Recursive Words

Running around in circles

March 29, 2026

I’m just wondering where the hell Sunday went.

(please excuse me while I rewind inside my head)

I vaguely remember waking up early this morning, and thinking “if I get up now, I’ll have hours before the rest of the family wake up”. And then of course I fell asleep – waking up a little after 8am. Oh – correction – 9am, because the clocks went forward overnight.

We’re now on “British Summer Time” – or “GMT+1” for the next six months – which seems to have been instituted during the first world war to help conserve energy, and give farmers more productive time in the fields.

Apparently there was a “British Double Summer Time” for a couple of years, and even a “British Summer Time All Year” as recently as fifty years ago. Who knew?

Anyway…

After scraping myself out of bed, having a shower, and throwing yesterday’s clothes back on I spent the majority of the morning helping a friend move her blog from LiveJournal to Substack. The move of all of her content was pretty straightforward – the arrival in the middle of a social network that probably now exceeds anything that existed in the late 2000s during the “Web 2.0” explosion was probably quite overwhelming.

I looked it up – Substack now has over thirty five million active users. It’s huge. No wonder the celebrities have started to arrive en-masse. Thankfully it’s algorithmic timeline is largely self-policing, meaning the usual chaos caused by the hate filled idiots that blight every other social network hasn’t happened yet. Give them time, I guess. Although saying that – given that Substack is designed for writers and readers to connect with each other, that’s kind of a spanner in the cogs of the most extreme idiots – because most of them can’t write any more than what they’ve been told to believe – and that gets cancelled pretty damn quickly these days.

“Threads” had the same thing happen – it was a veritable paradise for those leaving Twitter – until the idiots left Twitter and brought their misguided, misinformed hate to Threads too. It hasn’t happened at Substack yet, but I have no doubt it will – given time.

Oh, how thankful we are for the powers to ignore that which we would rather not see on the internet. While the algorithmic timeline has many problems, being able to filter out the hate isn’t one of them.

The real problem – no doubt – will be the marketers. While the celebrities have already begun to arrive at Substack en-masse, their agents, publishers, producers, and marketers will not be far behind. Of course then they’ll discover that the public are not actually interested in them so much as the people they either represent, or exploit – so won’t gain much traction. It’s funny how removing the layers between ourselves and those we wish to follow works.

ANYWAY.

I got my friend’s blog moved over from LiveJournal.

All it will take is one more argument between Russia and the west, and the entire existence of LiveJournal could well vanish between the waves – which will be a shame, because it really paved the way for “blogging” as we know it.

This afternoon I was in the middle of creating content for YouTube when I happened to look at the clock, and realise that if somebody didn’t get off their arse and start cooking dinner, none of us would be eating until very late indeed. Guess who that somebody was – go on – just guess.

Two and a half hours later we all sat down at the dinner table together, and ate a traditional roast dinner. Half an hour later, the plates were in the dishwasher. It never ceases to amaze me how long it takes to make a roast dinner (which isn’t difficult), versus how long it takes to eat it, and then wash up.

So.

It’s now 8pm on Sunday evening, and I find myself with nothing of consequence to get on with. I’m thinking perhaps a book, or some proper doom scrolling on the internet. Or perhaps email a few friends.

Perhaps I’ll finish this blog post first, and click the submit button.

Oh while I think of it – I finally lost my temper with WordPress earlier (again). While they might tout that much of the published internet relies upon them, it doesn’t take away from the fact that their user interface, and infrastructure is hopelessly out-dated and broken. The very fact that I have to lower the defences on my browser to click a like button is beyond belief really.

If you see a like or a comment from me at Substack over the next few days – you’ll know why.

Now please excuse me while I finish the remains of this bottle of red wine, and doom scroll for a bit.
The Wooden Spoon

March 28, 2026

We won an actual “wooden spoon” this evening, after taking part in the local rugby club quiz. We came last. Apparently, after complaints that the last iteration of the quiz had been “too difficult”, this year’s incarnation drew inspiration only from current events of the last twelve months.

Could you name the highest selling musical artists of the last twelve months? We thought we might at least get a few. We thought wrong. We thought wrong about a lot of things.
To be honest, going out to do a pub quiz is never really about the quiz – it’s about having an excuse to go out and spend the evening with friends. Sure, you’ll find the occasional “professional quizzers” that sit there with their glass of lemonade, hunched over the answer sheet – but we’re not those people. Not those people at all.

Today also coincided with a wonderful friend’s movie being released on Amazon Movies. She started writing during the pandemic, and following a tortuous journey over the last several years, has ended up with an actual movie out there in the wild – with her name in the titles and everything.

I’m really not sure how to relate how proud I am of her.

It’s been super interesting over the last couple of years, listening to the adventure that bringing a story from words on a page to something you can watch on your TV entails. Having been on the outside, looking in, I’m filled with wonder at the people that do this year in, year out. It seems to be very much a calling.

Walking home from the rugby club reminded me just how wonderful our circle of friends are – and how little time we have spent with them in recent months. Life happens, as they say. There’s been rather a lot of “life happening” in the last couple of years – far more than I remember in the past.

Everybody I speak to at the moment seems to express the same sentiments – that they don’t remember the last time they slowed down. Everybody seems to be surrounded by chaos at the moment. Everybody.

Let’s cross our fingers, and hope this weekend the chaos does as it’s told, and stays out of our way at least for a day or two. A day or two would be nice.
Thursday Night

March 26, 2026

The clock is inexorably ticking towards midnight. Thursday has almost given way to Friday, and once again I find myself wondering where the week has gone. I’m also wondering what on earth I might share. Having nothing of consequence to share hasn’t stopped me in the past, so we’ll see where this goes.

I’ve just spent the last ten minutes doing anything but write. I’ve made a coffee, chosen some music, tidied the room up, checked the news…

Some days the words come. Some days they don’t.

Not leaving the house for days on end doesn’t help. Every day becomes Groundhog Day – up, shower, dressed, coffee, empty the dishwasher, empty the bins, work, coffee, work, make some lunch and fill the washing machine, fold clothes, work, coffee, work, help with dinner, eat, wash up, record something for YouTube, put the dishwasher on, tidy the kitchen up (again), then noodle around with computers or the internet until stupid o’clock before reading in bed and falling asleep a few pages further on in whatever book I’ve been trying to read.

It’s relentless.

It will surprise nobody to learn that I’m already eyeing the point at which I might retire – or rather the point at which I might step away from a “normal” job, and go full-time as a content creator. I’m not really sure it will scale, but it would be interesting to find out. I guess the only risk is the thing I do for fun at the moment would become work – and that would kind of remove the fun from it.

In a perfect world I would write for a living. Unfortunately the market for breathless tales about sitting in the junk room each day, rambling on about nothing in particular is probably non existent. I’m a pragmatist, if nothing else.

I’ve always wondered how the economics of “being an author” work – because unless you’re one of the luck 1% that have “made it”, I can’t see how they keep their head above water. I’ve always suspected that most authors either have a “real job”, or they inherited wealth from elsewhere. I’m guessing everybody knows that most magazine journalists back in the day were unpaid interns – the children of wealthy families that could bank-roll them? It explains a lot.

Anyway.

While procrastinating famously a little earlier, I decided to resume an experiment. Rather than choose one place for the blog to exist, I’m going to let it co-exist in several places simultaneously – at WordPress, Tumblr, and Substack. Feel free to frequent whichever makes most sense for you.

I should really go brush my teeth, then head to bed. We all know staying up late to avoid tomorrow doesn’t work. It’s a fun game to play though, isn’t it.
Another unhinged dream

March 22, 2026

I’m writing this one down, before it leaves my head. Who knew the blog would turn into a journal of dreams?

I had been enlisted to look in on an apartment owned by somebody else – why or how are lost to me – because they had pet pigs, who apparently had access to the house – but were small, and house-trained. Crazy enough for you yet?

So I find myself in this house, and the pigs have pretty much put themselves to bed, and I sit in the lounge, and notice a laptop, or a tablet – again, the detail has gone – that has apparently noticed me in the room, and switched itself on. On the screen of the laptop, I can see my blog.

So I’m in a complete stranger’s house, and apparently the absent stranger reads my blog.

It gets weirder.

I hear a car pull into the driveway below – the living room is on the first floor – and make my way to the door to explain my presence. Because I’m doing this as a favour for a friend, the apartment owner isn’t going to be expecting me. I panic about how I’m going to introduce myself.

And then I notice a photo on the wall – among a collection of photos of past holidays around the world. The owner of the apartment – I’m guessing – is standing on the deck of a boat off the coast of Turkey. I know it’s Turkey, because I’m in the photo too, and I remember the day.

Twenty something years ago I stayed in a retreat in the mountains of the south coast of Turkey – a group of us from all walks of life came together for a week – a “boutique hotel”. We became unlikely friends for a time. The lady in the photo was one of our number.

I remember going for a long walk in the hills with her during our stay. We came across all manner of people – wonderful people. We couldn’t communicate, but met toothy grins from farmers, field workers, and shepherds.

One particular memory has stayed with me all these years later – of the most beautiful young woman I had ever seen, wrapped in patterned shawls, hanging washing on a line outside a farm-house. She recoiled behind the hanging sheets as her younger siblings raced towards us. I’ve always wondered what she knew of the rest of the world – given the remoteness of her life – and if not knowing would actually be a wonderful thing.

In the moments before the owner of the apartment approached the door, I woke up.
Escaping

March 21, 2026

I remember reading a blog written by an “Automattician” years ago – a wonderful lady that worked for Automattic as one of the WordPress “Happiness Engineers”. She often told stories about the experience of working from home, and I wondered what it might be like. If you didn’t know, Automattic don’t have a “place” – they were one of the first companies to prove that you didn’t need one – working from home was their normal.

Of course then the pandemic happened, and many of us got to find out exactly what working from home was like. I never stopped. The company I worked for at the time realised how much money they could save, and sold the office. We then got acquired by a much bigger company where “working from anywhere” had become their normal too.

I don’t know why I’m being so careful not to expose who I work for – you can head to LinkedIn and find out easily enough. Actually – that might be quite funny. If you’re on LinkedIn, go search for me and connect – leave me some good feedback – I’ll reciprocate. It will infuriate those that obsess over such things. Who are these people he suddenly knows? Where did they come from? How does he know them?

I really don’t like what LinkedIn has become. Most companies have taken ownership of their staff’s LinkedIn profiles. One day, when I retire, perhaps I’ll set about going rogue – fighting against the torrent of performative commercial slop with a diary of an ex-techie.

Maybe I’m just becoming a bit too cynical about it all.

There is a point to tilting at the working-from-home windmills today – or rather there was before I slide into an anti-social-media rant. One of the down-sides of working from home, and having a chaotic home life too, is that you rarely leave the hamster-wheel house any more. Just this week myself and my other half were both talking about joining the gym in town – purely to have an hour every other day away from the mayhem.

And finally the point of the post. I’ve escaped!

I’m sitting in ‘spoons this morning, nursing the leftovers of a cappuccino. As wonderful as it has been to sit on my own, eat a cooked breakfast that I don’t have to either cook or wash-up and empty my head into the laptop for a few minutes, I fear my time here might already be coming to an end. When I arrived perhaps three quarters of an hour ago the place was remarkably empty – and then peak Saturday morning rush unfolded around me. Families are arriving en-masse and starting a fight over tables and chairs. I’m half expecting to see a Jack Nicholson character standing over a table somewhere soon (love “As Good as it Gets”).

Isn’t serendipity wonderful. Lana del Rey has just started singing in my ears. The perfect soundtrack to a weekend that will very probably hurtle into the ditch in the next few hours.

Anyway.

At least I had this hour.

My next destination? The book shop, the card shop, and the florist. It’s my other half’s birthday tomorrow. She often gets taken for granted by the kids – we both do – so I’m leaning into the weekend a bit more than usual. We’re going out for lunch together tomorrow, and then to a show in the evening. Henning Wehn at Wycombe tomorrow night – she got me the tickets for my birthday, so we could go – kind of a joint present. I’m looking forward to it.

Right… this place is descending into madness. I’m going to post this, and will hopefully catch up later in the weekend with tales of cutting the lawn, going running, and surviving the apocalypse.
An old friend and a dream

March 19, 2026

I had the strangest dream last night. I’m writing it down before it leaves my head. Have you ever noticed that? – how if you don’t tell somebody about a dream, or write down anything about it, it will vanish from your memory? Huge parts of it have already gone, but the who is still there.

Back in the early days of Blogger, Tumblr, and LiveJournal I became friends – if you can call reading each other’s journal “friends” – with all sorts of people, all over the world. This was of course back in the relatively early days of blogging, when people shared the unvarnished happenings of their daily lives – before all the niche slop arrived.

We each shared the smallest moments of our days, and became an odd sort of not-so-secret society. Of course we were all learning how to “be” in that world too – a world with no guard rails, and that seemingly existed outside of the “real world”. Mistakes were of course made – by most of us.

Anyway.

A few of those nebulous friendships solidified over time. I still follow some of them now. The likelihood of us ever meeting was always incredibly low, but we’re still out there – at the four corners of each other’s world – occasionally crossing paths. Old friendships are strange like that, aren’t they – no matter how long it’s been since you said hello, the moment you do, it’s like no time has passed at all.

You never really leave each other’s orbit.

In last night’s dream a friend from those early days entered my “real world”. I’m not really sure why or how. We were just there. I was showing them around London – walking down back streets, and then in a hotel lobby, meeting their dog, and then in an old curiosity shop, looking at all manner of bits of pieces together.

And then I woke up.

And now I want to reach out and tell them about the dream – to find out if they had the same dream too. How on earth do you do that without sounding like a crazy person though?
Amaze Amaze Amaze

March 16, 2026

I worked late into the evening this evening – for no other reason than what I have been working on is really interesting, and a little voice kept whispering into my ear “if this works, it will be really cool”.

It’s difficult or impossible to describe what I was working on without betraying commercial confidences, or causing you to fall asleep standing up – so I won’t try.

It’s difficult to describe my work at the best of times – especially to anybody that’s never programmed a computer. It’s bit like being a carpenter, or a plumber, or a bricklayer I suppose – but also the architect – inventing structures the like of which never existed before.

Actually, perhaps the better analogy to my typical work would be to look at two completely different buildings, and to figure out how you might build a building in-between that’s connected to both, without affecting the workings of either of the buildings it connects to, but improves them immeasurably at the same time.

I’m probably making no sense.

Something I’ve often found quite odd is how terrible I am at foreign languages. I can program computers in all sorts of languages, and have an insane memory for them – but I struggle with real-world languages.

Anyway.

As you can probably tell, my head hasn’t slowed down yet – hence the scattered thoughts. This happens a lot. I suppose in some ways I’m writing this as an intervention of sorts – to change direction.

I’m sipping a glass of wine, eating broken chocolate biscuits, and watching an 80s playlist on the TV. Spandau are singing “True”, and we’re joking that it ended every disco when we were young. Oh the awkward memories.

David Bowie is singing “Let’s Dance” now. I don’t recall ever seeing the video for it before – it’s utterly, utterly mad.

Oh – nearly forgot – we made it out to the cinema last night – to see “Hail Mary” – based on the book by Andy Weir, starring Ryan Gosling. It was wonderful. I’m not going to ruin it for you if you’ve not seen it. I had an inkling what it was about, and had not read the book – so went into it blind. Wonderful, wonderful movie.

I’ll end the post with words you’ll only understand if you’ve either read, or seen Hail Mary…

Amaze, amaze, amaze.
Saturday

March 14, 2026

For the first time in weeks – months even – the weekend is our own. I’m sitting in the study, listening to music, and almost giddy with all the things I won’t be doing. Not having to be somewhere, be looking after somebody, running an errand, or whatever else leaves me at a completely loose end. I had almost completely forgotten what it felt like.

I’m listening to “Golden Hour” by Kacey Musgraves, sipping a coffee, and taking the opportunity to just “be present” for a change – in a way that I haven’t been for a long time. It’s kind of nice.

I don’t really have anything to write about – but I’m writing it anyway. I guess that pre-supposes that nothing can be something – which probably breaks physics in all sorts of important ways.

I didn’t go for a run this morning. I thought about it. And then thought “you know what – you need to slow the hell down – this is the first day you’ve had to yourself in forever”. So I didn’t go for a run, and I didn’t go to Spoons for breakfast either. I wandered downstairs, put some bread in the toaster, and made a coffee.

There’s a part of me that feels a bit self conscious if I escape to a cafe or pub with the laptop – like I’m pretending in some way. It feels performative. I know it’s no more than imposter syndrome, but it still feels odd.

I will go for a run tomorrow morning though. I need to do something.

I got called “basic” by my eldest daughter yesterday. She wasn’t wrong. The rest of the family came home from a shopping trip to the discount store in a nearby town, and returned with a present for me – a box of broken chocolate biscuits. I did a happy dance in the kitchen, which elicited the “basic” label. You can take your fancy cakes, and filter coffees – I’ll always be happiest with a cup of coffee and a chocolate biscuit.

Right.

I suppose I better go and lean into this whole “doing nothing on purpose” lark. The only problem? I’m not good at doing nothing. I’m an expert at finding some idiot rabbit hole to fall down.

Maybe I’ll get the chess board out.
Here comes the rain again

March 13, 2026

The rain has been falling all evening – washing the world away around us. I wouldn’t be surprised if we open the curtains in the morning, and find our house bobbing around in the middle of an ocean – with seagulls circling overhead.

It’s been a day.

Another day.

Filled with chores, and errands, and washing clothes, and washing dishes, and… just an endless churn of everything really.

Before work started this morning I had something to write about. I nearly started. Unfortunately the rest of the day has conspired to erase it from my thoughts. That’s been happening a lot recently. Perhaps I need to start writing things down. Odd thoughts that occur to me throughout the day. “Odd thoughts” would be a good title for an online publication, wouldn’t it.

At least work went well. Of course I can’t tell you anything about it, so I don’t quite know why I’m telling you about it at all – but without work, and chores, I don’t really have anything else at the moment.

During a quiet moment about a week ago I discovered an online penpal type thing called “Slowly”. I don’t even recall how I discovered it now – it could have been the result of a conversation with AI about websites that largely self-govern. Slowly lets people send messages to others around the world, and it simulates them taking time to get to their destination – depending on the geographical distance between the origin and destination.

Apparently I made my introductory message a little bit too good – because over the next few days I had an in-box filled with messages from all over the place – and me being me, couldn’t ignore them, so spent time replying to each and every message – and so it has gone one.

I have un-replied messages waiting for me now, and they are gnawing away at my subconscious. A voice is whispering into my ear that these people will think badly of me for not replying already – or not replying properly.
I really am my own worst enemy sometimes.

It doesn’t help that quite often I catch my own prejudices while sorting through the messages – wondering if people are who they say they are – or if they will start to pull some sort of social engineering scam at some point – or suddenly claim they need help with a medical bill.

Anyway.

It’s getting late.

I should go to bed.

Tomorrow is another day, and all that…
The Endless

March 11, 2026

Somehow – in-between working all day – I managed to get four loads through the washing machine and tumble dryer. I also emptied the dishwasher, re-filled the dishwasher, and emptied it again. And put the rubbish out, and collected the empty bins back in again. I never really “stop”.

And then my other half’s car broke down – which meant I also cooked dinner for everybody, and washed up afterwards.

Somehow I then found time to record some content for YouTube – which I’m only too aware was “mailed in” – before answering emails, and finally sitting down in the living room – at 11pm.

It’s now heading towards 1am, and I’m looking sideways at a glass of wine. A second glass of wine. To take the edge off the day.

It’s funny really – although I like a glass of wine, I rarely drink it any more. Invariably – while at home – I will drink coffee, because I don’t want to waste the time that wine would invariably cause. I want to have my wits about me, and I don’t want a headache in the morning.

Anyway.

Like I said. It’s racing towards 1am. Time to head to bed, and fall asleep with my nose in a book – not for the first time this week.
Weekend News

March 7, 2026

Back when I was at primary school, we each wrote in a book each Monday with our news of the weekend – accompanied by a picture. The teacher would typically help write one or two sentences, and we would copy what they had written. I thought it might be fun to title this post similarly, and impart what’s been going on in the hereabouts while still in the thick of it.

Where to start?

My old domain name has returned to so sail the seven seas of the internet. I’m not entirely sure the internet has seven seas, or any seas at all, but I’ve written it now, and I can’t be bothered to backspace through it.

Henceforth, the pollution that pours forth from my keyboard will be traceable to recursivewords.com. It only took a week to transfer from it’s previous hiding place. The transfer process reminded me somewhat of the old bank clearing system, where your money passed into their hands for several days before appearing at it’s destination – several days where they had your money to play with, and you did not.

In other news, the bathroom is finally finished. The washing machine is back on, the tumble dryer has arrived, and we’re all waiting impatiently to try the shower out tomorrow (the final sealant went in this morning – it’s curing today).

My entire world feels like it’s been skidding sideways recently. I’ve had no time to record content for YouTube, no time to run, no time to read, no time for anything really. Work has eaten into early evenings, and home is just an endless round of chores where you end up in a slightly worse place than you started each day.

Perhaps tomorrow morning I’ll get up bright and early, and escape to the pub for breakfast – I haven’t managed to do so for over a month because I’ve either been stuck here for builders, for babies, to wait for packages, to run errands, or whatever else each weekend has thrown at me.

Tonight we are escaping for a couple of hours though – invited out for dinner by some close friends. A rare treat. We nearly didn’t go though – eldest daughter is out for the night, middle daughter is working, and youngest daughter’s boyfriend is at his Mum’s house after a medical emergency last week – leaving our youngest on her own with the baby.

I guess she has to learn to cope on her own at some point. Of course it’s sods law that the baby has chosen tonight to scream the house down. Perhaps she’ll blow herself out, and sleep for the rest of the evening?

Anyway.

I have to go! Going out out!
Raiding the Kindle Book Store

March 6, 2026

While tidying up in the hallway last night I discovered an envelope with my name on it tucked down the side of the window in the hallway. An undelivered birthday card from earlier in the week. Upon opening the card I discovered not one, but two Amazon vouchers.

Here’s the crazy thing – I have more than enough money in the bank to go and buy books whenever I want, but resist doing so because I have so many unread books on the shelves behind me already.

Give me a voucher though, and guess what I’m going to do?
The attraction of the Kindle book store is of course that you receive the books immediately, rather than waiting until tomorrow. Tomorrow is forever away, isn’t it?

I will unashamedly admit that I then spent an HOUR choosing a few books to download to my Kindle. After searching classics, and contemporary fiction, I ended up choosing the following:

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
A Widow for One Year, by John Irving
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
The Graduate, by Charles Webb

I’ve been on a bit of an Ernest Hemingway kick recently. I’ve always loved the way he writes, and after watching “Midnight in Paris”, ended up reading “A Moveable Feast”, and fell in love with it.

A small part of “A Widow for One Year” was made into a wonderful movie with Kim Basinger and Jeff Bridges a few years ago called “The Door in the Floor”. I’ve always known it was from a much longer book, but never got around to getting a copy – until today.

I guess Wuthering Heights made it onto the list because of the recent movie. We didn’t make it to the cinema to watch it, but I’m still curious what all the fuss is about. I’m very much my own person when it comes to “the classics” – I would much rather read them and make my own mind up, rather than spout the received wisdom of others.

The same goes for “The Graduate”. I’ve never actually seen all of the movie with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft – of course I’ve seen the famous bits – and I’ve often wondered what it’s really about. Now I’ll get to find out.

So there you go. Several books to read in bed over the next few weeks.