Writing.
Creative writing, short stories, general musings.
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Human
The dawn of day
The sparkling dew
The rising sun
The fresh
The new
The air
The sea
The breeze
The heat
The ground beneath your feet. -
A thousand different journeys
We must have walked this path a thousand times, my son and I. A thousand journeys, each one a little different as we’ve grown, changed and (mostly) become wiser. When my son was small he was also restless, with a ton of energy. Still is, in many ways. Always moving, never still. We’d wake up at dawn, sometimes before, and I’d be thinking of ways to keep him occupied so we didn’t both go stir crazy. So we’d walk along the path, in the direction of the park. Sometimes we didn’t make it that far. We’d be stopped by a bubbling stream, or a half-dead worm needing to be rescued, or a ripe blackberry bush, or just a patch of dirt that was inexplicably fascinating.
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Sunny Bank Holiday
The radio this morning announced that today has broken the record for the hottest day in May ever in the UK. Here in Wiltshire the temperature reached 32 degrees, more than many of us Brits can comfortably tolerate. Climate change concerns notwithstanding, we are lucky to have some sunny weather during the school half term and Bank Holiday weekend — though less so when it’s unpleasantly hot. And of course, climate change is a difficult thing to dismiss. The notion that while this might be the hottest May of my life so far, it might well be one of the coolest for the rest of my son’s life.
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Beaches
The sea is in my soul. Growing up in Cornwall, my vividest memories are of beaches. Jump in the car and a short drive along winding country roads would bring you to the nearest beach. Every family holiday involved camping in my dad’s 4-person mountaineering tent at Mother Ivey’s Bay, a mere hour’s drive from where we lived, sometimes for weeks at a time, every single day spent swimming, running and playing on the pristine beach. We’d wake up before 6am (with the arrival of the gulls) and walk down with our bodyboards, my dad, my sister and me, plunging straight into the cold, grey sea before anyone else was up. Spending that first golden hour, while the beach was deserted, letting the primal call of the sea deep into our bones before heading back to the tent for chocolate porridge (my dad’s speciality made from mixing hot chocolate powder and porridge oats) cooked on the little camping stove. At night we’d walk there again by moonlight, watching for bats and listening to the sound of the waves.
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Beginning
The first line is always the hardest. I sit in front of the blank page with its cursor blinking, aggressively or invitingly, wondering what I’ll write. I know that if I can first uncork the bottle, the rest will flow. It’s the decision paralysis that gets you. The temptation to turn back before you’ve even started. Sometimes you just have to begin, not knowing where it’s going. Forget about all the things you think you need before you can embark. You don’t really need any of them. Once you’re on the trail, the woods close in behind you and the only way is forward. A meandering path through the thoughts in your head, only forged by putting one foot in front of another, testing the ground underfoot, backtracking when it’s too thorny, too overgrown with weeds. Finding alternative routes, easier paths made by those who came this way before, but which combined with your own journey make something new. Streams to ford, distractions or unconventional paths to uncharted lands full of new wonders? An uphill climb until you finally break out above the tree line to survey the landscape below. How far you’ve come. Is it far enough, or do you forge ahead to higher peaks, where the path is more treacherous and greater dangers lie? Where the journey is more perilous but the rewards far greater?
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Community
One of the most significant things that inspired me as a web developer was the sense of community. Through conferences, meet-ups and just being online a lot, I found a tribe of like-minded people who were all similarly passionate about web standards and making fun, creative work. This community spurred me on to make better work, to think and discuss more, to write about what I learned and even to speak at conferences where, in turn, I made new real-life friends, grew my community even further and, hopefully, helped others too.
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The swifts are back
In the last few days, the swifts have returned. Surely the bellwether of summer, I hear their high-pitched trills and spot them soaring and swooping, twisting and turning joyfully as I settle down at my desk. Always moving, never resting. A life spent on the wing.
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Untethered
Elkin couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been on the boat. He knew at one time or another he must have been somewhere. A long, seaweed-encrusted rope trailed from the bow of the small, weather-beaten wooden dingy. An umbilical cord. He supposed at some point it must have been tethered to something. Here he was nowhere, drifting freely on the wide open ocean, with no landmarks as far as the eye could see, the sun, moon and stars above the only markers of the passing of time and place. He had the vast open skies above him and the endless expanse of sea to call his own. But this little boat was all he knew as home.
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Being a student again
I’m currently studying part-time for an MSc in Computer Science. It’s an interesting experience being a student again. The course is entirely online, which has its advantages: I can fit it in relatively easily around work and anything else I want/need to do. But it’s a far cry from my arts degree 20 years ago, which was entirely studio based. I do miss the interaction with my peers, and I feel that shared experience can be a good motivator. The work is mostly interesting, but it could certainly be made more so by sharing thoughts and ideas with others.
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Journeys
Journeys are time to think. If not to relax, at least to collect your thoughts, to pause and to process. They are the spaces between places. It could be said that a good journey is a forgettable one. Uneventful, nothing out of the ordinary. The ones that went according to plan, where we arrived safely and punctually at our destination. These are the journeys we hope for. But the journeys we remember are the ones that defied expectations. The ones where we met someone new, or where we took an unplanned detour. The joyous ones spent travelling with friends or family, embarking on unexpected adventures, or the hellish ones where we’re stuck in traffic or delayed unavoidably by broken down trains. They are the journeys that leave their mark upon us. Travelling with another person is one way to really get to know them. A shared journey can cement a relationship, or expose its cracks.
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Broligarchy
The future is coming.
The future is coming.
The future is coming.
So why aren’t you happy? -
Operational Efficiency
“At OpTeq, we don’t just help your business excel; we build the future, together.” The room broke out in applause as the presentation drew to a close and the well-groomed North American executive smiled brightly, her smooth, honeyed voice flowing like melted butter through the rapt audience. Frictionless.
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Pools
Inside everyone
is a magical pool.
I want to dive in
and swim in them all. -
Motherhood
It’s hard to overstate the impact of motherhood. People can tell you of course, friends who have had children talk of sleepless nights and are unable to commit to plans for a while, making excuses and leaving early. But you can never really know until it happens to you. You can never really comprehend how your entire sense of self becomes refracted through the lens of someone else’s needs, how at times that shift is so great, so completely fracturing, so world-shattering that you feel yourself breaking apart entirely. I can only liken it to the feeling you get when as a child, having wandered too far, are hit with the terrifying realisation that you are lost, entirely unmoored. It was this realisation that hit me like a freight train in the dead of night, in a hospital bed after 60 hours without sleep, a heady mix of hormones and a cocktail of drugs still sloshing around my system following emergency surgery after my son’s birth. The feeling that I’d done something that could never be undone. That the person of three days ago was dead and gone, and my life would never, ever be the same again. And in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind, that small voice: “What if I’ve made a terrible mistake?”
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The Birds
The birds flitter industriously, feeding and preening. The sun illuminates their gleaming feathers, a riot of red, blue, gold and green. Half-camouflaged by the long grass, the cat watches jealously, mesmerised. Without really knowing why, she craves their bright plumage, feels its pull. With her tunnel vision, her eyes are like saucers. She only has eyes for them. She has no thought beyond her desire for possession.