write.as/jonbeckett

I signed out of the far flung building I occupied the 5th floor of at 6pm this evening and trudged back to my temporary residence through the puddles brought about by overnight rain. After negotiating a seemingly never-ending sequence of road-crossings, I made it back to my hotel, checked in, threw off my clothes, and debated where I might get something to eat.

I had all the intentions in the world of walking around the corner to the local pizza restaurant and ordering something the size of a garbage can lid. As I approached, I saw the restaurant was two thirds full of people, and imagined the next hour spent sitting on my own at a “Billy no mates” table, shovelling pizza down my face while awkward couples had first dates or sat opposite each other in silence after twenty years of annoying each other.

I walked straight past the pizza restaurant, and on to the local grocery store. Sushi for one. Again. While leaving the grocery store, the guy on door security unknowingly earned himself a starring role in this blog post. He was saying goodbye to people as they left – but I noticed after a few moments that he only said goodbye to pretty women – nobody else. Asshole.

My evening didn’t end at the grocery store. While shovelling said sushi into my face, an old friend appeared in my phone. While enjoying myself tremendously in my so-so hotel room, she talked me into wandering down to the hotel bar in order to report back on the people frequenting it. At first I wasn’t going to – and told her as such – but then thought “what the f*ck”. Five minutes later I had brushed my teeth (I’m still not sure why), and wandered downstairs.

After a few minutes sitting on my own in the corner of a conspicuously empty hotel bar, waiting for Scarlet Johansson to arrive as she had done in “Lost in Translation”, a morbidly obese woman turned the corner on crutches, along with a hassled looking helper. She could have had the entire hotel bar area to sit in, but chose the seat right next to me. I pretended to look at my phone as she approached.

Her stay next to me was short-lived. Apparently the lounge seating was far lower than anticipated. She laughed as she nearly rolled over backwards, having fallen several feet onto the chair. Her crutches flew in all directions. It was all her helper could do to lift her back out of the chair, and off to a table with normal chairs across the bar from us.

While wondering what might happen next, a paid of geriatric Hells Angels wearing chrome bike helmets walked past the hotel window next to me. The guy had a long white beard. I wondered if this was what Santa did during the summer – touring mid-range hotels in the north of England.

A few minutes later the hotel bar was empty once more – save for me, and one young guy propping the bar up. He was perhaps twenty years old, and trying rather too hard to look like Raimi Malik. The black hoodie was a total give-away. He drank orange juice while I sipped at my second Cidre. No – I have not spelled it incorrectly – its the latest fizzy apple juice from the same company that make a very expensive lager. Apparently if you spell it wrong, you can charge more for it.

While sitting in the corner of the bar, thinking about the hacker wannabe opposite, I looked up and down myself, and realised I’ve entered the “can’t give a shit” phase of dressing to go out. I guess in the Mickey Flanagan scale of things, I was “out”, but I wasn’t “out out” – so sitting in a pair of scruffy jeans and a polo shirt was passable, right? I remember our eldest daughter once commenting that I always looked “cool” – but she was only nine years old at the time. Maybe I’ve found my appreciative audience?

While sitting, daydreaming about clothes, hackers, and hells angels, the conversation going on from the overweight woman and her helper pricked my ears. She appeared to know a LOT about serial killers. She started listing how long the prison terms had been for various killers – seemingly from memory. Who even does that? Sure, you learn your times tables, but who learns how long each serial killer has been banged up for?

Ah. More distraction. An amazing Indian family walked past the window. The thing that struck me about them was how beautiful the women in the family were – and how much effort must have gone into their appearance. I’m usually something of a luddite when it comes to makeup and hair, but all the girls wandering past were immaculate. I don’t mean that in a creepy way – they were just distractingly beautiful. I spotted a teenage girl in the middle of the group, walking along without a flicker of interest or emotion, and I smiled. She was surrounded by younger siblings who talked non-stop, jumped, danced, and ran their way along the pavement around her – all elbows, awkwardness and teeth. It reminded me of my own children.

I called home.

While talking to various members of my family as the phone was passed from person to person, another woman arrived in the bar on crutches, and I started to wonder if I attract injured people. She vanished almost before she appeared.

After putting the phone down, I noticed a new girl had arrived at the bar. A pretty girl. I’m not sure if she was checking in, or had a problem with her room. As she danced back and forth between staff members, I noticed something odd. She was the first really striking girl to appear at the bar in some time, and within moments, a guy appeared out of nowhere, and was standing at the bar – obviously to be seen. How shallow can people get?

While messaging a friend, amused at the attention seekers antics, the entire game got turned up a notch. A group of South African men arrived in the bar. Nothing says confidence and gutter humor quite like a group of white South African men in a hotel bar. One of them commented about talking to a girl during the day, and getting something in her eye (while he feigned masturbating) – the rest of the group fell about laughing. Apparently it was funny.

Moments later a midde-aged blonde lady wandered up and asked if the seat next to me was free. She sat down, and suddenly I found myself caught. I had nearly finished my drink, but didn’t want to leave her sitting near the group of sexist, misogynist idiots across the way on her own. I nursed my drink for some minutes until her husband (I’m guessing) appeared. I quietly got up, excused myself, and made for the elevator, where I met pretty girl obviously avoiding the bar.

“Which floor would you like?”

“The second. Thankyou” – I smiled.

And that’s where my adventure ends. For now.

An hour later I’m in the hotel room once more, sitting in front of the same laptop I’ve been sitting in front of all day, writing this. I must be mad.

Late one night over the weekend I decided to delete everything I had uploaded to Google Music, and start over. I guess it was a “nuclear” option of sorts. A chance to start again.

Where on earth do you start though? I started with classics. Classic singers, classic songwriters, and classic performers. Given that I’ve just finished watching the TV series “Roadies”, the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Lindsey Buckingham were foremost in my mind. I plugged “Simple Man” into Spotify, and let it help guide me through related songs and artists.

The big problem with trying to find music organically is that you end up listening to it for hours and hours, instead of writing anything down. You vanish down ratholes in particular corners of history – following bands and musicians that crossed paths.

And yet somehow those hours spent – often early in the morning – are worth it, because music connects to us at such a more primal level than movies, or photography. How many times have you heard somebody tell a story relating a particular song to an event in their life?

It’s been a day. I’m not really sure where to start. I’m guessing the beginning might be as good a place as any.

I was supposed to be working from home this morning. After the usual morning routine, filled with child wrangling, breakfast and lunch making, and washing up, I sat at the desk in the junk room and fired the work laptop up. Oh look – an email. Oh look – an important meeting in 15 minutes in the conference room, 3 miles away.

Crap.

I slipped my shoes on, jumped on my bike, and started pedalling alarmingly quickly against the trophy mum school run traffic that was now heading away from dropping off Ruperts and Tabathas – no doubt headed for coffee mornings and clothes shopping dates. I now know that it takes me 11 minutes to reach the office from home if I unload my legs entirely. I used to be able to do it faster, but then I used to have a bike with gears.

Also – why is it that traffic will always conspire to cause you to stop at every damn junction when you’re in a hurry? On the way home from the office I didn’t see a single car. Half an hour earlier you might have thought the Cannonball Run was being held through the centre of town.

So. I arrived home an hour later, with an hour to spare until leaving for the railway station. An hour to write a document, and to finish packing my bag. While drawing diagrams and typing furiously, Miss 16 creaked her bedroom door open, and sat opposite me, rubbing her eyes.

“Good morning!”

“Morning”

She sat quietly watching me.

“Is there something wrong?”

“My computer won’t connect to the internet – it says ‘No Signal Detected’”

I agreed to have a look after finishing the mad sprint to write the document. It turned out “No signal detected” was actually the monitor that had lost connection to the computer – nothing to do with the computer at all. One hard reboot later, and everything was fine in the world once more.

The four hour train ride north was almost entirely unremarkable. I say almost, because there seemed to be a preponderance of backpackers everywhere. It finally dawned on me that they were all headed home from the Glastonbury music festival. Note to self – buy shares in glitter, and face-paint.

After arriving at the hotel this evening I checked in, unpacked my bags, and then walked to the nearby grocery store to get something to eat. Sushi, fruit, and juice seemed like a much better option than sitting alone in a pizza restaurant on a Monday night.

I might go down to the hotel lobby later for a drink, but it’s very much a “might” at the moment. I’m not sure I have much tolerance for loud travelling salesman tonight, or pretty marketing girls who know they are pretty. If I do appear, I’ll be the quiet guy sat in the corner with the laptop, typing like fury.

It’s only 6:30pm. What the hell am I going to do for the next four hours ?

Tomorrow lunchtime I will make the familiar journey on foot to the local railway station, head first towards Kings Cross in central London, and then on to the north of England. The better part of another week spent living from a hotel room far from home, sitting among strangers in a foreign office, and pretending to fit in.

I will survive throughout the week on pre-packaged salad bought from nearby convenience stores, cartons of orange juice, instant coffee, and bars of chocolate. I could opt to sit alone in restaurants and watch the world go by, but there’s something terrifically lonely about watching first dates and fat businessmen while eating your “pizza for one”.

I could sit in the hotel lobby with a free drink, and pour my head into a succession of inane blog posts, but that would mean ignoring the loud, obnoxious salesmen that tend to frequent hotel bars, or the sanctimonious cretins complaining to hotel check-in staff about less than stellar free WiFi.

Therefore I will in all likelihood sit in my room with my laptop for company. I will pay for a half-decent connection to the internet, and jump down the infinite rabbit hole each evening, in search of myself as much as anybody else.

Expect navel gazing. Lots of navel gazing.

Contrary to the rather misleading title, this post is not about a personal disaster resulting in “hitting rock bottom” – it’s about the local summer music festival we attended yesterday evening.

It was a fitting way to end a ridiculous day really – I spent the morning combating the jungle at the end of the garden once more, before heading out to a picnic at our youngest’s school, before racing back, re-packing the leftovers of the food, and heading off on foot for the next village.

I love music – or what I would call “real music” – people performing live on stage. Not the over-produced rubbish that tends to fill the charts – the raw, spontaneous performances that happen in front of crowds. I guess that’s why I fell in love with the TV show “Roadies” last month – it’s about loving the experience of listening to talented musicians – not about the finished, polished, marketed article.

After drinking ever so slightly more alcohol than I might normally in the early evening, I thought it best to find something to eat – so wandered over to the array of stalls surrounding the field. After not too much searching I found an amazing Thai place making massaman curry, and doing a roaring trade. Two of our children copied me as soon as they saw what I had.

As darkness fell, the headline act for the evening took to the stage – an OASIS tribute band. I raced down to the front with our eldest daughter, who also seems to have bitten the live music bug, and we listened/danced/laughed our way through a huge chunk of the OASIS back catalogue. We wandered back with ears ringing, and huge smiles.

I think we finally reached home at about 11:30pm. For the first time in living memory the children all went to bed without complaint, and slept. When I got up at 8:30 this morning they were still all fast asleep. Our youngest arrived downstairs mid-morning with quite the most impressive explosive bed-head hair-style I have ever seen.

I think somehow today will be a quiet day.

When any of you post a nice photo, or tell a funny story, I’m invariably late to the game. I think “I have to write a comment on that” – “awesome photo”, “beautiful”, “gorgeous”, “huge hugs”, or something along those lines. And then I see the usual suspects have already plastered comments all over it, and I walk away.

It kind of reminds me of being at school again – of not being one of the “cool kids”, and being fairly quiet by nature – being drowned out by the loud, obnoxious crowd. I was always the kid in the background, watching everything happen, and rarely being included. It probably explains why I spend all my time these days trying to include others, and giving very little of myself.

Anyway. If you receive a private message from me rather than a comment, now you know why.

For the last week or so I’ve got in from work, done the chores, then sat outside and watched the cats, hedgehogs, bats, and whatever else go about their business until bedtime. I have hardly touched the computer. The blog posts I have written have been very much “turn the handle on the sausage machine” posts about nothing in particular.

I’m sure I will return to the endless streams of navel gazing I’ve written for the past however many years, but in the meantime I can’t help feeling I need to change it up somehow.

Maybe the best idea will be to leave everything alone, and enjoy the quiet evenings for a little while longer.

After getting home from work this evening, eating dinner, and washing up, we headed straight back out to “Dad’s Night” with the local Girl Guides. I guess this happened because it was “Father’s Day” in the UK last weekend.

I won’t get started on how ridiculous “Father’s Day” is.

So what did the night consist of? Running around a field doing activities organised by the older kids in 30C+ temperatures while those same kids sat in the middle of the field on their phones. The games were badly organised, and there seemed to be no leader input involved.

I’m being unfair.

The kids organised the games themselves. Planning, and arranging the games was on them – and I imagine there will be a lot of learning involved next week, talking about what worked, and what they could have changed.

The one huge success of the evening was a mass game of Netball at the end of the night – except it was Netball with a twist. Instead of goals, you have two buckets full of water, and instead of a ball, you have a bar of soap. Netball with soap and water. It got ridiculously competitive – with a few of the parents forgetting that we were there to have fun. We’re totally going to get the neighbourhood kids to play it on the green outside our house though.

It’s now midnight, and I’m about to turn in for the night. My phone is flat, in case you were wondering why I haven’t posted anything for the last couple of days. I’m wondering about formatting it, because it’s been dying on it’s ass quite a bit just recently – there’s obviously some rubbish on it somewhere that’s eating it’s brain.

I think I’m going to have some aches and pains in the morning. Slipping over on soaking wet grass while covered in soap caused more than a few people to go flying – myself included.

I’ve noticed a few photos of Marilyn appearing over the last few days, and thought it might be time to tell my Marilyn story – for those that haven’t heard it. I’m sure everybody has a Marilyn story, or collects one during their life.

Many (many) moons ago, I studied art at college, and spent the greater part of a year drawing people. During that time I was procrastinating famously in the library one day, and picked up a magazine to see if there were any interesting faces to draw. There happened to be an article about Marilyn in it, and I failed hilariously to get any sort of likeness in the sketch I drew.

I ended up reading the article, and didn’t so much get sucked in, as jumped in head first. Within a few months I had read just about all the famous biographies by the likes of Normal Mailer, Donald Spoto, and Jimmy Haspiel, along with the countless conspiracy theory books, and most of the movies. I even found a couple of albums recorded by her in the 1950s.

She existed at a time when movie stars shone far more brightly than they do today. You have to remember that books, radio and the cinema were really the only affordable escape for most people – and she dominated the cinema like nobody before or since. When Some Like It Hot opened, central New York gridlocked for hours purely because she arrived in the street to wave to the crowd. I guess in some ways she shaped who I am today. She taught me what it really meant to be famous, what the real costs were. She also taught me about drugs, depression, strength, fragility, yearning, and so many other things that most people never talk about.

I wonder as the decades pass if she will continue to be remembered, or if other passing stars such as Carry Fisher will take her place?

I’m sitting in the office at work after spending much of the morning writing documents. The temperature has been steadily climbing throughout the morning – it’s currently hovering around 29 centigrade. It doesn’t help that I’m inbetween major projects, so can’t really get on with anything of substance that might make the day pass more quickly.

You might think an absence of work would lead to a deluge of blog posts, but the truth is that unless I have some damn fool escapade or other to write about, I end up navel gazing about nothing at all in very short order. I’m pretty good at writing about nothing though – as evidenced by 4000 blog posts stretching back to 2003 – I just don’t think people are that interested in mundane pontification.

I have another work trip coming next week – to the north of England once more – so can at least hope the train journey and hotel stay will conjure something worth recording. When I started travelling with work years ago, I envisaged a world where I would get to know hotel staff, and perhaps a few fellow travellers that I regularly cross paths with. Unfortunately that only happens in movies – you never see the same person twice, and invariably the people that inhabit hotel bars are exactly the kind of people you would rather avoid.