write.as/jonbeckett

I seem to have fallen into a pattern of posting to the blog every other day. I’m not sure how it happened, but it does feel less forced. I really don’t lead an interesting enough life to post every day.

I’m just trying to think if I have anything to report of consequence (a few moments pass while I frown, and my fingers hover over the keyboard).

I have tomorrow and Monday off work for Easter – I’m hoping to see Ready Player One in the morning – dragging Miss 17 along with me, then heading to Wagamama to eat noodles, and decompress. I read the book several years ago, and it has remained a favourite ever since. There is a showing just before lunch – with a little luck I’ll be able to get her up and out in time.

I’m trying not to think too much about work – it has very much dominated my thoughts this week, and will for the next several months. Because of the cerebral nature of the work I do, it’s difficult to walk away – I often find myself turning problems over in my head while walking into town with my children.

Anyway. It’s getting late. I keep promising myself that I’ll find time to read, then completely ignoring my own wishes. Not good.

I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m always surprised when anybody notices me – particularly if they have discovered me via this blog. I have been writing online for a long time – recording my sometimes daily stories, thoughts, ideas, and non-adventures. I’ve come to know a great many people over the years – many are no longer writing – some are no longer with us at all. When I am discovered, it’s like being approached by a new friend on the infant school playground all over again.

In many ways, I am Charlie Brown. Maybe we all are.

There is an obstacle that deters many friendships I might have forged though – I’m a third of the way further around the planet than many of you. I live in England – land of rolling green hills, etiquette, and manners – which explains my relatively odd spelling of so many words, and particular way of forming sentences. And yes – I have the accent. For those wondering, I suppose to an international ear I sound a little like Anthony Head – the man in the library from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Living so far from the vast majority of you means I’m typically anywhere from five to eight hours ahead – your early evening is invariably the early hours of my morning.

I’ve lost count of the times I have stayed up chatting with newly found friends – losing track of time while getting to know each other in conversations spanning thousands of miles. And yet I cherish those friendships perhaps more closely than those I know in the ‘real world’. People who read this blog are afforded a far better knowledge of 'who I am’ than those I know away from the keyboard.

The strangest thing about making friends across the vast stretches of the internet, is that sometimes you cross paths with somebody – quite by chance – and find yourself wondering 'what if’. What if you had met that person years before – would your life have played out differently? In this chaotic, tumultuous, seemingly random maze of coincidences that we all attempt to navigate, what if we had met this person before that person, or done this instead of that ?

And then we see the smile of our children, and realise that the best things are never planned – that 'happy accidents’ are probably the driving force behind everything – life, evolution, adventure, happiness, and so much more.

While I didn’t make my children – we adopted them when they were young – the person I am in their company is entirely down to choice. In the same way, the person that responds to an instant message, an email, or a comment on the blog is also a choice. I’ve always chosen to be myself – not to invent a persona – not to instruct – not to preach. I don’t market my words, and I don’t chase traffic. I’m just out here – and sometimes that leads to the most wonderful, organic, serendipitous friendships with the most unlikely people. Friendships forged in fire. Like minds.

So if you are one of those people that stumbled upon my words from distant climes, thank you. Thank you for reaching out, thank you for becoming my friend, and thank you for proving that the world isn’t bad at all. Quite the contrary in fact.

After a weekend filled with stress, arguments, standing on rugby pitch touchlines, school fundraisers, doing endless chores, and then being accused of doing nothing, it’s almost a relief that the world seems to have calmed down somewhat today.

Work is ramping up – the beginning of the marathon that will take me through Spring, Summer, and into Autumn has officially begun. I spent the majority of the day either in meetings, doing admininistration work, making changes to documents, and making changes in response to the endless meetings last week in Germany. I know I’m vague – no apologies for that.

I don’t seem to have achieved anything tonight, and quite worryingly this is turning into a pattern. From the moment I got in until about half an hour ago I faced an endless stream of chores, children asking for help with projects, adults asking for help with their computers, and repeated making of cups of tea and coffee for others. Of course in another ten minutes I’ll head out across the internet to find out what everybody else has been up to, and try not to compare my day against theirs – because mine will inevitably look pedestrian compared to theirs. This is where I start repeating the mantra ‘but most people only write their highlight reel – you’re the only lunatic you know that records EVERY DAMN THING’.

It’s true I suppose. Quite often I sit and write a post on the blog when I have nothing of note to share. A voice on my shoulder reminds me about the guiding principle of NaNoWriMo – that if you concentrate on quantity, now and again you’ll hit pay-dirt – the laws of probability almost guarantee it. I saw almost, because the laws of probability also predict that an infinite number of monkeys writing for an infinite length of time might NOT write a single sentence of Shakespeare – let alone his entire works.

On a side note, did you know there is very little proof that Shakespeare wrote any of his plays ? I have to admit I laughed, while visiting Stratford Upon Avon, when we sat in a cafe after looking around Shakespeare’s house – I occupied myself with reading the promotional leaflets we had picked up along the way, and happened to notice a telling sentence – that admitted the entire 'Shakespeare House’ is a fiction – it’s a modern building built in the style of buildings of the time. They don’t even know exactly where he lived, when he lived there, or who he really lived with – it’s all conjecture.

I’m old enough to be suitably cynical when faced with conspiracy theories. When I was younger I read countless books about UFOs – filled with code-words such as 'Project Red Book’, and 'KRLL’. Most of the stories don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Anyway. Time to make a cup of tea before turning in for the night.

After the somewhat epic journey home yesterday, and a pizza and movie night with the children (we watched ‘Justice League’), this morning has very much been a case of 'back to earth with a bump’.

I got up at 6:30am to watch the end of the F1 qualifying in Australia, realised Mercedes are going to have a cake-walk again this year, and switched it off.

After having a shower and throwing some clothes on, I started wandering from room to room – picking things up, putting things away, emptying bins, and doing all the other things that tend to slip if there’s only one of us here. The kids appeared to have spent the week in the junk room tap-dancing grit into the carpet, so guess who spent quite some time attempting to vaccuum it all back up.

(a few minutes pass, because I realise the washing machine has has fallen silent)

It’s now 10am, and I’m taking a break – nursing a cup of coffee, writing this, and tinkering – because given the chance, you’ll always find me in front of a computer doing something or other that doesn’t really need doing.

I installed Statcounter on the blog this morning – I didn’t realise you could add it to WordPress.com blogs. See – you might think of me as intelligent, and clever, and all those other words, but I’m really no better than anybody else. We’re all clever at different things – and it appears I wasn’t so clever at realising this was even possible. I’m not sure what stats StatCounter will give me over the WordPress stats – particularly on a free account – but I suppose it will provide a diversion for a while. I have no illusions though – relatively few people read my blog, and that’s not going to change any time soon because I never market it.

This is where I go off on one about blogs that tell you how to live your life. Really? Why do some people get off on telling you what to wear, what to do, where to go, and so on? I can understand blogs that explain how to do things – like how to fix things, or configure things, or cook things – but the whole 'how to look, dress, behave’ niche needs to be burned to the ground – along with all the 'look at all these clothes I bought – aren’t I wonderful’ vlogs on YouTube.

I have a special level of disdain reserved for the 'lifestyle’ bloggers, who wander the earth with an SLR in hand, recording themselves and their perfect children on catalogue advert photoshoot days-out. Actually – the whole 'selfie travel photo’ thing annoys me too. If you’re visiting somewhere, why the hell would you want to be in your own photo of the place ? Not only are you obscuring the view of somewhere that’s probably really interesting, you also come across as the biggest narcissist in the known universe. If you’re going to take a photo of yourself, fine – take the photo of YOU – don’t ruin a perfectly good photo of somewhere you are visiting by standing in the damn way of it. We know you went there, because you took the bloody photo – you don’t have to prove it by being in the photo.

I’ll get off my soap-box now. Maybe it’s just me that (usually quietly) rails against these things. I’m going to stop writing before I think of something else to complain about.

After waking up at 5am, 6am, and 7am this morning, I finally scraped myself out of the hotel bed, stumbled into the shower, and then set about folding clothes into my bag. Going home at last. After wandering across the room in search of underwear, I realised the crane on the construction site across the way was pointing directly at the window – no doubt gifting the driver a rather unexpected view of a very naked, very sleepy englishman.

Down in the hotel reception I joined the queue of people checking out, and kicked myself when I realised the bottle of water I opened in the room had not been added to the bill. I’m wondering now if the small bottles of wine were complimentary too.

After a quiet journey across Frankfurt on the train, I arrived at the airport at about half past eight, and made my way through the various escalators towards check-in. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes – there had to be five or six hundred people waiting to check their bags in. I joined the snaking line, and looked at my watch. My flight was scheduled for 11am. I should have plenty of time, right ?

After perhaps half an hour in the queue to check bags, and a five minute walk towards the departure gates, I realised the line of people I was walking past was the line of people waiting for boarding pass checks. I turned around, and followed the line – joining the end. It had to have at least six or seven hundred people in it, and wasn’t the only line. After another three quarters of an hour, I discovered why – all of the automatic boarding pass checking machines were down. Two members of staff were checking EVERYBODY.

You can imagine what I thought when I wandered into the security check hall – which had perhaps a thousand people snaking in all directions. I joined the back of the queue, and started trying to figure out how long it took to travel from one end of the room to the other – to figure out if I was going to miss my flight. Then after perhaps twenty minutes in the queue, fate smiled on me. A security guard ushered perhaps fifty of us into a second hall, jumping the queue entirely. Ten minute later I was through security, and on my way (not before a security officer checked my sweaty armpits, which apparently set the body scanner off).

I arrived at the gate printed on my boarding pass with ten minutes to spare, so found a seat. While sitting there, I began wondering why no Lufthansa staff were at the gate, and checked the boarding pass again. The gate for the aircraft had changed at the 11th hour – it was now perhaps half a mile away. I started running, flat out through the airport.

I arrived at the gate just as the passengers started going through to the plane, so joined the end of the queue, out of breath, but massively relieved. I worked it out on my watch – it took two and a half hours to get from the train, to the aircraft. While wondering why – because check-in and security usually take about half an hour – something occurred to me. Easter. Half of Frankfurt were getting on flights with their children to go away for Easter.

Thankfully the rest of the day was entirely unremarkable – sitting next to an intimidatingly beautiful German woman on the plane, avoiding the rugby scrum to get off the plane, walking several miles beneath Heathrow to catch the train to London, and then jumping on the first train towards home. I gave up the waiting game about ten miles from home after missing a connecting train – instead of waiting for the better part of an hour I checked my wallet for cash and jumped in a taxi.

The taxi driver asked ‘how was Frankfurt’, which threw me for a few moments – until I realised he had seen the tag on my luggage. 'Oh, tiring’, I said, then felt guilty about shutting the conversation down for the remainder of the journey.

I fly home tomorrow morning. I did a little work this evening, but nothing like the epic slog the last few evenings turned into. You don’t even want to see the state of my bullet journal – page after page filled with scribbled notes, and half-drawn diagrams. At some point over the next few days I need to start turning the chaotic mess into something that makes sense.

Just to cap off a craptastic week, I called home a few minutes ago, and realised I forgot my other half’s birthday. I had been planning on ordering flowers and a present via the internet, but with all the mayhem over the last few days, it completely slipped my mind. I knew I was in trouble at “hello” on the phone.

Needless to say, Amazon was visited.

I’ve been trying to think of something to write for the last hour, but I really have nothing to share beyond “sat in a conference room all day, then worked in the hotel most of the evening”. I’ve eaten at the same Japanese restaurant just down the road every night – purely because it is quick, easy, and not very far away – meaning I could come back and carry on working fairly quickly.

Anyway. I need to sleep.

I’m sitting in a king size bed, looking out over Frankfurt from the enormous window of my 15th storey hotel room window. The clock is ticking towards 2am. After sitting in conference rooms all day, I worked all night again. I escaped the hotel room for an hour earlier to visit the local japanese restaurant again, and then to the supermarket, but other than that, it’s been another day and night hunched over the keyboard, stressing out.

I’m slowly getting to the point where I don’t care. I don’t want to get into why – that will get me into trouble. I’m just resigning myself to doing what I can do, and putting one foot in front of the other, regardless of the mayhem, and unrealistic expectations surrounding me.

I think the saddest part is that I was looking forward to visiting Germany this time, and I’ve ended up destroying my own trip in order to make unexpected amounts of progress against completely unrealistic expectations. All I have seen for the last 48 hours is conference rooms, a restaurant, a supermarket, and the hotel room. In another 36 hours I’ll be getting on a plane and returning home.

Maybe I’ll try and take tomorrow night off and head into central Frankfurt. Or maybe I’ll just sleep.

One more day to get through. One more day. I can do this.

It goes without saying that if anybody wants to light my phone up with emails, instant messages, comments, or whatever – it would be nice to wake up and be reminded that there is more to life than this bizarre bubble I find myself in at the moment.

I’m wiped out. I scraped myself out of bed at 7am, arrived in the office ay 8:30am, and worked straight through until 5pm. The first two hours of day were stressful, to say the least (and no, I can’t share why). After work I wandered to the Japanese restaurant just along the road, and came straight back to begin working on designs for the things I’ll be building over the next few months.

It’s midnight now, and I’m wiped out. I have a massive mountain to climb over the next few months. Being honest, I can’t see how I’ll get everything done unless I work weekends and evenings. Maybe I’ll have a word about overtime.

Anyway. Sleep. I need some sleep.

It’s 9:27am, and I’m sitting in the middle of Terminal 2 at Heathrow airport, London. The taxi transfer arrived at our house precisely when it should this morning, prompting me to kiss the girls goodbye as they got ready for school, lift my bag onto my back, and carefully make my way out across the ice on the driveway to the waiting car.

A little under an hour later we arrived at the airport, and fifteen minutes after that I made it through check-in and security. I forgot to take my watch off, and had to stand in the body scanner before being waved through.

Airport terminals are strange places. There is a continual flow of people – everybody is going somewhere, or arriving from somewhere else. I’m sitting next to a Russian businessman (or at least I think he is Russian – I’m not great at accents). Across the way a Turkish woman is talking to a younger man – perhaps she is his mother? A Swedish girl sits opposite – she has impossibly blonde hair, and seems to be waiting for somebody. I can never understand people that keep their coats on at the airport – I packed mine in my checked-in baggage – the entire place is air conditioned, and the flight will be too. Of course they will all be laughing if we end up walking across the tarmac at Frankfurt in sub-zero temperatures.

I can see a Japanese pilot looking around in a store called “Bottega Veneta”. He’s buying jewelery for the lady accompanying him. Is it his girlfriend? His wife? His mistress? He has full uniform on, with gold stripes on his sleeves, and a formal braided cap. I wonder what it’s like – working in the “exclusive” stores in the airport? A Harrods watch store is just across the way – I haven’t seen a single customer in there yet – it must be incredibly boring. There’s only so many times you can polish the glass cabinets full of bracelets, necklaces, and watches.

Apparently my departure gate will be shown in ten minutes. Ten minutes to wrap up this blog post, connect to the airport WiFi, find a photo to go with it, and go find the gate.

(six hours pass)

The airplane flight was uneventful. I got in the wrong queue in the departure lounge, and fell to the back of the boarding queue as a result. I had visions of climbing over people to reach my seat, but thankfully found it and the adjacent seats unoccupied. After a few minutes a lady with black curly hair sat in the aisle seat, and closed her eyes. She didn’t open them for the remainder of the flight – communicating with cabin staff through nods and shakes of her head. I imagine she was petrified of flying. We won’t talk about the person behind me that spent half the flight applying ointment to some injury or other – the smell was like a sports injury clinic. We might mention the beautiful Lufthansa flight attendant that handed out sandwiches and drinks without once dropping her smile. I really don’t know how they do it – I would be inclined to stand at the front and shout “THERE ARE SANDWICHES OR COOKIES – CHOOSE BEFORE I GET TO YOU!”.

After landing at Frankfurt, I began the long walk through the airport and almost laughed out loud when I came to a T-Junction in the walkways – both directions pointing towards baggage reclaim. Of course now I’m wondering just where the other corridor lead to – was it the same carousel via a different route, or a very similar parallel universe ? I chose the busier direction, which happily turned out to be the correct direction. While waiting for my bags to arrive on the luggage carousel, I amused myself watching the other people waiting – who scrambled en-mass to the edge of the carousel as soon as it began moving. I have no idea what they were in such a rush for, because they had been sitting minding their own business seconds before.

My bag appeared pretty quickly, so I made for a cashpoint, and then the taxi rank – which seemed to be spectacularly empty of taxis. After looking around forlornly for a minute or two, I walked back into the terminal, and down to the railway station. The information board told be there would be a train to Frankfurt in 18 minutes. There was a number next to it – “5”. Was this the number of carriages? The ID number of the train? Maybe the number of the platform!? I bet on it being the platform number, and after a few minutes and twenty eight thousand flights of escalators, arrived in the airport railway station, standing at the edge of a pristine railway platform.

Frankfurt Railway station reminds me of a cleaner version of the big London stations – with the busyness turned down a few notches. After walking through the mayhem, and snapping a few photos along the way, I was out into the minus-something-or-other fresh air of the city.

So. The hotel. I knew it was only a few minutes walk, and I knew it was going to be good, but holy hell is it ever good. I have become so used to staying in budget hotels with work, it’s something of a shock to the system to stay somewhere nice. From the glass lifts, to the modernist landings, and the stark “nordic” styled rooms, it’s a far cry from anywhere I have stayed in the last few years. The room has a huge window looking out over the city – if only I had a telescope, I could look in on people being busy in the various towerblocks that now illuminate the night sky.

After unpacking, and doing imaginary happy cartwheels around the room, I wandered down to the bar and bought myself a drink. I NEVER do this. Or very rarely, anyway. It was only 4pm, and seemed wrong somehow. I sat with my Bullet Journal and a tall glass of German beer while the bartender girl busied herself with preparations for the evening ahead. She quietly wandered over with a glass full of peanuts for me, and grinned as she walked away.

Time ticked on, and I thought I should probably get something to eat. I remembered a restaurant a little way back along the road – a Japanese noodle bar called “Mosch Mosch”, so grabbed my coat and set off.

I’m not quite sure what the difference might be between Japanese, Chinese, and Thai noodles, but they were amazing. I bought a huge bowl of “Glucksgefuhle”. Don’t ask me to translate it. It had beef, pork, noodles, vegetables, broth, beansprouts, and all sorts of noodles in it. I thought I might not be able to finish it. The server at my table was a tiny Japanese girl, who ran quietly from table to table, grinning a huge toothy grin, and talking in the tinkliest tinkerbell voice I think I’ve ever heard. I gave her a tip, and she bowed. I guess some cultural stereotypes are real.

I’m sitting back in the hotel room now. Home for the evening. It’s 7:30pm. I’m in a foreign city, surrounded by clubs, bars, and restaurants, and I’m sitting on my own in my room. I know how to live. A part of me wants to go out for the evening, but another part of me knows I need to have my brain engaged tomorrow.

I woke at about 7am this morning, with a pounding headache. Downing several cans of craft cider the night before will do that to you if you’re not used to drinking any more. Snow had been forecast, and I couldn’t be bothered to wipe away condensation on the bedroom window to take a look – so stumbled down the stairs in the direction of the shower. While waiting for the shower to warm up, I looked out of the junk-room window, and saw several inches of snow on the car, and a white carpet out across the green outside the house.

I guessed rugby wouldn’t be happening, and confirmed as much half an hour later – when notices appeared on the club Facebook group. I pulled on warm clothes, and set out for the corner-shop, to buy bread and milk for the snow day ahead.

I’ll admit to being a bit concerned – I have a flight to catch mid-morning tomorrow from Heathrow. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled – I’m just hoping that another 24 hours will see the snow melt, and the world right itself once again. I’ve already done check-in for the flight via my work mobile phone – there are no warning notices in the Lufthansa app at the moment – I guess I’ll need to take another look early tomorrow morning.

I’ve pulled an old android phone from the cupboard, and have put it on charge – it may well take the place of the candybar Nokia I’ve been using since the beginning of the year. The Nokia is great, and it’s wonderful that it only needs to be charged once a week, but the reality is I need fast access to text messages, WhatsApp, and Google Calendar to keep up with family, schools, and the various sports clubs the kids are involved in. I think the old Android handset was originally bought for our eldest as her “first phone”. It says something about Android that it still works perfectly, three or four years on – and something about our kids looking after things, because it doesn’t have a single scratch on it.

In other news, I killed my old LiveJournal account completely. Given the political goings-on at the moment, I would rather not have anything to do with anything based in Russia. I realise the people that work at LiveJournal have no hand in what’s been going on internationally, but their own government no doubt have fingers in every pie going. I don’t trust them – in the same way that I don’t trust Facebook, and by inference Instagram and WhatsApp (Facebook own Instagram and WhatsApp, if you didn’t know).

I suppose going back to an Android phone means I’ll be able to use the Telegram app again. If you’ve not seen it, it’s independent, secure, free, and has a web interface too.

Oh – one last thing – I pulled the cross-posted written posts from Tumblr too. I’m not sure what I will do with Tumblr going forward – at the moment I’m using it as a kind of procrastination playground – a scrapbook to throw stuff into while avoiding getting on with other things, and a place to keep in touch with a handful of friends I have made there over the last few years. The community there has changed though – it’s tiny compared to the way it once was. I suppose everything changes eventually, wether we like it or not.

Anyway. I feel a cup of coffee and a rubbish movie coming on.