After what seems like weeks chasing my own tail, the world is slowing down a little – affording the chance to take stock and work out how to move forwards, rather than continually stumble and scramble.
I accompanied my youngest daughter once again on her paper round this morning. She's improving every day – making fewer mistakes, and getting faster. My other half has drawn the short straw to accompany her in the morning – following that, we will let her get on with it herself. Sink or swim time.
I don't think I'll ever get used to the late-afternoon tiredness that comes with getting up before 6am.
One of the huge benefits of working from home is being able to listen to music all day. I used to listen to Spotify, but in recent weeks have been listening to streaming radio stations instead. I tend to choose retro stations playing 80s and 90s music – perhaps because that's what I grew up listening to. I love the new Abba singles.
Twenty years ago today a Rolls Royce sped past a church in Oxfordshire, horrifying several elderly ladies waiting for it's arrival. Within the car, the bride and her father had struck up conversation with the driver, and were having far too much fun to notice anything as unimportant as the church they were supposed to be arriving at. The groom meanwhile stood at the altar, with no clue of the temporary drama unfolding outside.
My memories of that day are hazy at best, twenty years on. I remember listening to a friend read the passage from Corinthians about growing up and putting away childish things. I remember turning around at the end of the ceremony and being blown away by a church filled with friends and family. It's funny – when you're in the middle of a wedding, you're kind of in a bubble. It's easy to lose sight of everything and everyone around you.
I remember drinks being bought for me at the reception – lined up on the bar – and feeling bad that I wasn't going to get through them. I remember finding a quiet corner at one point with my better half, collapsed on a chair together. Within moments those with cameras discovered us. They have always been our favourite photos of the day.
I remember the older generations of the family staging a reunion of sorts. It's amazing how births, marriages and deaths seem to succeed in bringing people together when there was nothing stopping them doing so beforehand.
Where on earth have the last twenty years gone ?
This evening, while standing on the touchline of a rugby pitch, we watched two of our three daughters running back and forth. I walked to a nearby gas station and returned with two chocolate bars.
As I handed a bar of chocolate to my other half I grinned and said “Happy Anniversary”. A nearby friend's face broke into a huge smile.
In-between juggling work, chores, and all manner of distractions earlier, I decided to go back to what I had planned to do in the first place, and just have a blog at Tumblr. Tumblr is easy. Tumblr is simple. Tumblr just lets you post stuff without really worrying about it too much.
Alongside the blog backtracking, I re-installed Manjaro Linux on the old laptop – mostly to turn it into an internet radio. It's wired up to the boombox in the corner of the study, playing music from the 80s as I write this.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go collapse into bed. I'm going to be up at 5:30am again in the morning to accompany my youngest daughter on her paper round (unless my other half takes a turn at it). Wish us luck. For most people, a paper round would be trivial – for our youngest it's pretty challenging for all sorts of reasons.
I'm getting a little too good at “not writing” at the moment. It's easy to say there are too many distractions, when the reality is that I'm just not setting aside time to write anything. Life is happening around me.
This week was pretty brutal. During the first half of the week I somehow managed to fit three days work into two – getting up with my youngest daughter who headed out on her newspaper round each morning at 6am, and working straight through to the evening. Sometimes work projects stack up, and there's no alternative but to just knuckle down.
The coming week is looking a little easier – although the early mornings will continue. Our youngest struggled a little with her paper-round this week – I'll accompany her for a few days – more as reassurance than anything.
If nothing else, getting up early and getting on the bike will be good for me. I've not been running for a while, after one of my knees started hurting. Cycling on a morning will hopefully put some strength back into my legs. It's probably worth remembering that I used to cycle at least six miles every day to get to the office and back. Maybe I need to figure out a quiet route that covers a similar distance.
Anyway.
I just wanted to take the chance to say a huge thankyou to those of you out there that have reached out to me recently – to ask how I am – to share a little of your world with me. It means the world to have a small circle of friends dotted around the world. Sure, we're not in each other's faces every day, or every week, but we somehow persist the unlikely friendships we have forged.
If you receive this blog post via email, you're probably wondering what on earth is going on. Let's just say I had a change of heart about blogging (yet again). Now somebody remove the delete key from my keyboard before I start using it again.
As of this evening, my younger daughters have both entered the world of work. If you had told me this even a month ago, I wouldn't have believed you.
Miss 16 has taken to her newspaper round like a duck to water – getting out of bed at 6am each day, and delivering her “round” with an eye on the money she will earn at the end of the week. We worry about her the most because she has a number of challenges when compared to others her age – but she's doing well. Tomorrow she will head off single handed, and we will stay behind worrying.
Miss 17 started work at a pub in town this evening, waiting tables and learning the ropes. She came home full of stories about the evening, the people she had served, and the staff she worked alongside. Although only a “tryout session”, she was offered the job at the end of the night and grabbed it with both hands. If there's one thing Miss 17 can do better than most, it's work hard and continue working hard. She will do well.
It's strange really – after spending so long being most of the kids universe, they are slowly engineering us out of their lives. In some ways it's a huge relief, but in others it's a worry. I guess all parents go through the same mental gymnastics. I suppose all you can do is hope you've prepared them well enough for the world.
While talking to friends on the green outside our house yesterday evening one of them mentioned that the local newsagent was looking for paperboys and girls to deliver newspapers nearby. A few minutes later I arrived with my youngest daughter. A few minutes after that she had agreed to deliver papers every weekday morning, starting at 6:15am. Ouch.
And so it was that we scraped ourselves out of bed at 5:30am this morning to see her off on her first round. While she was shown the route by a member of staff from the corner shop, I thought “I'm up now, I may as well get on with work” – so I did.
The universe has a funny way of making things work. I have been dreading this week for some time – knowing that several projects have conspired to crash into each other. By working several days in a row from 6am, I'm essentially going to fit three days into two and not lose the evening.
I will admit to being dead on my feet this evening. It didn't help that my youngest got in from college and wanted to go back out to practice her newspaper round route – to try and memorise it a bit better. It only took about half an hour. Her Mum is going out with her tomorrow morning on bicycles to do the route with her.
Working will award her more money than she has ever seen. It will also bring an end to her “pocket money”. We've had a long-standing agreement with the kids that as soon as they start working – in any form – pocket money stops.
Anyway. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch some rubbish on the television, find something to eat for supper, and then collapse into bed before doing it all again tomorrow.
It's been a few days since I wrote anything in the blog. Life seems to have a way of diverting me from anything and everything at the moment. This morning has been a good example – I started writing this post three hours ago; along the way the washing machine, the washing line, the rubbish bins, the kitchen, the dishwasher, and numerous other things got in the way.
I'm about to walk away, after managing to write one paragraph in three hours, to make some lunch. Perhaps I'll just carry on writing – while listening to my teenage daughters arguing while making their own lunches. Their natural state seems to be some sort of argument.
My eldest daughter appeared from her room yesterday looking pale, and announced that she might be in trouble. After calming her down, we spent half an hour trying to get her to understand the way banks operate – and that when they tell you “your current account is about to become overdrawn”, it's just a case of covering the debt from your savings account (we set her up with two accounts, but now we realise she doesn't understand at all).
I ended up asking her to imagine that banks have two people working in them – one that writes down every transaction you perform, and another that actually performs the transactions – and the person that performs them is slow (we all know the reality – that banks are businesses, and they hold your money for a few days to use for their own reasons). I think she understood in the end.
I'm tinkering with a Blogger incarnation of this blog on the quiet. A further retreat from the internet at large. Blogger has no walled garden – it never has had. Sure, it's a bit clunky, but all I ever do is post a few words. I'll let you if it goes anywhere.
My cousin died yesterday morning. The one who's wedding I went to two weeks ago. The wedding was wonderful, but it was pretty obvious he didn't have long left. I'm guessing we'll be returning a lot sooner than we thought for the funeral.
When we were children he visited our house every Thursday night with his Mum. We would play with LEGO together, ride bikes around the neighbourhood, and climb trees.
When I was in infant school I made friends with a boy with the same name – who moved away to the same village as my cousin. They became best friends.
They are both gone now.
I'm not sure how I feel about losing people around me. It seems like so many of my secondary school year have gone now. I don't think of myself as that old. I suppose nobody does.
Where did Tuesday and Wednesday go? Can we go out and look for them? I vaguely remember them happening, but I’m not really sure.
I sit within the four walls of this room each day, and slowly lose touch with the outside world. After dinner this evening – scratching around for a reason to go for a walk, I asked if we needed any groceries. Town is a mile away – fifteen minutes walk – far enough to clear your mind. My younger daughter accompanied me, along with a shopping list and an old hessian bag.
We didn’t talk much while walking. Sometimes you don’t need to. My daughter held my hand for much of the way. She’s sixteen. I sometimes wonder if she’ll always hold my hand, or if it will become un-cool at some point.
Late last night I started binge-watching “Upload” – a dark comedy on Amazon Prime about a technology in the future that allows your conscience to be uploaded to a virtual world shortly before your death; so that you may live on. While much of it is typically shallow US wise-cracking humor, there is some great commentary about culture, values, and the erosion of society. I’m enjoying it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I can hear the kettle boiling...