write.as/jonbeckett

After work this evening I dropped my bag at the hotel, changed my clothes, and set out along the river to the bar I have visited for the last several nights. While sitting quietly and sipping a beer, I watched the world go by while chatting with a friend on the internet, and called home to catch up with the adventures of my children.

Watching the sun slowly fall in the sky, it occurred to me that it might be fun to walk the city streets and take a few photos. There’s something about long shadows that I’ve always liked. So rather than return to the hotel with food from the supermarket, I stopped at a japanese restaurant for something to eat, and then headed straight into the city.

While walking I saw life happening all around me – business people leaving for the day, couples heading out for the evening, city-dwellers cycling this way and that among the traffic, and older people sitting in cafes – talking animatedly, and occasionally lifting the mood around them with booming laughter.

It occurred to me that here I was, in the middle of a beautiful city, taking photos of so many things – so many moments, and really it meant very little because I had nobody to share it with. Sure, I posted photos to Instagram when I got back, but it’s not the same as walking hand in hand with somebody, and sharing discoveries – quiet corners, back streets, and unexpected scenes unfolding before you.

Sometimes things just seem so much more powerful when shared with another. It doesn’t have to be a partner – it could be a friend, a family member, an acquaintance, or even a co-worker. I’m sure the pscho-analysis crowd would pull my thoughts to pieces and equate them to something missing during childhood. Come to think of it, I never did get that Micronaut Battle Cruiser when I was 7 years old.

Anyway. Apologies for lighting Instagram up a little earlier this evening. If I had not shared at least a little of the sights experienced during my walk through the streets of Frankfurt earier, I would have ended up questioning the reason for being here at all.

The day began at 6am when the alarm clock went off on my mobile phone. This wasn’t the first time I woke up this morning of course, because guess who fell asleep while lying on top of the bed covers reading a book at 8pm, and then woke at 1am, 4am, and then again at 5:30am? I’m blaming the 30C temperatures outside – it definitely had nothing to do with beer and wine. Nope, nothing to do with beer and wine at all.

I scraped myself out of bed a few minutes after 6, and stumbled off in the direction of the shower. Ten minutes later I was showered, dressed, and wondering if 6:15 was too early to show my face for breakfast. It turns out any time before 7 is the perfect time for breakfast – as the clock ticks closer to 7, all manner of construction workers appear and pretty much clean the breakfast area out of anything worth eating.

I made a bacon roll for myself, filled a cup with cappuccino, and grabbed a yoghurt from a refridgerated cabinet on my way past. I also picked up what I thought might be a boiled egg, and an egg-cup. Yeah – make that a hard boiled egg. You know that moment when you just fancy a dippy egg, and you find out it’s hard boiled. That.

After nursing my coffee for twenty minutes, I decided I couldn’t stretch breakfast out any further, and faced an hour with nothing to do. Thankfully a wonderful friend from the other side of the world appeared in my phone, and saved the morning. I think somehow it might become a regular thing while holed up in the hotel.

Of course I cannot write about the middle part of the day for obvious reasons (professionalism, blah blah blah), but I can talk about escaping the office at 6pm, getting changed out of my work clothes, and immediately heading off along the river to the bar I discovered last night. Along the way I called my other half and caught up with the various adventures of the children (mostly to avoid gawping at the variously unclothed people sunbathing at the side of the river).

I sat in the sunshine with a beer, and watched the world go by. It struck me how few obese people there are around here – certainly among those that frequent the river bank, anyway. Most of the mile-or-so walk to the bar had been spent dodging people on bicycles, rollerblades, and scooters – and while I sat sipping my beer, I couldn’t help but notice the continual stream of runners, or couples out for a walk in the evening sun.

It’s funny how lonely you can suddenly feel, sitting at a table on your own among so many people meeting up on the way home from work, or while heading out for the evening. All I had to look forward to was a quiet walk back to the supermarket, or to find a restaurant nearby. I chose the supermarket, sushi, and a pot of natural yoghurt.

Now don’t laugh. While sitting in the hotel room, attempting to watch a German soap-opera and eating sushi, it dawned on me that I had no spoon to eat the yoghurt. I also figured the yoghurt was just too thick to drink. What to do? I could get dressed I suppose and ask at the bar in the hotel if they would lend me a spoon. I then figured that the plastic fish from the sushi that had been filled with soy-sauce could probably work as a spoon too. I tried it. It did work. Kind of. I think mostly it just slowed me down – and also helped coat my fingers with yoghurt – but it was one step up from scraping the yoghurt out with my fingers like some sort of neanderthal thug.

So. Here I am. As soon as I’ve finished writing this I’m going to have another go at reading the book I fell asleep reading last night. Wish me luck. One day down, two more to go.

It’s 9:04 on Monday morning, and I’m sitting in the departure hall of Terminal 2 at London’s Heathrow Airport. I’ve chosen to sit right in the middle of the departure hall, because bizarrely it’s the quietest place. On one side the seating area is surrounded by endless shops that very few people seem to set foot in, and on the other sides, gates to waiting aircraft, accompanied by gaggles of highly strung, stressed travellers.

I’m stressed too – but not about the flight – more about the work to achieve over the next few days. Flying has become strangely routine for me now, having done this trip so many times in recent months. I was just talking to a neighbour a few days ago about the “magic” of travel, and how it dissipates pretty damn quickly when you do it for work. When I tell people I’m off to visit Frankfurt once again, they talk of museums, and cafes, and boat trips along the river. I will see none of that. I will see my hotel room, a supermarket, a restaurant or two, and a conference room. I’ll see a lot of the conference room.

I have about half an hour until the gate is called for the Frankfurt flight. Half an hour to watch people milling around, buying over-priced coffee, and deliberating over where to sit, having been asked to arrive at the airport two hours early, and finding they got through security in fifteen minutes.

I will admit to becoming “good” at security checks. By the time I arrive at the scanner I’ve usually dispensed with my belt, my watch, my keys, any coins, and emptied my bag of all electronics. One time coming home a security lady at Frankfurt cheered when I walked straight through with no alarms – and quietly confided that she wished there were more passengers like me.

I suppose I should post this, and get on with some people watching. No doubt I’ll have more adventures to impart a little later.

After arriving at Frankfurt Airport, and picking my way through the various hurdles that have become so familiar, I finally found myself standing in the queue for a train ticket at the railway station beneath the airport. I wondered quite what everybody was doing, taking so long over buying tickrets, until I finally got to the front of the queue, and put my journey details in. Instead of suggesting a reasonably priced ticket to get me from the airport to the city, there was now a full-blown journey planning application with ten screens, all sorts of choices, and tickets that costs three times as much as they used to.

I didn’t bother trying to figure the ticket machine out. The passengers in front of me obviously had, given the amount of time they spent pouring over the menu choices. I spent three times more than normal – still cheaper than the London Heathrow Express – and went on my way.

It has to be said – Frankfurt is a beautiful station. After the train rolled to a stop I spent some time wandering along the platforms, taking photos before heading off into the city to find my hotel.

You know the thing where you walk into a hotel and see the reservation sign, and suddenly remember the email you received 24 hours before inviting you to do advance check-in – and that you totally ignored? Yeah – that. So I spent the next several minutes filling out a piece of paper with my passport number, address, and so on.

Fun times.

I’m on the fifth floor of the hotel. I’m almost certain I’ve stayed in this exact room before – the first time I visited, about 18 months ago. Since then it’s had a pretty spectacular face-lift, and is almost nice now (not always the case for budget hotels). Oh yes – this is a budget hotel – not the grandeur of the idiotic suite I stayed in last time. I have no coffee machine, no fridge, and no wardrobe this time. Oh, the trials I suffer. On the plus side, there is no step in the floor half-way along the room that I will trip over and fall flat on my face three times either.

After unpacking my bags, and giving my phone a few minutes to charge, I headed straight out for a walk along the river. I don’t think I’ve ever known Frankfurt this hot. I spent the next ten minutes kicking myself, having not packed any shorts. The attire of the day though – judging by people stretched out on the grass alongside the river – was swimming trunks though. Tiny swimming trunks. And tiny bikinis. To be honest, it was difficult not to look.

I’m not sure if this is culturally offensive or not, but older German men do creepy really well. While the younger people stretched out on the grass, absorbing vitamin C from the sun into every corner of their body, a number of old men walked past with their bicycles – and they made sure they had a damn good look. One particularly hilarious looking old man, with hair sprouting from each side of his head like a mad professor, took quite some time adjusting his bicycle clips while simultaneously leering at an admittedly beautiful woman asleep in the sun wearing not very much at all.

A little way past the army of sunbathers I spotted a riverside bar, and almost got run over by a girl on a bicycle while trying to reach it. Maybe an exaggeration. She had to swerve, and I apologised, but then realised she probably didn’t understand me anyway.

Five minutes later I found an seat at a bench table, and rested a marvellously huge beer down in front of me. Thankfully the beer was labelled on the bar, otherwise I might have had a very entertaining conversation with the barman, doing my best charades act to describe a “big beer”. I smiled while the lady on the till talked away happily at me in German, and nodded occasionally. Let’s hope she wasn’t asking me anything where nodding was a deeply offensive answer.

While sitting there, sipping my beer, and polluting Instagram with the last several hours goings-on, I watched life going by, and wondered how I might luck into such a life. A life spent sitting around in cafes and bars, watching people, and writing about them with humor, honesty, and candor. I could become a tremendously successful travel writer – but a writer that only writes about places he happens to be visiting. Maybe it could be called “While I was doing something else”.

I thought about it some more half an hour later at a Japanese restaurant – the same one I frequented last time I visited Frankfurt. The same pretty Japanese girl ran out to greet me, and I spent much of my time there alone. While eating, I watched the city workers leave their offices for the day, and get on enumerable scooters – twirling helmets onto their heads, and vanishing off towards the suburbs among the traffic.

Do you ever wonder about people when you’re sitting alone in a restaurant? Where they are from? What their homes are like? If they have big families? What they worry about? What makes them laugh? If they have children? If they have somebody at home waiting for them? I do.

After paying for my meal, I wandered on down the road, and picked up a few groceries – among them a gigantic bottle of water, a bottle of orange juice, some apples, a bar of chocolate, and a huge bottle of cheap wine. Reading back through it, it’s not exactly a balanced diet, is it.

So here I am. Sitting in the hotel room once more. The hotel has a bar, but I’ve already blown today’s budget for food and drink. It might be quite entertaining though – to find out if the perverted old men extend to hotel lobbys too. I imagine the bar will be filled with tourists and business people though – which provides it’s own kind of entertainment too. I’ve spent enough awkward dinners with co-workers to know all about waiting for the ground to open up, or a Monty Python foot to fall from the sky and squash somebody for dithering over menu choices.

At breakfast time tomorrow morning a taxi will hopefully arrive at the end of our drive, waiting to whisk me to Heathrow Airport, ahead of another week in Frankfurt, Germany.

I spent this morning ironing clothes into a travel suitcase that has accompanied me all over the world. Perched atop the suitcase are clothes for the morning – to travel in, and to wear during the evenings throughout the week. I’m staying at a small hotel across the road from my ultimate destination – the 28th floor of an office building that looks out over the Frankfurt financial district.

And yes, I’m starting to stress out.

The flights and hotel are already paid for – as is breakfast in the hotel. I’m going to try and turn my body-clock around while there, getting up a couple of hours earlier than normal. Walking along the riverside among the early morning runners and cyclists seems like a nice way to greet each day, weather permitting.

Before any of that happens I need to make a decision on the Filofax, the Bullet Journal, the Moleskine, or no notebook at all. Over the past few weeks I seem to have fallen off the Bullet Journal horse – perhaps because each week has been much like the last. The idiocy of filling calendar entries in triplicate between Outlook (for work), Google Calendar (for home), and the bullet journal has not been lost on me. I think the Moleskine may win out, purely as a notebook to carry into meetings, or to accompany me on walks along the river.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment with Amazon, to see what free movies I might fill my tablet with. Streaming is almost non-existent in Germany, particularly if you’re not from Germany, so I tend to arrive armed with all manner of things to watch, listen to, or read – just in case. Of course I will spend most of my free time blogging, but that’s not the point.

I expect the next blog post will be sent from a hotel room in Germany, having survived the journey. Fingers crossed.

Miss 17 and I took the twentieth bus out of town this morning – it would have been the first bus, but I couldn’t find any dynamite to explode her out of bed. You’re probably wondering why we were up so early (actually, probably not, but I’m going to tell you anyway).

I was given tickets last Christmas to a local Comic-Con. When people think of Comic-Con, they naturally thing of San Diego, and thousands of people descending in various cosplay outfits. This was not San Diego. This was nothing like San Diego. This was more like a local town hall with a few stalls, a few props, and a few actors that live locally.

Although I had never visited the venue before, we knew we were on the right track when we bumped into a very good facsimile of David Tennant (the tenth Doctor Who) marching down the high-street, trench coat billowing in the wind. I stopped and did a double-take – he really was very impressive.

A little further on we could see a crowd parting through the street market as two imperial storm troopers and a forest scout trooper made their way through, brandishing very impressive looking weaponry. They stopped to talk to a car that had pulled over, giving directions (or looking for droids – not sure which), and we got to see and hear them up-close – they even had voice changers. I think Miss 17 kind of freaked out at that point – taking a rather wide birth round them.

Within the hall there were a number of stalls selling the things you would expect – memorabilia, figurines, comic-books, jewellery, and so on – and unexpectedly a row of tables with various actors sitting quietly, waiting for anybody to take an interest in them. And that’s how I got to meet Greedo.

It turns out the chap that played Greedo in A New Hope is a nice guy – immediately joking with me about who shot first, and the number of edits to the scene George Lucas has made (so far). I respectfully declined the opportunity to buy a signed print, or pay for a selfie – I did wonder about offering to go get some of them a coffee though. I bet nobody ever does that.

Also sitting along the line was a goblin from Harry Potter, a Storm Trooper from the newer Star Wars films, and an extra that appeared to have been in just about every major movie of the last ten years – everything from James Bond, to the Star Wars movies, and Ready Player One.

Oh – nearly forgot – the master at arms in Game of Thrones that taught Arya Stark to fence – he was there too. I overheard him laughing with another visitor – apparently he had never held a sword in his life before he was cast.

After talking to the various actors, perusing the stalls, and becoming slightly besotted with a very good professional actress dressed as Black Widow from the Avengers (the attraction may have had more to do with Scarlett Johansson than the lady dressed as Black Widow), Miss 17 decided her pocket-money was burning a hole in her pocket – and that’s why she now owns a Hunger Games inspired pocket-watch.

After lunch at Wagamama – a faux Japanese noodle-bar in the middle of town – we had a look around the local bookstore. I wasn’t going to buy anything – just killing time before the bus might arrive – but then a book caught my eye – “Sleeping Giants”, by Sylvain Neuvel. It’s amazing how books do that. I contemplated making a note of it’s title, and ordering it from Amazon, but then realised the only reason I discovered the book is because we have a wonderful bookshop that I could wander around – so even if it’s a bit more expensive, it’s kind of worth it – otherwise bookshops go away, and we only ever find books that Amazon want’s us to find. I think that makes sense. Sort of.

Finally, the eagle eyed among those that read this post (both of you! lol), will notice that the name of the blog has changed. I did a thing. I signed up with Wordpress for the next year, and they gave me the domain name in return. I guess that settles the blog migration madness for the next year at least. We’ll keep very quiet about Wordpress losing the first version of this post, which I foolishly tried to write in the browser.

You know the one where your other half delivers your youngest daughter to the final day of football camp, then drops the car off for it’s MOT (Ministry of Transport) test, and it fails ? Yeah – that. Guess who had to run to the local petrol station to get cash – because WHO HAS CASH – so his other half could get a taxi to pick our daughter up again.

Why do these things always happen to us ? We now have no car until next week – that’s going to be fun.

Anyway. I seem to write “anyway” rather a lot. It’s Friday – the last day of my “week off”. Well maybe technically not the last day – because I still have the weekend to come – but still – where the hell did the past week go? All I seem to have done all week is washing up, gardening, tidying up, and tinkering with computers. Oh – and trying to figure out what might be wrong with the internet connection in the house.

A few days ago the internet started cutting out – for a few seconds at a time. When it did so I would head to the router administration page on our home network, and either re-connect, or re-start the router. I imagined engineers must be working on the cables somewhere nearby – opening the green boxes that have popped up on the end of many suburban streets. Only it didn’t get better – it got worse. By last night the connection stayed up for a few minutes before dying each time – somewhat frustrating while trying to catch up with on-demand TV shows (because we very rarely get to watch anything when it’s actually being broadcast).

This morning I checked again – no internet connection at all. I re-connected all the wires, and re-booted everything. Still no joy. Time to sit in a 15 minute queue with the internet service provider, to try and trace the fault. After working through the same routine I had just gone through, the engineer on the other end of the phone suggested something I hadn’t tried.

“If you remove the face plate from the box where your telephone cable is plugged in, you will find a second test socket”.

I fished a screwdriver from the toolbox under the kitchen counter (don’t ask), and removed the face plate. Oh my word – he was right. Inside the box, was another connector – just like the one outside the box. What sort of recursive design methodology was this?! I plugged the phone directly into it, and suddenly we had dial-tone. I plugged the broadband filter back in, and the internet connection re-established almost immediately.

After putting the phone down, and taking a good look at the face-plate of the box where the telephone cable plugs in, I realised what’s been going on – or rather I smelled what’s been going on. The cat has been peeing on the damn thing. It reeked of cat pee, and you could see inside there was some pretty horrid staining. So guess who spent the next hour scrubbing the walls, the floor, the door, and the entire area surrounding the telephone connection point? And guess who then drenched the doormats in a bleach solution before hanging them outside to dry? For my final act I sprayed the entire area with some kind of Batman anti-cat spray that we bought some time ago, and then walked to the corner shop to buy air fresheners.

I swear – if I catch the cat doing it again… Stop laughing. It’s not funny. Well, I suppose it is kind of funny, if it didn’t happen to you this morning.

I’m having second thoughts about living on my own remote blogging island, out in the middle of nowhere. Just so you know. Does this mean I’m coming back ? Maybe. The phrase “never say never” comes to mind.

The thunderbolts, lightning, cats, dogs, and whatever else that were forecast to fall on the United Kingdom today are conspicuous by their absence. The various weather websites have been confidently predicting all manner of graphical icons I have never seen before, accomanied by wording along the lines of “the end of all things” – none of it has come to pass yet.

So where is it? Where is this mythical lightning storm to end all lightning storms? Of course writing this will no doubt doom us to a post-apocalyptic storm the likes of which the world has never seen – hitting our house repeatedly with lightning bolt after lightning bolt until there is nothing left but a pile of smouldering bricks.

In-between checking the weather forecast, we have been working on the garden again today – cutting a path into the dense jungle, and periodically filling the car with branches and bracken, destined for the local rubbish tip. I say “rubbish tip”, but it’s actually a recycling centre. Rubbish tips don’t really exist any more in this part of the country – all refuse is sorted into metals, plastics, wood, garden waste, and so on, thrown into hoppers, crushed by diggers, and transported off to wherever it is that they re-process it and make it into something else.

We have a huge garden, but never spend any time in it – go figure. When the children were younger they would sleep out in tents during the summer, play in the Wendy house (inherited from a friend), or spend hour upon hour on the swings. The swing frame still stands under an old apple tree at the far end of the garden – the swings are a little broken and forlorn, having not been used for several years now. We had a climbing frame until last summer – it was put on the local freecycle website, and a lady came along in a very posh car to take it away. She brought no tools with her. I was not happy.

While writing this, my other half is feeding various cuttings through a wood-chipper. I can hear occasional explosions of rattling as branches and bows from the hedgerow get disintegrated. It’s quickly becoming apparent that over the last ten years we have lost perhaps 12ft of the garden from each side – it’s so long since we’ve seen much of it, we had forgotten just how big the garden is. When we first moved in – back in 2001 – there were no borders, no trees, and no hedgerow. I could walk the entire length – back and forth – almost 100ft – with the lawnmower. We could have put a lap pool in, a tennis court, you name it – but no. We planted things. Things that would eventually become overgrown, and that would cause the job of cutting the grass to become increasingly complicated. When I say “we”, it’s worth noting that I had no part in the decision making process at all. Stop laughing.

I don’t mind admitting that if I had my way, I would either live in an apartment, or astro-turf the entire damn garden. How gardening is supposed to be “fun” is beyond me. It’s no accident that when I was single, I owned a first floor apartment.

(three hours pass)

I ended up going back out to help in the garden – cutting branches into lengths that will fit in the car, and keeping Miss 13 (who had returned from football camp) occupied. While we did this, Miss 14 was supposed to be making dinner for everybody. Not for the first time, my other half had to go and rescue dinner. I’ll keep quiet about having to wash up three times during her dinner attempt, to avoid the entire kitchen devolving into a war-zone. I’ve never known one person cause so much mess while making such a simple meal – or to so reliably require rescue mid-disaster.

After dinner, muggins drew the short straw for washing up. I suggested that the children might help with washing up, but this started such spirited arguments starting with “but I did this”, or “but I did that”, that I just started picking plates up while they lined up their excuses and got on with it. Sometimes life is too short.

After clearing the decks, washing the kitchen down, and putting things away throughout the house, I delivered a cup of tea to my other half, who was working in the garden once more. Unfortunately this coincided with the heavens finally opening – and beginning to deliver all of the rainfall forecast for the day in the space of one minute. It was impressive. While gazing out at the sudden deluge, Miss 14 suddenly remembered that we borrowed the tarpaulin covering the new barbecue to take rubbish to the dump. Guess who once more drew the short straw, and braved the elements to run out into the garden, tarpaulin in hand.

As I left the house, I shouted over my shoulder “If I get struck by lightning, I’m going to haunt you lot”. Miss 13 thought this incredibly funny for some reason – although not quite as funny as my re-appearance in the doorway thirty seconds later, looking like I might have fallen in a river.

The first wave of rain seems to have abated. I’m going to go hole myself up in the junk room for the rest of the evening with hot tea, and an internet full of rabbit holes – if the internet connection stays up that is. Fingers crossed.

It’s just after lunch. I think it’s Wednesday – it’s hard to tell – the days are running into one another. I wonder how retired people keep track of the day of the week? Is that why they read the newspaper and watch the news? The rain has abated outside for a little while, but it’s still cold and miserable – like a grey blanket has been pulled over the world.

I keep being distracted by a Spotify playlist – the soundtrack from Les Miserables. “On My Own” is playing. I remember the first time I really watched Les Miserables properly – from end to end. I was lying on a hotel bed, hundreds of miles from home with work, in the early hours of the morning. I was stressing out about the project I was working on at the time, and couldn’t sleep – so picked a movie almost at random, and bought some chocolate and wine from the nearby 24 hour convenience store. I wish movies came with “will tear you to pieces from the inside out” warnings printed on them.

Music is powerful. It attaches itself to memories – people, places, emotions, experiences – it’s hard-wired into us at a an incredibly low level. Have you ever noticed how your brain records the order of tracks on favourite albums too? It becomes jarring when you hear a track as part of a playlist, and it is not preceded or followed as you might anticipate.

For the past few evenings I have crossed paths with a distant friend on the internet, sharing stories of the music that helped shape who we are – telling the story of where we came from, and perhaps where we are heading towards. It’s been a wonderful escape from the cold, the rain, and the drab world outside the window.

Looking outside now, the sun looks like it might be making something of a fightback – brightening the overcast sky somewhat. Of course I have seen the forecast for tomorrow – thunder, lightning, cats, dogs, kitchen sinks – almost like the universe is passing judgement on my snap decision to take a few days off work.

Maybe the world is giving me a gentle dig in the ribs – encouraging me to stay in the warm, listen to music, talk to friends, and remind myself that life isn’t just about getting things done.