write.as/jonbeckett

Sound filled the room at 3am this morning, rousing me from fitful dreams and causing me to stumble across the room to reach the phone it was coming from. After squinting at the words and fumbling with the screen for a few moments, silence reigned again, and I rubbed my eyes. Half an hour later I had woken the children, had a shower, gathered our things together, and sat along with everybody else, wondering what to do until the airport transfer coach arrived a little after 4am.

We double and triple checked the passports, and made sure my other half had downloaded the flight confirmation to her phone. We finally made our way out into the darkness of the mediterranean morning, and gathered at the pre-designated place for the coach to emerge from the darkness. While making conversation with each other, we watched bats and stag beatles fly around nearby street lights. I looked at my watch and realised that 3am had been 2am at home – and debated the rest of the day with my other half – to go home and sleep, or to go home and attempt to stay awake. That these words are appearing on the internet signals that we have stayed awake – or at least attempted to.

Aside from my other half totally and utterly freaking out (which is normal – she is petrified of flying), the flight passed without incident. I sat next to Miss 17, and my other half sat with the younger children, who had taken turns on the outward and homeward trips to have the window seat. Guess who lost his new hoodie (bought expressly for the journey home) to Miss 17 at the airport – it didn't occur to her to pack anything other than t-shirts for the last week. I very much doubt I will get it back.

We departed a little after 8am, and landed back in the UK an hour later. After rendezvousing with the taxi driver for the transfer home, we slumped into the back of a Mercedes van and struggled to stay awake. Two of the children flaked out within minutes of setting off.

The remainder of the day has been a bit of a slog – getting home, washing clothes, cleaning (fruit had been left in the bowl in the kitchen – causing a biblical fruit-fly infestation), going grocery shopping, and generally bringing the house back online.

At the time of writing it's just gone 6pm in the evening, and I'm struggling to stay awake. There are so many stories to tell of the last week, but I want to do them justice – so they will have to wait.

I fear I may not make it much past 7pm. Somehow Miss 13 has been awake since 3am, and is doing fine – I'm not entirely sure how.

Today feels like we are in a curious sort of limbo. A taxi will arrive outside our house at 6am tomorrow morning to take us to the airport. From there we will fly to an island off the coast of Spain for a week largely spent “off the radar”. I packed my bag this morning – it took all of ten minutes. Given recent experiences travelling to and from Germany, I’ve become more adept than most at figuring out the difference between items I “must”, “should”, and “could” pack.

I’ve spent the last few hours charging phones and tablets for the children. Against all expectations, we managed to sneak five new iPhone contracts through over the last few days – meaning we can take advantage of the Apple Music family plan, and the kids an download and listen to whatever music they want going forwards – no more buying an ripping CDs for them. It also means they can download favourite albums to listen to without chewing through data.

(six or seven hours pass)

I have spent the entire afternoon and evening helping the children setup their iPhones. This is really code for “spent the entire afternoon and evening re-setting forgotten passwords for Google, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp”. It’s not funny any more. I still haven’t configured two factor authentication for the younger children, but they have strong passwords so I’m not too worried.

The conversation with Miss 14 – who had obviously changed her email password in a fit of temper 27 days ago (the account told me as much) – started out with “I didn’t do it”, and tailed off into “I didn’t know it would cause all this trouble”. All of her contacts were in Google Mail – and without that she had no phone contacts, no recovery email address, and nobody in WhatsApp. I think she finally learned her lesson today about listening, doing as she is told, and that we will ALWAYS find out what she has done eventually.

ANYWAY!

I need an early night. I need to be up at 5am in the morning, and somehow explode the children out of bed too. Wish me luck. Oh – and if WiFi at the hotel fails to transpire, I’m guessing this is me signing off for the next week or so (waves in a style reminiscent of the Truman show).

I’m writing this a few minutes after 9am on Sunday morning. Summer seems to be ebbing away – the mornings are becoming a little colder – a little less inviting. Early next week we will escape the approach of autumn for a few more days – boarding an aeroplane in order to fight over sunloungers with fellow escapees. You may not find me at the hotel though – it’s far more likely that I’ll be a distant figure wandering the seashore, listening to the crash of waves, and picking up seashells while turning thoughts over and over in my head.

I need this holiday. I need to step away from the mayhem. I need to just “be”.

The house is still remarkably quiet. The younger children are away until tomorrow afternoon. I look in on Miss 13’s hamster each evening before bed, filling her food, checking her water, and talking to her for a little while. I’m not sure why I talk to her. I talk to all the animals – even the fish – wishing them a good morning each day. They are not very good conversationalists.

This week ahead of the holiday – of pottering, tinkering, and quietly moving from one chore to the next – has been good. Today will be more of the same. The washing machine and dishwasher are quietly rumbling away in the background, next door’s dog is barking from time to time, and Spotify is busy working through a playlist of things it thinks I might like – it’s doing pretty well so far.

Here’s to quiet Sundays, meandering blog posts, and recharging life’s batteries.

This evening finds me filling an Amazon tablet with books, movies, and music ahead of a week spent largely offline. A week away from the internet. A week filled with cheap wine, the beach, sunburn, swimming pools, playing in the surf with the children, Dad dancing in the hotel disco, and otherwise doing as little as possible.

I’m taking paperback books to read on the beach – I picked up the box sets of “Talon” by Julie Kagawa, and “Red Queen” by Victoria Avehard. They get middling reviews on Goodreads, but I tend to think my bar is much lower than most – just having the time to read is a victory of sorts. I’ll also sneak “This Side of Paradise” into my bag – by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I’ve always been drawn towards classic books. I suppose it’s really down to curiosity – to find out why they are thought of as classics – to read them for myself, and make my own mind up. About ten years ago I worked in London, and endured four hours on trains each day – I filled those hours with all manner of books – famous books, infamous books, banned books. I read “Lolita”, “Tropic of Cancer”, “Catch 22”, “Stranger In a Strange Land”, “Anna Karenina”, and many more. I tried to read “Moby Dick”, and failed. I often thought about starting on “War and Peace”, more to say I had read it than because I was really interested in it. I still haven’t read it, ten years on.

I really haven’t read much at all over the last ten years – largely because children entered our lives, but also because the internet almost totally eclipsed books. I’m wondering now if the shadow cast by the inumerable distractions of the internet is finally passing, and allowing books a second chance – for me at least.

While wandering around the local bookshop last weekend, I couldn’t help noticing that nobody had a mobile phone in their hand – nobody was gazing at a glass screen while stumbling forwards like the army of zombies on the pavement just outside the door. It struck me that I much prefer the book shop people to the people outside.

Anyway.

This isn’t helping me fill the tablet with anything, is it. If you’ve read a good book recently though, I’d love to know.

Miss 17 received her exam results this morning. The good news? She’s on the design course next year that she failed to quality for this year. The bad news? She will have to repeat another year of English and Maths to improve her exam grades. Again.

I’m caught between being happy, frustrated, and sad. I’m happy she’s on the course she wanted to be on, but frustrated about how she ended up in the position she has. If not for a manipulative, toxic, abusive relationship she walked straight into with her eyes wide open earlier this year, her results would have been markedly different. Maybe she has learned something. Let’s hope so.

Nobody warns you quite how difficult parenting becomes when your children become teenagers and push away from you – and while you might want to be there, to help, support and guide them, it’s really better that you are not. It’s terrifying though – watching your largely innocent children swim straight out into the deep water, surrounded by sharks.

At least she has survived her first brush with a shark. I just wonder how the sharks of this world come to exist though. How do some teenagers learn such duplicitous behaviour? If it has been by example, I cannot imagine the lives they must have led.

Anyway. She’s on the design course. That’s all that matters. Another year, and another chance at the deep water.

I seem to only make it to the blog every other day at the moment, which is ridiculous because I have the week off work. Im knocking around the house doing chores, walking into town running errands, and somehow filling each day with forgettable detritus.

Ill keep quiet about Grand Theft Auto 5. Yes, I picked up a second hand copy of it, and yes, Ive played it for a number of hours now, but Ive already started to lose interest in it. I tend to deconstruct things in my head and know that as soon as I start doing that with a video game, Ill lose interest in it. Ive started seeing through the veneer of the imaginary game world to the machinery underneath, and its killing it. The uncanny valley has been washed away by scripted lines, event triggers, and stock animations.

Maybe theres a hint there about why I tend towards blogging rather than video games. Its all about real people, isnt it. When we post our thoughts out to the internet, we invite real people to connect with us. We sow the seeds of the chance to make new friends.

People are odd though, arent they. While ironing a shirt to wear this morning I listened to a chart-show style playlist, and started to take notice of the songs. They were all so polarised my girl wants me dead, I want to die without her, whats the point of carrying on, and so on. It all seemed so black and white. It got me thinking about somebody I have come to know through their blog that is having a tough time at the moment and their daily swing from high to low. They have no middle-ground either. Ive been sitting here, wondering if its to do with age, and life experience?

Maybe when we are younger, things really are more polarised? We have no life experience to fall back on, so endings really are endings the idea that the world keeps turning is probably earned through bitter experience. I wonder how many times we have to wake up the next day feeling better about things to learn the lesson?

Anyway. Im rambling. I have promised a certain 13 year old a visit to the coffee shop in town. I imagine she will order the most complicated drink possible (last week was a caramel frappuccino), while I stand there looking apologetic. Later.

Sixteen thousand steps. That’s what the Apple Health app tells me, on the shiny new iPhone that’s been in my pocket all day long. Nearly thirteen kilometres. That’s about the size of a day out and about with my younger children. And you wonder why I’m not overweight, given that I typically sit at a desk all day long.

To be honest, today wasn’t ordinary at all. The girls wanted to go to rugby training, and our car’s engine has been misbehaving, so rugby was a bus ride, and a couple of miles walk away. I distracted the children on the way with breakfast in McDonalds, and again on the way home with lunch at KFC. Hardly healthy, I know, but I was in full-on-distraction mode.

After rugby training, the afternoon was spent wandering around the shops – buying new school bags for 13 and 14, new running shoes for 14, and an armful of video games from the used game store. The girls finally have their copies of FIFA to play in their rooms.

Oh – I forgot all about that story, didn’t I (it played out on Saturday afternoon, but I’ll tell it anyway). My other half acquired two copies of FIFA 17 on E-Bay, and had them posted to our local supermarket via “click and collect”. As soon as we got the collection notification via email, I wandered into town with Miss 13, who has been waiting to play FIFA all week (she’s football mad). All went well in the supermarket – we fed our details into an iPad on the counter, and were told a staff member would bring our parcel out to us. Only that’s now what happened at all.

We stood waiting for perhaps ten minutes, while nearby staff took an interest in us, and apologised. Finally a flustered looking lady turned the corner at the end of the nearest aisle, and seemed to offer a more formal apology. In the hour between the video games arriving in the store room, and our arrival in the story, they had gone missing. You can think what you like – I think they were stolen by staff in the store room. Of course I have no proof.

She issues us a refund, and a gift voucher for more than the value of the games that had been lost – which Miss 13 seemed pretty happy with – until I wouldn’t let her spend it on chocolate.

“You can’t spend that amount of money on chocolate!? You would need a wheelbarrow to carry it home!” – this did nothing to dissuade her form the idea.

So anyway – after returning from our epic shopping and rugby adventure late this afternoon, we sat down for dinner together, then went our various ways to play video games. This is where I admit to picking up a second hand copy of GTA 5 – which half explains my total absence from everything over the last few hours. It turns out leading a pretend life in a video game as a collection of entertainingly dreadful characters is quite addictive.

I finished work at 5:30pm this evening, and cycled home through quiet roads towards home. The majority of the people that would normally be passive aggressively driving their cars home from work were nowhere to be seen – no doubt they are either sitting on beaches in sunnier climes, posting their toxic highlight reels to the social networks.

Well guess what. Now I can play that game too – because I finished work this evening, and don’t go back for nearly three weeks. Next week I am at home, then the week after we fly to Majorca – our first family trip overseas. While I might share a few photos along the way, I promise not to flood the feeds with idiotic mugshots – no “look where I am and you’re not” photos from me.

The first of our five iPhones should arrive tomorrow – we could only order three to begin with, and will order another two at the start of November. It appears to be some kind of billing safeguard to avoid people buying phones in bulk, selling them, and then vanishing. I’m still not sure how I feel about returning to using an iPhone – it’s something new to learn (or to re-learn in my case – I had an iPhone 3G back in the day, and an iPad). I’m sure it will be fine, but urgh. I don’t know.

Miss 17 got paid this evening – her first ever pay packet. She has worked for the local dance teacher for the last week – running art activities for children at her summer dance classes. I have to take her to the bank in the morning to show her how to pay a cheque in. I may well walk up to the bank staff and ask them to show and explain everything to her – it will give them something to do. By mid week she will have more money in her bank account than she has ever known – I imagine parcels will begin arriving from Amazon over the following days.

What else has been happening? Not much really. I started playing chess online, can’t quite believe how bad I have become. I’m not entirely sure I want to invest the effort to drag myself back to where I used to be. I do still love playing the game though – it fascinates, and frustrates me at the same time.

Oh crikey – look at the time. Somehow it’s midnight, and Friday has become Saturday. I should post this, and then head to bed.

If all goes according to plan, at the weekend a parcel will arrive in the post with five iPhones in it. Both mine, and my other half’s phone contracts have come to an end, and we have been looking around at the various deals available. At the same time, we’re going to move our children from pay-as-you-go phones to contracts, meaning they will not run out of credit while out with their friends.

It turns out buying five contracts for the iPhone SE was cheaper than the two idiotic handsets myself and my other half have been paying through the nose for. We have no illusions why either – Apple is obviously about to release the iPhone SE 2, so has quietly told all the networks to offload their old hardware.

Here’s the thing – I don’t really care about having a “flagship phone” – I’ve been there, done it, and realised it’s a stupid game to get swept up in. As long as my phone does all the things you might expect, I don’t really care. Hell – I haven’t even had a personal phone for the last few months – I’ve been using my work phone, on account of my other half smashing hers. I gave her my handset at the same time I started using the Nokia 3310. Of course I then lost the little Nokia, but we won’t dwell on that.

The children are predictably ecstatic. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps the label on the back of the phone means far more to a teenager than it does to me.

While working on some code this afternoon one of my co-workers wandered over to check if I had keys to the office. I glanced at the clock, and realised it was already 6pm. How the hell did that happen? After a quick call home to apologise in advance, I jumped on the bike and started out towards home.

I rarely remember the journey to or from work. I just pedal, and my brain goes elsewhere. Sometimes I’m pulled back into the real world – you know, like when a pedestrian walks out in front of me without looking, or when an idiot driver tries to kill me – but by and large, I daydream all the way home. Sometimes I think of great ideas for blog posts, but by the time I get home, clear the kitchen, put the rubbish out, pick up the mountain of debris in the hallway, eat dinner, wash up, clear the kitchen again, put some washing in the machine, take some washing out of the dryer, and finally sit down well by then whatever the hell I thought of two hours before has long gone.

It’s not all chores though. I’ve sat staring at the computer in the junk room for the last hour, procrastinating famously rather than start typing anything. I wandered into Spotify for a while, and somehow ended up listening to a Keith Urban track – that led to a search for cowboy photos, with the idea of writing a post about how country music polarises people (I don’t mind it, for the record). Of course this post isn’t about country music – because in the end I just started typing, and this just sort of happened.

It’s funny really – some people write insightful, sweeping blog posts about their adventures, their thoughts, their ideas, their hopes – I just kind of write, and whatever comes out gets published to the web a few minutes later. Sometimes the words fall out of me like turning a tap on, but invariably it’s a fight against any distraction you might dream up – even country music.

Tonight was a battle of two halves – the first won by Spotify, YouTube, and Wikipedia – the second won by a tired software developer sitting in the dark of the junk room with only the distant sound of his daughter’s hairdryer for company.

Anyway. I think it’s probably time to stop this nonsense, go make a very English cup of tea, and then go hide somewhere with a book.