wordsmith.social/jonbeckett

I received my first COVID vaccination shot today. My age group became available to apply last week – I left it a few hours before looking at the website, then booked the appointments. The nearest dispensing station was about ten minutes walk from home, which made the choice largely academic. I received the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine.

If I get side-effects, they will appear within 12 hours. Fingers crossed I don't get clobbered too hard by them – I've got a busy week ahead planned with work (I suppose plans can be changed though). My other half was knocked out for about three days.

My return to work tomorrow follows a week off. It has felt a little like limbo.

Fingers crossed I don't wake up in the middle of the night shivering.

The staycation is coming to an end. Friday has arrived, supported by coffee, and bacon sandwiches. I woke a little after 6am, then convinced myself to sleep for another hour. I'm not sure why I've been waking up so early recently. At least it gives me time to do this – write a few words – before the rest of the house appears.

Spotify is quietly humming away in the background – filling the room with a supposedly relaxing playlist. It sounds more like angst and longing to me.

Earlier this week I ventured out of the house for the first time in months – escorting my youngest daughter to meet some of her friends in a nearby town. We travelled by bus, wearing masks throughout the journey. Along the way I discovered that none of her circle of friends had correct phone numbers for each other, and none of them knew where they were, other than “on the bus”. They had pre-arranged to meet at the bus station, and more by luck than judgement managed to do just that. I've begun to suspect that when together their common sense is far greater than the sum of their individual parts. The best part of the day? When they called each other after getting home, to make sure each other got home in one piece.

After waving goodbye to my daughter I wandered over to a used video game store, and picked up an arm-full of last generation video games. Ten old games for the price of a cinema ticket. I thought my middle daughter might have an accident when she saw the games (she has always been the gamer – her sisters not-so-much).

While on the subject of electronics, I resurrected a laptop yesterday – robbing parts from two old laptops to make one half-decent one. It's sitting on the desk next to me, with a fresh install of Manjaro Linux installed. When I summon some enthusiasm later, I'll finish installing it. My youngest daughter walked in while two of the laptops were in pieces across the desk – with circuit boards and screws everywhere. She recoiled in horror – “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Thankfully I'm pretty good at putting things back together.

Late last night I got sucked into watching a few episodes of “Chicago Fire” with my other half. I did a double take when some cast members from “Chicago Med” showed up in an episode – apparently there are several series that cross story-lines on a regular basis – among them PD, Fire, Med, and Justice. One particular story crossed three of the shows in consecutive episodes. I love it when TV shows do things like that.

Anyway.

I think it's time for another coffee.

My youngest daughter is now sixteen years old. The little girl that used to hold my leg when unsure, and raise her arms to be picked up when tired is somehow sixteen years old. She still walks up to me for hugs in the middle of the kitchen when stuck for something to do.

Once the smallest, she is now the tallest. She runs like the wind, and has an engine that most athletes would envy – and yet she doesn't show off, or realise her own potential. She's happy tagging along with whatever others are doing, although has the strongest sense of fairness and justice I know. Her sense of humor is razor sharp.

Where did the years go?

To mark her birthday, we all visited “Go Ape” yesterday – an outward bounds activity centre perhaps half an hour from home. They have various precarious paths strung high above the forest floor – requiring you to traverse cables, rope bridges, and zip lines – challenging yourself, and building confidence along the way.

At the end of the day we walked to the edge of the woods, and visited one of the locations for a rather famous series of movies. Black Park served as the grounds of Hogwards School throughout the Harry Potter movies, mostly because it backs onto the studios where the movies were made. It reminded me of visiting the woods near my cousin's old house in California – those woods became famous as the forest moon of Endor. There's a strong sense of having been there before when visiting.

My entire body aches this morning. Muscles were required that have not been used in quite some time. While waiting on a wooden platform high in the canopy yesterday, I watched the newly crowned Miss 16 from a distance and realised she had no fear, and total confidence in her own ability – which contrasted sharply with her sisters who clung with white knuckles to ropes, and repeatedly whispered encouragement (and swear words) at themselves while screwing their eyes tight shut.

She's heading to a huge park today to meet friends. A socially distanced “hang out”. I may end up chaperoning her to the edge of the park, then becoming surplus to requirements (other than as a source of money for coffee or ice cream). I'm not entirely sure what I might do, other than find a quiet spot to sit and read a book. We'll see.

Lockdown has partly come to an end in the UK – not that some people took any notice of it what-so-ever. Pubs, restaurants, and shops re-open today, albeit with all manner of social distancing and safeguarding rules.

I think I'll stay the hell away from town for at least another six months. I'm going to predict the third wave will happen, and it will be driven by the same asshats that caused the second wave.

It appears some people have a massive disassociation in their brain – where what they want to do doesn't correlate with guidance, rules, or law. Their immediate wants or needs outweigh everybody and everything else around them. You might call them selfish, ignorant, unthinking, or just plain assholes. The pandemic didn't create them – they were here all along – it's just their blind self-interest didn't affect others so much in the past.

Anyway. Deep breaths.

I have the week off. When I looked out of the bedroom window at 7am this morning, snow was falling. I grinned, and wondered if that was just nature's way of sticking it's fingers up at me. I imagine by dinner time we'll have fire, brimstone, and plagues of something or other.

It's Sunday afternoon, I'm sitting in the junk room in front of the computer, the chores are done, my other half is out, and Norah Jones is singing about being Alive on the colossal beat box my cousin from California got me for my birthday.

I woke at 6:30am this morning, and stared at the ceiling for an hour before getting up.

I'm sipping an instant cappuccino made from a packet that isn't half bad, and wondering what to write next. Probably a defence of instant coffee would be a good start. I'm pretty sure there's a very vocal yet tiny minority who own coffee machines that cost more than a family car that only touch coffee beans from a small corner of Africa.

While on the subject of idiots, I saw a wonderful take-down the other day – where an anti-masker was mansplaining about half a million years of evolution not evolving face masks, therefore we shouldn't wear them. The first comment asked “do you wear shoes?”

If nothing else, the last year has highlighted both how wonderful people can be, and how horrific too. I keep reading that “the world has changed”. Of course it has – just like it does every day, for everybody.

So. I have a week off work. I'm a little giddy at the prospect at the moment – filling my head with all the things I won't get done. Apart from cutting the grass. If I don't get the grass cut, I'm fairly certain we could film another sequel to Jumanji in our back garden. For all I know, one of the Jonas brothers really has been living at the end of the garden for the last however many years.

I stepped back into the “interpals” foray one evening last week. It bills itself as a website for finding pen-pals. I thought it might be a good idea to build a bigger circle of online friends for myself, but quickly remembered why I walked away some time ago – within minutes several men and women had messaged me, inviting me to learn about Bitcoin, and a seemingly lovely chinese lady cut me off at “hello” (having not read my profile) because she was “only looking for husband”. I wondered if she was looking for a husband, or her specific husband... had she lost him? Had he run away? Was he sneaking around doing bitcoin deals behind her back?

I think maybe the best idea is to just write my words in the blog, and see who finds them. The internet is pretty good at connecting the dots between people all on it's own if you have a little faith in it (and tag the crap out of everything).

Maybe when we finally climb back out of lockdown, I'll explain my continued absence by leaving a note on the front door – “I have replaced my circle of real-world friends with bitcoin scam robots – they're surprisingly good listeners”.

In keeping with the “falling off the blogging horse” theme I seem to have been following recently, I can feel myself being slowly drawn back. It's curious how that happens. The more scientific might start talking about biorhythms. I'm more inclined to call it a state of continual distraction.

It's Friday morning. The last day working before a week off. I don't have any specific project work to get on with, so am doing research and development into skills I will need for an upcoming project. I always find it difficult to focus without a specific aim – I suppose it's a little like wandering without a compass.

I'm not entirely sure what next week will be filled with. I need to get the grass cut in the back garden, but beyond that I'm not sure. Some long walks with the rest of the family might be an idea – if I can get them out of the house. There are some nice circular walks nearby – through woods, over hills, and across fields.

While writing this (and sipping coffee) I'm listening to a Spotify playlist. Claire de Lune by Claude Debussy just started playing. It always reminds me of the movie “Frankie and Johnny” – where the lead characters finally find a moment of calm after a (quite wonderful) story filled with stress, uncertainty, and yearning.

(five minutes pass while I make a second coffee, and check on the washing machine)

The washing line is now completely full of clothes. By end of day there will be mountains of folded clothes all over the dining table. When the kids emerge I will set them to work – retrieving dry clothes from the line, and folding them (to a fashion) into piles for each person. There's no point me doing it – I no longer have a clue which clothes belong to whom. My daughters are now the same size as my other half. My simple brain has enough trouble distinguishing between “my clothes”, and “their clothes”, let alone “skinny fit t-shirt with cats on”, “black boy shorts”, “crimson leggings”, “black leggings”, and so on.

People tend to either smile knowingly, or frown when I tell them I live in a world of womens clothes, underwear, and makeup.

Anyway.

Better get on with some work.

I disconnected the automagic plumbing between Wordpress, Tumblr, and Substack this morning. No more “read more here” links. You just get to read my idiocy wherever you happen to read. It takes me a few moments to paste my words and hit publish.

In a perfect world, Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger, and Substack would be one entity – but we don't live in a perfect world, so I find myself straddling awkwardly across several platforms – mostly because I have friends in each place and guilt myself into never walking away.

Anyway.

It's Tuesday morning. I'm back at work – whatever “back” means any more. I suppose for me it means I'm sitting in the study, pretending to be busy. Filling in timesheets, sitting in conference calls, writing documents, and trying to appear knowledgeable. It all feels a bit strange.

My eldest daughter is two days into her new job. We are crossing all of our fingers and toes, which means it's quite difficult to get the most simple tasks done. The last few years have been a bit of an adventure for her to say the least. It's funny really – this “bringing up children” lark – all you can really do is set an example, and be there to pick them up and dust them down when things go wrong. I suppose realising that everybody falls down from time to time is a good lesson too.

I'm writing this at lunchtime, if you're wondering. I just stuffed a hot-cross-bun in my face, mostly because I can't be bothered to make something properly. Spotify is playing a James Taylor playlist in the background. It was suggested to me – I couldn't be bothered to look up anything else. I tend to find choosing music somewhat stressful, so usually go with whatever the algorithm in the cloud has chosen for me.

I shaved my hair off again yesterday with the clippers. I'm back to looking like a skinhead, but at least it's better than looking like a toilet brush. After finishing the job while bent over double in the middle of the garden (to avoid hair falling inside my clothes), I still had to have a shower – it turns out small pieces of hair are the itchiest substance in the known universe. While drying myself off, I burst out laughing at my reflection in the mirror – although I had next to no hair left, I had huge eyebrows. I looked like a Thunderbird puppet.

I should really go and make something proper to eat. I think there are some leftovers in the fridge from dinner last night.

wp:image /wp:image wp:html After planning an online event with some friends for the last couple of weeks, my other half arrived in the kitchen on Friday night and said “I've booked us all tickets to visit a National Trust place on Saturday to go for a walk”. I got halfway through saying “what time on Saturday?” before she furiously responded with “DON'T BOTHER!”.

Half an hour later I had asked others to help run the event in my place.

The walk was actually ok – it was good to get out in the fresh air, even if it was bitterly cold. After trudging perhaps four miles around the estate of an old house, we found a picnic bench near the car and huddled around packed lunches with our coats on, shivering while convincing ourselves it was “good to be out”.

Late last night I collapsed onto the sofa and tried to watch “The Expanse” again. I've so far watched the first episode twice (months apart), and now three quarters of the second episode. To say it's slow going is an understatement. I'm wondering quite how it has reached five seasons. There MUST be something redeeming about it, surely?

This morning was altogether different. The sun shone, the birds sang, and I walked into town with my eldest daughter while my other half took the younger girls to rugby practice. The entire escapade was really a distraction from her melting down over starting her new job tomorrow morning. I think it mostly worked.

We walked to the big park in the middle of town, avoiding crowds along the way. While standing waiting for coffee from the cafe (a rare treat), we were stunned at being the only people wearing masks. I'm still amazed at the ignorance, arrogance, thoughtlessness, and stupidity of seemingly the vast majority of people.

I nearly forgot – I rented “Gozilla vs Kong” (or is it the other way around?) from Amazon Prime late last week. It's fun, in a completely non-memorable kind of way. It was exciting, loud, and had almost no story to speak of. It strikes me that a lot of movies have fallen into that hole recently.

Anyway. It's Easter Sunday afternoon, there's a huge pile of easter eggs next to me that I can't quite face, and Miss Seventeen is cooking roast dinner. Perhaps it's time to find a book and a quiet corner.

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wp:image {“id”:2107009292,“sizeSlug”:“large”,“linkDestination”:“none”} /wp:image After Wordpress decided to change the way they monkey with text, I'm scampering back to Substack, and thinking “sod you then”, while pointing a rolled up newspaper in the general direction of Automattic. It's not the biggest annoyance in the world, but it's annoying all the same. And that's why you're seeing this post as an excerpt, instead of the whole thing. You'll have to click the little link at the bottom to go read the rest of it.

It's Thursday morning – the last day of work before the Easter holiday. Four days off, before another four days working, then a week off. I started to write “another four days in the office”, but then realised I no longer work in an office – I still haven't gotten used to that.

The “working from home” experience is slowly changing for me. During lockdown the house was always fairly busy – with teenagers doing college work, and my other half working from home several days a week too. Now the rest of the world has started to wake up again, I'm slowly finding myself alone for the majority of the day. Some people might have problems with the seclusion, but I quite like it. I get more done when distractions are removed.

While writing this, I'm beginning to think “I should really go make myself some lunch” – not because I'm hungry – more because it's the thing I should be doing. It's amazing how many things I do during an average day because “it's the thing I should be doing”. Washing up, washing clothes, putting things away, sweeping up, picking up after people, and so on. I suppose in a strange sort of way, going running fell into the same hole – the drive to “be healthy” – to fit in with the image that people are supposed to. I guess it pays to look after yourself though – very few people aspire to being a couch potato.

Anyway.

I really SHOULD go and get some lunch. I fear it will involve a walk to the corner shop, because we've run out of cheese (unless some has magically metamorphosed in the fridge).

wp:image /wp:image After the craziness of the last several weeks, today the world seems to be slowing down somewhat. I'm starting to judge how busy each day has been by the amount of notes scribbled in my bullet journal – yesterday was a “two page” day.

I completely forgot that Easter is approaching. I don't have a religious bone in my body, but I'll happily take the chocolate, and the days off work. I imagine I'll end up cutting the lawn, and repairing the bike shed roof while I'm off. Fun times. We have a new (to us) lawn mower – we don't know if it will work yet – we got it free from another family that had replaced theirs a few months back. It has rained ever since – this week has brought the first successive dry days since before Christmas.

At the beginning of the week I was put in charge of the work “social” video call. We started doing the social calls after the office closed – so we don't feel quite so remote from each other. I had to think of something to talk about – to go around everybody asking. I went with “what movie, board game, or book have you most enjoyed during lockdown?”. I wrote down a huge list as people reeled off their favourites. I suppose the biggest take-aways were that everybody loved “The Queen's Gambit”, and those that had read “Ready Player Two” thought it was pretty awful.

In between working and doing chores this week I've begun to reach out to one or two old friends on the internet. I've been absent from just about everything for months – it's nice to find out how people are doing, and to catch up a little.

Anyway. Time to go make the two hundredth coffee of the day. Yes – I'm back on the coffee wagon. About my third or fourth since breakfast time – not two hundredth. I'll be fine.

p.s. one more thing – in the interests of ruining everybody's day – Unsplash (purveyors of “free” stock photos) were acquired by Getty yesterday – so say goodbye to free images eventually.