write.as/jonbeckett

It feels like I’ve been in some sort of bubble during this visit to Frankfurt. Since arriving from the airport on Monday afternoon, I haven’t really gone anywhere, or done anything outside of visiting the supermarket, the office, and a nearby restaurant. I have seen no “life”. Perhaps if the weather improves this evening (as it looks like it might), I will go for a walk around the city – explore a little.

Before that I have to endure a final day in the office. Apparently I’m being taken out for lunch today, so have no requirement to go and buy anything for a change. I suppose this also means I’ll get less done.

I half watched the England game at the World Cup last night. I switched it off a little way into the second half, because it was becoming more and more obvious that we weren’t going to win – and wasn’t really surprised at all when I checked before going to bed, and saw the score. The press are trying to find positives this morning, but the harsh reality (as far as I can see) is that England scored nearly all of their goals throughout the competition from set-pieces, and were very fortuitous in the draw of teams they played.

Anyway – enough about football (I’m not really a huge fan, if you hadn’t guessed).

While here (in Frankfurt) I have been getting up at 6am each day, and making it down for breakfast by 6:30. I’m not entirely sure why. I suppose it gives me an hour afterwards to sit in my hotel room, and gather my thoughts. I’ve been paying for breakfast in the hotel as part of the booking fee while staying – it’s ridiculously expensive, but work is picking it up as expenses so I don’t really mind.

I’ll be tempted at the end of today to just sleep I think.

Anyway… one more day, then home on Friday. My flight is at lunchtime, so I’ll get to have a relaxed breakfast for a change. Fingers crossed.

It feels like I’ve been in some sort of bubble during this visit to Frankfurt. Since arriving from the airport on Monday afternoon, I haven’t really gone anywhere, or done anything outside of visiting the supermarket, the office, and a nearby restaurant. I have seen no “life”. Perhaps if the weather improves this evening (as it looks like it might), I will go for a walk around the city – explore a little.

Before that I have to endure a final day in the office. Apparently I’m being taken out for lunch today, so have no requirement to go and buy anything for a change. I suppose this also means I’ll get less done.

I half watched the England game at the World Cup last night. I switched it off a little way into the second half, because it was becoming more and more obvious that we weren’t going to win – and wasn’t really surprised at all when I checked before going to bed, and saw the score. The press are trying to find positives this morning, but the harsh reality (as far as I can see) is that England scored nearly all of their goals throughout the competition from set-pieces, and were very fortuitous in the draw of teams they played.

Anyway – enough about football (I’m not really a huge fan, if you hadn’t guessed).

While here (in Frankfurt) I have been getting up at 6am each day, and making it down for breakfast by 6:30. I’m not entirely sure why. I suppose it gives me an hour afterwards to sit in my hotel room, and gather my thoughts. I’ve been paying for breakfast in the hotel as part of the booking fee while staying – it’s ridiculously expensive, but work is picking it up as expenses so I don’t really mind.

I’ll be tempted at the end of today to just sleep I think.

Anyway… one more day, then home on Friday. My flight is at lunchtime, so I’ll get to have a relaxed breakfast for a change. Fingers crossed.

A lot can happen in 48 hours. A blog can be removed from existence, and fifteen years worth of posts – four and half thousand of them – can vanish into the ether. Of course this is the internet, and nothing ever vanishes without a trace. In this case that “trace” is the four and a half thousands posts resurfacing somewhere elsewhere entirely, right under everybody’s noses.

I stopped writing a personal blog 48 hours ago. And yet here I am, writing again – emptying my head into the keyboard. This isn’t so much slipping under the radar, as moving in around the corner – complete with a badly fitting fedora, sunglasses, and stick-on mustache. You haven’t seen me, right ?

What else has happened in the past 48 hours?

I flew to Germany. There’s that. I’m sitting at the table of my hotel room in deepest, darkest Frankfurt while writing this. I’m one day into a three day development sprint – busy trying not to stress myself out over the mountain still to climb, or to look over my shoulder at the yawning chasm behind me. I’ve been on this project since February, and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight. There are already sketchy plans for flights in September, and funding for further projects next year.

I went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner – the one I have frequented often during these flying visits. The food is wonderful, the service is fast, and it’s not expensive. It’s also nearby. The lady serving me presumed I was German to begin with, and apologised profusely when she discovered I was English. We both laughed, and suddenly there was a warmth about her that hadn’t been there before. I still find it amazing that even international staff in restaurants throughout the city appear to be tri-lingual.

After returning to the hotel, I haven’t achieved anything really. I avoided the World Cup on the television, and contenting myself with one internet rabbit hole after another. While it is tempting to stay up until the early hours catching up with friends, another part of me wants to continue reading the book I’ve had my nose in. I think tonight the book might win.

It’s 7:34am on Tuesday morning and I’m sitting in the hotel room. It’s cold outside – for the first time in weeks. Although I slept with the window open last night, I have closed it now. The weather forecast says 20 something degrees – it feels like half that – I may even put a sweater on.

I’ve been nowhere, and done nothing all morning so far. This week we’re trying to get through the Procurements workflows – which should be fine, because they were run through twice already (during the crazy visit where I stayed up until 2am two nights running in the 1000 hotel room). We’ll see I guess.

I’m tempted to write up a list of the “issues” so far in my notebook, but then thought “why bother” – it’s just a waste of ink – I suspect half of the issues are no such thing – just the psychotic project manager having a rant because she doesn’t understand how anything works.

Oh – I canned the blog yesterday, so I guess this is the first entry as a diary post. I wonder what it means? Maybe that I can tell the truth, rather than filter everything. Is that a good thing? Not sure.

Brooke has promised not to try and talk to me all week. I’m thinking this is a good thing – not sure if she will keep to it though. She has crossed all sorts of lines in her head – from being distant friends, to something else entirely. I can only imagine there is something pretty massive missing in her real life to behave in the way she does.

Jessica in NZ messaged me on Hangouts the day before yesterday, and commented (on my final public blog post) that my life seems like a cage much of the time – and I had to agree with her. It made me realise how crap the blog has become, and a primary factor in finally pulling the plug on it. I’m not sure if she realised as much.

Not blogging about life has had an unexpected consequence – I’m looking in on Tumblr once again. I don’t know how much I might use it, because I still hate reblogging, but I suppose we’ll see.

I have about twenty minutes before I need to leave – to go get something for lunch from the supermarket. Oh what a fun day ahead (not). Let’s see if I can get through it without losing my temper spectacularly with Sandra.

I’m seriously considering drawing a line under this whole blogging adventure again. I nearly did it a couple of months ago, and then returned. I’ve soldiered on, posting less regularly, and still struggled to find anything worth writing about.

Maybe if I stop blogging, I might find time to go running, or start writing a novel, or even read a few of the books that have been patiently waiting on the shelf behind me for several years.

I’ll still be at Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, so it’s not like I’m going anywhere. Maybe it really is time to end this though.

After finishing work on Friday evening I cycled home via the supermarket with Miss 17, and picked up all manner of goodies to help out with dinner. The barbecue we lucked into on Freecycle was going to get it’s first try-out. I am reliably informed that “Friday night pizza night” has become “Friday night barbecue night” throughout the summer.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about barbecues – while it takes twenty minutes to cook, and ten minutes to eat the food, it then takes an hour and a half to clear away all the stuff everybody has left out, and to scrub the damn barbecue afterwards. While the kids gathered around the chiminea late in the evening, I was still in the kitchen, washing the stops down, and clearing up.

I spent all of yesterday – Saturday – washing clothes, and getting them dry. I think perhaps the washing machine did about eight or ten loads during the day and night. At least I now get to go to Germany next week secure in the thought that no fingers can be pointed at me. I also went grocery shopping, and folded about a thousand items of clean clothing that had amassed in the lounge throughout the week. I doubt any of the children will take their clothes and put them away, but we can dream, can’t we?

While running back and forth with washing, emptying the fridge of mouldy food, and filling the bins with rubbish the rest of the family had seen fit to just leave around the place, I looked in on the England Sweden football match at the world cup. I missed both goals, but was happy England have progressed – happy for my own children more than anything.

Of course not all of our children are football mad. Miss 17 announced early in the evening “I don’t care who wins – I just want this stupid football thing to be over”.

Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that Miss 13 won the “Coach’s Player of the Year” at their annual awards yesterday evening. I’ve never seen her smile so much as when she arrived home with the presentation box, and glass plaque. She even tidied her room, in order to put the award in pride of place among the various other football trophies she has earned over the years.

Today is Sunday. I was up at about 9 (shocking, I know), and wandered into town to re-fill the contents of my work washbag. Miss 17 has been “borrowing” razors from me. I needed a new toothbrush and toothpaste anyway. Here’s the thing – why in the actual hell was the supermarket full of seventy year olds at 10am on Sunday morning? I swear – it was busier than a weekday morning. Just to cap things off, the supermarket obviously runs on skeleton staff on a Sunday, so at one point there was a queue perhaps twenty deep at the self-checkouts, all of which were waiting for staff intervention. I thought some of the old people might spontaneously combust in anger – but at least it took my mind of the queue. I mean – it’s not like they had anything else to do with their day, is it?

I’m now hiding out in the junk room, trying to catch the remaining fleas the cats have brought into the house yet again (don’t even dare ask how furious I am about it), and waiting for the British Grand Prix to kick off at Silverstone. It’s one of the few races that gets free TV coverage – next year Formula One goes completely pay-per-view, so I imagine that will mean the end of me bothering with it any more.

Anyway. I need to go find a beer.

Later this afternoon I’ll have to start ironing work shirts back into a suitcase, ready to travel again tomorrow morning. Urgh… Trying not to think too much about that.

Late yesterday evening – while sitting outside watching kindling burn in the old chiminea that sits on our patio, Miss 17 appeared in the doorway of the house, looking a bit lost. She finished college a week ago, and bouncing around the house on her own has started to get very old indeed.

I suggested that if she got herself up and out of bed in the morning, she could come with me to work. Better to be in the office bored, than knocking around the house at home bored. I didn’t think any more about it – fully expecting her to sleep straight through her alarm clock.

You can imagine my surprise at 7:30am this morning – in the middle of making packed lunches for everybody – when she emerged from her bedroom to have a wash. I almost fell over.

An hour later I had pulled her mountain bike from the shed, and re-inflated the tyres. After a few minutes of dithering over what to wear, what to put in her backpack, and how dangerous the morning traffic might be, we set off – very, very slowly. We continued towards the place I work – very, very slowly. And we arrived – very, very slowly. And you know the funny thing? She was knackered – almost unable to walk up the steps to the office.

It’s been fun though – having her around in the office. The building is almost deserted today – with most staff either working on-site at various customers, or working from home. We spent the better part of an hour at lunchtime sitting alongside the river, feeding the crusts of our sandwiches and cold pizza to the various swans and ducks that spotted us.

I wonder if she will come in again ? Perhaps more importantly, I wonder if she will survive the cycle home ?!

After a day spent fighting virtual fires within the software leviathan I have been constructing for the last six months, I’m now sitting in the garden, slowly feeding kindling into a chiminea, gazing into altogether more real flickering flames.

There’s something about tending an open fire. I’m not sure if it’s the smell of wood smoke, or the hypnotic pops, crackles, and streams of light that leap, bend, and consume the twigs, branches, and leaves within. A part of me imagines Mr Tumnus playing his flute, and Lucy Pevensie falling asleep in the corner.

Today wasn’t a complete slog though – a wonderful friend that lives nearby put out an SOS on Facebook for somebody to help her lift something heavy (which appears to be one of my useful purposes). A few minutes later I arrived in her back garden, and somehow lifted a huge wooden table onto the roof of a Landrover defender parked on the driveway. I can only imagine how the new owner removed it.

Helping out led to an hour sitting in my friend’s kitchen, being fed wine, and grown up conversation. After the last few weeks, it was a perfect hour – an hour away from everything and everybody, just emptying my head with a trusted friend. She perched on the kitchen counter, I sat at a breakfast-bar stool, and the world seemed to fall away for a little while.

Of course then the whole escapade came crashing to a halt, when my other half arrived home – and without me present our girls had apparently launched into a fairly accurate recreation of “Lord of the Flies”. I received an angry text message just as my wine glass was being re-filled.

It’s funny how families do that, isn’t it – how the rug can be pulled from under you. One moment you’re enjoying some much needed peace, quiet, and a brief glimpse of how things might be, and the next you are pitched back into the shouting, the arguments, the mayhem and the chaos.

You know how I switched back to a basic candy-bar phone at the start of the year? I’ve been using it mostly as a destination for text messages when logging into social networking sites. I also use it as a destination for “one time codes” for the bank account – when I make a payment for anything through online banking, it sends a code to the phone, and I key it in to validate the transaction. This all works wonderfully – until you lose your damn phone.

Yes, I lost my phone. I imagine it went missing at some point over the weekend. While it would be so easy to claim somebody stole it from me in London (which is a very real possibility), I have no doubt it will turn up in the next few days. Of course I’ve already called the phone company, and re-set all the two-factor authentication things to use my work phone.

Those first minutes though – when I realised the phone was missing – they were awful. A kind of empty dread swept through me. I walked into the lounge and asked if anybody had seen the phone – even though I knew nobody would have. I’m SUCH a creature of habit – the phone lives in the same place in my bag, or in my trousers. I looked through the washing, and emptied my bag. Twice. Quite why I imagined it might turn up on a second search through the bag is a very good question indeed.

After spending the first hour of the day at work on the phone to both the phone company, and the bank, a new SIM card will arrive on Friday. Of course I will have no handset to put it in, but at least I’ll have it ready for when we finally buy some new phones at home.

I commented recently that I had fallen off the blogging horse. The months of daily posts came to a crashing end, replaced with television, books, video games – anything but writing. If this “not writing” thing is a hole in the ground, it still feels like I’m in it. I’m not so much struggling to get up – more gazing at the wall as you might when you wake on a morning – knowing you need to get up eventually, but not quite summoning the will to do so for the moment.

Of course it doesn’t help that it’s been so hot here recently. It rained pretty consistently for the first several months of the year, and then switched to “second sun of Krypton” mode. This appears to have created perfect conditions for the insect world to have something of a baby-boom year. I’m sitting in the junk room writing this, and have just lit an incense stick to hopefully dissuade mosquitoes from adding me to their menu for the evening.

I feel like I’m in limbo at the moment. I was in Germany last week with work, I’m home this week, and I will be back in Germany next week – staying at the same hotel as usual, going through the same routine as usual. I will fly out mid-morning on Monday, get up ridiculously early each day while on-site, and then fly home on Friday.

One of the curious benefits of traveling recently is I’ve finally started finding time to read again. I used to read all the time – we have bookshelves dotted around the house filled with evidence (because who on earth gives books away?) – everything from Douglas Adams, to Charles Dickens, Tolstoy, J K Rowling, Robert Heinlein, and countless more. I still prefer reading paper books, but also appreciate how easy the Kindle is to carry with me while traveling. The Kindle is dangerous too though – within moments you can buy any book you like – and another – and another.

With books, hot summer evenings, and burning incense sticks in mind, you’ll excuse me if one of the reasons for not posting quite so often is because I have my nose in a book.