write.as/jonbeckett

jonathan.beckett@gmail.com

You might recall that during my last visit to Germany I received word about an old friend and co-worker that was killed in a motorcycle accident. I’m attending his funeral tomorrow, representing the company I work for. His other half has asked if anybody that knew him can record their memories, and share them, so she might compile them for both her and their baby in years to come.

I’ll do my best.

Over the years I have worked here, I have sat at different desks throughout the offices. For a couple of years I sat in a small office at the end of the top floor, alongside a new starter – with the hope that I might take him under my wing – show him the ropes – teach him how to keep putting one foot in front of the other. His name was Steve, he was engaged to be married, and he was a pretty damn good software developer. He could turn his hand to pretty much anything, and quietly got on with whatever he was assigned to.

Over the next couple of years we got to know each other well. We went out to lunch together, put the world to rights, and he came to a number of the ridiculous barbecues we threw each summer. In the years before children we would invite our co-workers and friends over – one year attracted friends from South Africa, Australia, Zimbabwe, Italy, Japan, and Oklahoma – we joked that the various outdoor games taking place in the garden should really have been titled as an unofficial world cup of sorts.

I remember the year Steve brought the “Fire Poi”. He had been learning to perform with “poi” for several months outside the office at work – twirling them around his head annoyingly impressively. As darkness fell in the garden he retreated to his car, and returned with two chains, with balls on the end that he dipped in a flammable liquid and began twirling. Slowly but surely everybody present (perhaps 70 or 80 of us) surrounded him in the garden, marvelling at the roaring balls of fire.

Towards the end of 2006 I began working on a huge project in London that entailed commuting back and forth every day – spending hours on trains, and rarely visiting the office. As summer of 2007 approached, Steve joined me on the project. We would share the hell of the London Underground together at the beginning and end of each day, swap video games (the Nintendo DS was “the toy to have”), and talk about books we had read, movies we had seen, and so on. I dread to think how many hours we spent squashed into the corners of underground trains together.

Quietly one day Steve announced that he had split up with his wife, and was getting divorced. Not long after that, he handed his notice in. Their house had been sold, and he vanished off around the world – not so much to run away from everything, but I think to find himself. The photos that appeared on Facebook over the coming months turned everybody living a “normal” life green with envy. Steve was effectively ticking off a bucket-list of places to visit, one after another.

And then, a year or so later, an email arrived in my inbox. “Are you doing anything at the weekend?”. During this time period we had gone through the tail-end of the adoption process, and now had children. Suddenly going out for lunch was a huge logistical exercise – but we hadn’t seen Steve for a year or so, and jumped at the chance.

And that’s how we met Bryony, and their dog. After a wonderful pub lunch getting to know one another we went for a walk around the nearby park – and our middle girl (who is dog mad) proudly helped hold the lead – downloading the entire contents of her head concerning dogs while doing so. I’ll forever be grateful that Bryony had so much patience for her.

Not long after there was a wedding, and we were invited to the after-wedding party in the evening. I’ve always felt guilty that I didn’t dress appropriately – we had been to a wedding previously where the evening was much more relaxed, so I went with an un-tucked shirt and khaki trousers. Of course everybody was in formal wear (and Bryony lookedstunning).

Over the years since we had followed each other’s adventures on the internet, and tried to keep in touch – but as with so many friendships, work, family, life, and everything else conspire – and we slowly drifted apart. But then a friend organised a few drinks one night, and suddenly there was Steve again – larger than life – laughing about stories from years past, still good at video games, and talking about soon becoming a Dad.

That was the last time I saw Steve. He was happy, smiling, and looking forward to the future.

It’s funny how particular moments burn their way into your memory. I remember the exact moment, late one night in a hotel in Germany when I received the awful email from Bryony. I remember calling home, and hearing Wendy’s voice wobble.

Tomorrow we say goodbye.

Steve was a bloody good friend. He had time for everybody, very few enemies, and if you needed him, he was there. I don’t think that’s a bad way to be remembered at all.

My body performed it’s usual magic trick of waking up a few moments before the pre-programmed alarm clock this morning. I silently switched it off, and crept down-stairs. All clean underwear was on the folded washing mountain downstairs (which may fall on somebody one day, and necessitate a caving team to dig them out of the underwear, sock, and bra landslide), so I crept downstairs half-naked, hoping the children would not magically wake up and catch me running past with my hands over my bits and pieces.

I got away with it.

Half an hour later I was through the shower, and had wandered to the local petrol station (gas station, if you are in the US), which happens to also double as a grocery story. I returned home with bread, ham, cheese, olive spread, and various other items to help assemble lunchboxes for the children. Given my pressing schedule to get through the morning routineand get to the railway station, guess who naturally ended up in the queue being served by the guy that had never worked on a checkout before? He got elbowed out of the way while randomly trying to re-program the entire system by accident.

Things went downhill fast at home, with Miss 13 refusing to get out of bed. I half heard the threats and screams of “I HATE YOU” from the kitchen, and didn’t really dare show my face. Apparently she went to school at lunchtime, and has had the world taken from her – no phone, no video games, no television, and so on – for quite a few days. I left for the railway station, not really knowing how things were going to pan out.

After a number of trains that miraculously connected, I arrived at a far-flung railway station bedecked in a warm coat, and my Hufflepuff scarf. While walking across the station concourse a voice shouted out “GOOD MORNING!”. I looked around, and saw a girl working in a coffee stand waving at me with a huge smile. It turned out she had recognised the scarf, and grinned the entire time she made me a coffee.

I’m not really sure how the economics of rail travel work, but somehow I was one of about five people that boarded a ten carriage train towards my destination. If we conservatively estimate that each carriage can probably carry a hundred people, the train was something like 0.05% filled. How does that even happen?

It’s perhaps worth mentioning that part of my journey involved walking really rather quickly between two stations in Windsor -where Her Majesty the Queen lives. I skirted the edge of the castle between the stations, and marvelled at the numbers of American and Japanese tourists milling around – even at that time in the morning. I didn’t think to look at the flagpole to see if she was in or not.

After several hours on-site (which… yada yada yada… I can’t tell you about), every single trainfailed to connect on the way home. I ended up standing around on railway station platforms, messaging a distant friend that I’ve not spoken to in ages. She distracted me for much of the journey, until I arrived at a nearby station and realised I had not eaten anything all day (I still haven’t – I’m being good, and hanging on until dinner).

I wandered over to the coffee stand on the railway station platform, and was greeted by perhaps the most cheerful, talkative, nosy barista I have ever known. While making me a cappuccino, she asked after my day, laughed, made conversation, and seemed genuinely interested in me – right up until she handed me the finished drink, and immediately switched focus to the next customer – like flicking a switch.

I sat with my coffee in the waiting room of the station, with half an hour to kill until the next train. There were perhaps ten of us sitting around the room, sheltering from the bitterly cold wind outside. One lady that was talking quietly on the phone suddenly exclaimed something that caused the entire room to fall silent:

“MANSLAUGHTER? But I thought it was only going to be actual bodily harm!?”

She carried on talking on her phone, and the rest of us looked at each other wide eyed. Had we really just heard that?

The resulting silence was eventually broken by the arrival of local schoolchildren – catching the train home to the various stations en-route. They arrived like a noisy, disruptive wave of litter and swearing – the children of wealthy parents that live out of town in the leafy suburbs. I started counting iPhones (they were only 12 or 13 years old on average), and lost count. The conversations annoyed me so much I put my headphones on – quite how so few children could sound so entitled and precocious was staggering, to be honest.

I listened to the new P!nk album for the next half hour, and was kind of relieved when we finally pulled into my home station. The train doors opened, and another wall of school children – all wearing red ties – poured onto the train before anybody could get off. One young man – a wonderful example to the rest – shouted “GET THOSE FUCKIN’ SEATS” in the deepest, most angry rant he could muster. Lovely. I’m noting the tie colour so anybody whodoes know who I am, and whodoesknow where I live will be able to connect the tie directly to the Grammar school from whence it came.

While walking home from the station, my day was neatly finished off by witnessing a colossal 4x4 blocking access to the local doctor’s surgery, flashing his “I can park anywhere” lights. Entitled assholes like that annoy me enormously. Turning the corner towards home, I was then nearly run into by a grown man riding his bike on the path, with no lights, no helmet, and no reflective clothing. I dived into the shrubs alongside the path to avoid immediate injury, and he carried on along his way – in the moments afterwards I daydreamed about putting a stick through his spokes, or leaping in front of the bike accidentally on purpose – injuring us both in the process.

“Oh, I’m sorry you appear to have broken your teeth off on my work laptop – if you hadn’t been cycling on the path with no helmet on, and no lights, that might not have happened…”

I believe the French have a phrase to describe the things you wish you had done or said in the moments after an event. I must learn it. Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I bought a magazine yesterday morning – a magazine all about blogging. Within it’s pages there are interviews with “bloggers of note”, lots of explanatory articles about what to write about, how to write it, when to write it, where to write it, and all sorts of other rubbish. And that’s just it – it’srubbish.

Instead of doing what I had intended, and spending an hour visiting some of the blogs covered in the magazine interviews, I fell down a colossal internet rabbit hole (something I’m particularly skilled at, I should perhaps mention), and went on my own journey of discovery. For four or five hours. I’m not really sure how long I spent reading, liking, following, and commenting – but one blog lead to another, and another.

It was re-affirming in all sorts of ways. For the longest time I have wondered if blogging was dead. Maybe not dead, but certainly on life support. It’s probably worth qualifying what I mean by “blogging” – I mean people sharing the days of their lives – posting candid adventures, thoughts, hopes and dreams for others to trip over as they wander past. Anything else isn’t really “blogging” in my mind – it’s certainly something, but not “blogging”.

Anywaytoday turned out alright for a change.

Here’s to us, and our stories, experiences, hopes, dreams, disasters, and whatever else we choose to share (you know, instead of packaging, marketing, and selling it).

Somehow I have made it to day fourteen of the Wordpress Blogging University “Every Day Inspiration” series of daily prompts. Yes, I know I haven’t doneevery day – but I’ve done quite a few of them. Today’s prompt appears to be the easiest of the lot, because it’s pretty much “what I do” – tell the story of my day (or at least a part of it – I can’t imagine many people would be too impressed with a description of brushing my teeth every morning, or emptying the dishwasher for the umpteenth time this week).

Today is Sunday – traditionally a day of rest. Har har. I woke at 4am this morning – don’t ask me why. After squinting at the clock for a few minutes I fell back asleep, and had an epic dream who’s content now escapes me – I remember feeling cheated when I woke again at 7am. While having a shower, shave, and brushing my teeth, Miss 12 made it downstairs, dressed in the same clothes she had been wearing yesterday.

“Did you sleep in your clothes again?”

“I might have done”

I rolled my eyes, and tilted my head in the most disapproving manner I could muster. She volunteered to go and get changed.

A couple of hours later myself, Miss 12, and Miss 17 left the house – headed towards a nearby bus-stop, twenty minutes crammed in among the fellow passengers, and a half hour walk to a nearby football stadium. During the walk Miss 12 variously complained that she was thirsty, hungry, cold, and that she needed to go to the bathroom. She didn’t appreciate me repeating her list of ailments back to her, and asking if she had anything further to add to the list.

Eventually we arrived at the football ground, and snuck in a side entrance – flashing the free tickets via my phone screen at a very bored looking turnstile attendant.

“Can we get a drink?”

And that’s how we came to stand in a queue to buy a hot chocolate for twenty minutes. We stood in the same queue for twenty minutes at half-time – in order to buy a cardboard cup full of potato chips. If you covered them in enough ketchup, they tasted vaguely like they might not cause a stomach problem tomorrow.

I’m not going to write about the football match – because I’m not a sports writer, and it will probably bore you to tears. I will mention the group of opposition supporters a few rows behind us that sand idiotic songs mostly to amuse themselves throughout the game. One of the songs ended half-way through with a chorus of “I’VE FORGOTTEN THE WORDS”, followed by raucous laughter. Oh how I wish our team had thumped theirs, but alas no – the universe doesn’t work like that. The game ended at two goals a-piece.

The journey home was a perfect re-wind of the journey to the game. If the day had been recorded on cassette tape, we could very well have poked a pen through the spindle, and spun the tape backwards until we arrived home again. I supposed wedidgo grocery shopping on the way home too – becauseeverybody goes grocery shopping every time they leave the house, right?

We’re eating ready meals for dinner tonight. As soon as I finish writing this I will go and turn the oven on. Miss 11 and Miss 12 have pizza, I have noodles, and my other half and Miss 17 have curry. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to fill lunchboxes with in the morning. Before we get there, I need to go threaten all sorts of recriminations to ensure homework is done, and school clothes are ready to go for the morning.

On weekday mornings our house resembles a Formula One pit crew – except one where packed lunches, breakfasts, and bags full of books, pens, and pencils are thrown here, there, and everywhere before everybody is ejected from the house at pre-planned intervals. It almost goes wrong almost every day, but never too disastrously. Wish us luck.

Well this is unexpected. No scheduled football match for Miss 13, rugby cancelled due to lack of numbers, and football called off for Miss 12 due to an unplayable pitch this morning (of course the call went out as we were all running around the house shouting at each other – “you SAID you got your kit ready last NIGHT!” – the common refrain on a weekend morning).

Suddenly the weekend has become our own – which is fortuitous, given events of the last few days.

On Thursday afternoon Miss 17’s life was threatened on Snapchat by somebody unknown to her. She spent the late afternoon with her college safety officer, too scared to come home because she would have to walk from the bus stop to our house in the dark. She was told to block the account, which of course destroyed the evidence – why on earth the safety officer didn’t ask her to screenshot the messages as evidence, I’ll never know – it was the first thing I asked her. Bang went any chance to report it to the police, and gift the idiot a free criminal record.

She went home with a friend, and would have to be picked up – which of course coincided with the “night of mayhem” – Thursday nights have always been a nightmare at home – I think all of the children’s clubs in town collude with one another to cause everything to happen on the same night. We generally find ourselves running between dance classes and football practice throughout the evening. There are two of us, and three children – so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that one problem can derail everything.

Everything seems to have calmed down now. I will admit to spending several hours on Thursday night learning every damn corner of the Snapchat app. I also found the person that sent the threatening messages. I’ll play a waiting game – I may even advise Miss 17 to unblock him – give him enough rope to hang himself, and then win . I learned two things about Snapchat; firstly, that the app is awful – easily the least intuitive social app out there. Secondly, the safety options in Snapchat very clearly put the onus on the users to protect themselves – they take little or no responsibility in resolving safeguarding situations. I get it – if you build a social network at that scale, running a sizeable safety team to deal with issues around the world is expensive – I was still shocked that their reporting procedure is so difficult to find though.

Fun times.

Miss 12 is now trying to play myself and my other half off against each other to arrange a sleepover with one of her friends from school. She has already been told it’s not happening – she thinks she can ask each of us in turn, and get a different answer. I just walked into the lounge and recited her second attempt back to her Mum, right in front of her. She’s busy looking at her feet now. It never ends.

Right. It’s just gone 10am. Sitting here writing this isn’t achieving anything constructive. Next stop – supermarket. I foresee crusty bread, nice cheese, and soup to get us through a quiet weekend at home. A quiet weekend where Miss 12 and 13 have just decided to make slime, and bath bombs (don’t ask). They are in the process of wrecking the kitchen, and already arguing like cat and dog. I’m getting out of here now.

While escaping from the house this morning on a mission to buy groceries, I happened upon a magazine I first saw a little over a year ago, called “Blogosphere”. After reasoning with myself for a few moments – justifying quite possibly the most expensive magazine ever seen by the human eye – I picked it up and added it to the morning haul, alongside the newspaper, soup, bread, and various other bits and pieces.

It turns out the magazine is quite interesting – it’s filled with interviews with successful bloggers – talking about how they started out, who they were influenced by, what they have learned along the way, and so on – their story.

While skimming through the magazine, it occurred to me that I have been writing for at least a decade longer than any of the people being interviewed. I also have pretty extreme views about what constitutes a “blog” (I know, I know – I have a chip on my shoulder about it). I smiled to myself – imagining how unprintable an interview with me would become – disregarding all of the niche blogs as self publicist marketing morons, and tearing into the myopic millennial self-aggrandizing “look at me/look where I am” photo journals. Then of course I would drift off to rant about re-bloggers on Tumblr, and the death of originality. Readers would visit my blog purely to vent their anger – all perceiving the slights as attacks on them personally.

One of the interviews – with a male blogger – does look interesting. A by-line on the article makes note of the death threats he has received, purely for expressing unobjectionable opinions. I’ve typically only seen that sort of behaviour at Reddit. Anybody stupid enough to express an opinion about anything on Reddit opens themselves to threats involving farm animals, knives, guns, and all manner of imaginative endings.

It made me laugh that the cover photo of the magazine is of a pregnant blogger, sitting in a corn field, with her sequined dress unbuttoned all the way down – because everybody does that, don’t they. I’m not questioning the revealing nature of the photo at all – I’m just laughing at the contrived situations photographers dream up. Did anybody see the argument last month about Grazia magazine, who edited a model’s (quite ridiculous) hair to better fit the cover? Quite why the stylist or photographer thought hair that looked like a TV aerial was a good idea in the first place is a mystery, and quite how the magazine editors thought they would get away with it is another mystery.

The world has gone image consciousness mad. Nobody can take a “real” photo any more. Even the latest iPhones have filters to remove the background – to make it look like you were in the sort of studio used in 1980s SLR camera instruction books. Of course the “look” of the photos is “new”. Everything has to be “new” – you know, instead of “real”. Contrived photos of clothing hauls, dinners in boutique restaurants, and visits to secluded beaches, reading paperback books while sitting among perfectly arranged sea shells. It’s all so false, so shallow, so fabricated.

I’ll just keep on sharing my thoughts, and the days of my life. I’ll keep on with the people watching, and the commentary on whatever happens to be on my mind on a given day. At least you know the things I post are what I think – not what I think you want to see.

The strangest thing has been happening. Maybe not strange, but certainly unexpected. People have been reading my blog posts. Lots of people. Well, a few. More than in quite some time. Ok, enough with the short sentences because it makes me sound like Donald Trump (on a side note, it will be interesting to see how the new 280 character limit at Twitter effects the style and content of his hyperbolic buffoonery).

I know why I have never garnered an audience in the past – it’s not rocket science. I’ve moved blogging platforms more often than some people have had hot dinners. As soon as any shiny new platform appeared, I landed there – armed with enough archived blog posts to break their database server. I’ve also changed the name of the blog more times than I care to remember – as well as writing under my own name from time to time, which could be argued is either tremendously brave, or tremendously stupid.

I often think of my own posts as forgettable, and my life as mundane – but I’m guessing we all do that. It’s so easy to look at social media, see the highlight reel posted by friends and acquaintances, and subconsciously compare the story we tell against the story told by others. While we know most people present a facade to the outside world, we still get sucked in, or at least I do.

I have a pretty good pair of rose tinted spectacles too. I started blogging around the same time the term was coined. I remember when the majority of those posting their words to the internet were sharing slice-of-life journal entries – listicles, advertorials, and niche online magazines had yet to be dreamed up by marketing morons the world over. I often look back at those early days with a certain fondness. Most of the names from the past have gone, but a few still remain – still sharing their story – still tilting at their own windmills.

Anyway. I often end posts with “anyway” – have you noticed? It’s a pleasant surprise to see people liking and commenting on my posts once again, and of course I’m not really freaking out and thinking “oh crap, now I have to start trying a bit harder at this stuff”. I’ll try to follow back in return (as long as you’re not sharing poetry the Vogons would be proud of), and try to keep up with you too.

Who knows – we might even become unlikely far flung friends.

Although I seem to have missed a few of the Wordpress Blogging University “Every Day Inspiration” prompts over the last few days, I am doing them as and when I can. Yes, there is an OCD part of my brain screaming “BUT YOU MISSED SOME!” – I’m trying to ignore it (if you see a rash of posts from me later today, at least you’ll know what happened).

So – today I’m supposed to answer the question “if we were meeting for coffee right now…” – I’m supposed to finish the sentence. I wonder where this will go?

If we were meeting for coffee right now, I would let you know which coffee shop, and try to arrive first. I know how hard it is to sit and wait for somebody – particularly if you’ve never met them before. As you approach I would smile, and get up to either shake your hand or give you a hug. Not a huge bear hug. I’m not entirely sure how the decision gets made between the two. I think perhaps a guy would get a handshake, and a girl would get a hug? I’m not sure. I’ve never understood why people do air kisses.

I would go get your drink, and probably talk you into getting something to eat too. Something small – maybe a cookie – mostly because I want something to eat, and if I’m getting you something, I can have something too.

I am an expert at talking to anybody about anything, if needed. This is of course a cover for being shy. A front. I may even get caught taking all sorts of interest in you, purely to get you to talk instead of me. It’s not that I’m not really interested in you – of course I will be – it’s more that I like to hear people’s stories too. Everybody has a story, and the world seems to be filled with mansplaining idiots who are only interested in their own story – I’m not one of those people.

It’s probably worth warning you that I’m an expert fence-sitter too. If you agree or disagree with something, I might cause you to consider other points of view – this drives some people to distraction. On more than one occasion during gatherings of friends I have started conversations that turned into raging debates. A friend once realised what I did, pulled me aside, and congratulated me on the argument I started. I smiled.

If conversation falls flat, I will change tactics, and collude with you as we watch people going about their daily life – imagining where they are from, where they are going, and what they might be like. I will most probably say something outrageous, purely to cause a reaction. You will struggle not to spit your drink out, and elbow me in the ribs.

When we say our goodbyes, we will promise to meet up again soon, because we don’t do enough of “this kind of thing”. We won’t organise it though, because we are both rubbish at organising things. We will message each other from time to time though – through whichever mobile app we both have, to while away the quiet moments of the day when we should be doing something else.

Given that I will be heading south on a succession of trains this evening, I’m taking the chance to write a few words now – at 7:45am.

I woke at 6:20am, ten minutes before the alarm on my phone kicked in. I’m not sure how that works – if I set an alarm, I always wake up a few minutes before it. After having a shower, getting dressed, and re-packing my bag, I arrived in the hotel restaurant for breakfast a few minutes before 7. A bright, cheerful blonde girl approached in staff uniform.

“Have you had breakfast with us before?”

“Yes.”

“Brill.”

She said “Brill” a lot. Accepting the table she shepherded me towards was “brill”. Giving her my food order was “brill” too. So was the affirmation that I had finished, and that she could take my plate while I sipped coffee and scrolled the news on my phone.

I’m back in the hotel room now. Forty minutes to fill before my day begins. The office building is next-door to the hotel – more within staggering distance than walking distance. As mentioned before, my bag is packed already. I packed most of it last night, because I’m kind of insane like that. If you’ve ever seen the George Clooney movie “Up in the Air”, and thought his travelling routine was bordering on obsessive compulsive, you have no idea.

When I arrive at a hotel for a few days with work, I unpack my clothes into the wardrobe – then each day as I wear things, I fold them back up, into my bag. I leave home with precisely enough clothes to last throughout the stay. If it’s a long trip I might take a set of spare clothes just in case some kind of disaster happens. The “routine” has become just that – “routine” – something I do without really thinking.

Today I will be sitting in on a number of “workshops”. I think “workshop” really means everybody sits around a table and disagrees with each other. Either that, or everybody sits around a table and doesn’t have an opinion – which is probably just as bad. I get to listen, write notes, and remind everybody that I can do whatever they want – it’s really up to them to decide what they want me to do.

I don’t think I’ve ever described what my day job is. I’ve hinted at it. I work for a “Microsoft Partner”. This is a lofty title imbued on organisations that Microsoft trust enough to recommend to corporate customers that need help building their systems out. I started out as a software and web developer, and still am to a certain extent – although in recent years I have become the “workflow” guy. Workflows are the magic that happens when you fill a form in, and it causes other things to happen elsewhere – popping up tasks, updating databases, generating letters – that kind of thing. Some people might call me a “full stack developer” – a ridiculous title if you ask me.

Anyway.

It looks like a beautiful day outside – not a cloud in the sky. Of course I won’t see it – I’ll spend the greater part of the day sitting at a conference room table, and the better part of the evening sitting on trains. At least I have reserved seats.

It’s 7:50am, and I’m back from the hotel restaurant after attempting to eat a cooked breakfast big enough to feed most entire families. I don’t usually bother with cooked breakfast, on account of very rarely eating breakfast at home. Most mornings are a race to get the kids up, fed, and out of the door.

I’m going to blame the girl on reception. When I arrived late yesterday evening my credit card wouldn’t work on the automated check-in system, so she arrived smiling at my side to check me in instead. While doing so, she offered all the things I hadn’t ticked when booking the room. Just to make sure. With a smile.

Last night was pretty entertaining, in a tortuous kind of way. After checking in, and unpacking my bags, I headed straight for the restaurant to find something to eat. I had been travelling for the better part of five hours – I was tired, and hungry. A smart lady met me at the lectern demarcating the pub from the restaurant, smiling as I approached.

“Table for one?”

“Yes” (again, I thought)

She shepherded me to a small out-of-the-way table in a quiet corner, and took my drink order before vanishing off to wherever the staff go to magic drinks and food from. In her absence a group of people arrived, led by another member of staff, to sit across the room from me.

Have you ever experienced somebody who’s voice you can hear through every other conversation in the room? Have you also ever experienced somebody who just DOESN’T STOP TALKING? She was sitting opposite me.

For the next hour I heard all about her son’s wedding, her holiday, their friend who was spending an inordinate amount of money on their wedding, and was also heading towards a nervous breakdown over the wedding planning. I heard about her younger son winning money on premium bonds, how this restaurant was the right mix of quality and value, and bizarrely “how lovely Dave’s wife is” (well done Dave!).

It wasn’t just that I could hear her conversation – it was the repeated delivery of every subject. An example might be useful:

“Dave’s wife is lovely, isn’t she. She’s a lovely person. Lovely. Isn’t she lovely Bill. She’s lovely, isn’t she Bill. Such a lovely woman. I really like her. She’s really lovely”.

She did this withevery subject. I think I heard the two men with her get two sentences in during the entire half hour or so I shared the restaurant with them. She disagreed with everything they said, and lectured them at length with why she thought differently.

Oh. My. God.

After asking to pay, I was informed that the credit card machine wasn’t working, so could I pay at the bar. I wandered around the corner, and stood patiently waiting for a lady in her mid-sixties to also pay. She appeared to be trying to use several discount vouchers in some sort of multiplier scheme of her own invention – which the computer system was recognising and stopping from happening. She claimed ignorance, but I didn’t believe her for a moment.

When I finally arrived at the counter the girl behind the bar started asking me if I would like a table – as I stood there with the receipt in my hand. She stopped mid sentence and dissolved into giggles.

“I can’t believe I just did that – I’m so used to greeting people with those words”

There was a moment – as we both grinned – that some kind of wall came down. Instead of being professional, and efficient, and all those other things, she was human, and friendly, and warm, and disarming.

I paid my bill, then wandered back through reception, saying hello again to the girl that checked me in, and then back to my room to start stressing about the days to come – not before watching a quite wonderful movie called “Freedom Writers” though. Apparently it’s a true story – find it, and watch it. I dare you to get through it with dry eyes.