, there’s actually a fairly robust conspiracy to keep that information away from three and four year olds. Adding to the confusion is Daisy’s own ideas of what school is like, and what home education would be like; a few times, she’s expressed an unwillingness to have a “home-school” because she perceives that it will necessitate replacing our furniture with school-type furniture, and then where will we sleep, and sit to watch the telly? She doesn’t comprehend, because she’s three, that the purpose of school is concerned with education*, and it’s the education part that we’re interested in addressing at home, and no matter how carefully I try to explain and reassure, I’m fairly confident that her head is full of bizarre and confused assumptions about what it all means. For example, I imagine that any convincing attempt at school-at-home will have to include the taking of a register, in order to be accepted at authentic. Still, that shouldn’t take long: “Daisy?”, “Here.” All done.

Maybe I need to start asking her to think about WHY people go to school, as a route to understanding the concept of education, as distinct from school attendance.

* Actually, whether the purpose of school is education, is wide open to debate, and worthy of it’s own post. Education is the bit of school we’re concerned with, however.

Don’t panic Mr Mainwaring

posted on Saturday, April 26, 2008 by Kevin in [News & Media]

The one sure-fire way to get people to panic buy anything? tell them not to. We saw two petrol stations full of cars today, and we live about 20 miles from a huge petrol depot that’s not on strike.

So..

Don’t panic, there is no need to rush, I haven’t spoken to Waterstones but I am sure they will have enough copies of my new book, “Look Stupid… Just buy it - the idiots guide to buying without thinking” (Â£25.99)- there will be more than enough copies to go around, I repeat don’t panic!

Working from Home

posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 by Kevin in [Council, Liverpool, Work]

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.

Day Out: Chirk Castle

posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 by Kevin in [Culture, Holiday, Piccies]

Saturday was trip day for the Jumps, and we went to Chirk Castle, which is in Wales. It’s National Trust which means we get in for free, and we don’t pay for parking. It also means you can buy tea-towels with maps on them, walking sticks and flat caps.

Chirk Castle is the last Edward I castle still lived in today (as you will know if you followed the link above).

[Historians look away now!] Edward I was the King who built loads of castles in North Wales - he spent Â£80,000 on castles in the 1280’s that’s a lot of money. The Main aim of the castles was to keep the Welsh quiet. They didn’t really think England was all tat great thanks, and much preferred the hilliness of snowdonia and the wild coast that was to become scouse-wales. Edward I (who was the fourth King to be called Edward) was recently voted 94th Greatest Briton - maybe because he conquered Wales, or maybe because he did quite a lot of law reforming.

None of that really tells you about Chirk Castle, except why it was built. As it is the only castle of that time still lived in, it doesn’t really resemble a 700 year old Castle it’s more of a stately home squeezed into a castle. It’s still very interesting and warm. unlike those ruined 700 year old castles. the CafÃ© is nice, and there where chickens in the car park.

New Camera

Really for us it was an opportunity for me to try out my new camera. The weather wasn’t great, but still we got some good shots. The zoom is cool; We have some fab shots of animals, the type you think you are going to take with your camera, only to discover you have a dot in the middle of a field of grass; well on my camera you get a full picture of the animal.

a rabbit.

The Colours are really good to. It’s not until you get a decent camera do you realise just how over saturated some cameras can make photographs - of course this means I will have to start taking pictures of everything again. for one it’s 8 mega pixel which means good shots can be blown up real big and stuck on the wall.

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