Another year's end

The twilight of 2011, and, stereotypically for this time of year, a moment to consider where I am in my life. In some ways, not much has changed since this time last year. The financial quicksand is a little deeper and more treacherous than 12 months ago, and may have serious repercussions in the months to come, but all we can do for the moment is battle on and try to keep the plates spinning a little longer. On the personal front, it's much of the same, too. I'm still closeted, still a boylover, still boyless, still no prospect of any of those things changing any time soon. And maybe those things shouldn't change, despite the frustration that causes me. Even if I could find a boy in my 'age of attraction' that was willing and able to consent to a relationship, even one without a sexual component, the attitude of the world at large is so hysterically against any such contact that the chances of more harm than good coming of it are too high to make it a realistic possibility. In a nutshell, even if there was no sex and no intention of sex, very few, if anyone, would be prepared to believe that wasn't the ultimate goal. The 'paedo', the predator, is either doing it, or 'grooming' to facilitate it. All the 'right-thinkers' know that, don't they? Consensuality, consideration for anyone else, any sort of morality at all, can't exist in a boylover's character, can they, and, as for love, utterly unthinkable. This is all hypothetical, in any case, because I simply don't know any boys, even in passing, let alone well enough for there to be any prospect of anything more. I'll just keep taking the eye candy, and reading the stories - and dreaming.
To end, I'd like to wish everyone who visits my blogs, and especially those kind enough to follow and to comment, a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2012. My love goes out to you all, as ever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Caution sometimes pays

I had an exchange of e-mails with someone a couple of months ago which left me feeling uncertain of the direction my life might take, the direction I might want it to take. I had some rather substantial doubts about the motivations of my interlocutor at the time, and said so, at which point the e-mails abruptly stopped. Something I've read this evening has pretty much confirmed what I suspected at the time, that someone was trying to 'out' me, for reasons I suppose they know, even if I don't. Discretion is the better part of valour, they say - and they may well be right.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Mixed

One of those days, predominantly good, but with not so good bits, one in particular.
Bad news first, I guess, as that's chronologically accurate, and gets it out of the way as well. We had a letter this morning, the only item of post we received today, which marks another lurch in the southward direction in terms of our finances, and matters arising. Nothing is set in tablets of stone as yet, but whether we'll be living where we do now in a few months time is an open question at the moment.
After that, and a few minutes of my wife and I falling out under the stress of the issue, the day improved, though. We went out and did some shopping, after having called at my wife's office so that she could pick her work laptop up, although her hopes of getting it set up in such a way that she could use it to work at home didn't come to fruition, despite a lengthy call to her employer's IT helpline - it seems to be virtually tethered to their internal office network at the moment, which seems to defeat the object of having a laptop at all. More investigations will have to be undertaken when she returns to work next week, it seems.
The shopping trip had its eye candy moments, with the school holidays still being in full swing - there were a couple of cuties in the supermarket, one more than a little reminiscent of a friend of my brother's (and subsequently a friend of mine, too) who was one of my early boy crushes, donkey's years ago, when I was still a boy myself.
Once we got back from the shops, it was pretty much a chill-out day, all fairly calm and amicable, despite the less than encouraging news this morning. Maybe it's getting to the point of resignation, of que sera, sera. If it's all going to go down the tubes anyway, why let stress drag your health and happiness down with it?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

You know you're home when....

....it's raining as you drive over 'the bridge' and into Cornwall.
....you get out of the car and it's 4° or 5° warmer than when you left from 'up country'.
....the cat greets you by running out of the front door as you walk in.
....the family ask what you're cooking for their tea before you've even had time to sit down.
And, most of all -
....you drive up Fore Street and there's an awesome cutie scootering down the pavement in his fetching red anorak!
Long live Cornish cuties! Even the ones that are far too young to do anything other than admire, like today's.
My work for 2011 is done, I'm not back to work until Wednesday, and then only on a briefing day. I'm hoping for a calm and relaxing start to the New Year. Being at home will hopefully facilitate that.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Irony, or what?

I've just been to check back on yesterday's hebephilia post, to see what comments it might have attracted (very few, in fact, compared to its predecessor, but all, such as there were, predictably 'anti'), and found a link from the blog to the website of an organisation called the 'Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance'. The definition of 'sexual freedom' the organisation espouses is as follows:

Sexual freedom is the fundamental human right of all individuals to develop and express their unique sexuality.

What can I conclude? That I and those like me are not considered human at all, and thus not worthy of any 'fundamental rights', I suspect.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Mind made up

There's been a follow-up to the post about hebephilia I linked to the other day, and it leaves no doubt about the views and agenda of the writer this time. The first sentence contains the phrase 'to have sex with children', and one of the post's tags is 'rape'. In the face of such certitude, the scientific studies quoted as evidence are obviously superfluous. Everyone 'knows' we're all just evil child rapists, so no further research, or indeed thought, required. So fucking predictable.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not what I was intending to post

In some very early, dark hour this morning, when I was en route from home heading back to work, I found myself, for no logical reason at all, musing about someone I last saw about 8½ years ago, and about something that completely failed to happen. I wrote a rather lengthy post about it, but then realised that I really couldn't publish it, because the person I was writing about is very IT oriented - he works in the industry - and while the chances of him reading the post are, I guess, pretty small, if he did, he might not remember the events I was describing in the same way, if, of course, he remembers them at all - he was only 14 at the time. Nothing came of it, anyway, but, and I'm not looking at this through 'wishful thinking' glasses, it could have done, had I reacted differently to an unexpected turn of events. The most recent genuine possibility of my being involved with a boy, I think, and the only one in the last 20-odd years. And I blew it. Big time.
Just as an aside, I've found him online this evening, and he's based in London now. Small world.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

All over for another year

More or less, anyway - I'll be off to bed early this evening, because I've got to set out for Surrey at 3:30 in the morning, to get to work in time for a 7:30 start, and thus endeth the Christmas break, such as it's been. It could be worse, though, because I've only got three days to work before embarking on a long weekend off over New Year.
We've actually been out shopping, normal supermarket grocery shopping, this lunchtime, something which wouldn't have been possible for most of my life - Boxing Day has traditionally been a day when most shops have been closed. It was planned that way, once I knew our regular shopping venue was going to be open today, because I'll be absconding with my wife's car again tomorrow, so we needed to make sure the girls had enough supplies to last until I get back again on Thursday evening. I'll round off my domestic duties for the weekend in the next couple of hours by cooking another roast dinner, albeit considerably less elaborate than yesterday's effort. Justifying my existence, if nothing else.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Just because it's Christmas....

....it doesn't make the problems go away. Not only have I had to endure a Christmas morning with almost nothing to give my wife and daughter, but I've read something on another blog that has made me very concerned for the welfare of someone I care a great deal about. Neither issue is susceptible to remedy by any effort I might make, either, leaving me feel utterly impotent and useless. I've alluded a few times in recent days, mostly in comments, to the fact that I'm feeling very fragile emotionally just now, and the first half of today has done nothing to mitigate that situation. I'm sorry to be so downbeat on Christmas Day, but I can't pretend all is sweetness and light when, for me at least, it patently isn't.
Notwithstanding my issues, though, I hope everyone else is enjoying their Christmas.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Felicitation

Well, Christmas Day is approaching rapidly, almost under way in some parts of the world, so I'd like to wish everyone kind enough to come here to read my blog, and especially my followers, a happy and peaceful Christmas. I hope, too, that, like me, you are all lucky enough to have someone special to share the day with.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Meeting myself coming back

Waking up this morning, it took me several seconds to work out where I was and why, even though I was in the all-too-familiar surroundings of my Surrey accommodation. I've obviously done enough dashing about over the past couple of days to confuse myself thoroughly! Yesterday's return trip, facilitated courtesy of my wife's car, was straightforward enough, the traffic being distinctly more civilised than I was expecting, although that degree of civility wasn't mirrored in the supermarket where I stopped at lunchtime for a few bits of shopping - it was a typical pre-Christmas experience, shoppers single-mindedly filling their trolleys with things that they'd never consider buying for the rest of the year, and woe betide anyone rash enough to stand in their way. It never ceases to amaze me how the 'season of goodwill' manages to bring out the worst in some people, especially in shops.
At the top of my blog list this morning was a link to this post, referring to hebephilia. The post itself is reasonably balanced, albeit with a disapproving tone, and I felt, initially, that I wanted to comment on it, to try and give an 'insider's' perspective, but the first four comments, unfortunately, all fall into the usual mindless, kneejerk pattern this subject almost invariably attracts, with words like 'creepazoid', 'predator', and the relentlessly inevitable 'paedophile' being bandied about. I'm just not prepared, at a time when I'm already feeling emotionally fragile, to put myself up as an 'Aunt Sally' to be torn to shreds by those who not only totally fail to understand the issue, but don't even want to try to understand. It's impossible to have a discussion with those who aren't interested in listening.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The longest of shortest days

Well, it feels that way, anyway. I'm at home at the moment, having travelled down on the overnight train last night. I was on lates yesterday, and I'm using my day off to collect my wife's car - I'll be driving back up to Surrey in the morning - so that I can get back home on Saturday evening after my late shift then, allowing me to have Christmas Day and Boxing Day at home. Apart from an hour or two on the train last night, and a couple of short power naps this afternoon, I've been awake for getting on for 36 hours, yet another test of my resilience. Good job that my stamina is holding up, given my age and condition.
Another advantage of the overnight trip, given my wife's kindness in coming to the station well before 'the crack of dawn' this morning, was that we managed to get the Christmas grocery shopping done at our regular supermarket, which is open 24 hours. It's a much more civilised time of day to shop, I find, especially at this time of year, when the worst problem you have is slaloming around the shelf stackers and their trolleys, rather than the rapacious hordes of locusts masquerading as Christmas shoppers that make such places like bearpits during the day.
Having finally arrived indoors, around 6:00 this morning, I haven't had any ambition to go out again. I've been quite happy, as is often the case when I'm here, to do little more adventurous than chill in my living room. I have won a brownie point or two in sorting out a couple of very minor domestic jobs, which took me a grand total of about a quarter of an hour, but, that aside, I've been thoroughly lazy.
On the basis of wanting to be accurate, I've just checked on a calendrical website whether it actually is the shortest day of the year here today - and it isn't! Tomorrow, in terms of the time between sunrise and sunset, is apparently one second shorter! There's obviously a conspiracy afoot to make me out to be dishonest! They're out to get me - or as Kurt Cobain memorably wrote, 'Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you"!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sometimes you just despair for the world

I've been wrapped up in my own issues for the past couple of days, but a news item I caught while I was on my break at work last night dragged me back into the real world, and its iniquities. It could be said, when set against wars, famine, economic meltdown, climate change and the rest, the theft of a work of art is pretty small beer, but it's the mindset the theft seems to typify that I found so disheartening. Some time over Monday night/Tuesday morning, persons unknown, as the stock phrase goes, forced their way into a South London park and stole a bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth which had been in the park since 1970, and hadn't even attracted any graffiti in that time. And all the evidence seems to suggest that the theft was simply motivated by the scrap value of the bronze, which surely can't be more than a few hundred pounds, as against the half million pounds the sculpture is insured for as an artwork. Oscar Wilde said that a cynic is a person who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. That observation seems to me to describe much of contemporary society. When major works of art, and even the metal fittings of war memorials, are seen as fair game by the conscience-free to make a few quid, the new age of barbarism can't be far away, if it hasn't already arrived.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Missing out

I had a text the other evening from a guy I used to work with, and shared accommodation with - three of us, all from the West Country, got jobs at the same place at more or less the same time, and we rented a house together - when I was working away from home the last time, in Berkshire between 2002 and 2006. The location we worked at then is closing over Christmas, and being merged into a larger, regional centre, and a 'leaving/closing do' has been organised for this Friday. Predictably enough, I'm on lates, so I won't be able to go - at least my liver will be relieved, given the boozy way these events usually seem to go, but it's a disappointment to miss out, nonetheless.
The theme of missing out has made me think about yesterday's post, and how I'm 'supposed' to live my life. OK, the post was larded with self-pity, I will admit, but it did reflect how emotional I was at the time I wrote it. The underlying issue, it seems to me, though, is a significant one. Am I meant to apologise for being who I am and what I want at this point? I've spent almost 40 years of my life not having what I most want, isn't that worth at least a modicum of sympathy, even if only from within? Maybe not, maybe what I want is so vile in the eyes of the world that even wanting, still less doing, is enough for me to be hated and ostracised.
A boy to love, who loves me back. Less obtainable, it seems, than all the riches of the world.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Absence

Clinging like kids to each other.

A line from 1916 by Motorhead. The song is heart-rending enough in itself - check it out if you've never heard it - but that one line has had me in tears again this morning. Because I never had anyone to cling to when I was a kid, and still don't, in the way that I most want. I know that when I've said things like this before, people have commented that I've got my wife and daughter, and that should be enough for anyone, is far more than many others have. And I can't argue against that, in any way but one - the boy shaped hole in my heart that, in all probability, will never be filled. 

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Making an impression, and no good reasons

I might have made some sort of impression, somewhere. Good or bad, I don't know, probably the latter. A former blogger, returning, albeit tentatively, and, amongst, but very different from, a few others, following a blog with a superficially similar title to mine, albeit with no connection whatsoever. Probably a pisstake, but vaguely interesting.
My wife was griping about money again, or the lack of it, earlier on, specifically in connection with Christmas. I suggested that we cash my pension in and do a runner to somewhere sunny, to which I got the reply 'We can't do that'. I asked for one good reason why not. Silence ensued. QED.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Life imitating art

I've started writing a story, a kind of 'what-if', counterfactual thing about what life might be like in the UK in a few years time if this country jumped on the coattails of a theocracy being set up in and exported from the US in the wake of a fundamentalist Christian being elected president. And it seems that our esteemed Prime Minister isn't even going to wait for that eventuality before banging the religious drum. According to Cameron, the UK is a 'Christian country', and all the evils of modern society, from MP's fiddling their expenses to Islamic terrorism are due to the country not following 'Christian values'. 'Christian values'? What a complete oxymoron that phrase encapsulates. Ask anyone, from Hypatia of Alexandria to the latest gay teen bullied and hounded into suicide, about 'Christian values'. Nauseating hypocrisy, and nothing more.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Winter, and a pointless opinion

People at work last night were rather preoccupied with the weather forecast, given that there were threats of 80 MPH winds and heavy snow, but, in the event, little of real significance materialised, in this part of the world, at least. It was unpleasantly cold and wet when I left work this morning, and, by the time I got back to 'domicile-ville', it had started to snow a little, but it was very wet and sleety stuff, and didn't show any sign of settling. In such circumstances, though, you never quite know what you're going to find when you next look out of the window, but when I was woken up this afternoon, by the deputy manager of the place where my accommodation is, bringing round some character doing a building survey, a scenario I wasn't, predictably, all that happy about, the sun was shining, and there wasn't a flake of snow in sight, which was a scenario I was happy with. It was still bloody cold, though, when I took advantage of my curtailed sleep to go out and do some shopping. Winter certainly seems to have asserted itself.
I've been re-reading a story on Nifty over the last day or two, and while it will doubtless never be the subject of a major literary award, my meaningless vote goes to Leo as the most heart-stoppingly sexy character in the history of erotic fiction. Maybe some psychologist, following the link, might be able to come up with a deep and meaningful theory for the roots of my sexuality as a result, who knows? I'll just settle for the vicarious thrills!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Rover

I'm a big fan of the 1960's TV series The Prisoner - and yes, I'm old enough, sadly, to remember it the first time around, although it was even more bizarre and surreal to the 7 or 8 year old I was then than it was when I watched it again, 15 or so years later, and it was surreal enough then. For anyone not familiar with the series, it centred around a 'resigned' secret agent who was abducted and woke up to find himself in a strange 'village' where a shadowy organisation tried to extract 'information' from him. Part of the 'security' of the village was 'Rover', which was, for want of a better description, a sort of animated giant beach ball which pursued potential escapees and smothered them, as per the picture.

My latest trip around our financial mess, as I perused our account via my online banking service a couple of hours ago in the wake of my wife having been paid today, brought the 'Rover' image very vividly to mind. Effectively, all of my wife's pay has already gone, with overdue and pending payments, some of which I dealt with this afternoon. I get paid in a week's time, but that's all pretty much spoken for as well. However hard we work, however fast we try to run, we still seem to be slipping ever further into the abyss. Soul destroying doesn't even begin to describe it.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Apathy

After a few hours sleep, any remnant of the intensity of 24 hours ago has gone completely. I'm feeling really flat and tired, tired of just about everything in the current iteration of 'life, the universe and everything' as it applies to me. I'm struggling to come up with a single justification to carry on with any of it, beyond the usual 'this is what I do because this is what I do', a hopelessly circular argument if ever there was one. Even this blog, in which I have invested much of my 'passion', such as it is, over the past couple of years, is starting to seem like an exercise in futility again, a majority of my recent hits seeming to come from Russian based 'web crawlers'. I seriously considered pulling the plug again last weekend, perhaps the only reason I didn't being that with the amount of hours I've worked in recent days, I didn't have time to write a valedictory post, a completely fatuous reason for continuing by any standards. I'm tired and disillusioned by the fact that the only way I can say what I want to say is by hiding behind an avatar, a mask, one which I've come to heartily despise. 'Sammy' is me, to a point, at least, but it isn't the 'real me', the person in the round. But then, in my 'real life', I'm not the 'real me' either, because I couldn't interact with 'society' in any meaningful way as my true self, as an 'out and proud' boylover, given the hatred that society espouses for who I am and what I want. There are days when I feel like I want to just go and crawl into a cave, never to re-emerge, and today is one of them.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Intensity

Something happened on the way into work yesterday evening that hadn't happened to me for a very long time, perhaps even stretching back decades. The train was rather busy, and I ended up sitting in one of the pull down seats, a strapontin as the French call them - English doesn't seem to have a directly equivalent word, sadly - in the cycle storage area in one of the carriages. At the next stop after mine, a boy got on, and ended up sitting opposite me. He wasn't, I think, quite of 'legal age' - if I had to guess, I'd have said he was 15 - but he was a lot nearer to being legal than the majority of cuties that catch my eye, and he was very attractive, nonetheless, tall, with largish hands and feet, dark-haired but not too 'grown-up' looking, and I watched him as much as I could without being too obvious. Another stop further on, and a cyclist boarded, the boy offering to move so that the man could store his bike more easily - and he came and sat more or less next to me! Just one empty seat between us. The seats faced towards the centre of the coach, so to look out of the window, the boy turned round in his seat, to his left, and this had the effect of moving him even closer to me, maybe just half a seat width away. After a minute or so, he half turned back towards his original position, ending up by sitting almost sideways in the seat, and seemingly looking straight at the side of my face. At that point, the unaccustomed thing happened - I started to get distinctly turned on. Just by his presence - there was no actual body contact - and his relative closeness. I'm not imagining for a moment that he had any real interest in me, but even the idea of the slightest possibility was exciting. Then, needless to say, the train arrived at my station, and I had to get off, while he stayed aboard, and it all fizzled out into one of those typically evanescent, never to be repeated moments that characterise my (non) interactions with boys. All the experience illustrates, I guess, is what a sad bastard I am, but it seemed like an intense situation at the time.
Then work was pretty intense, for quite a few hours, with a lot going on until well after midnight, before it finally began to wind down into the small hours - at least it made the time pass quickly, if nothing else, and my second batch of overtime of the week will at least boost the bank balance minimally when I get paid next week. The only intensity that's left now is intense tiredness, so I'm off for a good day's sleep.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A whole hour to myself - don't spend it all at once

I had a phone call from work about half an hour ago, inviting me to go in early for four hours overtime this evening, as someone has rung in sick. The fact that I was rash enough to agree means that I've basically got one hour of free time today - which I'm halfway through already - before I have to start getting ready to go. What a dazzlingly exciting lifestyle I lead!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lucid - almost

I guess I ought to put a disclaimer here - this post is going to contain a description of an erotic dream, so please don't read on if you're likely to be offended.

In the early hours of this morning, when I managed to grab a 'power nap' while I was on a break, I had one of the most vivid dreams of my life, almost certainly the most tactile, if nothing else. It was probably the closest I've ever come to a full-blown lucid dream, too - I knew I was dreaming while I was dreaming, but I wasn't in control of the action, so perhaps a halfway house to a lucid dream.
It was the tactile side of it that was the most interesting, though. The action took place in my workplace initially, then in an unidentifiable park, and apart from me, the other main character was a young man, late teens, give or take, very good looking, blond, very obviously, almost stereotypically, gay (he didn't get a name as such in the dream, but had a nickname of Laalaa, as in the Teletubbies - I know, odder and odder!), but not based on anyone I recognise from real life. In terms of looks, the nearest equivalent I could think of was my mental picture of my 'Alex' character from Lucent, although I didn't make that character at all camp, so 'Laalaa' was very different in that way. He was in my workplace as some sort of trainee, and attached himself to me, then when I finished my 'shift', attached himself literally. hugging me from behind, then kissing me, before we went on to nibble on each others lips, and I could feel all the touch sensations very vividly, as though it was really happening. When the scene moved to the 'park', he hugged me again, from the front, and we frankly snogged each other, before he thrust his hips against me, until he had an orgasm, and I could actually feel his erection pulsing through his clothes. I've never experienced anything like this dream before (nothing like it in real life, either, sadly!), and while I've no doubt it has no more real world significance than any other dream, it was powerful enough to make a big impression on me after waking. I'll be off for (I hope) a good day's sleep shortly, and I wouldn't be in the least upset if 'Part 2' was to appear in my head!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

And the Student of the Year Award goes to....

....my daughter! She received her stage school's award for this year's highest achieving student at their 'end of term' performance and prizegiving this afternoon. She didn't know anything about it in advance, either, so she was genuinely surprised to have won. Mind you, I can be smugly self-satisfied, because I've been saying she's a born actress since she was 2 years old, and she can sing as well. Ironic, then, that it was my first day back at work today after almost two weeks off, so I missed the show and had to find out about her success by telephone. The joys of my schizoid lifestyle, again.
That apart, it's been an unremarkable enough day - bloody cold this morning, by Southern England standards, anyway, back to a load of the usual irritating crap from some of my colleagues, although, for once, homophobia was almost eclipsed by xenophobia and misogyny, a messy-ish shift, but less on the position I was covering that those of my colleagues, shopping on the way back to my accommodation, and then cyberspacing this afternoon and evening. And an early night coming on, I suspect - I'm knackered!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another casualty

It seems that yet another gay teen has committed suicide after years of bullying, with the authorities seemingly sitting on their hands, despite being well aware of the situation, and letting it happen. No doubt the religious right, more or less openly, will be smugly satisfied. Can you imagine, though, the outcry from the very same people if a series of Christian kids, in some country where they're in a minority, were killing themselves in similar circumstances? They'd be lobbying for any such country to be invaded to enact a 'regime change'.
There's a lot of faux outrage about from politicians and pundits about oppression of GLBT rights in 'backward third world' countries, especially where death sentences are mooted, but there seems to be precious little interest in mitigating the de facto death sentences that bullying causes in our supposedly 'advanced Western democracies'. As ever, some are far more equal than others.

RIP Jacob.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sex and money - the dream and nightmare version

A night of vivid dreams. I was woken at 4:00 this morning in the throes of a panic attack, after dreaming of receiving a letter from the bank demanding money, and tearfully telling my wife we didn't have any to give them. Waking up in such circumstances would often mean the end of my night's sleep, but, on this occasion, I managed to doze off again, and the next part of the dreamscape was very different. I had a long, narrative dream about a journey, by road and then train from somewhere undefinable in the English Midlands to Paris, a journey that was punctuated by lots of sex. It involved two people from my past, both young adults in the dream rather than boys, neither of whom I have ever had any conscious attraction to in real life (although I did see a photo of one of them as a boy, and he was seriously cute at that age, while I knew the other at school - he wasn't my type, even then). The final phase of the dream, after arriving in Paris, involved my being 'picked up' by two boy prostitutes on bikes, looking like brothers, but not resembling any boys I can recall seeing in waking hours. There was no actual sexual activity with them, though, unlike the earlier part of the dream, just talking to them in a mixture of their broken English and my even more broken French. As usual with dreams, I don't suppose any of it actually means anything of any substance, although I guess that the fact that all the sex was gay rather than straight might be saying something.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Melodrama queen, again

This afternoon's post was all a bit over the top, really. My wife's meeting wasn't as traumatic as she was expecting - she might even be getting a bit of support from on high, rather than the undiluted diet of pressure that she's been subjected to of late - and my trough, for once, was short-lived, almost illusory. The financial situation is still a nightmare, but there's nothing we can do about that in the short term, as bags of money don't grow on trees. I'll be back in Surrey by about this time tomorrow, which isn't exactly ideal, but it's all part of the treatment at the moment.
The cutie was still super-cute, though, and it's well worth, I think, sticking around to see some more.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Last day

The last full day of my holiday, we're on the last of our money, a bit of cash I squirrelled away last weekend in anticipation of the way things have gone since, possibly the last day of my wife's job, which would lead directly the end of several other things, and there are voices nagging at my mind saying it could, even should, be my last day ever. And I'm not even depressed. Just resigned to it all collapsing. I used to have a recurring dream, when I was young, it usually came if I was ill, which I could never quite pin down, but as near as I can describe it, was like being inside a room, or a building, that was collapsing. Thinking about it now, it was more like the actual fabric of space-time disintegrating around me, like the theoretical 'Big Rip' that some cosmologists say might be the way the universe will end. I feel a bit like I'm in a waking version of that dream now, just waiting for the structure of everything to collapse, and knowing there's not a single thing I can do to prevent it.
At least, if it is the end of it all, when I took my wife to the station this morning, to catch her train to what might be her fateful meeting with 'the management' in Exeter, I saw one almost perfect, super-delicious cutie on his way to school. He was only a little boy, really, around 8 or 9, but he was just so lovely to look at. The very thought of him now, as I type, is bringing tears to my eyes. For anyone who knows 'Twinergy', the pictures of 'Sasha' would be a reasonable 'lookalike', but this morning's boy was a little younger, and even prettier. If he proved to be my last ever cutie, he'd have been hard to beat.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Angry mode

For no especially good reason, but when has lack of motive ever been inhibitory to my moods? I've spent a good chunk of the day feeling quite agitated, in a taut way, as though it wouldn't take much for me to really snap, and chew someone's head off. Maybe it's the 'time off rapidly coming to an end' scenario, maybe it's the fact that my wife is still being lined up for being elbowed out of her job, and is herself swinging between anger and low spirits, maybe it's just the general miasma of our lousy situation. Who knows?
Following on from yesterday's non-discussion on a religious theme (if a lack of communication can have a theme), I mentioned my 'dystopia' story idea to my wife this evening, a story which I now think might be expandable into a longer format. Without giving too much away, one of the proposed plot elements is the fallout from a fundamentalist Christian becoming US president, and the possible consequences of an aggressively theocratic American foreign policy. For once, my wife didn't just switch off, but, instead asked me why I had 'changed since we got married' as far as my attitude towards religion goes. My answer was that I don't think it has changed - I've been an atheist since I was 13 or 14 - but maybe I'm more inclined to fight the 'disbelieving corner' than I have been in the past. Or maybe it's just that I'm angry.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not listening....La La La

One aspect of my personality, my beliefs, that I'm definitely not closeted about is my atheism. I'm well aware that such a stance is considerably easier for me to sustain in the UK than it would be in many parts of the US, but I'm not shy about telling anyone of my non-belief, if it comes up in conversation. I've had one or two interesting conversations as a result, perhaps the most notable being with a chaplain attached to my industry, who walked into a place I was working at in the mid-1980s, and not only got a pretty forthright answer when he asked if I had connections to any churches in the area where I was working at the time, but was also very surprised to find that my reading matter (it was a one of those quiet one-man locations I've worked at over the years) was Heimskringla, the Icelandic history of the kings of Norway (in translation, needless to say, my talents, such as they are, don't extend to fluency in Icelandic), and even more surprised when I pointed out that my working in a relatively lowly role didn't condemn me to illiteracy.
My wife, on the other hand, is a Christian. We were both well aware of our ideological differences more or less from the outset of our relationship, and, until fairly recently, I'd been under the impression that it was one area where we'd agreed to disagree, the only serious difference of opinion we'd ever had on the subject being when I wanted to withdraw our daughter from religious education classes when she first started at primary school, as parents have the right to do in this country, not because I wanted my daughter to grow up as an atheist (she hasn't, incidentally), but because I objected to very young children being taught religious, predominantly Christian, tenets and Bible stories as facts rather than what I would describe as opinions or allegories, children of that age obviously not having the mental architecture in place to be taught in any sort of nuanced, 'shades of grey' fashion. Of late, though, perhaps for the last year or two, my wife seems to have decided that my views are unacceptable, but rather than discussing the issue, she just refuses to listen to anything I have to say on the subject, and won't even put forward any counter-arguments to lend support to her own case. It's just a closed-minded 'I'm right, you're not, end of story' kind of attitude. This evening has been a case in point. We'd received a Christmas card from one of her long-standing friends from her home town, which had an 'our recent news' kind of insert with it, amongst which was the news that her friend's family had started attending a different church, to which my wife expressed her surprise - she met her friend through church, and he'd been attending the same one for over twenty years. I asked her, lightheartedly enough, if it made a difference, because, to my mind, they all espoused the same mythology, but, rather than saying 'no, you're wrong, because of a), b) or c)' she walked off and started talking to our daughter about something completely unconnected. If I'd ever made any effort to 'convert' my wife to my way of thinking, and she'd found such an attempt unwelcome or offensive, I could better understand her attitude, but I'm quite happy for her (and anyone else) to believe whatever she wants, as long as I'm not expected to dance to the same tune. In the overall scheme of things, it's a minor issue, but still something of a disappointment.
Some more steam - metaphorical, at least - issued from unmentionable places during the day, as I finished my story for 'Nephelokokkygia'. I'd like to think it's got marginally more depth than simply being a 'masturbation fantasy', but I would say that, I guess. It's got one good character, at least. Cherchez le garçon. He's a cutie!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not Safe For....well, anywhere, really

This post is probably going to fall into the 'far too much information' category, but, as ever, I'm going to shamelessly please myself and write it anyway. I've spent much of today getting myself pseudo-adolescently hot and bothered, because I've been writing a story for 'Nephelokokkygia' with yesterday's 'supermarket boy', or a totally fantasy fiction version of him, as a central character. The story, should I get round to finishing it, will end up as one of those self-indulgent things like Suadela, basically me just turning fantasies around the desires in my head into text, and inflicting them on the world, in a way that's assuredly 'NSFW' - or home, or anywhere much else.
At least my success in getting myself worked up has distracted me from my bad back suffering a relapse - I woke up this morning with my lower back feeling like it was made out of concrete, and it's taken most of the day to get it loosened up in any meaningful way. Physical deterioration - don't you just love it!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fantasy Land

I went out relatively early for a Sunday morning, because my daughter had arranged to meet some of her friends in 'town' at 10:00, and I gave her a lift, before going on to do the shopping. The supermarket had only been open for 15 minutes or so when I got there, but was still busy. The eye candy quotient was low, though - or would have been, but for one individual. It was one of those 'all the boxes ticked' scenarios - he was about my daughter's age, 13, maybe 14, tallish but not too 'grown up', very light brown hair, not quite fair, nice face, good skin, and the most appealingly 'kissable' lips I've seen on a boy for many a long day. I must admit to having succumbed to some rather vivid fantasies about what I'd have liked to have done with the boy, and those luscious lips, given his willingness and consent. For all my attraction to boys of that age, I don't very often get as far as actively fantasising about specifics, so perhaps I'm feeling a bit needier than usual at the moment in the face of all the other pressures in my life.
There was a brief glimpse, too, of another more local object of desire at lunchtime, as I fleetingly saw the blond cutie who lives just behind us. And yes, it was through the infamous window, but he was only visible because he was at the window looking out and down when I happened to be in our kitchen, before I'm accused again of voyeurism. I'd have to be perched on our roof to be able to look directly into his room in a 'peeping Tom' kind of way, which would make me a little conspicuous, even if I had the wherewithal to get up there!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Trust

My daughter has now seen my blog. It wasn't accidental, but it happened in a perfectly natural way. She came downstairs this morning while I had Blogger open, and, as usual, I alt-tabbed away to a 'safe' window. We were talking for a little while, and something I'd read in one of the blogs I follow came up in conversation. She asked a follow-up question, the answer to which I couldn't immediately recall, and the easiest way to retrieve the requisite piece of information was just to go to the blog concerned and look. And the easiest way to do that was to go to my blog, and click on the link in my blog list. So we did. Following on from that, I thought she'd be interested in the Theodoric quote from a couple of days ago, so we looked at that as well. In the aftermath, I've told her that she can read whatever she wants, that she can link to or from the blog if she wants, but, purely as a favour, I've asked her not to tell anyone else whose blog it is. It's entirely her decision, but, even at her young age, I trust her. That goes without saying, I guess, because if I didn't, I wouldn't have shared the blog, or the other things she knows about me. A quote I read somewhere ages ago said that a secret is only a secret if two know it, and one of them is dead, but that's the chance I've taken.
I've spent this afternoon dabbling at my Jamie sequel, or parallel-quel, or whatever you want to call it, and made a little progress. I've decided there's no way I can write it from a first-person child's perspective and make it sound in any way authentic, so third-person it will be - if it ever sees the light of cyberspace day, of course.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fifteen minutes

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes."

Andy Warhol's most famous quotation, arguably. A comment on mass media, I guess, and oddly prescient, given the latterday obsession with reality TV and celebrity culture. What made me think of the quote was reading Rowan's post this evening about his first experience of performing in front of an audience, and enjoying it. Given that I don't 'do people' at all, the idea of me as a performer is not one that would spring too readily to mind, but, ironically, I've probably been seen by a larger audience than at least 99% of the world's population. Why? Because I have, or had, a capacity to answer general knowledge questions, and I've appeared as a contestant on two different TV quiz shows, one of them very high-profile in the UK, certainly at the time I was involved. I've been on TV nine times, in total, not counting repeats (I'm not aware of any, but in this multi-channel age, there's no way of knowing), and I've had my share of being recognised in the street, or in the supermarket. My 'fifteen minutes', I suppose. I didn't enjoy it, predictably. It felt like a violation, of sorts, an exposure to the eyes of the world that I would have been happier without. But, of course, having put myself 'out there' voluntarily, I can't complain. All in all, I'd rather be rich than famous. There's more Howard Hughes than Paris Hilton in my personalty - thankfully!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another lurch towards the precipice

My wife rang me before heading home from work this afternoon, to prime me for bad news, as I correctly suspected. It looks like her job is in jeopardy again - her line manager is trying to paint a picture of substandard performance, but I get the feeling it's more to do with money. My wife retained her rate of pay when she transferred from her old employer in the summer, and that rate of pay is quite a bit higher than the new outfit would have offered for the post, so my take on it is that they're trying to elbow her out so they can get someone cheaper. Whatever the 'politics' of the situation are, if my wife loses her job, there's absolutely no way, even if I was to work seven days a week, every week (which I'm not allowed to do, anyway, under our working time regulations), and never came home at all, that I'd be able to make up the shortfall, especially given that, in the current economic climate, the chances of my wife getting another job at all, never mind at a comparable salary, aren't exactly promising. Once again, it makes me wonder whether the time is approaching to simply look for an exit strategy. It's hard to justify being away, doing something I don't want to do, if it's all going to the dogs anyway.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Who are the barbarians?

I came across this quotation earlier today, while watching a history documentary.

"We cannot command in matters of religion, because no one can be compelled to believe against his will."


Sounds fairly modern and progressive, doesn't it? A product of the Enlightenment, or even more recent than that, perhaps. In fact, it is attributed to a monarch who not only lived 1500 years ago, but whose people are widely considered to be barbarians - Theodoric, king of the Ostragoths (454-526, reigned 471-526). If a 'barbarian' from the so-called Dark Ages could espouse such a belief, why is it seemingly so difficult for so many people in the 21st Century, of many different faiths, to extend that courtesy to those who don't share their worldview?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Busy doing nothing

It's been that sort of day - I haven't really done anything very much, but I've been far from being bored. Life's too short to waste it being bored, anyway. I have nibbled away at my 'dystopian future' story a little bit, so there are a few more paragraphs of that in the draft now, I've been nominally looking after my daughter, as she was off school today because of the public sector workers strike, but she's largely been doing her own thing during the day (including not getting up until almost midday - anyone would think she's a teenager!), I've cooked the evening meal, I've helped (in a very small way) my wife collate some information for a report she's got to write for work, and I'm now sitting here typing this, drinking a glass or two of Chardonnay and watching football on TV. All pretty inconsequential, really. The sort of day where, had I decided to stay in bed for the duration, nothing, in global terms, would have been different. But just being at home, enjoying the amenities that entails, and seeing the people I care about the most, is satisfying in itself. That makes me a good candidate for early retirement, I think, in all respects except one - I can't afford it. Meh!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sympathy

This one has been fermenting in my mind for quite a few days, almost a fortnight, in fact. It revolves around a single word, the title of this post. I left a comment on another blog, in response to an item about the aftermath of the Penn State sex abuse allegations. Among some fairly predictable stuff about 'grooming' of 'vulnerable children', there was a line about 'scientists' not knowing why 'some adults are attracted to children....it could be like a sexual orientation'. I commented that, at least in my case, it isn't like a sexual orientation, it is a sexual orientation. The blogger concerned replied to my comment, and while I've got no doubt at all that he's a genuinely caring person, the fact that he said that he offered me his 'sympathy' brought me up short. I am what I am, and I really don't see my nature as being an object of pity. I have frustrations, well documented here, but I'm far from being the only person in the world who has to live with not being able to be themselves. It's a fair indication of the depth of contempt that boylovers are held in, that even caring people seem to find us pitiable.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I don't want to tempt fate....

....but the first day of my break has been, on the whole, pretty reasonable. The day started fairly early, getting ready to catch the first through westbound train from 'domicile-ville', and rather chilly, too - the fields, viewed from the train window, were more than a little frost-glazed in places, not a sign of things to come, I hope, because the relatively mild weather we've had over the past few weeks is rather more to my taste.
Not that there was any great likelihood of anything too wintry back at home, though, and that, indeed, was the case - it had begun to rain by the time I got off of the bus at our local stop at lunchtime, and it carried on raining for most of the afternoon, but it was 6° or 7° warmer than it had been in Surrey. The usual quid pro quo of our maritime climate, of course.
As usual, certainly of late, I was a little bit apprehensive about how my wife and I were going to interact when she got back from work. In the event, though, it was all quite congenial, once she'd vented about her current job situation, which she isn't very happy with. My daughter and I quickly slotted into our regular badinage, too - while we were out on a brief shopping trip, largely to replenish my stock of alcohol, if I'm being honest, I told her about the 'harem gang' from yesterday, which she found amusing. She found a way of ribbing me gently afterwards, looking at me meaningfully as a teenaged boy walked past us in the shop, then claiming, when I said he was a bit too old for my taste, saying that he was too young for her! Given that she's not 14 until February, and the boy was probably 15, at a guess, it was just her winding me up a little, as her inability to keep a straight face proved, but at least she can be lighthearted about my foibles, something I'm grateful about, given that it could easily be said that I've put too much pressure on her at too young an age by coming out to her, albeit accidentally. Looking back over the 18 months, more or less, that she's known about my boyloving side, I'm convinced we've become even closer than we were already, possibly because she's aware of the implicit trust I have in her, and the way I treat her as an equal, something I would have wanted to do in any case, but has been underlined by the confidences we've shared.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Eye candy bonanza!

Working the shift pattern that I do, school terms can be a real desert for me as far as 'boy watching' is concerned, because I'm just not out and about at the same times of day as they are. This week had been very much like that - until this lunchtime. It was a very pleasant day weather-wise, with blue skies and, by the standards of late November, warm sunshine. Both the train to work and the town centre at the 'work' end were very busy - and the cute boys were out in droves! In particular, there was a group of 8 or 9 boys, all about the same age, around 11 or 12, seemingly off on some sort of outing with a couple of adults, walking down the steps onto the station platform as I was making my way up to the exit - and they were all cute, every one of them! Somebody's birthday treat, perhaps - either that or it was the annual general meeting of the South West London Gorgeous Boys Club! All just eye candy, as ever, but I'm not complaining, in the slightest!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I was going to rant, but I haven't got the energy

Another morning of seething at work at more rank hypocrisy from some of my colleagues. I had a rant full of expletives in my head, and had I written this post a few hours ago, this corner of cyberspace would have been blue, but the after effects of six consecutive early starts rounded off by a twelve hour shift today have drained all the fight out of me for the moment. Suffice it to say that the usual double standards were out in force - amongst the cesspits of egregious bullshit was the tale of the young son of a friend of someone at work who had received a series of crudely suggestive text messages from a girl, which was seen as highly amusing, despite the fact that the boy was seemingly deeply upset by the situation, but, needless to say, if I'd done something similar, as a boylover, and it had come to light, I'd probably have been taken out into the car park and lynched. I'm so sick of these sorts of attitudes, and the fact that I can't, in any remotely feasible way, have my say without collapsing the whole edifice of my life reduces me, at times, to almost inarticulate frustration.
There is a brighter side, though, for a change. My back is substantially better today, so it looks as though my diagnosis was wildly out (although I'd still like to know what was wobbling about at the base of my spine the other night), and I've found a picture of an awesomely lovely (and fully clothed, I hasten to add) boy on one of the eye candy sites I visit reasonably often, which I've added to my very small (less than 10 in over two years) collection of 'borrowed' internet images. Best of all, after my late shift tomorrow, I'm off for 11 days. I won't be home until Monday lunchtime, which will be half a day gone already, but I'm still not complaining. Living a reasonably normal life for almost a fortnight is as much as I can hope for at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Aches & pains, and yet another story idea

Another health issue has reared its head over the past couple of days, but not illness so much as 'physical integrity'. For all my vicissitudes over the last few years, I've never suffered from back problems, even in the relatively physically active environment of my previous job, but that seems to have changed this week. My lower back is very sore, but most worryingly, when I rubbed the painful area last night (why, in the face of its complete ineffectiveness, does anyone ever rub an injury?!), I felt something moving below the skin which I don't think ought to have been moving. Visions of a slipped disc came to mind, although, given that I'm nowhere near being completely debilitated, that was probably unnecessarily pessimistic, but something certainly seems to be amiss, to the extent that I've arranged to see my GP next week while I'm back at home. I normally see her around this time of year to review my heart meds anyway, so it could be a 'two birds with one stone' appointment. I could certainly do without a bad back, particularly given the amount of travelling I have to do, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this turns out to be something and nothing. And I seem to be coming down with a cold, but that just comes with the territory at this time of year.
I have been working, intermittently, on a couple of my drafts in 'Nephelokokkygia' of late, but another idea has struck me recently. About this time last year, I wrote a story called Jamie which I was fairly pleased with, and which, having re-read it, I'm even more convinced is one of my best efforts to date. One of the comments I had at the time suggested that it could have been 'fleshed out' more, and that's what I'm now thinking of doing, but with a twist - the 'Jamie' character has a young son in the story, who plays a brief but important role in the plot, and my intention is to write, not so much a sequel, but a parallel story, written from the child's point of view. As ever, I'm giving no guarantees that I'll have either the requisite inspiration or perspiration to make anything of it, but I'm going to give it a try. Apart from anything else, it will be interesting to see if I can put myself into a child's mindset, given how long it is since I was a child myself. A test of my imagination, for once.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Mundanity

It says something about the lack of excitement in my life when the most noteworthy event of the day was the discovery that a new supermarket has opened a few minutes' walk away from my accommodation. It's a branch of the supermarket chain where we do most of our shopping at home, and is a fair bit cheaper than the shop I've used most of the time since I've been staying here, and with a somewhat bigger inventory, too. There you are, I'm waxing lyrical about a shop - shows how much of a non-event my lifestyle in Surrey is!
Despite the fact that it was early afternoon, and before the end of the school day, when I was shopping, there was one moderately attractive cutie wandering around the store, seemingly on his own. We got as far as eye contact, and, for a rash moment, I was almost tempted to speak to him, but it would, no doubt, have been a thoroughly bad decision had I succumbed to that impulse. There is no way, it seems, of breaking through the wall of paranoia and distrust, on my part as well as on the part of boys like today's example, in the present climate of hysteria.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Targeted advertising, and a nice numerical quirk

I found a junk e-mail in my 'sammyb50' inbox earlier which had evaded the spam filter, and which was a first for me. Presumably some 'web crawler' or other had found my blog, because the e-mail was promoting a gay dating service website. I found it quite funny, really, because my first thought on seeing it was 'there's no chance you would have anyone on your books I'd be remotely interested in'. It might have been entertaining, if I'd been feeling daring, to fill in an online questionnaire completely honestly, but there would probably have been too much chance of the 'paedo police' paying me a visit, so I resisted the temptation without much difficulty.
I noticed a 'round figures' numerical coincidence last night which was quite nice, if completely inconsequential. The first pageview after I'd published yesterday's post, which was the 600th in this blog, brought the overall total of views the blog had had at that point to 14000. Lots of zeroes! And lots of thanks to all of you who come and visit, even if it's just proof of the adage of 'hope over expectation'!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Disposable society

I saw two things at work today which highlighted how wasteful our modern, 'Western' society can be. I was on my break, eating my breakfast in the mess room, when someone came into the room - I didn't know who he was, but he evidently worked for my employer, because he was wearing a fleece bearing the company logo. He walked up to the water cooler, took one of the plastic cups from their dispenser, drew no more than a mouthful of water from the cooler, drank it, then threw the cup in the dustbin and left the room again. It all took less than a minute. A trivial, everyday occurrence, no doubt echoed in thousands of workplaces worldwide. And that's just the point. How many plastic cups are used in this way every day, then just thrown away without a second thought? The numbers must be astronomical. The incident seemed to me to be emblematic of today's 'throwaway' attitude - if something isn't perfect and new, and sometimes even if it is, chuck it away and get another one. I remember seeing an advert extolling recycling a few years ago, and although it was undoubtedly simply the company concerned - Shell - doing a bit of 'greenwashing' of their image, the tagline stuck in my mind. 'Don't throw anything away - there is no "away"'. It's a big world, but certainly not infinite, and people would do well, in my opinion, to remember that.
The second example of waste is, in a way, even more unconscionable. Over the past weekend, the night shift obviously had some time on their hands, and decided to check through the items that had been left in an uncomfortably overstuffed fridge/freezer in the mess room. Someone had written out a list of the items that had been found to be past their 'use by' date, and had been thrown away. It filled an A4 sheet, which had been stuck to the fridge door, and included items going back to June last year. And it wasn't, for the most part, 'bargain basement' stuff - a lot of the things came from the likes of Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Sainsburys (the 'posh' end of the market, for those not familiar with UK food retailers). When so many people in this country, let alone those in the so-called 'developing' countries, have so little, this kind of heedless waste is something I find extremely distasteful.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I may be some time

Even more than usual, this blog has been an unmitigated tale of woe of late. There's no reason why I should expect anyone to have to read about my troubles day after day, so there may be a hiatus, unless I can find something more upbeat, or, at the very least, something more interesting, to write about. Please don't hold your collective breath, I wouldn't want to induce hypoxia in anyone.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Smile

'Smile!', my wife said to me earlier on. Would that I had anything to smile about. No money, every chance we'll be evicted in the foreseeable future, marriage falling to bits, heading back to Surrey tomorrow, and that's before I even get started on boys, and matters arising. And Christmas on the horizon, too, with the prospect of not being able to afford much in the way of gifts for my wife or daughter. I don't know about smiling, another thing my wife said, this morning, might be more apposite, when she wondered aloud whether I should be on anti-depressants. Yeah, give me a 'happy pill', that'll solve everything.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Old Pool

The house that appears in Noctivagent (which isn't totally moribund, despite my having made no progress with it recently) as 'Old Pool' is up for rent! It isn't very far from where we live now, and it's most certainly the sort of place I'd love to call home (and my daughter, too, as I showed her the online listing for it a while ago). It's probably too pricey for us, anyway, even if we do have to move in the near future (which isn't inconceivable), but there's no harm in daydreaming.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not much progress

My wife and I are still pretty much bumping along the bottom. Nothing much was said this morning before my wife went out to work, and not much more was said when she got back again late this afternoon. It seemed to me that she wanted to disregard what had happened last night, to pretend that nothing was wrong. I don't think that's possible, though, given what was said - at the very least, some discussion, as far as I was concerned, was needed. That discussion came after our evening meal, and didn't go very well. In a nutshell, it came back to the position my wife has taken before in similar circumstances - if I don't like it, I'm a 'free agent', and can choose what to do. Take it or leave it, in other words. I turned the proposition round, and said she had the same choices, which, of course, she has. At the end of the day, my perception is that she wants an easy life, and when she has to make any sort of effort, to come out of her comfort zone, she resents it. I still don't know where we're gong to go - maybe the immediate crisis has passed, but we're far from reaching a resolution yet.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

On the rocks?

I really think it might have happened this time. The actual cause was trivial - isn't it always? - but the underlying tensions magnified the effect, and led to some very bitter things being said. Whether I'm still here tomorrow, or whether my wife is still here tomorrow, remains to be seen. After an hour or so to calm down and assess the aftermath, what convinces me this is more likely to be terminal than its precursors is that I don't feel that distressed. It would be an exaggeration to say I don't care, but I don't care as much as I feel I should if I wanted to retrieve the situation. Even my daughter, who was distraught the last time there was a major fall out, seems to be relatively sanguine this time, as though she knows, instinctively, that this might be on a different level.
Call me selfish, whatever, but I really have got to a point where I don't think I can accept being treated as the 'root of all evil' any longer. It takes two to make an argument, I know that, and I'm not claiming to be a totally innocent victim, but it's all getting to be too much, if it hasn't reached that point, and beyond, already.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Damned if you do, and....

People have different talents and abilities, there's no doubt about it. And just as well, because it would be tricky if everyone knew how to bake bread, but no-one knew how to make flour. I'm pretty hopeless at dealing with people, but I'm very good at dealing with procedural tasks. Like navigation. I never make any claim to being any more than an adequate driver, but I am a good navigator, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've been lost in my life. On the other hand, my wife is very good at dealing with people, but could get lost in the long grass of our back garden. So when, this morning, it transpired that the only way she was going to be able to get to a meeting she needed to attend in another town, around 30 miles away, on time was to drive, she wasn't happy. She wanted to go by train, but hadn't checked the times, and when I looked the services up for her, because the rail journey isn't direct, and involved a change of trains with only an hourly service on the second leg, it was already too late for her to have caught the latest train from our nearest mainline station that would have made the necessary connection. So car it was. Seeing how unenthusiastic she was about the prospect of getting herself there, I offered to take her - after all, I'm just chilling this week, and had nothing else planned. But that wasn't right, because that was making her dependent, and she needed to 'do it for myself'. So I worked a route out for her, she wrote it down. In essence, it was a journey she'd done several times before, albeit with me driving, because her destination was only around half a mile from where her best friend used to live after her move to the West Country, a couple of years before we moved to Cornwall. And it all went well enough, because she rang me, 20 minutes before her appointment, to say that she was more or less there. Win.
After the morning's success, the return trip would be a breeze, of course. Well....no. That's where it's all gone tits up. In the last hour, I've had three phone calls from my wife, having 'the vapours' because she's got lost. Twice. Follow the outward route in reverse? Far too complicated, apparently. And, needless to say, it's my fault. Universal scapegoats are us. She's now 'lost her confidence', is 'never doing this again', it's 'bloody ridiculous'. Yes, it is. Ridiculous that an intelligent, 40-something woman can't follow the signs out of a large town, heading for an even larger town, without getting to the verge of a nervous breakdown. And without blaming someone else. Someone who volunteered to chauffeur her around, and was rejected. Please remind me how much fun this marriage business, someone.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Time to give up, I suspect

When even liberal, rationalist, humanist bloggers, from relatively liberal and rational countries like Canada come out with statements like 'there's no such thing as child sexual abuse, it's all rape', it's probably time for me to admit that there's no place for me in this world. I'm used to the kneejerk haters, the ones I'd never agree with on anything at all, but when people who are on approximately the same wavelength as me on many issues hate what I want so vehemently, there really is nowhere left for me to go. Of course, the argument would doubtless be that I don't deserve a place to go, apart from hell or jail, or hell via jail, and anything I might say to the contrary is my trying to defend the indefensible, again. Maybe I am just an Orwellian 'minority of one', and, as such, an 'unperson'.
'You do not exist'. Not in any way conducive to personal fulfillment, anyway.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another quiet day, and another new story

The story will probably end up as unfinished, but I've had an idea over the past couple of days, and it began to take shape earlier today. It will be, if it gets off the ground, something slightly different from things I've written before, with elements of political thriller and dystopian futurism. As ever, no promises of publication, soon or, indeed, ever.
That apart, my aim of having a chilled-out week has been furthered today - I haven't been out of the house, and haven't, in all honesty, wanted to. I might become a little more adventurous as time goes on, but, on the other hand, maybe I won't.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Some internet reading matter is sweeter

Yes, there's some sex in it, but if you can cope with young teens being less than 'pure as the driven snow', this story is just stunning, cute, sexy, with brilliant characters, and, above all, funny. It's soon coming to an end, sadly, but I have no doubt I'll be re-reading it, sooner rather than later. It's one of my favourite stories, internet or printed, ever, and I have no hesitation in recommending it.
Maybe everything will turn out alright, you never know.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Bullet in the head

Or emasculation. That's what I deserve, apparently, for my filthy and unnatural desires, according to the commenters on a post about the failure of draconian punishment policies for 'paedophiles'. OK, well shoot me for something that, as far as I know, I was born with, but don't complain if 'they' then come and shoot you for being left-handed, or a mindless bigot.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Dogs and difficulties....and a little rapprochement

I have a confession to make, one which will probably upset almost as many people as any exposition of my sexual orientation or my atheism. I'm not a dog lover. In fact, I tend towards the attitude epitomised by a quote attributed to Alan Bennett - 'I wish dogs were like lions in the Serengeti, only five left and all male'. And after what happened as I was on my way to work last night, I'm no more of a 'canineophile' than I was before, although, to be fair to the animal concerned, the 'human factor' was more significant. I got to my 'local' station, to find it heavily populated by the Surrey Police, presumably targeting Saturday night revellers. Amongst the assembled 'forces' was a sniffer dog, which decided to take an interest in my bag. As a result, I was subjected to the humiliation of being searched on the station concourse, treated like some worthless criminal, particularly by a female officer who, if she'd ever known anything about dealing humanely with people, had evidently forgotten it, before they grudgingly concluded that what the dog had reacted to was my heart medication. Train the £@%&!?* dog properly, that's what I say. As a parting shot, the male officer involved said, with a detectable tone of irony, 'Thank you for your cooperation'. Like I had a choice. As a result, I was noticeably distrait for the first third of my shift at work, which was thoroughly messy - I'm sure at least one of my colleagues thought I probably was on something, even if the coppers hadn't had their fun. I managed to get through without doing anything deranged, but I wasn't anywhere near as sharp as I would have liked to have been.
I thought the difficulties were going to extend into my journey home this morning. I got to Paddington in good time, but because of the failure of a train going elsewhere, our train was 'pinched' to replace the failure. In the event, a replacement for our train did materialise, and we only left two or three minutes late, and I arrived back at our 'town' station on time, to be met by my wife and daughter. After the hiccups of recent days, first impressions were far from encouraging. My wife seemed very cool, as though she really didn't want to be there, and that her coming to meet me was a real effort, even though I'd said I was quite happy to go home on the bus - we're lucky enough to have an hourly service on a Sunday, unlike many places. My daughter was pleased to see me, but I didn't feel I could be too demonstrative in return, because I didn't want to antagonise my wife any further, as she's often said that my daughter and I have some sort of 'special relationship' which she's not party to. Basically, it was all very stilted and awkward, a feeling that continued into the shopping trip we undertook on the way back. By the time we got home, I was starting to feel very downhearted about things, wondering whether my fears about the end of it all weren't just paranoiac, but more substantial.
It took a bit of badinage on my part to break the mood, if I can say so without seeming immodest. I'd had an hour or so asleep, and was feeling a bit more human, when my wife came into the front room and mentioned the selection of 'reality' TV programmes that are on at the moment, and that she's following. I have not the slightest interest in any such programming, something my wife is well aware of, so that when I came out with a 'none of this is going to change my life' kind of comment, she wasn't too pleased, and parried with a remark about not being interested n the sort of things I like to watch. It could have led to another bout of acrimony, but, for once, I managed to say the right thing - 'At least we've got something in common, then, no interest in each others' interests!'. She got the humour, and the exchange ended in laughter when it could easily have ended in raised voices. The ice was broken, and the rest of the day has been pretty civilised, perhaps lubricated by my cooking a very pleasant, if I say so myself, lamb roast this evening - is the way to a woman's heart, sometimes, through her stomach, too, just like us blokes. I'd like to have a relaxed week off - we've got no money, so chilling out is about all I can afford to do - and if this afternoon is the precursor to that, I'll be more than happy.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

20

It was twenty years ago today, as the song goes. In around two and a half hours' time, it will be exactly 20 years, to the minute - 9:05 PM on November 12 1991, in a pub in Ashton-under-Lyne, under circumstances that seemed to have been concocted by fate with the maximum degree of unlikeliness possible. I'm talking about my first meeting with the young woman who would, some 18 months later, become my wife. How unlikely was it? Well, in the first place, the meeting wouldn't happened had I not been burgled that morning, because I was only there at the invitation of a friend of mine, who'd helped me to sort out the mess the burglars had left behind, his reasoning being that if I was left to my own devices I'd have gone out and got drunk - and he may well have been right. He was due to meet his fiancée, as she was at the time, in the aforementioned pub, which I'd never been in before, and only made one subsequent visit to, near where she worked, when she finished her late shift as a student nurse. I'd met her a few times before, but she wouldn't, of course, have known that I was going to be there, and, equally unbeknownst to my friend, she'd invited one of her work colleagues to come along. Thus it was that two people with at least a couple of degrees of separation came to meet, and I don't think it's too fanciful to say that if we hadn't met that night, we would probably never have met at all.
The question, of course, is whether, overall, that chance meeting was a good thing, for both of us, or not. I fell in love with her, rather quickly and pretty heavily - almost too quickly and heavily, because she came close, not long afterwards, to dumping me because I was being too intense (nothing new there, then!) - and, as is usual in my case, the love has remained, even in the difficult times of recent years, but does that, in itself, prove that it was the right thing to do to enter into a long-term relationship? Because, and although I might have wanted it not to be true at the time, I was gay then, and I'm gay now. Obviously, I'm at least functionally bisexual, because, amongst other things, my daughter came along in due course, but that doesn't change the fact that, ultimately, I'm a gay hebephile, attracted to the same group, pubescent boys, that I was attracted to when I was a pubescent boy myself. I've tried to be the best husband I can, but I've never been as good as my wife could have found in someone else, and never will be, because my deepest desires lie elsewhere. There's always that element of my playing a part, rather than my heart being 100% committed to where I am. And there is, of course, the possibility of my true self being unmasked, deliberately or accidentally, and my wife concluding that I've been maliciously deceiving her all these years. As I've said several times before, there are no easy answers. Would that there were.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Why can't this be love?

The song set the tone. Just as I was thinking about ringing my cousin to pass on my birthday greetings, Planet Rock played Why Can't This Be Love by Van Halen. A blast from the past, and no mistake. When he was about 14, we were out jaunting one weekend, and found ourselves in a pizza restaurant in Huddersfield (of all the romantic locations!).  The song came on the background music tape, and as I sat opposite him at our table, I looked into his eyes, and sung the song to him. At the end, he shrugged and said 'I don't know'. Of course, the reason why not is pretty obvious, with hindsight, the classic, almost clichéd 'gay boy falls for straight boy, heartache ensues' scenario, with the added twists of our being cousins and best friends, and the age difference between us, irrelevant now, as adults - he's only a year and a half younger than my wife - but a big issue back then. He remembered the day in the pizzeria, even if he didn't remember his eleventh on 11/11, and it all got a little bit emotional - I still love him, not in the same way as when he was 11, or 14, or 16, but love, all the same, and, in his own way, he still loves me, too, I think. He wants us to meet up soon - although we speak on the phone at intervals, I haven't actually seen him for nearly two years, after their proposed trip to Cornwall earlier this year fell through. I think it might well be time for me to take a trip to Manchester.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Meltdown and remembrance. And a 'he knows not what....' moment.

Not just financial meltdown, now, but relationship meltdown thrown in. Another seriously acrimonious phone call  last night, with the renaissance of a familiar question, aimed in my direction - 'Why are we bothering to carry on?'. Why, indeed? Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the day my wife and I met, November 12 1991, and I'm starting to wonder, especially given that I'm off next week, and, at least theoretically, at home for eight days, whether we'll make it to 20 years and a week.
Another, older and arguably happier remembrance this morning, though. My cousin, my darling boy, has his 11/11/11 birthday today. I remembered another birthday, 30 years ago, when he was 11 on 11/11. Then, he was beautiful, special and my best friend. Now....he's still special, and still my best friend. I'll speak to him later, all being well, and no doubt embarrass him with my memories, but, hey, isn't that what best friends are for?!
He didn't know what he was saying, or, at least, who he was saying it to - one of my work colleagues, that is, overnight. He's not long since become a father for the first time, and it appears that his partner is expecting again, which led to a little discussion about parenthood. His first child being a daughter, he'd like the new arrival to be a boy. I mentioned some of my mixed feelings about having a daughter rather than a son (although, of course, had I had a son, especially one anything like a male version of what my daughter has become, the complications might have been insurmountable) and what I might have missed out on as a result. Out of the blue, he said 'You can have Jack, if you want'. His stepson, who's 12, apparently. It was only a lighthearted throwaway, of course - he gives the impression of being quite close to the boy, even though he's not his own 'flesh and blood' - but the irony of the remark almost made me laugh out loud. If nothing else, it's an indication that my mask is still reasonably intact. Whether, ultimately, that's good or bad is a moot point.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How close?

How close can you come, that is, to calling your work colleagues a bunch of imbecilic bigots without actually doing it? Not much closer than I did towards the end of my shift this morning, I suspect. The exchange that so annoyed me was elicited by a throwaway news story, typical tabloid 'human interest' fodder, which someone had read, about a rugby player who'd had a stroke after a training accident, and had 'become gay' and retrained as a hairdresser after his recovery. How many mindless stereotypes and misconceptions can be fitted into one short sentence? No rugby players are gay? All male hairdressers are gay? Hairdressers never play rugby? A person's sexuality is set in tablets of stone? Needless to say, the conversation was littered with the usual offensive remarks about gays and all their works, winding me up still further. I think it was only the fact that the incident happened in the last hour of the shift, when the night shift relative quiet had been replaced by the beginning of the busier early morning period, where the position I was covering required something close to my full attention, that allowed me to keep my seething resentment of their stupidity in check. What are these people so afraid of, FFS? Because I can't envisage such prejudice and hatred being engendered by anything other than fear. Some people are gay, fucking get over it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Presumption

I've been reading online over the last day or two about the case of a high profile American Football coach who is accused of sexually assaulting several young boys in a coaching programme he was involved with, including accusations of rape. Rape, in particular, is a crime I find especially horrifying, rape of anyone, irrespective of age or gender, but particularly the rape of a boy, but, that being said, I have no idea whether the man is guilty or not - if he is, then he undoubtedly deserves to be punished - and I'm pretty certain those opining about the case have no more idea about his guilt or innocence than I do. What concerns me in this case is its illustration of a trend, in this country, as well as the US, of the presumption of guilt of the suspects in such cases, and others which invoke public 'revulsion' - the 'all Muslims are terrorists' meme springs to mind - rather than the suspect's traditional right of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. It isn't a new phenomenon, and one particular case, which happened around 15 years ago, in the area we used to live in prior to moving to Cornwall springs to mind. A local secondary school teacher was charged with sexually assaulting a 13 year old girl pupil of his after she made an allegation against him. There was local press coverage, with the predictable spin of child 'victims' needing to be protected from the 'evil predators' n their midst. Except that the 'victim' in this instance wasn't the person everyone assumed. 10 months later, after his name, career and reputation had been dragged through the dirt, the man was exonerated when the girl admitted to having fabricated the story to 'get back' at the teacher after he'd disciplined her for bad behaviour in class.
So, yes, punish the guilty, whether they be child rapists, terrorists or the 'white collar' criminals defrauding the 99%, but let's make sure they are guilty before assassinating their characters.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Quotidian

Routine. What you do every day. The same as the day before. Like this night shift week. Work, back to the accommodation, sleep, cyberspace, food, back to work. There's every chance that tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that will be the same. Yesterday was like that, today too, unless anything unexpected intervenes. Millions, billions of people are in the same sort of situation, going round and round the same hamster wheel day after day. Why? Apart from the biological imperative to pass on your genes to the next generation, why on earth do it? Slogging away, day after day, to try and provide a better 'standard of living' for you and yours, only to find, ultimately, that your efforts only really enrich the much-quoted 1%. The bankers, politicians and their assorted hangers-on, the so-called celebrities, famous for being famous and usually, these days, with little or no discernible talent, the magnates and oligarchs enriching themselves at the expense of destroying the jobs, the lives of their underlings. The age of 'greed is good' style over substance. What, for the 99%, is the point of colluding with a system that guarantees your own subjugation? The whole rotten, meretricious edifice ought to be swept away, as far as I'm concerned. But it never will be, because most people can't even see they're being subjugated. To quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four, not for the first time, 'Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious'. Who needs the Thought Police when you've got the tabloid press and its televisual equivalent, and 'reality' TV shows?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

One step forward, three back

I've spent something like 20 of the past 36 hours either at work or travelling to and from work, and most of the rest asleep. And where do we find ourselves at the end of it? Another lurching step towards financial meltdown. This is an old mantra, of course, but - why do I bother? It's like the myth of quicksand - the more you struggle to escape, the more quickly you're sucked under. Aside from the vanishingly unlikely chances of winning the lottery, the only way out of the vicious circle seems to be to pull the plug and be left with almost literally nothing to show for three decades and more of work. Or death. But that's not a preferred option.
Even finishing work early enough this morning to catch my preferred train back to 'domicile-ville' didn't work out as well as I'd hoped - on a train heavily patronised by cute boys, where did I end up? In a bay of seats surrounded by late teenage girls on their way to college! Most 'men of a certain age' would doubtless have enjoyed the experience, but, certainly in this context, I'm not 'most men'. Just my luck, I guess.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tears on a train

Reading about someone losing the love of their life, in a heartbreakingly stupid, avoidable way. I would rather have been somewhere less public, if I'm being selfish, but I couldn't hold back the tears, anyway. Why does the world have to be such a disheartening place?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

As though nothing had happened

That was my wife's attitude this morning, after yesterday's spat. It's better than arguing, I suppose, but nothing ever gets resolved. It's all pretty academic, in the short term, at least, because I'll be heading back 'up country' in a couple of hours time, being on earlies, then nights, tomorrow. Keeping my nose to the grindstone, as ever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not happy

I'm not happy to be here. So I've been told this evening. Told, not asked. Well, actually, I'm thoroughly happy to be here. What I'm not happy about is being treated like the root of all evil, like everything I say or do is wrong. Especially what I say. And I'm not happy, while all this is going on, about still having to pretend I'm something I'm not. I'm so close to saying 'I'm gay, I'm a boylover. Take it or leave it.' If it wasn't for the effect it would have on my daughter, I can't see any way I wouldn't say it. There comes a point when it all becomes totally insupportable, and that point isn't that far away.
On the whole, I'd be far happier to sweep DBJ into my arms and spirit him away to some paradise island while he's still in my AoA. But as that's never going to happen, in this universe, at least, I'm willing to compromise and try to make the best of where I am. But that compromise is constantly being undermined. And I don't know how much more of it I can tolerate.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cornwall, CJ....but no E

This is yesterday's post, really, but I literally fell asleep in the middle of writing it last night, a combination of not going to bed after nights, travelling and, I have to admit, a glass or three of Chardonnay conspiring to render me comatose at around 8:00.
I got back home at lunchtime yesterday after what was, particularly in its latter stages, a rather messy night shift, certainly a lot messier than I'd anticipated. I managed it pretty well, though, perhaps something approaching definitive proof that I've got over any lingering loss of confidence feelings after my screw-up in the summer and the subsequent disciplinary stuff.
The journey back was smooth enough - the main problem was hobbling up to the station after finishing my shift in time to get the first of three trains to take me home, given that I've been afflicted with yet another episode of gout over the past couple of days (the medication is finally coming to terms with it now, I think - I hope!). My wife met me at the 'town' station so I could drive home in her car after dropping her back at work, but her apparent altruism did have a small hidden agenda - the quid pro quo was my doing the shopping on the way back. To prove that virtue is sometimes its own reward, though, I did have a sweet encounter at the supermarket. Why he should have been there at lunchtime on a schoolday, I've no idea, but I came across an absolutely delicious boy, 12 or 13, really awesomely cute, in the store with an older woman (grandmother, at a guess, given their relative ages) - and I was treated to that most rare of gifts for a boylover, a moment of connection. He was struggling to heft a case of beer into a small space in the shopping trolley on the woman's behalf without crushing any of the other items (I was waiting to pick up my own case from the same display), which he managed just before I got the chance to offer my help. I made a light-hearted remark about his loading abilities, and he turned my way and smiled, lovely white teeth and all. Just an evanescent, never to be repeated moment - as with all such cuties, I haven't the slightest expectation of ever seeing him again - but none the worse for that. And CJ? That's what grandma called him, so the family nickname, I guess.
Being Thursday, I had another cutie on my mind, too - I was hoping E might have appeared to put a free paper through our door, but the publication he delivers evidently isn't a weekly thing (once a fortnight, I think), so I missed out on seeing him again. Two in one day would've been greedy, though, I suppose.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Maybe the name change was a good idea after all

Well, maybe Aristophanes wasn't too displeased with my 're-borrowing' of his imaginary placename. After quite some time of not doing anything very substantive with my fiction writing (although I liked Nostalgia, even if no-one else did - but then I would, I suppose, given the subject matter), I've actually spent a few solid hours this afternoon working on my Lucid/Lucent 'sort of' sequel, or the new story with the same principal characters, whatever it is, which has been in abeyance since June. It's still nowhere near being finished, but it's something like twice as long as it was six or seven hours ago. A temporary resuscitation of the muse, at least.
That apart, it's been a quiet day, waiting around to go in for my 'one night shift stand' tonight, but then I've got the bonus of a two and a bit day visit home to look forward to. Every little helps, as they say.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Prodding the shade of Aristophanes

For no better reason than that I can, the other blog has reverted to its original title. I like the word, so 'Nephelokokkygia' it is. I'm sure the 'relaunch' won't make the slightest difference to my paltry output, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Uncertainty

I'm in one of my periodic 'shall I, shan't I' moods about the blog. Most of the time, I feel positive about blogging and what I get out of it, and want to persevere, but then these dips, jitters, whatever you want to call them, creep up on me and make me wonder why I carry on. This one is more mysterious, in that I've had a small, but significant upturn in the interest in the blog, so I can't claim to be feeling neglected, and I've also been able to write regularly and reasonably fluently, albeit that I haven't come up with any devastatingly sparkling insights. Apart from the little hiccup at the beginning of last month, when I got myself upset over something I should have been more mature about, I haven't even had any emotional troubles. So why am I thinking of walking away, as it were? Maybe there isn't really any logic or reason to these things, just feelings that come and go without much connection to 'real life', whatever that cypher signifies.
Maybe if I could make at least a tiny ripple with my fiction writing it might help - I know most of the stories that have appeared in 'Cuckoos' recently have been short and self-indulgent, and that's down to me. I have been working, intermittently, on a more substantial piece, but it keeps stalling. I did think of 'bolting on' a chunk of plot from another unfinished story, but hybrids are often not all that robust, so I don't know whether it would be a good idea. More uncertainty. I need a good kick up the backside, I think.
This isn't a feeling I'm used to, really. I have my up moments, and down times, but this kind of 'stuck in the middle, stuck in neutral' prevarication isn't usually my thing. Getting vague in my old age, maybe.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B