OK – another few months have passed….

John Lennon is reputed to have said ‘Life is what happens when you’re making other plans‘. There is also the old saying ‘Man plans, God laughs‘. And then there’s ‘Joe is really an idle, easily distracted procrastinator.‘ You may choose your own reason why I haven’t posted.

Today, in a valiant effort to make this site look something like my favourite writing environment, I sat down with coffee, chatGPT, the WordPress Twenty Twentyfive theme and a vague idea of ‘Make it look like a yellow pad’. I also thought that doing this might encourage me to get back in to the swing of things!

I have to say that I managed a lot of what I wanted to do without too much input from the AI, but when I did need it it delivered the goods.

So….I am rapidly running out of excuses, but not ideas. Wahtch this space…I will publish or this site will be consigned to the dustbin of history!

Well… it’s been a while. In fact, it’s been quite a while. The last time I hit ‘Publish’ on here was back in 2018 — which now feels like several lifetimes ago.

Since then, the world has had a habit of throwing us all a few curveballs (understatement of the century?), and I’ve found myself both full of things to say and yet strangely reluctant to say any of them here. I am probably the only person in the world who has ever blogged but who didn’t comment on COVID, Trump 1, and the the rest of the global craziness that have enveloped us since 2018.

In that time I’ve experienced bereavement, depression, getting old, failing knees, the passing of my feline friends and the arrival of a new cat at Pritchard Towers. And, despite my comments in Gutterdamerung…. I did, in fact, finally replace the gutters….

Lately, I’ve been feeling that old itch again — the urge to share thoughts, amusements, frustrations, the odd half-formed rant, and maybe the occasional story about half-forgotten curiosities that no one else seems to care about. In other words… back to normal service.

I’ve missed the way blogging lets me ramble, reflect, and connect with anyone who happens to stumble in. Over the years, this place has been part soapbox, part notebook, part midnight musings — and I’d like it to be that again.

So, this is just a little note to say hello if you’re still out there, thank you if you’ve ever read any of this, and brace yourself — because I have no idea where this will go next, but it’s probably going to involve books, films, music, random dreams I feel compelled to jot down, occasional rants about whatever passes for technology these days, and a fair sprinkling of nostalgia. And, as Ben Elton used to say ‘A little bit of politics’

If you’ve stuck around this long, you’re either wonderfully patient or just forgot to delete the bookmark — either way, I’m glad you’re here.

Normal Service, whatever that may be, will hopefully be resumed… soon.

My biggest personal productivity shortcoming – and trust me, I have a few – is probably my ability to get easily distracted.  It used be procrastination, but I gradually managed to get that at least a little under control.  But focus is definitely an issue. I guess part of it is that I have something of a butterfly mind,  (oops…just flicked away briefly from here because a Skype message popped up) and I probably do have a low boredom threshold.

There’s a saying ‘Started is half done’ which I think I’ve misunderstood and turned in to ‘Started is finished, it just needs tidying up, and tidying up can wait…’.  The number of half finished projects around here is still pretty big – but again, not as big as it used to be, thank goodness.

I call my moments of lost focus and distractedness ‘Oooh….squirrel’ moments. Let me share the reason for this. Many years ago, our neighbours over the back wall used to have a gigantic tree in their garden. I was huge – thicker than a telegraph pole, visible from a mile and a half away, and as far as I was concerned it was poised to come crashing down through our back bedroom every winter.  When the wind blew, the tree added it’s own ‘Dodgy Horror Film’ sound effects, and it blotted out half the sky.

But the one benefit of this tree was squirrels. Dozens of the times a day we’d see squirrels running up and down it, popping on to the bird table, running around the garden, chasing our cats (Marvin, I’m talking about you….) On at least one occasion one popped up on the back window ledge and looked in whilst I was working at the dining room table.

Whenever one of these little chaps came in to view, I’d take a look.  There were occasions when my wife and I would be talking and the person with the view of the yard would suddenly stop what they were saying and doing and utter the words ‘Oooh….squirrel!’ to indicate that a ‘tree-rat’ was doing something cute.  OK – or to indicate that a squirrel was doing something….squirrelish.

It eventually became something of a code-word in household conversations for when one of us became momentarily distracted and lost the thread.

The tree was eventually removed – I love not having it there but miss the squirrels enormously, although in the last year the odd one has shown up on the edge of the garden near other trees.  But the phrase has stayed with us.

And it’s now become the code word for one of us being distracted, or losing focus. In fact, I now use it deliberately when I can feel my attention slipping – no squirrel in sight; just uttering the words makes me at least aware that I’ve temporarily lost the plot.  It’s become something of a standing joke in Pritchard towers, and I even have a daft expression on my face – a sort of quizzical look.

It’s become a helpful tool in my attempts to stay on focus. As soon as I say ‘Oooh…squirrel’, I tend to stop what I’m attempting to do and deliberately break from it. I look around the room and my head for the squirrel; was it an outside distraction, social media, boredom? When I’ve acknowledged my squirrel I’ll often review what I’m doing to see whether I’ve totally blown it in some way, but more often than not I can soon get back to the planned activity with that ‘mind break’ done.

Just admitting the presence in the room of that virtual squirrel acknowledges that I’ve been distracted, and I’ve dealt with it.

Of course, sometimes the squirrel just sits there being cute and I have to break off what I’m doing altogether – that’s often when I know I’m bored or distracted beyond saving and need to go and mentally watch the cute little bugger do what it will for a while.

And on that note…ooooh….SQUIRREL!