I was advised against running because I had asthma and it makes running difficult, but the pattern of the above paragraph kept playing over in my head. If I didn’t do something, I wouldn’t be able to do it, so I wouldn’t.

I can, and people do, apply this to other parts of my life. I’m bad with numbers so I rely on electronics. I have To Do lists because I err towards the flighty.

I don’t like crowds because I tend not to make an impression and until then worry how much of a matter me being there makes.

When my job determined I did a lot more driving and far less walking, I became really unfit, even to the point where common colds became battles for breath.

A few people tried to warn me off running because of my general health, and when they did it came from the right place, but this encouraged me even more. And now, two months on, I can run three miles without stopping. That’s twenty five minutes flat.

I don’t want to gloat here, but if I can’t gloat here where can I? I am really pleased with this. And I’m not saying you can’t, because I’m sure you’ve got your thing that would help you. There must be an obstacle that may seem more of a bet than an investment.

They always say that with investing you should never put in what you can’t afford to lose, but with personal matters you probably have nothing to lose.

I can run for twenty five minutes without stopping. And in two weeks I’m going to make that half an hour. That’s more than I have been able to run for the last twenty three years.

In France, I ran between cornfields through valleys past war graves while tractors passed me. I was someone more than myself. Churches pulled closer with footfalls. FOOTFALLS.

I hope you’ll do some things. Not for anyone else, but for you – although they could benefit if you do. Sort out your photos. Stop biting your nails. Learn your seven times table – you don’t REALLY know it. Read in the evenings. Write in the mornings. Ask someone to recommend an obscure favourite band. Complain where you should have. Drink more water. Get some rest.

This one’s for you.

Take care of yourself.

It was about a man who keeps the time at the Bureaux de l’Heure in Brussels. From his office, literally on his watch, all the clocks fall into line or go out of sync. Without this guy, trains wouldn’t meet connections, satellites wouldn’t hook up, cats and dogs living together, etc.

It was worthy, and it was in French and it would have done me a power of good had not been for the fact that it was boring me.

My view is that there are so many things to read that if you something and it doesn’t start working for you in the first seventy pages, then move on. Cut your losses. You’ve lost £7.99 maybe, but you’ve saved some time. There are tons of good books for you out there. Reading a book is a relationship, not a marriage.

Anyway, I’m straying into the exact opposite of the point of I was trying to make in this post. I started writing about why I didn’t like the book, but that wouldn’t have done any good at all, for either of us.

I have come up with a few posts about blogging on here, and this is something else I’ve learned over the last five years or so:

Don’t write the posts you can write, write the ones you can’t not write.

This isn’t a one way conversation. We’re not in 2005 any more. The stream of consciousness was dammed up and there’s a boating lake there now. Most of the people floating around on it are too busy checking their RSS feeds to even realise daily posts ran through what was once a valley.

People use the internet in different ways now and they don’t wait for one blog to update.

Back in the day, bloggers would go on holiday and readers would wait for the next update. And by bloggers I mean me. It was flattering and validating but that’s not how it works anymore. It’s not just you and me now. The party’s still going on but there are people in the kitchen that I don’t even know, no one has touched the coffee and there’s a taxi outside for someone called Jill or Jillson or some such.

Now blogs only exist when they are updated – just because it’s live doesn’t mean it’s broadcasting. It’s always open mic night on the internet but you don’t always have to show up.

What I’ve lost in frequency of updates, readers have gained in variety, because more people are reading more things. And even they are not reading what they can, they’re reading what they can’t not read.

I’ve been in France and I was renting out a place which didn’t have enough sheets.

I tried to call the landlady but I couldn’t get my phone to dial out so I left the family and drove over to her house. All the way on the road, through the cornfields, over the hills and under water towers I ran through a list of what certain words were in French. I’m a little rusty with the old parlez-vous and I had been in the country for an hour and a half.

“Excusez-moi Madame, on n’a pas assez de draps a la maison.” Draps. Boom. I remembered the French word for sheets. If I ever need sheets in a Francophone nation, I’d be fucking set. I could travel the world, too. I’d go to Ile de la Reunion, Indochina, West Africa. Senegal.

“Aussi,” I add, clearly nailing it, “il n’y a pas assez de couvertures…” Arse. Duvet covers. I’m pretty sure the French for duvet isn’t duvet.

It sounds French, but then marmalade sounds French and it’s not.

So I’d be fine for sheets, but I’d be stuck for duvet covers. I wouldn’t need duvet covers in West Africa anyway. I’d be just fine.

I say duvet cover in English, defeated. “Ah,” she lights up, “douvet coveurs.”

“Oui,” I return, ” exactement.”

“Entrez, entrez,” she says.

I peer at her dog, which has been barking at me throughout the whole stilted conversation. She assures me he’s not going to bite me as she turns and disappears into her house.

Now, reader, I know I talk a big game but sure as oeufs are oeufs this is how it happened, word for word. It’s a big game anyway, and talking about it or not isn’t going to change a thing.

I walked through the gate into their garden and the dog runs up to me. His tail is wagging and it almost belies the fangs he’s bearing at me. Her husband walks out of the house and sees me trying to make nice as the dog runs around me.

“Un chien Anglais,” he says.

I don’t know the word for duvet or many dog breeds. I might need that in Northern Quebec. I know Berger Allemand, but that’s an easy one. Is it still huskey? And do they pronounce it “oo-SKEE”?

I could end up on an expedition to explore the Northern Passage with little more than sheets and labradors.

“Setter?” I say.

“Exactement.”

The dog goes to get me a slipper and teases me with it while he circles and bends around the birch saplings.

“Viens voir ce que j’ai tuer.” I don’t know if you speak French yourself, but literally, this means “Come and see what I have just killed.” I don’t think there is a figurative meaning in either language.

But I know that if anyone says this to you, you will look.

I poke my head around the doorway he has just walked through and he is pointing up at the wall at a pair of antlers about three and a half feet across.

I make an impressed noise. It’s like an intake of air, but with a whistle. I throw in a raise of the eyebrows.

“Where do you hunt?” I ask.

“This one here,” he says, “was in Normandy. I got two. This was the biggest.”

“How much did it weigh?”

“One hundred and sixty eight kilos.”

I’m terrible at small talk at the best of times, but I make more of an effort with killers.

“Quel sorte de pistolet?” I ask.

“Une carabine,” he says. A shotgun.

I realise I have just asked him what kind of pistol he used. As in a handgun. Like he put a cap in a deer’s motherfucking ass. Right after he pistol-whipped a boar.

What I meant to say was “fusil” – rifle.

“Did you eat it?” I ask.

“No, you don’t eat BLAHBLAH. You can eat deer, but not BLAHBLAH.” BLAHBLAH is the name of the animal I didn’t know, but can’t remember what it is. It had antlers.

His wife emerged with the sheets and her husband asked: “Was there some kind of problem?” He said it to her quietly.

“No,” I say. “It was my fault. The kids changed their sleeping arrangements and now we need more sheets.”

“Ah,” he says.

“I would have called but the number didn’t work. I think it was my phone.”

Right now I just want to get my sheets and go before he invites me to go hunting with him.

“Your phone?” he says. “Try it now.”

“How do you mean?”

“Try it here and call. We’ll see if they phone rings.”

“It’s probably me dialling it wrong. It’s OK.”

“No, really. Go on. If the phone rings, we’ll know that it works. Try it.”

I get my phone and dial the number but it doesn’t go through.

“You know what?” I say, ” It’s probably me. Actually I got no signal in the valley anyway. It’s fine.”

They look at each other and one says “Ah, OK. No signal.”

“There’s no signal in the valley,” says the other one.

“That’s why,” they said.

“Probably that,” I add.

They look satisfied and I thank them for “all this” (raising the sheets I’m holding) I pocket my phone and head back to the car.

I’m happier and I will communicate easier.

I am feeling a little better and have appreciated the break almost as much as I needed it.

Every time – every fucking time – I have a break coming up I’m just about hanging on by the time it comes up. I start craving quiet and the thought of unwinding with a good book. Or even a bad one. Or just unwinding.

But I’m back now, my heart a little less hard and my feet a little less tender, both in a more natural balance.

Will I really have to stop caring altogether before this happens?

Maybe, Nina. Because when you’re depressed, nothing matters at all. When you’re sad, everything does.

The entry continues:

Maybe I’ll have to get so hard that I don’t care at all. Then there’ll be NO hope for me and I don’t want to reach that point.

I suppose in a way I’d always known.

Writing as a career is tough. It doesn’t pay well and it takes discipline. But mostly the first thing.

I wanted to tell her that she needs to love it and to make sure she was following her heart and it wasn’t about the F word that the kids keep talking about. Famous.

I see people on TV every now and then, or in bands, or people who write for newspapers and I mention in passing: “I know him” or “I went to school with her.”

They are usually impressed, until I answer their next question: “So, were YOU ever famous?”

I needed to tell my daughter that you have to want to write because it makes you happy, rather than on the slim chance it will lead to fame or fortune.

“The thing about writing, daughter,” I say, “is that -”

She says: “You can’t press to hard otherwise you break your pencil?”

Me: “Um. Yes, that’s right.”

I nearly add: “Then you’re ready. You’re ready to be a writer.”

I don’t of course, but I wonder if an early shot of rejection might stand her in good stead.

Not too much has been happening with me lately. There hasn’t been tons of creativity from me and water runs slow through flat land.

I’m doing ok though. I’ve been living like a god, actually. By that I mean no one was sure if I existed or not.

I’ve started some therapy for depression. I’ve kind of kept that quiet, but it’s been under the surface for a while.

I could lie to you, or joke around it. I could joke away from it. I could tell you I’ve been working on a hybrid pleasure cruise and pets magazine entitled Motorboat Those Puppies.

Not that I’ve hidden it away or anything, but I keep parts of myself to myself. Secrets, see, are like arseholes – everyone’s got one and they’re seldom pretty.

I am a high-functioning depressive and like asmtha, it’s something I’ll always have. You can acknowledge it and take steps, but you’re somewhat defined by it, although doing your normal every day stuff is the best response. It’s a condition more that an illness. In fact the two are very similar. You’re not sick, but you’d feel better by not having it, thanks.

One thing that always gets me about therapy is that when you down the that route they treat you like you might be suicidal, because they can’t take any risks. The psychological assessors asked me questions that I would answer like: “What??? No!” and then they make a face like it’s standard procedure.

No, I’m doing all right, thanks, but I’m less convinced lately that all right is good enough. I’m worried I’m going to get to 40, or 50, with the kids grown up, only to look back and say: “You know what? I could have been happier.” I can’t let that happen.

A little flat in places, but it blows my mind.

Like Holland, only with music.

Short attention span? 2 minutes 47. Tell them I sent you.

Have a great weekend.

See? It does exactly what it says on the can.

or: “ILTES”: WEBTTTDT …AWTNTTT

Which is better, and artist’s earlier work or their later stuff?

On the one hand, in most cases, when a musician is starting out, they are going for glory, pouring everything into it and hoping people like it.

After a few years of success, they have the time and money to do what they want. Sting goes off and records an album of forgotten English folk tunes. Eric Clapton revisits the blues that inspired him. Stevie Wonder, um…

So I’d have to say that artists are better when they are starting out.

Picture the scene

Giverny, 1917

Monet: Hey Pierre. Come on through, I’m in the garden.

Pierre (Monet’s agent): So, what are you working on?

Monet: Oh, you know, outdoor things. Heavy brush strokes, interpretations in vivid colours, contrasts, textures. Same old.

Pierre: You know… That Westminster painting you did killed in London. The English are starting to get this stuff.

Monet: Yeah, but I’ve got time now. I want to work on what I want to do. I want to express myself. I want to explore the boundaries of painting. I want to explore those.

Pierre: Ponds.

Monet: Lillies, Pierre. Lillies.

Pierre: Claude, baby. Landscapes. There’s a foreign market. No one lives on lilies, man. Not even the English.

Monet: My work with lillies has not yet finished.

Pierre: Look, I didn’t say anything with the first 150 paintings, but you need to branch out.

Monet: Why must I? I do not need to work.

Pierre: But you represent a movement. You are an impressionist. Maybe the greatest ever.

Monet: Perhaps it is as you say.

Pierre: No one could touch your Jimmy Cagney.

Monet: I’m just doing my thing, OK. You come in here with your big city ideas and your suits and speak of market forces. It’s about soul, Pierre and yet you’re all “Show me the Monet!!!” Now I know how Vincent felt.

Pierre (quietly): Never sold one pain-

Monet: Never sold a painting, I know, but that’s not the point! He had his sunflowers, I have my lilies.

As a sweeping generalisation, I’d have to go with the earlier stuff most of the time. Ah, I hear you say, what of The Beatles, Steven Spielberg, Sebastiao Salgado, Paul Klee, George Carlin and Elvis Costello.

For every example of late bloomers who turned into mighty oaks (stay with me), I’ll show you two Serge Gainsbourgs, Pearl Jams, Stings, JD Salingers, Woody Allens and Robin Williamses. Or a Paul MacCartney. As an aside, do you have any idea how unbelievably shit John Lennon would be if he were still alive? Macca’s trangressions I can accept, but the sins of a 90’s walrus would have been unforgivable.

Artists need conviction because conviction is soul and soul is self expression and self expression for the enjoyment of others is art.

It’s also why every blogger thinks they aren’t as good as they used to be. Because the thing that got us started is very different from the motivation we need to keep going. And because very few of us can lay claim to being Elvis Costello, we’ll always think not only that we’ve already had our shot, but that we blew it.

Which is why we’ll carry on.

Which is why we’ll get better.

The fundraisers, some of whom when they’re not walking they’re blogging, are just a few small hundred pounds shy of the £20,000 raised for the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity founded by their friends in memorial to their son Joseph who died aged 3 in April of 2005.

The Trust supports parents who have lost a child by providing financial assistance to those who need it most. This may be to help with funeral costs, or enable the self employed to take time off work in order to grieve.

If you’d like to help them hit their target, you can donate here .

Congratulations to the walkers, and I hope the money helps bereaved parents with their own journey, moving them in some small way to where they need to be.

Me: About three.

RW: Really?

CJ: Sometimes, yeah.

RW: Out of ten, right?

CJ: Per cent.

RW: Wow.

So I haven’t been writing here much because of work and things, and I don’t pretend it’s 2005 any longer and blogging’s all there is. That particular train doesn’t call at as many stations it used to, which is a shame.

It really is, how the early bloggers don’t write the future as much as they used to. That’s the thing about movements, you don’t really recognise them while they’re going on. They need their place in time to give you that perspective. I don’t count myself among them, really, because I was late to the party myself. Just on that metaphor, I’ve moved to the couch with a bottle of wine, maybe someone has a number they won’t call and there are suggestions of coffee which I ignore as I’m talking unconvincingly about the government or where the next Olympics are going to be.

This isn’t a melancholy post, by the way. I’ve just been elsewhere. I have been working a lot and reading in the last couple of months, too.

I read Liverpool In The 1930s and The Blitz by Ron Garnett, partly out of research but also because I want to understand the world my dad grew up in and years on now it seems a different planet from 1970’s Pennsylvania where I grew up such as I did. It’s a tender memoir of the city after the first world war and on into the second. The author went to the same school as my dad, and I recognised stories he told me about teachers he had, and the day Oswald Mosley visited the ground outside the school and someone standing near my uncle hurled a brick at the guy. We talked about it last week and he’s reading through it now.

I also read The Wild Things by Dave Eggers, which was OK, but the first of his books that I didn’t necessarily love.

The Name Of The World by Denis Johnson, on the other hand, is a different story, literally (“Nice” – reader’s voice). It’s about an academic and his place in the world alone and how he works in an industry with people he’s not really into, and what becomes of the content outsider when forty hits? It’s a tender portrait and very well written.

Clive James argues against struggling through worthy books for the sake of virtue. He says: “Without enjoyment, there is no art” and that’s completely right. I try and switch up books between those I read for their literary prowess and other for sheer enjoyment. Occasionally there is a sweet spot where you hit both, but sometimes you have to take one or the other.

Right now I’m reading A Connecticut Yankee In King Edward’s Court by Mark Twain, and it’s tough going, because you’re reading a Missouran’s interpretation of medieval English, which slows me down a bit, but the man tells a story like no one else.

I read that on the back of  a fun one, a real romp and adventure. It was light, but I make no excuses – what’s been really buckling my swash these days is the Genghis Khan series by Conn Iggulden. I’m glad that the books are easier to read that his name, because they have a real pace and power to them that draws into view a remarkable era. I’m about to start the third and latest one of the series and they are brilliant.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing as well, trying to flesh out something of a story. They say everyone’s got a book in them. I don’t know if that’s true, but the other day I woke up and all my pencils and about 70,000 words were missing.

I don’t know if much will amount by it, but we’ll see and I’ll share the love here.

I’m also running, which I haven’t done in years. I know that doesn’t seem like a good idea because of my asthma, but I think that if it’s hard then it’s a sign you need to slow things down get better at it, or it’s always going to be difficult. I’ve set myself a goal that by September I’ll be able to run 30 minutes non-stop. This will be awesome.

On the one hand, in most cases, when a musician is starting out, they are going for glory, pouring everything into it and hoping people like it.

After a few years of success, they have the time and money to do what they want. Sting goes off an records an album of forgotten English folk tunes. Eric Clapton revisits the blues that inspired him. Stevie Wonder, um…

I’d have to say that artists are better when they are starting out.

Picture the scene

Givenchy (year)

Monet: Hey Pierre. Come on through, I’m in the garden.

Pierre (Monet’s agent): So, what are you working on?

Monet: Oh, you know, outdoor things. Heavy brush strokes, interpretations in vivid colours, contrasts, textures. Same old.

Pierre: You know… That Westminster painting you did killed in London. The English are starting to get this stuff.

Monet: yeah, but I’ve got time now. I want to work on what I want to do. I want to express myself. I want to explore the boundaries of painting. I want to explore those.

Pierre: Ponds.

Monet: Lillies, Pierre. Lillies.

Pierre: Claude, baby. Landscapes. There’s a foreign market. No one lives on lilies, man. Not even the English.

Monet: My work with lilies has not yet finished.

Pierre: Look,

Monet: I’m just doing my thing, OK. You come in here with your big city ideas and your suits and speak of market forces. It’s about soul, Pierre and yet you’re all “Show me the Monet!!!” Now I know how Vincent felt.

Pierre (quietly): Never sold one pain-

Monet: I know he never sold a painting, but that’s not the point! He had his sunflowers, I have my lilies.

A Paul Macartney. As an aside, do you have any idea how unbelievably shit John Lennon would be if he were still alive?

So are web developers and technical architects.

Windsor is quite close to Farnham.

It’s about 25 miles as the crow flies, travelling as it would over the green belt border through Berkshire skies and on into Surrey. But crows travel light and people prefer to take the train.

Information online moves between people across systems in any numbers of ways. It gets coupled and decoupled and disseminated at its destination and spat out in a way people can easily digest. Often content providers carry lots of data which is split up for different clients to display in a way they choose.

For example, a sport news agency could provide a range of football data including scores, live play-by play updates, in-game text comments from users, video highlights, match stats, half-time summaries, as-it-stands league tables, betting odds, audio commentary, live streaming video, celebrity post-match analysis and a full time summary.

Now imagine you’re the director of a mobile network. You have customers looking at small screens who want information on the move and you have a limited budget.

You really want live streaming video, because none of your competitors offer it, and also know your parent company bought the rights in your territory.

It is the content most desired among football fans, and as far as your budget goes, it’s free. Additional content will cost more, and besides, with video-capable mobile devices becoming a standard, you see littl point in offering text commentary and half time summaries as a poor alternative to live video, right?

Good move. You’re a smart operator. I knew that from the moment you clicked on the link to get here. Which link was that by the way? That’s the one. With the blue text? Or the one with the picture? Exactly, I know it well.

Now imagine you’re a web developer. You’ve been up all night playing dungeons and dragons and you’re on your forth mocha (only joking) and your director walks in (seriously, cappuccino) and says: “We need to get video highlights attached to every weekly newsletter we send. Is that possible?”

And you say: “Yes, it is, but-”

And she goes: “Great.” And she puts the phone that’s been in her hand up to her ear and goes: “Tom? We can do that. I was right.”

Never ask developers if something’s possible without listening to the full answer or specifying your bigger goals.

Attaching a video to an email is possible, but it’s heavy. It will crash your servers, no one’s going to download it on a mobile because it will take forever and don’t even think about anyone sending it on to their friends. A link would do just as well.

It is possible to get a train from the 25 miles from Windsor to Farnham. What you do is get the 9:42 from Windsor and Eton Central to Slough, travelling east. Then go back west on the 9:58 from Slough to Reading. After that, catch the 10:34 from Reading to Northcamp. From Northcamp, walk 20 minutes to the station at Ashwalk and get the 11:44 to Farnham. It should take you under two and a half hours at an average speed on 10 miles an hour.

It takes so long because Windsor and Farnham are on the commuter routes and the lines are geared up to serve London, so services between the two towns aren’t great because here isn’t the demand.

If a manager said: “We need to get more trains running between Windsor and Farnham. Can we do that?”

The infrastructure people could say: “Yes, but it’s a pain to do and there are better ways of doing it.”

The short-manager could reply: “But if it’s possible, then we should do it. I know these things are hard, but we need to overcome them going forward.” They would probably also walk away, noting to self: “(Doesn’t like challenges. Sees obstacles.)”

Technical solutions are much the same. While things are possible, managers need to understand that what they are trying to do might not be the best solution in the timeframes they are given.

Directors should listen to technical solutions, but that’s not their job, and that’s where a product manager steps in. A decent product manager looks why people want to travel from Windsor to Farnham and address that need rather than blindly try to meet the demand.

They would look at how else to provide video rather than use precious developer time building systems to execute an uniformed decision.

If there were a real need to run trains the 25 miles between Windsor and Farnham, a product manager would check whether it was worth the time, money and effort of laying new tracks between the two towns and introducting a dedicated direct train service. Or they would look at a new delivery system to embed video in an email instead of as an attachment.

A decent product manager would tell you you’re going to need more crows.