write.as/jonbeckett

While cycling home from work this evening, I couldn’t help but smile at the young children out with their parents – variously dressed as Witches, Faeries, Batmen, Draculas, Wolverines, Princesses, Spidermen, Hulks, Buzz Lightyears, and every other character that could have been made from a dressing up box.

I will admit to being ever so slightly annoyed by a typical “I’m more important than everybody else” Mum, who slowly walked into the rush hour traffic with her children – expecting everybody to make way for her. It would have been fine – except her entire family were dressed head-to-toe in black. If not for her face and hair showing, they would have been run-over. Why do people not think?

I arrived home a few minutes before six, and just had time to eat leftovers from the children’s dinner while standing in the kitchen before heading back out to escort them and their friends around the nearby houses.

I’ve been wondering if we would be taking part in the traditional trudge around the houses this year. Our youngest is now twelve years old, and our middle girl thirteen. I think this may have been her final year – she met several of her school friends in doorways along the route – none of them were dressed up.

As we wandered along each nearby road, our band grew over the course of half an hour from myself, a wonderful friend, and a gaggle of excitable children, to a small army. We marched on each house with pumpkins, leaving with much of their candy. Some of the children ate as they walked – no doubt levitating on sugar vaper by the time we headed back towards home.

While wandering along behind the children, catching up with parents I haven’t seen for some time, we talked about the difference between Halloween in the US, and the UK. A family of Americans on the green had gone all-out, with projections, mannequins, and wildly impressive costumes. The English adults had only dressed up if they had small children with them – the rest of us were wrapped up warm in the clothes we had come home from work in, trying desperately to keep a head count on the children in our charge.

After reaching home, showing off their haul of candy, and sitting down to watch the final of the “Great British Bake-Off”, I commented that it wasn’t even half past seven, and yet the knocks on the door had almost ground to a halt.

“It’s a school night”.

I think we perhaps have one more Halloween of dressing up to look forward to with our children. One last hurrah. It will join the growing list of “things we used to do” that we reminisce about fondly. “Remember the year she dressed as the zombie rabbit?”, “Oh yes! And that year I was Darth Vader!”, “Oh my god – and that time Dad was Dumbledore, and nobody recognised him!”. I think we’re going to miss it.

I’m sitting on a chair in the corner of my eldest daughter’s bedroom at half-past midnight. We both have Chromebooks propped on our laps, and we’re both writing blog posts. She’s writing something sensible – I’m writing this ridiculously recursive rubbish just to show that if you start writing something – anything – then more will probably come.

I’ve always found the act of writing fairly easy. Sure, the words that leave my fingers aren’t the prize winning confectures that win awards, but they’re mine – and quite often that’s all the counts. Faced with an internet filled with regurgitated nonsense, it’s quite comforting to think of myself as one of the few content creators. I’m tempted to call it “tilting at windmills”, but that becomes awfully close to the sort of recursive drivel I often rail against.

Anyway- my accomplice has fallen off her blogging horse. Typing has stopped, and she’s fallen head first into the bedclothes. I need to lift her back on and smack the horse on the ass. Give me a minute or two. Or an hour. Or a massive bar of chocolate.

Fast forward an hour, and I helped her write her blog post. A call for help, and a rant of sorts. She dictated, I threw ideas into the mix, and typed like fury for ten minutes. I do hope she finds some friends in this vast, sometimes empty community of bloggers we all pitch into.

After publishing the post, and looking through other bloggers starting out via the Wordpress dashboard, I looked over and she had fallen fast asleep while cuddled up against me. I’m still not entirely sure how I managed to extracate myself without waking her up. Let’s call that “Christmas Eve parent skills”.

Today’s writing exercise from the totally fabricated faculty of Blogging University is a list. It could be any list, but I’m guessing a list of goals, inspirations, or past fails is going to be far more interesting than a shopping list (although posting something that meta is kind of enticing).

The first list that springs to mind that won’t cause a sudden attack of narcolepsy would probably be “things I’m good at” – so without writing another paragraph leading into the slightly unimpressive list (and yes, I know this is that paragraph), I’ll get cracking. Things I’m Good At

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1. Procrastinating. No, seriously. I’m sitting at work while writing this. There are productive things I could be doing, but a huge part of my brain is winning the argument to write this.
2. Tinkering. I spent an entire day last week writing programming to turn a Wordpress export into cleanly formatted text files. I then deleted them, and decided I didn’t need to keep backups after-all. Because tinkering. It also explains why I have a fully operational 2003 vintage iMac at home.
3. Dropping Everything. When somebody needs me, or if I even suspect they need me, I will almost always drop whatever I am doing and go help them. This happens with my own children a lot – as evidenced by sitting up until the early hours with Miss 17 for the last several nights.
4. Eating Pizza. People sometimes use the phrase “the food of the gods” – if I wasn’t such a massive atheist I might use that phrase to describe pizza. I think my attraction to it has more to do with it being cheap, and easy to cook, rather than how great it tastes though – because I will pretty much eat anything put in front of me.
5. Cycling. I have always cycled to work. I don’t own my own car. This results in some mighty impressive looking legs that will never fit in skinny jeans. It also means I have a bitter and cynical view of the kind of people you share roads with during the rush-hour. I have written more than once about trophy mums racing to coffee mornings in four wheel drive tanks. So there you go. My first “list” post in quite a long time. It goes without saying that if you interract with me in any way, shape, or form, I will not only stalk you, I’ll come and read your blog.

I was joking about the stalking part. Honest.

I’m doing well this week. I signed up for one of the Wordpress University courses yesterday, and then completely missed the first assignment arriving in my in-box. Does that mean I currently hold the record for missing the start of the course, let alone the fifth, sixth, or seventh exercise?

The title of today’s exercise is “I write because…”. I gather I’m supposed to have some lofty mission that I have embarked on. Forgive me if I’m suppressing laughter, but no. I just write. I always have done. I think perhaps in the early days of writing a blog I tried to “play the game”, but then I realised that doing so turned the blog into a sausage machine pumping out unoriginal derivative junk.

Ok. I’ll try to answer the question, rather than go off on one about marketing morons masquerading as bloggers.

I write in order to empty my head. My life is filled with obligations, expectations, places to be, things to know, things I should have done, and so on. Along the way – working in a sometimes stressful job, bringing up children, and running a twenty four hour family laundry and tidying service – it’s very easy to lose myself. I end up with very little that is “mine” – so I suppose the blog becomes the one thing that is just about “me”. Of course I write a lot about people, places, and things, but it’s generally my own idiotic thoughts about them.

Does that fulfill the brief? Is that a good enough reason to write? I suppose another reason might be the attraction of talking to myself. I can sit here, typing away furiously at the keyboard, imagining a conversation with an unknown audience, where you hang on my words and applaud at the end of a spirited rant about something entirely forgettable. Maybe that thought should stay inside my head.

I am going on-site with a new client on Wednesday. I discovered this via a random email last Friday. You might think “So what? you travel all the time with work – you tell stories about standing in front of rooms full of strangers, pretending to be clever”. Yes, I do. I also freak out ahead of those visits.

Even though I will only be on-site for one day, I can already feel the anxiety levels ratcheting up. They will probably continue climbing through today and tomorrow, and then be erased the moment I walk through a corporate foyer, and realise I am surrounded not by brilliant developers who have seen through my act, but by corporate drones who are good at shaking hands, and conversing in pure acronym.

Getting to the client site is going to be something of an adventure. For whatever reason, reaching their office will require three or four trains, and a taxi journey. I guess it makes sense – they are one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world – why would they have an office that’s easy to reach by public transport? At least the journey will give me a story to tell though, right? The chances of being squashed into the corner of a train by somebody applying makeup, or an overly chatty lunatic are probably pretty high.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some major procrastination, stressing out, and worrying over nothing to be getting on with. As always, if you like this post, or comment, I promise to stalk you in return. Well maybe not stalk. I never was good with words.

Over the last few months I have continued to post almost every day, tried to read those that I follow, and kept putting one foot in front of the other – it’s one of the few things I’m good at. It struck me this morning that I’ve also become incredibly lazy.

Over the years I have been posting my mundane stories, ill conceived thoughts, and idiotic ideas to the internet, I have known all sorts of people, all over the world. I’ve written before about the transitory nature of those friendships. It’s almost like you’re making your way across a vast ocean in your own little boat, and sometimes you happen upon another boat. For a time you travel along together, sharing your journey, and then eventually you go your separate ways – either vanishing without trace, or continuing on in the company of others.

I realised this morning I had stopped looking out for others. For some months I have just been hitting the post button, reading anything by people I have crossed paths with recently, and moving on. Yes, you could argue that I have a busy “real life” that prevents the hours one might spend searching the horizon, but that’s not always the case. I really haven’t been looking.

It’s strange though – this business of reaching out. Making new friends requires bravery and trust. You need to be willing to start the conversation. Starting conversations is hard.

In spite of myself – I’m naturally inclined to carry on drifting along in this little blogging boat of my own creation – I’m going to try and reach out a little more. If you see a comment or two, or a follow from somebody you’ve not seen before, hopefully this post might serve as an introduction.

(this is where I raise my hand, and try to look relaxed and calm as you approach, but quietly freak the hell out – straightening my clothes, flattening my hair, and wondering if I have anything stuck in my teeth).

I sat up with our eldest daughter last night watching back to back episodes of “Stranger Things” on Netflix. We watched the first four episodes of season 2 while eating pizza, drinking red wine, and sneaking penny sweets from a huge bucket in the kitchen bought for Halloween.

I’m not quite sure how or why, given the lack of sleep, but I wasn’t tired this morning. The alarm clock went off at 7am, and I woke with a start. My other half asked how she was, and we had a whispered conversation – making “Team Mum and Dad” plans to put her back on her feet over the weekend.

She started her own blog this morning. Not a niche blog about fashion, or makeup, or anime – an online journal where she can empty her head and process a few of the thoughts she has been wrestling with over the last few days. I spent an hour helping her learn the ropes, and dipped her toes into the vast ocean of words published by people sharing similar stories.

We are going shopping this afternoon. We can’t really afford it, but we are in the business of distracting, and building smiles today. If it costs a little money to make that happen, I’m more than willing to stand waiting in clothes shops for a few hours.

After escorting Miss 17 to a famous fashion retail establishment this afternoon, I left her to peruse their wares and crossed the road to see what the second hand video game store might have on display. I wasn’t planning on buying anything – I just wanted to look.

My plans began to fall apart then I saw the Playstation 2 tucked away in the corner of a display unit. They completely disintegrated two minutes later when I also found copies of “Ratchet and Clank”, and “Jak and Daxter” among the shelves of traded in games.

There’s a back-story here. About fifteen years ago I owned a Playstation 2. Both myself and my other half would play it after work as a means of relaxation. She sang along to Abba while playing “Singstar”, I tuned my pretend supercars in “Gran Turismo”, and we both went on wild goose-chase treasure hunts as both “Jak” and “Ratchet” in their respective video games. We loved those games – but then children arrived in our lives, and we needed money. We sold everything.

Fast forward to this afternoon, and Daxter once again fell into the Dark Eco and became an “Ottsel” (I always thought he was a mongoose – it’s amazing what you learn if you bother to read about things). Over the course of an hour all the children congregated around the Playstation 2 and the smack-talking began as they took turns. It’s worth pointing out that their phones, consoles, and tablets were all forgotten. There’s a message somewhere there about gameplay trumping graphics, internet connections, and ridiculous hardware specifications.

Getting back to the shopping trip thread of the story, we had some time to kill before getting our bus home, and the kids hadn’t eaten for several hours, so I took them to McDonalds for some fries and a drink. While sipping at drinks and laughing about the random things you do while also jamming soggy fries into your face, Miss 17 retrieved her phone from her pocket and started tinkering.

“Ooh! I can carry on writing my blog post on the phone!”

“Yes, yes you can.”

This evening she finished the blog post, and then agonised over her writing, her punctuation, if she had written enough, if she had written too much, if the picture was good enough, if the tags were correct – everything you could possibly imagine.

“Don’t worry about it! The important thing is that you’ve written something. People will like you, because you’re you – and you will get better each time you post”

I know I was just “being encouraging”, but it’s true. There are so many blogs out there filled with advertorial link bait, shallow attention seeking, and gameification of every damn aspect of “blogging” that a new voice posting real thoughts, stories, and opinions is going to shine out like a beacon. It may take people time to find it, but they will.

Anyway. We have another several episodes of Stranger Things to subject ourselves to, lest the army of spoiler toting assholes ruin it for us. Please excuse me if I fall off the internet for the next several hours.

Tonight is pizza night, and Stranger Things 2 has been released on Netflix. That solves what I’ll be watching throughout the weekend. I may stop on my way home to buy some snacks for both myself and Miss 17. We watched the first season together, so it’s kind of become “our thing”.

Stranger Things has come at the right time to be honest – without sharing too much, I suspect I will need to be there for our eldest quite a bit this weekend. I’m busy filling my bag of parent tricks with things to take her mind off the last few days, and to make her laugh again. An all-night binge-watching TV marathon fueled by chocolate and fizzy drinks might be just the thing.

Here I am again, sitting in the junk room at home, emptying my head into the keyboard. I have no adventures to relate as such – other than wanting to kill next door’s dog, which has barking non-stop all morning. I’ve turned Spotify up to eleven to drown it out. An eighties playlist is waking the children up – Paul Simon is singing “You Can Call Me Al”.

My other half has gone to visit her Mum for the day with our youngest, leaving me here with Miss 13 and Miss 17. It’s nearing 11am and I haven’t seen them yet. I’ve just filled the washing machine for the first time today – when it finishes a load the house falls silent, and it feels strange – this house is never silent.

I suppose I do have a story to tell, but it’s not really my own. Forgive me if this ends up being heavily filtered.

At about ten to nine last night my other half walked into the junk room, where I was busy tinkering with things that didn’t need tinkering with, and announced that Miss 17, who had promised to catch the train that would deliver her home by 9, had just texted that she had twisted her ankle en-route to the train station and had missed the train.

We both looked at each other. My other half was furious. I struggled to maintain a straight face, and tried for an eye-roll to cover up. She had promised to get the next train, in an hour. I agreed to walk to the train station to meet her.

Of course we both knew she was full of shit. She must think we were born yesterday.

I met her from the train station, and pointed out the pub she would have to walk past on the way home.

“This is the reason I’ve come to meet you – if you ever DO find yourself coming back late and there are people around outside the pub, go straight into the pub and call us from there to fetch you.”

“Why?”

“One of our friends had to a few years ago – there was a strange drunk guy hanging around on the opposite side of the road – she messaged on Facebook, and waited in the pub.”

“OK”

I guess this will be our lot for the next year or so – deconstructing the safe bubble she has lived within – a bubble of our own creation – slowly making her aware of the dangers that exist in the “real world” so that she may be better armed to have more independence. It’s not a fun thing to have to think about at all.

While we walked through the quiet streets towards home (there was no trace of a limp, by the way), I broke the ice about a HUGE secret that’s been going on.

“Just so you know, I know all about you and [redacted name]”.

“Oh? Did Mum tell you?”

“Yes, but I had guessed.”

“When did she tell you?”

“The same night you told her. We do talk you know.”

She smiled, and it was like a huge weight lifted off her shoulders. An invisible wall fell, and we chatted about all sorts of things while walking through the darkness.

I can’t help thinking about a conversation I often have with people that don’t have children. There is no instruction book for any of this stuff – all you can do is go on your best instincts, and best judgement about what decisions to make as they crop up. For younger children it’s almost easier, because you have so much more to go on, but with teenagers it’s almost “The Undiscovered Country”. Letting them go as safely as you can, but also affording them as much freedom as you can is difficult.