{Cheese and Beans}

For the past two days I have commuted towards the southern reaches of London to teach a group of business people how to use a technology product I happen to know more than most about. It has been my first experience of teaching a group, and somewhat unnerving. I am not a teacher.

Somehow in my head I imagined standing in front of perhaps four or five people. Having signed into the building and followed a rabbit warren of corridors, I was greeted by a rather large room – full of people. I put on my ad-hoc teacher’s hat, consigned any natural shyness to my backpack, waved in a friendly manner to everybody and started acting.

I don’t know how to teach. Everybody who has seen the way I am with children always remarks how good a teacher I would have made – but this was a room full of grown ups. Luckily I have sat in a good few training courses over the years, so did what I’ve seen other people do.

We went around the room doing introductions, I wrote names down in high speed scribble (I even draw a diagram of where they were sitting – I saw another teacher do that on a course I was in once, and thought “that’s a damn good idea – I’ll do that one day”). Of course I only referred to one person by name during the two days, and I got it wrong.

Everybody knew my name.

Whenever I’m showing professional people anything vaguely technological, I’m always scared stiff of being found out – scared that some classroom know-it-all will know more than me about the thing I’m demonstrating, or discussing. I’ve never actually had it happen, so I’m guessing it’s another hang-up to put on the pile that make me who I am.

Of course, computers being computers, I always fear that things will not work too. When showing something to a group of people who are paying a lot of money for you to show them that something, strange things happen. The button you’ve clicked on five thousand times before doesn’t do what it did the previous five thousand times.

During the first day I stressed over absolutely everything. To the class I probably appeared calm, methodical, and knowledgeable. Unbeknown to them, my heart was in my mouth most of the time. It’s surprising how quickly you relax though – today (day two) was an altogether more relaxed affair. Part of the reason for that was down to me proving everything I wanted to do would work late the night before. Yes, I am that mad.

So, while I might appear to be a good teacher and might appear composed and clever, I don’t think I could do it as a career. I can almost guarantee that at some stage I would lose it (prompted by my own perceived failure to figure something out in front of the students). I would be found hours later in the street, talking to pigeons about strong naming in the dot net framework or something.

Waiting in Birmingham Station to travel back towards home – and a
night and day of coding. Not very happy that my planned morning
Christmas shopping is now going to be spent hunched over my work laptop.

I haven’t said anything about this on my blog yet – but half the reason for me spending so much time with the children recently has been because I knew what was on the horizon at work.

Between next week and Christmas I am very probably going to find myself on-site with my work, several hundred miles from home. Every weekday. It’s going to cause total havoc at home.

I basically have two options;

1. Commute back and forth from the client site each day – meaning getting up at 5am, and not getting in until 8pm.
2. Stay in a hotel – meaning I will be away all week, and when I am home I will be washing clothes ready to go again.

It sucks, doesn’t it.

Meanwhile, the wheels are going to fall off the wagon completely at home. Wendy will essentially become a prisoner unless we hire a babysitter for several nights of the week (she is Brown Owl at Brownies, on the PTA of the school, and on the School website working group), and/or try to get the lovely lady who cleans for us to come more often (she does one day a week at the moment). Normally I do all the washing up, and a lot of the tidying up around the house when I get in on an evening – none of this will happen if I am not there (unless Wendy keeps going until 11 at night every day).

As you can imagine, I’m not looking forward to the next two months – it’s going to be ridiculous. I’m thinking commuting every day, and at least trying to help out will be the only sensible answer. I still won’t get home in time for any of the things Wendy does on an evening though.

Postscript – Wendy has been wonderful about me being away over the next many weeks. It’s been a surprise because I get to see the fallout of the more trying days with the children; the thunderous looks as I walk in the back door and ask “what did they do?”. My inlaws are apparently going to lend a hand when needed, and a couple of friends have stepped up to the plate too… I feel very, very lucky indeed to know so many great people.

Visitors to our house are invariably astounded at the plethora of books that surround them – and probably make snap judgements about us, or the “kind of person” we are by the presence of so much literature.

I have a guilty secret.

Since ceasing the daily commute into and out of London, I have hardly picked up a single book. The four hours sat on trains each day was my time. In the course of the two year London odyssey, I hit a lot of the books on my “would like to read one day” list.

I discovered that Anna Karenina really is one of the best books ever written – certainly the best I have read thus far. It started as a chore – an act of blind faith because “everybody says this is good”. It required effort to escape the first hundred or so pages, before sweeping you into the world of Anna, Count Vronsky, and Levin.

“The Order of Things” by Foucault mystified me for days. I persevered through the philosophical navel gazing, and came away with something. I’m not quite sure what that something was, but it seemed worth it.

Terry Pratchett delivered light relief during the darkest times, and Cory Doctorow fired my imagination.

Since settling into the rhythm of a career closer to home, the internet has taken the place of the books I once read. Many and varied blogs vie for my attention. When the mood takes me, I sit into the early hours reading the shared story of far flung friends; some of which I now know, but the majority I shall never meet.

Stories. So many stories, and so little time.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Jonathan’s Posterous

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Jonathan’s Posterous

This morning finds me on the London train once more – for the first time since I stopped commuting for a project last year. It felt very strange preparing to leave the house this morning – memories of returning to school after the summer vacation came back to me.

 What time is the train? What time do I need to leave? What do I need in my bag?

 Being on the train again is strange too – many of the same faces are sat around the carriages – including Mrs Handbag, busy shovelling her makeup on. She has the dress sense of an armoured car.

 In a strange way I’ve missed this time on the train each morning. Time to reflect, time to think, time to wake up…

 Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Jonathan’s Posterous

Sitting on the train, en-route to Birmingham once again. Woke with a start at 4:55am, and lurched out of bed. Espresso at home, and a capuccino at Maidenhead have kick started my body enough to deal with the early start.

Some foolish experimentation with viral Twitter tools yesterday filled my morning email with follows from strangers. I had no idea so many people were so gullible. No doubt the new followers will fall away as time goes by, and leave me with a hard core of “those worth following” – in the meantime I have to employ my brain to sort the wheat from the chaff – something computers find very hard.

At the time of writing, we are a few minutes out of Reading station, on the 7:10am train towards Birmingham – via Oxford, and Banbury. It’s a roundabout route, but gets me to the destination with time to spare ahead of a fairly long requirements gathering meeting.

Work seems to have consumed a lot of my life recently – not only in terms of time, but also in terms of thought. I find it hard to switch off; in the dead of night I will often find myself thinking through aspects of the software architecture I am working on. I suspect it’s a common problem with technical professions.

There is a blonde woman sat in front of me on the train. I can’t help thinnking she looks like a far flung friend (at least the back of her head does)… I’m always seeing people I know in others.

Looking out of the train window, summer appears to be arriving with a vengeance – we have blue skies from horizon to horizon. It’s going to be a hot day – not exactly great when you know you’re going to be crammed into meeting rooms all day.

I guess I should send an email on ahead to my destination to find out if any colleagues are on-site today too – maybe meet them for lunch if our schedule allows… or at least I would if I had any phone signal whatsoever.

A girl just passed through the train carriage with a trolley full of food and drink – she reminds me of a girl I went to primary school with, and found again on Facebook last year. I’m doing it again – seeing people I know in strangers. It’s a curse.

There is something strangely calming about commuting. Sitting on a quiet train in the early hours of the morning, zipping across the countryside, listening to music, and recording thoughts into a netbook – a change from the usual morning sprint to get the children fed, ready for school and out the door.

The train just rolled into Oxford – the place I met my other half back in the summer of 2000. Our first date was in the “Cock and Camel” in George Street after a month or so writing emails, and calling each other on the phone. I often wonder if the place we met still looks the same, or if it’s been replaced by some faceless chain pub or cafe.

Oxford holds many wonderful memories for me – walks through the dimly lit evening streets, and fog filled early morning parks… the “dreaming spires”, the Radcliffe Camera, Jericho, the colleges. It’s unique, beautiful, and different than any other place in England – there is a real sense of history and learning.

In the reflection of the train window I can see the blonde lady in front writing email after email on a Blackberry Bold.

Casting an around the carriage, it’s interesting to notice the difference between people commuting away from London, and those who commute into the city (as I did for much of 2007 and 2008). The London commuters are younger, more sharply (and unapproachably) dressed, and give the impression of being less patient, more shallow, and invariably self interested. My partners travelling north today seem more “real” – hard working, friendly, approachable people.

I remember writing during my period working in London about the predominance of pretty girls, and the obvious discriminatory hiring policies of the city financial institutions. Many might argue against any such thing, but standing by the doors of the Amro building, or Lloyds, you may as well start counting the number of girls with perfect hair, makeup, teeth and figures who could be catwalk models. I wonder if other big cities suffer similarly.

It’s 7:50am. Still an hour to kill before I arrive at my destination. I’m going to stop writing now for fear of causing numerous accidents in my pathetically small readership via this narcolepsy inducing essay of the inconsequential.

Wherever you are, have a great morning, afternoon or evening…

Good morning world!

While commuting towards a client site last week at some ungodly hour, I pointed my iPhone out of the Window and took this…

… if you take enough random photos, you invariably end up with one or two good ones.