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