How on earth is it the 1st of March already? Also, it’s been almost a week since the last post on the blog. Again. What is happening? I can’t remember posting this infrequently for years. Ever, really.
I’ve been buried at home and at work recently. This evening I finished work half an hour later than usual, then had half an hour to have a wash, shave, get changed, and heads straight out the door to do the quiz at our local pub with good friends.
Before going out, I didn’t really want to. I’m getting worse. I wanted to stay in and work on a project I’ve been picking away at for the last couple of weeks. Something quite big. It was only while out that I realised how distorted my view of the world is becoming.
I think sometimes I need to kick myself up the backside. Those few hours at the pub were kind of what I needed. I can’t help feeling that one friend in particular channels Nanny McFee. We’ve always a bizarre connection - and tonight the phrase “when you want me I won’t be there - when you need me I will” couldn’t have been more true.
Why does it sometimes take a drink or three to remember why it’s so important to spend times with those we love? To get over ourselves, push the “so very important” things to one side, and actually live for ourselves for a little while, instead of for others.
I find I’m all too easily swept up in the expectations of others. Or fall into rabbit holes of my own making - with curiosity becoming a rather precipitous agent of destruction. For several nights over the last week I’ve found myself staying up into the early hours working on programming problems - not for work - for my own projects.
The monstrous project at work is approaching too. If ever there was a time when I need to remember to step away - to breathe - to live - now is it.
Anyway.
This coming Sunday I’ll be celebrating making to 51 laps around our local G2V class star. We’re headed to Bletchley Park - where they broke the Enigma codes. Because of course we are. Where best to go while having a day off from computers, than the place where some of the first electro-mechanical computers were built?
Here’s to Tommy Flowers, Bill Tutte and others - who are almost always overshadowed by the story of Alan Turing, but shouldn’t be. There are so many stories of the team that worked on Colossus that need to be told. I find the human side of history fascinating.