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Last night I ended up at the Christmas party for the one of the world’s biggest computer companies. For the sake of discretion, let’s call them GrApple.

For those who have yet to experience the phenomenon of the GrApple Store, this is a company that hires geeks of the highest calibre and trains them to present themselves as friendly, yet not pushy – happy to help, yet unobtrusive.

The stores themselves stand out on your average high street, with gleaming interiors where you can check your emails, play computer games, and walk away without buying a thing. I would love to become the writer in residence or my local branch, but I fear I’m just not glossy enough.

But regardless of their sleek, shiny image, their party was anything but. In fact, the staff had to pay for it themselves as GrApple, under the guise a ultra-political correctness, don’t recognise Christmas, instead celebrating the generic, non-offensive ‘holidays’.

Bottles of lager and watered-down cocktails were two-for-one, while the music was provided GrApple employees with a penchant for dj-ing, leaving a few spouses feeling somewhat neglected…

At times I felt like I was living out a scene from the Big Bang Theory, with a few heavy metal fans thrown in for added flavour.

I wonder how Google are celebrating Christmas, sorry, the holidays, this year…

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I’ve been reading a lot of Paulo Coelho work recently, and have been finding a lot of my own viewpoints validated, which is interesting and unexpected.

Paulo is one of the few writers who has managed to attain the kind of worldwide celebrity status usually reserved for rock stars and cult leaders. In fact, according to his website, he’s occasionally asked by fans whether they can join his cult! Scary stuff.

He’s the kind of writer who explores all kinds of big questions through his work, from perceptions of good and evil, to the differences between madness and faith.

It’s the kind of stuff that gets my brain whirring, and on my train rides from Bristol (I’m currently spending a couple of weeks freelancing for a publisher in neighbouring Bath) each morning, I begin to read, only to find myself thinking about his words instead of taking more of them in.

Train carriages are the perfect place for daydreams and curious meanderings. As frosty fields drift past the window, I muse on how individual each person’s perception of reality is, and how we’re guided, cajoled and bullied by the version of reality dictated by society.

I believe that the Earth is round, not flat, because that’s what I’ve been taught. I believe in science rather than religion, due to my upbringing. But my reliance on science is just as much a matter of faith as a devout Catholic’s reliance on God.

In fact, I don’t even have any genuine understanding of how this website works. I know that it’s built using html, but for all I know, that’s a code word for magic. I only believe that electricity is based on science rather than anything more mystical as a matter of faith. I don’t have any empirical proof of the fact.

It makes me realise that, as Paulo Coelho is fond of suggesting, even our most dearly venerated facts are nothing more than perception. The positive side of this is that this means the world is just as we see it, so if I choose to see it as a wonderful, magical place, then that’s exactly what it is.

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One of the most entertaining parts of being a freelance journalist is how varied each day can be.

After several weeks of working my own hours, writing features, editing my book and uploading stories to EssentialWriters.com, I’ve been thrust back into a 9-5 schedule for two weeks subbing on a new launch.

I rather enjoy these pockets of structured time. Much as I love the freedom of being freelance, heading into an office occasionally reminds me that I am a grown up, gives me the motivation to wear something other than pyjamas, and offers me the joy of observing office politics unfold around me.

The part of the building I’m in is reserved specifically for launches and redesigns, meaning that most of the people up here are freelancers like me, fumbling their way through publications they haven’t yet got a feel for. There’s a fab sense of collective confusion as we all endeavour to make it up as we go along.

And I’m learning so much! I’m probably more active than most of the people I know, running three to four times a week. But the magazine I’m currently working on is aimed at proper athletes: the type of people who run for an hour in the morning, swim at lunchtime and cycle in home, EVERY single day unless they are having a scheduled rest day. How they must long for those rest days.

So far, I’ve discovered that ‘bonking’ is a less salacious term than I realised, referring to the collapse that comes from exercising to the point of zero blood sugar. I’ve learnt that cadence is a term that can be applied to running speed, and I now know that Fartlek is nothing to do with bodily functions, but is Swedish for ‘speed play’, and is a type of training where you vary the intensity of your training to boost your level of fitness.

What I still haven’t deduced is how these hyper athletes find time to carry out the rest of their lives. With so much time devoted to honing their bodies, when do they socialise? Or do they only socialise in the form of some vigorous activity?

When, for that matter, do they go to work and earn money to pay rent? Or do they spend so much time running through fields that they don’t get a chance to sleep, and therefore don’t need a home in which to store a bed?

I run partly as a way to sort my thoughts out – if I’m stuck on a piece of writing the best cure is to get out of the house and let the rhythm of one foot falling after another ease the next sentence into place.

But something tells me these athletes don’t use running as a means to an end – it is the end, and if I followed their example, I think it could well be the end of me, not to mention my writing…

An Irish ruin

I spent last weekend in Limerick. As I boarded the plane from Bristol to Shannon, I had a clear idea of what to expect. Ireland is the Emerald Isle, right? It’s a country of green fields, leprechauns and rainbows, Guinness and people who enjoy a good craic, right?

Well, the last bit was true.

The friend I was off to visit was Norwegian lass I met at university, and had only seen once since those days. I wasn’t concerned about that though – A is the type of girl people gravitate towards, and I knew we’d get on as famously as ever.

And she hadn’t changed a bit, apart from gaining a slightly disconcerting Irish lilt to her Scandinavian accent, and a few letters after her name.

Now mostly through a PhD on European Politics, A now teaches seminars rather than taking them, giving our sessions of reminiscing about our student life together a new twist.

As A puts it, she’s currently testing her boundaries, trying to see just how eccentric she can be before her students call her up on it.

So far no one has commented when she’s done impressions of Tony Benn, Basil Fawlty or the cast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This week she’s contemplating wearing bunny ears to work. She sounds like my favourite kind of lecturer.

We re-lived the student lifestyle to the full, including two nights out on the lash in Limerick City, also known, delightfully, as Stab City. We danced in clubs to the same cheesy hits we loved at Uni (Blues Brothers, Footloose, YMCA, Brian Adams and Bon Jovi!) until I felt we were in a time warp (probably the only song that didn’t come up).

But to show how much we’ve grown up, we also went for a meander in the woods and came across the gorgeous old ruin pictured above, and A cooked Pad Thai for dinner – a grand improvement on the pot noodles and ginger biscuits we used to survive on.

It reminded me that however much time marches on, part of me will always be that 19-year-old girl living in halls of residence, daydreaming about what her life will become. Not a bad way to while away the days.

Personally I hope that part of me lives for ever, even while the rest of me frets about tiresome adult concerns such as rent, bills and cholesterol levels. And part of me will always crave ginger biscuits.