wordsmith.social/jonbeckett

I have the rest of the week off work!

Because I've worked at the same company for years, I've pretty much maxed out the holiday allocation – accruing 25 days per calendar year. We have to take Christmas, Easter and so on from the allocation, but still – it amounts to about 4 weeks during the year. On top of that, we are allowed to carry over up to 5 unused days – or up to 10 under extraordinary circumstances.

Long story short – after working on big projects two years running, I arrived at the start of this year with over 30 days in my back pocket.

I'm almost giddy with excitement – it's still only 9:40am – I've tidied the lounge up, cleared the dishes in the kitchen, emptied the dishwasher, and put two loads of clothes through the washing machine already.

I have no plans for the week, short of spending time helping our youngest with home-school work when she needs it, and (apparently) recording a work-out for her PE coursework later. I imagine she's going to turn into the coach from Glee this afternoon, and laugh at my pathetic attempts to follow instruction.

I'm sitting at the dining room table, surrounded by piles of folded laundry. It seems stunning to me that even though we have gone nowhere and done nothing for months, the washing machine is till being run into the ground every day. I'm starting to wonder if the bottom of the laundry basket is entirely mythical.

Following my youngest daughter signing up for the “Couch to 5K” programme through school, she has to complete the training runs each week, and her sisters promised to help her with it. We're at week three, and I've already run with her twice after they no-showed on her.

Tonight we ran around town in the dark after I finished work – completing the week three run according to the programme, and then effectively doubling it. She was tired at the end, but then she's starting from a position far ahead of her sisters. It says something that she was up and ready to run before breakfast this morning, and all she could get from her sisters was grunts from their bedroom doors.

Tomorrow she has to organise and run a workout session – and film it. Apparently I may end up as a ginea pig for that too – given that I have a few days off work. If our wonderful next door neighbour looks over the fence tomorrow, she'll see me throwing kettle bells around, skipping, and collapsing in a heap somewhere.

It just occurred to me that I should write something on the blog. Somehow I've fallen away from writing nearly every day, to writing every few days. Perhaps the promise I made to myself to read books, watch movies, and spend time with my family is working.

I've been reading “The Queen's Gambit” over the last several evenings – I've nearly finished it now. It's every bit as good as the TV series, but perhaps I still have rose tinted glasses – the TV series was incredible. The next book on the heap is Ready Player Two – which seems like a re-tread of Ready Player One. I'll reserve judgement until I've read it properly – I snuck a little of it at Christmas while sitting quietly in the lounge one night.

We're still working our way through the box of movies scribbled on raffle tickets. We watched “Eurovision”, and “Bumblebee” last week.

Last night we organised a quiz on Zoom for family and friends. It was fun – a lot of the older family members had never been on a webcam before, so doing tech support for the first half an hour was a bit of a struggle. We got there in the end. As always, the “after party” was probably more fun than the quiz itself – the drinks and snacks came out, and we all got to say hello to people we had not seen for years in some cases.

Anyway.

I have a book to go finish reading. I'll write again soon!

p.s. the other blog at Medium is doing really well. It's a bit scary.

My middle daughter began celebrating her seventeenth birthday this morning. How did that happen? Where did all the time go? The last time I looked she was holding my leg at the infant school gate.

She dragged us all out of bed early to sit around the breakfast table and watch her open cards and presents. She has no idea a local pub will be delivering pizza to the house tonight.

Sometimes you feel like your life has been standing still for months, or even years – and then you look around and wonder what happened.

In other news, I somehow managed not to write anything in the blog for the last four days. I don't know how that happened either. There's a lot of things I don't appear to know much about any more.

I went for a run around town with my youngest daughter this morning. She was supposed to be running with her sisters, but neither of them got out of bed. At 8am she appeared in the bedroom doorway, asking if I might go with her instead. My other half smiled at me.

She's starting a “Couch to 5k” course with her school, and has been doing the official training programme with her sisters. Here's the thing though – she's far fitter than them. I proved it this morning – rather than do any of the interval training she has been doing, we just went out on a long slow jog – to see what she was really capable of.

She did three and a half kilometres. A few more weeks of the interval training, and I think she'll get to five kilometres easily. As we passed a footpath that leads back towards home, I handed her my front door key and carried on to extend my distance a little – running for another three kilometres or so.

I love running early on a morning, before the rest of the world has emerged. This morning the streets were almost deserted, save for one or two people walking dogs, or out running themselves. I always say hello when passing fellow runners – they usually respond with a smile – occasionally they take no notice, and carry on frowning their way down the road. Grumpy buggers.

After getting home and having a shower I set about helping my daughter eat the remaining crumpets from the fridge – I bought them earlier in the week, during my first visit to the supermarket in about a month. I imagine I'll be returning to town in a bit to get some more groceries. I'm not entirely sure I want to brave the cold again.

It's been very quiet indeed around here for the last few days. After a scare mid-week where my youngest daughter had to do a COVID test, we have stayed holed up in the house for almost the entire time. I walked to the supermarket last night to get groceries, but other than that we have gone nowhere and done nothing.

I'm beginning to understand what Stir Crazy really means.

Of course the huge distraction this week has been history unfolding in America – and I've been trying to do my usual fence sitting act – to read and watch a variety of news sources. It's so hard – trying to have any empathy at all for those I know that think of themselves as republican. Their ideals and values pretty much go against everything I know – and yet I try not to say anything untoward.

While reading an interview yesterday expressing disbelief that so many people believe the stream of lies, falsehoods, and fraud coming from so many in positions of power, I couldn't help thinking about all the religious people I know, and thinking how two faced everybody is. How is believing in election fraud any different than believing in a magical creator figure in the sky that gets credit for anything good, and is escaped from the argument for anything bad?

People believe what they want to believe, and there's nothing we can really do about it.

The world is just tremendously broken. Perhaps we're fortunate that it doesn't go spectacularly wrong more often.

I stayed up most of last night watching history unfold on the other side of the world – watching what surely must be the end of Donald Trump. Now I wonder what will come of the people that listen to him, follow him, and are inspired by him.

I'm only really connected to the unfolding news through the wonderful people I know that live in America. I've come to know their various hopes and dreams, and witnessed their frustrations over the past few years.

It's a strange experience – being on the outside, looking in.

It occurs to me that we are all re-writing our rule books at the moment – or at least the rule books we hope most people follow – the rule books that govern the things we do, the things we don't do, and the things we never even contemplate doing.

People are quick to blame social networks as an “enabler”. While the algorithmic timeline has played a part in surrounding us with, and amplifying concordant views, I can't help feeling that most blame is often employed to shirk responsibility.

There is too much entitlement, ignorance, and apathy in the world at the moment. If everybody cared a little more, and had the courage to stand up for what's right a little more often, the world would be a very different place.

Our youngest daughter started coughing yesterday afternoon. Even though we suspected a run around town with her sister was the cause (it's bitterly cold outside), we waited for a couple of hours before making any decisions.

Shortly after dinner she was still coughing, so booked the COVID test for first thing this morning.

Of course she seems fine now, but we can't take any chances – my other half works in a school – the contact tracing would be insane should she show any symptoms.

We're therefore stuck in the house for the next day or two – not that it makes much difference to me. I've been no further than the corner shop in the last six weeks (if you discount running around town in the early hours of the morning now and again – avoiding anybody and everybody en-route).

I suppose you might say we are exercising “an abundance of caution” – unlike so many families that seem to think COVID is either a hoax, or something that only affects others. It's so frustrating. I've come to the point of trying not to look at Facebook, because I quickly become annoyed at the widespread entitlement, bullshit, and outright lies.

wp:heading {“level”:3} ### Returning to work

/wp:heading I returned to work this morning – or rather, I sat in the junk room and unfolded my work laptop on the desk, instead of my own. Returning after time away is always a bit strange – chatting with co-workers about the holidays, clearing e-mails, filing timesheets, and so on.

Mid-way through the morning a friendly Amazon delivery driver knocked on the door – leaving a number of small packages on the doorstep – the new bullet journal, and some gel pens ordered last night. I have no idea where the half-decent pens go in this house. I had a lightbulb moment, and retrieved a posh coffee tin from the recycling in the kitchen to put the pens in.

We tend to keep nice jars and tins, and find uses for them. There is a food shop in town that re-fills empty containers with seeds, pulses, dried fruit, and so on. Throughout lockdown we have arrived with bags of empty jars, and now have all manner of basic ingredients lined up on the kitchen worktop. It's like an ecologically conscious mad scientist's laboratory. I have never found a good use for the coffee tins other than as pen tidies.

wp:heading {“level”:3} ### The bullet journal

/wp:heading The bullet journal was interesting. I had ordered it a couple of days before, and didn't really look properly – I searched Amazon, saw the brand name, and hit the “buy now” button. The book that arrived looks very much like a bullet journal, but isn't a “real” one – if that makes any sense. I managed to order a “dotted A5 notebook”. The same company makes the much fetishized “Bullet Journal” notebooks. They are the same shape, the same colour, but have the words embossed into the cover, and have some special pre-printed pages inside. I shrugged, and got on with filling out the various bits and pieces I needed by hand. No problem.

I'm not quite sure what caused me to do it, but at lunchtime I headed to Amazon and thought it might be worth posting a review of the notebook – to warn others of the mistake I had made. And then I saw the comments. Oh. My. Word. I wasn't the only person that made the mistake. It turns out just about every Karen that writes a bullet journal had also made the same mistake, and they were having a collective melt-down in the comments – complaining that the book they had bought (that isn't a Bullet Journal) isn't a Bullet Journal. I kept reading for quite some time, and then started to feel guilty about being amused by other people's despair, so stopped.

After wandering to the corner shop – kitted out in my trusty Star Wars facemask (you read that right) – I bought some bread, made some really quite rubbish cheese sandwiches, and then started taking down the Christmas decorations. While the kids gleefully started disasembling the tree, I headed outside with the ladder to take the lights off the house. I was only out there for about ten minutes, but took an hour to warm back up. I swear – it was about -20C up the damn ladder. You know when it's so cold your knuckles start to hurt when you bend your fingers ?

wp:heading {“level”:3} ### The Sex book

/wp:heading While lifting decoration boxes back into the attic, and re-arranging things up there, I discovered something rather remarkable. The Madonna “Sex” book.

Back in the 1990s Madonna released an album called “Erotica”, and in the lead-up to it's release, published a book about sex. The book was immediately notorious – one of the tabloid newspapers received a leaked set of the photos, and published massively censored versions of them – suspecting that they had been stolen from Madonna. Of course when the book arrived, it landed like an atom bomb, and pushed the new album straight to No.1 all over the world.

The book has sat in our attic for the last 20 years – and before that survived two house moves. Back when I was single, and had my own apartment, I probably had the book on the bookshelf – I really don't remember.

I wonder if the book is worth anything?

My other half just got back from visiting her family, who we have not seen since the end of last summer due to the lockdown. They met at a National Trust property in the middle of nowhere to go for a walk, and exchanged Christmas presents in the car park. I can't help smiling – it must have looked like the most festive mafia handover ever.

I now have two new books to read! (to add to the mountain that got higher on Christmas Day, and is now higher again).

The first book is a thriller called “Dark Matter” by Blake Crouch:

wp:quote
> 'Are you happy in your life?' > > Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. Before he awakes to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before the man he's never met smiles down at him and says, 'Welcome back.' > > In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible. > > Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch /wp:quote The second book is a historical dramatisation called “Remarkable Creatures” by Tracy Chevalier (she of “Girl with a Pearl Earring” fame):

wp:quote
> Mary Anning may be young and uneducated, but she has “the eye”. Scouring the windswept Jurassic coast near Lyme Regis, she find the fossils nobody else can, making discoveries that will shake the scientific world of the early 19th century. But science is a male-dominated arena, and there are many who disapprove... > > She finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot: unmarried, middle-aged and middle class, and a fellow fossil enthusiast. If they can weather differences in their age and standing, and overcome professional envy, will true friendship prove the rarest find of all? > > Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier /wp:quote I'm looking forward to reading both of them, but have to get through “Ready Player Two”, and “The Ickabog” before then.

I have so many books still unread on the shelf behind me. “Rotherweird”, “Night Circus”, “A Gentleman in Moscow”, “Snow Crash”, “You”, “We”... and they are just the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe this year should be the year of reading – when I try to take a step back from the computer on an evening and lose myself in all these unread books.