The place - Sloe, Paddington Station
The time - 8:30am
The date - Thursday 28th June 2007

I’m sat enjoying the comfortable surroundings of the new bar above Paddington station. It’s been undergoing a refit for the last month or so, but is now very, very nice indeed (it wasn’t bad before, but go figure…)

If anybody that reads this and works in London wants to bump into me here, feel free. Just no stalkerish people please. Shout me on Facebook (link at the foot of the page).

The train journey between Marlow and Bourne End (the first leg of my morning commute) lasts about 10 minutes. Because Marlow doesn’t have a train station, a man walks through the carriage selling tickets. This is needed because if you get anywhere near London you invariably cannot leave a platform without showing a ticket - and if you don’t have one you face a fine.

Normally everything works well - the guy selling tickets wanders down the train and you hope to get a ticket before reaching Bourne End. Unless you had wanted to buy one this morning.

The lady sat behind me - the second passenger he was dealing with - didn’t just want a ticket. She wanted to confirm her entire itinerary for the day. Questions about this ticket - that ticket - the other ticket - “what if I leave at this time”, “what about that time”…

The result of this was she was the only passenger that got a ticket on the entire train. How selfish is that? She must have realised that many other people on the train also wanted to purchase a ticket (luckily I have a season ticket), and now were going to miss their connecting train because of her.

Perhaps some people really don’t think about anybody else except themselves. It seems very alien to me - I put myself last by default. Last night was a good example; on the underground coming home I remained standing so an old chap could have a seat. He thought it was humorous that I mentioned to my colleague “it’s okay - I’ll let this older chap have the seat”. Even then, there were two gentlemen, and the younger of the two grabbed the seat, forcing the more elderly one to stand.

Whatever happened to courtesy and respect for our elders (no matter how old they are)? I suppose I was guilt of that this morning though - thinking badly of the lady monopolizing the ticket seller. Maybe that was just thoughtlessness though.

Please let something more interesting happen to me than the commute. There must be more to life… Perhaps it’s a reflection of my life at the moment - most of it is taken up with work, and I’m not allowed to write about that. Home is taken up with decorating in preparation for the impending arrival of adopted children.

Ah - a subject. How do you decorate children’s rooms when you have no idea what age or sex the children will be? At the moment we have chosen indestructible carpet, painted walls magnolia (silk finish, which we are told you can wipe clean), and ceilings white. Hopefully further decoration will take the form of clip frames, posters, curtains, duvets, lightshades and rugs.

We have thought about taking the children (if they are old enough) straight to Ikea with us to choose their own bedroom - with a healthy amount of prodding towards something practical of course. If they are too young for that we will face our first decision for them, and hope they like it.

When I was a child I liked just about everything anybody ever did for me - or perhaps “accepted” is the better word. When you are young you don’t realise there are choices - and therein also lies the answer to why so many abused or neglected children don’t get reported. They think it’s normal. They don’t realise that life can be different.

It’s going to be so fantastic to give children who have not had a “good” choice the best options we can. Yes, we’ll be poor, and yes, we’ll be secretly stressed, but we’re going to be happy.

Over the last couple of days I have been reading “jPod” by Douglas Coupland. My other half read “Microserfs” many years ago and has repeatedly told me I need to read it because it reflects her view of my world - the world of a software developer.

Before starting on what I think of it so far, it’s only reasonable to repeat what the fly-sheet has to say about it;

Ethan and his five co-workers are marooned in JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive game-design company. There they wage battle against the demands of boneheaded marketing staff who torture them with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan’s personal life is being invaded by marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, global piracy and the rise of China. Everybody in both worlds seems to inhabit a moral grey zone, and nobody is exempt, not even his seemingly strait-laced parents or Coupland himself.

I wasn’t sure I was going to like jPod when I started reading it (yesterday) - it seemed to have no story - it meandered along. Then while reading it this morning I realised it was just like my own life - only my own life isn’t filled with drug dealing parents, people trafficking, or any other such extremes.

I can relate to the daily idiotic exchanges of pointless inanety between cubicles though. It really does happen. When the book opens with everybody penning letters to Ronald McDonald, I had the biggest smile. For many months myself and a couple of colleagues passed quiet moments by inventing silly-but-plausible people’s names - such as “Sue Mowrestler”, and “Jenny Talia”.

There’s this girl that gets on the train at Maidenhead, and she doesn’t shut up. Ever. I swear she doesn’t breath either - at least not in through her mouth - there’s no time. Just to make it worse, she speaks with this nasal tone that can’t help but induce narcolepsy in those around her (or at least me). She could be used as a weapon at conferences.

Imagine the thoughts that went through my head when I left her on the train at Paddington, walked the length of the station, got on my underground train - which broke down - and changed trains at Edgeware Road - to hear her voice drifting across the masses of people squashed onto the replacement train. Wonderful. And my iPod battery is flat, meaning I can’t drown her out with some soothing Metallica or something.

Just to finish the commute in fine style this morning, I watched as a short plump woman walked out in front of a cyclist. I knew she was going to do it, and the cyclist knew she was going to do it. She had no idea the rest of the world existed however until she was in the road, with a bicycle stopping right in front of her nose. She didn’t say sorry.

It’s 7:16, it’s Monday morning, and the train will be leaving Marlow at any minute. I’m ready to fall asleep right here and now while sat on the train, but better not - I need to arrive somewhere near on-time this morning if I possibly can.

There’s this scary guy sat two seats in front of me, peering over the top of the seats with beady eyes.

This weekend was a blur from start to finish. I can’t even remember Friday night. On Saturday morning friends came over from Wendy’s home town for lunch, so we went to the big pub in town that has a restaurant (they had children with them, and this particular pub is very child friendly). We all ate too much and didn’t really notice the slowest service in the world because we were too busy catching up with each other’s news.

After lunch we went for a walk in Higginson Park - there was a church fate on, and thought it might be fun for the kids. We never got that far though. While walking through the park (throwing a frisbee back and forth) it started spotting with rain. By the time we reached the huge old oak trees alongside the river it had turned into a full-on thunderstorm. We spent five minutes huddled under mine and Wendy’s waterproofs before I decided enough was enough - they all ran for the car, and I ran for home (knowing I would not fit in the car). It’s about a mile run home from the park, and I surprised myself - I can still run! Even in sandals and 4 inch deep rivers of water!!

The rest arrived back at home just in time for me to hand out an armful of towels and mine and Wendy’s shower robes. Everybody’s clothes went in the dryer, and we sat playing Playstation together in various states of undress. Good job we a re all good friends…

Later on Saturday evening we were deluged with offers - which is funny because I was on a bit of a downer towards the end of last week - wondering when some light would break into the daily grind. Our friends that live round the corner got in first with the offer of going to dinner together and then maybe bowling - and because they asked first we went with them. Dinner ended up being “TGI Fridays” - an american style theme bar nearby, with american size helpings. It always reminds me of the bar in the movie “Office Space”. I guess it’s very similar to Hard Rock Cafe. By the time we walked out of there it was too late to go bowling so we tossed a coin and came back to our house together.

The Nintendo Gamecube got it’s first outing for a year and we all squashed onto the couch together for a mammoth (slightly drunk) session of Mariokart, and Smash Brothers Melee. I would like to say I did well, but that would be a bare faced lie. Why is it the prettiest (non video game playing) people always do best - usually Mums too? Perhaps it’s because they too grew up in the era of coin-op space invaders, and have latent skills that they don’t admit to.

The hilarity finally ended with Super Monkey Ball at 1am, and we said our goodnights. They had a long journey home (at least 200 yards), and we had a bed calling us.

Hmmm… “Hilarity” - strange word. Is that the feeling that you know Hilary Clinton is going to be the next US president?

Sunday was filled with washing clothes, washing more clothes, helping Wendy sort out books to sell on the internet, and washing even more clothes. I now have lots of un-ironed clothes, as evidenced by getting up at 6am this morning, having a wash, shave, and then pressing a shirt and trousers. Somehow those few things took up nearly an hour - probably because my trousers looked like they had been to the world “see how much you can crease up your trousers in the dryer” competition.

I did nothing yesterday afternoon - save watching the MotoGP race on the television (Casey Stoner won - woohoo!). I guess I did change the washing over several times, but that’s not really hard, is it.

Anyway. The train is about to fill up with people and any semblence of free-space will dissappear. I better finish this quickly.

I will post photos of the late-night Nintendo tournament later.

My cousin from San Francisco (who is living in London at the moment) came to visit over the last couple of evenings. I would like to think she came to stay just to spend some time with her favourite cousin, but I know in reality she was after my uber-geek computer skills to help her fiddle with her business website.

It was great having her stay - we have the kind of relationship where you don’t have to try at all. Conversation and company comes easily - which I guess is how it should be.

Last night was our local “pub quiz” and she was as excited as a child at christmas - her first “British Pub Quiz”… I got in from work at 7:30pm, got changed quickly and then we set off for the pub - accompanied also by Wendy’s brother who was using the visit to the pub as an excuse for a night out too (he stayed over at ours too).

On the way down the road we called our good friends who are moving house at the moment, and asked if they were around. We thought they might like to have a break, and they jumped at it.

We had a great evening - catching up on each other’s news, doing the quiz predictably badly, and drinking lots. Probably too much. Enough that I drank two pints of water before going to bed last night…

While sat in the pub dipping in and out of the various conversations, I realised that the group around the table are the last of my close family and friends that don’t have children - and that situation will be changing for us soon too. The chance to meet at the local pub at the drop of a hat will vanish.

I don’t know that I’ll miss going to the pub - because I’ve never been the kind of person that goes out that regularly, but I might miss the freedom. I guess it’s just one of the changes that will come with being a parent. I’ll probably be far too wrapped up in other things to even think about it once we get there.

We had another meeting with the adoption services this morning to go over our views on parenting skills - our past experiences. At the close of the meeting we finally got a prospective date for our review panel - late September. It’s later than we would have liked, but at least we now have a date.

While walking round the corner towards the office door this morning I heard a huge crash behind me and the kind of thuddy crunch noise a person makes as they fall off a bike in the road.

I turned round to see a thick set eastern european guy holding his arm - and saying a delayed “ouch”, and a woman sprawled out across the ground, holding her head and staying completely still.

I walked straight over - along with everybody else nearby - and crouched down to see if she was okay. She wasn’t.

It became obvious pretty quickly that the thick set guy (who also sported stitches across his forehead from what must have been a spectacular fight) had walked straight into the road with no warning - into the path of the cyclist. Once he realised what he had done, he started defending himself…

“You damn cyclists - all you do is pedal, pedal pedal - you don’t look where you’re going”

The woman on the ground woke up now. “You just walked out in front of me!”

He had no answer for that.

When she got up off the ground her right eye had almost closed up, and an impressive egg had formed on her forehead - along with a huge graze. Everybody was acting as good samaritan by this point so I wandered back to the office. As it turned out, one of the people in the road was from the same building anyway and they walked her in to sit down for a bit.

I can still see the wound on her head now - and the memories have come back to me all day about the close shaves I have had travelling to and from work - of cars behaving like I’m invisible (I cycle to the office near home - several miles through the school run traffic - hundreds of massive 4 wheel drives invariably with one female occupant).

The day got better.

On the way home I was quietly sat minding my own business on an underground train (and marvelling at my luck of finding a seat) when I became aware that one of the two scotsmen stood to the right of me was starting to complain to his friend that his legs were tired, and that somebody should give up their seat for him. It was obvious he had been drinking, and his friend tried to calm him down (not very hard mind you).

The complaints grew more consistent until he started to quietly insult everybody nearby in turn. The black guy next to me got called a lazy *******, and I got called a posh **** (I’m censoring this because it was pretty extreme and I don’t want to land in hot water).

He finally wound himself up enough to ask the black guy for his seat. If he had just asked to begin with, any of us would have given our seat up, but we had sat through a few minutes of wingeing and insults that he didn’t think we could hear.

“Laddie - give me your seat please - I’m an invalid - I’ve broken both my knees, and my jaw in six places”

What on earth did his jaw have to do with him not being able to stand up?

His next act beggars belief. Because nobody would surrender their seat, he leaned across (while swearing profusely) and pulled the emergency stop lever for the underground train. A thousand travellers ground to a halt because of one incredibly selfish, stupid, unthinking drunkard.

“You’re in trouble now laddie - you wait until the police arrive, and you’re thrown off the train for not letting me have your seat! If they don’t do it I’ll ******* throw you out that ******* window.”

The train slowly rolled into Edgeware Road and an official came into our carriage to reset the emergency alarm, and find out what had happened. The scotsman was escorted onto the platform while the various procedures went on to make the train ready again.

Over a thousands people had by now missed their connecting trains (me included) - all caused by this one idiot. While defending himself to the station staff outside, we just caught “as the Ace of Spades” - and the black guy sat next to me finally snapped.

The funny bit (if you could call any of this funny) was the number of businessmen who now crowded into the train doors threatening to do all sorts to the scotsman… the victims had now become the bullies - a vengeful mob.

Luckily a train rolled in on the adjacent platform going in the direction we should have been going and they all ran for it. I stayed put and made smalltalk with the lady next to me, who was now positioning herself as the mouthpiece of middle-england in the carriage.

Almost unbelievably the scotsman was allowed back onto the train. He had no disability. We all shook our heads in disbelief - apparently you can hold a London Underground train to ransom and not be arrested for it. I seriously considered taking his photo with my camera phone and going to see the police at Paddington.

I didn’t.

The net result of the adventure is my working day (from door to door) extended to about 14 hours today. Just to cap things off I got caught in a torrential thunderstorm on the way home from the station too.

Through many times in my life I have struggled to find the place where being a good person ends, and friendship begins - and where friendship ends and love begins.

Those who know me a little may well see by turns an idealist, a clown, flashes of intelligence, or even idiocy at times. Those closest to me perhaps know another person - the person who lifts when others are down - who includes when others are excluded - who tries to fix when others are broken.

You might call it the pursuit of happiness in others. During our recently adoption interviews it came up in terms of the sources of my energy - of my strength. I could only but shrug my shoulders and surmise that I draw strength from the knowledge that others are happy. In and of myself, I require very little from others. I wouldn’t call it selflessness though.

There appear to be many different kinds of people in this world, and where many people take in order to give, I seem to be a spring - a well or sorts. It’s interesting in many ways - while not subscribing to eastern philosophies as such I have drawn many parallels with those who can heal - the idea that energy can be given and taken between living creatures is appealing. I read the Celestine Prophecy many years ago, and while the book is on the whole dreadful, the central ideas of life force, energy, and the complex transactions that take place in the world around us again seemed very clear.

On cold days my hands are warm. On winter nights I am told my body becomes almost too hot to touch. While joking with my other half about the thermostat on my body’s central heating system, I am reminded of healing, and my relationships with close friends.

It’s a dangerous game though - “fixing people”. The spirit you share with those who are down is not infinite. Quite often it will be paid back for no more complex a reason than “you listened” - or “you noticed”. Sometimes the transaction is not even though.

Anybody with children knows that you pour into them your hopes, your dreams, your energy, your life - and after giving all, you face a day when they fly the nest - when they stand as your equal and find their own way without need of your assistance.

The same is true of close friends that you have perhaps helped through hard times - you prop up, listen, share thoughts, carry confidances, and then - when you have raised them back onto their feet, you have to face the time when they can once more face the world and you may never be quite as close as you once were.

It’s a difficult thing - friendship - if you give too much, you may not receive equally in return. If you don’t give enough, the friendship may not happen at all - which raises an entirely different question; why do we need friends? Is it a part of the human condition? Some people seem to need those close to them far more than others - and I suspect I may fall into that bracket.

One thing I do know is that despite the sense of loss you might experience when somebody turns to finally face the world once more, you can take heart from the knowledge that you had a part to play in their reconstruction. There is a tremendous sense of pride - the pride of being a friend - of having been there at their lowest ebb. A pride in having shared their problems and lightened their load.

There is a wonderful satisfaction to be had from being a friend - and being called “a friend”.

I cannot quite believe the Formula One race I just saw… Fernando Alonso was quite clearly the faster car for the majority of the race, and his team mate almost caused a crash through stopping him from passing - following that the team implemented “team orders” stopping their cars from racing each other.

Now Lewis Hamilton is celebrating. I can’t quite believe he’s happy about it - that the team effectively “gave” him the race. This smells very much like Schumacher at Ferrari, and Mika Hakkinen at McLaren several years ago.

For race after race, season after season, McLaren favoured Hakkinen over his team mate, and it showed. The Ferrari team repeatedly undermined Schumacher’s team mates over the years - perhaps most famously in the US Grand Prix when they ordered Rubens Barichello to move over on the last corner of the race.

Team orders need to be stamped out in Formula One, less it be turned into a completely commercial event. They are supposed to be “illegal”, but they still happen in every race. Most people already acknowledge that it’s not a sport - it’s a club run for the benefit of the world’s biggest car makers.

It’s such a shame… even athletics finds itself mired in controversy these days - with athletes admitting that the winners of the power events have the best chemists working with them. Ridiculous.

It gets worse. In the post-race press conference, the media are spending 90% of the time talking to Hamilton (because he’s English, and the media are). Alonso has taken his chance to let the media know that he let Hamilton go purely because he didn’t want to destroy his tires. Of course the media had become deaf by that point.

cross posted from PluggedOut

I have just uploaded the “work in progress” ThoughtCafe website to the internet.

ThoughtCafe is a website for amateur writers to post their work, and to give and receive feedback. Although this incarnation is new, the site has existed in the past.

In early 2000, while learning about new web technologies such as ASP and PHP, I built a simple website for people to post stories to - that site become “ThoughtCafe”. The first version was built using ASP (or “ASP Classic” as it is now know), and taught me many lessons. Perhaps the most important lesson was that ASP websites - when put under stress - do well to last a week without crashing.

By 2001 the Linux domination of web hosting was in full flow, and version 4 of the PHP scripting language had been released. I saw the desperately needed re-development of the ThoughtCafe website as a perfect reason to learn how to develop on the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform, and dove in. I bought the O’Reilly books, and spent several weeks creating the new site. I ended up with perhaps the most fully featured writing website on the internet, and the visitors came in their thousands.

Visitors of course meant bandwidth, and this was before the days of Google Adsense to offset your hosting fees. We implemented paid memberships to cover costs, and for several years the site flowered. A wonderful community atmosphere grew up among the membership, with many becoming successful published authors - standing on each others shoulders to learn, and to improve each other’s skills. We ran monthly online writing workshops and even sent out a newsletter to the thousands of members with news about the site, writing events, and special interest articles.

Then it all went wrong. A small and very vocal minority happened to enter the site at the same time as our life away from ThoughtCafe was changing. The free time that had once been spent creating harmony within the site was no longer available - and chaos soon followed - culminating in the eventual closing of “ThoughtCafe” in April 2004.

After a few years away, the internet has changed, people have changed, and the technology has changed. I also received an email - the first in years - from a member of the old website. “Just wanted to let you know that people still talk about ThoughtCafe in other writing sites - that we all miss it”.

I started thinking that maybe it was time to take another look - to give ThoughtCafe another chance. Of course, the original “.com” domain name has been bought by a cyber-squatter, who will not release it unless I pay exorbitant amounts of money. I did discover “www.thoughtcafe.net” was available though - and happened to have been looking at various content management systems recently.

The email from the stranger was all I needed. Over yesterday evening and this morning, the site has had new life breathed into it, and is now sat at www.thoughtcafe.net awaiting it’s first visitors.

If you are interested in writing - be that creative writing, poetry, or even journalism - why not head over to ThoughtCafe right now!