I really wanted to write something about motivation, but I can’t motivate myself to think about what’s buzzing around in my head. To be honest, I am starting to think my ability to compose sentences and string words together is leaving me. It’s not that I have any difficulty thinking about the things I would like to write here, but I have difficulty actually writing it. My head is full of random thoughts, but I can’t get them into anything coherent. Failing in this way is actually proving to be quite depressing, to be honest.

I wanted to write about a post on Strange Little Boy about using a wireless connection in a public place, but I can’t get to that point.

I also wanted to write about the development of online technologies and my frustration at seeing many of the technologies I am interested in being developed outside the UK. Again, I am suffering from some kind of block.

So, I am off to meet a friend for pizza this evening. This will allow me to clear my mind with friend-pizza-eating-trivia and also to avoid the television, which, after last night’s Dawson’s marathon, will be no bad thing for my brain. Perhaps I shall welcome tomorrow with a clearer mind.

On this day…

A regular Tuesday morning in London. Like millions of other commuters around the capital, I head for work in something of a daze. Londoners are not known for striking up conversations with each other on commuter trains. Today, however, I witnessed two real-life conversations between strangers. As a result of the derailment on the Northern Line, the Bakerloo Line was packed. At the bottom of the escalator at Piccadilly Circus, two women had a row about who was pushing who as they tried to get to the top before each other. It wasn’t a deep and meaningful exchange, but it was a conversation (of sorts) between two strangers – which was certainly different. The second instance also took place on the escalators, but this time at Waterloo. The advertisements on the walls were for O2’s lower-cost calls from home service. They were a series of postcodes. A family riding up didn’t understand the message, and another tube-rider chipped in with his opinion on the ads. He too failed to understand the message. I guess there’s something in that for O2’s ad agency, but for me, it was an eye-opener that people on the London Underground aren’t so self-involved.

On this day…

I have been away on holiday for a week and am moving into catch-up mode.

As a child, I frantically wrote letters the week before going on holiday, so I would have a nice pile of unopened mail when I returned. Yesterday, of course, there was a mass of mail on the doorstep, but most of it was corporate mailings or junk of some description. My email inboxes were the same, but where are the communications I actually want?

Back in the office, most of the mail is not junk and has to be dealt with, but, as ever, procrastination gets the better of me. I’ve read it all and acted on the urgent. The rest is delayed for the “catching-up” excuse, which can last another 24 hours. Shameful, wasteful, and it will be – ultimately – frustrating for me, but that is the spirit of putting off.

On this day…

As the British tend to do, we will look back on this past summer with joy. We’ll talk about it like we did that of 1976 – a long, hot, lazy, crazy summer. I was more likely to be playing in a paddling pool than worrying about shortages of the plastic pools back then, but I do remember the heat and picking the fruit from my father’s fruit bushes while sitting in the back garden. Sadly, the topless lads playing football on the green behind my house have given way to the Sunday morning rugby matches. This is a sign of the oncoming winter as the fields turn from their burnt golden grass to a dark-brown mud bath. Still, autumn comes first, and it’s my favourite of seasons. I think it’s time I got the camera out to start recording some of it.

On this day…