Semicentennial plus one

Well, I'm not 50 any more. Just another day, but one that saw the 'age' counter tick over to the next integer. And what was I doing on this auspicious occasion? A twelve hour day shift (well, to be strictly accurate ten and a half, because I got away early by finishing on a break). What a thrilling life I lead. Now I'm back at base, having indulged myself with a thoroughly unhealthy kebab by way of my evening meal, which I'm now washing down with some nice Chilean Chardonnay - I'm on late shift tomorrow, so I've got plenty of time to recover.
Apart from the alcoholic beverage, I had another big treat this evening, and an unexpected one at that. I spoke to my brother, and it transpired that a few mutual friends were at his place for a meal, including easily my closest female friend (apart from those I'm related to by marriage or blood), who haven't I seen for a couple of years, but who I got to have a longish chat with this evening. She's absolutely lovely and special, and I'm very, very fond of her, in a totally non-sexual way (she's married to another of my closest friends), and I think she feels somewhat the same way towards me - her first words on picking the phone up this evening were 'Hello, sweetie', which sums up our relationship pretty well. She had a serious brush with breast cancer about five years ago, which was dreadfully upsetting for all of us (especially her family, of course), but she really seems to be back to her old self now, which is fantastic news. As my slightly gushing tone probably implies, having spoken to her has been a really nice birthday present, and one I'm very pleased to have received.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nuptials

Needless to say, everything in the UK has been utterly dominated by the royal wedding today - there seems to be nothing else on TV or in the news. The conspiracy theorist in me sees the whole thing as a plot by the government to distract the public from the mess the country is in, and that the government themselves are making worse by their dogmatic policies, but it's more likely that the majority of Brits actually enjoy this sort of wallowing in sentimentality and love of royalty and pageantry, and I'm the curmudgeon who's out of step. Still, it hasn't had any great effect on my day, one way or the other - I went to work early this morning, before the hordes would've begun making their way into Central London, and travelled back at lunchtime, before the tide turned the other way, with the shift at work in the middle being reasonably equable, both in terms of the actual volume of work, and in the absence of yesterday's bigot-in-chief, who was on a different shift today.
Although I've been studiedly disinterested in the goings on in Westminster Abbey today, all the wedding talk has brought back to mind the best wedding I've ever been to - my own. That might just sound like a 'rose-tinted glasses' kind of statement, but I'm not just thinking of the obvious, 'I'm glad I married my wife', kind of sentiments. The actual mechanics of the day were as perfect as they could've been - the weather had been atrocious the day before, with strong winds and torrential rain, but the day itself dawned with clear blue skies and sunshine, which lasted until after the actual ceremony and the photographs at the reception venue, after which it poured with rain again, virtually everyone we wanted to be there turned up, and had a good time, the church service went well (yes, me, the unreconstructed atheist, got married in church, because it was what my wife wanted - call me a hypocrite if you want to, but I made my vows to her, as I see it, not to some imaginary god), the food and drink at the reception were perfect, everything was perfect, basically. If the royal couple have half as good a day as we had, they'll certainly enjoy themselves - and, for all my cynicism, I hope they do.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Seething, and ways of getting over it

I had another of those periodic moments at work this morning where I came within an ace of outing myself simply because of the hateful, bigoted rubbish that was being spouted by some of my colleagues. It started by someone having a dig at one of this morning's crew who happens to be a Fulham fan, over the Michael Jackson statue that's been put up outside their ground. That led on to all the usual suspects being aired - Gary Glitter, Pete Townsend, Chris Langham, and so ad nauseum, and what these deep thinkers, who can't see past the front page screams of 'Paedo' from the tabloids, consider should be done to such people. It was all I could do to restrain myself from telling them to stop talking out of their collective arse about subjects they don't have the least understanding of. Needless to say, the usual nonsensical non sequitur about all child molesters being gay was trotted out as well, just to underline the ignorance of these people - the thought doesn't seem to have crossed their tiny minds that if that was the case, why are girls abused? And that, of course, is quite apart from all known research showing that the vast majority of abusers are straight men. I was absolutely fuming, for hours, until the job intervened, and had me busy enough for most of the second half of the shift that I didn't have time to think about anything much else.
The second part of the repair of my temper was down to all of you good people who are kind enough to visit my little corner of cyberspace. Some time between 10:00 last night, and half an hour or so ago, this blog - or actually, this incarnation of this blog, relaunched after the security issue I had with 'Semicentennial' last summer - passed 5000 page views. Given that I'm still amazed at times that anyone at all would want to read my ramblings, to pass such a milestone is very gratifying, and I'd like to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone who visits for your time and trouble in doing so. You make it all worthwhile.

Love & best wishes
Sammy B

Halfway, more or less

I've nearly reached the halfway stage of my two weeks away from home, and while it's far from being ideal, I seem to be coping (Monday night's little meltdown notwithstanding), and the family, as far as I can tell from our telephone conversations, are getting along fine without me as well (dispensable....oh, no!!). I definitely think the psychological boost of having a proper base, where I can at least construct a simulacrum of 'home life' has helped, even if it is only a (largish) single bedroom within a building whose facilities I share with others. At least the feeling I was getting of being a nomad, if not a refugee, has diminished somewhat.
Despite my feeling more grounded, it's still an open question as to how long I can tolerate the schizoid lifestyle. To some extent, the decision is out of my hands, insofar as there are financial strictures involved, but it's still not something I really want to do for years on end. To spend two-thirds of my life away from Cornwall to be able to be able to carry on living in Cornwall has the feel of a self-defeating exercise, unless it can be proven to come under the 'short term pain for long term gain' heading.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It was a bit embarrassing, wasn't it?

Last night's post, that is. It was how I was feeling at the time, and I while suppose I could just delete it, people have been kind enough to take the time to comment, so it would be disrespectful to them to consign their words to the cyber-dustbin of history. I don't often get quite as messed up as that, especially about things I can't change. Just frustration, I guess, better that it comes out here rather than in any way that could hurt anyone in the real world.
I hope there's a bit of embarrassment amongst some of our technical people, too - they've been installing new equipment over the past few weeks, and spent the whole of the long Bank Holiday weekend testing it with a view to it being fully commissioned in the early hours of this morning, but when I got into work at 6:45 this morning, despite the work overrunning by two and a half hours, half the stuff didn't work at all, and after about four hours, one of the bits that had been working up to that point failed as well. Nothing dangerous, but it all slows the job down and makes unnecessary extra work for the 'poor bloody infantry' like me. 'We have the technology', as the saying goes. Yeah....but sadly it doesn't work!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cri de coeur

I've been debating with myself whether to post this or not for nearly an hour. There's nothing really new in it, apart, perhaps, from a streak of desperation, amplified by being on my own, probably, and allowing my thoughts to circle around and around the issue.

I want a boy.

I want it more, almost, than I can express in words.

I know it can't happen.

And so along the same pointless, soul-destroying track, again and again.

I don't know how long it will be before something breaks, but when it does, it will probably implode rather than explode. There's no reason why anyone else should be damaged by my desire. No-one deserves to be hurt by me, except me.

Sorry, yet again.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Someone inside my head

There must have been someone walking about inside my mind lately, because I've just been reading a story, part of which involved a fictional boylover talking about the mechanics of his attraction, and it could have been written, almost word for word, by me about me, about what I'm attracted to in boys and why. Art imitating life, and no mistake. Probably eclipsing life, because it was a more logical exposition of how I feel than anything I've previously been able to come up with myself, Unbelievable, really.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A smidgen of achievement

As planned, I've had a very quiet day, rest, relaxation, and a little bit of writing (a variant on those alliterative but not very literate schoolday '3 R's', I suppose). After stuttering rather worryingly for a couple of weeks, I've finally manage to finish and post the next chapter of 'Noctivagant' on the other blog - not a long, or an especially brilliant chapter, but at least it's there now, and I'm ready to move onto the next bit. I started another story as well, in another different genre, but that's stalled after three paragraphs - I might be able to resuscitate it, but I need a bit of a rethink, I suspect.
Back to the grind tomorrow - just a mere 11 shifts to go, and then I'll be on a six day long weekend. It seems a long way off at the moment, but I'm not going to start wishing my life away by hoping it was closer - life's short enough as it is.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Eostre

To those of you who celebrate the Christian festival, I'd like to wish you a happy Easter. To others who, like me, don't subscribe to such matters, I hope you have a happy and peaceful Sunday.
As it's my last day off until my long weekend starts on Friday week, I'm intending to chill out, and little more. Given I've decided not to do much, though, you may have the dubious pleasure of being regaled by more than one post today. Hopefully it won't be too traumatic!
An Easter memory has just struck me. From when I was 10 until my voice broke (shattered into a thousand pieces, more like!) when I was about 14, I was a church chorister. Easter Sunday was absolutely my favourite day of the ecclesiastical year, because we always, amongst the hymns and psalms, sang an anthem called 'Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem' by C.V. Stanford, and I loved it. Even though I was pretty much an atheist by the end of my time in the choir, I still enjoyed the actual singing, and nothing more so than that anthem.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Puer Borealis, and other random stuff

Another nice day, weatherwise, today, and, for once, I actually took advantage of it to some degree. After what had been a rather niggly, messy shift at work, it was my turn to get away early, so I headed towards Central London, albeit by a pretty circuitous route, which included a chunk of the Thames Path, for the first time since my move, albeit not a long chunk, between Putney and Hammersmith bridges  - the first third, give or take, of the Boat Race course - but a pleasant walk in the sunshine, nonetheless.
There was a little sourish note when I got into town, which can be encapsulated in the following question - why does English (and I'm using the word 'English' specifically in this instance, not as a careless catchall for Britain in general) patriotism seem to be most attractive to the mindless, thuggish elements? There was a St. George's Day event, apparently under the aegis of the Mayor of London, going on in Trafalgar Square, and the only people I saw who were literally wrapped up in the St. Georges's Cross flag were a bunch of very unpleasant looking skinhead types. Someone had mentioned at work that little seemed to be made of the English patron saint's day, as opposed to, especially, the Irish on St. Patrick's Day, but also the Scots and Welsh, and speculating about why that was - well here's a theory. I reckon most of the English are pretty embarrassed, if not downright ashamed, of the way the flag has been hijacked by the extreme right wingers, racists and xenophobes who seem to crawl out from under their stones on a far too regular basis.
Much more palatable, as far as I'm concerned, was another Nordic - probably Scandinavian, I think, although I couldn't be sure of the language that was being spoken - cutie I encountered on one of the buses I travelled on. As I was getting ready to get off the bus, he looked straight at me, and I felt like melting - he was just lovely. I'm sure he was only looking my way to try and work out when he last saw someone as gruesome, but that's just an aside!

Thanks very much to 'Dave the Rave' for becoming my latest follower - I hope you enjoy what you find here.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Based on three things....

....ignorance, stupidity....and nothing else (Quote shamelessly stolen from the radio version of The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy). I read something earlier this evening which seems to fit this quote exactly (here - http://www.milkboys.org/article/us-state-approves-gay-ban-bill/). When will these right-wing, largely Christian fundamentalist, basket cases realise that you can't legislate away innate aspects of people's lives? As I've said before, you might as well pass a law outlawing left-handedness, for all the practical effect it would have. What sort of message is given by telling 5% (or more, depending on what survey you choose to believe) of your population that what they are inside is so far beyond the pale that it can't even be mentioned? I can only suppose these people still think being anything other than heterosexual is simply a choice, and if the choice isn't presented to young people, they'll all grow up to be compliant little straights. Well, I can say from my own experience that if I could have chosen my orientation, I certainly wouldn't have chosen something which attracts the degree of hatred and contempt that being a boylover does- yes, even self-hatred and self-contempt a lot of the time, too. It isn't a choice - it just is.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Home from home?

Because of the dramas of the past week, tonight will be the first time I'll stay in my new permanent base, a few stops down the line from where I work, and over the Greater London boundary into Surrey. All very 'des res' and leafily suburban - I'd have to do pretty well on the lottery if I wanted to buy a house around here, not that I have the slightest ambition to do any such thing. My room itself is fine, not en suite, but otherwise ideal, especially as I'm getting it at a discounted rate, and no extra bills to pay, utilities and so on being included in the price.
I'm going to be seeing a good deal of the place in the immediate future as well - unless something unforeseen happens, it's going to be a fortnight before I next go home, because I've only got 2 days off in that time, and each time, I'll be on early shift the next day, so it really isn't worth doing a 450 mile round trip, costing somewhere around £60, to spend half a day at home. It will be the longest I've been apart from my wife since I met her and my daughter in her whole life. I hope this is all going to be worth it.
I'm not quite sure where the post I put up in the early hours of this morning came from - I wasn't depressed at all, but it just seemed to be something I needed to say. Hindsight cures nothing, but it might be nice if it gave someone pause for thought and stopped them getting into the kind of tangled web I've woven for myself. Not especially likely, given the limited readership of my blog, but you never know.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Listen to your heart, please

Don't get yourself entangled like I have, by trying to do what you think others want you to do. You've only got one life, one pitifully short life in this world, and if you spend it pretending to be something you're not, it's a gratuitous waste of your potential, of your happiness. Second place is nowhere, second best is nothing.
I've known who I am since I was 13, give or take, so I've wasted three-quarters of my life. Trust your instincts, be yourself. There's nobody else, ultimately, that you can be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fred Karno's @!?$*%# Circus!

Or not even that organised! I was packed and literally within five minutes of leaving home to head back to my (hardly-used) new accommodation when my phone rang. It was my manager, telling me that I wasn't working tomorrow after all, and that I wasn't required until Friday. Except that he now wants to see me at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon for the aforementioned 'quick chat' before I'm let loose on the job again, presumably because he doesn't want to turn out at 7:00 in the morning on a bank holiday, as it is on Friday. I told him when he rang to reinstate me while I was sitting on the train at Paddington yesterday afternoon that I wasn't scheduled to be working tomorrow, but he was insistent that I was. If I had any hair to spare I'd tear it out! I suppose it could have been worse - at least I was still at home, rather than actually en route, and it means I can spend another night in my own bed, but it's somehow symptomatic of the whole shambolic affair.
I'm very much hoping that this is the final twist in this sorry tale, so by way of drawing a line under things, I'd like to thank those who've been so supportive of me over the past few days. Mark, Jay, Brian, Joe, Randy, Micky, Daniel and Billy, thank you all very much for your care and friendship. I really do appreciate it.

Love & best wishes
Sammy B

Was any of it really necessary?

Back home after an 11 hour, 10 minute round trip for a 20 minute interview. Not wishing to keep anyone in suspense for longer than necessary, I've been reinstated, I'll be back at work on Thursday morning.
Now to fill in the back story a bit. It really looked as though it was going to be one of those days from the outset - a few of the London trains stop at our little local station, and the timings of my trip meant I could catch one of them this morning. It left exactly on time, went the few miles to our nearest mainline station, arrived on time - and then sat there for over half an hour with a technical fault. It was eventually fixed, but the half hour delay was never recovered, so my plans at the destination end had to change - I basically had to go into Central London and back out again, rather than being able to change, as originally planned, onto a suburban service at Reading. I arrived at the offices where I was scheduled to meet my manager about 15 minutes later than I anticipated, but I was still 10 minutes early. That's when the frustration began to be ratcheted up again - my manager had been in a meeting which had overrun somewhat, so he showed me into a vacant office, and then disappeared for a quarter of an hour while he made himself some tea, leaving me stewing, and eventually close to fuming, as all my rushing about to be punctual seemed to count for nothing. When he eventually reappeared, the interview, such as it was, consisted of him handing me a letter formally confirming my suspension, asking me about three questions about what had happened, then me spending 5 or 10 minutes ranting at him about how I felt I'd been treated, and that I had no intention of supervising any more trainees for the foreseeable future, and then him saying he 'wanted me back at work by the end of the week', but in the next breath saying that he had to discuss the matter with his line manager before any decision could be made, so I left to head back to Paddington still not knowing my fate. I felt like kicking the furniture, at the very least. However, I was finally put out of misery about an hour and a half later, as I was sitting on the train home waiting for it to leave, when he told me to report to his office at 7:00 on Thursday morning, for a 'quick chat', after which I'll return to a normal early shift.
When I rang my wife to tell her the news, she said 'Are you pleased?'. Good question. There's still more than a little temptation to tell the company to stuff the job up their arse, but I'm not liable to be able to walk into another job which pays as well if I did, so discretion will doubtless be the better part of valour, at least for a while.
I still can't fathom why today's little drama couldn't have been played out by phone and/or post, or, indeed, why I was suspended in the first place for something I had no control over, but I guess I would say that, wouldn't I?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Still suspended, and a delightful day trip to come

My manager rang me a short while ago, and not only am I still suspended, but I have to go all the way to London tomorrow for an 'investigatory interview'. Thanks a lot, I can hardly restrain my enthusiasm for what will probably be something like an eleven or twelve hour round trip for an interview that will probably last about 30 minutes. Why it couldn't be done over the phone is beyond me, but the management are insistent that the meeting has to be face to face. The only crumb of comfort, such as it is, was that when I rather bitterly asked if I should bring a bag with me to clear my locker out, my manager told me I shouldn't talk like that, and that he 'wants to get me back to work', which could mean anything or nothing, given that, while he's a reasonable enough bloke, he is rather prone to being full of bullshit. I may learn more tomorrow, so I'll reserve judgment until then.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Yawning chasm

Waiting to swallow me, no job, no prospects, no money, no home, (probably) no marriage, no future, no hope.
And no chance of what I really want the most. Apart from that, life's fucking wonderful.
Please don't sympathise with me, I don't deserve it. Self-pity is never edifying.
No escape. How the fuck did it come to this. FAIL.


Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What can I say about today?

I'm not quite sure how to explain how I feel at the moment. I've gone from the turmoil of yesterday to a plane of....something. Not quite apathy, not quite fatalism, not quite insouciance, but with elements of all of those things. It's a strange mixture of 'I care what happens next, but I don't care enough' and wanting to vindicate myself at all costs. I suppose you're defined by what you can and can't do, and, given my lack of people skills and social graces in general, and lack of self-esteem and self-confidence in a lot of areas, almost the only part of my life where I've always been unshakably sure of myself has been in my ability to do my job, and to do it better, without wishing to seem conceited, than most of my colleagues. Now that psychological prop is in danger of being removed, where does that leave me? At the moment, at least, in fairly good humour, but whether that's some sort of gallows humour, I don't know.
Uncertain. That's the word that's just sprung to mind to describe my mindset. I don't even know which day I'm going to be on the carpet, what the likely outcome is, what I'll do next. It's as though the framework underpinning my life has had all of its bolts removed, and is only clinging together by willpower, and which as soon as anything happens to disturb my equilibrium will collapse into a meaningless jumble.
A bit like this post, really - incoherent and jumbled. I'm in a place I haven't been before. I'm trying to come to terms with it. I haven't succeeded yet.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The end?

Well, here I am, sitting in my living room at home, when I should be a couple of hours into my night shift. My manager eventually rang to confirm his opposite number's decision, although he 'kindly' waited until almost 4:00 this afternoon before he called me, which meant my journey back to Cornwall began in the teeth of the West London rush hour. Once I'd got past the M25, though, the rest of the trip wasn't too bad, a small mercy in a traumatic day. It could all be a distant memory before long, though - given the contemporary 'blame' culture, which my employer seems to fully subscribe to, all the 'powers-that-be' want is someone who they can nail to the wall, and it looks very much that yours truly is going to be the 'nailee' in this instance.
I've been through the ranting and self-pity stages, more than once each, today, but now, as the day comes to an end, all I feel is flat and apathetic. It doesn't, seemingly, matter how good you are or for how long, all that's significant is your last mistake - or sometimes, someone else's mistake.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

As one door opens....

....another slams so hard in your face it leaves nothing but an unrecognisable, mangled mess.

Suspended. Until further notice.

That, if I had anything resembling a Facebook profile, would be my current work status. If it was for some egregious mistake I had made, I would have to hold my hand up and accept my fate. But I'm being 'punished', because that's how I see things, even if it's supposedly pending further investigation, for someone else's stupid mistake. This person is, on paper, almost as experienced as me, and in a similar position to the one I've been in over the past few months, namely learning the idiosyncrasies of this particular job, rather than being someone starting from scratch, and my 'crime' was to have the misfortune to be the duty person for the job when he made his mistake. Our training manual, such as it is, states that an experienced operative should be expected, after four weeks of training, which this man has completed, to be able to work 'under minimal supervision'. It wasn't as if I'd gone home early leaving him in charge, or even left the room to use the toilet - I was sitting with the shift manager, observing what my 'trainee' was doing, but what he did was such an basic, fundamental breach of regulations that no-one could reasonably have expected a man with his experience to do it, and, in any case, the way the equipment operates, and given the scenario which unfolded, there's no way I could have prevented him from doing it even if I'd been standing right next to him. The person who's suspended me isn't my line manager, but one of his opposite numbers from another area who happens to be the out of hours 'on-call' person this week, so it is possible that I'll be reinstated almost immediately, but that's hardly the point, as far as I'm concerned. After 32 years' unblemished service, I've been tarred with the brush of incompetence because I didn't prevent an unpreventable incident, in which, as it transpired, no-one was hurt and no damage was done to anything other than 'the letter of the law', although I'll admit that such an error could have had much more serious consequences had the situation been different.
I've run through a fair gamut of emotions in the last 6 or 7 hours since the event occurred, ranging from being furiously angry to almost suicidally depressed - I had a vivid mental image of the 56 tablets of my next prescription, due today, all nice and white and lined up ready to be swallowed - but what has crystallised out of the swirl of moods and feelings of this morning is an absolute determination not to be disciplined over this. If that's the way my employer decides to go, they'll have a resignation on their hands. You can call me immature, illogical, or anything else that comes to mind, but what I'm not prepared to be is supine. The next move depends on what my manager has to say - he's supposed to be ringing me soon.
More later, I suspect.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nomad no more - but....

....there's not much good news otherwise. It looks very much as though I've finally found somewhere to stay when I'm away from home working, although it won't be confirmed until tomorrow afternoon, and, ironically, it's back at the place I saw a couple of weeks ago which so depressed me when it appeared to be outside my budget. It seems that the charitable trust have been convinced that I'm a case deserving of their attention, and they've offered me a discounted rent package. It's still somewhat more than I ideally would have liked to have spent, probably to the tune of around £10 a week, but it's otherwise ideal - an easy commute, all inclusive in terms of utility bills and the like, and, as I said at the time I went to see it, not at all a bad place, certainly better than some of the dingy, run-down places I could've ended up in. Assuming no last minute pitfalls appear, I could well be moving in there before the end of the week.
For the rest, though, this week hasn't exactly been full of the joys of spring. I've been pretty tired most of the week, as my sleeping arrangements have been decidedly hit-and-miss, and, this evening, I found out our finances are in even worse shape than I'd feared, when I went to the bank to get hold of some money to pay my first rent instalment tomorrow. As with my emotional and domestic situations, there's no point getting over-stressed about the money, because it won't change anything - it certainly won't magic any more cash out of thin air - but it equally doesn't make me feel like a raging success story.
Whether it's regression under pressure, or just my real self surfacing, virtually all the cuties I've seen this week have been very much at the younger end of the spectrum, even off the scale altogether in some cases, like three I saw within less than an hour this morning, who must have had a combined age of all of about 27. Before anyone gets the wrong impression, I would never get involved with boys as young as this morning's, even if they said they wanted me to, but I make no (more) apologies for saying that one of them in particular, a gorgeous little blond thing, was the sort of person I could quite happily have spent all day looking at.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The refugee and a boreal cutie

Well, another long day, just for a change! Up in the middle of the night, back up to London, early shift, few hours off, back in for night shift, typing this on my break, still nearly seven hours to go. Just remind me how much fun I'm having! This early and night shift on the same day business is pretty archaic, a throwback to pre-privatisation days in my industry, and only happens on Sundays - five Sundays in the 30 week roster, to be exact - and while it's something I've done often enough in the past, it's a good few years since my last experience of it. It does allow for more weekends off overall, so there is something to be said for it.
The afternoon hiatus between shifts found me in refugee mode. There wasn't much point in booking any accommodation, because I wouldn't have had value for money, so I spent what proved to be a few warm and sunny hours meandering around on various London buses, watching the world go by and vaguely looking in one or two more newsagents' windows for small ads in my continuing quest for a place to hang my hat, so to speak. Being me, I also spent a good deal of my energies looking out for passing cuties, with, for the most part, an abject lack of success. On the evidence of most of my trip, the metropolitan population of males between about 8 and 18 could have been numbered on the fingers of one hand - I don't know whether they've all been locked in their rooms to protect them from being leered at by me, but there just were almost no boys out and about. Until the last bus I caught, early this evening, bringing me back to the area I work in. I joined the bus at its origin, and at the same stop, a family, two parents, a young girl and two boys also got on. The older boy, 13/14-ish, was pleasant enough looking, but his brother, a year or two younger, was something else. They turned out to be Finnish, ironically given my daughter's recent trip to their homeland, and the Nordic stereotype was much in evidence with both boys, but particularly the younger - blond hair, blue eyes, delicious all over, basically. I must admit, as I sat two or three rows of seats back from him on the top deck of the bus, to having done something even I don't normally do, as I descended into quite vivid fantasies of what I would have liked to do with him, in the vanishingly unlikely event of his being amenable - pretty vile behaviour, really, but no-one's perfect. When they finally got off of the bus, three or four stops before me, I looked down at him on the pavement, for the last time, obviously, and thought 'Have a lovely life, sweetheart'. Better than being ogled by the likes of me, anyway.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunshine, sweetness, sadness

The pleasant weather of recent days has extended into the weekend, for once - it's not tropical, by any means, but it's certainly more than acceptable for early April, warm enough for shirtsleeves in the middle part of the day when we headed into our local city centre. My daughter and her friend had planned a trip into 'town' today anyway, so my wife and I gave them a lift over and left them to their own devices, while we wandered about getting one or two things that we needed, and, of course, having a bit of quality time into the bargain. Needless to say, my roving eye was in action, and while there were plenty of nice looking boys about, only one really caught my attention, and that was only a momentary glimpse, but he was delightful - dark hair, lovely face, just too nice for words (except these, I suppose!).
That was, however, the highpoint of the day, because as the afternoon has progressed, I've felt my good spirits ebbing away, as the knowledge of my having to get up at a ridiculous time in the morning to head back to work has come to the fore. There's little point in carrying on complaining about being away, because it won't change anything, but it isn't getting any easier - I got as far, a little while back, of wondering whether I should come home at all if I was going to find it so hard to go back, but that isn't a realistic option, just me feeling sorry for myself again.
Another slight source of sadness, albeit more of the melancholic, nostalgic kind rather than anything depressive, over the last day or so, has been in my being reminded, for no particular reason, of probably the deepest love of my life, certainly the deepest of the unrequited variety - my relationship with my cousin when he was a teen and I was in my early twenties. I have mentioned this before in the blog, so I won't go over all the details again, but I wrote a little thing in 'Cuckoos' yesterday which was inspired by him, although it wasn't all that autobiographical - he didn't desert me, and is still my best friend - and I then read a post on one of the blogs I follow about being attracted to someone who can't reciprocate because it isn't in their nature which proved to be another little sting to my psyche. It's not even crying over spilt milk, because there was no milk there to spill in the first place, but, every now and again, I can't help thinking about how things could have been different if he hadn't been straight.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cooperation

I've come across a couple of things today which have rather piqued my cynical inclinations. I was watching a programme earlier about the possibility of an asteroid, or other large space rock, hitting the earth with life-threatening consequences, as per the Chicxulub impact which is thought to have contributed towards the extinction of dinosaurs, and what might be done, with modern technology, to potentially avert any collision detected in sufficient time. One of the speakers made a comment along the lines of the first thing that would be required to deal with such a situation is international cooperation, to which my immediate reaction was 'we're all dead, then'. It seems to be virtually impossible for politicians and other interest groups within countries to agree on any course of action that would benefit everyone, so the chances of any cooperation between countries, even in the face of an apocalyptic threat, are, in my opinion, nil.
This kind of compartmentalised thinking, and the lack of empathy between people, was underlined by something I found online today, a poll which found that a majority of respondents amongst Republican voters in certain southern states in the US think that interracial marriages should be banned by law. I'm aware that those polled are not likely to be representative of everyone in the US, or even in those particular states, but the fact that a significant body of people, in the 21st century, should hold such antediluvian views really doesn't inspire any confidence whatsoever that Homo sapiens has any long-term future at all. As I think I've said before in this blog, if people can't accept that we should live together tolerantly as a species, we'll surely die together.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Back where I want to be

I'm at home again, for a couple of days, after travelling down after work this afternoon. Following on from the rest of the week, I'm feeling thoroughly washed out, but at least I'll be sleeping in my own bed tonight. There wasn't much that was good about the trip - the train was packed and overly warm - but there was one exception. An absolutely gorgeous boy, sitting, about four paces away from me, with a school party at Paddington while I was waiting for the train. Just mind-mangling lovely, and no problem with accidentally outing myself on this occasion. Just looking, though, I hasten to add.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I think I've just done something stupid

I've left a 'subject to approval' comment on a blog, but I think I've let my heart run away with my head again - I just hope the person I've left the comment for doesn't freak out and think I'm some kind of creepy stalker. People who know me IRL tend to think I'm a 'cold fish', but the reality is that, inside, I'm more likely to be over-emotional, especially with people I care about. Oh well, done's done. I suppose I ought to make some effort to get some sleep, as I've got to get up at 'stupid o'clock' - and being asleep will stop me doing any more deranged things, at least for a few hours.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Waste of a nice day

Today proved to be the nicest day of the year so far, weather wise, warm and sunny, so what do I do? Apart from work, which is an unavoidable necessity, I sequestered myself in my room, and fell asleep again for several hours. Even allowing for the fact that my week began with an overnight train journey, and has continued with early mornings, I do seem to have been excessively tired over the past few days, so I'm hoping it's not the precursor to anything sinister - I have had sniffly, slight sore-throaty kind of symptoms on and off, but whether that's a cause or an effect of my tiredness is hard to say. Full of aches and pains that nobody ever dies of, as my mum used to say!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Prevarication

There are times when I frustrate myself, never mind how anyone else might feel about me. I set a goal this week of getting some proper accommodation sorted out to fit in with my job, but, so far at least, I haven't done all that much about it. Part of the reason has been early shift and its draining effects - I felt pretty ropey this afternoon, came back to the place where I'm staying and eventually fell asleep again - but that's not the whole story. I've found a couple of small ads in a newsagents' window in the area of London where I work, and took down some of the contact details, but I haven't yet followed any of them up. Why? Basically because I can't get over my lack of self-confidence in dealing with people. It's ironic, really, because in my job, I'm expected to be decisive and take the lead in situations, and I really have no trouble in doing just that, but when it comes to pretty much anything else, I'm outside my comfort zone and find it difficult, and seemingly increasingly difficult as I get older, to cope. As far as I can work it out in my head, it comes down to an almost pathological fear of making a fool of myself, and what people will think of me as a consequence. In saying what I've just said, I've doubtless already made myself look stupid, but the pseudonymity of cyberspace acts as a coping mechanism - if I'd had to stand up in front of a real life audience, even an audience of one, and make the same admission, I doubt I'd have been able to do it. Do intelligence and self-consciousness go together? Probably, at least in my case.
There has been one substantial piece of good news today, though, in the discovery of the return of a blogger who's particularly close to my heart (Thank you, Mark). I'll say no more than that, because I don't think the person concerned is too wildly keen on being over-publicised, but anyone who's read my blog for any length of time will doubtless know who I'm referring to.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Only so much energy

The trip up to London on the overnight train didn't turn out to be too bad - the seating coaches are ex-first class, so there was plenty of room to flop and sleep reasonably comfortably, allowing me to arrive at work this morning as close to being compos mentis as I could realistically have expected. My first shift on the full roster went fairly well, although nothing too far out of the ordinary occurred - I'm sure my time to get the job round my neck will come, probably sooner rather than later!
I had good intentions of being proactive in my search for accommodation after work today, but, in the event, those intentions were overtaken by tiredness - I checked into the place I'm staying this week, which has turned out to be more than acceptable, and in an area of London close to where I used to live when I was working here in the 1980's, and thus pretty familiar, but then I rather ran out of energy. What was supposed to have been a 'power nap' ended up as almost four hours asleep, and I still feel like it's close to my bedtime! Never mind, hopefully the batteries will have been recharged by the morning, and I'll have a bit more get up and go tomorrow.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Altercation

I'm now sitting at my local mainline station, waiting for the overnight train to appear, but just under an hour ago, I managed to get mixed up in something which has been quite some time in the making, one way and another.
My wife and I went to the coach station to meet our daughter, who's travelled back from her Finnish trip today. We got there ten minutes or so early, and were waiting with another pair of meeters and greeters when a couple of drunks decided to start mouthing off. Despite my best efforts, it didn't take too long before my threshold of tolerance was breached, when one of them decided it would be amusing to tell my wife to 'F*** off'. He found it less amusing, I suspect, to be up against a wall with my forearm across his throat, at which point the abuse ended. Luckily, for both of us, I guess, the coach turned up at that point, with nothing beyond intimidation required. I'm not proud of myself, not least because my wife hates anything like that, but I'm really not prepared to 'turn the other cheek' indefinitely in that kind of situation, especially I was pretty much forced to swallow my pride when all the trouble with the local youths around my old workplace kicked off last year. I'm afraid tonight's lowlife just picked the wrong target at the wrong time, but at least no-one was hurt, even if it was a close-run thing.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

....and I'll hang myself

Give me enough rope, as I said a couple of weeks ago. And not for the first time of late, I had a bloody good go at hanging myself at lunchtime. My wife and I ventured out to buy her a pair of shoes she'd seen a few days ago, which we successfully achieved, but it all nearly went wrong when we called at our local supermarket on the way back to pick up some odds and ends. We were meandering along the back of the shop, when I glanced down one of the aisles, to be confronted by a quite delicious boy, wearing yellow boots, as if he wasn't eye-catching enough. My wife didn't catch me looking, so I made sure she realised something had attracted my attention by closing my eyes and sighing. She asked me what I'd seen, then when I didn't come up with much of an answer beyond nervous laughter, asked me who I'd seen, which was much more pertinent. The best I could muster was a feeble 'I can't tell you', which, for some unknown reason, she accepted without further comment. To say I'm skating on thin ice is a decided understatement.
I guess I'll be safe for a few days from this evening, because I'll be travelling back to London on the overnight train, ready (well, ready-ish) for early turn tomorrow. I'll be back on the accommodation hunt again over the next couple of days, hopefully without the depressive fallout of last week.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sweet and sour

It really has been one of those days, swinging up and down more than once. There wasn't really anything that new in the mix, just a different permutation of the same stuff. My daughter is still away - she's due back tomorrow evening, and, if I'm lucky, I might see her for about a quarter of an hour before I have to head off again myself - so it's just been my wife and I around today. As often seems to be the case of late, all was going well for a while, before the pressures we're living with came back to haunt us, or, more accurately, haunt the interactions between us. We went out to lunch, which was nice, both in social and gastronomic terms, but we then got into fairly involved discussions about our fiscal issues, which brought it all back down to earth, and below, once again. Once the mood had deteriorated, the recriminations started to creep in - what's happened isn't, in realistic terms, anyone's fault specifically, more a malign combination of circumstances, but that isn't always easy to remember when the atmosphere becomes heated. It did settle down eventually, even to the extent of a few moments of humour creeping in, but it's all a bit disheartening overall.
Just as a consolation prize, though, I came across an unbelievably cute video of an unbelievably cute boy on a blog I peruse from time to time (here - http://beautifulplanet.me/78457/?p=1898). Sweetness personified, and, in my opinion, you don't remotely have to be a boylover to appreciate it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fully fledged

After 27 weeks, give or take (albeit including something like 7 weeks off in total, for various reasons), I passed my final assessment this morning and I'm now deemed to be fully competent in all elements of my new job, which means I'll be starting on the full roster from Monday. It seems to have taken forever, but my colleagues have suggested that it's only around half of the average time, although I suspect I'm substantially more experienced than most who've preceded me into the job. I can now set about trying to earn the substantial amounts of extra money which was the main incentive to go back to working in London in the first place. The frustration is that if my previous management had told me the truth, I could've been in this position two years ago, and not in such a parlous state financially, but that, it seems, is the way it goes.
I'm back at home now, the train journey, right from the tube trip into Central London at lunchtime, having been a bit of a boy spotting expedition. One particular cutie, who travelled a few stops on the same tube as me, was just a delight - much too young for anything but looking at, but so full of life and enthusiasm, bubbling out of him and into the world. Enough to melt the heart of even an old curmudgeon like me!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B