During January I’ve decided to take part in the annual “bloganuary” escapade at WordPress – where you’re encouraged to write something inspired by the writing prompt each day, tag it with #bloganuary, and post it off in your own little paper boat to sail the internet ocean. Maybe … | Continue reading
Does 3am still count as “New Year’s Eve” ? It’s been a strange year. The loss of friends and family members in the last couple of years has brought into focus that we really do only get one go at this – that we should somehow “make it count”. If only somebody wrote some instructi … | Continue reading
A month after buying the record player, I finally got to a record store today. While my other half and youngest daughter perused clothing and book stores, I flipped through boxes of vinyl albums and debated about spending far too much money on two albums. There is a back-story he … | Continue reading
Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. We’re almost at the end of another year. I feel like I should write something about this year, but the words really aren’t there. The whole year’s been a bit like that really – like something was about to happen – something should happen – but it didn’ … | Continue reading
We’re heading out of the door in an hour to the yearly “Christmas surprise”, organised by my other half – only it’s not so much of a surprise any more after she deleted the tickets from her email by accident and had a meltdown about it last night. In the middle of the meltdown my … | Continue reading
The clock is ticking towards 11pm on Christmas Eve. It feels weird this year. Christmas is changing. I guess all families go through this – as your children grow up. For years you are their world – and Christmas revolves around them – but then they grow up, and your little family … | Continue reading
That’s it. No more work until the new year. A few days to relax into the holidays now – to slow down (har har). There is a chore mountain ahead of us – and only a couple of days to complete them. I had been hoping to go shopping in the morning but fear I […] | Continue reading
Unlike many people I worked straight through the pandemic. I wasn’t furloughed, but I did reduce to a shorter working week for a while – keeping myself busy by persuing interests that I had been studiously avoiding – among them the “Couch to 5K” running escapade, and trying my ha … | Continue reading
Tonight you find me sitting in the darkness of the bedroom, emptying my head into the keyboard on my lap while my other half watches “Van der Valk” in the lounge. I vaguely remember “Van der Valk” the first time around – a dutch detective show from the early 1980s – the theme mus … | Continue reading
I finally fell into bed at 2am last night – and then watched a TV show on my laptop until nearly 3am. Perhaps this “trying to fit too much into each day” lark is starting to get a bit out-of-hand? There’s so much I want to do though – television shows I want to watch, […] | Continue reading
If you receive my blog via the wonders of email, you’ll have no idea of the seismic changes that have taken place in recent hours. The “Substack” incarnation of the personal words I pollute the internet with is no more. It has shuffled off this mortal coil. It is not sleeping – i … | Continue reading
A few minutes after my mobile woke me this morning there was a knock on the bedroom door, and my Dad shouted “time to get up”. I squinted at the clock, and wondered what was going on – we weren’t supposed to be going anywhere today. He then knocked on the door again, and shouted … | Continue reading
A few minutes after finding a seat on a train at the local railway station this morning a lady walked through the train checking tickets. She took my ticket in her hand, read the destination, raised her eyebrows, and said “my word – that’s quite the trek!”. An hour later I boarde … | Continue reading
A couple of months ago I was talking to my other half about how we might use the mountain of holiday I had accrued at work, and she suggested I visit my parents. They live on the coast, and we try to visit at least once a year as a family, but hate “landing ourselves” […] | Continue reading
Friday morning finds me sitting in the middle of a busy cafe – the one my middle daughter works at. She’s not here today – I finally got around to visiting on the one day she doesn’t work. She would have been with me, but instead is waiting at home for a succession of people […] | Continue reading
The clock is ticking relentlessly towards midnight, and you find me sitting in the dark of the junk room once more, bathed in the light of several desk lamps, wondering both where the day went and what I might write about in the blog. Because I have to write something, right? It’ … | Continue reading
How on earth has October arrived already? Everything about the world feels strange at the moment – disconnected – broken – stumbling in a haphazard manner from one day to the next. Maybe it’s the changing of the seasons. Apparently Autumn started a week ago – maybe that’s it. Per … | Continue reading
I did it!! After a month of running almost every morning (even while on holiday), and then navigating a household wading through the latest covid spike, I made it to 100km to raise funds for Great Ormond Street Hospital. I’ve never attempted anything remotely like this, and am no … | Continue reading
It’s been a few days since I last wrote in the blog. I’m not sure I really have much to share, but I’ll start writing and see what happens. How does the old saying go? “I have nothing to say, and I’m saying it”. Mr Covid has come to visit our house once again. Our […] | Continue reading
Early in the hours of last Saturday morning we loaded bags into a waiting car and were transported to the airport. After spending several hours crammed in a Boeing 737, we emerged among palm trees, roasting sunshine, and lapping waves in the distance. We spent the week in Tenerif … | Continue reading
I’m starting to think a long-standing joke among my family may have some truth to it. The route into town on foot crosses several road junctions – and while you may not see any traffic for entire minutes while walking on the footpath, as you approach junctions, cars “spawn in” wi … | Continue reading
A message from an old friend appeared in my phone this morning. I was walking to the corner shop to buy bread when it arrived – the gentle vibration causing my brow to furrow as I made my way across the green outside our house. After fishing the phone from my pocket, the name in … | Continue reading
I’m giving WordPress another chance. I immediately noticed while catching up on recent posts in the “Reader” interface that the “like” button worked perhaps 50% of the time. I’ll pretend it didn’t happen. I’ve been away – experimenting with Substack. Some of you came with me. I’v … | Continue reading
I’m not entirely sure what WordPress are up to, but they have badly broken the session programming behind their wonderfully dysfunctional platform once again. We’ve been here before. At the moment if I visit the public-facing side of anybody’s wordpress blog, it doesn’t know I’m … | Continue reading
I’m contemplating ditching WordPress. A fundamental given of any web platform is that anything a visitor can interact with should perform the expected action. Over the last few months I’ve noticed situations where the “like” icon on comments doesn’t respond to being clicked, the … | Continue reading
After noodling around with the internet for much of the morning, I looked out at the sky, saw that it was cloudy, and thought “if not now, when?”. I have a friend in Canada to thank for that phrase echoing around my head during moments of apathy. I only ran around the block – abo … | Continue reading
The clock ticked past midnight half an hour ago. I’m not entirely sure where Saturday went. After going out for breakfast this morning, I returned home, half-watched the football, put a couple of loads of clothes through the washing machine, recorded some more content for YouTube … | Continue reading
For some reason I woke up at 6am this morning. I’m not entirely sure how or why. I then fell asleep until the Amazon Echo filled the bedroom with commercial radio an hour later – and somehow had several hours of dream in that time. It’s curious how that happens. The next few minu … | Continue reading
It’s been a pretty quiet day. While the rain fell outside my other half holed up in the lounge doing a jigsaw, and I noodled around with this and that on the computer. I keep coming back to that John Lennon quote recently – about life happening while you’re making other plans. I … | Continue reading
Some time ago I wrote about the curious paradox of feeling loneliness when surrounded by others. I wonder if it’s to do with fitting in – or rather, not fitting in. I often walk to my own drum-beat – invested in my own interests, thoughts, and daydreams – and don’t typically shar … | Continue reading
I walked to the optician yesterday lunchtime and picked up my glasses. I thought it might be interesting to record my initial experiences before I forget what the first days were like. I’ve never worn any kind of corrective eye-wear before. I’ve never needed it. Over the past few … | Continue reading
One day after another. Rinse and repeat. Get up, have a shower, brush your teeth, have a shave, get dressed, clear the kitchen, tidy the lounge, pick up the shoes in the hallway, hang clothes on the washing line, fill the washing machine up, switch on the work computer, make a co … | Continue reading
I had the strangest dream last night. I only remember the last few moments. I was at some kind of conference with work, and had made friends with a couple of people during the day. We were all busting to go to the bathroom, and one of the attendees said he knew where the bathroom … | Continue reading
I sat down with my daughters after clearing up the dinner things and set about learning to play “Magic the Gathering” with them. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a fantasy card game where you each play from a deck of cards in order to “fight” each other – a “last man standing” s … | Continue reading
After working on programming all morning, I’ve upped sticks and moved to a nearby café for the afternoon. Rather than amuse myself in the junk room at home, I can now try to ignore everybody around me while pretending to get on with some work. I’m telling myself this is good for … | Continue reading
I walked into town yesterday at lunchtime and visited the opticians for an eye test. It’s been about five years since I last had my eyes tested, and I had slowly become aware that my eyes are not quite as good as they used to be. When tired I’ve been finding it difficult to focus … | Continue reading
We went to the cinema last night and watched the latest and final Indiana Jones movie. I don’t quite understand why the critics have given it such a mauling – I thought it was fine. A typical summer popcorn adventure movie – just like all the other Indiana Jones movies. Something … | Continue reading
I’m sitting in the dark of the living room on my own, with the clock ticking towards midnight. My other half is on her way back from a music concert – she went to see Blur at Wembley Stadium with a friend. The kids went to bed some time ago. I’m listening to Taylor Swift’s […] | Continue reading
Meta – the owners of Facebook – released “Threads” this morning – a mobile app very similar to Twitter, but perhaps crucially not run by a self-destructive narcissist egomaniac (although some will no doubt argue that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are as bad as each other). It’s g … | Continue reading
I ran at lunchtime today. “Officially” I’m on week 7 of “Couch to 5K”. Unofficially, I thought “f*ck it”, and ran 5K. I went slowly. It hasn’t escaped me that I’ve lost no weight at all while doing this idiot escapade, and still have problems with my left achilles tendon – but it … | Continue reading
After spending the last several months either holed up in the study at home, or occasionally venturing to a nearby café, I boarded a train this morning and headed off in the direction of London to meet-up with co-workers. A social gathering to thank the small team that had worked … | Continue reading
It’s early on Saturday afternoon, and the house is curiously quiet. Everybody else left a few minutes ago – heading out to watch England Ladies play against Portugal in their last “friendly” football game before the World Cup starts in a few weeks time. I’m taking advantage of th … | Continue reading
I was going to do so many things this evening. So many things. I ended up watching the movie “Titanic” with my eldest daughter. She had never seen it, and following recent events had become curious. Even though I knew the story inside out, and have been a fan of just about anythi … | Continue reading
Another day. Another run. The only window I had to go running today was at lunchtime, which also coincided with the sun coming out. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something? I’m not going to lie – running felt a lot more difficult today. I departed from “the programme” … | Continue reading
The clock just ticked past 10am. I’ve been up for a couple of hours. I’m still the only one up. Pottering around the house – tidying up, putting things away, opening windows and doors, watering plants. The usual. We went out yesterday evening to a friend’s 50th birthday party. It … | Continue reading
You find me sitting in the dark of the bedroom on my own again – with the Chromebook balanced on my lap, the windows wide open, and the sound of traffic in the far distance. It’s too hot to sleep. I’m half-way through week 5 of the “Couch to 5K” programme now. I completed another … | Continue reading
Many years ago, when I started writing a blog on the internet, the “blogosphere” was filled with larger than life characters, breathless stories, and exuberant explosions of life in every direction you looked. People weren’t so much interested in attracting attention, as projecti … | Continue reading
I just got back from giving a friend’s dog his dinner, and taking him for a walk around the green outside our houses. He rewarded me by doing the biggest dump he possibly could – because he loves me, obviously. My daughter came with me. When we let ourselves into the house, the d … | Continue reading