wordsmith.social/jonbeckett

We are three days into our adventure on the south coast.

On the first day we wandered down to the beach cafe a mile or so down (quite literally) from my parents house overlooking the ocean, and wandered back in time for tea and medals.

On the second day we drove a mile further into the back of beyond, and did a coast walk around a far-flung piece of scenery. We anticipated hail and brimstone being thrown at us, but got away with overcast skies and bracing wind.

Today we marched over a hill and back again in pursuit of penny sweets, cheese, and cups of tea. On the homeward journey my middle daughter confidently informed me that she was going to die, and that her legs were about to fail. This was a blessing, given that she had been stung by a wasp earlier in the day, so a few aches and pains took her mind off the sting. I have no doubt she will done out on the “I got stung by a wasp” story for quite some time.

I don't know what we might be doing tomorrow. Probably something involving somewhere quiet, and perhaps a cooked meal of some description. So far I have cooked, the kids have cooked, and my Mum has cooked. Tomorrow may be “frozen Pizza city”.

While walking up and down hills I have been recording our exploits into Strava – mostly to make the keep-fit crowd look bad. Walking 10km through the middle of nowhere seems to be a pretty good plan for keeping away from computers so far.

Anyway. It's late, and I've probably overdosed on fresh air for one day. Time to sleep.

We left home a little after 10am yesterday morning, waving goodbye to our eldest daughter who is looking after the house, and set off towards the south west and my parents house. After stopping at a picnic area to stretch our legs, we finally arrived late in the afternoon.

This morning the weather has arrived – filling the surrounding hills with mist and rain. To be honest we're not too dismayed – the primary aim of the week away is to slow down, and the weather will play a part in that. We have books, movies, endless cups of tea, and cupboards full of food.

Time to step away from the rat race.

Yes, I know I haven't written anything here for an ENTIRE WEEK! Life gets in the way sometimes. Or perhaps this is the new normal – a few words each week, rather than a never-ending stream of consciousness.

At least I have a story to tell.

We went to a family Wedding last weekend in Witney, Oxfordshire – the town where I used to live. I have not been back for twenty years, so it was quite strange really. The wedding was at a church in the old part of the town, which thankfully hadn't changed. Memories came flooding back as we walked through the town – to old friends, and various nights out over the years. I wondered if I might bump into any old faces but I guess life has moved on for everybody.

One of my cousins was getting married. It was bittersweet – he's terminally ill with cancer, and was finally marrying his partner – the girl he's been with for years.

The church was impressive, enormous, and filled to the gunnels with family, friends and well-wishers. Apart from one other cousin and uncle, there were very few family members from our side – the wedding had only been green-lighted a few days before, and most of our family is spread all over the country (or world) now. Quite a difference from our childhood when various cousins would visit each other week-in, week-out.

I had several far-flung family members waiting on my photos throughout the day.

Although many of us had perhaps approached the wedding with trepidation, and could have turned the day into a rather sombre, sad affair, the opposite happened. The church was filled with goodwill, optimism, smiles, and yes – a few tears. Shortly before the service began I snuck down to the front to find the groom's parents and wish them well. The smiles said everything. They had an empty block of seats behind them, so I returned moments later with my family.

The ceremony was very traditional, but kind of lovely. It's nice to know that in a changing world some things remain. The vicar read the excerpt from Corinthians about putting away childish things. I remember a friend reading it at our wedding twenty years previously.

Religious ceremonies fascinate me. Given my lack of faith or belief in any of it, I find myself wondering about the history of it all – how the various procedures, readings, iconography, and so on have evolved over the years.

After leaving the church and taking all manner of photos outside we wandered back through town, and then on to the reception at a village hall a few miles away. I finally got the change to catch up with my aunt and uncle, and sat for some time finding out how my cousin really was – and how the last year had been since his adventures began.

Late in the afternoon we said our goodbyes, and returned to Witney once more – finding a pub on the green next to the Church we had attended earlier in the day – and ordered some food and a drink. The late afternoon sun shone, the birds sand, and we were reminded that sometimes the world isn't all bad.

I meant to write something on Friday. And then I didn't. I meant to write something over the weekend. And then I didn't. A pattern is forming. I suppose in the past I would have written something about falling off a bike, or a horse, or some other vaguely workable idiom.

Before you know it a day has passed, then another, and another.

I miss writing. I miss the “tribe” that so many talk about. I miss being a part of the circle. Life is just getting in the way at the moment.

We are travelling down to my parents next week for a few days – perhaps the break will reset the writing bug inside me, and recharge the impulse to empty my head into the keyboard once again.

I meant to write something earlier today, but work, home, chores, and everything in-between got in the way. Before you know it the day vanishes, and it's nearly midnight.

I ran again this morning. Another five kilometres. I really didn't feel like doing it (again), but the stubborn/dogmatic part of me kicked in once more and pushed me out the door.

For some reason today was the most difficult day so far – not helped by the sun noticing I had left the house, and thinking “let's f*ck him up”. I get it – I'm not that fit yet. The added drain of the sun shining on me while out running was like pulling the plug out of my bath full of energy.

I go again with Park Run at the weekend. Hopefully it will get easier. With reflection, summer was NOT the best time to start this idiot escapade.

In other news, we're changing our phones at home – switching away from Apple to Android handsets. It won't make any difference to me – I've been using an Android handset for years – it will be a shock to the system for the kids though.

Anyway.

It's getting late. Time to go read, and fall asleep with a book collapsed against my chest.

After waking up a little after 7am this morning I watched the clock tick for the better part of half an hour before scraping myself out of bed, pulling some running shorts and shoes on, and wandering out into the morning air.

I really didn't feel like running, but a dogmatic voice deep inside my head started putting one foot in front of the other, and before I knew it, my legs were carrying me towards town.

Given my less than stellar performance at Parkrun on Saturday, I decided to just jog a five kilometre route around town. The route took me past several road junctions where I might have cut it short, but something kept me going. Stupidity probably.

I'm still not entirely sure how I made it back without walking at all. I really wanted to walk at the half-way stage, but didn't. I guess the words going round inside my head on repeat were “you'll be annoyed if you walk, you'll be annoyed if you walk”.

I suppose the real job today was to put more miles into my body – to make running for half an hour easier. To build fitness. I go again on Thursday morning, and then return to park run for a second attempt this coming Saturday.

I must be mad.

I took part in my first “Parkrun” yesterday morning – a regular weekly 5 kilometre run around the big park in town. Parkrun operates all over the world – you can register for free, and attend any of the runs.

About 300 of us started the run, which looped twice around the centre of the park before heading off along the river, and then back. I was nowhere near fit enough to run it, and the conditions were not ideal (the humidity was ridiculous), but I got on with it, ran it at my own pace, walked a little towards the end – and finished in a somewhat respectable time.

After a couple more runs in the week I'll hopefully keep improving my fitness. To be honest dipping under 30 minutes would be fine. My only reason to do park run is to keep fairly fit – some people that turned up took it all tremendously seriously – and that's fine – it's just not why I'm doing it. I sit in front of a desk most of the week – it's just an excuse to get off my backside.

After getting home from running and having a shower, I immediately turned round and went grocery shopping – to get food and drink for gathering of friends and neighbours on the green outside our house. It had been planned for weeks – and of course the weather tried to throw a gigantic spanner in the works.

I should get an award for continuing to play frisbee in the pouring rain while lots of others huddled under tents and cheered me on.

The rain eventually stopped, and neighbours slowly appeared – forming a circle of chairs around a firepit that burned late into the night. Although I'm usually quite introverted, I got over myself and spent the evening chatting with people I've not met before – and laughing at the antics of “the usual suspects” that drank a little too much. I dread to think how their head might be today.

It struck me during the evening how lucky we are to be in the company of so many nice people in our neighbourhood. I quietly watched a little girl from across the way tending to the fire for a good hour, closely watched by several nearby adults. I imagine she will remember evenings like last night for the rest of her life.

Anyway.

Today is about resting, and watching TV. Time to go make a hot drink and switch the Olympics on.

I have spent nearly all day in meetings – one meeting after another. I don't think I could ever be a project manager, because their life seems to consist purely of meetings, calls, and gantt charts. Being a software developer suits me down to the ground – I get to obsess over my own little world of code, bits and bytes, and pretty much shut off from the rest of the world.

I've been humming “Video Killed the Radio Star” all day, after YouTube suggested a video of the band “Buggles” re-forming to perform it. YouTube has been knocking it out of the park recently – suggesting some amazing time-wasting procrastination aids to me. Perhaps the best musical performance has to be “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, by Procol Harem – google the live performance in Denmark, 2006.

Anyway.

Time to sleep.

Last night we went out for the first time in 18 months.

A farm perhaps a mile out of town has several vineyards, and is owned by one of the bigger wine producers in the country. They had cleared an area of one of their fields, erected a huge cinema screen and sound system, surrounded it with bean bags and deck chairs, and setup a wonderful bar serving their various wines and local beers.

We walked from home. The walk probably took half an hour, with the final mile through farmers fields and finally through vines to the screen we could see looming above them.

Most of the evening was wonderful save for one thing – the food. We had pre-ordered pizzas, and arrived an hour before the movie to have time to eat. The catering company drafted in to make the pizzas on-site had some sort of disaster and ended up cooking elsewhere and ferrying the pizzas to the field. We finally received ours half-way through the movie, and most of the way through a bottle of champagne on an empty stomach (we were celebrating being “out out”).

Apart from the movie, the queue for the pizza stall was perhaps unintentionally the most entertaining part of the evening. I've probably mentioned before – we live in a very wealthy area, which is populated with a great number of privileged, self-righteous, self-interested people with little or no empathy for anybody or anything other than themselves. The next several people in the queue for the pizzas ticked all the boxes, and then some. I'm surprised they didn't call their lawyers from the queue.

While aspersions were cast, I quietly expressed my disbelief with my other half – feeling very sorry indeed for the two teenage girls taking pizza orders; obviously drafted in on a minimum wage to do a menial job – and who were muttered about, shouted at, and treated pretty horrifically. When we were finally called to collect our pizzas, one of the girls smiled uneasily as she handed them to me, and I tried to find some words to let her know we were on their side. She looked like she might start crying.

Imagine a field full of 100 “Lady Totty” characters from “Wallis and Gromit and the Curse of the Warerabbit”, and you get some idea.

The movie was the salvation of the evening – “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. I had a vague recollection of watching the first few minutes of it some time ago, but couldn't remember much. If you've not seen it, you'll either love it or hate it – I suspect it's something of a marmite movie for most people (you might not get that reference either, thinking about it). I loved it. I love marmite too.

Here's the trailer:

Anyway.

On that note, I'll bid you farewell for the moment. It's late, and I need to get up in the morning for a run, and then work. Thankfully the weather has sorted it's life out and had dropped a little below the “surface of the sun” antics it's been playing around at recently.

It's been an eventful few days in my little corner of the universe. Where to start?

For the last few days my ankles have decided to start something of a protest against sitting at a desk throughout my working day. They have done this by accumulating water and swelling up really quite impressively (I was going to write “spectacularly”, but that seems a bit over the top, although also accurate). I had been hoping to get out running, or on the bike to combat it, but the weather has had other ideas – the temperature has rarely dipped below 30C in the UK during the last week. It's supposed to drop by a few degrees over the weekend – not before time.

Over the past couple of years my ears have decided that they really like conjuring up earwax from wherever they conjure it up from, and have gotten really, really good at it. This week I decided enough was enough, and enlisted the help of an over-the-counter remedy. You pour a few drips into your ear, tip your head over, and let the magic happen. The bottle mentions nothing about the party going on in your earhole while whatever it is fizzes, and turns into the itchiest substance known to science. I won't trouble you with the gunk that fell out of my ear after pumping water into it afterwards. It was impressive.

Finally, at lunchtime today I decided it might be a good idea (to combat the ever increasing ankle radius problem) to go outside and play frisbee with my youngest daughter. Five minutes into said shenanigans, a wasp decided to fly between my foot and my sandle – which caused me to jump around like somebody that had just stood on a small explosive device. My daughter couldn't stop laughing as I walked back to the house with one bare foot, and then took a rather morbid interest in the dark vein of poison spreading up my foot from the sting-site. Thankfully ice blocks from the freezer stopped it in it's tracks, and I stopped hopping around and cursing mere minutes later.

In other news, once my salary falls into the black hole we like to call our bank account in a few days time, we are going to pull the trigger on replacing our mobile phones. We're switching everybody to Google Pixels. Apple can shove their idiot devices that never play well with others wherever they like.