write.as/jonbeckett

It’s my second day off work, and the world finally seems to be slowing down. Yesterday was spent washing and drying clothes, fetching children from holiday activity clubs, and running here, there, and everywhere. The dishwasher is finally empty, and the washing baskets are nearing empty too. Of course we know this is a false dawn – Miss 17 spent the last two days in her room with a friend – I looked in this morning and glimpsed a pretty good version of “The End of All Things”, complete with dirty clothes walked into every part of the floor space that you might walk on.

She vanished mid-morning with no more than a “see you later Dad”. After two years out of the school system, she suddenly has friends and first love, and is experiencing everything at a hundred miles an hour. As long as she gets college work done, we’re not putting too many obstacles in her way. Yes, it’s odd suddenly losing a huge part of her like this, but then we had all got used to having her around the house all the time – which isn’t normal at all. She’s 17. If we try and slow her down now, I imagine she will rebel spectacularly.

The younger children were on a rugby camp for the last couple of days, run by one of the Premiership clubs a few miles up the road. They were completely and utterly worn out last night – Miss 12 fell asleep on the couch at 8:30pm, woke with a start, and put herself to bed. That never happens. We are taking them to see the new Thor movie a little later – hopefully they won’t complain too much about not buying snacks at the cinema – we really can’t afford it at the moment.

While looking at the archive of my blog this morning I noticed all the curly quotes and em-dashes were missing from the text. Thankfully I kept the programming that performs the export, and after a few minutes had re-generated all four thousand or more files again. I read a few posts here and there to check – it all looks ok (har har, famous last words). I keep wondering what to do with the archive – it’s kind of a pointless exercise, but at least I have a backup of the writing, right ?

I’m writing this on the old iMac, if you were interested. The fifteen year old computer sitting in the corner of the junk room. Tori Amos is playing on iTunes, and Textmate is pretending to take note of the words I write. I also have an old copy of TextWrangler installed, but haven’t really tried it yet. I wasted an hour late last night trying to get the Mac to run “Mutt” (a command line email client that I use on the netbook). Turns out the Mac is just too old to get away with such things, even if you re-compile them from source.

While waiting for code to fail compilation last night, I started thinking about the various blogs I post to again – about the places my writing lives on the internet – and given my propensity to change platforms every time the wind changes direction, if I should really have a fallback blog somewhere – something similar that’s just the text. It’s probably a stupid idea. If I didn’t change platforms every ten minutes I might even end up with an audience.

There is a Raspberry Pi sitting on the shelf alongside me, doing nothing. I bought it with the intention of teaching the children to code in Python, but neither of them have shown much interest. It hasn’t escaped me that it could take the place of this old Mac. It would take up less desk space, and run silent. It would also run all the things that fail to compile on the Mac.

Do you see how good I am at procrastinating? I suppose some might call it curiosity. It’s procrastination though, isn’t it – tinkering with things rather than doing something even vaguely useful.

I guess it’s time to go and put a rocket under the children – to comb their hair, brush their teeth, and wear something vaguely presentable to the cinema.

I have three days off work, starting today. I didn’t even wake up until 8:30am. How does that work? Usually I’m awake and up at 7am. Maybe I need to add one of those life tracking bar-graphs to my bullet journal, to record the time I get up and go to bed. I tried it for a little while when I first had the bullet journal, but dismissed it as a bit ridiculous – you end up informing your actions each day based on the knowledge that you are recording them (scientists would call it the “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”) – which is kind of self defeating.

I started the day with no real plans, and thought about spending the morning writing. As always happens, a rabbit hole appeared in the form of a re-organisation of all of my online writing. I didn’t need to do it, but a particular mania that occasionally eats away at me during the quiet moments overtook the part of my brain that should be quite happy twiddling it’s tumbs, and before I knew it I had downloaded an export of the Wordpress blog, and was writing Python code.

In the past I have always written blog posts as plain text (in markdown format), and copied the results into Wordpress, Tumblr, or whatever other platform has been the flavour of the month. The files are always formatted the same, and always filed into year and month subfolders. It makes it very, very easy for me to re-purpose the archives – to make Kindle books, for example.

Here’s the thing – a couple of weeks ago I decided to do away with the archive, and just trust in the mighty Wordpress. Which was fine. Until I decided that was a stupid idea, and wished I had never got rid of the archive by accident in a huge cleanup of Google Drive last week. I’m SUCH an idiot sometimes.

So this morning I set about writing a script in Python to take the export from Wordpress, and turn it back into the neatly formatted collection of year and month folders filled with Markdown formatted files that I used to have. Along the way I also cleaned up some formatting issues I always knew had been there, because as I said – I’m kind of crazy when it comes to things like that. It’s the same part of my brain that built foundations for buildings in Minecraft, even though they wouldn’t be seen.

One of the huge advantages of keeping all of my writing in text files is the same tools I use at work to look after source code can be used on the writing – I can check completed posts into an online repository as a sort of “King of the Nerds” archival backup facility. I’m still deciding between GitHub and BitBucket for this – not that you’re probably interested at all.

I’ll go back to writing about mundane things later. I might even make the script I wrote to export the wordpress posts available for others, if there is any interest.

I’m thinking about giving”Tiny Letter” a try. It’s owned by MailChimp, and is provided as a free service for individuals – it lets people subscribe to you, and then you can write to them in the same way you might for a blog, but obviously it’s not published online.

It’s an interesting idea. It would feel more like writing a letter.

If you would like to subscribe to me, to find out how it works,click here.

Cycling to work this morning seemed like hard work. It’s amazing how sitting in a hotel for a week can take the formerly super-human strength from your legs and hide it somewhere. I guess it doesn’t help that I have a few days booked off work this week – which I fully intend to spend sitting on my backside watching movies, and playing board games with the children, who are on half-term.

I spent the greater part of the morning filing an expense claim for the Germany trip. The rules and regulations around what you can claim for, and then converting card transactions to currency are slightly insane. It took two and a half hours.

I caught up with Mr Robot over the weekend – the TV series starring Rami Malek and Christian Slater. I loved the first two seasons, and the third season seems to be taking it on to a whole new level. I wish I knew people that are watching it – sometimes you finish an episode and need to decompress – to talk about it with somebody. I don’t have that.

I have nothing to get on with this afternoon. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do for the next several hours. If you’re at a loose end, give me a shout.

Would you like to know why I didn’t write a blog post yesterday? Would youreally like to know why? Then I shall begin.

I spent several hours yesterday migrating technical notes – bits of programming, and swathes of explanations to myself – into Evernote from Google Docs. Of course, because I am such a colossal nerd and suffer from suspected but undiagnosed OCD about all things being done correctly, neatly, and tidily, I edited each post to make sure it was formatted in a uniform manner, and tagged with appropriate keywords. It took hours.

I also spent some time messing around with Medium, Weebly, and Postach.io again – trying to decide which is the better platform for my more nerdy (read: public facing) thoughts, ideas, and journey’s down the rabbit hole. Medium is lovely, but I’m more tempted by Postach.io, because it turns Evernote notes into a blog for free. I suspect Postach.io has been acquired by Evernote too, but can’t find any evidence saying as much. I wonder if the founders would tell me if I emailed them?

Anyway.

This has been a post about nothing at all. It’s Sunday here, the washing machine and tumble-dryer are just about coming to a halt, one child is at rugby practice, another is at a sleepover, and I’m wondering what rubbish movies might be on the TV this afternoon. Next week is half-term in the hereabouts, and I have a few days booked off work (if they get confirmed). I hear rumblings that I might be helping Miss 13 start her long rumoured cooking blog.

I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to make it through this blog post. I’m home, I’m sitting at the desk in the junk room, and I’m typing. It’s been a long day.

The journey home from Germany is becoming somewhat routine. I get up, have a shower, get dressed, pack my bag, check out of the hotel, walk to the station, buy a ticket, go to the airport, check my bags in, go through departures, and then wait for the flight.

I guess something out of the ordinary did happen though – while checking my suitcase in at Frankfurt, the girl on the counter with my boarding pass looked up, and told me the exact gate my plane would depart from. Nobody has ever done this before – I can only guess that she does the same journey, or has memorised the planes that depart from particular gates. I smiled, and said “Oh, thankyou!”, genuinely grateful I wouldn’t have to search out my flight on the information boards. She smiled the best smile back as I clumsily picked my way through the small army of disorganised passengers bearing down on her.

I just remembered – something else happened too. I forgot to take the Amazon Kindle from my backpack while going through security, which earned me a visit with a security officer to go through my bag. He dug around for quite some time before waving the kindle in the air, and asking if I could log into it for him. As soon as I did, he interrupted me.

“I’ve seen enough – you can go”.

I wonder why he didn’t want to admire my selection of forgettable books?

Once on the plane, I got the impression that a ridiculously clothed English guy with bleached hair had sat in the wrong place on the plane. It quickly became apparent that he saw a very pretty blonde girl, and just decided there and then to sit next to her. Let’s forget that planes tend to be fully booked, and that he looked like a hungover version of Rupert the Bear. For the first twenty minutes of the flight I put up with his inane conversation, which somehow cut through everybody elses. After moving seats for a few minutes, he was back sitting next to the girl, and doing his level best to chat her up. I dug the headphones out of my bag and put some music on, specifically to block him out.

The guy sitting next to me on the plane had just retrieved a laptop from the overhead compartments, and got comfortable with it on the tray table in front of him, when the 50-something guy in front of him reclined his seat, and made it completely and utterly impossible for him to do anything. Why on earth do planes have reclining seats? And why are people so ignorant about the effect they will have on passengers behind them? I once sat on a plane to San Francisco behind an asshole that kept reclining his seat, even though the stewardesses kept telling him to raise it again (because it meant I couldn’t eat the meal, read a book, or pretty much anything really).

One we reached London I somehow found myself walking behind the Rupert trousered idiot. The girl he had subjected to his unique brand of conversation had apparently dropped him like a stone after humoring him for the last couple of hours.

The next leg of the journey home took me along a mile long tunnel walk underneath the airport towards the “Heathrow Express” train. This is a train service that takes you from the airport into Paddington Station in London. In Frankfurt, a similar train costs less than five euros. In London, the same service costs 21 pounds (about 25 euros) – so five times more expensive for essentially the same service. It’s ridiculous.

While sitting on the train minding my own business a member of staff came along selling tickets. An Indian lady sitting opposite me that had been preening herself for the entire journey so far had no ticket. When asked if she would like a single, or a return ticket, she replied

“Oh, I’m not travelling like this again – I shall get a taxi back”.

“So a single then?”

I loved the staff member’s answer. He wasn’t going to get into her aloof, prejudiced bullshit – and he somehow made her look ridiculous at the same time.

The final part of my journey home involved the familiar sequence of trains from Paddington Station back to my home town. I quietly sat and filed a number of the photos I had taken on Instagram, and caught up with friends that live inside my phone to while away the time. I messaged my other half along the way too:

“Is it Pizza night?”

“It can be.”

I fly home tomorrow morning.

I almost didn’t go out for anything to eat tonight. After work I collected a shopping bag from my hotel room and wandered down to the local supermarket. After wandering the aisles and not finding anything even vaguely like a pre-made salad, or filled baguette, I gave up and wandered back. I would have to go out.

I started off in the direction of the main railway station, walking past both of the places I had visited earlier in the week. I continued on, and eventually found myself walking past a promising looking Thai restaurant. I found a table, looked at the menu, and wondered why nobody was approaching me to take an order. Ah. Maybe they don’t do that. I got up and walked over to the counter where others seemed to be paying. Everything was straightforward – ordering spring rolls, and a curry – until I offered up my card to pay.

“You have no cash?”

“No.”

“Cash machine is three minutes walk.”

“Really?”

“You want to cancel?”

I nodded, and walked from the restaurant.

As I made my way along the streets of downtown Frankfurt, I became slowly more depressed and hungry. All the promising places to eat were jam-packed with Germany people on nights out in large groups. I passed a couple of doorways in the street that appeared to conceal bars – with groups of people standing in the street with beer bottles, laughing, and shouting in each other’s faces. It struck me that I didn’t see a single police officer while making my way through the crowds.

Eventually I spotted another quiet Thai restaurant on a street corner near the station. I wandered in, and a waiter ushered me to a table. After doing my best to decipher the German menu he wandered up with an English version, and smiled. Given that I hadn’t said a word yet, I laughed to myself. Do I really look THAT English?

I ordered the house special – a huge bowl of fried rice, spiced chicken, and noodles, with a “Tiger Beer” to help it down. As far as I recall, Tiger Beer is brewed all over the world, and passed off as somehow exotic in restaurants. I imagine the Tiger Beer in Frankfurt is probably bottled just outside the city somewhere.

While sitting in the restaurant it slowly filled with people, and I became more aware than ever that I was sitting alone while everybody else had friends, family, or loved ones sitting with them. The cacophony of conversation became an almost impenetrable wall around me. I asked for the bill as soon as I finished, paid, and left.

As much as it might seem exciting to visit different countries and cities, I’m looking forward to going home now. I’m looking forward to home cooked food, sitting around the dinner table with my family, and sharing our day with each other. I’m looking forward to crashing out on the sofa, and watching garbage TV with my other half until the early hours of the morning.

Just one more airport departure lounge, one more flight, and a few more train journeys to go.

After work this evening I changed from the vaguely smart shirt and trousers I wear every day (clean shirt each day, obviously), into the vaguely less smart jeans and t-shirt to head out for something to eat.

When I packed my bag to travel, I didn’t really think about it – and packed whatever clothes were either clean, and nearby. Therefore I have a selection of t-shirts with ridiculous wording on them, such as tonight’s offering – which state’s “I’m not lazy, I just really enjoy doing nothing”. The only problem with such t-shirts is they are of course printed in English, so if you’re hoping to slip under the radar while wandering through a busy pub in Frankfurt, you’re not going to do very well. This is of course presuming that you might run into a gang of neo-nazi idiots looking to kick in anybody obviously English – in my three weeks in Frankfurt so far I have never seen anything but polite, quiet, charming, and obviously well mannered people. I will admit that makes me suspicious (it’s always the quiet ones), but still – just me being paranoid.

So anyway – I wandered out of the hotel with every intention in the world of finding a tex-mex place marked on Google maps. The problem with this plan was I was hungry, and I had to walk past the Irish pub I visited last night – “O'Reillys”. I didn’t make it past. Before I knew it my legs had walked me into the pub, straight to the Kylie look-a-like server, and straight to a quiet table deep in the cavernous interior.

Another Irish girl wandered over a few moments later to ask if I would like a drink, and somehow my mouth automatically said “A pint of Guinness please”. She grinned, and skipped off in the direction of the bar.

While waiting, I checked emails, messages, and read the news on my phone – but was eventually distracted by the thump, thump, thump sounds of a dartboard behind me. I looked around, and discovered a single German guy throwing darts hilariously badly – they were landing all over the place. He wasn’t trying to go “around the clock” either – he was just a bit rubbish (I should know – so am I). Looking around the rest of the restaurant area, I noticed a couple of pool tables had been covered to turn them into tables, and a quiet guy sat in the corner with a notebook, and a pork-pie hat propped on his head. At a glance he looked like Johnny Depp – I wondered if he had beaten his wife up too (sorry for that – I have no time for Johnny Depp or any of his movies any more, knowing what sort of despicable shit he is).

The food was wonderful – and not what I had expected at all. I ordered a “pie”, but it resulted in a deep bowl half filled with mashed potato, and half filled with Irish stew. I didn’t really mind, because I like most things. It was hot, tasted great, and slowed down the effects of the Guinness. The second Guinness.

As the restaurant area slowly filled with people, I became more and more conscious that everybody else was with somebody – either a partner, a friend, or a group. Apart from the Captain Jack poet, I was the only person on his own in the entire bar. I messaged a close friend, and wished they were here to be an idiot with me – we could have taken part in the Karaoke later in the night, singing “Islands in the Stream” together, and brought the house down. The clientelle would have lined the drinks up for us, and carried us on their shoulders around the pub. Probably.

Eventually I finished my meal, paid my bill, and wandered out into the night once more – whistling “Islands in the Stream” as I went, grinning to myself. I must have looked like a recent release from a mental hospital.

I woke several times during the early hours of the morning and checked my phone for messages in the aftermath of yesterday’s awful news. I buried my head in the bedclothes, and ignored the world until I absolutely had to leave. I did get up eventually, and wandered down the road to a nearby supermarket to buy lunch.

The day passed without incident. As is usual, I cannot impart anything worth reading, because it crosses all sorts of professional lines. I can tell you about the German gentleman that spotted my bullet journal on the table, and exclaimed audibly about it – picking it up, and showing it around everybody else in the session.

“Look at this! It’s amazing! It looks like it is printed! Tell me – how do you write such writing?”

I shrugged, and smiled at the pretty oriental lady opposite.

“I take care ?”

She broke into a huge grin.

“Why does my notebook not look like yours?”

“He told you – he takes care!”

We grinned at each other. I bet she had a beautifully written bullet journal hidden in her bag. I was just glad she had my back.

After the work day finished, I wandered back across the road to the hotel, changed from work clothes into a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, and wandered off in the direction of downtown Frankfurt. A search of Google Maps had turned up a few potential places – one of them an Irish bar opposite the railway station.

You when you walk into a place, and there’s just something about it ? That happened to me this evening. The bar could very well have been a real-world recreation of the Irish bar I frequented in “Second Life” for a few weeks of evenings earlier this year. A bubbly member of bar staff strode straight up to me, smiling. She looked a little like Kylie Minogue, and spoke almost perfect English. The place was called “O'Reillys”, and is probably much like every Irish bar the world over, but to me it was a welcome reminder of home.

Within moments I had been shepherded to small table in the corner next to two German women on a night out. While they chattered endlessly about this and that (I have no idea, such is my lack of understanding of a single word of German), I sipped an amazing pint of Guinness, and filled my face with perhaps the best burger I have eaten in quite some time. I am half tempted to return late one evening while here, because apparently they do karaoke. Standing with an improbably large glass of beer while watching drunk people attempt to sing is strangely enticing.

I sat quietly in the corner of the bar, and watched the serving staff go about their jobs. A taller server with long brown hair lifted an impossibly full tray of drinks into the air with one hand, and stood examining a map of tables, solving the “Travelling Salesman Problem” in her head before setting off. Her strength amazed me – I struggle to carry a round of tea and coffee for the office single-handed – how she hefted perhaps ten or twelve pints of beer into the air so easily is a mystery to me.

After leaving I called home, and talked to the children while picking my way across endless road junctions en-route to the hotel. I heard about Miss 13’s trip to the minor injuries clinic – the first of many projected with a rugby career ahead of her – and all about her hamming it up in school with crutches. Always the drama queen.

It’s now approaching 8pm, and I’m sitting in the hotel bar for the first time, sipping at my second wheatbeer while watching the german equivalent of MTV, and people watching. It’s amazing how much you can pack into an evening when you’re on your own.

The barman is African, and seems to be holding down every job in the place – serving customers, running to the kitchen, settling bills, and so on. Sitting next to the bar are two german businessmen, laughing loudly at each others tales, while gesticulating wildly. In the centre of the floor a lone businessman sits, eating a forgettable looking pizza. He has the neatest, shortest hair in the known universe, and is wearing a blazer while eating. On the right side of the bar a fifty-something man is sitting with a twenty something girl. I wondered if she was his daughter until they kissed. Nearest to me, an african family are sitting – three generations sit around the table. The youngest, a boy, is watching MTV while his parents fuss about the skin on show in the succession of videos appearing. Over in the far corner a middle-aged American couple are quietly eating their forgettable pizzas, and seemingly talking about everybody around them. She has the best laugh. Her hair looks like it came from a barbie doll – he looks like he does exactly as she tells him.

I only came down to the bar for a coffee. How have I ended up drinking two beers, and writing all this rubbish?

I know I shouldn’t laugh, but after a succession of music videos by the likes of Katy Perry, P!nk, and Iggy Azalea, there is now a local German “pop star” on. He’s trying really hard to be cool, but it’s just not working.

Ok. So 8pm must be the time when everybody comes out to play. The bar just got much more busy, with several couples appearing seemingly from nowhere. One of them is sitting opposite me, looking at the forgettable pizza menu. I wonder if they know there are far better places to eat less than five minutes walk away ?

When I woke at 6am this morning, I instinctively checked my phone for messages, and discovered my flight to Germany had been cancelled. Ten minutes later, while squinting at a computer screen in the dark of the study downstairs, I had re-scheduled to a later flight, and called the taxi company too.

The later flight has now been delayed too. I suppose this is vindication that I set an entire day aside to travel. Taking into account the time-zone change while in the air later, I will now reach the hotel in Germany at perhaps 5pm, after getting up at 6am to get to the airport. The actual flight usually takes a little over an hour.

I have another hour sitting here until the gate is even announced. Maybe I’ll read a book. Or provide a running commentary on the people sitting throughout the departure lounge. They’re not exactly interesting though (he writes, glancing up) – they all appear as bored as me.