Still ill...but still at work

I've had a pretty unpleasant weekend, healthwise, feeling dire for a lot of the time, and spending most of the time when I haven't been at work asleep. Not the most promising of topics for a blog post, all in all. I think (at least, I hope) I'm past the worst of it now, so fingers crossed on that front. We did get one piece of good news - my daughter has been on the waiting list for a very popular and well thought-of local drama group for a couple of years, and she's finally got a place, so she's quite pleased with life at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not a well bunny

Having said I was going to open out the blog a bit, what's the first thing in my next post? Feeling rotten. At least this is a physical rather than emotional version of rotten, so there is a slight variation on the theme. I wasn't too bad when I first got up this morning, but by around 10:00, I was starting to come down with various virus-y symptoms - headache, aching muscles, temperature and a dose of the shivers. I didn't dare go sick from work again, having already had more than 6 weeks off this year, so I dosed myself up with whatever I could find in the medicine cupboard, went back to bed for an hour, and then got up and dragged myself off to work at lunchtime. With the help of a few more pills and a bowl of cereal to give me a sugar rush, I've managed to keep myself going up to now - about another 3 hours, and the night shift man will be here, then I'll be able to go home and curl up in a corner somewhere.
There was a really nice, happy post on Alex and Tony's blog this morning. Tony, with Alex's help, has come out to his parents, and they seem to have accepted the fact, despite their apparently being quite traditional, church-going people. It makes me wonder what would've happened if I'd come out to my parents in my teens - I think my dad might have accepted it, but I can't see my mum having done so in a million years. It's all academic, anyway, because I was so conflicted in my teens, then went through my 'suppressed years', before finally getting my head round who I am in the last year. Too late for either of my parents, sadly.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Turning outwards

If there was one word to best sum up my blog since its inception, 'introspection' would probably be the one that I would choose. That, in itself, hasn't entirely been a bad thing, because it was one of the originally stated aims of my having a blog, to use it as a sounding board for myself, to organise my thoughts and feelings, and by doing so, hopefully helping me to come to terms with issues in my life. However, there's been rather a preponderance of that sort of thing, a kind of monologue that has been by, for and about me, and I think it's time to diversify somewhat. There are a couple of reasons I want to change the blog slightly, but perhaps the most important is that, as of the end of next month, I'm going to be spending a goodly chunk of my life on my own, once I move to my new job, and if I indulge in too much navel-gazing, it could become depressing to the point of self-destructiveness, which is certainly not the object of the exercise. I also want to try to make the blog as readable as I can manage, and if I carry on spending most of my time in 'woe is me' mode, it's hardly going to inspire others to want to read it. I'm going to try to take advantage of being in the London area by spending some time taking in some of the cultural and intellectual offerings available - I've seen various events and lectures advertised in magazines I read, and quite a number of them are free, so I'm going to do my best to take advantage of what's out there. I also want to follow as much of the Thames Path as I can, allowing for my hiccuping heart and dodgy ankle - it should, given the help of the public transport network, be possible to split the walking into bite-size pieces, so all I need is the time and the weather. If I do have the time and the motivation - and the energy! - to fit some stuff in between shifts, I'll try and write about it here.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How long does a girl have to wait for table service around here?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The boy who never grew up...and some good news

An epiphany. Nothing less. At 6:15 in the morning, prompted by a line in a film review in Radio Times, of all the unlikely sources, describing J.M. Barrie as 'the original boy who never grew up'.
Because that's me, in a nutshell. Just accepting that simple premise explains so much about me, the intermittent emotional neediness, the self-centredness, the occasional fits of petulance, the tendency to impulsiveness, and perhaps, above all, my sexuality - if I'm still a boy in my head, why wouldn't I be attracted to other boys? I know, in practical terms, that it makes no difference - in the eyes of the world, I'm an adult, and one with a despised sexual preference at that, but if I can accept what I am inside, those externalities are so much easier to cope with, and, far more importantly, it gives me a way that I can successfully live with myself. As long as the boyish impulsiveness doesn't break through the wall of self-control and lead me to get involved with someone I shouldn't, and it never has yet, albeit with one or two very near misses, I'm safe, because I would never attempt to use the vagaries of my psyche to excuse anything illegal, and I have enough consideration for others never to force myself on anyone who wasn't willing.
The irony of it all is that a very similar comment was made to me well over twenty years ago, but its veracity didn't fully strike me until today. The previous example came when I was staying with someone who was a close friend of mine, who lived in Leicestershire at the time, and who is the third person that I'm 'out' to IRL (I haven't seen him since just before we moved to Cornwall, having fallen out with him over an issue completely unconnected with this, a sad example of the perils of mixing business and friendship). During the weekend I was staying with my friend and his family, his brother, who lived in the same area, and my friend's two nephews came to visit. I had what was, at the time, a big novelty item - a computer, an example of the very wonderful ZX Spectrum, which was soon plugged into the living room TV. The two boys, my friend's two daughters and I, had a fun afternoon of gaming, with the other adults giving a poor impression of not really being that interested in these kids' games, and after my friend's relatives had left, he commented on my having got on well with the two boys, slightly surprisedly - whether the surprise was engendered by my usually rather aloof persona being breached, or whether because the boys were known for being a bit difficult and boisterous (being boys, in other words), I'm not sure - but then continued with 'but that's because you're a boy yourself, I suppose'. I was mildly offended at the time, feeling as though I'd been slightly juvenilised, but, especially with hindsight, he hit the nail exactly on the head.
After a morning in which I felt much better about myself, and about life in general, the upswing was enhanced when I got home from work, to find a letter confirming my transfer date to my new job as September 27. After all the problems I've had in my present job in the last few months, the prospect of a definite point in the future when I'm going to be making my 'escape' is a very welcome one, even if it does entail the downside of beginning an indefinite period of spending the majority of my life away from home. I'm sure my family and I will find a way of making it work, and it certainly won't be forever - as soon as circumstances permit, I'll hotfoot it back to sunny Cornwall, hopefully permanently.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What's the point?

A very flat kind of day, mood-wise, and a good reflection of how I'm feeling about the blog at the moment. If I was to make a list to summarise where I feel I stand, and what the blog had achieved, it would look something like this:

• Connect with people, or even make a few friends - FAIL
• Do something to help others - FAIL
• Write to a standard others find interesting - FAIL
• Exorcise my demons - FAIL

I doubt that I'll close the blog, because I tend to stick at things once I get going, but I'm not feeling that there's much worthwhile about it at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The price of honesty

I was brought up to tell the truth, both of my parents, but especially my mother, being far more likely to punish us for being dishonest about anything we'd done wrong than for the actual infraction. My wife and I have taken a similar approach towards our daughter, trying to teach her the value of telling the truth. There are times, though, when I have my doubts about the value of being honest. It seems that unless the truth that you tell fits in with people's expectations and preconceptions, the outcome is, at best, ostracism. I don't want to keep harking back to the 'Yacky Box' fiasco, but it seems that the perpetrator of that particular pack of lies has ended up being far more accepted and sympathised with than both the victims of the hoax and the tellers of unpalatable truths. If you give an honest answer to an honest question, but it's not the answer the enquirer wants to hear, the only outcome is becoming persona non grata, or so it seems. Maybe I should start a new blog filled with plausible and easily digestible lies and exaggerations, and see how that fares. (I'm joking, in case anyone's concerned.)

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

No muse, no sun

I really felt this afternoon that I wanted to write, and that I might be able to come up with something worthwhile, but, sadly, it hasn't come to fruition. I tried to go back to an old story, the idea for which predates the blogs, but only added a minimal amount, and then had a go at a new story, the plot outline of which has been in my head for a few days, but again, I could only produce a couple of sentences. I know the writing thing is only a hobby, but it's something that I've considered trying to do more seriously, so I've found this afternoon quite frustrating. It's as though I know the words, but putting them down in any sort of coherent order is a step too far.
My mood hasn't been helped by the unabated rotten weather with which my long weekend off has been greeted.  We've lived in Cornwall long enough to expect little in the way of summer sunshine, for good geographical reasons - too much sea too nearby - but, given my longstanding addiction to the sun, there are days when I find wet weather almost a personal affront. If I could persuade my wife it was a good idea, I could quite happily decamp with the family to Gran Canaria tomorrow, and find some way of ekeing out a living, but there's no prospect of her agreeing to any such thing any time soon, and there's no way I would walk out on my responsibilities, so it's a case of 'grin and bear it' for the foreseeable future. There's a severe weather warning out for tonight, heavy rain and strong winds supposedly being on the way, so it looks as things are going to get worse before any there's chance of them getting better.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The elusiveness of dreams

I woke up in the early hours of this morning from what I presume must have been an interesting dream, because I can remember thinking that it would make a good idea for a story. Sadly, the fact that I thought it was a good idea is all I can remember now! I know some people who are interested in dreams keep a bedside notebook, but I don't have memorable dreams often enough to make it worthwhile. Perhaps the seed of the story idea is still somewhere in my subconscious, waiting to be unearthed by a felicitous combination of circumstances, similar to last night's conversation with my daughter.

More 'Dreams'



Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Convolutions

The twists and turns of the brain never cease to amaze me. Through the most circuitous of mental routes, a conversation between my daughter and I about an hour ago, which began with the derivation of the name of a football team, led me to remember a person I hadn't thought about for, at the very least, 30 years, but who, in retrospect, holds quite an important accolade in my life, although he, if I ever chanced to meet him now and discuss the subject, might not find it all that complimentary - the first boy I can recall being attracted to.
He was the same age as me - I was all of 12 at the time - and I met him at a cricket match between my school team and his. His name was (still is, presumably) Glyn, and he was the wicket keeper and captain of his team. He was blond and very good-looking, and I remember spending much of the match watching him. I didn't really understand why I felt so drawn to him at the time, and wouldn't for a couple of years, but, with the benefit of hindsight, I understand now - he was gorgeous! I saw him a couple more times during my school career, always at cricket matches between our respective schools, but didn't really feel any massive recurrence of that 'first hook' - it's only thinking about it now that I realise his significance. There was one other school cricketing acquaintance who had a similar effect, and given that I was older when I met him - around 15 - I had rather more insight into being drawn his way, although I did no more about it. Pat was nice looking, but his main attraction, even to a hormonally raging teen, was his personality - he was really bright, bubbly and funny, just the sort of person many people would love to have been friends with, and the fact that I found him sexy as well would just have been the icing on the cake, had I had the chance to get to know him better.
Speaking of blond and eye-catching, I saw a very pretty little boy when my wife and I went to the supermarket this afternoon. Strictly eye candy, of course - he was only 7 or 8 - but he brightened up what has been a really grey, drizzly and miserable day down here.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tripping

My trip with my daughter over the last two days eventually achieved our aim, but could hardly have said to have gone according to plan. We set off as intended, by road to our local mainline station, to get a train down to Par in time to start the expedition proper, at just before 7:30 yesterday morning. Everything was going swimmingly until we got to Newton Abbot, an hour and a half later, but that was the end of the original itinerary. We then proceeded (no pun intended) to sit at for Newton Abbot for over two hours, while Great Western tried to resuscitate one of their HST sets which had expired at Dawlish. With the further knock-on effects en route, it was virtually lunchtime by the time the train approached Taunton, almost four and a half hours to cover just over 100 miles. We were both pretty fed up by that point, and decided to get off the train that we'd been intending to stick with through to Birmingham, not least because we were both pretty hungry by that point, having not had much in the way of breakfast. There was serious talk of aborting the trip and going home, but, after an early lunch in a local pub, lubricated by a couple of beers on my part, we decided to carry on, albeit with a radically different travel plan. My daughter had never been to Wales, apart from a couple of brief visits when she was a toddler, which she obviously didn't remember, so she decided she wanted to go to Cardiff (which had been pencilled in for day 2 of our trip if time permitted) for the afternoon. I didn't see any reason not to accommodate her, so we set off again from Taunton, via Bristol. Next spanner in the works - the weather took a substantial turn for the worse. We arrived in Cardiff to be greeted by torrential rain. Neither of us had any ambition to get drenched walking aimlessly around a city we weren't familiar with, so our trip to the principality effectively became a 'non-lander', as we jumped on the first long distance train that appeared, which happened to be going to Manchester. That was a happy accident in a couple of senses, in that it was a place I was much more at home with - I've lived in and around Manchester, in three phases of my life, for nearly fifteen years - and that it landed us in the part of the country that we'd been intending to be in at the end of 'Day one' of our trip. It also led to the first element of our revised plan for the trip which was advantageous. By the time we got to Manchester, at around 7:30 last night, food was on the agenda again, and my daughter expressed a preference for Chinese. Manchester's 'Chinatown' is only a ten minute or so walk from Piccadilly station, so that's where we headed. In all honesty, it was a bit of a hit and miss affair on my part, because, in all the years I'd lived in the area, I'd only ever been for one meal in Chinatown, and that was an upmarket affair intended to impress a lady friend (before I met my wife, I hasten to add), but we struck lucky on this occasion, finding ourselves in a restaurant offering an 'all you can eat' buffet menu for £8 a head. It really was very good, perhaps illustrated by the fact that there seemed to be quite a number of the local Chinese community eating there. I've always reckoned that if you go where the locals go to eat, you can't go too far wrong, and that seemed to be the watchword in this case. We didn't pig out too gratuitously, always a temptation in the 'all you can eat' format - although there were a few student-ish types there, who probably were! - but enjoyed some genuinely pleasant food. Crap beer, though - to be fair, they're a restaurant, not a pub, so that's a bit of a cavilling comment on my part. By the time we'd finished eating, any last hope we might have had of short-circuiting our trip and heading for home - which would've meant catching the last Manchester-London train of the day and then coming home on the overnight service to Cornwall - had gone, so we were faced with the problem of how to deal with the overnight phase of the trip. After some perusal of the options, we ended up by undertaking two round trips over the Pennines, before going on to Preston at around 4:15 this morning, and then catching the first train of the day to Cark. If that sounds like plain sailing, I'm afraid it wasn't. The next issue that didn't conform to the ideal, although I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything else, really, was that, between 10:15 last night and 6:15 this morning, we had to deal with three separate groups of offensive drunks. The first problem arose at York last night - York races had seemingly been on during the day, and, contrary to my stereotypes of racegoers, 95% of them, female as well as male, appeared to be drunk to the point of incapacity. I can certainly not claim to be innocent of being drunk in public (although it's been a good many years since my last lapse - February 15 2001 springs to mind as a black mark in my copybook, and there are two reasons why I can remember the specific date), but I think I can honestly say that I've never been rowdy or irritating to others in my cups, and I find it thoroughly inconsiderate that others don't share my restraint. The next one and a half 'Roses' trips went smoothly, before the second episode of 'pondlife on tour' , with a bunch of nightclubbers assuming the right to ignore other people by way of shouting, swearing and implicitly making clear that anyone who had the temerity to complain would be on their 'hitlist', and generally implying that anyone who impinged on 'their territory' was most unwelcome. The final indignity was, ironically, on the train that actually took us to Cark, with yet another gang of selfish, drunken yobs on their way back from an 18th birthday party making life barely tolerable for everyone else. I'm sorry if I sound like some boring fart moaning about the 'youth of today', but I find such arrantly selfish behaviour quite unacceptable, and, in any case, the first crowd (of racegoers) were largely middle-aged, rendering their antics indefensible, in my opinion. The saving grace, as far as I was concerned, was having Cark station to ourselves for half an hour this morning. Apart from being able to take the pictures we wanted, the major benefit was being able to enjoy the peace and quiet of rural Cumbria for those minutes, and have a bit of gentle, satirical fun - I took a picture of my daughter giving her take on the 'Angel of the North' on the station footbridge, and it appeared on the camera to be just a silhouette, but when I transferred it to the computer earlier, her face was recognisable, so I've had to refrain from putting the photo on the blog. The journey back was, by comparison, very straightforward - all the connections worked out, we both spent a fair chunk of the time asleep, had a nice, if gratuitously overpriced, breakfast in Preston, before finally getting home, courtesy of my wife's 'POETS day', shortly before 4:00 this afternoon, some 33 and a half hours after leaving home. My daughter and I both enjoyed the trip (apart from the overnight malfeasants) and may well do something similar again in future, subject to our not being at loggerheads in the meantime. In case anyone should wonder, there is a good reason why we were able to make so many random-ish train trips without it becoming prohibitively expensive, but I'm not prepared to elucidate, certainly now, probably ever, because it has considerable mileage in security terms.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Jaunting in the morning

Despite having had a couple of days to think about it, my daughter is still keen to embark on our 36 hour bout of travelling, so we'll be up before 6:00 in the morning to head out for our first train at just before 7:00. She's a resilient character, and can get by, as I can, on fairly limited amounts of sleep (although I predict she'll be in bed until lunchtime on Saturday!). We'll take the camera, so there may be a little illustrated travelogue when we get back.
I managed one of those occasional sessions of fairly fluent creativity this morning. In about four hours, I went from having an idea for a new story for 'Cuckoos' to posting it. I doubt it will be to everyone's taste, but it does at least represent a slightly different type of story compared to those I've written up to now, which was something I wanted to try to do. After the literary and personal shambles that was Oneiros, I definitely felt the need for a change.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Peripheral

I'm not, and never have been, a 'people person'. This has led to my finding myself almost always on the edge of things when it comes to inter-personal dealings, and it seems that cyberspace is no different. I'm awkward, almost shy, in face to face dealings with others the vast majority of the time, but I'd hoped that the veneer of anonymity afforded by the online world might have helped me to become involved with people a little more easily than I've become accustomed to. However, that doesn't, on the whole, appear to be the case. I'm well aware that I'm not a 'sympathetic' character - there are enough things about me I don't like, so why would I be surprised that others feel the same way. The balance never quite seems to be there - either I get the impression that someone might be a potential friend, and fail by overreaching, being too keen to try to engage, or the opposite process applies, and I'm cool and detached to someone I can't believe would want to associate with me, and fail by pushing them away. It makes me sad sometimes that I can't find a way to be more sociable and more involved in life, but I guess after all these years I should be used to it. I'm sorry if I've upset anyone by my sins of commission or omission, but, ultimately, 'I am who I am', and always will be. I don't want anyone to think I'm fishing for sympathy or compliments here, I'm just trying to give an honest assessment of how I feel.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A relocation, and a trip

I hope I'm not being premature, given that what I'm about to say is only the outcome of a couple of phone calls, and I haven't got anything in writing yet, but it looks very much as though my last shift in my present job will be a late shift on Saturday September 25, and that I'll start my new job on the following Monday. This was after a bit of 'shuttle diplomacy' on my part yesterday and today, when I spoke to my current and next managers, and seemed to persuade them both that the end of next month was suitable for all concerned. On the whole, I'd rather move yesterday, but, if I can get a definite date everyone can agree on, I can start making some plans - after all, my family need to get their mindset organised, quite apart from any consideration of my employers and their office politics. Ironic, given the problems I've had in my current job, that I should finish on a late shift, especially at a weekend - late turn Saturday, incontrovertible proof of man's inhumanity to man!
On a few occasions, my daughter and I have gone off on some weird and wonderful trips, and it seems there might be another one in the offing later this week. It's based on a joke - a 'spoonerism', actually - there's a station down here in Cornwall called Par, and another 'up north' called Cark, and we've often bantered about going from 'Par to Cark', so, unless anything unforeseen happens, we'll be doing just that, on Thursday and Friday. My wife's working, but it's not the sort of thing - heavy travelling, and not vast amounts to see when you get there - that would've appealed to her anyway, so she'll stay at home and cat-sit. There's one interesting sidelight - when my wife was pregnant with my daughter, we spent a weekend in Grange-over-Sands, and walked along the promenade there, and if things go to plan on our trip, my daughter and I will reprise the walk, one that she's only done before as a foetus!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Spectres

I have an interest, as some might have noticed, in a few esoteric subjects, one of which is the 'many worlds' version of quantum physics. I've mainly used the concept in fiction (Oneiros and Lucent spring to mind), but I think it's interesting to think about the idea in relation to my real life. Even if the parallel universes posited by the theory don't have any 'real', objective existence, there are spectral alternative universes where I could have been the same person, but in a radically different situation, according to either decisions or chance occurrences that have befallen me along the way. For example, and probably the way in which my life could have been most different, was if I'd carried on along the educational trajectory that seemed to be possible at one point. When I was 10 and 11, I took a series of exams known as the 'Kent Test', which had replaced the 11-plus as the means whereby children were selected for either grammar school or secondary modern as their next step from primary school. My mark in those tests was 136+/137 - 99.5%, give or take - and within the top ten candidates in the whole county. Academically, I could pretty much have done anything, and I was being touted - indeed had been touted from when I was 7 or 8 - as an Oxbridge candidate. I duly went off to grammar school, and it was a good school, a fact that I appreciated even when I was there - this isn't a case of 20/20 hindsight - but, unfortunately, I was around in an era where the concept of 'gifted and talented' pupils hadn't come to fruition, and I was doing the same work as everyone else. It was, and I'm aware this is probably going to sound impossibly conceited, a waste of my time - it was too easy, and I quickly came to realise that I could achieve superb exam results, which was the only criterion that mattered at that time, with no effort at all. In other words, I didn't have to work, so I didn't. Once I'd got into that mindset, it proved to be virtually impossible to get out of. I did the absolute minimum of work I could get away with all the time, became unpopular with numerous teachers - I remember one particular school report, in a subject I had no interest in at the time and did nothing for throughout a whole school year, which ended with my getting the second or third highest year end exam mark, where the teacher concerned wrote 'This boy does not deserve this exam result', and he was probably right. I did briefly flirt with a university education - nowhere near Oxford or Cambridge, either geographically or academically - hated it, and left to follow the career that I'm still following now. I just wonder if I'd made different decisions, or had been given more encouragement, or hadn't been so downright lazy, where I might have been now. Maybe some version of 'convergent evolution' might have brought me to exactly the same place, but I somehow doubt it. There's no point in regrets, because I am who and where I am, and I know I need to make the best of that situation, but I can't help wondering, who that spectral 'me' could have been.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lazy Sunday - at work!

My all-day Sunday shift came round again today, and it proved to be a very straightforward experience. I spent most of the day with my nose buried in the laptop, only interrupted by a modicum of work every now and again. The only downside is the need to be there the whole time - that's the nature of the job, there might not be too much work, but it can arise at any time, and there's only one person, i.e. me, there to do it. It's definitely better (and better paid!) than digging ditches, so I'm not going to complain.
I spent some time today reviewing some of the stories I've started for the other blog, but not got around to finishing for one reason or another. One or two of them are beyond hope, and I'm only keeping the drafts in cast there's the odd bon mot I can recycle, but I put a bit more work into another, which has a pretty fully worked out plot, and may well make its appearance in 'Cuckoos' before too long. I feel I need to branch out in terms of subject matter with my fiction writing, and I did have one new idea for a slightly different kind of story, based on the 'plot' of an old and not very well known pop song, actually (I'm not saying which one, I don't want to be accused of plagiarism!), which may be next on the conveyor belt - hopefully not of unfinished stories!
A little treat came my way during the shift, in the shape of an appearance from 'DBJ', sporting sunglasses and his customary unflattering short summer haircut. Lose the shades, they cover up too much face, and grow that hair! It's my last few weeks of seeing him, after all, so I can at least fantasise about seeing him at his best before I go. I can barely believe that it's four years, give or take a couple of weeks, since I first saw him. I can remember it as if it was yesterday.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Coming to terms?

This post has been written after giving several hours of thought to what I wrote in 'Schizoid' last night. First of all, I must express my deep gratitude to Brian and Mark. I feel very ashamed of myself in having succumbed to such an egregiously self-indulgent meltdown, but even in the face of such behaviour, they've spent their valuable time in trying to help me with their caring and constructive comments.
I think it's fair to say that, whatever else may come of it, what I wrote last night and the state of mind that engendered it has convinced me that there's absolutely nothing to be gained, for anyone, by my 'coming out'. Even if I was able to be 100% selfish, and say that no-one's feelings but my own were of any importance, it still wouldn't achieve anything worthwhile, because the turmoil inside wouldn't go away, while there's every chance that I would lose everything that is good and valuable in my life. If I was gay in the way the term is customarily used, and I had found, or might find, someone with whom I could embark on a relationship, then that might tip the balance in favour of an outbreak of honesty (not that I'm suggesting for a moment that gay people have an easy or comfortable ride in life, but there is now, in some quarters at least, some kind of grudging tolerance, if not acceptance), but to be 'out' as a boylover in this country, or, indeed, in pretty much any country, is just not a tenable position - there are far too many self-appointed vigilantes who consider it their duty, if not their right, to castrate you with a blunt penknife, or pour petrol through your letter box and set light to it. If I owed my family nothing else, I owe them protection from that kind of scenario.
My family is the next point I need to consider. As I've said several times before, I love my wife and daughter dearly, and I know they love me. That is far more than many, many people are able to say, and far more, at several points in my life, than I thought I would ever be able to say. To think of throwing that away, on a whim, to tilt at unattainable windmills, or even to salve my conscience, would be stupidity of the highest order. I know I have responsibilities in my life, and trying to look after my family, to the best of my ability, is the greatest of them in my eyes. In that light, giving up something I've got no chance of achieving, to all practical purposes, isn't even a sacrifice on my part.
What might be the practical consequences of all this? As I said in a recent post, my attraction to boys is very longstanding and deep-seated, if mysterious in origin, and I have no expectation of it going away any time soon. With that in mind, I need to come up with a supportable way of 'managing' the issue, so that no-one, including me, is hurt by it. I have, within the past few months, considered what, if any, professional help might be available and suitable, going as far as making enquiries about a fairly well-known and apparently well thought-of counselling service based in our nearby city centre. There are two 'show-stoppers' for me in that regard, though. The obvious one is cost - when we're struggling to pay the mortgage, counselling isn't exactly a high priority item - but the other aspect I can't get past, which is doubtless a product of paranoia on my part, is how far the professional detachment of any potential counsellor would extend in my case. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would happily call me a worthless pervert, without my having to pay for the privilege.
As far as my cyberspace activities go, my blog list now only contains two active sites by younger male bloggers (I know 'The Life of Lauren' is there as well) - Rowan's, which is currently in abeyance, and, with due respect to him, he's one of the older younger bloggers (if that makes sense), and who, even if I chanced to meet him IRL, would almost certainly be outside my 'window of attraction', and DJ's, which is a different scenario for me, because, and I know anyone who reads this has only got my word to go on, my concern for DJ is strictly a 'pseudo-paternal' thing - I might want to give the boy a hug, but only in the same way I would give my daughter a hug. I do look at one or two other blogs on an 'as and when' basis (Kieren's and Sammi's 'Teenage Narcissist' spring to mind), but I'm hardly spending my whole life, even my online life, hanging around teenagers' blogs. 'Nifty' and similar sites are, perhaps, a different issue. I make no pretence of the fact that I read such stories for any other reason than that I find them erotic. Whether this has potentially positive or negative consequences isn't clear to me. Does the time I spend in a 'fantasy' sexual environment get the desire out of my system, or does it make it more likely that I might try to 'act out' that fantasy? In the absence of evidence from a concrete, real-world situation, I can't make any absolutely definitive statements. What I can say, with as much certainty as I can say about anything, is that the idea of rape fills me with revulsion - some of my posts, and I can assure everyone that they are genuine, have detailed how upset I can get about the thought of anyone, but especially a boy, being raped, and I can't see any circumstances where I could do any such thing. Rape, to my mind, isn't a sexual crime in any case, but a crime of violence and anger, perpetrated in an attempt to dominate and humiliate another person, rather than anything born of desire. The need I feel for reciprocity, the wanting to be 'loved back', is probably the best insurance policy I have against finding myself in a situation where I might actually become sexually involved with someone I shouldn't, because, and this is one of the few sensible things I said in my last post, I don't see any feasible real-world scenario in this context where any such reciprocity could be found. Whatever else I might be, good or bad, I'm no-one's sex object.
So - coming to terms? As I said earlier, my boylover side isn't going to go away, so there's got to be some kind of solution whereby I can live with it and still continue to function usefully and rationally. My rushing off to some kind of ill-conceived 'coming out' isn't a sensible option for anyone, and I think that particular brand of stupidity would always be trumped by my fear of the consequences. The only viable way forward at the moment is basically 'more of the same' - carry on in hiding, and deal with the frustration as best I can. After all, the fact that the (unfinished and unfinishable) story I posted in 'Cuckoos' before I went to work this morning, and which has had a considerable influence on bringing this issue to a head, had to be set in a parallel universe to make even a fictionalised version of what I want workable is indicative of how vanishingly unlikely any real-world sequel would be.

Finally, and disgracefully delayed on my part, my thanks to Tony (Tman) for becoming my newest follower (days ago, sorry, Tony!).

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Schizoid

I'm in a really strange place in my life at the moment. It stems, in a way, from the panic last Sunday when I binned 'Semicentennial' and 'Nephelokokkygia', although the roots of the way I'm feeling go back quite a lot further than that - say about 12 months, because any further than that would constitute arrant navel-gazing. In a nutshell, I'm almost feeling as though, even though it would constitute 'the end of the world as we know it', that I want to be 'caught', I want my wife, in particular, to find out about me and my predilections, I want it all to come out into the open, that I'm just so fed up of living in hiding. But then I think, what would I gain? What would I lose? Then the cowardice sets in, the fear of potentially having the whole edifice of my 'normal' life come crashing down, the family, the home, the air of acceptance and 'respectability', probably my job, because if my work colleagues got to hear about the 'paedo' in their midst, they'd doubtless refuse to work with me, the whole idea of it is almost terrifying. And what would I gain as recompense for all that loss? Nothing. There is no conceivable real-world mechanism for acquiring the sort of relationship I want. It might happen in stories on 'Nifty' and the like, but real life boys don't fall at the feet of fat, middle-aged blokes, why the hell should they? Even if some hypothetical boy wanted a relationship with an older man, there are millions of far more eligible candidates than me. So what other possible motivation could I have for some kind of suicidal outburst of honesty? Do I want my marriage, my family life to end? I would say not, if I was asked, but maybe there is some 'midlife crisis' kind of scenario going on in my head, whereby I think I would be better off making a fresh start. But, as I said, what would that 'fresh start' consist of? Me going back to where I was in my twenties, living in crappy bedsits, going nowhere much except work, assuming I could get a job, with the possible added 'attraction' of the internet, which wasn't around in the 1980's. It's as though I'm trying to press two magnetic north poles together, what I've got now and what I want are just mutually exclusive. The only imaginable scenario for my having sex with a boy is for me to pay for it, but sex isn't the prime motivation, unbelievable as it may seem. In the same way that I waited until I found someone to 'love me back' in the case of my wife, and was lucky enough to persuade her to marry me, I would only want a reciprocal kind of relationship with a boy, and it's just not going to happen. Ever. Get over it.

Sorry, everyone.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Non-thrilling day

Another day off, but, as is the case in this part of our 4 week roster cycle, a day permeated by tomorrow. The week after the night shift week consists of 2 late shifts, 2 days off midweek, then the start of a 5 day run of early shifts from Friday onwards. Given that, for me, early shift means getting up at just after 4:00 in the morning, it does rather tend to restrict what I can do on the Thursday, because everything needs to be geared towards an early(ish) night, to avoid being a total zombie the following morning. Having said that, this week should be my penultimate 'split' week before I move to my new job, and another new roster pattern, which will doubtless throw up its own joys(!). and, hopefully, a few bonuses to counterbalance the need to be away from home for around 60% of my life.
The very low highpoint of today was finalising a bit of bridging finance to keep us ticking over until the pay rise from my new job comes to fruition in October - at least it was nice to be able to go and do the weekend shopping without being paranoid about the final total at the checkout, not something I've been able to do for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I'm not a raging spendthrift, but I really do struggle with the idea of a 'hand-to-mouth' kind of lifestyle - I had enough of that in my childhood, and I've no ambition at all for a repeat performance.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lessons in tolerance?

It's been my day off today, so, as the school holidays continue unabated, my daughter and I went out and about, off to our local Argos store, of all the exciting summertime venues you could choose - my daughter wanted to spend some of her savings on a set of art materials and equipment, as she finally seems to be developing some self-confidence in her artistic abilities. She got what she wanted, and on the way back, we passed close to the home of one of her primary school friends. He was (is) another one of the 'bright kids' who jumped through the requisite hoops to get to grammar school, but developed the reputation of being a bit of a 'geeky', mad scientist sort of character, and kids being what they are, i.e. cruel to anyone who's even slightly 'different', that led on to his being called 'gay' - this by 10/11 year olds, to boot. My daughter wasn't one of the name-calling crew, as I would've hoped, but the possibility of his being 'gay' came up in conversation today in the car. My attitude was basically 'he almost certainly isn't, but so what if he is?', to which my daughter's response was 'Ewwww!'. This led on to a more general discussion of this aspect of bullying, and the sort of insults that kids throw at each other, often just to get a reaction, but which, if directed at someone who might take them personally can be incredibly hurtful. I asked my daughter to think about how she might feel being in the position of the 'target', and she quickly admitted she would 'feel really bad'. I got a lot of verbal abuse when I was a tween/teen, partly because I was the 'fat kid', and partly because I was ridiculously 'bright', and attracted the sort of opprobrium that my daughter's friend has had to put up with, as being 'clever' has never been fashionable, even in the far-off 1970's, so I'm speaking from a position of some authority here. I hope that I've at least encouraged my daughter to think about the issues, and perhaps be a little more tolerant and a bit less prone to 'knee-jerk' reactions.
I've succumbed to a bout of shameless self-indulgence this evening. I normally have an unbreakable rule that I never spend more than £5 on a bottle of wine, unless it's a special occasion, but I'm currently enjoying a bottle of fizzy Chilean 'Brut Reserva' that was reduced from £10 to £7 at our local supermarket, for no better reason than I feel like it. Disgraceful behaviour, but 'is this the face of a worried man?!"

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Some good news at last

Around 18 days ago, I read a post called 'Farvel for alltid' on 'Planet DJ' which was the first harbinger of what proved to be a very painful and upsetting time for a lot of people, as well as causing a lot of mistrust and lack of belief in this corner of the blogsphere. This morning, 'Wandering Pom' pointed me in the direction of 'Planet DJ II' (Thank you, Mark), with a super new picture to mark DJ's return to blogging. I think DJ is really brave to put himself 'out here' again after all that's happened, and I sincerely hope that all his cyberspace experiences from now on are positive ones. As I've said before, I prefer to believe that most people in the blogsphere are well-intentioned, unless there's concrete proof to the contrary, let's not allow the few 'bad apples' to spoil things for everyone else.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Settling in, and a chat

The move to my new blogsphere 'home' seems to have gone OK, and I'm pleased to say that some of the followers of my old blogs have kindly found their way to the new place - thanks very much to Mark, Brian and Daniel.
I had a chat with my daughter last night about what had happened, and why I'd done what I did. She's a bright, and, for her age, mature person, so she understands now that it wasn't an issue of trust or mistrust, or me treating her like an ignorant child, but more an issue of wanting to protect her and her mum, and, in all honesty, myself. I've referred to this tangentially before, though never explicitly, but my daughter is aware, to a limited extent, of my 'hidden' side -  she hasn't had any of the 'gory details' thrust upon her, but she asked me a specific question a few months ago in connection with a picture (non-pornographic, I hasten to add) I'd culled from the internet, and I didn't want to lie to her, so she is, to some extent, one of the two people I'm 'out' to IRL. I have no doubt that many people would say that to have involved someone so young is utterly wrong, and I do have misgivings about it myself, but, ultimately, done's done, and I can't go back and pretend that I was making it up. Fortunately, she's been absolutely great about it, and very supportive - I'm lucky to have someone like her in my life.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Too much excitement for one day

I've just got through a traumatic couple of hours, after stupidly allowing my daughter to find out the name of my (now former) blog - she said she wouldn't read it, and while I don't want her to think I don't trust her, there's too much in there which isn't really appropriate for a 12 year old, especially my own offspring, quite apart from the chances of my wife reading any of it. Luckily, I seem to have transferred pretty much everything over to its new home intact, and I've shifted 'Nephelokokkygia' to a new place as well, just to be ultra-cautious, at 'SB - Cuckoos v. 2.0'. Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled by my carelessness, but I've cheered up a bit after the apparently successful transfer. Just as a piece of completely undeserved serendipity, the new template I've found seems to be slightly easier on the eye - I hope at least some others will agree.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A hardy perennial

This afternoon saw the reappearance of a conversation which my wife and I have, on average, about once every 12 to 18 months. The exact details and circumstances vary, but the gist is always the same - wouldn't I like to move to the Midlands, to be near my wife's family. And the answer is always the same - 'no'. This isn't because I have the slightest problem with any of my 'in-laws' - well, except perhaps with my sister-in-law's adopted daughter, who is, in my opinion, a dreadful brat - but because I have no personal connections with the Midlands, apart from my wife's family, and, furthermore, I spent probably the three unhappiest years of my adult life in the area, when I worked there in the late 1980's. Added to that is the fact that I like living in Cornwall, that it was an exhaustively discussed joint decision when we did move down here, and that my daughter has worked hard to get a place at one of the best state schools in the whole of South West England, and has lived in Cornwall herself for all of her life that she can remember - she was 2 when we moved here from Greater Manchester - and also likes living here, so, at least in terms of any scenario where I am offered a choice, I would never agree to such a move. The x-factor, however, is whether my wife would ever feel so strongly about moving that she would be prepared to take a decisive lead and start looking for jobs, houses, etc, of her own volition. Because, ultimately, my wife does have the highest trump card - she knows I love her and would never want us to split up in any foreseeable circumstances. My telling her, as I did again today, that if she wants to move so badly, to start looking for those jobs and so on, basically constitutes me calling her bluff. There's always the chance, one of these days, she'll tell me she's off for a job interview in Birmingham, Derby, Leicester, or wherever. I hope, however selfish it might make me seem, that such a day never comes.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Taking a step back

The last 2 weeks have been dominated, in a blogland sense, with the fallout from the 'Yacky Box' affair, and this morning's rant on my part, while I stand by what I said, seems to have marked a threshold where the blog stuff has started to encroach on my 'real' life - my wife and daughter were aware that I was agitated about something earlier on, and now are aware of my current mood of being flat and borderline depressed, and as it's not something I can speak to them about, I think it's time that I stepped back, not from blogging as a whole, but from this affair in particular. If I felt I was able to make a positive difference to those who have been affected, and to one person specifically, I would carry on, but, realistically, I've got no way of achieving what I want to achieve, so the only likely outcome is to increase my own stress levels, to the possible detriment of my family, which is obviously not an outcome I can countenance. My 'real world' responsibilities and relationships are far more important to me than anything in blogland, and I would hope most people here would be able to say the same. It's a matter of keeping things in proportion, and focusing on priorities.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Count to 10...no, I'm still seething

A post has appeared on Paul's blog overnight purporting to tell the 'real' story of 'JJ'. People seem to have been falling over themselves to embrace someone who is, at best, a self-confessed liar, and, at worst, something far more sinister, while forgetting those who have been 'the collateral damage' of this affair. I'll admit, freely, to partiality in this matter - anyone who's read my blog over the past couple of weeks (and indeed a lot further back than that) will know that there's a very big place in my heart for DJ, and I'm absolutely furious that he's so upset yet again. It's all the more frustrating for me that all I can do about it is rant - I just wish there was something, anything, more substantive I could do for the boy, but I know that's not a realistic expectation.

I know the chances of you reading this post, DJ, are very small, but if you do, I really hope you find a way of coming to terms with everything that's happened, and moving towards a much happier future. I wish so much that I could help you in some way, but I know, sadly, I can't fix things for you. All I can do is say how much I care. ((Hugs)).
Love & best wishes to you, DJ.

I haven't forgotten the others, like Gabe and Rowan, who've been hurt by this as well, I'm thinking of you, too.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Abject

I've been tipped back into a very unhappy place by events of the past 24 hours. It began by my being ensnared by good intentions, or what I would consider to be good intentions, into not only making myself look foolish and naïve, but into dragging someone else who I've come to consider as a friend, at least in a cyberspace sense, into my pit of stupidity, and, on top of that, not even getting close to achieving the potentially beneficial outcome I was hoping for. That left me feeling very down and emotional last night - self-pity, for the most part, but also genuine sadness for one particular person who's really got under my skin, but who I can, realistically, do absolutely nothing to help.
Then, this morning, reading Tman's latest blog post, and being thrown straight back to where I was 3 months ago, when I wrote 'The dark place' in the wake of a similar blog post, but without, in this case, any hope of catharsis or resolution for me. No doubt the 'right thinkers' and other purveyors of schadenfreude would say that, as a self-confessed boylover, I deserve all the unhappiness I get, but I can no more help my sexual orientation than I can help being right-handed. It's been there, consistently, since I was a boy myself, the only variation between different phases of my life, in reality, being how successfully I've managed to come to terms with, and in most cases, suppress, my real self. Given that it's been around for the best part of four decades, and that I don't expect to become left-handed overnight either, I would hope it wouldn't be too much to ask for a little forbearance. Sadly, I probably hope in vain.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Back to Castle Paranoia

I've tried over the past week or so, and today in particular, to try and do what little I can to prevent someone who I 'met' in Blogland, and who I care about, from coming to any further harm, but it appears that all I've succeeded in doing is displaying my naïvety - I hope someone is enjoying their amusement at my expense. Trust is hard to build up, and very easy, apparently, to abuse, and to lose. I'll be keeping my head down for the foreseeable future, and sticking to what I know to be true, which means this blog will probably become little more than a glorified diary, perhaps with a few musings like those of the past couple of days. I'm feeling pretty sad and disillusioned with it all at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Bifurcations and fleeting moments

Or butterflies and tornadoes, if you prefer. I planned to go shopping this morning, as I often do when I'm on nights, to our nearest 24 hour supermarket on my way home from work. When I arrived there, however, my plans were thwarted by the fact that the store had been evacuated because of a fire alarm, so I had to turn around and head for home instead. I was annoyed, as people are wont to be in such circumstances, because to go to this particular supermarket involves a fairly substantial detour in terms of distance and time, and led to me arriving home half an hour later than I would've done without having achieved my object. It also meant that I had to go out again this afternoon, after I'd got up, which in turn led to a memorable, if transitory encounter, and set off the train of thought which has led to this post. I went to our local, small supermarket rather than venturing to one of the bigger city stores, given that I didn't actually need vast amounts of stuff, and while making my way around the shop, I saw an absolute cutie, a very good-looking boy of 11 or 12 with dark, curly hair, who I obviously wouldn't have seen if I hadn't had to make the unscheduled shopping trip. It was only the most fleeting of moments, a few seconds at most, as I looked at him and he looked back at me, before I turned away to avoid the gaggle of females he was with (mother and a couple of sisters, presumably) noticing I was looking at him. I've never seen him before, almost certainly never will again - he may not even be local, the supermarket I was in is right by one of the busiest main roads in Cornwall, and as such gets a fair amount of 'passing trade', especially at this time of year - so one could easily say 'so what?', these things happen all the time, we see people almost every day in passing with no expectation of ever seeing them again. What made this encounter more significant for me, apart from the fact that he was the best looking boy I've seen so far this week, was it got me thinking about the vagaries of cause and effect, how being in a specific place at a specific time can change your life in ways that are completely unpredictable. While I've got no expectation whatever of this particular evanescent, tangential meeting of two individuals will have the slightest effect on either life (apart from the self-evident one that I'm writing about it), I, and I'm sure most other people, can think of events that have happened in comparably random ways, in circumstances that couldn't have been predicted days, hours, or in some cases even minutes in advance, but that have had a much greater effect on one's subsequent life.
One really big piece of my life's jigsaw happened in a completely unexpected and unpredictable fashion. At around 6:00 in the morning of November 12 1991, I left my house to go to work. About eight and a half hours later, I arrived back home to find that I'd been burgled. Apart from calling the police, and later on talking to my insurance company, I rang a good friend of mine, who was far more practically minded than me, to help me repair and secure the back door, which had been the way the burglars had got into the house. We often went out for drinks, but had no plans to on that particular day. He was a divorcé, but had recently met someone new (who he subsequently married), and was due to be meeting her for a drink after she finished work later that evening. He saw how fed up I was with life, and invited me to tag along. I already knew his girlfriend, and didn't feel as though I'd be too much of a 'gooseberry', so I accepted his offer. She obviously didn't know I was going to be turning up with my friend that evening, because she was already at work before  I rang him, but what he didn't know was that she'd also invited a work colleague, who was new to the area at the time and didn't know too many people locally, to come along to a pub near where they both worked where she'd arranged to meet my friend. The upshot of it all was that, at 9:05 that evening, to the nearest five minutes, I met the woman who would, around 17 months later, become my wife. If the peculiar circumstances of that day hadn't happened in the way that they did, it's very unlikely, given the way that our lives worked at that time, that I would ever have met my wife, so, although I would never have expected to have said so, I think I owe the burglars a debt of gratitude!
There's another fallout from the change of the day's plans which will happen shortly - I normally fill my car up in the petrol station at the 24 hour supermarket, which I wasn't able to do this morning, which means that I'm going to have leave about 5 minutes earlier than usual to go to work this evening. so I can stop for fuel en route, and that change of itinerary could put me in a position of jeopardy that I wouldn't have been in if I made my journey at the normal time, or, conversely, save me from being somewhere that I would otherwise have been at the 'wrong' time. Who knows? Wish me luck!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

P.S. Thanks very much to Tintin (Handsomevietguy) for becoming my latest follower.
SB

Contemplations

There have been a few issues I've been thinking about recently. and this post, hopefully, will be a distillation of those thoughts.
I saw a comment on a message board (I forget exactly where, but it may have been Iomfats), a few months ago now, which I've returned to in my mind on a number of occasions. The comment, in essence, said that if you ever think you might be gay, you probably are, the implication being that there is such a degree of discrimination and hostility in so many places that anyone who wasn't gay wouldn't even allow themselves to think about putting themselves into such a position. I don't really agree with such a black and white kind of assessment, because, without wishing to trivialise the argument, people often have mixed feelings and have to make choices about other aspects of their lifestyle - for instance, I drank very little wine until about 10 years ago, but I now drink it on a regular basis - so why should sexual orientation be written in the proverbial tablets of stone? Related to that issue, I read a series of comments on a blog post a few days ago (sadly, once again, I can't remember which blog) which became quite a heated argument between two individuals about whether bisexuality actually exists, or whether people who identify themselves as bisexual are simply gays who are afraid to commit to their true nature. Given that I self-identify as bisexual, albeit in a different way to the person who was upholding the 'bi' side of the issue in the discussion, it's a distinction that concerns me. I would say that I've gone through stages in my life where what I would consider to be my primary sexual attraction has changed. At 15, I thought I might be gay, in the way the term is customarily used, but was very uncertain and conflicted, at 25 I was primarily attracted to boys, at 35 and 45, I considered myself to be primarily straight, albeit with a 'window-shopping' eye for an attractive boy, while now, I've returned to boys as my primary sexual attraction, while still considering myself to be relatively happily married (although, as I've said before, I doubt that would continue for very long if my wife became aware of my 'hidden' side). Perhaps all that says about me is that I'm either indecisive, or just a selfish hedonist wanting the best of all worlds.
The other issue I've been thinking about over the last few days, unsurprisingly given recent events, is trust, especially as it applies to cyberspace. Even in face-to-face interactions between people, there's the potential to deceive others, whether by exaggeration, embellishment or outright dishonesty, although, to some extent, that potential is mitigated by the operation of non-verbal communication, body language, tones of voice and so on. I'm terrible at lying, and have been since childhood, always seeming to be caught out, so the only mechanism I can use if I want to be less than brutally honest is, if I might call it this, 'selective truth', telling someone as much of the truth as you want them to know, and no more. Online, however, the people I communicate with only know me through my blogs and e-mails, and I only know them in the same way. The potential for deception is, self-evidently, greatly enhanced in this situation - you can, effectively, make yourself into whoever you want to be, within reason - it would obviously be easily discovered if I tried to pass myself off as some publicly known figure, for instance - but I've decided to be honest about myself, as far as I can while using a pseudonym and a blog-specific e-mail address. Having said that, I'm still only telling a part of my truth, and I choose which parts I reveal and conceal, and for what reasons. In addition, I'm well aware that anyone reading this has only got my word that I'm being honest, so it tends to become rather a circular argument. On the whole, though, I still prefer to assume that most of the people in most of the blogs that I read, and those who comment on them, are basically telling the truth and expressing their honest opinions, unless I find compelling evidence to the contrary. After all, if we bloggers and readers spend all our time mistrusting and disbelieving each other, what's the point in any of us carrying on?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Home alone, and some news

My first full day of 'home alone-ing' was, basically, pretty quiet. I spent most of the day catching up on a few pre-season football matches I'd recorded, while tapping away at another new story for the other blog, which I'll go back to after I've finished this. The weather wasn't all that prepossessing, grey, drizzly and a bit miserable, so I didn't even leave the house until it was time to go to work at just after 5:00.
A week and about 3 hours ago, I posted 'What's happening?', summing up my rather mystified reaction to the disappearance of 'Planet DJ' and 'Yacky Box'. Almost the first thing I found this evening was a post on Gabe's blog, which I don't follow, but do read from time to time, which appears to answer some, at least, of my questions. Sadly, and despite my saying several times that I sincerely hoped my 'wild theory' about 'Yacky Box' was wrong, it seems my hopes were in vain. The affair hasn't caused me any personal hardship or harm beyond a fair degree of disappointment and a small amount of embarrassment for having been duped, but I think there are others out there who were much more involved and closer to the centre of things, and their experience is likely to have been substantially more traumatic than mine. At the risk of hoping in vain once again, I would like to think that anyone tempted to indulge in 'spoofing' who happened upon any of the blogs (those that are left, anyway) of those affected might at least think twice about the upset they could potentially cause.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

P.S. Thanks very much to Daniel for becoming my latest follower. His 'Up and About' blog provides much interesting and thought-provoking reading.

SB