Catching Water in a Cardboard Box

This morning I found myself thinking of the time a couple of years ago when the student house next door had a leak (or rather a gush!). We noticed from the outside and knocked on the door, first we had to explain about stop cocks and then find it and turn it off. When we went into the front room, which in our house is a living room and in theirs is a bedroom, water was gushing down through the light fitting and the boy (well he was 19 at least) had put a cardboard box underneath to catch the water! We had to first tell him under no circumstances to switch on the light and then tell him to find a container that would actually hold water...

I have always thought this a scary but funny story but this morning I find myself wondering if we are actually giving our children enough opportunity to actually learn things for themselves. When I worked in a pre-school children were given an abundance of opportunities for messy play but all done in a very controlled and contained way. I am now wondering why, for instance, did we not ask the children what containers the children thought would hold water and then let them try them out to see if they worked. What better way to learn that in fact a cardboard box cannot hold water and why and because they had tried it out for themselves rather than being told by an adult that it wouldn't work then the information would be more likely to stay with them for life.

Obviously you could not let them experiment with electricity...but there are many other scenarios that you could let them try out. For instance when making cakes why not let them try a batch with salt or without baking powder to see what happens - let them learn by mistakes but still in a safe environment. In the rush to look after and protect our children we sometimes forget that telling someone something (nagging or advising) is no substitute for actually leaning something for yourself!

The sound of silence

Mystic Spirals
Originally uploaded by pupski

I'm not sure that I believe in god but I do believe in the power of silence and stillness.

Eating Books

In an interview that I listened to on the Internet yesterday C. D Wright said that as a child she "ate" books. This was something that I really related to - as a child I ate books too. From the moment I could read I had an insatiable appetite for books - an empty gnawing hole that was never quite filled. I started with Dr Seuss and then I read my way steadily through the children's section in our local small-town library and when I had finished with that I started right on in on the adult section. I would eagerly await our rare trips to nearby Norwich on the Saturday coach and once there would be itchy and fidgety until we got to what for me was the goal of the trip - The Scientific Anglian secondhand book shop. Once there I could spend happy hours grazing the shelves in search of an Enid Blyton or two to add to my collection - the prices lovingly inked in little hand drawn squares on the paper covers. My only problem was how to choose - there were so many! At birthdays and Christmas any coveted money would immediately wing its way to the local book shop (until I discovered music!). I would spend pocket money wisely eking it out between the jumble sale book table and the second hand book stall on the Saturday market. Then there was the grammar school library - on the whole conservative, but I did manage to unearth a gem or two in my lunchtime rummagings. There were also the parental bookshelves of course: novels mostly belonging to mum - an odd assortment of sci-fi, poetry, horror and Australian outback detective stories. And later on to Shrubb Farm on its communal shelves an extensive library of literary gems culled from the 1960s and 70s: "The Family", "Drop City", "The Grateful Dead" plus other tasty nuggets for enquiring minds such as Carlos Castaneda and Aldous Huxley. It was a young readers dream. To this day my eyes just can't stop reading. I am constantly getting rid of books; selling them, taking them to the charity shop, giving them away, yet my shelves are overflowing and there are piles on the floor. The main problem is having time to read them all. There's so many ideas in the world - philosophies, novels, poems, travelogues, writing guides, autobiographies...I pick them up all the time in charity shops, second hand book stores, in sales, as presents - my appetite is insatiable - I am always wanting more.

confusion

I thought it was yesterday and then discovered later that I was mistaken...

Love

All young men are(and women) concerned about love and that's the way of it. But whether it's a butterfly bungee jumping in your heart or an elephant trampling is the leap into the unknown...

U2 sell out

What is it with U2 and advertising. I could forgive them the ipod advert - after all ipods are quite cool and Vertigo is an extremely catchy song but the Blackberry advert is just taking things a bit too far. What was Bono thinking - record and ticket sales are low I know lets do another advert? Well I've got one word for you Bono (well two with a hyphen) - sell-out!

Post hand in play list

Well here it is my top twenty of the moment and actually I am finding it incredibly hard to limit it to just twenty. My mind is exploding with all kinds of music at the moment ranging from Jamaican music like Ernest Ranglin to rock bands like Audioslave and Led Zeppelin to more quiet music like Belle and Sebastian.

Anyway here goes:

1) Thank You - Led Zeppelin

2) Can't Stop - The Red Hot Chili Peppers

3) The Boy With the Arab Strap - Belle and Sebastian

4) Armagideon Time - The Clash

5) Karma Police - Radiohead

6) Somewhere a Clock is Ticking - Snow Patrol

7) King and Country - Seth Lakeman

8) Freedom (90) - George Michael

9) The Needle and the Damage Done - Neil Young

10) Bruise Pristine - Placebo

11) Let it Loose - The Rolling Stones

12) Wake up Jamaica - Dennis Alcapone

13) Problem Is - The Dub Pistols

14) Revelatios - Audioslave

15) All These Things That I've Done - The Killers

16) Rocking Universally - Willie Williams

17) Martha Cecilia - Andres Landeros

18) Baby, Baby - The Vibrators

19) Pain Killer - Turin Brakes

20) Back to Black - Amy Winehouse

After the Hand In

Well after a rather large gap in my blogging activity, due to the workload in the lastt few months of my degree I have decided to make a comeback. The degree is finished bar the marks, which we will get in mid June and since I have handed in my final work I have found that I have been listening to a massive amount of music. It's as if some mental space has cleared.


I haven't however started reading a novel yet - but that is in part due to the fact that the last novel I read was so good that nothing else seems to measure up. Mary George of Allnorthover by poet Lavinia Greenlaw is one of the best novels I have read in a long time. The novel is set in a small Essex town in the late 1970s. the writing is both visceral and beautiful and is evocative of the time and place. There is no danger of Greenlaw becoming rambly or overly poetic - although the prose is highly descriptive in places the plot bowls the story along sucking the reader in and inducing the rare quality of a book that you just can't put down because you really care about what happens next.

Platypus with Aardvark Rising

I am considering inventing a whole new star sign system using animals to symbolise each sign. Under this new system I would be Platypus with Aardvark rising.