write.as/jonbeckett

I went Christmas shopping with our eldest daughter today – armed with a list written late last night by my other half. Of COURSE this was how I wanted to spend my week off. OF COURSE it is.

We nearly didn't get there. There is a bus stop about five minutes walk from our house – after consulting the timetable we left the house with a few minutes to spare, and wondered how long it might be until the bus appeared. We stamped our feet in the cold, pulled our collars up, and glanced around at everybody else waiting for the bus. They were all beginning to complain to each other. Old people in England like nothing more than complaining about something – it's like a national sport. Of course they will never complain to the subject of their annoyance – only to each other. While the small congregation busied themselves with grumbling incessantly we looked at our phones, and figured out the next bus was ten minutes away (you know, because of GPS, Google Maps, and all that kind of thing). We didn't tell any of the old people – listening to them complain was more fun.

Needless to say, a bus finally did turn up, and the old people started complaining that there would be nowhere to sit. You really can't win in their world.

Today I discovered that going to the shops in the middle of the week is unexpectedly wonderful. You can wander from shop to shop, pick things up, look at them, and not get walked into, pushed into, tripped, or otherwise harangued by a million and one people who are all far more important than you.

Miss 19 retrieved my other half's hand-written list from her pocket, and we set off.

I would love to say that it was easy – that we skipped from shop to shop, getting everything on the list before jumping on the next bus home. Life never quite works like that – we made it through one clothes shop before Miss 19 turned from “happy go lucky” to “everything is rubbish”. The only way to turn her mood around – discovered by much trial and error over the years – was to buy her a hot drink and a cake from a cafe. While she munched on an enormous gluten free muffin, I inquired “are you going to cheer up now?”, and she smiled. Well – she smiled as much as you can with a face full of muffin.

Over the next couple of hours we bought bath bombs, pajamas, slippers, books – the usual presents that people open and do their best to react well to. Christmas has turned into that, hasn't it – something that you have to get through – that you have to react well to.

After shopping we had lunch at Wagamama – a faux Asian restaurant chain that sits you on long benches, and serves incredibly expensive street food. It kept Miss 19 quiet. I can't even remember then name of what I ordered – I forgot at the time too – the server bringing the food out had to go and double check that what was in his hand really was what I had ordered (it was).

The bus journey home was altogether less eventful. The bus almost arrived on time – to the note of several old people, who complained that it had parked in the wrong bay at the bus station. While waiting to get on the bus, I thought it might be a shame if everything worked and they had nothing to complain about – it would reduce them to complaining about the weather – or maybe their various ailments.

Anyway.

I'm going to stop writing now, because I'm going to the corner shop to buy a bottle of wine. Then I'm going to watch TV. Possibly all night. Because I can.

After dithering quite considerably over the past several months, I have returned to using a bullet journal. There was a huge temptation to dick around with a mixture of Google Calendar, Evernote, and whatever else, but at the end of the day it comes down to one thing – if I don't write things down, I don't remember them.

Yes, yes – I know – the whole point of writing something down, or typing something into some gadget or other, is so you don't have to remember it. I know. The whole point of a bullet journal though is the regimen of planning your day, your week, your month, or even your year. Oh – hang on – that's the lyrics to the title track from Friends, isn't it. You know what I mean though. It's about forming a habit around recording what you want to get done today – and checking what you wanted to get done in the past – to see if it needs to happen any time soon. I suppose some people might call it mindfulness.

It strikes me that Google Calendar, and Evernote, and all the other things are the opposite of mindfulness – they are procrastination enablers. You can just throw your stuff in there, and forget all about it. I've done it. I'm still doing it. Which is why I'm stopping it.

Anyway. All I really set out to say is that I've gone back to using the Bullet Journal. It's not going to be full of pretty pictures and illustrated pages like the wonderful creations you might see at Pinterest – it's just an enormous pile of lists. Things to do this week. Things to do today. Books to read one day. Movies to watch when I find them. TV shows to fool myself into thinking I have time to watch, when in reality I will spend every spare hour dicking around on the internet, rather than actually watching anything that everybody else is going on about.

I'll shut up now.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in the UK, a huge skills gap opened up that the various science, technology, engineering and mathematics Universities became worried about. Although the county had lucked into leading most of the world through the 1980s, with an army of “bedroom coders” using the early 8-bit home computers, a decade on most schools were only teaching children how to use word processors and spreadsheets – not how the actual computers work.

After a long and winding story, the “Raspberry Pi” computer was born – an entire computer on a small circuit board that cost less than a video game, ran open source software, and encouraged people to tinker – to find out exactly how the thing works – from the chips, through the operating system, right up to the applications you might run on it.

Fast forward a couple of years, and a chance convergence has occurred.

Back in the 1990s – while kids were busy learning how to use Word and Excel, and Microsoft was trying to buy the hearts and minds of a generation, the first wave of video games was already beginning to vanish from existence. Old arcade machines were being thrown away, along with the first generations of home computers and games machines. Suddenly thousands of software applications and video games were at risk of being lost to history.

I don't suppose anybody expected that when computers became fast enough, small groups of software developers would envisage using them to pretend to be older computers – to continue running the games they had grown up playing on virtualised recreations of long-dead hardware.

Where am I going with this?

On the corner of my desk at home sits a Raspberry Pi. A computer no bigger than a box of kitchen matches. Connected to the electrical socket via an old phone charger, and to the computer monitor via an HDMI cable, it also borrows an old wired USB XBox controller – and turns itself into a Nintendo, a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, an Atari 2600, a Gameboy, a Gameboy Advance, a NeoGeo, a Nintendo DS, an Atari Jaguar, a Nintendo 64, a Sony Playstation... I could go on (and on).

As soon as I got it working last night, my eldest daughter wandered into the room, and launched “Bomber Man” – a game she had last seen when she was perhaps 9 years old on the Nintendo DS. I didn't get a look-in for the next hour.

If you're wondering where I have acquired the old games from – a visit to the Internet Archive, and a few judicious searches turned up the ROM images of all the games I remember from my teenage years (essentially the content of the chips on the original cartridges or tapes) – Super Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Defender, Phoenix, Street Fighter, Excitebike, Mario Kart, Pilot Wings... the list goes on and on.

Anyway.

If you're wondering why the blog posts dry up for a few days, blame an italian plumber.

Throughout the second half of the Couch to 5K running programme over the last few weeks, I have been battling first a cold, then what appeared to be a second cold, and finally a cough. After churning through the training runs every other day for the first half of the course, I was reduced to running once a week – which seemed to suffice and caused no ill effects.

And then came the fun run on Sunday morning. At about the half-way point I could feel the cold air doing something to my battle-damaged lungs, but wasn't sure what – I'm still not sure what – neither is the doctor. I finished the run, and went out with my family for a meal afterwards, but kept quiet about how much pain I was really in. It felt like somebody had punched me in the ribs.

This morning I finally went to the doctor – a feat in itself, which requires sitting on the phone for twenty minutes, repeatedly re-dialing until you beat the queue of old people calling to reserve a space for their social club. Before you start ranting at me about ageism, the doctor's surgery in town has mail-shot the entire town before about this problem – about older people repeatedly requesting to see the doctor when they don't need to.

Anyway.

I blagged a mid-morning appointment. This will probably come as a shock to those I know on the other side of the Atlantic – I really did call the doctor this morning, and and hour later was seen, and it cost me nothing – because we have a National Health Service – the very thing that will cause our next Government to collapse if they dare sell any of it's services to the US as part of Trump's latest round of idiocy.

The doctor spent quite some time listening to me breathe, and writing notes about the last six weeks. While asking about family history, he laughed that my record only showed one visit in the past – in 2014 – for a chest infection.

“You don't get ill very often, do you?”

“Not ill enough to trouble you, no.”

After a humorous fail with a blood pressure monitor, he asked if I might use one of the self-service machines in the waiting room. He also booked me in for a chest X-Ray, and a blood test – more procedural than anything. We talked about perhaps using some of the holiday days I have left at work to book a few days off.

Minutes later I found myself sitting in a booth in the waiting room, following instructions on a touch-screen, with my arm poked through a hole in a machine that read my blood pressure. I don't know about the machine being able to read my pulse – I could certainly feel it, as it inflated a collar around my upper arm.

A couple of hours later – after walking home, phoning the hospital booking line, and then walking back again – I arrived at the town hospital with a referral letter, and no idea where I was going. A helpful lady on reception pointed to a door and told me to follow the signs leading upstairs to the X-Ray department. Over the next few moments I discovered that the entire building seemed to be filled with doors, hallways, and stairs. I started to wonder where the actual treatment and consulting rooms might be hidden.

Finally, I reached a small seating area, with a button on the wall, and a helpful sign stating “For X-Rays, press here”. I “pressed here” – and almost immediately a slender doctor stepped into an adjoining corridor (another corridor), and asked “are you here for an X-Ray?”

“Yes”

I followed her while she talked, and crouched over a computer to check the schedule.

“Oh yes. Here you are.”

I gathered over the next minute or so that I had somehow slipped incredibly fortunately through the system, and that they could do my X-Ray immediately. I shed some clothes, stood in front of a large plate, and was manipulated by a friendly Irish lady who recognised my name.

“Does your wife work in the infant school in town?”

“Yes?”

“I thought I recognised the name!”

It turned out the nurse's children go to the infant school. Small world.

Moments later everything was done, and I was free to go. Apparently my doctor will receive the results in two weeks, and will be in touch if there is anything to worry about. We all suspect he will respond with “you've got a chest infection”.

While walking back towards home I called work, and agreed that I'm going to take the entire week off – to stay at home in the warm, and try not to do anything. Of course doing nothing is easier said than done. In-between the doctor and the hospital I emptied and re-filled the washing machine, filled the dishwasher, folded clothes, and tidied the kitchen and lounge. Immediately after getting home from the hospital I let a satellite TV engineer in to look at our dish, that hasn't worked for months. It never ends.

At least the TV is fixed now though, right ?

After getting up a little after 7 this morning, jumping in the shower, and having a shave, I pulled on a bright red Santa suit, and joined the rest of the family downstairs. I looked almost exactly like Santa for a couple of minutes – right up until I bent over to tie up my running shoes, and ripped the backside out of the trousers. My youngest daughter instantaneously exploded in laughter.

Guess who walked to the park to take part in the annual Santa Fun Run with only half a Santa suit? I must be special or something.

A little while later, three thousand Santas had gathered in the park by the river – slowly making their way to the “start funnel”, ahead of a 5 kilometer “fun run” around the town. Fun my arse. It was more of an obstacle course for the first ten minutes – trying to avoid dogs, dog leads, small children, and pushchairs among the thousands of runners. Apparently the very clear instructions that strollers and dogs should start at the back was completely ignored by the legions of “the rules only apply to other people” idiots.

I ran with my youngest daughter, my eldest daughter, and my mother in law. Our middle daughter has been at a hockey tournament with her school team all day.

Throughout the first two thirds of the run I managed to keep everybody together – picking our way through the legions of people that had begun walking, and were now blocking everybody behind them from getting through. As we did so, our youngest daughter started to pull ahead, and I chose to go with her, rather than hang back with the others.

She flew. It was interesting to run with her, and to try and keep a lid on her enthusiasm. I knew we still had a fair distance left. During the last kilometer she made a comment about wanting a rest – I pointed out how many people we were now passing that had begun walking, and she did the opposite – increasing her speed. Our track on Strava is pretty funny – throughout the race, each kilometre after half-way is significantly faster than the one before.

Before we knew it, we were back in the park, passing people left, right, and center. After crossing the finish line hand-in-hand, we were given medals, bananas, and chocolate bars. A local church had setup serving free hot chocolate to runners – much appreciated, and really rather wonderful in that moment.

Rather miraculously, while sipping our drinks we turned back towards the finish line, and saw the rest of our group through the crowd at the same moment they saw us. I waved, and we smiled.

While picking our way back through the growing sea of Santas in the park, my eldest daughter and I bumped into one of the coaches of the Couch to 5K course – the course she didn't finish...

“YOU DID IT! CONGRATULATIONS!”

Miss 19 grinned, and looked at her shoes.

“You do realise this means you can come get your certificate and shirt now, right?”

The smile on Miss 19's face was priceless.

On the way home from work last night a car forced me into the hedgerow alongside the road. When I got home I realised the front tyre of my bike was punctured. Again. I then woke this morning with a sore throat, and a snotty nose. I'm going to write a formal letter of complaint to my body – asking what the hell is going on. It's now five weeks since I caught the first cold.

So I walked to work today. It's only three miles door to door – it takes perhaps fifty minutes. I listened to podcasts along the way. It only occurred to me about a mile in that I would have to walk home – and that I had suggested to my eldest daughter that we might go for a run this evening. I make my own problems.

While talking to one of the wonderful ladies I work with earlier, she questioned if I should take some time off – use up some of the holiday I have accrued over the last couple of years. I laughed, and suggested that staying at home would actually be more stressful than being at work – there's no way I would be able to leave any of the chores alone.

Sod it. I'm going home. I have nothing to do this afternoon. I've been picking away at a few research things in preparation for future work – but really there's no reason for me to be here, coughing like an idiot.

While many people I know on the other side of the planet have the day off today – to celebrate “Thanksgiving”, it's just another day on this side of the planet. Business as usual. More of the same.

It has rained across the south of England continually for the last few weeks. It feels like a grey blanket has been pulled over everything. I'm wearing full waterproofs on the cycle to work, but they're not really working – and taking two sets of clothes to work each day seems a little bit crazy – and would probably finish the washing machine off at home once and for all.

Three people of note died yesterday – Jonathan Miller, Gary Rhodes, and Clive James. I'm guessing most people will never have heard of them. It feels strange, when people of note that you have been aware of throughout your life have suddenly gone. I suppose in some ways it reminds you that your time is finite – and that it might be better to get on with living, rather than watching the clock tick down.

When people write all the inspirational words about “living life”, “choosing life”, and so on, I often find myself wondering how you do that – how you unshackle the load you carry. Yes, I would love to travel the world and visit all the friends I have made through the internet over the years – but then what would happen to my family? Who would pay the bills? Do I take them all with me? What about my job? What about school?

It strikes me that without people doing what they have to do, the people that rely on them would not be able to do what they like to do. At all. This is where I sit on my hands before starting out on the usual rant about massively privileged millennials promoting an entirely fabricated life across the social internet. We know it's all bollocks.

Anyway.

I think it's time to make a cup of tea. A cup of tea will make everything better. Things will make sense after a cup of tea – they always do.

I finished the “Couch to 5K” running journey tonight. Apparently running 5 kilometres without walking at all is “graduating”.

It's funny – I got signed up for this damn fool escapade to support Miss 19 in her efforts to do something – or rather my other half's efforts to make her do something. Notice I wrote “I got signed up” – I didn't sign myself up. Of course I went along with it, because I thought it would be a good thing to do together – in the same way that parents all over the place end up doing things purely to spend time with their kids – and of course to get them outside, in the fresh air, away from YouTube and Netflix.

We should have guessed at the outset that the chances of our family making it through 10 weeks without injury, illness, accident, or general mayhem rampaging through our plans were slim. Through some kind of miracle we made it to about the fifth week before the idiocy really started – I think I've run perhaps three times since. Taking a month out with a cold and then a cough really wasn't in the plan. Neither was visiting a physiotherapist with Miss 19 to discover that sitting on her foot was preventing her from running.

Anyway. After receiving a wonderful email from one of the girls running the Couch to 5K programme last week, I promised to do the graduation run without my daughter – really to see everybody else finish what we had all started. The coaches knew I could run the distance anyway – we had talked about my lapse at week 5 – when I ran on my own one night and decided to test my body out.

Tonight was interesting. For the first time the group were free to run at their own pace – with seasoned runners matching pace, and accompany the groups that formed. This left me in a bit of a pickle – knowing that I could go with the front runners, but not wanting to be “that guy” – especially as a few people knew why I had been there, and that I had run in the past.

I ended up staying in touch with the lead group – and smiling to myself as they went through the first kilometre significantly faster than they had gone before. Over the next couple of kilometres I slowly reeled them back in (read: they slowed down), and busied myself with making conversation with fellow runners along the way. I saw a couple of people drop out after the first kilometre or so, and wondered if I should stop – but then noticed the coaches peel off to check on them. I'm guessing some people paid the price for starting so fast.

It was fun – and seeing everybody finish and in such high spirits kind of made the night for me. We all returned to the club house after the run, received certificates, a running shirt, and an energy bar each. A huge deal was made out of it, with all of the club members present applauding each person receiving their goodies.

I might have bought a pint of cider.

It's funny – in the past I've always seen running as a solitary activity – something to do on your own, as an escape from normal life. Tonight I saw another side to it – a group of friends have formed over the last 10 weeks. Sure, it might have taken us until tonight to really start talking (the British are famously reserved), but most of the conversation over our drinks was about where we might cross paths next. If only we had all gotten over ourselves a little earlier.

Before the planned park runs, and charity events, my focus has to turn back towards my daughter – to keep her running. I'm guessing we will head out on Thursday night and do some intervals together – and then perhaps repeat those intervals at the weekend as we run around town dressed as Father Christmas, along with several thousand other Father Christmases (yes, you read that right).

I think my body might actually be starting to stage a fight-back. I have felt better today than I have in several weeks. The snotty nose has gone, and breathing appears to be possible again – you know, without exploding in a coughing fit when doing something as strenuous as standing up.

Of course my work sensed this return to form, and decided to pull the rug out from beneath me quite spectacularly. The development environment I have been using for the last several months decided to lose it's shit in quite the most sneaky, unsuspecting way you might ever imagine. I'm looking forward to a full server rebuild tomorrow, with no confidence that it will solve anything.

The running club have also been in touch – the group Miss 19 and I have been running with over the last several months are “graduating” tomorrow night – running a 5K route around town together. I replied that I will wander down and run with them – without Miss 19. I'm already wondering about signing her up for the next “Couch to 5K” programme, with the hope that she will find it easier, and I'll hopefully remain fit and well for ten consecutive weeks. Fingers crossed.

Did I mention that I stopped using the bullet journal? It seems like a shame in some ways – I had used it pretty consistently over the last couple of years. I guess I came to the realisation that for my purposes – keeping a daily log of what I have done – Evernote is much better suited, and perhaps most importantly, is searchable. That being said, I might resurrect my old lined paper notebook – for those moments when you have an idea and no computer nearby. If I'm going to do that, I should probably add a new moleskine notebook to my Amazon wish-list.

The night before last Miss 19 wandered into the junk room with her old laptop under her arm – the one she has never used. She inherited a Chromebook some time ago, and has always had a PC under her desk – it doubles as a television to binge-watch YouTube and Netflix. So I have a skinny little laptop to decide what to do with. I might look at installing Elementary OS (a minimal Linux distro) on it. We'll see.

Anyway – it's getting late. Time to go read a little, and try not to think about the server re-build in the morning. Oh – and before I forget – thank-you to everybody that has come out to bat for me while I've been unwell in recent weeks. You have no idea how much your comments, messages, and emails have been appreciated.

My entire life feels like it's going sideways at the moment.

Today I thought I might stay in the warm, in the hope that my body would turn a corner in it's month-long fight with the various viruses it has been battling. Shortly before leaving to stand on the touchline of a rugby match, my other half suggested that I might pick up the Santa Fun-Run costumes from a nearby cafe. So not staying in the warm after all.

I probably need to explain myself.

You know how my other half registered our eldest daughter – the one with anxiety issues – onto the “Couch to 5K” programme at the local running club? The programme I had to run with her, to have any chance of her even leaving the house? Well not only did we get registered for that – we were also registered for the “Santa Fun-Run” around town at the start of December – a 5K event where all participants dress in full Santa costume.

Notice my other half has booked herself into none of it – none of the training, none of the events – nothing. And yet she's more than willing to dispense advice about what we should be doing all the time. I better shut up.

It turns out a cafe on the edge of the industrial estate in town had taken delivery of all the Santa costumes for the runners – we just needed to go fetch them. In the cold. Thankfully the cafe serves all manner of nice food and drinks, so I slowly wandered down this morning with Miss 19 (after waiting half an hour for her to get ready), and turned it into a “lunch out” of sorts.

While sipping a very expensive cup of cappuccino, I spotted somebody I know on an adjacent table – a fellow web developer – sitting with his Macbook Pro, trying to look busy. Quite why you would choose to sit in a cacophonous cafe, surrounded by loud conversation, crashing cutlery, laughter, and general mahem is something of a mystery. I did wonder if it was a deliberate attempt to “look” clever.

After eating until we could eat no more, we inquired about the Santa costumes at the counter, and were lead to a pile of cardboard boxes in the entrance-way – this lead to an immediate “trying on” session at home, where Miss 19 transformed herself from a typical teenager into the most depressing/comical/unimpressed Santa you could possibly imagine. I think perhaps the hat pointing strait up like a garden gnome, rather than flopping to one side had something to do with the hilarity.

Anyway. I set out to sit quitely and read a book today – and so far I have not done that. It's already 3:30pm. The rugby gang will be back in an hour, and fill the house with mayhem once more. And then reading will be out of the question.

It comes to something when you have to play for two days to read a book for an hour.