the corner office

If you devotedly visit my blog, looking to see if there's something new to read (hello, dear!), you might be forgiven for thinking "wait a minute, all these posts weren't here last week...?"

You would be right, and in truth, I'd fallen back into the bad habit of writing blog posts and not publishing them. This blog lives on my computer before it gets synced up to the web server, and as in years past, if I'm not quite happy about the wording of a post, or not sure whether I really want something to be published at all, I'll hold off, allowing myself time to come back and tweak or edit a little more.

All well and good, but there's "allowing myself time" and then there's "this has become a bit ridiculous". What it's meant is that I've been blogging away happily for ages, with a readership of "me". It wasn't until Ronwen grumbled, recently, "hey, where are all these blog posts you keep promising me?" that I decided it was time to sort myself out and get up to date. And so a final review, another tweak to Boy in the Woods, and deciding that a post about an airconditioned train, rain clouds and a sourdough boule didn't really need to see the light of day.

And... here we go. Synced again.

I was out for an early morning walk. I'd turned off a path, popular with dog walkers, and apart from one or two people stirring at a row of houses on a country lane, I'd not seen another person for a mile or two.

I was walking across a field, thinking about this, when I heard voices on the wind. Darn, so much for solitude.

Were they behind me or ahead of me? I couldn't tell. I kept walking, over the field, into a wood, turned left, and then along the side of a valley. Every now and then I'd hear the voices again - they were behind me, closer after I'd stopped to check the map on my phone.

Soon, in addition to the voices, I heard a strange clanging, metallic sound. What on earth was I hearing?

Now, I don't know what the rules are when it comes to optimal personal space while out in the countryside, but unless there are plenty of people about, my own preference is "the whole field". It's awkward and feels rude to turn around and look at people, as though you're letting them know that you know they're there, and perhaps passive-aggressively hinting that you'd rather your morning stroll didn't involve having to turn around to see who was behind you.

And so I kept walking, the occasional voices, the odd clanging, but I didn't look back. Until the suspense was too much, and I allowed myself the briefest of glances as I stopped to admire the view across the valley. I saw two women, and a large labradoodle-like dog gambolling around them, a weird cow-bell like thing on its neck.

On we went, half-a-field apart. My imagination soon kicked in. My mind went to the lyrics of an old Robert Johnson song, "got to keep moving" ... it had been the briefest of glances, and was I wrong? Had I imagined the bell, or were they chains clanking, and was this lively and cheerful mutt not in fact perhaps a Hellhound on my trail?

Across the next field, amused by this thought (and composing the rudiments of this blog post, I'll admit), and before long I was in woodland again. Still, the voices and occasional clanging, but now, I could make out footsteps approaching, fast. Again, too awkward to turn around and look, but not the ladies and the dog, surely? (unless they were truly after me?)

Eventually the footsteps were very close. I decided to stop, stepped off the path, ostensibly to check my map, and looked up. A woman, in black lycra, a yummy mummy in the vernacular, full make up and duck lips. "Thank yeeeeew", she smiled as she steamed past.

I set off, but very soon after, was overtaken again. This time a man, shortish, walking fast, grey hair, stylishly cut, fashionable but awkwardly-fitting tracksuit bottoms, and expensive-looking white trainers not designed for countryside mud. Was he yummy mummy's partner, battling to keep up, I wondered? A slightly breathless "mornin'" and he was past me, too.

A few minutes later I reached a fork in the path. I went left. Cerberus and his keepers must have gone right; soon, I heard them no more.

A few days later, I was out walking again, somewhere else. I heard the same clanging, but this time, it was a little old lady, and the bell was on a fox terrier. Doggie fashion these days, I guess, though I've not heard that sound since.

I saw the movie 84 Charing Cross Road when I was younger. I loved the movie, and read the book, written by Helene Hanff, some years after, and loved that too.

I work in the area and I've walked along Charing Cross Road countless times, and it embarasses me to admit that it took me some years before I thought to actually find number 84.

But one morning on the way to work, I did. Starting at St Martin-in-the-Fields, I made my way up the road, counting off the building numbers. And the numbers started getting pretty close, and I came to Shaftesbury Avenue, and crossed over, and then I found it, and laughed. The irony!

If you look for 84 Charing Cross Road today, all you'll find is a small round plaque (plenty of photos online), saying:

The booksellers Marks & Co were on this site which became world renowned through the book by Helene Hanff.

What made me laugh, is that the plaque is next to the entrance to the Cambridge Circus McDonalds.

Ironic in two ways. The obvious, that a location made famous by a book about love of literature should now be a fast food joint, but really, it's been more than half a century since the shop closed down. Searching online I see it's been many things since then, including a restaurant, other fast food places, and a record store. (What's more remarkable perhaps, is that I'd guess that Charing Cross Road was a bookseller's street, a bit like Denmark Street around the corner is for musical instruments, and a few booksellers, small and large, are still there, or down side streets, although at least one or two have closed down since I first explored this area, more than a decade ago).

But no, the main reason it was ironic to me, is that this is a McDonalds with which I was very well acquainted.

In the first few years after starting my current job, I'd commute into London early to beat rush hour, and find places to sit and read or study, before heading into the office. And for a while, the Cambridge Circus McDonalds was one of my haunts. It was quiet first thing in the morning, and I'd usually be able to find a table in a corner.

(Now, even after all this time, there will be those who care about me making Good Choices, who will be reading this disapprovingly. Obviously I'd never have sat there each morning without buying something, and all I'll say is this: often I'd just get coffee, and many times I'd order oats. And I'll leave you to draw the Venn diagrams for yourself, while I get on with the story.)

Some days I'd people watch. The Chinese pensioners who'd all gather at a large round table for coffee each morning. The gangsterish dude whose girlfriend became more cloying and obsequious, the more dismissive and rude he was to her. The Australian and the South African in suits, loudly discussing the meaning of life (the first time I heard the three essentials for happiness quote).

But mostly, I'd put in my earphones, block out the world, and study.

At the time, I was teaching myself an area of maths I'd not studied at university. I enjoyed doing it at the time, and that was reason enough to do it, but after all these years, I've forgotten much of it, and I have little to show for my time, apart from my notes and proofs and drawings in a ring-bound notebook, lost somewhere on a shelf at home.

Which, in a round-about way, is the tenuous point of this post. These were the days before two things substantially changed how I studied, and how productive my studies actually were. The first of these was spaced repetition (using Anki), which I'm not likely to write much about, and then a couple of years later, my approach to note-taking, which came to encompass more than just academic interests, and which I do intend to write a bit more about.

(I wrote the first draft of this post years ago, and then in the past year or two, started to develop an interest in "reading" and "literature", and put the book back onto my to-read list to see what Hanff was interested in. Then a few months ago, I actually re-read it. So this is likely to be a set-up for a couple of other things too, including a book review, in good time, perhaps).

You might guess which of the seasons is my least favourite.

(... and a month later, once the rapeseed had been harvested):

Rapeseed is a weird plant.

And by weird, I mean weird-ass science-fiction alien plant kind of weird.

As luck would have it, I started reading Seneca this weekend, and right there, at the start of his seventh letter:

You ask me to say what you should consider it particularly important to avoid. My answer is this: a mass crowd.

Seneca wasn't talking about riots per se, but I think he has it about right.

Had election day been a week or two later, we may yet have descended to the headline "Sun rises in blow to Sunak". The news people were trying their best to make it all dramatic and nailbiting, but I think the only two questions anyone really had were "how much will Labour win by?" (and now we know the answer: lots), and "how much will taxes be going up by?" (and to that we can probably guess the answer: lots).

Tax rises. Much poring over manifesto promises and speeches trying to divine just what is in store for us, but how seriously does anyone take manifesto pledges? Today, Rachel Reeves rolled out the dreaded "difficult decisions" line (deployed repeatedly during the early Tory/Lib Dem coalition days in 2010, as I recall), and it's not a stretch to imagine what comes next: "omg things are so much worse than we imagined who could possibly have foreseen this?" (edit: 4 weeks later lol that didn't take long)

And then, how long before something something regrettably, something something broadest shoulders? (edit: 8 weeks later do I laugh or cry?)

Either way, Sir Keir is now in charge. He seems a serious-minded and well-meaning fellow, and his successes will now be our successes, and all that. But so will be his failures, a detail the platitude omits. His rosette may be a different colour, but the chalice is no less poisoned than before.

The blog isn't meant to catalog my health travails but since I'd mentioned the first 3 rounds, I may as well mention COVID round 4. Well over a year and a half since the last time.

It started with Ronwen being really sick one day. I got home from work and half-seriously said, "we still have some COVID tests in the drawer, you never know, maybe you should take one."

And she did, and there was the little red stripe. Oh dear. COVID still a thing. Let colleagues know I'd be working from home for a while, ordered more COVID tests, and buckled up for the ride. Soon the youngest had it, and a few days later myself and the eldest. But while Ronwen and the youngest were out for a couple of days, they were soon back up and running, while myself and the eldest languished, man-flu style, for well over a week.

It sucked. A week feeling like I'd been kicked in the head, and when the headaches passed, still too brain-fuddled to concentrate or do simple things like read, and all the more miserable and irritable because of it.

But... it passed, and thankfully I seem to have bounced back a bit more quickly than previous times. Hoping it's at least as long again, before Round 5.

Sitting on the couch, chatting with the youngest.

"Dad, in Horizon Zero Dawn, do you know who the antagonist was?"

(Antagonist!)

"Wow, I'm impressed that you know that word. Can you tell me: what is an antagonist?"

"It was HADES."

"That's right, but what I mean is, what's the definition of an antagonist?"

"It's the villain of the story."

Wasn't aware that Mom was covering this kind of stuff yet, but great going on the home-schooling! Me, in my best Evening Dinner Table 'So Children, Tell Me What You Learned Today' voice:

"I think it's very cool that you know what an antagonist is. Where did you learn about antagonists?"

"YouTube"

Since deciding to carry on blogging (and before), I've had a bunch of part-formed, half-written posts kicking around in my mind and on my computer. I realised that quite a few of them follow the same pattern: an anecdote or reminiscence, or observation, or small detail, which then sets up, or links, potentially tenuously, to something I'm keen to write more about.

The problem is, you can only really do that sort of thing once before it becomes obvious that you're doing it. Do I just not write these other posts, or write them differently? What to do?

I've decided that the best way around it is just to 'fess up to it - which I'm doing now - and then any time I do it in the coming months, I can just refer back to this post and feel less guilty about it.

If I were to name my photographs, I'd call this one "Boy in the Woods". It was a lucky shot, and I really like it. The branches, the colours, the light, my son in there somewhere, even the lense flare.

What you don't see in this bucolic snap, though, is that my son is directly below one of the power lines which cuts across the southern tip of High Elms Country Park, and he's actually listening to the crazy buzzing and crackling sounds the lines make.

A metaphor for online life? The first draft of this post had a long deliberation on social media, and highlight reels, on signalling (and how even writing about signalling is signalling), and my being self-conscious about the kinds of things I wanted to write about on this blog, and why, (ironically, on such a long-running blog, albeit slightly rebooted), and not being quite sure how to resolve it all.

But who needs that? A slightly shorter version, and resolution, in a way, comes by returning to Boy in the Woods. It's a photo. You might like it, you might not, but the fact that there's a power line overhead doesn't detract from the picture itself. It adds an amusing twist, but otherwise doesn't matter. I'm not pretending that I don't live on a cramped island with people and buildings and roads and power lines. I took a photo, and when I saw it later, I thought "that's cool". On top of that, if you know my son, and recognise his posture, or were there, and remember him wandering off quietly through the undergrowth, curious and engaged, then the photo offers another dimension or two to appreciate. But it's still just a photo.

Similarly, whatever I choose to write about here, is still just a bunch of words - you might enjoy reading them, you might not. Etc. Etc. The second draft of this post still waffled on about the parallels, but at this point I'm mainly just looking for an excuse to share the picture.

Earlier versions also said I was planning to put up more photos. I'll leave that bit in.