Six Days Six days have somehow passed since I last wrote - there’s quite a lot to unpack. I’m not really sure where to start, if I’m honest.
Somehow a visit to London last week completely escaped the blog. The company I work for has moved offices - to a space near Paddington Station. Finding the new location was something of an adventure, given that I’ve rarely if ever explored the area around Paddington - my usual exit has been out towards Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park with the children.
It’s always interesting - meeting up with co-workers. Because I work from home I’ve only met the majority a handful of times in the “real world” - we predominantly meet through video calls. Somehow it’s ok for people to remark if somebody is bigger than they thought (I’m quite tall) - but I would never dream of telling anybody “you’re far smaller than I thought”… Maybe this is a part of the “law of the giants” ?
I survived, and was back home in time for tea and medals.
On Tuesday night I met up with old co-workers for a night out. We used to share an office together - before the pandemic - and before “working from home” became a thing. Since then a lot of water has passed under the bridge - the company was acquired, and we have slowly migrated from being important cogs in a small machine to somewhat insignificant footnotes in a leviathan.
Having known each other (for the most part) for over a decade, we became far more than just co-workers. We know each other’s families, and have shared the stories of meeting partners, getting married, and raising children along the way. My other half accompanied me - and worried she would be the only woman there. Thankfully another partner arrived a little later.
Before we knew it the pub called last orders, and we all looked at our watches - surprised.
“I thought it was perhaps 9pm - how is it 11pm already?”
We looked at each other and laughed.
You know the funny thing about meeting up with people you haven’t seen for ages? You catch everything off each other. Within twenty four hours I could feel my body going down-hill. I guess the up-side to working from home is you rarely catch whatever is doing the rounds - but the downside is you lose out on the immunity against all the rubbish that’s doing the rounds. You can’t win.
The next day - against every sensible thought in my head - I went for a run.
I had started back on the “Couch to 5K” programme a little while ago, but stalled after work and home pretty much trampled my life (a long story I won’t be telling here).
Following encouragement from a friend, I pulled my running shoes back on, and headed out. I won’t deny - it felt good - even though I got worse the next day. A part of me was sticking my fingers up at the virus I knew I had - asking it why it had shown up the moment I planned to do anything for me?
It’s funny how the universe does that.
I’ll survive. It’s only a cold. I do feel properly rubbish though. In tandem with it, my other half then caught (we think) the same thing at her work too. I hadn’t said anything about how bad I had been feeling - because what does that achieve - but when she came home on Friday feeling rotten, I confessed.
While feeling sorry for myself on Thursday night I took it upon myself to do something about the multitude of parallel blogs I had conjured a month or so ago. While not able to make my mind up about Substack, Ghost, Wordpress, or Tumblr, I invented a Hydra of sorts - and started posting the same content to all of them. A proper “fuck around and find out” tactic if ever there was one.
It’s amazing how feeling rubbish concentrates your mind on doing as little as possible though - and wielding a wrecking ball to anything outside of that became unexpectedly freeing. I said goodbye to Ghost (which was lovely, but slow and expensive), and Substack (which is slowly morphing into the same hell as every other social swamp on the internet).
So yes. I’m back at Wordpress. Back where I started.
Actually - that’s not entirely true. Back before 2003, my blog began as a hand-written PHP script (which you can still find, if you know where to look - the last time I looked, it had been downloaded half a million times!). There’s a back-story that I won’t bore you with.
If you’re reading this via email - your subscription was automagically transferred (by me - so not really magic). You don’t need to do anything.
Today… Saturday… Today has been a slow day.
I did make it to Wetherspoons this morning, to grab a cooked breakfast and perhaps write this. I arrived an hour later than usual though, and the entire place was filled with young families not controlling their children. Normally my patience is pretty good - but add a cold and a temperature to the melting pot, and I was kind of “out of fucks”. I ate my “small American” (which still makes me laugh, writing it down), and left.
We both know that chasing our own tail and ignoring being sick never ends well, so have taken our own advice for a change.
We were supposed to go to the pub to watch the rugby this afternoon (well done Red Roses!), and were supposed to visit a neighbour to help celebrate his birthday this evening. Instead we’re holed up at home, wrapped up warm, sipping hot drinks, and watching rubbish on the TV. Well… my other half is watching the TV - I’m obviously writing this.
I don’t really watch much television any more. Sure, the occasional series might catch my interest, but it’s rare. In recent years Mr Robot, Halt and Catch Fire, Westworld, the OA, Silo, For All Mankind, and Fallout have been the only stand-outs that come to mind.
Instead of force feeding myself a steady diet of forgettable television, I tend to spend my evenings tinkering with content for YouTube, or reading. Not always books - quite often the news. I have a free trial of Apple News+ at the moment, which scrapes stories from all corners and removes the worst of the advertising that typically pervades modern journalism. It doesn’t get rid of it entirely - because news organisations sold out a very long time ago - but it’s infinitely better (at a cost) than the web.
The worst part about reading the news? You quickly realise which side each journalist or network is on - and how they have re-framed every story to fit their narrative. It’s tiring - picking slivers of truth from bias, spite, vitriol and hubris.
Anyway.
After not writing for six days, I’ve ended up writing several hundred more words than I was planning to. I’ll shut up now.
I hope you’re well, and will try to write more often in the days to come - because nobody wants to wade through a blog post his long. As Norah Ephron once wrote - blogs are sort of like an exhale - not an opera with encores.