Ring out the old, ring in the new

Just 3 hours or so of 2010 left, just time for a little reflection on the past year. It's been a mixed year, to say the least. Healthwise, it hasn't been very good for me, but at least my problems have been more along the lines of inconvenience, bearing no comparison to what my mother-in-law has had to cope with. She has made it through to year's end, though, which wasn't looking likely at one or two points, so that has to be something to be grateful for. I managed to escape from a job which was causing me so much unhappiness, but only at the expense of having to be away from home for large chunks of my life.
It's not all been bad, though. This blog, and the corner of cyberspace it inhabits, has been integral to many of the good things in 2010. I've been able to say some things, and exorcise some demons, that I haven't found any other way of dealing with. I've got to know some people who I'm really pleased to have been able to come into contact with, many of whom have interesting stories to tell, and I hope that some of what I've written has been of some interest in turn. Of late, the blog has become a bit 'Dear Diary'-ish, and one of the things I'm going to try and do in 2011 is to perhaps be a bit more imaginative in my choice of what to post. No promises, though!
2011 in general, what do I hope for? Much of what I would like to happen isn't, in all honesty, very likely, so it's probably best not to dwell on it too much at this stage, but there are things that I would not only wish for myself and my family, but for anyone who reads this post - health, happiness, peace and prosperity. I hope all of you have a great 2011, and that as much as possible of what you would wish for yourselves comes about.
Happy New Year, or Blydhen Nowydh Da, as some say in this part of the world.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Please, just don't!

Especially not at 8:00 in the morning on a day that I felt like I'd woken up with my head on upside down. What am I talking about, you might ask? Well, it seems that one of my new colleagues at work is involved with the Scouting movement as an adult leader, all with perfectly honourable motives, I hasten to add. He was being subjected to some basically good-natured banter this morning, which led on to a jibe or two about his Scouting activities. Someone asked if his troop have a 'Cub of the Year' award, and then followed it up with 'Who judges the swimwear parade?' (a la Miss World, presumably!). All meant in jest, but I suddenly had a vision of such a parade, and almost moaned out loud at the very idea of it. I can't cope with such imagery without prior notice! (I'm not, by the way, backtracking on what I've said in earlier posts about not being attracted to younger boys - I'm not, but I do find them nice to look at sometimes, and my reaction to this morning's badinage is in that vein.)
That apart, the main difficulty of the past couple of days back at work has been extreme tiredness. I'm staying at my brother's again, and when I got here yesterday afternoon, I decided to have a nap to freshen myself up at bit, and promptly went into a flat-out sleep for three and a half hours! It's a combination, no doubt, of the aftermath of the virus I've been struggling with for the last couple of weeks, and the ridiculously early start I had to make yesterday morning to drive up from Cornwall to London. Still, I'll be back at home tomorrow to see the New Year in, but whether I'll be awake anywhere close to midnight is, to say the least, on the doubtful side.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

All good things must come to an end

Or so the saying goes. As far as my keeping up with the adage is concerned, it's the last day of my first substantial Christmas break since 1986. Even though the time off I've had had been marred, to a degree, by illness - I'm still some way from being 100% well, even after nearly three weeks - it's been nice to be at home with my family, and, as a side benefit, evade a lot of the bad weather the UK has been subjected to recently. You hear about people who have serious problems adapting to retirement, but I know for sure I wouldn't fit into that category. For most, if not all, of my adult life, my main difficulty has been the fact that there never seem to be enough hours in the day, and certainly never problems in finding ways to occupy my time. Some of my interests would doubtless strike some people as being a waste of time, but others' perceptions are not my problem, the main issue, as far as I'm concerned, is that I'm virtually never bored. That really would strike me as being a waste of my valuable time.
Today's programme of non-boredom has included going out for lunch with my wife and daughter, as a treat for us all to end the holiday season (my wife will be going back to work tomorrow as well). It wasn't anything especially elaborate, just a trip to a pub-restaurant in our neighbouring town, but the food there is usually pretty good, and today was no exception. The only downside was that they were rather busy, which meant that the service was a bit on the slow side, but we didn't have any other plans for this afternoon, so there was no rush as far as we were concerned. It gave me time to have a leisurely couple of beers, anyway!
I've had what is, so far, a rather inchoate idea for a new story for 'Cuckoos' swirling around in my head this morning, a sort of counterfactual, 'what if society was like this instead' scenario. I haven't even come up with an initial approach yet, as there are a number of ways, some lighter, some darker, that the story could develop. I think this could be an idea which will need some careful development and work, rather than relying on my usual style of getting my stories typed and published as quickly as possible, before I lose whatever little inspiration has prompted me to write in the first place. The '99% perspiration' method hasn't been my thing with my writing, probably because I'm basically a pretty lazy so-and-so, but this story, if I can get it off the ground, might be the one which would benefit from such a treatment.

Many thanks to Grant (the immigayrant) for becoming my latest follower. I hope you won't be disappointed!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thaw

After having had snow on the ground for more than a fortnight, by far the longest cold snap we've had in the 10 years we've been living in Cornwall, it seems that the weather has finally turned - the wet and windy stuff is coming up from the south, and most of the lying snow and ice has melted since yesterday evening. We've been out grocery shopping this morning, and it was nice to be able to drive (and indeed walk) around without worrying about suddenly going sideways after hitting a patch of ice. With the not too welcome prospect of my returning to work on Wednesday, at least it seems that the weather, and associated travelling conditions, will be one less thing to worry about.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Superfluous advice of the day

I've been watching a nature documentary on TV, as the ladies of the house have decided to have a lie-in this morning. At one stage during the programme, a scientist picked up a bird-eating tarantula a foot across, and the voiceover said "Don't try this at home". As if!! If my home was infested with spiders that size, I'd be looking to move forthwith!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Stuffed

I'm in chill-out mode after cooking and eating our Christmas dinner over the last two and a half hours, or thereabouts. It all went down pretty well, so I'm moderately pleased with myself. The meal was the centrepiece of what's been a nice family day, at home with my wife and daughter, and speaking to various family members we can't be with on the phone. My daughter was pleased with the presents she received, which was nice, considering we didn't have the money to be quite as extravagant as we would've liked in an ideal world - she's far from being deprived, but I'm sure some of her friends received more than she did, so it's very mature of her to have reasonable expectations.
I hope everyone else has had as nice a day as we have, and that the remainder of the day goes well for you all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Season's greetings

Well, it's rapidly heading towards Christmas Day (in GMT land, at least), so I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers, and all those whose blogs I read, a very happy Christmas. I hope you all have a great day, and I wish you all you would wish for yourselves.
I'd like to say a special thank you to my followers, Tony, Jay, Brian, Daniel, Billy, and especially Mark, for your friendship, interest and encouragement, and another thank you to those whose blogs have given me so much interest and entertainment over the course of this year (including those of my followers who have their own blogs, which is most of them), thanks to Rowan, Lauren, Randy, Cody, Matty, Lee, Ian and especially to DJ, I hope to be able to read more from you all in the year ahead.

Peace, love and my very best wishes to you all
Sammy B

Hibernation

Luckily, it wasn't too icy here this morning, so I managed to get out bright and early (albeit a bit nervously) to do the Christmas grocery shopping. Even though I arrived at the supermarket before 7:30, there were plenty of people about, but I managed to get everything we needed for the weekend without undue stress. I was rather undecided about the Christmas Day menu, but, as it's turned out, it's going to be a pretty traditional spread, turkey and trimmings, the only real departure being a Spanish version of 'pigs in blankets' I'm going to put together, with mini chorizo sausages wrapped in Serrano ham. Should be OK, especially with a nice bottle of cava to wash it all down.
Having got through the shopping assault course, I'm now in a position where I can stay indoors until Monday, if I choose to, which, given the unabated freezing weather, seems like an appealing prospect. In fact, if I could stay indoors until about April, it would suit my current mood, but I doubt that's going to be a viable option!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fear

I managed to get myself thoroughly wound up earlier today, although I've calmed down a bit now. It all came about after reading about the author of a controversial book in the US having been arrested on thoroughly trumped up (and, in so far as I understand the US constitution, which isn't too much, unconstitutional) charges. The subject matter of the book, of course, is the issue - it seems, from reports I've read, to be a boylove tract, written from the perspective of a loved boy. What upset, and, if I'm being honest, outright frightened me about the reactions to what's happened, though, is that this author isn't charged with any sexual crimes, or even subject to any allegations of anything of that kind, he's simply been targeted for having written about a controversial subject. Amongst the comments left by members of the public on a news website where I read about the story, left, presumably, by people who would identify themselves as Christian, are examples hoping that this man, who, let me reiterate, appears to be guilty of nothing beyond writing a book, will be raped in prison, or even subjected to 'street justice', i.e. be lynched. I can't imagine the US has any monopoly on hatred and bigotry, so I'm sure that there are people in this country who would want me to be raped in prison or killed or both, for having had the audacity to express my views on the same subject, and it's not a prospect that I approach with anything less than fear. I don't consider myself to be a coward, but there's only one of me, and I have no doubt that if any of these people had the opportunity to dispense their version of 'street justice' they wouldn't be dispensing it single-handed. Some might say I'm being excessively paranoid, and maybe I am, but having seen the depths to which some people's hatred can descend, I'm certainly going to think twice about what I put in my blog. Which means, of course, that the haters will win, if I'm going to self-censor. Damned if I do, and damned if I don't, or so it seems.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

No boys allowed?

Having spent the last week and a half pretty much trapped indoors by ill-health, I've been watching substantially more TV than I normally would, mostly Discovery and History channel documentaries. In the run-up to Christmas, the advertising is pretty much what one might expect, centring on toys, gifts and food. The cast of characters, if one can call it that, within the various adverts, is interesting, though, and an extension of something which seems to have been happening for quite some time. It appears that some decision, whether overt or not I couldn't even guess, has been made that attractive boys are not allowed on screen any more. Even those adverts which have boys amongst the cast seem to be filmed in such a way that they have the absolute minimum of screen time, or ensure that they're obscured in some way or other. The advert which seems to have been the watershed for this phenomenon was one that aired regularly some months ago for, of all things, Whiskas cat food, which featured a screamingly cute 7 or 8 year old blond boy and 'his' almost equally photogenic cat. "I love my cat", and all that, I'm sure the Brits amongst my readership who watch any amount of TV will know which advert I mean. Presumably some faceless wonder has decided that the 'wrong' kind of audience would be attracted to the advert, and thus the product. Another step closer to all kids being locked up for their own protection until they're 18 and deemed to be old enough to suddenly be released into the outside world with no life experience or social skills. If anyone these days grows up well adjusted, it seems to be in spite of rather than because of society's 'values'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Blond angel in our street?

I've seen a boy over the last couple of days within yards of our front door - on his way to school yesterday, and out in the snow, of which we sadly have more (albeit not as much as many other places), this morning - who is pretty close to having the sort of looks I might design for my delectation if some sort of real-life 'Sims' was available. He's about 12 or 13, very nice looking, lovely blond, longish hair, the real deal, as far as I'm concerned. I mentioned him to my daughter earlier, and she seems to know who he might be - she doesn't know him personally, but if it's who she thinks it is, he's a friend of her friend's brother. Purely daydream/eye candy material, but none the worse for that.
I need something to cheer me up, in any case, because my health issues don't seem to want to go away any time soon - I'm almost three-quarters of the way through my course of antibiotics, and only feeling marginally better, not helped by the fact that, if coughing was an Olympic sport, I'd be a cert for the team. I've only been out of the house three times, for a total of about an hour and a half, in the past week, and the fact of having transitioned to my prearranged week's leave hasn't changed anything - I'm still effectively off sick. It's not just me, either - there are apparently a total of six people off at my workplace at the moment, and, here, my wife's down with a similar kind of bug, probably to a slightly greater extent than me, so I'm trying to look after her after a fashion as well. Just remind me how much fun this winter business is, someone?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Radio days

Like most people, certainly most people of my vintage, I've spent many an hour listening to the radio over the years. What is probably slightly more unusual is how my choice of radio stations has evolved over the years.
My first radio memories are from the age of around 5 or 6, listening to what was then the BBC Light Programme, which evolved soon after into Radio 1 and Radio 2, which is what my parents listened to. Even at that tender age, I had somewhat offbeat tastes - my favourite 'programme' was the Shipping Forecast! I could quote all the sea areas, in order, before I was 7 (and probably still can, sadly!), I did play around with the tuning dial on the family radiogram whenever I got the chance, and given where we lived, right down in the south east corner of England, we could pick up lots of European stations, but as my linguistic skills didn't stretch beyond English, they unfortunately didn't benefit me much.
The first truly independent steps in my radio listening came when I was 12 or so, when I first had my own bedroom, and my own clock/radio. Most of my peers at school were avid Radio 1 fans, given that was the only official national pop music station, but reception where we lived, down in the bottom of a river valley, wasn't very good, so I scouted around for something else. After a while, I found Radio Northsea International, a pirate station which broadcast in English at night, and Dutch during the day, and began listening virtually every day. Like most offshore, and, at best, dubiously legal, stations of its kind, it didn't last too long, and I listened sadly in summer 1974 (I've just checked that, I hasten to add!) to the last night of their English service.
My next port of call in the radio spectrum, and, once again, hardly a typical choice for a teenager, was the BBC World Service, whose Western European service was easy to pick up at home - it was essentially being broadcast straight over our heads to France, Germany, and so on. I liked the variety of programmes they broadcast, basically a digest of the type of output of the then four BBC national stations. I heard various things I might never have heard otherwise, even musically - I first heard Extreme Noise Terror on the World Service, on a weekly new music programme the legendary John Peel presented - and was certainly better informed on current affairs than just about anyone else I knew.
Another station I listened to, slightly more conventionally for a teenager, certainly the likes of me who had virtually no interest in anything that made the singles charts, was Radio Caroline. Their 'mission statement' at the time was to only play album tracks, and predominantly in the prog/heavy rock genre that I clung to even after punk had started to demolish that particular, rather overblown edifice (but I liked it, and still do, without apology).
For most of my twenties, I was a regular Radio 4 listener. That choice of more or less serious 'talk radio' fitted in with what was probably the most 'intellectual' decade of my life - I discovered, and was regularly reading, the likes of Nabokov, Hesse, Dostoevsky and Icelandic sagas - and, living on my own for nine years, I didn't have to compromise my tastes. Again, it left me extremely well informed, but was hardly much of a chat-up line.
That all changed, hardly surprisingly, when I met my wife in the early 1990's. Radio 4 was 'boring', but I was desperate not to listen to Radio 1, which I hated cordially, given its almost wall-to-wall chart playlist (certainly during the day) at the time. We eventually found a compromise in the shape of Atlantic 252, who were based in the Irish Republic, and had a much more eclectic playlist - I could at least expect to hear a song I liked occasionally! I still listened to Radio 4 when I could get away with it, although my allegiance gradually shifted to BBC Five Live, with its rolling news and sport coverage, in the latter half of the decade, while my wife switched to our local commercial music station, Piccadilly Radio/Key 103, for the most part.
I carried on as I was when we first moved to Cornwall, a mixture of Radio 4 & Five Live, but my wife had to change, although she continued in similar vein, mostly listening to Pirate, the main commercial music station down here.
The final major changes of my radio listening life have happened over the last five years or so, as I've migrated, except in the car, to DAB, mostly Planet Rock, probably the first music radio station I've ever listened to where I like a substantial majority of the output - classic rock from the 1960's onward, it's a no-brainer, really. I have got a Pure Highway in the car, but, doubtless because of the iffy aerial, the reception while driving isn't all that wonderful, and I don't often bother with it. More often than not, I listen to Radio 3 in the car, something I never would've expected to have said a few years ago, as I'd never got into classical music, even as a passing phase. I still draw the line at opera, though!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sleeplessness

I had terrible trouble sleeping last night - every time I tried to lay down, I had a coughing fit. I ended by effectively sleeping sitting up, which seemed to be slightly better. Predictably enough, though, it meant that I've been tired all day today, dozing off periodically. I did manage to get to my doctor's appointment on time, though (just!), and I've been prescribed antibiotics. I definitely won't be going back to work tomorrow, beyond that depends on how soon the pills begin to take effect.
There was one good thing about effectively being stuck indoors all day yesterday - I managed to finish my latest story for 'Cuckoos'. It's not perfect, by any means, but I'm happier with it than anything I've written for months. The magnum opus is still stubbornly refusing to emerge, but I'm pleased, after all the false starts lately, to have completed something I'm at least a little bit satisfied with.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

This is going to sound like a cracked record....

....but I'm off sick yet again. This is the fifth time this year, including my long break in April/May - I've never had a year like it. This time a cold I've been struggling with for a few days has settled on my chest, and turned into (I think) a chest infection, so I'll probably need some antibiotics. I can't get a doctor's appointment until tomorrow, so I'll be off for at least another two days. I'm going to get a reputation as a malingerer if I'm not careful.
As a result of my health issues, I've had a pretty quiet weekend, especially yesterday - I spent most of the day laying on the sofa wrapped up in a blanket and feeling lousy. I suppose it could have been worse - hopefully I'll be able to shake off this latest bug before Christmas, if nothing else.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A real life boy (nearly), a boy and not a boy

It was my daughter's end of term performance at her stage school this afternoon, and for the first time, they'd produced a pantomime, Singarella (no prizes awarded for guessing what it was based on!). For the first time since the equivalent Saturday last year, I was actually able to go, work having kept me away from the two previous performances. My daughter had asked the boy who she'd gone into town with a few weekends ago if he wanted to come and watch, and he'd said that he did, but wasn't sure if he'd be able to. We still hadn't heard by this morning, but when my daughter rang him just after midday, he said he would come, but needed his dad to come back from some outing to confirm the details. When the phone rang again about half an hour later, my daughter rushed to answer it, but it was immediately apparent from her disappointed tone of voice that it was bad news - he'd been told he had to go on a family visit instead, seemingly. I have to say that I was almost as disappointed as my daughter - the boy would've been sitting in the audience with us, and I was looking forward to what would've been my first substantive conversation with a boy for nearly three years, since we took one of my daughter's primary school friends on a trip for her 10th birthday. I'd be very wary of being in a private situation with a boy of his age (12) - babysitting, for example - because I couldn't guarantee, even to myself, that I could be 100% trustworthy, but in a public scenario like this afternoon would've been, I genuinely enjoy the company of boys, leaving aside any thoughts of carnality. It's a symptom of my 'boy who never grew up' streak, I guess.
One boy who was there this afternoon was the cutie I mentioned (It's all about context) a few weeks ago. He was playing one of the ugly sisters, which was a definite piece of miscasting(!), and to say he gave a committed performance was a distinct understatement - he really threw himself into it, was very good, and very funny. And did I mention he's seriously cute as well! Apart from my daughter, it wouldn't take Holmesian powers of deduction to work out who I spent most of the performance watching!
There was one other cast member I had more than half an eye on, though, playing a kind of Simon Cowell character. Dark, collar length hair, a sweet face, and another 'all-action' performance. Given my intermittent attendance at these productions, I didn't recognise him, so I asked my daughter when we got back home who he was. Just about keeping a straight face, she told me 'he' was called Abby!! Spoofed by a girl! That'll teach me. Very disappointing, she would've made a super-cute boy!
Thank you very much to Billy for becoming my most recent follower. I'll try and make your welcome interest worthwhile.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Back to nocturnalism

I'm almost halfway through my first week of night shift since I moved to my new job, and I have to say that at least one thing has stayed consistent in comparison to where I was working before - being on nights tends to bring your non-working life to a standstill. By the time I've got to my brother's, where I'm staying again this week, got some sleep, got up and showered, then had something to eat, it's pretty much time to go back to work again. Not the sort of lifestyle to recommend itself to a wild party animal, I would've thought, although never having been a party animal, even in my far-off youth, I'm working on supposition here.
There's only been one incident of any real note so far this week, and that largely took place in my head. I thought I'd upset someone in blogland who I care a great deal about with a comment I'd left on one of his posts. It turned out that I was mistaken, as evidenced by a lovely message I received yesterday which put my mind at rest and made me feel a lot happier with life.
The chance encounter I mentioned in my last post has given me an idea for a new story for 'Cuckoos', which is taking shape slowly, given my relative lack of free time this week. It might even have a happy ending - stranger things have happened!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A face

I've come home for a flying visit, given that I was on early shift this morning and on nights tomorrow. I travelled down from London on the train, and on getting off the train at our local main line station, I was brought up very short. Amongst the 'meeters and greeters' waiting for the substantial crowd of alighting passengers was a family with a couple of boys. I glanced in their direction, as is my wont, only to be thrown back many years in a moment - the younger of the boys, who was around 10 or 11, was the image of 'B', the boy at the centre of the incident I wrote about in 'The dark place' some months ago, as he was at that age. I only saw today's boy for a few seconds, but it was certainly an unexpected and unsettling experience.
Despite the encounter at the station, it's nice to be home, even if it is only for about 22 hours. The last two nights, on my own at the B & B, were a bit downbeat, even if I'm not one of life's most gregarious characters.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

B & B (without the second B)

I started back at work today, after almost 2 weeks off, travelling up early this morning through some very frigid temperatures, although, thankfully, no snow. I mentioned my dislike of snow and ice recently, but that's nothing compared to my outright hatred of driving in such conditions. It all goes back to a big accident I had many years ago after skidding on black ice, an accident that could easily, given a little less luck, have had far more serious consequences. In the event, only the car was written off, but, ever since, I get very jittery when I'm forced to take to the roads in wintry conditions.
Given the prospect of a continuation of the weather that's seemingly thrown the country into panic and chaos - whatever else we Brits can do, we don't, on the whole, seem to deal with winter at all well - I looked around a couple of days ago to see if I could find some suitable accommodation for my first working weekend since I started my new job. I've ended up in a (relatively) cheap B & B about 40 minutes drive from work, not too far from Heathrow Airport - not, on early evidence, right under the flightpath, which is something of a relief. The main attraction of these places is often the breakfast, but I'm not going to find out on this occasion, because I'll be leaving for work at around 6:00 both tomorrow and Sunday, and even if they served breakfast at that sort of time, I wouldn't be in the market to eat it. My digestion usually needs an hour or two after I've got up before it can tolerate anything much in the way of food. At least I'll get an extra hour's sleep each morning than I would've done if I was staying at my brother's, which doubtless would've been my destination had the weather permitted.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Still at home

My wife is still away, and will be so for another day or two at least, so I'm still holding the fort in sunny (and yes it is, but very chilly) Cornwall. My mother-in-law is going to be admitted to a hospice in the near future, which it tells its own story, sadly. Even if that happens imminently, my wife will remain at her parents until her aunt, who was due to take up temporary residence to help out next week, but who was on holiday and has had to arrange an earlier flight back from Tenerife, gets back to the UK, because her dad isn't well enough to look after himself - he's in his late seventies and had been in poor health himself for two or three years. My manager, when I finally managed to get hold of him this morning, has been reasonable about my circumstances, even if he didn't sound wildly thrilled on the phone, but the downside is that I'm going to end up working through the coming weekend as well as all next week to make up my hours, which means I'll end up being away from home for 8 or 9 consecutive days, in all probability. I guess after the best part of two weeks off, I shouldn't complain, but it's not ideal, by any means.
The sombre mood has been leavened by the odd brighter moment here and there - my daughter and I had a genuine laugh out loud experience yesterday evening. She needed a new calculator for school, having lost her previous one a few days ago (doing her science homework on the school bus, seemingly), and we needed to go to our local 'big city' to get the right type. This meant negotiating the rush hour, and we ended up in a pretty substantial traffic queue at one point. If someone had made a transcript of our conversation at that point, anyone who read it might have guessed at an exchange between my daughter and one of her friends rather than between her and her father, as we discussed the finer points of boy cuteness. It took a good couple of minutes before the surreality of the situation struck me, and I burst out laughing, joined by my daughter when I asked her how many other father and daughter pairings of our respective ages in the area, or indeed anywhere, she thought might have been having a similar chat at that moment! Even if I do seem, on the evidence of my blog, to take myself a little bit too seriously at times, it proved I can still laugh at myself occasionally.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Bad news

I won't be going back to work tomorrow after all. My mother-in-law's health has taken a serious turn for the worse, so my wife is off to the Midlands in the morning and I'm staying at home to look after my daughter. We knew this scenario would arise at some stage, given my mother-in-law's diagnosis a few months ago, but it's happened rather sooner than anticipated. I'll be off for as long as it takes, and if there's any problem with my employer over that, they'll have to sack me. I'll speak to my manager in the morning and discuss things with him then - he's aware of the situation anyway, so I'm not envisaging too many difficulties, but in these penny-pinching times, I might end up on unpaid leave. If that's what it takes, so be it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

200

I was going to use this milestone post to write 200 words to characterise myself, but, on reflection, it's all in the blog anyway.
A long time ago, not long after I got married, a (female) friend of mine, who I'd almost, but not quite, got involved with on a couple of occasions and who I still held a candle for to some extent, asked me the $64,000 question one evening - "Are you happy?". My answer at the time was that I was, around 90% of the time. Now, fifteen or so years on, I think the 90%/10% ratio still holds, except that the happiness quotient now seems to be the lower figure. It's mostly my fault, but I feel I've spent much of the intervening time painting myself into a corner, which I now can't escape from without causing myself, and more importantly my family, lots of pain and suffering. This is going to be a pointless, rhetorical question, but I'm going to ask it of myself regardless - where did I go wrong? There must have been a crucial bifurcation where I made a bad decision and which has led me to where I am now.
*Sighs*

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Truce

After last night's fireworks, today was cool, in more ways than one. I speculated about whether I would be expected to apologise, because if that had been an overt suggestion, I might have lost it again, but nothing like that came about. All in all, 'polite but reserved' might be the best way of describing today's interactions. It may well be that things can be mended, but is that what I want? I don't know yet.
For all the upset of the last 24 hours, I'm still not looking forward to going back to work on Monday morning. I've never, even in the earlier days of my career when I was actually keen on the job, enjoyed going back to work after more than a long weekend off, and even then, not always - I think I'm naturally lazy, and having enough interests in my life to never get bored , I could very easily adapt to retirement, or whatever you want to call it. At least I can take solace in the fact that I've only got to work for another three weeks before I get another week and more off, as part of my first decent Christmas break for 25 years. Assuming, of course, there's been no resumption of domestic hostilities in the interim.
On a lighter note, and something I was going to mention yesterday before being overtaken, if not overwhelmed, by events, I've found a couple of blogs written by Cornish teens which look as though they might be interesting. I'm only keeping tabs on them as yet, rather than going for all-out public following, but it's nice to hear what people who live 40 as well as those who live 4000 miles away have to say about life.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cracks in the edifice

It would have been another of those 'quiet day off' days, had the last hour or so not happened. Got up, made breakfast for the family, screwed up my resolution to go and get my hair cut, just the usual kind of stuff. Later on, dabbled around online, watched some winter sports on TV, cooked another meal for the family, washed up.
Then the roof fell in.
I could go into intricate details about the way the scenario developed, but the short version is that I offered to do something which I considered to be helpful, to have my wife, far from for the first time, throw my offer back in my face. I was annoyed, and for once had the audacity to show my irritation, in words and body language, and certainly not physically in any way, at which I was dubbed a 'bully' and a 'bastard', and a little later on, equated to someone my wife was involved with before I met her, who was genuinely abusive towards her, to the extent that she eventually had to take out an injunction against him. To say I'm not happy is a huge understatement, and I came as close as I ever have, in my anger, to telling her who I 'really' am. In fact, an hour and a half later, I'm still not sure how I didn't say what was on the tip of my tongue, something like 'Thanks for reminding me why I prefer boys'. Saving cowardice, probably.
I'm not going to claim that I'm blameless in what happened - after all, I could have kept my feelings inside, because that's what I do, day after day, year after year, just to get through life in general, never mind married life, but there are times when the degree of being taken for granted, of having to jump through hoops for little or no reward or recognition, reach levels which bring my frustration to boiling point. What, ultimately, is the point of spending my life not being myself, when I'm not even getting a simulacrum of happiness as a result? It's a question I'm going to have to come up with an answer to, sooner rather than later, if only for the good of my physical health, because the predictable result of this evening's spat was to set my heart hiccuping again.
Nearly twenty years, all breaking down? It could be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Winter....aargh!

I glanced out of the window at around 9:00 this morning, to find that it was bloody snowing! Horrendous! I have little doubt that it's down to old age, but I've got a thoroughgoing aversion to snow and ice these days, not helped, I guess, by having spent the last 10 years living somewhere that gets very little of either. The snow didn't last long, and didn't stick - all evidence of it was gone in little more than an hour - but it was an unwelcome reminder that winter is imminent, if not here already, and there's three or four months of it still to come.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Imagination, creativity and autobiography

The balance, or lack of it, between the elements in the title of this post might go some way towards explaining why I've been struggling with my writing of late. There has, I have to say, been too much autobiography, albeit fictionalised to a greater or lesser degree, and not enough imagination. I've heard it said that all writing is autobiography, up to a point, and, up to now, that has been pretty much true in my case. That ties me down rather in what I feel I can write about with any authority, because I haven't really had an especially varied or interesting life, and while I've got some capacity for imagination, I wouldn't claim it as my strongest suit. I've been writing on and off today, and made a start on yet another story, which is coming along, and which I've seen a way of linking to another story I was writing about a year or so ago, in pre-blog days (on good old paper, in longhand, with a cheap pencil!), but which I have to admit still has quite a lot of my real life in it, chopped up and reconstituted, as it were. I'll try to persevere, because I do really want to try and come up with something readable, encouraged, maybe, by the relative success of one or two things I wrote a few months ago. As I've probably said before, if I can do it once, I can do it again.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Belonging

I've spent this morning teetering on the brink of another messy, tearful meltdown, but I think I've managed to pull myself together now.
Reasons? Thinking about acceptance, and belonging. Thinking about who accepts me, and why. Thinking about finding a place where I feel I belong. It's not, as I see it, a pretty picture.
Acceptance. I fall at the first hurdle, because I can't even accept myself. It's seems that I've fallen for the propaganda. The tabloid headlines that scream at me day after day. 'Fiend'. 'Vile'. 'Unnatural'. 'Predator'. 'Paedophile'. 'Evil', 'evil', 'evil'. The hatred of what I am. It's not even 'the love that dare not speak its name' in the eyes of the world. It's not accepted as love of any kind, just selfishness, manipulation, the destruction of lives. Innocent victims drowned in a torrent of unspeakable lust. Those who accept me for what I really am can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. For the rest, I can only gain acceptance by hiding, pretending, playing a part, biting my tongue when I want to speak out, deception and lies, all the time. Utterly soul-destroying.
Belonging. I read a story this morning, which proved to be the proverbial final straw that threw me into my latest chasm of despond. The main character, a boylover, talked about finding 'somewhere he belonged'. It made me feel that there's nowhere I belong, at least within the confines of my current life. That brings me back to the 'scrap my life' possibility I thought about recently, but while I might feel I've got issues I want to run away from, there's nowhere viable to run to that would make it any better. You can't, after all, run away from yourself, can't run away from the real world.
Tman had it right when he commented on yesterday's post - until I can love myself, I'm not going to progress. The problem is turning that insight into action.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More local attractions

After bemoaning for years the dearth of cuties in our immediate area, I came across another one earlier, only about four doors away from us - a tallish, dark-haired boy of about my daughter's age who was very, very nice to look at. I haven't seen him before, so he might have been a visitor rather than a resident.
While many might think that all I'm interested in is inveigling some innocent boy into my bed, that's really not what my desire for a 'Young Friend', as the boylover parlance has it, is centred on. The only YF I've ever had, my cousin when I was in my twenties, was a completely sexless, but very close relationship, because that was how he wanted it to be. I would be more than happy if I could find someone who I could have a similar connection with now.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I want, I want, I want

I want to stop deceiving people close to me.
I want to call my time my own.
I want to be able to look after my family in the way I think they deserve.
I want to meet one particular blogger whose blog I follow.
I want some sunshine in my life.
I want to write stories that people want to read.
I want a boy in my life.
I want to be free to be me.

In no particular order, and just a wish list, not a plan of action. None of them are likely to be achieved any time soon, sadly.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

There's cute....

....and there's super cute! In order of seeing them, there was a boy from my daughter's Friday drama club who she likes and who she'd arranged to go into 'town' with today - it wasn't quite a 'date', but she was very happy that he'd wanted to go - and who I hadn't seen before, because my wife normally does the 'taxi' duties for the Friday activity. He was nice looking, but not, to me, jaw dropping, so the potential nightmare scenario of my falling for one of my daughter's friends is postponed, at least. Cute, though.
Part two of the day's encounters was somewhat different, though, with my third brush with the boy (visiting/revisiting) next door. Oddly enough, it was my wife who spotted him this time, looking through our living room window - she seems to think that he's our (divorced) next door neighbour's son, although on what evidence, I've no idea. If he is a blood relation, I've probably had a near miss from what could have been a very sticky situation, because he's so lovely, and to have him actually living next door would have made it very difficult to go about my daily life without quickly giving away my interest.
If I might be allowed a little 'soapbox' moment, I spotted this quote from David Cameron on another blog (It's Getting Better, thank you Micky) a couple of days ago, talking about homophobia - He added: “Britain is a diverse, open, tolerant place. This is not the sort of country where we label people for being different.” I wonder if his comment would be extended to boylovers like me. I suspect not.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Quiz and garlic

I had the chance to exercise a couple of my talents yesterday. I've said before about feeling guilty about the fact that I seemed to be accepting the generous hospitality of my brother and his family without giving anything back, but, for once, I was able to repay them a little by cooking them a meal yesterday evening. I have no claims to be any sort of culinary expert, but there are some dishes that I can make a reasonable fist of, and paella is one of my specialities. I'm quite interested in Spanish food in general, and its Canarian variant in particular, so I added a side dish that anyone who's been to the Canary Islands might recognise - Papas Arrugadas con Mojo Rojo. Mojo is a garlic sauce which has a number of variations, my version of it being made with lots (and I mean lots!) of garlic, smoked paprika and olive oil, which is then served with the Papas Arrugadas, wrinkled potatoes, which are small potatoes cooked in their skins. The traditional way of getting the skins to wrinkle is to boil them in heavily salted water, but I cook mine in the oven in a small amount of olive oil, which seems to have the desired effect. It all seemed to go down pretty well - there was nothing left over, anyway! - but it left us all smelling very garlicky, something even heavy teeth cleaning couldn't overcome! My niece ended up going to buy some mints to try and become a bit less anti-social!
After the evening meal, we went to a village pub a quarter of an hour or so from my brother's house where he plays in the pub quiz league. Perhaps my most notable ability is answering general knowledge questions - I seem to have not only the sort of memory that can retain trivia, but also the capacity to recall it pretty effectively. I have, albeit not recently, had my proverbial 'fifteen minutes of fame' by appearing quite successfully on a couple of TV quiz shows, so when my brother's team found out I was potentially available last night, they were keen to bring me on board as a bit of a 'ringer' to help them along (it was all legal under the quiz league's rules, I hasten to add). It turned out to be quite a competitive game, but we managed to prevail in the end, and I think I made enough of a contribution to justify my existence. I would've been most disappointed if I hadn't ended up on the winning side - without wishing to seem conceited, I'm not used to losing in pub quizzes, and, even allowing for the fact that I don't play very often these days, it's a good few years since I have been on the wrong side of a result.
Just in case we hadn't had enough garlic earlier in the evening, the after-match food provided by the host pub included some fairly piquant garlic bread. It's a good job you can't overdose on garlic, because we'd have been in great danger of doing so otherwise!
I'm back at home now, having just about managed to drive back to Cornwall after work this afternoon without falling asleep at the wheel! I'm now starting to get into 'holiday mode', with a nice glass of Chardonnay on hand while I'm writing this. As has been said before, it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Weary

I've not been posting as much as usual of late, principally because my lifestyle with the new job and all the long-distance commuting seems to be very tiring at the moment. Apart from the obvious requirement of being awake to type, the fact of being tired all the time seems to have dulled whatever mental faculties I possess still further, so that I end up with nothing interesting, or nothing at all, in my head when I do get some free time. I'm off all next week, though, so I'm hoping that some Cornish air (and rain, if I know Cornwall!) might refresh the parts other air can't reach (Brits of a certain age will probably recognise the paraphrase  - if not outright plagiarism - of an old advert!).

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Feeding frenzy

Just under 6 weeks to go, and it appears that the annual ritual of people spending ludicrous amounts of money on things they don't need, otherwise known as Christmas shopping, is already in full swing. When we went to our regular supermarket at lunchtime today, we struggled to find a parking space in what is a pretty large car park, while the store itself seemed to be awash with humanity, all intent on completing their particular retail mission, with little or no consideration of anyone else in the process. My daughter and I apparently got in the way of some thuggish looking bloke at one point, and he looked as though he was tempted to push her out of the way - all I can say is that I'm pleased, for his sake and mine, that he didn't succumb to that temptation, because I would've lost it completely if he'd laid a finger on her. As it was, I made a sarcastic comment, very audibly, but he chose to stomp off to his next port of call. Preparations for the season of goodwill, evidently.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A nice idea, in theory

I follow, and sometimes comment on Alex and Tony's blog (My Gay Little Brother). I had a reply to the last comment I made from Tony, to the effect that I could (should?) 'hit the erase button' and start my life afresh. Oddly enough, it's a concept I've been mulling over of my own volition in recent weeks - just scrap my life and start again. There are distinct attractions to such an idea, but any temptation to actually doing it is trumped by the 'elephant in the room' - there isn't just me to consider. My life, and the stage of it that I've reached, is inextricably linked to the lives of my wife and daughter, and I'm not so selfish - at least, I don't think I am - that I could just walk away from my responsibilities. After all, it's not as if anything that makes my life such a frustration at times is any fault of theirs - I decided to dissemble and follow a path of less resistance, to suppress my 'real' self, chose to be 'safe' rather than taking a risk that might have led to either fulfilment or disaster (or both) by playing a part that society expected me to play. In other words, I've made my bed, so complaining about laying in it is nothing more than futile self-indulgence.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Ever get the feeling it's not going to be your week?

It's been one of those for me, so far this week. Nothing disastrous has happened, just a succession of irritants that have conspired to make it all rather heavy going.
On Monday, it all went fairly well until I was driving down to my brother's in the evening, when I got embroiled in a horrendous traffic jam in the aftermath of an accident on the motorway, ending up arriving well over an hour later than planned, meaning that my brother had to wait up for me again, making me feel like a total imposition on him. I also found out on Monday night that I'd left my medication at home in Cornwall, which led to a complicated manoeuvre on Tuesday and into Wednesday to retrieve it - I had to change my shift and undertake another long journey, albeit one that didn't cost me anything financially, but which sapped my dwindling stores of energy once again. Then, just as I was about to arrive back at work yesterday lunchtime, my knee, which had been holding up pretty well since Monday, decided to have another outage, which continues as I write. At the risk of wishing my life away, I'll be glad when tomorrow evening comes and I finally get back home for some R & R!
There was one major piece of good news to leaven the mix a little - my daughter has now got a place (promoted from first reserve) on her school trip to Finland in the New Year, the trip being part of a languages project her school have been involved in. She's understandably pleased and excited at the prospect of going, and will no doubt be counting the days pretty soon!
Since I've been working up in London, there seems to have been a distinct dearth of cuties in the area, but that was redressed a little on Tuesday afternoon, when I walked up to the local shopping area while I was on my meal break. There was a very attractive blond boy in front of me in the queue in the bakery, and although I only had a fleeting look at him, mostly in profile, it was still a bright moment in a not very prepossessing week. Be grateful for small mercies, I guess!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Pretty good weekend, except....

....it having to end, and my having spent most of it limping. I've had creaking knees, on and off, for a few years, but this weekend's problem is a new one - really sharp pains down the inside of my right knee (the medial ligament, I think, although I stand to be corrected), especially when walking down stairs. With the help of an elasticated knee support and some beefy painkillers, I've managed to function, but it wouldn't have been my ideal scenario for my weekend at home.
Leaving aside my aches and pains, though, it's all gone pretty well over the past couple of days. Nothing earth-shatteringly wonderful has happened, but we've managed to do some family stuff, including going out for a meal yesterday evening, which was nice given that it doesn't happen so often these days, as well as some quality chill-out time, always welcome in my somewhat fraught current lifestyle. There have been plenty of fireworks over the weekend as well, even this evening (I thought it was supposed to be the 5th of November we remembered, can these people not read a calendar!) - not really my cup of tea, but there is some chemical artistry there, even an old curmudgeon like me has to admit that!
As if to underline the generally positive mood of the moment, my weekend is coming to an end with a smile - DJ's latest post, with recordings of him jamming with his hockey buddy who plays drums, was thoroughly uplifting. Not to everyone's taste, I'm sure, but for an unreconstructed rocker like me, great stuff, and nice for me on a personal level to see the boy having a good time, given some of the stuff he's had to deal with over the last few months.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

1000 miles....

....and then some. As I was making my way home this afternoon, after the last shift of my latest week in London, I worked out that by the time I got back to the house, I'd have driven almost 1100 miles this week, with the round trip from here and four round trips to my brother's where I've been staying again. This is a problem on several fronts - there's the immediate expense of all the fuel I've been using (£5.50 a gallon, or thereabouts, for diesel at the moment), the worry that if I keep piling the mileage on the car the way I'm doing at the moment, it's going to turn round and bite me by breaking down expensively, and the fact that I'm ending up feeling absolutely exhausted all the time, with all the travelling on top of the actual working hours that I'm doing. I suppose it's fair to say that I should've expected all of this when I decided to go for the job in the first place, so I've got few grounds for complaints.
It's all quietened down again now, but the earlier part of this evening was, in terms of sound at least, like sitting in the middle of a war zone, with all the bangs associated with Bonfire Night. It never ceases to amaze me how bloody loud fireworks are now compared with those I remember from my youth - I'm convinced some people manage to get hold of surplus artillery shells and set those off! Even this evening's unpromisingly damp weather hasn't put people off - I have to say that I can think of many better ways to spend an evening than standing in the rain watching my money going up in smoke, but each to their own.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's all about context

It''s amazing the way that the 'where and how' of words that you use can affect the way they're understood by the person you're speaking to and can make such a difference to the reaction you get. Had he but had ears to hear, as it were, I told my brother this evening that I thought a 13 year old boy was 'cute' (he's a friend of my daughter's at her Saturday stage school, a friend that she'd very much like to make a boyfriend - and yes, he is cute!), and my brother didn't bat an eyelid, just because of the way I phrased what I said. Spin doctors are us, or what! I guess that's how politicians and some of their acolytes get away with some of the obfuscations, and even downright lies, that they do, by framing the statements in a way that sounds plausible, and has 'plausible deniability' if it all threatens to blow up in their faces at a later date.
I managed to get through my assessment successfully this morning at work, which means I'll be able to move on to something more interesting and challenging from tomorrow. My training process is going to be slowed down somewhat by the fact that I need to 'use or lose' two weeks' worth of leave by the end of the calendar year, and I have no intention of losing it - it's just a matter of picking which weeks would be most advantageous. The way things are shaping up, I might actually get a decent break over Christmas, possibly as much as 11 or 12 days, which will only be the second time in my whole career that I would have managed to do so, if it comes to fruition, although I won't be counting my chickens until I've got some sort of written confirmation. We can but hope!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The light at the end of the tunnel....

....is an oncoming train. Having made my nightly phone call home, it seems that we're getting ever nearer the edge of the precipice. My wife's job has never been all that secure, because she works for a cash-strapped charity, and the project that she runs is funded from the social services budget, a nice soft target for the endless rounds of cuts that our government has decided is the only solution to the national predicament. In a nutshell, and despite my wife's protestations that nothing has been finalised yet, it seems likely that her job will go in June next year. A month or so after I effectively burned my bridges as far as working near home is concerned, that's not exactly the news I wanted to hear. Irrespective of how much I can potentially earn in my new job, there's no way I can get anywhere near to replacing my wife's earnings, so it looks very much like we're going to end up in a worse financial position than before I committed myself to my nomadic lifestyle. Presumably this is what the government means by 'making sacrifices' - uproot your family life to keep paying for the bankers' bonuses, then lose everything anyway. Then just to deliver the coup de grace to my mood, my wife told me that our ailing bed seems to have finally given up the ghost - it's been living on borrowed time for months - so that will entail spending another chunk of money we haven't got. And on that happy note, it's off to bed for me to try and ensure that I'm reasonably compos mentis for work tomorrow morning, when I'm going to be facing the first big assessment in my new job, hopefully to pass me as competent for one of the five areas my workplace covers. The timing could have been better.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Endurance

Another long and long-distance day to start the week, up at a really ridiculous hour to drive up from home to work, and another drive down to my brother's this afternoon. I have had a bit of a 'power nap' since I've been here, though, so I'm a bit livelier than I might otherwise have been. It is a rather tiring lifestyle that I'm leading at the moment, and my brother and sister-in-law are somewhat worried on my behalf, so I've tried to reassure them that I don't think I'm going to do myself too much damage - I am blessed with reasonable reserves of stamina, so it should all be tolerable, as long as I don't try to do it for months on end.
A bit of a red-letter day yesterday - I finally managed, after all my struggles in recent weeks, to finish and post a new story for 'Cuckoos'. It's not the best thing I've ever written, by some distance, but it's a relief to know that the muse hasn't abandoned me completely. Hopefully the logjam has been broken, and I'll be able to go back to writing a bit more regularly. It's certainly something I want to do.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Grey, drab and miserable....

....and that's just me, never mind the weather. The last day of British Summer Time has brought cloudy and damp, if not torrentially wet weather, not the most unusual occurrence in Cornwall at any time of year, but, in concert with the knowledge that it will be dark by 5:00 or thereabouts tomorrow evening, a reminder of impending winter. It hasn't helped what has been a pretty downbeat couple of days for me, elicited in turn by a combination of factors - the problems with my perceived lack of honesty I referred to yesterday, thoughts of the person I miss seeing so much (those two issues are linked, of course), and the knowledge that, come Monday, I'm going to be away from home again for another week at work. These moods tend to be cyclical for me, so I'll no doubt be out of the trough in a day or two, although none of the problems will have been resolved, unless something wildly unlikely intervenes in the interim.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Deceit

I have no doubt that anyone who has read my blog over the last few months will find this post repetitive, but part of the raison d'etre of my being in blogland at all is to have a place where I can express how I feel, so, with apologies, I'm going to do just that.
I'm struggling again because I feel that, at least in part, that I'm living a lie. This is particularly the case in terms of my relationship with my wife. I've said before on several occasions that I genuinely love her, and I still maintain that's true, but, certainly in terms of a physical relationship, I have serious doubts if it's what I want any more. If I was single at present, I'm sure I wouldn't be looking for another woman. What I really do want is unobtainable, and I've more or less accepted that, although I haven't given up all hope of finding myself where I want to be by some fluke or other. What I am finding increasingly difficult is having to pretend I'm something I'm not on a day to day basis - I haven't told any direct lies about this, but my policy of selective truth is becoming less tenable and palatable to myself as time goes on. It's making me feel deceitful, and while I realise that people tell each other 'white lies' more or less all the time to make sociable living possible, being less than truthful about such a fundamental part of who and what I am is becoming depressing.
It seems that, not for the first time in my life, I've contrived to 'paint myself into a corner' - if I come out, I put my family as well as myself into the firing line, if I don't, I'm apparently sentenced to increasing unhappiness. I wish I could see any hope of some sort of solution, but there doesn't seem to be one without oceans of pain for those that I care about.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lazy day

I've been taking the fact that I'm on holiday, even though it's only a case of being on the home front, to heart today, having one of the laziest days I've enjoyed for a long time. I haven't left the house, and done nothing beyond some washing and cooking the evening meal during the day. It's been a real 'couch potato' experience, with most of the time being spent on the laptop or watching TV (or both simultaneously!). After yesterday's post, I'm pleased to say I did manage to write a couple of paragraphs of my new story this morning, although I'm making absolutely no predictions as to whether it will eventually amount to something postable.
Given that it's school half term, I have thought about taking a trip to where I used to work in the vague hope of seeing 'DBJ'. I doubt that I'll actually do it, not least because the chances of seeing him at random aren't high, but also because it would reopen the self-inflicted wounds of unrequited love if I did chance to see him, without any prospect of achieving anything worthwhile in return. If precedent is anything to go by, I don't expect to get over the boy any time soon, if ever - I've fallen in love, or at least what I would describe as love, with 7 or 8 people in my life, and fallen out of love with precisely none of them, even the two (one of each gender) who could be said to have to have treated me in any way badly. Loyal, or obsessive - take your pick.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Writing, or the lack of it

I'm really struggling at the moment to write anything for 'Cuckoos'. The early part of the summer went fairly well in that regard, as I managed to come up with some stories that even my perfectionist self was reasonably pleased with, but the last couple of months have been a complete desert by comparison. Last month, when I spent the first half of the month feeling ill and the second half occupied with the move to my new job, might be excusable to a point, but the continuation of the drought into and throughout this month is much harder to explain away. I've got a few ideas which I think might work well, but I just don't, at present, seem to have the wherewithal to bring them to fruition. Today, for example, I've come up with what I think is a pretty good plot for a new story, but when I came to try and start to convert it into words on the screen this afternoon, I ended up writing nothing beyond a title - I just couldn't find a way to even write the first sentence. It's certainly not from a lack of motivation, I want to be able to write fiction, even if it's not to any wonderful standard, so I'm really not quite sure why I should be having such difficulty with it at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Chilly, and barking mad

My wife took a day off work today to go and see her mum, who, as I've mentioned before, isn't very well at all. She would've liked to have gone for longer, with me being off this week and able to look after my daughter, but today was the only day she could take, as it turned out. This meant a long day trip for her, more typical of the sort of thing I'm prone to do, by train to the Midlands and back. She needed to catch a train at 7:25, so we had to leave the house before 7:00 to get to the station in time, which led to the first example of a not particularly pleasant task for this autumn/winter - scraping the frost from the windows of the car. We don't ordinarily get as much wintry weather in Cornwall as many parts of the UK, so to be de-icing the car in October is something of a surprise - I hope it doesn't turn out to be the harbinger of another cold winter like the last was.
I came across something on the internet today which, if it had been April 1, I would've taken to be a spoof. It was a YouTube style video of an item from an American TV show, apparently giving parents advice on how to make an 'effeminate' son more masculine. Their suggestion for a suitable Halloween costume for such a boy (modelled by a kid of about 7) was a combat-style outfit, accompanied by a huge replica gun, reminiscent of an AK-47, to occupy his hands so he couldn't 'clap and squeal'. Given that the US is awash with real guns, given the constitutional right to bear arms, if a 'trick or treater' turned up at a house dressed like that, they'd probably end up getting shot. Maybe it was a spoof, and I'm taking it all too seriously, but given the prevalence of homophobia in the US and the UK, I wouldn't be at all surprised if such 'advice' would be both dispensed to and readily accepted by paranoiac parents. If I had the choice between a gay son (or daughter for that matter) and a small child toting enormous toy guns, I have no doubt where my preference would lie, but no doubt the 'right thinkers' would say that such a reaction on my part is completely predictable. Given the irrationality, if not outright madness of so much of contemporary life, I sometimes feel that my 'liberal' instincts are heading towards 'voice in the wilderness' status. It's all decidedly depressing, I'm afraid.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lucky

I don't normally go in for much in the way of hyperbole, but it could be said today that I'm lucky to be alive. I went to visit the friend who'd kindly accommodated me a couple of weeks ago, and after an interesting guided tour of his home town, which I hadn't visited before (apart from the short walk from the station to his house), and a very pleasant lunch, I set off for home. It wasn't too long before it became apparent that there was something wrong with the car, vibrations from the front passenger side wheel that became gradually worse, to the extent that I pulled in at a motorway service area to try and see what was going on. I put my hand on the wheel, and it moved! The whole thing was loose, and taking off the wheel trim, it was easy to see why - there were only two of the four wheel nuts in place, and they were working loose as well. I was probably within a few minutes of the wheel coming off of the car altogether, which, given that I'd just been on a motorway, could have made it an extremely bad day for me. The only thing I can conclude is that when I had to have a new tyre earlier in the week, the tyre fitter either forgot to replace the wheel nuts at all, or hadn't tightened them sufficiently which had allowed them to work loose and fall out. To say I was shaken up, given the potential consequences, is a considerable understatement. Having not called out the AA for about three years, I've now called them twice in a week, and, as is my experience with the organisation, they came up with a solution to my problem. The service area I was stranded at wasn't too far from the outskirts of North London, and there proved to be a car spare dealer a within half an hour's drive that was open until 10:00 - it was 8:00 by this time - which luckily had some wheel nuts in stock, so the patrolman took me to the shop to get them, fitted them for me and had me ready to resume my interrupted journey at around 9:30. At that rate, I was expecting to get home just after 1:00 in the morning, but the final episode of my unpleasantly eventful journey even shot that expectation down in flames, because the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall was closed after an accident, leading to a 25 mile detour and yet another three-quarters of an hour added to the trip, so that I eventually got indoors just before 2:00. Just remind me how much I love working 'up country'!
After all that excitement yesterday and into the early hours of this morning, I'm in the throes of a fairly lazy day today, although we did head out to do some shopping earlier on. Heading into my week off, I have to say I haven't got much ambition to do anything much at all, beyond bare necessities - as I've already said, I very much feel the need for some 'downtime' at the moment, and I have particularly little desire to spend anything other the absolute minimum of time in the driving seat of my car in the next few days, given the mileage I've put in over the last four weeks.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Feeling guilty

I'm just coming to the end of another week away from home, and another week where I've been helped greatly by the generosity of others, my brother and his family on this occasion. Ever since I've been old enough and had enough money, I've always prided myself on being independent and looking after myself, and not being a burden to anyone else, whether it was my parents while they were still alive or family and friends since. My current situation, though, has made me feel like a complete freeloader at times - I seem, to myself if to no-one else, to be taking without giving anything back, and its making me feel guilty. My brother, before he went off to work this morning, said that he had no problems with the present state of affairs, and that I shouldn't worry about it, but I do worry, nonetheless. I'm in a bit of a 'Catch 22' at the moment, in that I need the extra money from my new job to afford more convenient accommodation, but I need to get through my training period before the full benefits of my pay rise kick in and allow me to sort myself out. On the brighter side, today is my last working day before taking a week off to coincide with school half term, so I've got some quality time with my wife and daughter in sunny Cornwall to look forward to. I certainly need the rest and recuperation, if nothing else - all the dashing up and down the country has left me feeling thoroughly washed out and tired, so not spending hours a day travelling is going to be a big bonus in itself. Will it all work out in the end - I certainly hope so.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Frivolity and inanity

Two different types of humour punctuated different parts of my day today. This evening, after I'd arrived back at my brother's, there was a phase of rather silly but very amusing badinage (at least, we thought so!) centred around a questionnaire my niece was answering as part of an online application for a part-time job with a national bakery chain who are opening a new shop in the area. Hopefully we haven't damaged her chances too much by distracting her with laughter, and my brother, sister-in-law and I did help her with the more serious 'C.V.' part of the application, so with any luck she'll make a good impression. As an aside, it's amazing how involved the application form is for what is effectively a 'Saturday job' - anyone would think she was trying to become an astronaut rather than selling sandwiches and cakes!
In dismal contrast, there was a different kind of 'humour', to use the word very loosely, in evidence at work earlier in the day. The welter of sexist and bigoted 'jokes', comments and opinions that emanated from some of my colleagues this afternoon was thoroughly depressing. Needless to say, they were all laughing like drains at their own inanity. I doubt that it will be long before I fall out with somebody by telling them what I think of their attitudes - I never have been known for suffering fools gladly.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

And it all started so well

Today was definitely 'a game of two halves'. This morning looked quite promising, up at a reasonable time, seeing off my wife and daughter for work and school respectively, steadily getting ready for a fairly punctual departure for my journey for the forthcoming working week, and even, for the most part, benign traffic conditions en route, allowing me to make good time. Then, 40 minutes or so into the afternoon, it all started to fall apart. I was less than half an hour's drive from work when I heard an ominous noise from the front of the car - I'd acquired a flat tyre. At 70 mph on a three-lane dual carriageway. Luckily, the road wasn't too busy, and I was in the inside lane, so I managed to steer onto the hard shoulder and stop safely, if a little shudderingly. Having had the dubious privilege of changing a wheel before on the hard shoulder of a fast road, and finding it one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, I let discretion be the better part of valour on this occasion and called the AA to do it for me - after all, we pay them a handsome membership fee every year, so it's good to let them earn it occasionally. The only problem was waiting three-quarters of an hour for the patrolman to arrive and do the job, which made me late for work. Not, however. as late as I thought I was, because for some reason which completely escapes me, my manager has decided to make the training late shift later than it had been two weeks ago. That, in turn, meant that I was later in leaving work this evening, and later in arriving at my brother's, which meant he had to wait up to let me in, as I didn't have a doorkey. It left me feeling like I was being a burden to him, although he kindly denied any such thought. At least I've got a key now, so if I get delayed tomorrow I can let myself in. Hospitality is one thing, having to turn your lifestyle upside down is quite another. The only thing in my favour is that he knows I would do the same for him (and have done, albeit quite some time in the past) if the positions were reversed.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Jitters and gorgeousness

For no readily discernible reason, I was feeling very jittery and nervous this morning, which is very unlike me. Whatever else I might say about myself, I'm usually reasonably calm and laid-back, at least superficially, so to be in a state closer to that which might suggest impending doom was unexpected and unwelcome. The feeling did pass with time, but it was all rather odd.
We headed for our usual supermarket at lunchtime, mostly to set my wife and daughter up with sufficient groceries to tide them over until I get back from my impending week away at work. For the second Sunday in a row, my daughter and I both had eyes for the same person, an absolutely lovely, fair haired boy of about my daughter's age who was shopping with his (presumably) father at the same time we were there - we even compared notes, very light-heartedly! The boy knew, I think, that he was the centre of attention, because he smiled slightly in my direction at one point, cue more than a few shivers down the spine. In the isolated world of the boylover, even a fleeting instant of acknowledgement like that is a major event. Not, of course, that I've any expectation of even seeing him again, still less anything more, but it was a nice moment, nonetheless.
My brother and his family are kindly accommodating me again this week, because I could well end up on a mixed up week of shifts (although I won't know for sure until I speak to my manager tomorrow), but the fact still remains that I need somewhere closer to work as a base, once the roadblock of finance is overcome. Money can't, needless to say, buy you happiness, but it can facilitate a less complicated lifestyle.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Bleak

Another of my periodic bouts of darkness and self-loathing has set in since reading a blog post this morning. Not for the first time, my problem has been caused by reading an account written by someone who is now an adult of his being sexually abused as a boy. The pain, helplessness and hopelessness he felt as a child, and the psychological scars that his experiences have left on his adult self, are plain for all to see. And yet, what the adult in the abusive interaction wanted is, it seems to me, what I want, what my personality, psyche, whatever you want to call it, tells me I want, day in, day out, any time I see an attractive boy, the feeling, insisting, nagging, convincing me that I missing out on something important to my wellbeing, not something I think I 'deserve' or am 'entitled to', but just something I want so much that it's in danger of becoming an obsession. I still keep telling myself that I would never do anything without consent, would never hurt anyone, but I came so close once before, only saved from myself by the courage and common sense of an 11 year old boy, not because of anything that was inside me, I have no doubt that if he hadn't stopped me, nothing inside myself, conscience or guilt or shame, or whatever you choose to call it, would have stopped me, and then I would have been the abuser, even the rapist, who knows where it would have gone, and he would have been the damaged boy, physically and emotionally, damaged by me and my desires. I wish there was some way of cauterising this part of myself, of making it go away, but I know that's not possible, any more than I can wish my brown eyes to become blue.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another long day

Today was a bit like a negative of yesterday - Kent to London for work, then back home this afternoon for my weekend with the family. I wasn't up quite as early this morning, but it's still been a pretty long and tiring day, not to mention the aches and pains associated with driving 600 miles over the course of a day and a half. It's pretty obvious that I've got to find a better way of arranging my working life or it's going to end up killing me off. The problem is that all the suitable permutations cost money, and that's a commodity in very short supply at the moment.
Better news on another front today, though - my wife went to see our doctor this morning, and the initial results suggest that Monday's tests and procedures haven't revealed anything which might have given serious cause for concern. It's taking her a little longer than expected to recuperate from the after-effects of the anaesthetic, but the doctor was reassuring on that as well - a week is far from unusual in the circumstances, apparently, so a quiet weekend might be the final piece in the jigsaw of my wife getting back to normal. I'm hoping for a bit of rest myself over the next couple of days, so we'll have to do nothing together!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Mining

I tend not to comment too often on news stories, not least because I'm not exactly an avid follower of current affairs, tending to find it all rather depressing. However, given my background as the son of a coal miner, I have to say I'm really pleased that the story of the trapped Chilean miners has had a happy ending, and that they're all safe. My dad was never, thankfully, involved in a serious accident during his 45 year career underground, but he was injured more than once, including quite a bad back injury which restricted what he could do in the latter years of his life. Mining is a dangerous job, even in this day and age, something I think people would do well to remember when they use commodities and products which the industry facilitates, whether it be coal, metals or whatever. These things don't appear by magic, they're extracted from the ground by the labour of those like the Chilean miners, or, indeed, in years past, my dad.
I'm down in Kent tonight, again being very well looked after by my brother and his family. At least I was able to contribute something to the cause today, a nice bottle of wine (Chilean, coincidentally) which we shared with the evening meal. The downside is another early start to come tomorrow morning, but not, at least, as early as today. Bedtime impends!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Early night and the possible revivification of the missing muse

I'm back to work in the morning, and given that it's a three and a half hour drive to get there, I'll be getting up ludicrously early. That in turn means I'll be off to bed at the sort of time I used to be sent there by my parents when I was about 7 years old. Marvellous.
At least there was one small piece of good news during the course of the day. I might actually have come up with an idea for a story that might lead to something substantive being posted in 'Cuckoos' before too long - I have a plot, two or three characters and maybe even the motivation to take it somewhere. I've struggled so badly to get anywhere beyond a couple of paragraphs for the last eight or ten weeks, so I hope this isn't a false dawn, but I think this might be the story to get the creative juices (in so far as I've got any) flowing again.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I don't know whether this is going to work

My new job, that is. I've taken an extra day off tomorrow, with my new manager's agreement, ostensibly because my wife has been very tired and washed out today after her hospital visit yesterday, but my actions are not, perhaps, quite as altruistic as they seem. I know I've only been working away for two weeks, but I'm already having serious doubts about whether it's what I want to do at this stage of my life. The job itself is fine, it's busy, interesting and well-paid, especially in these straitened times, but the domestic/personal side of things are increasingly looking like a show stopper. The worst problem is being away from home, as I've already discussed at some length in this blog, particularly in the absence of a permanent pied a terre close to work (and that is in no way whatsoever to diminish my gratitude to those who have extended their hospitality to me over the past couple of weeks), but I'm also increasingly getting the feeling that I'm not going to fit in at all well with the rest of the 'team' in my new workplace. That is my fault, at least in so far as I'm reluctant to compromise my principles, even if only by silence, in that I'm not prepared any more to pander to the kind of sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic attitudes that sadly still characterise much of the white, working-class, tabloid-press reading masses - in other words, most of the people I'm working with now. I'm far more likely nowadays to tell them they're talking out of their arse, which isn't likely to win me too many friends and influence too many people. And that, of course, is without even going anywhere my 'hidden' self, the fact that I'm the average, 'right-thinking' person's most loathed and despised hate figure, the 'paedophile', as I would doubtless be categorised. It's too early, I suppose, to give up yet, especially given the potential financial consequences, but for how long my situation is going to remain tenable is difficult to say.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Hospital

My wife was in for her day case at our local general hospital today, and I'm pleased and relieved to say that it all went according to plan, and that nothing sinister was found in the tests that she had as part of the procedure, although we've got to wait 3 or 4 weeks for the final test results to be 100% sure. The after effects of the anaesthetic have left her feeling a bit tired and woozy, so she's gone off for an early night, but hopefully that will be all that she needs to set her back on her feet.
I didn't spend more than about an hour in total in the hospital, taking my wife over there this morning and picking her up again this evening, but that was quite enough for me - I'm afraid hospitals and me don't mix, and anything to do with them, even visiting, fills me with trepidation. It's the reminder of my mortality, I suppose, the knowledge that someday all that I am will be extinguished, never to return. In that context, things are not looking good for my mother-in-law at the moment, another piece of news my wife could do without when her own health isn't as robust as it might be. My mother-in-law has been in poor health for some time, but things seem to be deteriorating rather more quickly than the original prognosis suggested. Hope springs eternal, as the saying goes, but I fear that hope in this case may just be the hope that there isn't too much suffering between now and the end.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The boy (revisiting) next door

It was an unseasonably warm afternoon here today, shirtsleeve, almost sunbathing, weather. My daughter had gone into our local city centre to buy her friend a birthday present and watch a film she wanted to see (on her own, because another of her friends had backed out of the trip, she's not her father's daughter for nothing, bloody-minded enough to go solo rather than cancel!), and I'd gone over around 4:30 to pick her up. As we got back home, who should appear from the front door of our neighbour's house than the boy who'd discomfited me so much at the housewarming barbecue in May. He was in 'summer' gear, tee-shirt and lightweight trousers, even cool wraparound shades, and just as delicious looking as he had been the previous time I'd seen him. My daughter looked in his direction with considerable interest as well (he's about a year older than her, at a guess), always a scenario I find amusing, in a slightly embarrassing way - as I've said before, she and I have eyes for a similar tranche of the population at the moment! All I can say is that it's a good job the boy doesn't actually live next door - quite apart from the prospect of me fighting with my daughter over him (joke, of course!), I think I'd spend a good deal of my time wanting to tear my hair out with frustration if I ever had such a genuine cutie as a neighbour.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What you've never had, you don't miss...

...except when you do. I've been reading a story today about a love affair (with some sex, admittedly) between two boys, one 16/17 years old and the other 12/13 years old, and even though it's now at more than 30 years remove, I've managed to get myself quite upset by thinking about the boy that I, with hindsight, was in love with when I was 17-ish, he being 14-ish at the time. I have mentioned this before, and I really didn't think about sex with him at the time, not least because I really had no idea about the mechanics of gay sex then, but reading the story has made me think 'What if, what if...' - had the internet been around in those far-off days, my whole life might have been different, I might have come to terms with myself so much sooner, I might not have spent my life hiding, hiding myself from myself as well as from the world. It's too late now, there's no time machine to take me back and give me the chance to live my life differently, I know I've got to make the best of what I've got now, but, oh, I can't help thinking, at times like this, how it could have been different. Hindsight is the most useless commodity known to man.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

P.S. There is a fictionalised version of my one-way love for 'R' in my 'Cuckoos' blog, called 'Beached'. Given the way I feel at the moment, I'm not going to be re-reading it imminently.
SB

Looking forward to home...and calm

I've almost reached the end of my second week in my new job, and, if nothing else, the time certainly isn't dragging. I seem to have done little all week except work and travel to and from work, including a couple of fraught cross-London trips with very tight connections to catch trains to and fro. The upshot of it all is that while I've been bowled over by my friend's kindness and hospitality in giving me a 'home away from home', and my gratitude for that is deep and sincere, I'm really looking forward to going back to Cornwall tonight, and spending a quiet weekend recharging my batteries and catching up with family life. I've got a couple of extra days at home to look forward to, as well, although the reason for me being off next Monday and Tuesday isn't exactly pleasant - my wife is going to have a 'day case' minor operation on Monday, and I need to be around for 24 hours afterwards because of the (hopefully) unlikely eventuality of her suffering an adverse reaction to the anaesthetic, or some other complication.
Not surprisingly, my wife is rather nervous about Monday, and it's just got me thinking about why hospitals, given that their reason for being there is caring for and helping people, often arouse such qualms, especially where any procedure involving anaesthesia is concerned. I would guess it's the loss of control over your own destiny, the 'your life in their hands' syndrome. I've tried to be as reassuring to my wife as I can, but I have to admit that it hasn't been easy - if anything, I dislike hospitals even more than she does, and the possibility of anything going wrong doesn't really bear thinking about for me. I'll need to keep my own worries under wraps so that I can hopefully help as much as I can, and console myself with the thought that the statistics are on our side - while the things that can go wrong in hospitals are 'newsworthy', and you tend to hear a lot about such misadventures, in at least 99% of cases, everything goes according to plan, and I don't feel too much as though I'm tempting fate in thinking that my wife will be within that 99%.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A couple of days' worth

I was intending to write a post last night, but tiredness caught up with me, so it's been postponed until tonight.
I spent a couple of hours at work yesterday afternoon seething with what I thought was righteous indignation, after what, in my opinion, was a completely unnecessary and heavy-handed bit of 'man management'. I followed a piece of 'custom and practice' which had appertained to those training everywhere I'd worked before, but which is frowned upon in my new workplace. Rather than a quiet 'word in the ear' to correct the error of my ways, I was summoned to the duty manager's office to be lectured like a naughty schoolboy, and that by someone with less than a third of my industry experience. I'll accept being told I'm in the wrong if that's the case, but there are ways and ways of doing things, and I was decidedly unimpressed by that way of doing things. It perhaps seems a bit on the trivial side at one day's remove, but I was pretty annoyed at the time.
Today threw up an example of the downside of working in the London area. I was travelling through the City of London (the financial district, for anyone who might not know) by bus, only to find that the police had closed various streets because of a security alert, which, needless to say, gridlocked the whole area. Luckily, I wasn't under any time pressure, but a journey that should have taken 20 minutes eventually took over an hour. I dread to think what it'll be like when the Olympics are in town in a couple of years time - I think a holiday might be called for sometime around then!
I saw my first real cutie since my move en route to the station this morning - very pretty, blond, much too young, but lovely to look at. A much nicer way to start the day than many I could think of.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More hospitality

I'm feeling very lucky at the moment - after the kindness of my brother and family last week, I'm now the recipient of more amazingly generous hospitality from a good friend, and some very interesting conversation, to boot. Being away from home, as I've said, is something I'm finding quite difficult at the moment, so for my situation to be mitigated by the care of friends and family is a great help. All I can do is to thank them, and reiterate how much it means to me.

Love and best wishes to all (and especially to those benevolent souls who've given me so much)
Sammy B

Domesticity

Today has been, for me, a very quiet, stay at home day, watching a bit of sport on TV and having a couple of cold beers this afternoon, then cooking the Sunday roast (or my slightly offbeat version of it, anyway) for the family. So far, so mundane, it might be said. What it has illustrated, though, is what I'm losing by working away from home. Days like today, just being at home doing domestic things, are going to be the exception rather than the rule for me for the foreseeable future. It's often said that you don't appreciate what you've got until it's gone, and while I've rarely taken my family life for granted - I spent too many years living on my own before meeting my wife for that - today has made me wonder whether the gain (sorting out our finances and letting me escape the stresses of my old job) comes anywhere near the loss of everyday life that I'm going to have to cope with. It makes me wonder whether I'm wasting the relatively short remainder of my active life in slogging away just to pay the bills while the important things in life just slip by. The only fly in the ointment is that if I don't carry on paying the bills, there won't be a home to have a domestic life in. There's no viable escape from the proverbial rat race, or so it seems.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The end of a hectic week

The end of my first week in my new job, and back home in sunny Cornwall. The job itself has been fine, my training/familiarisation has started well, and even yesterday's assessment session went better than I expected, given that the largest part of it was about an aspect of my job I haven't been involved with for many years, but which I've now got to relearn - it's a relief to know I haven't forgotten everything.
The worst aspect of the week was the amount of travelling I've been doing, albeit that some of it was a bit unnecessary, because of my accommodation situation still being up in the air. I've benefited from my brother's kindness this week, and will do so next week from, if anything, an even more generous offer of the use of a spare room from a friend - still a fair amount of commuting involved, but knowing where I'm going to be is a great weight off my shoulders, and I'm so grateful to the friend concerned.
Travelling back on the train yesterday evening, towards the end of what had proved to be a rather tortuous journey, I was treated to one of the best sunsets I've seen in a long time. The line between Exeter and Newton Abbot is amongst the nicest in the country at any time, in my opinion, running as it does alongside the sea and two river estuaries, but it surpassed itself on this occasion, with the low sun shining on the water and also reflecting back from a bank of cloud out to sea made the view into a work of art.
The weekend hasn't got off to the best of starts, though - 'my' sports team have been roundly thrashed this morning in their final replay. I knew I should've stayed in bed!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Hospitality

I ended up in deepest Kent last night, and I'm back here again this evening, the grateful recipient of the kind hospitality of my brother and his family. My search for any sort of realistically affordable accommodation within a reasonable distance of my new workplace has been an abject failure so far, so I'm onto Plan B, at least temporarily, of a very long commute instead. There's going to have to be a Plan C at some stage, something more permanent, if there's any chance of making this return to working away from home practicable, but quite what form Plan C will take remains to be seen. My new manager has arranged for me to go on a briefing day on Friday, which is in a relatively user-friendly location from my perspective, and starts late enough to make it accessible by train from home, so I'm going to get to go back to sunny Cornwall a day early this week, which, needless to say, has cheered me up considerably - I'll be home, given a fair wind, at around 5:00 tomorrow evening, and about the same time, all being well, after my day trip by train on Friday.
In our adult lives, I've always got on very well with my brother - we had the commonplace sibling rivalry as kids and teens, but luckily soon grew out of it - but I still count myself very lucky that he's put his spare room at my disposal at such short notice (about 2 hours notice last night). I hope I'll be able to reciprocate in some way - I know he's giving without expectation of a 'reward', but it would be nice if I can find some suitable means of repaying him before too long.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B