write.as/jonbeckett

Just a few words to tell those of you that follow me that everything is fine, there is nothing wrong, and the gaps in my almost-daily posts are just down to life happening. I flew home from Germany yesterday, then went to the local radio station quiz night, spent much of today at the local carnival, and then went out to a movie, dinner, and bowling with my family this evening.

Tomorrow may be a much quieter day, so maybe a few more contemplative words will make their way from my head, through the keyboard, to the internet. Stranger things have happened.

After escaping late from the office this evening I returned to the hotel, folded my work clothes back into my case instead of preparing them for the morning – I fly home tomorrow – and set off into the evening air to find something to eat. It struck me that staying in a less comfortable hotel is a great incentive to eat out every night.

Walking past the railway station in the city centre, I turned right, and headed out along the endless chain of cafes, bars, and restaurants that line the road – somewhat intimidated by the legions of city people sitting at tables – shouting laughter filled conversations at each other.

Eventually I came upon my destination for the evening – a wonderfully observed piece of faux Americana in the shape of a restaurant and bar called 'The Chicago Meatpackers'. I wandered in and was quickly shown to a bar-side table by an Asian guy who appeared to speak perfect Japanese, German, and English. He was quickly supplanted by a pretty german girl with her hair pulled tight in a ponytail above her head, and makeup my eldest daughter would have passed quiet comment about.

After leaving me to gaze at the menu for a few minutes, she returned, took my order, and then left me to gaze at the madcap design of the bar interior. I'm still now sure what sort of person builds a railway track into the rafters of a bar, but somebody did in this place, and it was endlessly fascinating. I didn't spot the train at first, but then thought it might be raining outside, before noticing the line of trucks passing overhead – rattling and drumming on the roof rafters as they passed.

Dinner was all sorts of wonderful. A 'Chicago Burger', accompanied by a side of 'chilli cheese fries', and a bottle of Samuel Adams beer. It's worth noting that I have never seen a bottle of Samuel Adams outside of Instagram photos taken by friends in America – so I took my chance after spying it on the menu. I messaged a friend to tell her what I was drinking.

'What do you think of it!'

'I don't know'

'Do you like it?'

'It's kind of like fizzy bitter – not like a european lager at all – there are more hops in it'

While eating, the girl that served me passed the table several times – asking how I was doing every time she passed. The guy sitting at the table next to me must have begun wondering what I had done to garner such attention – because she never said a word to him. I must admit that I began questioning it too.

After eating and drinking myself to a standstill (it really doesn't take much to do that for me), I settled my bill and wandered back out into the night. While in the bar somebody appeared to have turned a light switch off in the sky – cloaking the city in darkness and twinkling lights. I tried to take a photo, but quickly gave up – without the lens of a proper camera, night photography is a lottery at best.

The road back through the city centre had transformed itself over the preceding hour from a busy sea of smiling conversation, into a rippling torrent. So many faces – so many conversations – so many languages filled the air in all directions. At first I was overwhelmed by it all, but then began to notice how many people seemed to be at ease among the mayhem. Maybe I had got it all wrong two nights previously, when I saw so many people frequenting bars in the financial district. Maybe for some the centre of the city IS home.

Just as I might think of a quiet walk into the small town where we live to sit in a quiet restaurant with friends, perhaps those that live in busy cities see their own version of that night out in similar terms – only their quiet is very, very different than mine.

While walking through the jubilant crowds with nobody to talk to, nobody to meet, and nowhere to be, the lonelies crept up and tried to take a chunk out of me. I fought them off with ideas of a walk to the supermarket near the hotel – perhaps a bar of chocolate, and a bottle of wine. I made it to the supermarket, and briefly held chocolate in my hand – but something made me put it back and return to the hotel empty handed. I didn't need it.

So here I am. It's 10:30pm, and I'll be switching everything off soon. I will leave the hotel a little after 7am tomorrow, and catch the first train headed in the general direction of the airport. By lunchtime I will have landed, and will face the wonderfully unreliable british transport network to get me home.

Wish me luck.

After work this evening I walked through the

This post was going to be a rant-laden bucket of foaming invective about the failures of the Germany rail network, and the catalogue of first world failures exhibited by the down-market hotel I'm staying in this week. Instead, helped by a couple of glasses of wine and a couple of hours to calm down, I'm going to write about my evening instead. Roll up a chair, get yourself comfortable, and enjoy.

After spending the greater part of the day in an air conditioned glass conference room surrounded by laptops, bullet journals, and projected screens filled with code, workflows, and form designs, I took the lift down to the ground floor and walked out onto sun baked cobblestones – weary, but happy to have chalked another day off the project plan.

Returning to the hotel to get changed, I was somewhat surprised to discover that not only had the house staff changed the bed and cleaned the bathroom – they had also tidied all of my things away (which were already neatly stored) in entirely different locations. I can only now imagine the cleaner as an old lady – set in her ways – that arranges rooms the way she likes wether the guest likes it or not. I smiled after discovering my dirty laundry neatly folded back in my empty case, in the bottom of the wardrobe.

Taking advantage of the sunshine, I immediately set off on foot to explore Frankfurt a little more – passing the bearded hotel receptionist with a wave and a smile. I debated for some moments about eating at a nearby restaurant I have frequented many times before, but something about the long evening shadows and the city called to me, and before I knew it my feet were carrying me into the crowds.

Walking among the tide of people through the city streets is interesting when you have nowhere in particular to go. You wander along, keeping pace with nearby strangers, and see all sorts of things along your way. After leaving the hotel I kicked myself for not having picked up headphones – but a few minutes later realised that music or podcasts might have distracted from seeing, hearing, and smelling the city around me.

I followed a pretty lady with children sitting in the front of a butcher's bike for quite some distance. Most of the footpaths in the city are half-paved for bicycles. She hardly seemed strong enough to turn the pedals, and the children never lost interest in the world around them. No tablets, books, or phones for them – just wide eyes at the sea of strangers passing this way and that.

A little further on the road opened up into a paved area, and a well known Japanese restaurant chain emerged in the distance. It had been the first restaurant I found when walking the streets during my first visit two years ago. I sat at a free table and smiled as a red shirted waiter made his way to me.

Eating alone can sometimes be very lonely. While sitting at the end of a bench for the next hour, pretending not to watch the couples and co-workers surrounding me, the lonelies stayed far away – no doubt distracted by the two blonde girls that kept looking over at me from the the next bench along. Did I look like somebody? Was there something stuck in my teeth? Was my hair stuck up? I never did find out. I smiled as the waiter persuaded me to add a coffee to the end of my meal, before paying, and setting off on foot once again.

Instead of heading back in the direction of the hotel, I walked in the direction of the tall glass towers throwing long shadows across the city. I have always liked architecture – I know nothing about it – but I've always liked it. Minutes later I found myself at the foot of the ten thousand ton monuments to concrete, iron, and glass, surrounded by self important people in suits, or driving past in expensive cars. I wondered if the cars were actually populated by non player characters, but didn't dare pretty the triangle button to find out.

While walking past a grey haired businessman standing outside the towering glass doors of a marble atrium, I realised how much I like my little life, and wondered what his might be like. In the early evening he seemed to be furiously pacing in a circle in the depths of the city, talking animatedly to somebody somewhere – not on his way home, perhaps with nobody to go home to.

A little further on I crossed a busy intersection, narrowly avoiding a middle aged man with a very neat comb-over, engrossed in his mobile phone. On the other side of the road a glass lined bar filled to the brim with city workers drowned out all nearby traffic noise. Everybody shouted to hear each other, and everybody looked like they had walked from a magazine cover shoot. It was slightly surreal, but somehow expected – I've seen similar scenes in the heart of London. Again, it struck me that nobody was heading home.

While skirting another concrete and glass tower, a tall asian girl with impossibly long legs strode past on the way to a gym class – covered head to toe in lycra that revealed a figure that most women would either admire, or start judging themselves about. She turned sharply towards an animated sign for a spinning class, and skipped through the entrance.

Half a mile on the world changed entirely. The contrast was striking. Suddenly I was passing small bars and restaurants filled with couples and families – out for the evening together, meeting up with each other, smiling, laughing, and quietly enjoying each other's company. It struck me how much more friendly, calm, and relaxed the world had become after turning just a few corners.

Nearing the familiar territory of the central railway station, I decided to take another turn, and descended a flight of stairs towards the subway station. I had vague memories of the underground labyrinth following the line of the main road back towards my hotel, and was proven right. A barely hidden underworld unfolded before me, populated with news stands, fast food restaurants, and independent stores selling everything you could imagine, and quite a few things you could not.

I passed a nigerian man with quite the most impressive dreadlocks I have ever seen arguing with his girlfriend. She was tall, willowy, and really quite beautiful. She was also very, very angry. He looked at the ceiling as she talked quietly and threateningly in his general direction – her eyes burning.

Climbing back towards daylight, I dodged to skirt around a drug user who appeared to be trying to read the newspaper. He was perhaps forty years old, had long blone hair pulled back into a pony-tail, and wore denim from head to toe. As he staggered around holding the newspaper at arms length, it struck me that he might have been a long sighted Marcel Marceau. I still wonder now if he was really on something, or if it was a form of performance art.

Turning the final corner towards my hotel, I passed an asian girl sitting on a stool in the street outside a bar called the 'Africa Queen' with her boyfriend. They seemed to be conspiring with each other in guarded tones – laughing, murmuring, and laughing more. I couldn't help smiling too as I passed – reassured somewhat that there is still a little laughter and happiness in this world.

It's 8:55am, and you find me sitting in the middle of the departure lounge at London Heathrow airport. I woke at 6am, had a shower, then made bacon sandwiches for the children before discovering we had run out of milk to make coffee. After a few sips of redbush tea, I spotted a waiting taxi at the end of our driveway, and said goodbye to my family once again.

While sitting in the departure lounge at Heathrow I always find myself gazing at the sea of people passing this way and that – wondering who they are – where they are going – where they have come from. Some people look confident, some unsure, some full of their own self importance, and others like they are waiting for the world to end. Across the way from me, a saleswoman is slowly pacing around a makeup display, waiting for passers by to take an interest.

The terminal building is an odd beast. The waiting area is not unlike the terminal building in the Tom Hanks movie – stretching four or five stories tall, with seating areas clustered in groups across the floor area. The outside edge is populated with expensive stores selling handbags, makeup, watches, and coffee. I have never seen anybody in the Rolex store – I sometimes look in the window and laugh at the prices of the watches on display – my wristwatch cost 15 from Amazon, and has kept time perfectly for the last two years.

As these journeys back and forth across Europe progress, my choice travel clothing seems to regress. Today I am wearing a pair of denim jeans, a huge hoodie, and running shoes. The hoodie hides a Star Wars t-shirt. I used to dress fairly smartly to travel, but then realised it was pointless – and this way I get to wear the comfortable clothes around the hotel during the week if I want.

This week's hotel is an unknown quantity. Given the arrival of an auto-industry conference in Frankfurt, all of the hotels were fully booked some months ago. I managed to get a room, but am paying nearly four times the usual rate for it. It's a three star hotel just around the corner from the office – a few minutes walk from the Japanese restaurant I have so often visited, and the supermarket just along the road. I'm sure it will be fine. I hope it will be fine.

I have another half an hour to waste before my departure gate is announced. So far I have resisted the temptation of the nearby cafes – I'm not sure how much longer I might hold out. Maybe just a small coffee to help wake me up.

I have somehow ended up with almost identical blogs at Wordpress, Tumblr, and LiveJournal. Yes, LiveJournal still exists – stop laughing. Anyway – cutting a very long, introspective, and boring story short, I'm going to limit the almost-daily head emptying posts to just Wordpress. I find myself being drawn into all three communities and trying to keep a foot-hold in each – which it turns out is quite difficult when you only have two feet.

It's all become a bit mad – with blogging, instagramming, snapchatting, whatsapping, and whatever else competing for the couple of free hours I might excavate for myself each day. I need to make time for more crossyroading dammit.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a third cup of coffee to go make while avoiding ironing clothes into a bag ahead of flying to Germany in the morning.

There was a knock at the door a few moments ago. A rather loud and confident knock. I made me way to the door, wondering if it might be the little boy that lives across the way, hoping too play football with our children. I would have to tell him that they had gone out for the day. Opening the door revealed two women – one in her early twenties, and the other perhaps in her early fifties.

'Have you experienced the Kingdom of our Lord?'

'No'

'Would you be interested in...'

'Excuse me for interrupting, but I think it's only fair before continuing that you know that I don't believe in or follow any religion at all.'

They paused for a few moments, before the older woman edged forwards.

'Is there a particular reason you lack faith ?'

Ok. Now they were pushing it. I leaned on the door frame, and wondered what I could say that would shut them down without being either disrespectful, or discourteous.

'I don't lack faith. I have faith in lots of things – just not in any kind of intelligent creator figure or figures. I think people should be allowed to believe (or not) in what they want, as long as it doesn't impact on others.'

'Has something happened in your life that has caused you to think this way?'

'No.'

We smiled and said goodbye, and then I sat and thought about what I would like to have said. Although a tumult of thoughts were swimming randomly around my head, I found it difficult in the moment to organise them – I'll never be an orator of any kind.

Perhaps the following might have been a better response...

'I think it's wrong to push any sort of agenda door-to-door. I realise you're only doing what you've been told, but there lies perhaps my main objection to all of this – by doing so you have reduced yourself to little more than a pyramid scheme sales person. If anything I would rather learn what you think about things – not what you read in a book and are trying to get others to agree with you about.'

It's unfortunate that when I start railing against organised religion, it's like opening a flood-gate in my head. I have to temper the contradictory arguments I might challenge others with, for fear of causing offence. Nothing seems to offend others like challenging their beliefs.

The French have a phrase for the things we wish we had said after the fact – 'L'esprit de l'escalier' – 'staircase wit'. It originates from an observation by Diderot in Paradoxe sur le comdien:

'a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again [when he finds himself] at the bottom of the stairs'

I've been sitting in front of the computer in the junk room for the last hour, thinking I should post something or other, but no words are appearing on the screen. The tap that so often releases a torrent of idiocy into my little corner of the internet doesn't seem to be cooperating.

There's really not a lot to tell at the moment – the children are back at school and college, I'm back at work, and so is my other half. No sooner has the daily routine begun to approach normality then the weekend has appeared to throw us off again.

I somehow talked myself into taking Miss 17 out for coffee in the morning (if she gets up). Miss 13 has arranged to visit a friend, and I'm almost certain Miss 14 will spend half the weekend watching YouTube if we let her.

Life is carrying on. One foot in front of the other.

At some point over the weekend I need to pack another bag. I'm heading back to Frankfurt in Germany on Monday. Another week away. Another week eating alone – either in my hotel room, or in the corner of restaurants. You never know – I might actually get to read a book or two while away – unlike the holiday where I spent almost every waking minute in the pool with the children.

There are plans afoot at work to extend the project in Germany well into next year. I'm not sure how I feel about it at the moment. I suppose this is one of those times where I have to do something about improving my lot – perhaps explore Frankfurt a little more – make a few friends in the city so I'm not alone each time I visit. I don't know – I'll have to think about it.

Several times in the last few days I have caught myself worrying about what people might think about entirely innocent situations I write about, or find myself in the middle of.

Take the post yesterday evening about walking along the beach with my teenage daughter – and her holding my hand for the first time in a while. Somebody commented that it came across as creepy. Why? Why should a Dad holding hands with his daughter be creepy? What on earth has happened to the world?

Of course there is a back-story to the post – one that most parents of teens are familiar with – about kids growing up and not wanting to be seen holding the hands of their parents any more. Not all kids go through it, but some do – and its kind of amusing when it happens. You don't really think of it at the time, and then you quietly smile to yourself when they seek out your hand in a public place – particularly if you know there are anxiety, or confidence issues going on at the same time.

There was another moment during the holiday that I wasn't going to write about, but now I'm changing my mind. I'm not going to let a few dirty minded idiots ruin the world for everybody else.

I was out playing with the children in the waves while on holiday, taking turns to dive under the waves, fall into them, and generally horse around as you do. While floating around in the deeper water watching their antics, our eldest swam out to me – out of her depth – and clung to me. Quite apart from grabbing at the sunburn on my shoulders (which hurt like hell) my first thought wasn't of stopping her from coughing her lungs up after trying to swim straight through a barrelling wave – or swallowing half the ocean – it was what her grabbing me and climbing all over me might look like to people on the beach.

Its awful really, isn't it – that a family have to check how they appear to those around them – that we end up worrying so much about what others think – that we might say you cant hang on to me any more – here let me hold you at arms length like some sort of minimal contact therapist. The more I think about it, the angrier I get.

When the kids were little, and they raised their arms to be lifted, we didnt think twice – but now they are older – growing in body, but not in life experience – suddenly we have to check both our own and their actions, because we dont want others to think badly of them – to lear, gawp – or form incorrect assumptions.

After reading a few posts about various people's personal experiences with ghosts recently, I thought it might be interesting to share my own. Only they are not really my experiences – I have never seen anything myself. I need to tell a story first.

My grandparents moved to Oxfordshire in the 1960s from Yorkshire in the north of England. They bought an old house with a yard that was big enough to hold vehicles, and started a successful family business that ran for several generations and was ultimately sold about twenty years ago.

Growing up I remember visiting the house, and playing in the yard in the evenings. I also remember staying for sleepovers when I was young several times too. Nights in the yard were always tremendously dark, because the house was on the outskirts of a small village, and some miles from the nearest town.

Years later, after my grandmother died, my Grandfather moved into a bungalow in a nearby town, and my Dad's sister inherited the house. She and her husband set about renovating it back to it's original state. The house had originally been built as several cottages about four hundred years ago, and the yard had been a quarry for a time. Over the years it had been converted with modern plumbing and electricity, and most of the walls and floors covered either in panelling or plastered over.

When the renovations started, so did everything else.

My uncle would sleep on-site – usually in a sleeping bag within the house, or in a caravan alongside it – while my Aunt stayed with my Grandfather at his bungalow.

One night – while sleeping in the downstairs of the house, my Uncle heard what sounded like marbles being rolled across the floorboards upstairs, and children's footsteps running after them. There was only one problem – they had recently removed the upstairs floor, leaving just the beams that had supported it, and a clear sight to the roof rafters above. There was no upstairs.

Over the next few weeks tradesman started to experience strange goings on too – feeling rooms become very cold while they were working in them, and thinking others were playing pranks on them – swearing there had been people behind them, or tools had been moved. One day a room filled with mist that ended neatly at the open door frame. It become more and more difficult to find people to work on the house.

It's worth pointing out that my aunt, and my little cousin never saw anything. Only my uncle, and the builders had seen anything. Until late one night – after moving back in – when a plant moved across the floor of it's own accord. Nobody saw it move directly – but they noticed it was now in a different place, and it's leaves were waving back to a standstill. Not knowing quite what to do, they called the local church who came out to investigate.

I'm not sure what happened with the church – I don't know the full story – but I think you need some pretty serious evidence for them to perform an exorcism. As far as memory serves, it wasn't done, and strange things continued to happen. My aunt started reading about the whole subject around hauntings, the history of the house, and what they might do, and they eventually invited somebody to visit. I want to say it was a medium – a spiritualist – but I can't really remember. It was somebody that many might refer to as a witch.

The moment she walked into the house, she told them there was an old woman looking through the window. My uncle had seen the face at the window before, and never told anybody, because he didn't want to believe what he had seen.

As soon as the house was finished, and my aunt and her daughter moved back in, everything stopped – nothing strange happened again – but she carried on researching the history of the house, and discovered that two children had died in a well in the yard – a well that had been filled in decades earlier. There had been heresay in the village about an accident at the house generations before, but this was the only clue they ever really found.

I haven't seen my aunt for several years. She still lives in the house alone after splitting up with her husband, and has not seen or heard anything strange since. I suppose you could argue that the sounds in the empty house were the shell moving, and stones falling through cavities. You could also argue that the mist was freak atmospheric conditions. You could also argue that the dog kicked the plant that slid across the floor.

It makes you wonder though, doesn't it – is there more to the world than we observe? Is there something about the fabric of space and time that we don't quite understand yet?

Today is the last 'official' day of my holiday. My other half has returned to work, our middle girl has returned to school, Miss 17 starts her new college course in the morning, and Miss 13 returns to school tomorrow too. I'm busy going from one chore to the next around the house, trying to return our lives to some sort of normality.

The holiday already seems like a long time ago, even though it's only been 30 hours since I was standing at the side of a road waiting for an airport transfer coach.

Rather than pick out specific memories of the holiday, I thought it might save everybody a lot of time and effort if I recorded a few scattered memories of the last week in a single post. This of course has more to do with me being lazy, than any concern for you as a reader (and it always seems odd, referring to an unknown audience as 'you', just for the record).

Where to start?

Perhaps the best place to start would be the hotel itself – a rambling, huge complex of buildings, pools, bars, and a central outdoor show stage. We went 'all inclusive' for the first time in our lives, based on the advice of friends with teenage children – meaning we could essentially tell them to go mad in the restaurants and bars. Our room was on the first floor of a more exclusive part of the park, next to a large pool surrounded by perhaps sixty or seventy sunbeds. We never bagged a sunbed, because we are not insane enough to go to breakfast at 7am on holiday purely to put a towel down on a sunbed. What can I say? The hotel was clean, tidy, and the staff were wonderful.

Across the pool from our block was the main restaurant, which served breakfast, lunch, and dinner between allotted hours each day. The food was presented as a huge buffet with everything from a wide range of fresh salads, to various hot meals, and the ridiculous option of chips, friend eggs, and baked beans. Quite why you would fly half way around the world to eat food you can get from any cafe at home is beyond me.

The pools around the complex were all wonderful. The nearest to our block was a family pool, which made swimming next to impossible, but we discovered a deeper pool across the complex that was much quieter so headed out there from time to time. Of course the family pools had a busy entertainment programme all day – with dance music, and a small army of staff bouncing around doing aqua aerobics, water polo, yoga, and so on. I didn't take part of any of it, and didn't get around to reading any books either – because I spent most of my time in the pool with 13 and 14 doing handstands, swimming underwater, or trying to improve their swimming. I've almost certainly come home fitter than when I left – or rather I would have done if the pool bars hadn't served unlimited soft drinks. Given the 30C+ temperatures most days, we drank gallons and gallons of drinks.

During the evening a central show area started at perhaps 9pm with a children's show – involving the same team we saw throughout the day at the various pools. Surrounding the show area was a number of bars serving free drinks (all-inclusive remember). On the first evening the novelty of it all was a bit much, and I ended up mixing all sorts of drinks I wouldn't normally go anywhere near. My other half was not impressed with me, and I felt very second-hand the next morning. Thankfully swimming is a pretty good hangover cure.

Away from the hotel complex, we visited the nearby beach several times – and it looked pretty much like any picture postcard mediteranean scene – with thatched umbrellas, loungers, and pretty people lazily wandering along wherever you looked. We felt a little like frauds as we picked our way through them to the water, and stared in amazement at fish swimming around our feet. We spent our entire final day on the beach – my other half under a lounger, and me in the crashing surf with the children.

Behind the beach – which swept for several miles around the curving coastline, there were of course hundreds of shops selling the same tacky tourist rubbish as each other. They were like a magnet to the children, and I spent several hours throughout the week wandering along behind them while my other half returned to the hotel. For the first time I can remember neither myself or my other half bought anything for outselves – no momentos – no souvenirs.

We did escape the hotel and the beach one day at least – and visited the old part of the nearby town, where the guides told us parts of a Roman city had been excavated. We spent much of the day – in almost unbearable heat – wandering around the various dig sites, and laughing at our own lines from Life of Brian while sitting on the seats of an amphitheatre. Walking the streets of a forgotten city that survived beneath layers of mud for two millenia is a strange experience.

I suppose the only downer of the entire holiday was some of the people we shared the hotel with. I'm not going to name specific places, even though I could identify their accents, but will say that some of them made me embarrassed to be English. Perhaps the most memorable was the family that checked into the hotel, then stripped to their underwear at the poolside and jumped in while a game of water-polo was going on around them – still wearing their socks. Coming a close second was the loundest child in the known universe running completely uncontrolled around the restaurant while his parents bellowed at him.

It was a wonderful week. A week of escapism. A week away from the stresses of every day life. A week of free drinks, free food, no washing clothes, and no washing up. By and large we all – as a family – got on well too. It was the children's first time flying, and by far the most expensive holiday we have ever been on. I'm not sure we could afford to do anything similar next summer – but maybe the summer after. We'll have to see.