Still at home

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Bad news

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

200

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Truce

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cracks in the edifice

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Winter....aargh!

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Imagination, creativity and autobiography

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Belonging

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More local attractions

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I want, I want, I want

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

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

There's cute....

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Quiz and garlic

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Weary

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Feeding frenzy

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A nice idea, in theory

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

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

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Pretty good weekend, except....

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

1000 miles....

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's all about context

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

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

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Endurance

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B