Recursive Words

After falling asleep at about 11pm last night I woke at 3am and discovered my other half had been to bed at some point, and then gone downstairs. I also figured out I was partially deaf, and had perhaps the driest mouth in the known universe. Snoring. I must have been snoring.

I pulled my clothes on, and quietly made my way downstairs in the dark – almost scaring myself in the hallway mirror en-route – I looked a proper mess.

My other half went up to bed, and I sat up for a couple of hours before taking her place on the sofa, wrapped in huge fleece blankets, and falling fast asleep. What I didn’t count on was waking up again at perhaps 4am with my entire body shivering.

The first thought that went through my head? Covid. Been here before. Got the t-shirt.

I made myself a hot drink, grabbed another blanket, tucked myself in even more tightly, and slept through until one of my daughters started crashing around in the kitchen. My other half appeared downstairs a little later, and I told her about my covid suspicions.

The miraculous thing? After a shower, a shave, and putting some warm clothes on, my body appeared to have re-booted itself.

The rest of today has been spent putting Christmas decorations away, and washing the windows at the back of the house. I still have a couple of trips up to the attic to complete, but most of it is already done.

I’m also waiting on a number of deliveries from Amazon. The replacement keyboard and mouse I wrote about recently. And a bullet journal. And a book.

While in the bookshop in town recently I spotted a book called “The Full Moon Coffee Shop” – about a little coffee shop run by cats where people’s troubles are shared and somehow solved. I haven’t read it yet (obviously), but I’ll let you know when I do.

Oh – a new camera should be turning up too. I bought a small point-and-shoot camera for the family to use – my eldest daughter will be using it first during her trip to Kyoto in a couple of weeks time. The reason for having a small camera, and not using a smart phone? Battery life.

The more we rely on phones to do things – especially while away – the more we end up protecting their battery life during the day – and the more reason to not touch the phone if you don’t have to. It’s especially true while travelling – where your phone spends all day looking for networks and flattens itself in the process.

The little camera runs on AA batteries, and has a physical zoom lens – which mobile phones never do. Should be useful.

Right.

I better go take these last few boxes up to the attic.

Back to work tomorrow.

After making it all the way through Christmas and New Year without catching any of the various coughs and colds that were doing the rounds, I suddenly sneezed this afternoon. I sneezed, and then my nose completely blocked. I thought “oh here we go”.

It’s amusing really, isn’t it. I make it all the way through the holidays, then the weekend before I go back to work my body asks “what shape spanner shall we choose, and where shall we throw it?”

Don’t get me started about the weather either. It’s fairly obvious that if the world IS governed and run by a mysterious creator of some sort, then they have a tremendously dark sense of humor. You may recall I wrote recently about a friend inviting me to go running with them? I would have gone for a run yesterday – except I woke to a world covered in black ice and frost. Given I tend to appreciate my legs bending in the right places, and my feet pointing in the right direction, I thought it best not to tempt fate.

Then of course today the lurgy landed.

Anyway.

You find me – right now – sitting in bed with the MacBook perched on my legs. I’ve managed to write every day of the year so far – which sounds more impressibe than it is. This will be day three. I gather “Gen Z” would call this a “streak”. I thought a streak was when you took your clothes off and ran onto a sports field in front of the watching crowd? Being half serious though, I am wondering if I can find something to write about every day – at least for a little while.

There’s the thought that if you just write – with no clear plan, or aim – then something wonderful might leave my fingers, go through the keyboard, and appear on the screen. I know the chances are very low indeed, but they’re not impossible. That’s enough for me.

I should probably go try and sleep.

Wish my body luck in it’s fight against whatever it is that’s coursing through it this evening. I’ll help fuel it tomorrow with a world of combative junk – until then, sleeping instead of scrolling is probably a pretty good plan.

After clearing the decks at chore-city this morning I walked (very slowly) into town with my middle daughter. She’s on crutches at the moment – recovering from anterior cruciate ligament surgery – a repair on an injury sustained in a rugby match about 18 months ago. It’s probably going to take a year to recover fully, but at least she’s up and about.

The reason for our journey was to drop leftover painkillers at the pharmacy. Given they were hugely powerful post-surgery drugs, apparently they are best disposed of by the authorities, rather than ending up in land-fill and being scavenged by drug users.

We continued on into town – about a mile walk – and had a late breakfast at the huge pub where she normally works. One of the managers came by to say hello, which lifted her spirits enormously. She’s been going a bit stir-crazy at home, so getting out into the world for the first time in weeks was kind of huge really.

Afterwards we wandered over to the book-shop and I very nearly bought a copy of “The Full Moon Coffee Shop” by Mai Mochizuki. Rather than buy any more, I’m trying to just write down the names of books that look interesting in a list, and I’ll re-visit it when I’ve caught up (like that’s ever going to happen).

While out I did pick up a calendar re-fill for my old paper filofax. I know it’s a bit of a throw-back, but I still tend to double-up whatever is in Google into a paper filofax on the corner of my desk. It never goes wrong, and it doesn’t require any batteries.

When we got home I put the order in for a new bullet journal – it should arrive on Sunday. Rather than live ALL of my life in the computer, I’m returning to using a bullet journal this year. I used them for years before switching over to modern toys like Obsidian, Bear, or Notion – and have missed them ever since. The book by Ryder Carroll about how the idea of the “bullet journal” came about is a fascinating read, if you’ve not read it. A lot more thought went into it than you might expect.

I might have also ordered a retro keyboard and mouse that I’ve been looking at for months this afternoon. I’ve gone through so many keyboards in recent years it’s getting a bit ridiculous. I usually buy the cheapest standard-shape keyboards from Logitech, but after having two in a row exhibit the same problems with bouncing keys, I foolishly walked into PC World a few months back and bought an HP keyboard – which looks nice, but is strangely horrible to type on. The retro keyboard that will arrive on Sunday is much more like the kind of keyboard you might have seen twenty or thirty years ago – with clacky keys, and more shape to it. I don’t get the obsession with flat keyboards.

Anyway.

Just wanted to empty a few thoughts out of my head about “Stranger Things”. I finally made it through the last few episodes last night. Am I really alone in thinking that it kind of “jumped the shark” at some point in season 5? What started several years ago as a goonies type adventure into the paranormal with a group of children, somehow pivoted in the final episodes to the chief of police machine-gunning a room full of mercenary soldiers in cold blood? And the final plot point (which I won’t ruin) was massively contrived.

The only good thing that came out of Season 5 was Mrs Wheeler – who turned into a complete and utter bad-ass while defending her youngest daughter from one of the monsters in (I think) the first episode.

Onwards and upwards. Fallout season 2 has arrived on Amazon. I wonder if myself and my other half can binge-watch it over the weekend?

Well, here we are again. Another January 1st has rolled around, and with it, that familiar hum of “new year, new me.” This is where many people launch into grand declarations about resolutions, goals, and all the exciting things they are going to do this year. Not me. This year feels… different.

Instead of looking outward, I’ve been feeling a strong inward pull in recent months. A desire to strip away the noise – to quiet the constant hum. My revelation – or resolution – isn’t really very big or clever – it’s just an acceptance that I need to go off-grid – or at least, step away from the loudest parts of the grid.

The pressure to constantly share, curate, and perform becomes exhausting. Don’t get me wrong – I love connecting with people – but that’s where this all gets a bit paradoxical. The closest friendships of my life have been forged online – through blogging, or social networks. The people I have crossed paths with have taught me so much – inspired me – and kept me going on days when the world hasn’t been the friendliest of places.

It doesn’t help that every time I go anywhere near a social network, I’m immediately annoyed by the continual attempts by so many to be the funniest person in the room – to have a hot take on anything and everything. Everybody seems to want to take sides about everything and anything. It’s exhausting.

So… I’m building my own little digital cabin in the woods. This blog is going to be my sanctuary. My place to write, to explore, to be. No algorithms, and no endless scrolling – just words – from me to you – whenever you or they decide to show up.

I’m not entirely sure what this experiment will bring. It might be lonely at times. I might miss the instant feedback, the casual banter – but I also know that the very best things I’ve written have emerged from the dark silence of late night introspection – not from the continuous and cacophonous roar of the social internet firehose.

So, if you’re reading this, thank you for finding me in my new little digital hideaway. I hope you’ll stick around. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be an interesting year.

As the final hours of 2025 ebbed away, I sat on the sofa with a laptop, quietly lifting 22 years worth of blog posts into the air – to land them far from the madding crowd.

After a rather horrendous run through the end of the year – more of a stagger than a run if I’m honest – I came very close to ending the blog entirely. Not by choice, either.

I do want to shout out those that reached out to me during the darkest recent days. It meant far more than you’ll ever know.

Anyway…

The sun rises tomorrow on a new year! I’m not going to spout any ridiculous resolutions, or goals. I’m just going to try and get through the coming year in one piece.

Fingers crossed.

After falling off the internet in recent days, I reached out to a few friends around the world this morning – wishing them a happy “Boxing Day”, and none of them outside the UK had a clue what I was referring to.

In the UK, the day after Christmas Day is “Boxing Day”. I just looked it up – because I had no idea of its origins either. The most popular theory is rooted in the Victorian era. In those days, domestic servants were required to work on Christmas Day to serve their employers’ grand feasts. As a “thank you,” they were given December 26th off to visit their own families. Before they left, their masters would give them a “Christmas Box” – a wooden box containing gifts, bonuses, and sometimes leftover food from the Christmas dinner.
There you go.

Anyway.

You find me sitting in the lounge listening to Vinyl records on my own. My other half has taken our post-surgery middle-daughter to visit her Mum. I’ve spent much of the morning taking the opportunity to clear the decks – washing up (again), throwing packaging away, discovering clothes stuffed behind bathroom doors, and re-uniting them with the washing machine.

Sabrina Carpenter’s “Man’s Best Friend” album is spinning around on the turntable, filling the lounge with music while our aged ginger cat sits in the patio door atop a blank-box, looking out over the garden. He’s become such a home-body. Our other cat – Kaspar – is out in the garden somewhere, ruining Christmas for a family of mice no doubt.

From time to time our youngest daughter appears – waddling from room to room in her heavily pregnant state. We’re counting down the days now. She seems to be sailing through the whole pregnancy journey – let’s keep our fingers crossed the remainder of the journey is equally uneventful.
After falling into bed at stupid o’clock last night, I didn’t wake up until 9am this morning – unheard of for me. I wandered downstairs, had a shower, then made bacon sandwiches for myself and my eldest daughter. It’s almost miraculous – how the smell of bacon can summon her like a demon from the underworld.

Sabrina has finished singing about her boyfriend(s) now – I’ve changed the record over to a guilty pleasure – Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene”.
George – our many storied cat – is listening to it with me. Or at least, I think he is. He’s sitting across from me, curled up in a ball. I think he’s quite enjoying the peace and quiet while everybody else is out too. His full name should be “George of the 27 lives”. He used to have two brothers – both of which died young – we think he inherited their lives, given the scrapes he has survived so far.

I should probably get on with something. There must be a rubbish movie on or something. Maybe I’ll go read some blogs – try to catch up. I’ve been off grid for so long, it’s kind of difficult to find my way back.

Somehow we’ve made it through Christmas in one piece.

We all congregated in the lounge by mid-morning. There had been strict instructions to cap the budget at a sensible amount per person this year – because we all work now (well… all except our youngest daughter, who is heavily pregnant) – so none of us really need anything. The kids have slowly realised the idiocy of buying people “things” they don’t particularly want or need – so there were lots of aftershave, bubblebath, socks, chocolate, and whatever else.

Of course the unborn baby received more presents than the rest of us put together. Let’s just say it’s not going to need anything of consequence bought for the first several months of it’s life.
Lunch was something of a success. After spending much of the morning feeding the cooker with trays of potatoes, sprouts, carrots, and whatever else, we all sat down and ate enough for a small army. Somehow I don’t think we’ll be eating anything later today.

After spending much of the day together eating, drinking, and playing various board games, we have now disbanded. You find me holed up in the study – listening to music, catching up on email, and writing this blog post. Other half and middle daughter are watching Indiana Jones, youngest and her boyfriend have passed out upstairs. Eldest is sitting on top of her pile of presents like Smaug the dragon in her room.

Seeing as I didn’t actually need anything for Christmas, I asked my daughters for chocolate for Christmas – and oh boy did they deliver. I have enough to cause a major heart problem by Boxing Day (don’t worry – I won’t be touching any of it, any time soon).

You know that thing where you stockpile all the rich food for Christmas, and then within hours of unleashing it, you’re sick of it? That. The remains of Christmas dinner will no doubt end up in a frying pan tomorrow morning for “Bubble and Squeak”. I gather Bubble and Squeak might be a very British thing, so I should probably explain. Throw all the leftover veggies in a frying pan the next day, crack an egg over it, and fry it into a big fat pancake of sorts. Add ketchup, and it’s the BEST.

My other half bought me a Commodore 64 t-shirt. I think this is reason enough for me to go and order a shiny new Commodore 64 from the newly resurrected Commodore, isn’t it? I know… I don’t actually need a new computer, but hell – a NEW Commodore 64 would be a thing of beauty, wouldn’t it?

For anybody wondering what on earth I’m blathering on about, the Commodore 64 was a popular home computer in the early to mid 1980s. I didn’t have one. To be honest, I would sell my left arm for a Commodore Amiga, but they are as rare as hens teeth theses days (at least for a sensible price) – not least because technology of that era actively tries to kill itself. Capacitors leak onto the motherboards, and destroy them beyond repair.

A new C64 though. That would be quite wonderful.

Somebody talk me out of it before I end up putting the order in tomorrow morning. This is the reason I have the YouTube channel, isn’t it – so I can re-live my youth through retro hardware that I don’t have time to play with…

In other news, we snuck out for a drink with good friends yesterday evening before dinner. I got talking to one of them about her taking part in park run, and agreed that it would be a damn good idea if we went running together – for no other reason than to keep each other honest. Neither of us are competitive – but without at least SOME reason to get up and head out the door, you just know that one day you won’t bother, and that will lead to another day, and we know where that ends – 2 years since you last ran any distance at all.

I miss running. And yes, I know I’ve mentioned getting back at it several times.

It’s about putting myself first at least 1% of the time, isn’t it.

Anyway.

Merry Christmas all. Let’s hope for peace, quiet, and as few family arguments as possible over the next little while.

It’s been a few days again. A few days since I last emptied my head into the keyboard. I’m not sure where the last week went, to be honest. Work, chores, and errands rapidly conspire if you let them – and I tend to let them.

I’m trying to re-wind in my head – to remember what happened this week.

Monday through Wednesday were consumed by work, and running ragged around the house during “coffee breaks” to get washing through the machine, loads through the dishwasher, and so on. I really am my own worst enemy – I can’t leave things for others to do – if I have even a minute, I’ll invariably fill it with something or other. This is how I end up emptying the dishwasher first thing in the morning while waiting for the kettle to boil. It’s also how I end up folding clothes while waiting for the kettle to boil during the day – or re-filling the washing machine, emptying the bins, or whatever else needs doing.

There’s a sprint most days to get the house somewhat cleared by the time my other half gets in from work – a short window in-between me finishing work, and her arriving – then either she or the kids will cook, and I’ll be on washing up duty immediately afterwards. We try to sit down for dinner together most days, and share our day with each other. Of course nobody ever asks what I did during the day – because how do you even scratch the surface of telling them about cloud infrastructure, testing frameworks, corporate databases, document management systems, automation workflows, or whatever the hell else you’ve been submerged in all day?

Just to add to all the fun, our middle daughter is recovering from surgery at the moment (ACL if you’re wondering – she has had her knee re-built following a rugby injury about six months ago) – so she’s off work for the month, and holed up in the lounge watching TV, scrolling TikTok, and building LEGO kits. She’s going properly stir crazy. On Friday I dropped work and accompanied her to a succession of hospital appointments around the county – firstly to visit a physio, then to get the staples from the surgery removed, and then a consultant to get prodded and poked at, and new X-Rays done.

Yesterday was partly filled with a trip to the local rubbish dump. I took an old HP Deskjet printer, and tried to drop it at the “re-use” shop. The guy on the desk informed me that they don’t take printers – so it went into land-fill. Before you ask – I tried to give it away for months – nobody wanted it. It’s sad, isn’t it – that printers are deemed so unreliable, high maintenance, high ink prices, and usually have such poor support and compatibility, that they cannot be re-sold.

Anyway.

Last night we sat down and watched Karen Carney win Strictly. So pleased for her. I’ve been reading articles this morning about her journey after retiring from playing football – about her being trolled, and losing all her confidence. Something needs to be done about trolls online. Personally, I always agreed with Google+ stance – that people should use their real identity online – not be able to hide behind invented facades.

We saw Karen play towards the end of her career – we have a programme signed by her, and photos of her with the girls. She was one of the most talented football players I’ve ever seen. An inspiration for a generation. Like I said – so pleased for her. In a world where the loudest, most obnoxious, and seemingly most awful people hog the headlines, it’s wonderful to see a genuinely good person do something hard, do it well, and be recognised for it.

I went to my other half’s work Christmas party as her “plus one” last night. It was interesting – being the person on the outside, looking in on the work friendships and relationships – not having to “be present”, or “show up”.

I learned so much about a room full of strangers – a collection of wonderful people who somehow decided to empty their head – sharing their stories while standing with drinks, or sitting together to eat.

The good will and smiles around the room were infectious, and went some way towards filling the hole left by missing my own work Christmas party (we were flying back from Copenhagen).

It a strangely hollow feeling though – being on the outside. You learn names that you’ll quickly forget. You hear stories that you’ll attribute to the wrong faces in your recollections. You wish you could know some of the people better, and you find yourself quite glad you don’t have to get to know others any further than absolutely necessary.

We left the party late in the evening, and wandered through the night to the nearest railway station – where a concert crowd at Wembley Stadium had turned every railway carriage into a gigantic game of sardines.

We crammed into the middle of a carriage, and tried not to listen to a drunk family heading home after a night out – with a mid-twenties daughter repeatedly challenging her retired father on anything and everything that left his mouth. I felt so sorry for. No doubt when he’s grand-standing on social media’s algorithmic timelines, his racist, bigoted views are laughed at and encouraged – when surrounded by a cross-section of society on a train, not so much.

Anyway.

We got home at about half past midnight. I forgot to drink water. Somehow I woke this morning with no headache, and no after-effects. Miraculous really.

This evening I’ve started to watch the clock. Back to work in the morning. Back to normality. Back to the treadmill. I can feel the stress building towards the moment I login to Outlook and Teams, and watch the screens fill with pages of email, messages, conversations, and chaos.

I don’t recognise the internet any more. Walled cities have proliferated, filled with newcomers, settlers, and homesteaders – who invariably join each other in a race to the bottom – chasing just enough engagement to inflate their numbers without having to invest too much effort in establishing any sort of “real” relationship with anybody.

When the social internet first evolved and people began connecting through “friending”, “following”, and “subscribing”, I remember a common statistic being thrown around – a human limit of sorts. It was posited that nobody could support more than 100 friends.

I would often look around, count the people I kept in touch with on the fingers of one hand – sometimes two – and wonder if the statistics were inflated by an order of magnitude.

I became a “blogger” before the “social internet” happened. We would bookmark each other, write in each other’s guestbooks, and leave comments on each other’s posts. We would maintain blog-rolls – pages of links to those we regularly read – to help others find their way.

I can still remember the front pages of “Belgian Waffling”, “Dooce”, “Petite Anglaise”, and “Belle de Jour”. None of those blogs exist any more.

To my knowledge, only two of us still share an almost daily journal on the internet – myself, and a girl in Canada. We crossed paths back when then web was shiny and new – and took part in “NaBloPoMo” ~ “National Blog Posting Month” – a reaction to “NaNoWriMo”, or “National Novel Writing Month”. I still remember becoming friends with Lisa. I remember sitting in the office one morning, reading about her car accident. I still look in on her orphaned son from time to time – to see how he’s doing – twenty years later.

Somewhere along the way our “tribe” didn’t so much disband, as disintegrate. I suppose – thinking back – we were all “of an age” that suited the time required to share the quiet moments with each other. Life happened. Families happened. Work happened. One by one, we fell like dominoes.

Writing on the web was once dominated by either self published blogs (I wrote one of the first open source blog scripts), or one of the few “platforms” that would slowly gestate into the walled gardens that proliferate today. WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, and LiveJournal dominated during those early years – with “Really Simple Syndication” delivering our friends words to us across open borders each day. They gave rise to everything that came afterwards – MySpace, Vox, Yahoo 360, Facebook, Tumblr, Medium, Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk, Threads, Substack, Mastodon, BlueSky, and more.

I miss the early days of the web – before the “social” networks came into being. Perhaps the thing I really miss is having the time to spend reading, commenting, and contributing to the river of consciousness that the internet unlocked.

Every few months I find myself searching for those I once knew – usually late at night – with the hope of finding perhaps one or two of the names I recall. While doing so, I invariably discover new voices, new stories, and new characters – and add them to the towering list of content I won’t keep on top of.

I wonder if “my tribe” is still out there somewhere – or if indeed it ever went away. Perhaps it’s been here all along and I’ve chosen not to see it – or more likely it has been diluted and drowned out by hordes of engagement seeking sausage machine operators pumping industrial quantities of AI generated slop into the firmament while chasing one more like, one more follower, or one more subscriber.