write.as/jonbeckett

Why the 'probably' in the title? Because I haven't stepped outside today. I'm pretty sure the world is still out there, getting on with what it does. I wouldn't know. The closest I got was standing in the doorway at the back of the house late this afternoon, while waiting for the kettle to boil, watching our younger daughters play rugby tennis.

Rugby tennis is an idiotic game played over a net – where the players alternately kick the ball and try to catch it. If the ball touches the floor, the opponent wins a point. Simple. Except within minutes of assembling a net yesterday, the girls started arguing over what counted as 'in', or 'out'. I found a can of yellow spray paint, marched into the garden, and sprayed two yellow lines across the grass. So now we have a garden that looks... I'm not really sure what it looks like.

I spent almost all day today either talking to co-workers about what to write in a document, or writing the document we talked for so long about. Fun. After work tomorrow the entire company are assembling on Microsoft Teams for a 'social'. A 'pub quiz' of sorts. I'm not sure the only bottle of wine we have left in the house will last very long.

Quite worryingly my other half is looking forward to the quiz quite a lot. She loves a good quiz. The last time we went to a fundraiser quiz at the school, I think the best description of my involvement was probably 'luggage'. I sat at the end of the table throughout, getting slowly more hammered with the lovely lady that lives across the way. I don't think she ended up anywhere near as drunk as me. Disappointing really.

Anyway.

I have lots of nothing to be getting on with before tomorrow arrives. Wish me luck.

It's starting to get interesting – this whole self isolation lark. While I seem to have taken to it like a duck to water, that can't be said for everybody. I read a news story this morning that an elderly man had murdered his wife, after being shut in the house with her for the last three weeks. I know it shouldn't be funny, but I couldn't help grinning – and then felt awful about finding it funny.

I haven't left the house for some days. The last adventure was to the supermarket with my other half – a grocery gathering mission. Apparently the rules have tightened since – with only one adult household member being allowed to go shopping now. I'm guessing that means I won't be allowed to go – because I'll come back with all manner of things we didn't really need. I would of course argue that chocolate spread, cookies, and wine are essentials.

The children haven't left the confines of the house and garden for weeks. They seem happy enough – talking to friends through the wonders of the internet, playing games in the garden, and doing schoolwork set by their respective teachers.

I suspect if the internet router dies, there will be a riot.

My other half continues to work at the infant school, although on a vastly reduced schedule. On the days she visits the school, she returns home, drops her shoes into a bucket of disinfectant, and strips into the washing machine before getting in the shower. Thankfully she is working from home for the rest of this week – building out the new school website.

The new bicycle I bought for the commute to work sits in the shed – probably wondering what it did wrong. Was it something it said? Something it did? While not riding it I have been doing no fitness related activities at all. I daren't get on the scales. I can't imagine cutting my hair off last week will have made more than a few grams difference. The chocolate spread on toast and bacon sandwiches probably have.

We're out of bacon now.

For the first four months of the year I continued writing almost daily blog posts, but I didn't post them anywhere they might typically be found. I had grown wary of the temptation to chase statistics – to 'play the game' – and worried that doing so would impact the words I was sharing. I created a somewhat reclusive platform for myself, and stayed the hell away from almost everybody.

Until today.

Given events unfolding around the world, and repeated conversations with fellow bloggers, it seems like the right time to make myself discoverable once more – to reach out – to become a part of something greater than myself. This afternoon I back-populated both Wordpress and Tumblr with recent posts. I never really left – I just stopped posting.

I imagine one or two people will grin, shake their head, and roll their eyes. They would have predicted my return at the moment I walked away. It's been an interesting exercise though – removing myself from the never-ending global stream of consciousness for a few months has given some much needed perspective. I think sometimes you need to walk away in order realise what's most important.

I used to think that the words – the stories – were the important thing – and that people invariably become a distraction. I thought the temptation to 'fit in' would eventually begin to dictate the thoughts and ideas I shared, no matter how hard I tried.

I still don't know if I'm right, or wrong.

The great writers didn't have instant feedback. This isn't great writing though – this is a stream of consciousness – a record of thoughts, ideas, and opinions about both the biggest and smallest of concerns. Writing this stream in seclusion makes me no better than a lunatic – walking alone, talking to nobody in particular.

The song 'Nowhere Man' by the Beatles comes to mind. Maybe it's time for me to listen, and to know what I'm missing. I very much doubt the world is at my command though.

A friend tagged me in a Twitter meme of sorts yesterday evening – inviting me to post three random photos of bookshelves in my home, and to nominate three further people to continue the meme on it's way around the internet.

After posting, the voyeuristic urge overtook me, and I started scrolling through the recent responses – looking at other people's bookshelves. While wondering who had arranged their shelves specifically for the photos (I did not), I also became somewhat ashamed of my own bookshelves.

My bookshelves are not in any sort of order. There, I said it. While books of a similar type tend to be on a similar shelf than each other, in recent years the effort has been more about finding somewhere to put books away, rather than curating any kind of organised personal library.

There is a vague attempt at organisation going on – most of the fiction is in the lounge – in a row of bookshelves that wrap the entire end of the room from floor to ceiling. The books in the lounge ARE mostly in order – mostly because my other half did it. The study/junk room is a different matter – with books on philosophy, history, the internet, astronomy, and so on sharing shelf space with graphic novels, comics, and a hugely random assortment of books received for Christmas over the past several years – mostly filled with miscellaneous idiocy.

The WiFi router is perched across the room at the top of a very narrow bookshelf – originally used for compact discs in the lounge – now filled with my 'to read' books, which had at one time been piled up on the bedside table in an alarmingly tall and somewhat dangerous tower. The reason there are so many 'to read' books is of course because I can't walk past bookshops. It's a problem.

None of them are in a specific order.

I remember when my other half first visited my apartment, when we were first dating – she was horrified to discover my music collection was not in alphabetical order. At first I thought she was joking – expressing mock horror at the lack of organisation in my life – and then I realised she wasn't joking at all.

Here's the strange thing. While chaos surrounds me in every-day life, I am slowly becoming more and more organised. The children despair of me – always picking things up behind them, putting things away, and leaving rooms as I might wish to find them. It extends even further into the computer – with no icons on desktops, nothing in the trash, and everything in Google Drive organised into a simple folder structure. Hell – even the backup of past blog posts is arranged into year and month folders.

It seems everything in my life is ordered – except for the contents of the bookshelves. Here's the thing though – what if you put all of the books in order, and then buy another book that doesn't fit. What do you do? Have some sort of Sheldon Cooper meltdown, and pull all of the books from the shelves to start over, or just fall into the cluttered mess I have?

Anyway. Let's just say I really liked looking at the other people's bookshelves – but that perhaps I shouldn't have looked, because now I've written this ridiculously long examination of my habits for you to read. If you made it to the end, you probably deserve a medal.

The hair clippers turned up this afternoon. I put them on charge for a while – until my other half arrived home from school – and then we assembled outside for the 'ceremony'.

I sat on a garden chair while my teenage daughters circled me, with grins on their faces and the clippers in their hands. One of them filmed while the others took turns with the clippers, and my other half over-saw proceedings.

It took all of five minutes. At first they were really careful – trimming a little here, and a little there. And then suddenly they were not careful at all any more, with huge clumps of hair falling into my lap, accompanied by giggling, laughter, and expressions of shock.

So. Now I don't need to get my hair cut for AGES – or brush it – or use shampoo on it really. I wonder how often I'll have to clipper it if I choose to keep it the same ?

In other news we went through the now practiced drill when my other half got home – her shoes went into a bucket of disinfectant outside, her clothes went straight in the washing machine, and she went straight in the shower. Even though the risk is small, we're taking few chances.

I've buggered up posting every day this week, haven't I. Technically it's already Friday 3rd April, but until I fall asleep I'm going to count this still as Thursday. Friday doesn't start until I we get up in the morning – everybody understands that, right?

Ridiculous logical fallacies remind me of the arguments I used to have with my Dad – about whether centrifugal force exists, and whether the moon spins or not. If you've not thought about those claims before, pause for a moment, re-read them, and then get ready to start arguing with everybody around you about them.

I once caused a physics student to almost spontaneously combust in anger, after explaining that if you could run from point A to point B in 1 second, if you went fast enough, you could get there in no time at all – and if you went even faster, you could get there before you left. He became more and more enraged as I answered his rebuttals with 'yes, but what if you went a bit faster than that?'.

Anyway. Time for bed. There's more news to avoid in the morning.

wp:jetpack/markdown {“source”:“This week on the podcast I talk to Katy about her blog at LiveJournal, long distance relationships, broadcasting on the radio, and more!\n\nYou can find Katy at the following location online:\n\n* www.katyland.co.uk\n\nClick the link below to listen to the episode:\n\n* #13 – Katy – katyland.co.uk\n”} This week on the podcast I talk to Katy about her blog at LiveJournal, long distance relationships, broadcasting on the radio, and more!

You can find Katy at the following location online:

• www.katyland.co.uk Click the link below to listen to the episode:

• #13 – Katy – katyland.co.uk /wp:jetpack/markdown

I woke up at 7am when the alarm went off, then fell asleep for another hour. It's taken a few weeks to get used to not running around the kitchen like a madman emptying the dishwasher, feeding the animals, making breakfasts and lunches, and shouting repeatedly up the stairs for the kids to get up.

Once the children get up, it tends to coincide with the first conference calls of the day – I'm still wondering if the artificial intelligence of the cloud is clever enough to block out 'The Nation's PE Teacher' leading a morning fitness programme in the lounge. It often sounds like the house is falling down, only accompanied by laughter instead of screaming.

I haven't done anything approaching 'fitness' for three weeks. Given that I normally cycle somewhere in the region of six miles every day, I really do need to think about getting off my backside – before it doesn't fit in the chair any more. Maybe the quiet hour first thing on a morning would work – a run around the streets nearby.

I forgot to stop at lunchtime today. I was in the middle of doing something, and worked straight through. I only realised late in the afternoon and by then had something else to get done anyway. I imagine this is a common feature of home working – the temptation to just keep going until you've got this done, or that done. Of course the moment I finally closed the computer down, a colleague messaged me – playing the same game – he hadn't looked at the clock either. A few minutes later – while shutting the computer down for a second time, my youngest tipped her head around the door – 'dinner's on the table'.

I've still not spent any time reading the first of many books I've been promising to while in lock-down. I need to fix that.

Podcasts have become a wonderful distraction while working from home – half listening to WTF, Grumpy Old Geeks, The Retro Hour, My Brother My Brother and Me, The Bugle, The News Quiz, and many more. When not listening to podcasts, I invariably leave Spotify playing random playlists – mostly because Spotify doesn't pause to bring you the news.

After finishing work this evening we dared venture into town for the first time in two weeks. It felt strange – driving along almost deserted streets, but also kind of nice. We parked directly outside the bank to drop a letter into their mailbox. I didn't even realise there were parking bays in the high-street – I thought stationary vehicles were part of the road furniture.

The supermarket was remarkably civil. We arrived a little before 6pm, and joined a queue in the sunshine – each family group arranging themselves behind taped lines on the pavement. The gentleman in front of us had a full face mask on, and brand new running shoes. While waiting to be beckoned into the store, he leaned on a painted pillar with his bare hand. I wondered how many hundreds of other people had done the same thing.

The supermarket was perhaps three quarters stocked – a direct reflection on a quickly recovering supply chain, and all the panic-buying idiots running out of money. I saw my first toilet rolls 'in the wild' for quite some time – I thought about taking a photo, but feared it might cause a stampede. I forgot to look for paracetamol – I'm guessing there are people up and down the country sitting on crates of paracetamol like some sort of 'Pharma Thanos' – still not knowing really why they bought them.

The checkouts and their staff are now partially surrounded by clear walls of perspex. Talking to the staff felt oddly reminiscent of sitting in the back of a black-cab – where your natural propensity is to lean towards the small cut-out window to talk to the driver. I wonder if the staff lean away from people when they do that ?

As we unpacked the bags back at home, the children emerged one-by-one from their hiding places – hoping no doubt for slightly less healthy food than we have offered them in recent days.

I had a shave today. This might not sound like much of an accomplishment, but I was rapidly heading towards Grizzly Adams territory (anybody younger than 40 is probably wondering “who the hell is Grizzly Adams?”). My other half tried to convince me that I might look quite dashing with a beard, and cited the example of a certain famous infant school teacher – well... famous in our house anyway.

Here's the thing – shaving off facial hair once it's edging past the stubble stage feels a bit like rubbing your face with a cheese grater. Especially if you ran out of shaving foam several months ago, but thought 'it's fine – I'll just use soap – I'll get some next week'.

It hasn't escaped my attention that our hair is continuing to grow while in lock-down – and will continue to grow, because it's kind of good at that. I made the mistake of wondering out-loud in the kitchen this morning about buying some clippers and having done with my hair for the next six months – the ultimate 'zero maintenance' Dad haircut. Unfortunately my other half and children also thought it sounded like a wonderful idea – an idea that could be filmed, and posted to the internet.

The order at Amazon for hair clippers is going in this evening. Even if we don't raise any money towards the NHS – because of course everybody needs the little money they have left at the moment – I suppose it will show some solidarity, won't it? And I won't have to comb my hair for months.