So Along Presently is back, in a way. I've felt the itch to carry on blogging lately and I like this name too much to consider starting completely from scratch.
It's on a different platform, though - so click here to check it out.
It's not a direct continuation of this blog; the main difference being that I'm going to make no attempt to make the new one a daily blog, or to attempt to write about everything I'm up to. It's to be about whatever I want, and updated whenever I want. Hopefully with the pressure off I'll write more thoughtfully and less objectively. Just writing at all is good, though.
I'm also in the process of reviving my tech blog project which is called Nerdmirer. It's not ready quite yet - but hopefully I'll be able to give that a bit of attention too in the coming days and weeks.
M
Wednesday 16 February 2011
Monday 3 January 2011
The End...For Now
This is the 286th post on Along Presently. It's also, at least for now, the last.
I started a daily blog having been inspired by the likes of Richard Herring (who has now done his daily blog for over 8 years) to use it as a way of keeping my writing sharp and to be able to say that, if nothing else, I had at least written something every day. In the beginning it was fairly easy to keep up - allowing a 20 minute-or-so period in the morning to get down the previous day's events - but as soon as one day slips, that easily becomes two and three and all too often I've found myself anxiously putting aside evenings and even whole days to catch up on whole weeks at a time. This, clearly, is a pretty poor show for a "daily" blog.
Instead Along Presently stands as a record of 285 consecutive days of my life - and in that sense it's been successful, and something I can look back on proudly. The fact that I now feel unable to carry on with it is a shame (as is the fact that 285 is a maddeningly odd number of days), but it has certainly achieved its goal of getting me writing again, getting me thinking about writing and starting new projects. The main reason it has become a drag, in fact, is that it's effectively stopping me from writing anything else. I've tried and failed to properly start a new blog since I started Along Presently, and left a previously successful one to rot rather - mainly because every time I feel I have "time to write" it's spent catching up with this, rather than doing anything possibly more interesting or "useful", in a career sense.
So I'm stopping Along Presently (at least for a while) - but I'm not stopping writing. I'm going to write more about the things that interest me (football, technology, University Challenge) rather than focussing purely on the mundane details of my life. I will, however, post links on here to everything I write and every other misguided project I decide to launch. I may even develop the Along Presently idea into something else.
So that's it. Many thanks to the handful of people who have bothered to read this over the last nine months - but I'm off to do something else for a while.
Mat x
I started a daily blog having been inspired by the likes of Richard Herring (who has now done his daily blog for over 8 years) to use it as a way of keeping my writing sharp and to be able to say that, if nothing else, I had at least written something every day. In the beginning it was fairly easy to keep up - allowing a 20 minute-or-so period in the morning to get down the previous day's events - but as soon as one day slips, that easily becomes two and three and all too often I've found myself anxiously putting aside evenings and even whole days to catch up on whole weeks at a time. This, clearly, is a pretty poor show for a "daily" blog.
Instead Along Presently stands as a record of 285 consecutive days of my life - and in that sense it's been successful, and something I can look back on proudly. The fact that I now feel unable to carry on with it is a shame (as is the fact that 285 is a maddeningly odd number of days), but it has certainly achieved its goal of getting me writing again, getting me thinking about writing and starting new projects. The main reason it has become a drag, in fact, is that it's effectively stopping me from writing anything else. I've tried and failed to properly start a new blog since I started Along Presently, and left a previously successful one to rot rather - mainly because every time I feel I have "time to write" it's spent catching up with this, rather than doing anything possibly more interesting or "useful", in a career sense.
So I'm stopping Along Presently (at least for a while) - but I'm not stopping writing. I'm going to write more about the things that interest me (football, technology, University Challenge) rather than focussing purely on the mundane details of my life. I will, however, post links on here to everything I write and every other misguided project I decide to launch. I may even develop the Along Presently idea into something else.
So that's it. Many thanks to the handful of people who have bothered to read this over the last nine months - but I'm off to do something else for a while.
Mat x
Saturday 1 January 2011
Thursday 23rd December
Since K is now off work for Christmas, I head out to work leaving her snoozing, hung over, in bed. While she has a nice day with her sister planned, I spend the day frantically clicking the dreaded 'text to columns' on Excel, formatting names of authors and efficiently colour-coding literally yards of spreadsheet real estate. Not the most fun way to spend the day - but I do at least get a job finished that's been hanging over me for a while in far less time than I had expected it would take.
It also makes the day (my last full one before Christmas) go by nice and quickly - and soon I'm on my way home. K calls and asks me to swing by Iceland for nibbles to go with our fancy pre-Christmas meal of baked Camembert and home made garlic bread, so I grab a couple of cheapo bags of frozen party snacks and head back.
The girls already have some wine underway and the pre-Christmas party (a "London Christmas" if you will) is ready to go. Accordingly we exchange presents - all apart from a very few small ones that are worth taking all the way to Dorset and back. K unwraps my present to her, (a bright red retro-style record player that she had asked for well over a year ago but had seemed to have forgotten about - this goes down well) and I open some nice things from New Zealand (courtesy of K's twin) and various video games, DVDs and vouchers from various siblings and parents.
Contented, for now, we get on with the dinner - which is delicious - and drink a little more in front of the telly before Mike and Ellie wander round from Crouch End. We have fun catching up and watching Peep Show and Men Behaving Badly; until it gets to around midnight and I remember that I do actually have to be at work tomorrow. Ugh.
It also makes the day (my last full one before Christmas) go by nice and quickly - and soon I'm on my way home. K calls and asks me to swing by Iceland for nibbles to go with our fancy pre-Christmas meal of baked Camembert and home made garlic bread, so I grab a couple of cheapo bags of frozen party snacks and head back.
The girls already have some wine underway and the pre-Christmas party (a "London Christmas" if you will) is ready to go. Accordingly we exchange presents - all apart from a very few small ones that are worth taking all the way to Dorset and back. K unwraps my present to her, (a bright red retro-style record player that she had asked for well over a year ago but had seemed to have forgotten about - this goes down well) and I open some nice things from New Zealand (courtesy of K's twin) and various video games, DVDs and vouchers from various siblings and parents.
Contented, for now, we get on with the dinner - which is delicious - and drink a little more in front of the telly before Mike and Ellie wander round from Crouch End. We have fun catching up and watching Peep Show and Men Behaving Badly; until it gets to around midnight and I remember that I do actually have to be at work tomorrow. Ugh.
Friday 31 December 2010
Wednesday 22nd December
The doorbell goes just after seven this morning and K runs to get it. Her twin sister has made it safely back from Hong Kong after an 18-hour delay, across London from Heathrow and to our door - all while we were happily sleeping. Even better, she has come armed with bacon for breakfast, so after we've all got up and caught up, we sit down for some pre-work bacon sarnies. K heads off for the half-day of work she's scheduled for before her Christmas party and the start of her Christmas break, while I head to the office as normal.
Later on, I come home to find K getting ready to leave, and I quickly dump my assorted work-related items before heading to the Hope and Anchor to meet Alex before the party. Just as K is leaving there's a power cut that seems to wipe out half our street, street lamps and all. This means that K has to head off into town and I to Crouch End, leaving our guest sitting in the dark with no entertainment at all. We both feel bad but we both have places to be - luckily I soon get a text to say that it's back on before long.
I meet Alex in the pub with Mushki - the puppy she's currently looking after for her housemate. I'm no dog fan, but Mushki is pretty well behaved and it's fun to watch the assorted Hope and Anchor locals coming over to say hello. I suppose as a dog owner you'd have to get used to interacting with people; they seem to take the animal you're dragging along on a string as an open invitation to chat.
We sit and natter for a while before I have to skid my way back home to collect K's sister and head into Covent Garden for the party. It's at a place called Circus - which doesn't prove too difficult to find, what with the large queue and woman on stilts at the door. We eventually get in to find the place busy already, locating K somewhere near the free bar. After a bit of shuffling around we nab some space around a table, where we feast on nibbles of various qualities and endless free beers. It's not long before I start to get a bit claustrophobic, though, and at about 11 I decide to leave while the tubes are still running - leaving K and her sister to party on and get a company-paid cab home.
Later on, I come home to find K getting ready to leave, and I quickly dump my assorted work-related items before heading to the Hope and Anchor to meet Alex before the party. Just as K is leaving there's a power cut that seems to wipe out half our street, street lamps and all. This means that K has to head off into town and I to Crouch End, leaving our guest sitting in the dark with no entertainment at all. We both feel bad but we both have places to be - luckily I soon get a text to say that it's back on before long.
I meet Alex in the pub with Mushki - the puppy she's currently looking after for her housemate. I'm no dog fan, but Mushki is pretty well behaved and it's fun to watch the assorted Hope and Anchor locals coming over to say hello. I suppose as a dog owner you'd have to get used to interacting with people; they seem to take the animal you're dragging along on a string as an open invitation to chat.
We sit and natter for a while before I have to skid my way back home to collect K's sister and head into Covent Garden for the party. It's at a place called Circus - which doesn't prove too difficult to find, what with the large queue and woman on stilts at the door. We eventually get in to find the place busy already, locating K somewhere near the free bar. After a bit of shuffling around we nab some space around a table, where we feast on nibbles of various qualities and endless free beers. It's not long before I start to get a bit claustrophobic, though, and at about 11 I decide to leave while the tubes are still running - leaving K and her sister to party on and get a company-paid cab home.
Thursday 30 December 2010
Tuesday 21st December
There's a weird kind of end-of-term atmosphere at work. Some people have left already for the Christmas break, others have returned unexpectedly from Heathrow having had their Christmas holidays cancelled by the weather - others, like me, are here until Christmas Eve and have tons of work left to do. There is a lot of chocolate about the place, and our Quality Street-wrapper ceiling decoration is still hanging "proudly" above the marketing department. One nice moment comes when our sales director announces that he'll be taking us out for dinner at Mosaica - the surprisingly posh restaurant hidden deep inside the converted Chocolate Factory across the road from the office.
In order that there are still some people in the office when we're eating, we have to head over at 12pm (a little early for my liking) and I order a bottle of Peroni to sip ahead of my gammon and eggs. This is, needless to say, already much more satisfying than the car crash of a Christmas party we had last Friday. We chat merrily for an hour and a half or so before heading back over to the office - pausing only for a brief snowball skirmish with the work party heading to replace us at Mosaica.
I spend the rest of the afternoon in something of a daze - full of food and with an oddly discombobulating single midday beer inside me my eyes feel heavy and entirely unwilling to focus on the acres of spreadsheets and emails on my screen. I do, however, find a way to survive the rest of the working day and head home.
Somehow I find room for dinner (much later) and K and I sit around catching up on some TV shows we've recorded. Just before bed we get the happy news that K's sister has managed to squeeze onto a flight from Hong Kong that leaves tonight (UK time) meaning that she should be here tomorrow morning, snow or not - an unexpectedly positive result.
In order that there are still some people in the office when we're eating, we have to head over at 12pm (a little early for my liking) and I order a bottle of Peroni to sip ahead of my gammon and eggs. This is, needless to say, already much more satisfying than the car crash of a Christmas party we had last Friday. We chat merrily for an hour and a half or so before heading back over to the office - pausing only for a brief snowball skirmish with the work party heading to replace us at Mosaica.
I spend the rest of the afternoon in something of a daze - full of food and with an oddly discombobulating single midday beer inside me my eyes feel heavy and entirely unwilling to focus on the acres of spreadsheets and emails on my screen. I do, however, find a way to survive the rest of the working day and head home.
Somehow I find room for dinner (much later) and K and I sit around catching up on some TV shows we've recorded. Just before bed we get the happy news that K's sister has managed to squeeze onto a flight from Hong Kong that leaves tonight (UK time) meaning that she should be here tomorrow morning, snow or not - an unexpectedly positive result.
Monday 20th December
The 'Big Freeze' is virtually all that's in the news today. Heathrow Airport is clogged up and with only one runway functioning they're even telling people not to bother turning up for their flights at Terminals 1 and 3. Eurostar have people queuing out of the door of St. Pancras Station and all the way up almost to the British Library - which is bizarre to see considering how quiet it was when we got in from Kent yesterday morning. It is improbably cold outside, and while it's a dicey affair skating across the pavements and walking up the middle of the road to get to work, a big part of me is glad that I don't have any more travelling to do until Friday (when hopefully things will be more or less back to normal).
While the snow at Heathrow doesn't affect me directly, there is one problem: K's twin sister is on her way back to the UK for a surprise homecoming visit. This is a special early Christmas present for K that I've known about for a few weeks (though she has no idea) and today it's in severe danger of turning into a complete disaster. She is currently in Hong Kong - and tonight the flight she's booked onto has been cancelled.
After dinner K and I sit and watch Scrooged (a great Bill Murray Christmas film we picked up at HMV for a fiver yesterday) and afterwards I break the news to her that not only was she supposed to be getting a surprise homecoming visit from her sister, but that the visit was in danger of not happening at all now. She is understandably concerned and it's a shame that the potentially brilliant surprise is ruined - but after a few emails have been exchanged there is still hope that her sister won't spend Christmas trapped in Hong Kong airport.
While the snow at Heathrow doesn't affect me directly, there is one problem: K's twin sister is on her way back to the UK for a surprise homecoming visit. This is a special early Christmas present for K that I've known about for a few weeks (though she has no idea) and today it's in severe danger of turning into a complete disaster. She is currently in Hong Kong - and tonight the flight she's booked onto has been cancelled.
After dinner K and I sit and watch Scrooged (a great Bill Murray Christmas film we picked up at HMV for a fiver yesterday) and afterwards I break the news to her that not only was she supposed to be getting a surprise homecoming visit from her sister, but that the visit was in danger of not happening at all now. She is understandably concerned and it's a shame that the potentially brilliant surprise is ruined - but after a few emails have been exchanged there is still hope that her sister won't spend Christmas trapped in Hong Kong airport.
Sunday 26 December 2010
Sunday 19th December
We get up early and prepare to jump in Mum's car. They need to try and drive up to Scotland today (where even more snow is forecast) so every minute counts. We are informed by Network Rail that the high-speed line is back up and running, with a train departing at 9.25. After Alistair has dug the car out (which is, fortunately, four-wheel drive) we drive as quickly and safely as possible to Canterbury West station, where we see a train pull in as we arrive. Concerned that we might miss it, K and I leap out of the car and run through the small station to squeeze on. It's not too busy and we manage to find a seat - but mostly I'm just relieved to be on our way back. While the weekend has been far from a disaster, it's nice to be heading back for a shower and a change of clothes at least.
The train is incredibly quick and in less than an hour we're back in St. Pancras - with North London virtually unrecognisable compared to when we left less than 24 hours before. The thick blanket of snow has been obliterated into slush in true London style, at least on the roads, but it's pretty amazing to see what fell in just a couple of Saturday afternoon hours. The remainder of our journey isn't too difficult - though the Piccadilly line is severely delayed thanks to staff being unable to get into work. Though this means us running for the 29 through Finsbury Park, we're stunned to find ourselves safely home less than two hours after we left Aylesham - and all before midday.
The weather makes me want to stay in for the rest of the day, but we need to do food shopping at least so we head up to Sainsbury's in Wood Green and do a little circuit of Shopping City. After finally getting a shower and lolling around for the rest of the afternoon, we decide to brave the elements and wander up to Crouch End for a drink before dinner. Mike joins us after a while, and predictably one drink turns into several. Our delicious curry we had planned gets postponed to tomorrow - and we stoop to a greasy takeaway on the way home. Well, we reason, it has been something of a traumatic weekend.
The train is incredibly quick and in less than an hour we're back in St. Pancras - with North London virtually unrecognisable compared to when we left less than 24 hours before. The thick blanket of snow has been obliterated into slush in true London style, at least on the roads, but it's pretty amazing to see what fell in just a couple of Saturday afternoon hours. The remainder of our journey isn't too difficult - though the Piccadilly line is severely delayed thanks to staff being unable to get into work. Though this means us running for the 29 through Finsbury Park, we're stunned to find ourselves safely home less than two hours after we left Aylesham - and all before midday.
The weather makes me want to stay in for the rest of the day, but we need to do food shopping at least so we head up to Sainsbury's in Wood Green and do a little circuit of Shopping City. After finally getting a shower and lolling around for the rest of the afternoon, we decide to brave the elements and wander up to Crouch End for a drink before dinner. Mike joins us after a while, and predictably one drink turns into several. Our delicious curry we had planned gets postponed to tomorrow - and we stoop to a greasy takeaway on the way home. Well, we reason, it has been something of a traumatic weekend.
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