Desert of neutrality

After yesterday, I suppose a thoroughly bland, almost blank day was just what the proverbial doctor ordered. Got up, went to work, came back, power nap, internet, food, more internet. That's it, really. There are many other things I no doubt could have done, although the chilly, wet weather of the middle part of today didn't really encourage much in the way of outdoor life, but I chose not to.
The reshuffle at my wife's workplace is in full swing, given the impending end of the financial year, with various people leaving. My wife would have been amongst them, but for a three-month contract extension to allow more time for her particular project to be reallocated, hence her stay of execution until the end of June. Quite what we're going to do after that remains to be seen, but I find it hard to envisage, at least in financial terms, that things are going to get anything but worse. Having said that, I do tend towards pessimism, so I might yet be proven wrong and we'll come up smelling of roses. I'm not holding my breath in expectation of such an outcome, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Stupid of me

Stupid, that is, even to have hoped something would work out vaguely to my advantage. I went down to see the accommodation this afternoon, all very nice and civilised - and almost double what I could afford to pay. Another kick in the teeth from life, just what I needed. I might just as well have stayed in my old job and taken my heart attack like a man - at least I would've seen DBJ every now and again.
I'm left feeling not so much depressed as dejected, apathetic, beaten down. No doubt it all sounds a bit melodramatic when all that's happened is my seeing a place I can't afford, but it just seems symptomatic of where my life is at. No-one can expect to have everything they want in life, that would just be greedy and selfish, but not to have anything of what you really want is all rather soul-destroying.
I don't know where I'm going to go from here - I don't even know if I want to carry on with the blog.
A cute boy in my arms for an hour, then curl up and let the tide wash me away - even that's an impossible daydream.
Thank you all for your patience in the face of my relentless self-pity.
Later.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Serendipity, maybe

Back at work this morning, and, without wishing to count any proverbial chickens, I had an encounter which might turn out to be very beneficial. We had a visit during the shift, from a group of elderly ex-employees in the industry I work in. They're all residents of a retirement/care home, which used to be directly associated with the industry, but is now run by an independent charitable organisation. My manager was talking to the lady who had arranged the visit, and who works for the charity, close to where I was working, and I happened to hear her talking about a house which is in the grounds of the care home, some of whose rooms are rented out to people in the industry. Almost as a joke, I asked if she had any vacancies, and, to cut a long story short, I'm going over there tomorrow afternoon to have a look at the place. I've no idea whether the accommodation is available on a short-term or longer-term basis, or how much it might cost, but I'm certainly hoping it will be suitable, because it's within reasonable commuting distance of work - half an hour or so - by way of a direct train service. Pretty much what I've been looking for, so I'm keeping my fingers firmly crossed that there won't be any unforeseen pitfalls. Even if I'm only able to stay there for a few weeks or months, it would at least give me a base, and go some way towards mitigating the nomadic lifestyle I've been leading recently.
My daughter arrived safely in Finland - I had a text from her earlier, and my wife's had a phone call - and it seems, as expected, that she's enjoying herself, even if it is snowy and about 5 degrees below zero. The wintry stuff doesn't do anything for me, but each to their own!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Clocks and departures

While I didn't have to go into work today, it didn't mean that I had anything resembling a lie-in, because my daughter was due to leave early this morning for a school exchange trip to Finland, which, allied to the fact that British Summer Time started today, with the clocks going forward an hour, meant that I got a grand total of about four hours sleep overnight. Needless to say, my daughter didn't have any trouble getting up, the excitement of anticipation easily overcoming her usual weekend tendency to stay in bed until the streets are well and truly aired. The weather she's going to be met with at her destination is, to put it mildly, bracing - the temperature isn't forecast to get above freezing point all week. Best of luck, young lady!
I did catch up on a couple of extra hours later in the morning, though, so my exhaustion levels have been kept within reasonable bounds, for once, although, in the end, I found myself rushing about a bit to be ready to leave in time myself to catch my train to London this afternoon. It proved to be a bit of a tortuous journey, because the train was diverted because of engineering work, adding an hour to what is already a pretty substantial trip, followed by a convoluted itinerary on the Underground because of their weekend work, finally ending up back in the same East London place as I stayed in a couple of weeks ago at around 8:00 this evening. At least the clock change meant that most of the journey was made in daylight, which always helps, so far as I'm concerned.
One major aim for this week is to sort out a more permanent place to stay, given that I'm expecting to be starting on the full roster from next weekend. I've seen one or two places online which I think will be worth following up, and being on earlies this week should give me the opportunity to go and have a look at anywhere suitable (read affordable!) that's within sensible commuting distance of my workplace. One slightly offbeat option I spotted a couple of days ago was tempting - renting a room on a boat on the Thames, but the set-up seemed a bit too much on the commune-ish side for my taste, so I've decided not to pursue that one. I'm not the most sociable of souls, as I've said before, so there's little point in committing myself to somewhere I'd have to 'muck in', much as the idea of living on the river appeals to me. A single bedsit, where I can lock my door and shut out the world whenever I feel the need is much more my thing, I'm afraid.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Let's break a rule

One tenet I've tried to work to during my time in blogland, both in terms of writing in my own blogs, and commenting on others, is 'if you've got nothing to say, say nothing'. That's why I didn't post yesterday - there really wasn't anything much to say. Today hasn't been much more eventful, in all honesty - I did receive an unexpected phone call from work this morning, telling me not to bother going in tomorrow, because there's nothing for me to do, which means I won't need to travel now until tomorrow afternoon, effectively giving me a buckshee day off - and I've spent a little while, prior to starting this post, staring at a blank screen. I could have done what I did yesterday, and not bother to try, but I feel the urge to write something, so I'll meander and see where I end up.
I've been reading a blog lately, having seen a link to it on a blog I follow, called 'Born this Way', which I'm sure many are familiar with. It invites LGBT people to send in pictures of themselves as children, and to tell their stories illustrating the innate roots of their orientation. It's made me think about my own situation, and how far back my own predilections go. I wrote some months ago about the first boy I can remember being attracted to, when I was 12, even if at that time I didn't fully understand what that attraction meant, but my musing about the 'born this way' adage, has led me to earlier memories, and memories of one boy in particular. When I was around 8 or 9, my best friend was a considerably younger boy, just 5 or 6, called Jonathan. There was no sexual component to the relationship, not least because I was a total innocent at that age - sex just wasn't mentioned in my home - but, in hindsight, there was a distinct emotional tie involved. I remember one incident in particular, when having been invited to what must have been Jonathan's sixth birthday party, held one afternoon after school, I thought I'd missed my lift to his house, and had a dreadful, tearful meltdown outside school, far more intense than could reasonably be explained, even for a 9 year old, by the simple disappointment of not going to a party. Was I in love with him, in my childish way? It's certainly possible, and it's definitely fair to say that I didn't ever feel that way about a girl until I was in my late teens. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it does make me wonder how much of what makes me what I am is down to nature, and how much to nurture. I guess the truth lies at some intermediate point, as with most things.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

End of the marathon....for now

It was with a sense of decided relief that I arrived back home at around 11:15 this morning, to bring my half-week of mega-commuting to an end. Predictably enough, it's left me feeling very tired and not 100% well - I've been full of sniffles again this week - but I have, at least, got a couple of days of R & R before it all starts again early on Sunday morning. One positive of my time on the train is that I managed to get the next chapter of Noctivagant  posted on 'Cuckoos' this morning. I want to try and keep the momentum of my writing going, because, having released a few chapters, I wouldn't want to leave the story hanging there unfinished.
I had an interesting conversation with one of my colleagues about 2:00 this morning, the subject matter of which surprised me considerably, and not in an unpleasant way. The man in question is a ex-soldier, around five years younger than me, a pretty rough and ready kind of person with forthright, rightwing-ish views on quite a number of issues, and, superficially, not the sort you might associate with much in the way of tolerance. It transpires, however, that the elder of his two sons, who's in his early twenties, is gay, and, despite the young man apparently having expected all sorts of dire consequences, possibly up to and including physical violence, when he came out to his dad as a 16 year old, he was greeted instead with a hug and a kiss, and reassurance that he would always be his father's son. With all the dire stories of bullying, rejection and suicide that have been aired recently, it's really nice for once to hear of a happy ending, and from, with all due respect to my colleague, a fairly unlikely source.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Work, travel, sleep, travel, work

That cycle is filling my entire time at the moment, certainly until I get back home, sometime mid-morning-ish tomorrow. At least I haven't got time to get bored, not that boredom is really something I ever have to deal with - not enough hours in the day is a far more common complaint. Maybe it's the dreaded chariots of time pursuing me, but I almost always feel that there would be more I could do, if I had the opportunity - to paraphrase 'Parkinson's Law', life seems to expand to fill the available time, and being bored simply isn't a productive use of what time there is.
I overheard a thoroughly bizarre conversation on the bus to the station this afternoon, between two college age lads (18/19-ish) sitting behind me, on the subject of whether Spiderman is gay. Leaving aside the obvious objection that he's a fictional character, what difference does it make either way? If you were in some kind of mortal peril, would the first question you'd ask your friendly local superhero be about his sexual orientation? After a few minutes, at least one of the interlocutors seemed to realise the absurdity of the discussion, when he said 'I don't believe we're having this conversation'. Frankly, neither did I.
Thanks very much to Jacob for becoming my latest follower. I hope, as with everyone kind enough to visit my blog, that you find something of interest.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Travelling man

The combination of my being on nights with the continuing lack of a car or a London pied a terre has led to me doing some ludicrously long-distance commuting by train this week - I'm only working three days, followed by three days off, and I can, at least, top up my sleep on the train, so it's not as bad as it might have been. Beggars can't be choosers.
Yesterday's slough of despond has lightened a little, although that's probably more down to my coping a bit better than anything actually improving. For whatever reason, it all just seemed hopeless yesterday, and my mood went straight over the edge into near despair. I've got to cope, I've no choice, because it's not just my well-being that's at stake.
There are almost always brighter moments, too - I got to speak, unexpectedly, to my daughter this morning, when she rang my mobile by accident while she was on her way to school, the weather has been nice, even if I haven't had any free time to speak of to enjoy it, and I saw two absolute grade one cuties on the way to the station an hour or so ago. Crumbs of comfort, you could say, but better than no comfort at all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Closer to the edge

Again? Still? I don't really know. I wrote a piece called 'Brink' in 'Cuckoos' about six weeks ago, an imagined way out of what might have been an untenable position. I'm not in that kind of place in my life - yet. I have a nasty feeling that such a place is closer, though. It's like one of those nightmares where you unlock doors, only to find more locked doors beyond, no way out. However hard you try, there's no escape. Like an insect caught in a spider's web, irredeemably entangled in sticky strands, nothing left to do but struggle in futility, then die. It's a frightening prospect, I feel like running away, but there's nowhere to run to where you can leave yourself behind. I don't know what to do, how to avoid what is starting to seem inevitable, the loss of everything that matters, everything I've worked for over thirty-odd years. How did I get myself into this mess? I feel so stupid and worthless. It just hurts so much to have failed so dismally, failed my family, failed myself. I'm trying so hard not to cry, that would be pathetic, but I don't know if I can stop myself.

Sorry.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another landmark

Well, here it is. Post number 300. I don't know whether I should keep mentioning these waymarks on my journey through blogland, or not, but 300 it is, either way. I suppose 'significant' numbers, if nothing else, act as prompts to consider where you are and where you might be going. I'm going on, unless anything unforeseen intervenes, because I still feel I've got both something to give and something to gain from my association with cyberspace. As I've said several times, I'm grateful to the people I've 'met' here for their friendship and support, and I'm also grateful to those who just read without further comment, because without all of you, I'm just talking to myself. I guess I probably come across to some as difficult and self-absorbed, no doubt because that's true, but I hope at least some of what I write is of some interest, or even, perhaps, assistance to others.
I've used the same sign-off, 'Love & best wishes to all' for all of my posts, but the repetition doesn't diminish the sentiment. I really do send my love to you all, always.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Give me enough rope

For someone who prides himself on being relatively intelligent, I've done two particularly stupid things in the last 24 hours, both in connection with my attraction to boys. Actually, I suppose, I've done one stupid thing, and come within an ace of adding a second. The one I've actually done was in downloading something I shouldn't have, and then compounding the idiocy by looking through the whole thing before I came to my senses and deleted it - it wasn't pornography, but it was, to be as charitable to myself as I can, dubious, certainly something that could draw very unwelcome attention to myself, if nothing worse, and for what? A bit of eye candy. Moronic.
The 'near miss' was letting my tongue almost run away with me while I was talking to my wife, when the 'What do I want in life?' kind of question cropped up. It was a bit like the conversational equivalent of a 'Road Runner' cartoon, where I was hurtling towards the edge of a precipice, but screeched to a halt just in time, before saying anything unequivocal. And again, for what? To purge my conscience of all the deceit, at best, at the cost, almost certainly, of everything else collapsing into dust. I know this kind of thing has cropped up before, and it has led me to speculate that, maybe, there's something subconscious, or perhaps not so subconscious, in me that wants all of this to come out into the open, and be dealt with by whatever means, rather than churning away under the surface making me ever more screwed up. Maybe the time is coming closer when I need to talk to someone about all of this, in some kind of therapeutic setting, before I do something uncontrolled, even if it is only a verbal outburst. I certainly need to think about the implications, before I do hang myself, figuratively, if not literally.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Immured....and loving it!

Since I got home, around 11:00 last night, I haven't been out of the house. And, sad as it may seem, it's suiting me fine. Spending as much time as I do away, when I am here in Cornwall, rather than going out and taking advantage of the nice area we're lucky enough to live in, even on a nice day like today, all I seem to want to do is to curl up like some kind of hibernating animal in its den. The domiciliary equivalent of comfort eating, in a way. Once I get past my final assessment, which I'm pretty confident about, it could get even worse - I've been working Monday to Friday, for the most part, for the past few months, with most of my weekends off, whereas, from a fortnight tomorrow, I'll be on the full 24/7 roster, my first experience of which will be to work 10 days in a row, so that I suspect I'll be even more inclined to want to do little beyond rest and recuperation when I'm at home. I'm already looking forward to my first long weekend, 6 days off over the first weekend in May. Wishing my life away again.
Today has largely, as I suggest, been pretty congenial from my point of view. There has been a slight off-key element, though, and, once again it involves my interaction with my wife. This isn't a criticism of her, because, like me, she is what she is, and hasn't really changed very much in the time I've known her - almost 20 years - but it does underline the differences between us, and how it can lead to our talking at cross purposes on occasions. We don't have deep and meaningful conversations very often, because our interests are so disparate, so that when, this morning, I did start talking about one or two things, with a political slant, that I'd seen on the internet, for my wife to be so reluctant to engage was a distinct disappointment. It's not that I want her to slavishly agree with me, just to talk about something more mind-expanding than the contents of a homeware catalogue she'd picked up. She's an intelligent woman, but just doesn't seem to have the self-confidence, or self-esteem, to show what she's capable of. It leaves me frustrated, on her behalf far more than my own, that she should sell herself so short at times.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fantasies, fiction and fragility

It's well documented in this blog that I struggle with my lot in life from time to time, and, as I've said before, human nature, or, at least, my version of it, dictates that I tend to write about the more melodramatic elements. Today has been a bit of a case in point. I've had scenarios rolling around in my head which, looked at with any degree of realism, are total fantasy. Just because I'm meandering around a big city like London, it doesn't make it any more likely that cute boys are going to fall at my feet, or even that some waif or stray is going to turn to me as his white knight. There's a total discontinuity between what's in my head and anything that's ever got the remotest chance of happening in real life. When you add in another somewhat fractious conversation with my wife this evening, about, guess what, finances and jobs again, and then my contriving to drive the final nail into the coffin of my mood when I read the latest episode of an online story I've been following to find it taking an unhappy turn, I'm left, once again, feeling distinctly down in the dumps. As usual, the feeling will doubtless pass, and I'll pick up the traces again tomorrow - which is, as they say, another day.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

David, the heartbreaker

Not that it was his fault, mind you. On my cross-London tube journey to work at lunchtime, I was meandering along the District Line when a school party, evidently from some relatively upmarket private school, joined the train at Westminster. 10 or 12 boys, all around 11 or 12 years old, and a couple of teachers. I started to peruse the boys, as is my wont, but was quickly brought up very short. Light brown tousled hair, light tan skin colouration, the shape and setting of eyes, nose and mouth - he was so like DBJ two or three years ago. Not identical twin alike, but very reminiscent, just the same, the sort of likeness where you wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be a cousin, or even a half-brother, something of that order. It took all my self-control not to let my emotions get the better of me, but there was a good deal of inward groaning, the sort of 'of all the carriages, on all the tube trains, in all of London, he has to get onto mine' kind of reaction. The party travelled all the way to the end of the line, too, the same stop I was heading for, so I had plenty of time to mope over the situation, and what I not so much lost, except in an eye candy way, but what I never had and would so loved to have had. And yes, today's boy was called David - one of his friends asked him a question and used his name, then one of the teachers also addressed him by that name when the boys were being organised to get off of the train. Not an encounter, overall, that's exactly made my day.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Eastender

Not I hasten to add, because of suddenly becoming a fan of the long-running BBC soap opera! I'm in yet another new port of call for this week, across in East London - not ideal, in terms of accessibility from work, but the price was right - or nearer to being right - and the room itself is fine, quiet (so far, at least, not wishing to tempt fate!) and with all the requisite basic facilities working adequately.
My nomadic lifestyle has taken a turn for the yet more awkward this week, because my car is temporarily hors de combat until I can get the money together to get it through its MOT, so I'm reliant on public transport. Not that I mind travelling by train and bus, but the journey up from Cornwall takes the best part of an hour longer, due to the lack of door-to-door convenience as much as anything else. This should, I hope, only be an issue for a few weeks, but we'll see what happens.
I am now within touching distance of finally getting onto the full roster - one more competence assessment, in just over a fortnight, and I should be a fully fledged and certificated operative in my new job. It's all taken rather longer than I would ideally have liked, but I have had three weeks' annual leave and two weeks on the sick, as well as a week and a half off over Christmas and New Year, since arriving at my new workplace at the end of September, so that probably explains the long and drawn-out process as much as anything. Hopefully, once I do get onto the full panoply of weekend and night shift working, as well as the much greater chance of being offered overtime, the process of repairing our tottering finances can begin in earnest.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Spring has almost sprung....hopefully

It's been a nice, relatively warm and sunny day today - it could be that this seemingly interminable winter is finally on its way out. Not wishing to tempt fate, of course - we had snow in early April, even down here in Cornwall, two or three years ago. I went shopping at lunchtime, and I have to admit that I was hoping that the sunshine might have brought a few cuties out, but it was a pretty barren afternoon from that point of view, both out on the streets and once I'd got to the supermarket. Oh well, you can't have everything, can you?
I've tried to make some progress with 'Noctivagant' over the weekend, but I haven't achieved more than a handful of paragraphs. It's not, I think, due to a loss of momentum, though - I've still got plenty of ideas for directions for the story, within the overall plot structure - it's more been due to competing interests taking precedence, most notably catching up with the late season winter sport coverage. Good old Eurosport, the unwitting thief of my time winter after winter. Just how many winters has been brought home to me today - the world-class Finnish ski jumper, Janne Ahonen, retired after today's competition, at the age of 33. I can remember watching him compete in his first World Cup season, as a very young looking 14 year old! I was younger then than he is now! I can hardly believe how quickly the years have seemed to pass. Is that a sign of incipient old age? Very likely!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Atheism

'Don't talk about politics or religion' was a piece of advice my dad gave me when I first started visiting pubs in my late teens. Two areas of life where saying the wrong thing can upset people. Because people always seem to 'know' what's right in those contexts. Well, I'm not in a pub, even if I have got a glass of wine in front of me, so I'm going to talk about religion, because it's a subject that has exercised my mind a great deal over the years, and one I have to admit to having strong feelings about.
From the outset, I want to make one thing clear. I have no objection to anyone believing in anything they want to. Belief is a personal issue, and purely a matter for the individual. What I do object to, however, is the use of belief to impose a world view on other people. I've mentioned my dad, and now I'll mention my mum. I went to a Church of England affiliated primary school, so there were regular visits to church, once or twice a term, for the whole school for services for Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, Harvest Festival, occasionally others besides, and parents were invited to some of these services. On one of these occasions - I must have been around 10 - those of us whose parents had come to the service were allowed to go straight home from the church rather than having to go back to school, and my mum was there, so my siblings and I met up with her at the end of the service, and headed for the main door of the church. The vicar was there, saying his goodbyes to those leaving, and, as my mum passed him, he made a disapproving comment along the lines of why did he never see us in church on a Sunday. Without missing a beat, she replied 'I don't need to go to church to be a good person'. That stuck in my mind, and does to this day, as perhaps the first time in my life anyone in my ambit had questioned the certitudes of Christianity, taught to us, as I suppose it has to be to young children if it's going to be taught at all, as fact, given the relatively limited capacity for abstraction of those children. I can't say, even with hindsight, that was the day I became an atheist, but it was probably the day when the seed was sown in my mind.
Ironically, it wasn't very long after that - probably four or five months later - when I entered the phase of my life when I was most exposed to organised religion. I attended, and passed, an audition to be in the church choir, and spent the next almost five years attending church twice, and once a month three times, each Sunday, along with extra wedding and funeral services, Remembrance Days at the War Memorial, and sundry other church and town events when choral services were required. In short, I experienced vastly more religion than almost all of my contemporaries between the ages of 10 and 14. And I listened to what was being said, and thought about it, weighing the words I heard from the pulpit and lectern against what I already knew, and, especially after I went to grammar school, what I was learning of the scientific ideas about the world, the universe, and how it all came to be, and came to be the way it is. By the time I was 13, I was having serious doubts about the veracity of the Christian version of events, and before I left the choir, as my voice was breaking just after my 14th birthday, I had made my final decision. I felt there was no need to invoke a supernatural explanation for natural phenomena, including the existence of the world and all it contains, and I still hold to that belief to this day. I don't believe in 'God', or gods, or anything beyond natural processes to elucidate anything about the natural world and its reason for being here. Religious belief itself, in my opinion, is explicable within those parameters, as a construct of neurological activity, an attempt to explain that which not immediately apparent, a function of the evolutionary adaptation by which the human brain looks to identify patterns within the environment, an adaptation which probably originally allowed our hominid ancestors to avoid predators.
But again, thereby hangs a tale. Biblical literalists would claim that such evolutionary concepts are unnecessary and wrong, because 'God' created everything as it is now 6000 or so years ago, negating the idea of either a mechanism or a timescale for anything to have evolved. My answer to that kind of argument is encapsulated in the 'Occam's Razor' adage, which states that the hypothesis most likely to be true is that which requires the least assumptions. It is possible to posit that 'God', being omnipotent, could create a universe in which fossils appear in the correct strata, or the exact degree of galactic redshift, as viewed from Earth, could be concocted to conform to spurious geological or cosmological theories, but ism't it simpler to assume that such evidence exists because it is a natural consequence of natural processes, rather than the product of 'micromanagement' by a celestial creator?
I'm no proselytiser, I have no interest in persuading anyone to believe what I believe, or telling anyone how to live their lives. Sadly, there are many who wouldn't extend the same courtesy to me - instead I would doubtless be told I was destined to be damned to Hell and eternal torment because of what I believe and who I would choose, in my ideal world, to love. Going back to Occam's Razor, it's all evidence to me that there is no 'God', because a benevolent deity would surely have instilled empathy and tolerance into their creation, qualities which, to me, are noticeably rare in the contemporary world.
So, I'm an atheist. Q.E.D., as far as I'm concerned.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Disgrace

Even in the democratic and idiosyncratic world that is cyberspace, there is a case for a certain degree of regulation. No-one, I suggest, would claim that absolutely unrestricted freedom of expression is a viable option, because there are some things that are completely beyond the pale, particularly in terms, from my point of view, of individuals being coerced into things they are not willing or able to do.
Having said that, the other side of the coin is that control can easily tip into censorship, that certain vested interests can deem opinions, points of view, even complete lifestyles 'unacceptable', despite those opinions or lifestyles being perfectly legal, and I suggest, decent, and these value judgments can lead to gross injustices. One such injustice has taken place in the last 24 hours, with the deletion of a blog maintained by a person who only an utter bigot could accuse of being anything other than a genuinely good man with the best interests of others at heart.
I'm speaking, as many will already know, of 'tony's red flash'. Tony, or Tman, as some will know him, had just made his 100th post, and although I know no more of him than I've learned online, via his blog and a few e-mail exchanges, he appears to me to be a thoroughly genuine person, who honestly cares for and wants to help others, so for his blog to be deleted, for reasons which haven't been disclosed to him, and about which he can't find anyone to talk to, is an utter disgrace - or a piece of gratuitous censorship of GLBT issues, which is would be an equal, if not greater disgrace.
Google is a large and very successful business, but that, in my opinion, doesn't give them any sort of right to act as judge and jury on questions of morality. I might be thinking along unduly cynical lines here, but could it be that Google have been threatened with loss of advertising revenue, which, of course, is the 'cash cow', by some of the more reactionary elements in American society, inspired by what strikes me as a particularly intolerant brand of fundamentalist Christianity with a very narrow-minded outlook on life, and a distinct tendency to say 'do as I say, don't do as I do'. I'm an unapologetic atheist, but might I venture to say that some of these people might be well advised to consider the biblical quotation 'let he who is without sin, cast the first stone'.
I sincerely hope that Tony is back in Blogland, in some way or other, very soon.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Only two faults....

....everything I say, and everything I do.
Sorry, but this is going to be yet another dose of doom and despondency. There are times, and the phone conversation I've just had is one of them, when I utterly despair of ever being able to do the right thing in my wife's eyes. I'm stuck up here, away from where I want to be, looking forward to going home tomorrow, when it comes to light, while we're talking on the phone, that my wife, again, hasn't been shopping all week. So, I commit the heinous crime of trying to find out what groceries we need, so that I can pick them up on my way back. That, apparently, is perceived as scathing criticism on my part. The conversation then degenerated into monosyllables, leaving me, perhaps by way of overreaction, feeling that there's little or no welcome waiting for me when I get back. If I can console myself with anything at all, it's the knowledge that, at least, my daughter will be looking forward to seeing me, and the feeling is mutual. Beyond that, even allowing for the stresses and strains my wife and I are under, it's getting more and more difficult for me to contain my frustration. There's no way it would come out as physical violence, I'm just not that sort of person, but there are torrents of words that could be said which would be just as terminal to the relationship. 'I knew there was a reason I preferred boys' could just be the start.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More adventures in cheap(ish) hotel land

Another week, another dodgy hotel room! At least it's not subterranean, like the hobbit hole (although, to be fair, I didn't mind it there, and would probably be there now if I'd been able to book a room), this one's three stories above the District Line in West London, with tubes passing about every thirty seconds. At least it's easy to get to and from work, the tube station is about two minutes' walk away, which means I'll get a lie-in until a positively sybaritic 5:30 in the morning.
And that's the story of my day, really - work, check into the hotel, laptop, soon to be bedtime. What an overwhelmingly exciting life I'm leading here in the big city! I suppose that's the way with big cities generally - millions of people, but disproportionately more people on their own than a village or small town. It's a good job that I've got an insular streak that allows me to be happy in my own company.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tired

That sums up today in a nutshell. I spent a very cold and uncomfortable night last night, slept abysmally, and I've spent the whole of today feeling absolutely crap as a result. Despite promising myself I wasn't going to do it this week, I've ended up at my brother's again - he keeps telling me, and has again this evening, that I'm always welcome, and I'm really grateful to him, but I just feel like I'm being a complete imposition on him and his family. I guess it's because I've always prided myself on being independent, so that even the generosity of family and friends seems to me like I'm scrounging and/or taking advantage of other people's good nature. Too much pride, and too little self-esteem, perhaps.
So, it's an early night for me - I'll have to be up and about early in the morning, but at least I'll have had a warm and comfortable eight hours in the interim. If only I could convince myself that I'm worthy of it, it would be a psychological as well as physiological benefit.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Terminal omnivory

I apologise in advance for any typos, but I'm blogging in darkness - literally, not necessarily figuratively! - apart from the light from my laptop screen itself.
I spent the best part of two hours earlier on this evening in a bar at London Victoria station, because, in all honesty, I had little else to do, and that was where I was washed up by the tide of my day. Being at a busy mainline station, there was much in the way of comings and goings during the time I was there, with people having a drink and then, presumably, going off to catch their respective trains. Two people particularly caught my eye, one unusual of late, and one just plain unusual, from my perspective. The first was a young woman, probably just about into her twenties, tall, blonde and in what, to my eye, was nice proportion - certainly not overweight, but not an emaciated looking 'stick insect' either. She had a slightly androgynous look about her, but was certainly easily recognisable as female, and counts as the first woman I've found myself giving more than a second glance to for months on end. The second person was much more unusual, though - in fact, almost unprecedented. It was a young man - and man is the right word, he produced ID on demand to be served at the bar, so he was certainly over 18 - and while he was definitely on the boyish-looking side, he was assuredly 'legal' and then some, but my reaction was still 'bloody hell, he's cute!'. It certainly gave me pause for thought - after all this time, finding an adult male attractive, even if only in an eye candy way, is a new departure for me, and one that is, on first impression, even more of a muddying of the waters than before.
Normality - my normal, that is, not society's - was restored as I was waiting in the ticket office queue, though - a sweet boy of 11 or so, sitting on his suitcase while his family were buying their tickets, more than piqued my interest.
What's the trendy word that's bandied about - 'pansexual'? Hmmmm!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's not getting better

Not a reference to the anti-homophobia, anti-bullying campaign, but my personal situation. I'm going back to work tomorrow, but after another wallow in the morass of our finances earlier today, the stress levels are back through the roof, and I'm feeling no better, even with the new medication, than I was when I rang in sick last Sunday. Even if I was feeling 100% healthwise, I'm still going back to a situation I really don't have any appetite for - it's not the job itself, that's the easy bit, it's interesting, challenging to a point, but still well within my compass, and well-paid. It's the being away from home, having no fixed abode, and no prospect of anywhere affordable within sensible commuting distance, and, in all probability, not even having a car after this week, because I can't afford the work that will be needed to get the vehicle through its MOT. The whole benighted scenario is getting to a point where I really do struggle to see why we're still even trying to make it work when that isn't, as far as I can see, a viable option. With the cost of everything going skywards, as well, food, fuel, interest rates rumoured to be following soon, when we can't even afford current prices, and that's before I even start thinking about what's going to happen if and when my wife's job wraps up in June.
Anyway, no sympathy sought or expected, this is just to get the crap off my chest. Hopefully a more normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

OK, let's give it a go

I've spent a good few hours today working on my story, and I've decided, having finally found what I believe is a viable way of splitting the overblown Chapter 2 into two more manageable chunks (hereafter known as Chapters 2 & 3!), to publish what I've done so far in 'Cuckoos'. It's only a first draft as yet, but I think it has some slight merit - but then, I would, wouldn't I!
I've never tried, as I think I've said before, to turn my daughter into 'Mini-Me', but I'm sure I've had some influence on her attitude to life, so I wasn't entirely taken aback by something she told me this evening, She has a Tumblr, and made a point of telling me about something she'd reblogged - a litany of unflattering statistics about marriage and divorce, rounded off by the ironic punchline '....so same-sex marriage will obviously destroy the fabric of society', or words to that effect. Good girl, is all I have to say, especially as she isn't at all attracted to the idea of a gay relationship - 'Ewwww' pretty much sums up her take on the issue. If I can look at myself in the mirror and say I've encouraged her to be tolerant, even to things she herself finds unappealing, I'll give myself credit for something worthwhile as a parent.

Thank you very much to Micky for becoming my latest follower - I hope to see you once again making your own valuable contribution to blogland very soon.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Food for thought

I saw something on another blog, one that I follow, this evening, which has given me pause for thought. The blogger mentioned me in a reply to a comment from someone else, as an example of the point he was illustrating. What he said was in no way offensive or intrusive, and was only based on things that I have put into the public domain myself, via my own blog, but it was unexpected, and, probably for that reason, somewhat disquieting, in the sense that once you launch a piece of your life out into cyberspace, it's there irrevocably, in some form or other. Even if I were to delete my blog in five minutes time, it would still be available to some through Google Reader, or perhaps Wayback Machine, if anyone was interested enough to look for it, and it would still exist as zeroes and ones on my hard drive, until it chanced to be overwritten by something else. Some people strive for immortality, but, when you think about it, it's very much a double edged sword.
Chapter 2 of my new story seems to be expanding exponentially - it's already substantially longer than Chapter 1, and still has some distance to go to reach its conclusion. If it sprawls much more, I might need to find some way of splitting it into two, although I can't see a sensible way to do that at the moment, or else prune it ruthlessly. I suppose it's better to have too much material than too little, because it's more likely to be beneficial to the final product to edit than to pad out.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Mellifluous

I'm watching a programme on Sky Arts (yeah, I know, pretentious, but, hey, we can't all be perfect) about Andres Segovia, and the word in my title sprang to mind unbidden listening to his playing. Like having honey poured into your ears, but less messy!
There have been one or two hiccups today, but, generally speaking, things have been better. Or maybe its just my perception that things have been better, who knows? Either way, the extra pill seems to have had the desired effect, for the moment at least. Or is it the placebo effect? Again, who knows, and who cares? Not me, certainly.
I've nibbled away at my new story again today. Chapter 1 is finished, or as finished as first drafts ever are, and I'm plodding my way through Chapter 2. I might, once I've got a couple more chapters written, launch the SS Magnum Opus onto the waters of cyberspace, a chapter at a time, to see what people think. Always assuming, of course, that I don't run aground in the meantime. I hope not, because I do honestly think I've finally got something that's not only flowing, but flowing in a worthwhile direction.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Prolixity and pulchritude

Four posts in one day! I'll doubtless wear my welcome very thin before long.
Well, I've managed to surpass myself this evening - I go to an information meeting about GCSE options at my daughter's school, an all-girls grammar, and do no more than trip over, almost literally, a cute boy. He was evidently the younger brother of one of my daughter's coevals who'd been brought along on what he no doubt found a thrilling(!) outing.
He wasn't the only beauty on view this evening, though - there are clear skies here at the moment, and more or less a new moon, so there are substantially more stars visible than normal, even to the naked eye. A nice end, at least, to a rather difficult day.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More of the same, and more besides

The doctor's appointment has come and gone, and I'm now on three pills a day, rather than two, for a trial four week period. The doctor doesn't think anything has particularly changed, having gone through the standard stethoscope and sphygmomanometer routine, plus an additional oxygen concentration test to make sure my circulation is still circulating, so I suppose that's reassuring to a point. In essence, the prescription given to me by the cardiologist I saw last year still stands - 'chill out'. Easier said than done when you're waiting for the sky to fall sometime soon. I've decided to take the rest of the week off, to give the new medication a chance to kick in, and go back to work next Monday, unless there's any deterioration in the interim, and I've rung in to advise the roster clerk accordingly. I can't afford to be off for another month, like last Spring, so I haven't got a great deal of choice, really.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Twisting and turning....

....but not able to move from the same spot. It's like my foot has fallen through the rotten floorboards of my life, and now it's inextricably trapped. No matter how I choose to rationalise or justify myself to myself, no matter how I try to paint myself as a moral individual manfully struggling to prevent my proclivities from spilling over in such a way that someone else will get hurt in the fallout, it doesn't change the fundamental point. I am, in the eyes of the world, a 'paedophile', and no amount of argument, however cogent, on my part is going to change a single person's mind on that subject. No 'normal' person would be sexually attracted to 11, 12, 13, 14 year old boys, they would say, how can I argue against that? I'm not welcome in 'their' society. And never will be. No future except unbroken vistas of deception and lies, just to be able to live my everyday life. What's the point?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Petulance

That was my reaction to something that's happened in blogworld in the last 24 hours. A case of feeling that 'I've tried my best to show solidarity, and it's been thrown back in my face', the more frustrating for me because I pulled a punch in what I'd said in the first place to try and be helpful, to try not to seem confrontational in any way. I've been in this position before, albeit in connection with a blog which proved not to be what it purported to be, and no longer exists. It's put me back into the state of mind I was in then, feeling that I can't seem to make any positive input, so why bother to attempt any input at all. There's no blame attached to anyone other than me in this issue, no-one has any obligation to make me feel better about myself and about life in general, it's purely my problem. If I'm only in this for what I can get out of it for myself, then the motivations are all wrong in any case. There are plenty of people with problems far worse than mine, but when you're inside looking out, it isn't always easy to see that in the correct perspective.

Memo to self - fucking grow up.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Out to lunch, and (nearly) a kindred spirit

My wife is taking most of this week off, to use up her outstanding leave before the end of the financial year, and with me being back on the sick list pending my doctor's appointment tomorrow, but not actually bedridden (although still feeling decidedly substandard if I actually try and do anything much), we decided to go out for lunch today. It could be said that it's not the best use of our few remaining financial resources, but having a bit of civilised, quality 'us' time after recent frictions made it, in my opinion, anyway, a worthwhile expedition. The cracks are still there, thinly papered over, but if we don't even try to find a way to make things work more congenially, we really are in trouble.
Cyberspace is a pretty big place, and I can't claim to have perused more than a tiny fraction of it. Within the small corner I've visited through blogging, though, something I've seen in the last hour or so is, I think, a first in my experience - someone other than me publicly admitting to an attraction to boys under the (UK) age of consent. It was in the profile of a Tumblr blogger - it was a link from a link from a link, and I doubt I'll be able to find it again, as I stupidly forgot to make a note of the address - who described himself as an ephebophile, attracted to 13 to 17 year olds. A couple of years older than my AoA, but with a significant overlap, at least. I had no expectation that I was unique, but the knowledge that I'm not the only person doing my best to come to terms with this issue offers a modicum of reassurance.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B