Recursive Words

The life and times of a work-from-home software and web developer as he fights a house, four women, two cats, idiocy, apathy and procrastination on an almost daily basis.

Category: life

  • Escaping to Spoons on Sunday morning

    It’s a little after 9am on Sunday morning and I’ve bagged a booth table at Spoons. A “Small American” just disappeared (pancakes, bacon, eggs, sausage, and hashbrowns), and a “bottomless coffee” is about to follow it. I’m not sure I have much to report at the moment – other than trying to break the world…

  • Down the rabbit hole

    The Commodore 64 arrived at lunchtime. It’s now wired up to an old CRT monitor, and after some tinkering, I connected it to a re-creation of the ARPANET system you last saw in the movie “War Games”. I can’t quite describe the feeling of sitting in the dark of the junk room while a glowing,…

  • A blanket fort filled with forgotten totems

    The massive computer that normally sits under the desk in the junk room and helps to heat the entire street was picked up by a courier this morning. We won’t talk about how much it cost me to insure it – I’m glad I did though, given the way the driver threw it first at…

  • The twenty five year clothes shop

    2026-07-18 The twenty five year clothes shop In September we’ll be celebrating twenty five years of not killing each other. Twenty five years ago we celebrated the start of the adventure by boarding the P&O flagship “Oriana”, and galavanting off around the mediterranean for a couple of weeks. Twenty five years later we’re repeating the…

  • Stepping Back in Time

    2026-07-17 Stepping Back in Time I just ordered a Commodore 64. I’ve been thinking about it for a very long time. There’s a bit of a back-story behind how the Commodore 64 computer has re-appeared in the world after 40 years – I won’t bore you with it. The biggest question on most people’s mind…

  • Monday

    I’m busy shaking my fist at the universe today – or rather, shaking my fist in a rather half-hearted manner, because I feel pretty awful. After spending the last two weeks fighting a cold that wouldn’t go away, my head finally began to clear over the weekend – only for a completely different virus to…

  • Flipping the Narrative

    2026-07-13 Switching off I find it incredibly difficult to switch off or slow down. There’s always something that needs doing – something to pick up – something to wash up – something to put away. I just forced myself to stop. I’m now sitting in the junk room with a huge glass of “rejuvenate super…

  • Friday

    2026-07-10 Friday We are 10 days into the month, and this is only the second blog post. I’m not quite sure how that happened. Once upon a time I would have found the time to write every day. Somehow the universe has a habit of dumping on me from quite some altitude on an unerringly…

  • In the shadows of the few

    After quite some time, this Sunday morning you find me propping up a table in Wetherspoons, having just made a “small English” disappear. Just in case you’re wondering, a “small English” consists of a hash broad, a slice of bacon, a pork sausage, a fried egg, and some baked beans. I think the normal version…

  • First run in over a year

    Oh my word I’m unfit. I snuck out at lunchtime for my first run in over a year. I thought about firing up the “Couch to 5K” app and starting over, but then thought “nah – I’ll just set off gently, and see how it goes”. The first kilometre was pretty plain sailing. Rather than…

  • Plodding Onwards

    You know the one where you realise you have barely posted once a week for the last month? Back in the mists of time I somehow managed to write almost every day – sometimes more often than that. I’ll have to go look, and figure out what on earth I wrote about. I will admit…

  • Normality Resumes

    It’s been a week since I returned from the long weekend visiting America. Quite predictably after sitting next to a horrific little man on the flight home that coughed and sneezed without covering his mouth for eight hours, I got sick – which wiped out the latter part of the week and much of last…