The weekend has almost gone. The clock ticked past midnight some time ago. The clothes dryer is still running in the kitchen. The dishwasher finished a few minutes ago. The washing machine still needs emptying. It never ends. Most of tomorrow will be spent in an on-line meeting. … | Continue reading
The clock is ticking relentlessly towards 1am. I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room, writing something rather than nothing after missing several days in a row. I often struggle with the idea that nothing might be something, depending on your perspective. I often feel I have l … | Continue reading
Where has this week gone? I’m pretty sure the last time I looked it was still Monday afternoon – and now somehow Friday has lurched into view. Of course right now I’m looking forward to the weekend, but we know the weekend is going to vanish before my eyes, don’t we. Before we kn … | Continue reading
The clock is ticking towards midnight, and you find me sitting on the sofa in the lounge, listening and half-watching music videos on the television. Madonna is busy waving her hands around at the moment, in perhaps the most iconic pop video of the 1990s. When I was younger I had … | Continue reading
So here we are again. Half an hour ago Sunday became Monday. I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room with the remains of a cup of coffee, with the sound of my fingers on the keyboard keeping me company. I just asked the Echo to play something nice. It chose Bach’s cello suite. [ … | Continue reading
I snuck out to the shops yesterday afternoon and bought a card and some posh chocolates – as convention dictates – such that my other half might have something nice to discover this morning before leaving for work. In the event she got up first – meaning the discovery turned into … | Continue reading
I’m almost giddy with excitement. I have the day off work. I never take days off. We’ll ignore that it’s already 11am, that I got up three hours ago, and all I have done so far is wash dishes, wash clothes, tidy up, hoover, and whatever else crossed my path around the house. Ther … | Continue reading
At the moment life seems to primarily cosist of a concerted effort to reach tomorrow. I’m sure that’s a colossal generalisation, and will no doubt attract concern from various quarters – but I’m fairly certain that more than are willing to admit are persisting through similar jou … | Continue reading
Today was interesting, in the way that a magician pulling a rhinoceros from a hat instead of a rabbit might be interesting – not least if the magician had been expecting a rabbit too. If this all sounds very vague, it’s because it is – I don’t tend to write about work if I can [… … | Continue reading
You know the vague blog post I wrote late last night about magicians pulling rhinocerouses from hats? Not happening. Apparently the universe was playing a bit of a joke on me – the sort of joke that ends up with you sitting in bed, coming to terms with several days of blind panic … | Continue reading
Just a few words, given that I haven't posted since returning from Amsterdam. I picked up a bug somewhere along the way – and have been suffering quite a bit over the last 72 hours or so. It's just a cold, but it's really put the boot in. No sense of taste, head fu … | Continue reading
We got home late last night. The train journey home seemed to go on forever, and then the car we had booked to meet us at the station got stuck in traffic. Still – we got to see perhaps my favourite sculpture – the couple at the end of the platforms at St.Pancras. It stands […] | Continue reading
For our final night in Amsterdam we headed first for a meal at small restaurant on the banks of the Amstel river, and then on towards the Rembrandt area, where numerous bars and cafes surround a statue of the namesake artist – looking out over a paved area lined with illuminated … | Continue reading
After yesterday's epic treck around Amsterdam, we slowed down a little, and only booked one destination for the day – the Koninklijk Paleis – the Royal Palace. I love history, art, and sculpture, so visiting the Koninklijk Paleis ticked all sorts of boxes for me. I took more … | Continue reading
After scraping ourselves out of bed this morning we wandered down to the hotel bar, which had been transformed into a cosmopolitan cafe filled with coffee, cereals, fruit juice, and all manner of meats. I filled a plate with utter, utter junk while my other half sought out a "pro … | Continue reading
A car quietly arrived outside our house at 5:30am this morning. We quietly gathered our bags and tip-toed out to meet the driver – worrying over everything the children might need, might forget, or might have to deal with in our absence. There comes a time when you need to trust … | Continue reading
In a few days time, I will celebrate the completion of fifty laps of the sun. In order to celebrate the continued successful landing of one foot in front of the other, we're going on a bit of an adventure for a few days. A car will arrive outside our house at 5:30am tomorrow … | Continue reading
Isn’t it funny how we look forward to the arrival of the weekend, but then spend most of the weekend watching it vanish before our eyes? The clock just ticked past 10pm, and saw me re-filling the washing machine as it did so. Is that the fourth or fifth load today? I’ve lost coun … | Continue reading
You know the vague blog post I wrote late last night about magicians pulling rhinocerouses from hats? Not happening. Apparently the universe was playing a bit of a joke on me – the sort of joke that ends up with you sitting in bed, coming to terms with several days of blind panic … | Continue reading
Today was interesting, in the way that a magician pulling a rhinoceros from a hat instead of a rabbit might be interesting – not least if the magician had been expecting a rabbit too. If this all sounds very vague, it's because it is – I don't tend to write about work i … | Continue reading
At the moment life seems to primarily cosist of a concerted effort to reach tomorrow. I'm sure that's a colossal generalisation, and will no doubt attract concern from various quarters – but I'm fairly certain that more than are willing to admit are persisting thro … | Continue reading
I overslept this morning – if you can count dragging yourself out of bed at 9:30am on a Sunday morning oversleeping. I also had the strangest dream I've had in quite some time. I'm going to try and write it down before it vanishes entirely from my head. I still lived at … | Continue reading
Towards the end of last year I retreated somewhat from the wider social internet – untangling myself from the likes of Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, and Instagram. During the hiatus, I explored some of the increasingly popular federated platforms a little, but ultimately kept much … | Continue reading
Hi. I’m Jonathan. I used to write a blog at WordPress (and Tumblr, Blogger, Medium, and various other places). My writing now lives at Substack, where you can subscribe by email very easily. https://jonbeckett.substack.com/subscribe | Continue reading
It’s been a day – and that’s all I want to say about that. The washing machine has done several loads, the kitchen has been turned into a laundromat, and work is as crazy as you might imagine while trying to work on multiple projects simultaneously. Working from home isn’t what I … | Continue reading
For the last several years I have been soldiering on with a little Amazon “Fire Tablet”. It’s been my go-to device for reading in bed and watching movies and TV shows when the rest of the family are hogging the television in the living room. It’s travelled all over the place with … | Continue reading
For some reason known only to Automattic, WordPress is mangling the posts I push into it from Substack – only they are only mangled if you look at them from the wordpress interface – if you look from the web, they are fine. I guess it doesn’t help that I’ve been wrestling with th … | Continue reading
After battling my way to the end of an unexpectedly lengthy day at work, my other half wandered into the dark of the junk room and suggested “shall we go out for dinner? I have a voucher for the pub…” Twenty minutes later we were all walking into town together. It’s interesting – … | Continue reading
After a slow start this morning, I wandered into town with my eldest daughter. After quite some deliberation, we ended up at Starbucks. Armed with a cappuccino and a huge chocolate coin each, we found a quiet spot in the back of the café and enjoyed our drinks in silence for a fe … | Continue reading
We were invited by friends to a charity fund-raiser quiz-night at the local football club last night. We met them under a street lamp at the end of the road, and felt like teenagers while waiting. The quiz night was great fun – with some very dubious answers that caused howls of … | Continue reading
After drinking the kool-aid, and spending several weeks trying to convince myself that running my own blogging castle on my own blogging island was a great idea, I’ve retreated back to the relative safety of substack (again). Have no illusions. This is all about laziness. Substac … | Continue reading
I have become my own worst enemy, but at least I’ve caught myself while sliding into the abyss. I should probably explain. I’ve been tinkering with a Youtube channel for a little while now – recording content, and sharing it with the wider world (or rather, a niche interest dark … | Continue reading
Over the next few days I’m going to find myself in a curious state of limbo with work – as one project comes to an end, and the next ramps up. Only it won’t be one project – the next few months are going to be… interesting. One of the primary problems with having experience, … Co … | Continue reading
That’s it. I’ve had it with drinking. Or at least, I’ve had it with alcohol – until I forget how rubbish I’ve become at dealing with it. While watching the “Rings of Power” on TV last night I had a couple of glasses of wine. You would have thought this morning that I’d headbutted … | Continue reading
Watching the slow exodus of users bleed away from Twitter over the last several days has been interesting. Who would have thought that an eccentric billionaire hijacking one of the great tent-pole social internet platforms would cause such visceral reactions? Perhaps the greatest … | Continue reading
I almost overslept this morning. I’m going to blame the strangest dream I’ve had in quite some time. None of it made any sense, but it stuck in my head all day. Somebody I know was in it – I’ll have to tell them about it. I wonder if they had a strange dream too? … Continue readi … | Continue reading
I almost overslept this morning. I’m going to blame the strangest dream I’ve had in quite some time. None of it made any sense, but it stuck in my head all day. Somebody I know was in it – I’ll have to tell them about it. I wonder if they had a strange dream too? … Continue readi … | Continue reading
Sunday morning is rapidly vanishing in a storm of washing up, clothes washing, tidying up, and avoiding block-printing mayhem in the lounge (our youngest daughter has something of a cottage industry going). It’s already half eleven. The washing machine is already on it’s third lo … | Continue reading
I’m not entirely sure where the last few days have gone. The word “relentless” comes to mind – both to describe the working day, and the evenings. I cooked dinner this evening – a hastily prepared spaghetti bolognese. My youngest daughter offered to help, but given that I can mak … | Continue reading
The sky fell this morning. Cats and dogs. Curtain rods. It fell last night too. I will admit to feeling sorry for the young children “trick or treating” for Halloween – not so sorry for the teenagers trying to blag candy based on little or no effort. I ended up in charge of answe … | Continue reading
While tinkering with this and that this morning, I stumbled upon the blog of an old friend. Somebody I really shouldn’t have lost touch with, but somehow had. One click led to another, and before I knew it I had spent the better part of an hour reading about her recent days, week … | Continue reading
I spoke to a friend on the internet this morning – the first contact with anybody outside my family for a couple of weeks, and we both found ourselves wondering where each day goes. How is it suddenly Friday already? I suppose in a way I’m glad it’s not just me that’s feeling it. … | Continue reading
How has it been a week since the last time I wrote in the blog? How does this keep happening? In the past I wrote almost every day. How is that possible? What did I find to write about, and how did I find time to write? It’s about forming habits – and I seem … Continue reading T … | Continue reading
You know how sometimes life continues on for months on end, without anything in particular happening? The last few years have been a bit like that. And then yesterday, all sorts of things happened one after another. Which is good, I think? The universe started to re-arrange it’s … | Continue reading
A few years ago (actually quite a few years ago now) there was a popular twenty something TV drama in the UK that made stars of it’s cast. It’s still on now, but nothing like as popular as it once was. The actors involved were splashed across the internet, newspapers, and the var … | Continue reading
The clock is ticking towards lunchtime, and I’m yet to really get started with any meaningful work. Most of the morning has been spent sitting in the doctor’s waiting room with my youngest daughter, who has had a mysteriously swollen finger all week (Dad jokes about pointing at t … | Continue reading
You find me sitting in the dark at 1am again. I’m not entirely sure how this keeps happening. One minute I’m washing up the things from dinner – the next everybody else has gone to bed, and I’m here tinkering with a few different projects and losing track of time. I worked straig … | Continue reading
I opened the word processor at 8:35 this morning, with every intention of writing a blog post before work started. One thing after another cropped up throughout the day to make sure no writing of any sort happened. Before I knew it, I was up to my ears in source code, meetings, a … | Continue reading