wordsmith.social/jonbeckett

I walked into town after lunch with two of my daughters – a “mental health walk” – an escape from the walls that have been our prisoner for several weeks. It was good to get out of the house, if only for an hour.

We walked to the big park in town – mostly curious to take a look at the river that burst it's banks last week. It's receding now, but that hasn't stopped the ducks and swans from taking ownership of a huge swathe of the riverbank. I quietly walked up to some of the swans, who showed no fear at all – walking slowly towards me as I approached. My eldest daughter backed away, making worried noises – she had a run in with a swan a few years ago while trying to take a picture of it.

The park was mostly quiet – predictable, given that it was a weekday – but also because it was so cold. After leaving the house snow began falling, and got heavier during the time we were out – beginning to settle on the ground. By the time we got home my face had become numb.

It was good to get out though. The cold weather seemed to remove the idiots that think the Corona Virus doesn't apply to them. It's strange how some people are more fearful of the cold than a deadly pandemic.

I found myself in an online debate of sorts with a particular kind of idiot last night, and something occurred to me. The people that complain about political bias, unfair reporting, and support conspiracy theories tend to do so because they have actively chosen to narrow the opinions they take notice of to those they agree with. It's helped along by the very same algorithmic timeline they also complain about – because they fear missing out on anything. Figure that out – they fear missing out on the very same stories they don't want to see.

Anyway.

It's getting late, and I have a meeting first thing tomorrow. I need to sleep.

I started the week wondering if I would have anything to do – exploring a research and development project, but not having anything concrete to get on with. The entire world seems to be on a go-slow at the moment. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when the world finally wakes from this impenetrable fog. Slowly but surely as the week progressed work appeared. It's funny how the cogs of the universe work sometimes.

We ordered pizza from a nearby pub that has been delivering during lockdown, and watched a movie tonight. It was a celebration of sorts – the girls came to live with us 13 years ago today. I announced our plans for dinner earlier in the evening, and a cheer rang out throughout the house.

We watched “The Greatest Showman” – the Huge Ackman movie (sorry – Night at the Museum joke). I've never been a huge fan of the movie, but will admit to getting sucked into it. I've seen it twice now – both times I sat down without really wanting to watch it, and ending up being quite affected.

I've been drinking. We ordered a “deal” from the pub – several pizzas, garlic bread, and a bottle of Prosecco. Two glasses – that's how much it takes these days to make me as giddy as a schoolboy (or a cheap date, depending on how grown up you want your frame of reference).

It's supposed to snow here all day on Sunday – but before that, we're getting our twenty ninth year of rain. I imagine we'll be clearing snow from the escape raft I've been planning on building. Seriously though – it rained all day again, and is supposed to rain all day tomorrow too. You would think the weather man would be bored of making all the rain by now.

Anyway. Enough nonsense. I have lots more nothing to be getting on with.

I stopped drinking coffee yesterday morning (or the night before, in the interests of accuracy). I've had a headache all day – which I suppose is somewhat predictable after drinking coffee like a funnel for the last twenty something years.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I've stopped drinking coffee before. For some reason whenever I'm sick I revert to tea. I can't remember being sick since about eighteen months ago. The autumn before COVID launched itself across the world I was sick as a dog for about two months.

Anyway.

On reflection, today wasn't the best day to not have coffee nearby. I got thrown in at the deep end with work – assigned to work on something that I had little or no knowledge of. An entire technology platform that I've somehow missed or avoided for the last couple of years. Not any more.

I wrote a long-ass post over at Medium about detoxing from caffeine. I ended up writing down a horrifying list of some of the things that have caffeine in them. In the end, I just ended up wondering how many 500g bars of dairy milk add up to the same as cup of coffee. I could totally chug chunks of chocolate instead of coffee. Straight swap. Sure, I would have no teeth, a fat gut, and be covered in spots, but I would be happy.

I'm sure I'll cheer up by tomorrow.

I got the clippers out this evening and cut all my hair off again. It was approaching “toilet brush” levels of sticky-uppiness, so I thought I should do something about it. Given that it's been raining for the last twenty eight years, I stripped off to the waist, and leaned through the shower door to complete the job – running the clippers endlessly through my hair in the blind hope of cutting it somewhere near evenly.

My other half told me it looked ok. I don't know if to trust her or not. Thinking about it, my youngest daughter didn't explode in laughter, so it must be somewhere near sensible.

After cutting my hair, I clippered my eyebrows too. It turns out eyebrows are a pretty good indicator of actually how old somebody really is. There's some sort of genetic switch in men that turns eyebrows from “fairly neat and tidy” into “wild and ridiculous” at some point between 40 and 50 years old.

Most people have no idea I'm nearly 48. They see the skinhead idiot in selfies and somehow think I'm 10 years younger. I imagine if they spent any time with me, they would realise this level of cynicism can only be formed over many decades.

Anyway.

I appear to have gotten away with the whole caffeine detox/headache thing. My head has been clear all day – and I've been nowhere near as tired as yesterday. Perhaps I'm genetically pre-disposed to be able to deal with dropping things out of my diet without my brain having a melt-down about it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a book waiting to be read.

I had been entertaining the idea of escaping at lunchtime, and going for a walk. A few miles out in the fresh air on my own with a podcast in my ears. The weather has other ideas – it has rained pretty consistently all morning. We are forecast snow next weekend.

I have half an hour of my lunch break left. Half an hour to fall down an internet rabbit hole and get nothing done. Spotify is busing playing “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” from a random playlist chosen to fill the silence.

I switched out the theme of my blog before work started this morning – simplifying it enormously. I'm not sure why. I have a suspicion that most people live in the Wordpress or Tumblr interfaces, or email subsciptions anyway – they don't venture to the web to look at much any more.

Writing over at Medium has kind of dried up for the moment. Probably a good thing, because writing when you have nothing to write about is death to creativity and inspiration. I have no doubt I could churn out cookie cutter articles like many citizen journalists seem to, and make a tidy living from it – I'm not sure I would be able to live with myself though. I would rather tell personal stories than parrot manufactured idiocy.

I'm drinking too much coffee at the moment. I imagine boredom has a lot to do with it. Perhaps I'll get some ginger tea, and substitute out coffee for a few weeks. While thinking about health, I weighed myself this morning. I'm up three pounds from where I was a couple of months ago. I wonder how quickly I can drop it again? Watch this space.

I'm not working today, so have spent much of the day juggling home school assistance with efforts to encourage my eldest daughter to step outside her self imposed seclusion. She arrived in the lounge late last night on something of a downer, so we spent an hour firing ideas at her like a machine gun.

Long story short – she has a blog again, and has been dipping a toe into online chat rooms (or rather, lurking in online chat rooms, petrified of taking herself off mute).

She's currently sitting at her computer, trying to write a first blog post. It's painful watching her – I had to walk away. It's interesting how some people (read: me) can empty our head into the keyboard and magic a thousand words of nonsense almost at will – and some find the extraction of each and every word tortuous. Anxiety doesn't help.

I think she's planning on writing about her struggles with anxiety, lock down, and life in general. I helped get her setup with the blog, and write the about page – the first “real” post could take some time. If you have a minute today, go visit Daisiella, and click follow – getting some immediate feedback will hopefully help her see that there is a world out there, and get her over the start line.

I started writing this post on Thursday, and provisionally titled it “Thursday”. I got no further than writing the title before I was called away. I then re-opened it on Friday evening, and got as far as re-titling it “Friday” before being called away again. Let's hope the third re-titling leads to more than just the title being written. It's looking good so far.

It's been a bit of a day.

Since moving into our house a little under 20 years ago, a walk-in cupboard has existed in the corner of the kitchen that has become the classic Monica junk cupboard (you need to have seen a specific episode of Friends to get the joke). Well today that cupboard no longer exists – where it once stood we now have a neat, tidy larder.

I spent much of the day fixing plaster, re-painting, and putting shelves up – covering an entire wall with shelving. I have some skin missing on a palm, and a pretty good spinter buried in a finger to deal with, but otherwise – just glad to have gotten it done.

I guess the idea is to get rid of much of the food from the kitchen cupboards, and use them for saucepans, and so on. Like most families, we end up with tins and jars of this and that buried at the back of cupboards for months or years – and they end up being thrown away. Hopefully having all the food in sight will stop that happening.

It took our eldest daughter no time at all to realise she can visit the new food store without being spotted walking past the living room doorway.

(ten minutes pass while I fall down a Spotify rabbit-hole, adding a number of playlists to my short-list)

We signed up for a family plan on Spotify this week. Having gone nowhere and done nothing for a year, and in spite of spending more than the price of a car to save the cat's life, we have somehow managed to put some money back in the bank. A family spotify account was suddenly affordable. I think the kids are just happy that their Echos can now find anything and everything they might ask them to play.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find the cereals (if they have not been hidden in the new food cupboard), and make myself some supper.

I promise to write a less pedestrian post soon.

It's not so much a case of “falling off the blogging bike” any more – more a case of “has anybody seen the damn bike?”. Or maybe “can I even remember how to ride it?”. It's not like I'm pushing away for any particular reason, or even that I'm “pushing away”. Life is just happening.

Was it John Lennon that said “life is what happens while you're making other plans” ?

I'm a bit annoyed with myself, to be honest. I started to reach out to a few people online recently – following a few new voices. After an evening of “being brave”, I've hardly been back. I hope those I followed don't think badly of me. Perhaps this afternoon I'll carve out some time to go read and comment on their recent posts.

I'm sitting in the junk room, sipping coffee, and listening to Sara Bareilles. I should be working on some writing for the work website, but inspiration seems to have deserted me – hence writing this post instead.

Oh – random update – I hung a new door last week, armed only with a chisel, a screwdriver, a hammer, and a sanding machine. There's a back-story here – once upon a time our eldest daughter had the room with the door that needed replacing. She once kicked it off it's hinges in temper, and I patched it up. A few weeks ago one of our neighbours advertised a door to anybody that wanted it – of the same design as the broken bedroom door. My other half got the kids to go and fetch it, and it's stood in our hallway until this week. Here's the thing – door frames are very rarely square, and doors are often cut to fit the door frame they are in. I had to re-shape the frame, the door, re-position the (new) hinges, and re-position the locking plate in order to make it fit. I did mention all I had was a chisel and a sander, didn't I?

I think we're all beyond stir crazy now. We've been holed up in the house together since late autumn. Little annoyances have begun to pull at the loose ends of each other. The children often contribute nothing in terms of help around the house, and then expect everything in return. It's not going to end well for them.

It's been a remarkably quiet week in the Beckett household. I suppose the one stand-out achievement of the week has been gaining sight of the bottom of the clothes basket. It took two determined days of running the washing machine non-stop, but at least now I know there is an end to the clothes washing nightmare. I also know that the end does not last.

I've had the week off work. While not washing dishes, clothes, or putting things away behind people, I've been doing an awful lot of nothing at all. It turns out that while you're locked down, there's not much you can do to amuse yourself.

In the middle of the week my youngest daughter roped me into recording a workout with her for a school project. Five minutes of madness taking part in all manner of activities that could be completed in our living room. I learned a number of gravity assisted exercises, and wanted to die a few minutes later. Who knew that working from home for a year would make me quite so unfit?

I'm supposed to go for a run in the morning, but it's below freezing tonight, and it's due to snow tomorrow. I imagine the footpaths will be turned into ice rinks. I just checked the weather forecast – the snow isn't due until 8am, so maybe we'll be able to run before it arrives.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and raid the cupboards for something to eat. I'll probably end up eating cereal for supper – it's my “go to” late night snack.

I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden as the new President of the United States yesterday evening, and then fell down an internet rabbit hole this morning watching Angela Gorman and Katy Perry on YouTube.

It feels like the United States has suddenly exhaled – and much of the rest of the world has too. While watching footage of the celebrations yesterday evening across America, I remembered news coverage of the election, and of a young mother celebrating in the street with her daughter as Biden was projected the winner – with tears streaming down her face.

It turns out hope is pretty damn emotive.

Of course it's easy to think of those I know – who so wished for this outcome – as “everybody”. We have to remember that seventy million people voted for none of this to happen. I guess it's their turn to suck it up. I do wonder if the Trump experiment will stop any sort of republican get into power for a very long time though. People have long memories.

Over here, after having a conservative government for many years, several generations of younger people eventually forced change, and we ended up with a socialist government for the better part of a decade. Of course now those younger people have gotten older, earned their money, and no longer want to share it – they have become conservative, and now don't want any part of the socialism they pined for during their youth.

I remember my Grandfather once telling me that politics goes in cycles every eight or ten years – that history repeats itself again and again – that change is driven by the young.

I've never quite understood why people feel the need to take sides in any sort of debate. I sometimes watch political debates on TV, or read news stories, and wonder quite what happens to people – to fall in step with their “gang”. It reminds me a lot of people with faith in the various religions – being told what to believe, what to think, what to value.

What happened to people having their own mind? What happened to watching, reading, and deciding for yourself?

I think the most maddening thing I commonly see is people complaining that the news is biased – when what they really mean is “anything that doesn't agree with what I think is biased”.

Anyway.

While writing this, a little voice perched on my shoulder, whispering “you shouldn't really write about politics and religion, you know”...