wordsmith.social/jonbeckett

The radio is filling the room with “Black Velvet” by Alanah Miles. I remember when it first appeared, and VH1 played it to death. Who remember VH1? I'm guessing it arose in Europe after MTV went past the curious tipping point where their schedule was filled with reality TV shows rather than music videos. I've written about the era when their “VJs” became famous – the likes of Ray Cokes, and Marijne van der Vlugt. I remember getting in from college and decompressing in front of their shows.

I guess streaming has replaced broadcast music channels. Anybody can play or watch anything they like, when they like, wherever they like. The world has changed.

I sometimes wonder how discovery works now. Does new music only reach people's ears via algorithms? The various streaming services are paid to promote artists and songs – nobody walks into a music store and flips through the vinyl albums any more.

I just switched from the radio to YouTube.

I tend to either listen to 80s pop radio stations, podcasts, or music streamed from a variety of YouTube channels (invariably filled with instrumental Jazz). The jazz tends to turn the world around me into a Charlie Brown movie – filled with melancholy, serendipity, and thoughtfulness.

Anyway.

I'm supposed to be getting on with some work. Or make a coffee. I've not decided which yet.

A pretty ridiculous story has been unfolding in the UK this week. One I thought I might write a few words about for the entertainment and amusement of international readers who might want something to read while they sip their coffee.

Towards the end of last week, owing to a few logistics problems, one of the major fuel suppliers in England put out a press-release that they would have to close some of their gas stations for a few days. The media – scratching around for some muck to fling (because lets face it, that's what most breathless 24 hours news cycle reporting has been reduced to) discovered the story and added various spectacular adjectives to it in order to meet web traffic targets.

Within 24 hours, millions of idiots had begun panic-buying fuel up and down the country. Given that not many people own more than one car each, and there's only so many fuel cans and coke bottles you can fill with gasoline, petroleum, or diesel until you accidentally burn your house down, all predictions pointed towards a healthy supply chain returning everything to normal pretty quickly.

Only things got worse quickly.

Following a number of factors that various sides of the media like to either trumpet or bury, the fuel delivery supply chain throughout the UK has ended up running with little or no slack in the system. Depending on who you ask and their political leanings, this has been blamed on the UK leaving Europe, the BBC, low wages, the laziness of others, corporate greed, and every other reason you could possibly imagine.

If you put your fingers in your ears, ignore social media, and try to read a cross-section of reports from trustworthy industry sources, you discover that long distance haulage has been in decline in the UK for decades. Skilled drivers have retired faster than newly qualified drivers have come up. And yes, many tens of thousands of skilled drivers with appropriate training and certification to carry fuel left the UK when we left Europe. The reasons listed by researchers for low numbers of new drivers coming through have included low wages, lack of career progression opportunities, being away from home a lot, and work life balance.

Everybody seems to have nothing better to do than complain about the millions of idiots panic buying fuel, the media for causing the panic, or the politicians for not being clairvoyant enough to see the disaster coming.

There seems to be very little accountability going on.

If there were less petrol or diesel powered cars on the road we would need less fuel. If haulage was a more sustainable career, more people would do it. If supply chains were not micro-managed towards maximum efficiency, spikes in demand would become manageable. If we hadn't left Europe's gang, we would still be able to employ skilled drivers for less than the market rate to prop up a failing industry...

Oh. Wait.

The clock has just passed 1:30am. I don't know why I'm still awake. I've spent the majority of the evening deep in virtual rabbit holes. The internet is a perfect escape for a master procrastinator.

Tomorrow (or later today), we head out to watch our younger daughters play rugby. I'm pretty sure my role will involve pouring tea from a flask, and shouting encouraging things.

That's all I have at the moment. Hardly inspiring, is it. It seems these days I do no more than exist. I try to keep in touch with one or two people, but even that has become a struggle.

If a school teacher was passing comment on “me” at the moment, they would probably write “must try harder”.

I’m still here though, still turning the pedals, still placing one foot down in front of the other each day. Each day is much like the last, but I keep going. Keeping going seems to be the solution to an awful lot of things at the moment.

The clock is ticking towards 11pm, and you find me sitting in the dark of the junk room, listening to a retro radio station. It's been a bit of a day, and it isn't over yet.

After getting through the third lengthy meeting of the day this morning, I pulled the headset from my head, pulled some shoes on, and set off towards the infant school where my other half works – stopping to purchase some lunch on the way.

We sat outside in the sunshine – a quiet corner the teachers often seek out to find a little calm on typically chaotic days. While relating the story of each other's mornings the headmistress of the school's face appeared around a nearby door.

“Can I interrupt your lunch? We've got a bit of a first aid emergency”

I said goodbye and made my way home.

Several hours later my other half returned from work and told me a little more of the story – a fall in the playground, and a badly broken arm. She worried about him all evening, until receiving word from the headmistress. School staff don't so much take their home, as never really leave.

This evening my middle daughter is working as a waitress at the rugby club annual dinner. Paying the under-18s to staff the senior team annual dinner was a new idea this year. Given that she already works as a waitress in a pub in town, she had no concerns at all.

My other half went to pick her up two hours ago, and hasn't returned – I imagine lots of other parents have arrived to pick up their children, and have stopped to catch up with each other.

I therefore find myself almost alone at home (our youngest went with my other half – her nosyness known no bounds). Our eldest is secreted in her room, watching anime or reading manga. She rarely makes appearances.

Perhaps it's time to play some old video games. Anybody for a quick game of Pacman ?

I have coffee, cake, music, and an incense stick is filling the room with nice smells. Work is still relatively quiet – at least compared the headless rush of the last few years. Sometimes quiet is good.

I wandered into town with my eldest daughter at lunchtime. I'm pretty sure she was trying to break the “world's slowest walk into town” record – every time I slowed to let her catch up, she slowed even futher. I watched other people walking briskly past us with envy.

After picking up some groceries and somehow drawing a short straw to make dinner, we looked around the bookshop before heading home. Quite miraculously I didn't buy a book. I'm getting better at that.

I finally started reading “The Midnight Library” the other evening. I'll let you know what I think when I've got a bit further into it.

In other news I'm drinking black coffee for the first time in a while. A jar of espresso has been sitting in the corner of the kitchen cupboard for months – time to do something about it.

After a month spent hiding in a quiet corner of the Tumblrverse, I suppose these words signal a return to normality of sorts. A return to the madding crowd – or the periphery of it at least.

A good friend messaged me this morning while I dithered about back-filling journal entries from the recent past – “you're allowed to change your mind”.

In a somewhat connected turn of events, I wandered into Twitter last night, stood on a chair, and looked around. For the last year or so I've only followed a handful of accounts – bloggers, and close friends. After an hour of quite spectacular undecided hand-wringing, I began searching out new voices. Some thoughtful publications, influential thinkers, and old friends. Before setting off into the rabbit hole, I commented to a friend that Twitter was a slippery slope – and so it proved to be. By midnight I found myself sitting in bed, lit by my phone screen, following a hundred more feeds than I had earlier in the evening.

While scrolling Twitter, I began to understand it's attraction. Life – in all it's forms – distilled to it's essence. When you only have a few words to communicate your thoughts, the baggage tends to get cast off. I found myself absorbed in all manner of victories, losses, births, deaths, thoughts, debates, dreams, hopes, happiness, anger, and everything in-between.

Anyway.

I'm back. I suppose in some ways I was never really gone.

It turns out slowing down is difficult after several weeks chasing your own tail. I finally have time to take a step back – to take stock – to figure out how I'm doing things. I don't find it easy to rush head-long into the next thing.

Years ago I read all manner of books about productivity, and tried out lots of the fashionable things like the “Getting Things Done” methodology. It's all bollocks.

In other news, for some strange reason the HR manager where I work emailed me this morning and congratulated me for working for the company for 20 years. This is all slightly odd, because the 20 year mark passed in April (as far as I recall). Work has given me some restaurant vouchers – easily enough to take my entire family out.

“Re-write the Stars” is playing on the radio. I think that's what it's called – the song from “The Greatest Showman”. I'm going to end up humming it all afternoon now.

Oh, look at the time. It's coffee o'clock.

After my youngest daughter returned from rugby practice this morning, I accompanied her to the newspaper shop to hand her notice in.

While visiting the shop yesterday to buy a bottle of wine for our evening meal, the shop assistant (the daughter of the owners) made a point of telling me that a house on the newspaper round had made four complaints in the last week; three times of newspapers being screwed up, and once of the newspaper being left outside in the rain.

In the middle of apologising, I started mentally checking what I had just been told. Hang on. I had been with my daughter throughout four of the days, and my other half was with her on the remaining day. We had seen no newspapers get screwed up, and certainly no newspapers left outside – let alone in the rain (it rained on one day, we got soaked to our underwear, and we protected the newspapers like the crown jewels throughout the round).

I outlined this to the teenage girl reporting the complaints. She lifted an eyebrow at me, and shrugged.

I walked home and let our daughter know about the complaints. Her immediate reaction was fury, disbelief, and despair. She was upset all night about it, and spent most of Sunday morning depressed about the idea of going back out to be complained at again. We called it for her, and brought an end to it.

Here's where it gets good.

Later in the afternoon I messaged a friend who's son has started work as a paperboy on the same round (he does the weekend). I warned them what had happened in case they had it happen too. The friend immediately volunteered the exact address. They had complained about every one of their deliveries too. They had been late, screwed the paper up, left it outside – you name it – they had done it. On one occasion the parents had done the delivery, and found themselves being watched by an old age pensioner through the window as they made the delivery.

I have some thoughts. I'm not sure I'll share all of them, but I'll share some.

How does a world come to exist where a shop is so dependent on a small circle of customers that it is forced to throw it's own staff under the bus repeatedly when faced with falsehoods, lies, and slander? How can people look themselves in the mirror, knowing that they are spewing such hateful, bitter, nonsensical accusations at anybody and everybody around them?

My eldest daughter is 21 years old today. I guess that means she's a “proper” grown-up now. Even though she still lives with us, we've been slowly shifting responsibility for things to her – simple things like her phone. She has her own phone contract now in her own name, being paid from her own bank account.

It's funny – the whole process of “bringing up” and then “letting go”. There's no instruction book for it, perhaps because everybody is different. Some kids stand on their own two feet early. Some kids leave the nest as soon as they can. Some never leave.

I'm always fascinated – talking to friends around the world – at how different cultures operate around the “family unit”. In England I tend to think the whole “standoffish” thing has permeated society in general; it sort of explains why there's this expectation to leave home – to strike out on our own in the world. In many other countries you commonly find several generations of the same family living under the same roof.

We decorated the living room with balloons and streamers late last night. I'm wondering how long it will take for it all to fall to pieces and look like some kind of drunken accident in a glitter factory.

Anyway.

Today is Saturday. I'm two coffees, toast, and cereals into the day so far. It's almost 11am. The washing machine will be finished soon. The chores never end.

I think I probably broke some sort of record for hours spent in conference calls this week. Hour upon hour talking, listening, writing notes, and so on. It did occur to me during the week how fortunate I am to have discovered bullet journaling though; without my little book full of spider scrawl and dots I'm not sure I would cope.

Just after finishing work a scrap dealer turned up to take my daughter's car away. She bought it to learn to drive in, but then the pandemic happened, and it has been sitting on the driveway for the last year without moving – getting it taxed and insured again would cost more than it's worth. She doesn't seem particularly sad about it – especially as the waiting list for driving tests is 18 months long at the moment (yes, you read that right – there's an 18 month waiting list – not just for cars – logistics companies all over the country are in panic mode at the moment – there are no drivers).

Anyway.

I've just cracked open a can of beer. I “lucked into” a case of beer arriving because my other half forgot to cancel the subscription. It started out as a half-price trial, and now we're three months in. That's obviously how they make their money.

p.s. IT'S THE WEEKEND!