An interesting possibility

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Nabokov's Lolita, except by reputation, but an exchange of e-mails I've had with someone over the past couple of days has illuminated the possibility of a significant parallel between Humbert Humbert and myself, beyond the superficial consideration of being attracted to 'minors'.
In the book, the reason Humbert gives for his attraction to 'nymphets', insofar as a reason is given at all, is the loss of his childhood sweetheart and first love in traumatic circumstances - she dies of typhus. While I was writing a reply to the latest e-mail from my correspondent yesterday afternoon, it occurred to me that I lost my first real - I almost said adult, but that would be overstating the case a little - love of my life in a way that was very upsetting for me, albeit in completely different circumstances, and the thought that I had was that the loss, and the way I handled it, or failed to handle it, has had substantial consequences for the way my life has developed since.
I have written about R before, both in this blog, and in a fictionalised way in 'Cuckoos' (Here). He was a younger boy who'd attended the same primary school as me, and went on to the same grammar school, which was where I got to know him. He was 13/14 when we became friends, whereas I was 16/17, just having started my 'A'-levels, and it didn't take me long to fall deeply in love with him, not only the first boy I fell in love with, but my first serious love of any kind. Oddly enough, though, I didn't think of him in a sexual way at all, not even at the level of fantasising about him, my feelings were purely (if that's not an oxymoron) romantic. I never told him how I felt about him, and certainly never propositioned him, but somehow, I suspect, he eventually got the idea, or was given the idea, that I had dishonourable intentions towards him, because, over the weekend of my 18th birthday, I lost him forever. The previous time I'd seen him, at school at the end of the previous week, everything had been as normal between us, thoroughly friendly and with him wishing me a happy birthday, but, by the Sunday evening, it had all changed. I was walking to the station, to catch the train to the neighbouring town where my best friend lived, to go out for my first legal visit to a pub. As I was about to cross the main street, someone approached on a bike, so I waited by the kerb for them to pass. As the rider got closer, I realised it was R. I smiled, and was just about to say 'hello', when he stared at me with a look which I can only describe as complete and utter hatred. I was so shocked, I literally took a step back. When I say 'I suspect' he'd decided I wanted something from him beyond friendship, I use the phrase advisedly, because he never spoke another word to me. I've only seen him once since I left school, in a takeaway when I was on a weekend visit to my home town about five years later, and, again, there was that look of total loathing towards me, an impression that he would quite happily have stuck a knife in me, if he'd had one to hand.
That Sunday evening was a complete nightmare. I still went to meet my friend, but I was absolutely devastated, and terrible company. Eventually, we gave up on the pub, and walked across the road to the seafront promenade, where we sat in one of the shelters, and I completely dissolved into floods of tears. When my friend finally managed to get me to tell him what the problem was, he was very shocked, because he'd known me for nearly seven years, but had no idea about my attraction to boys. He tried his best to help me, even so, but a lot of the time was spent with his trying to convince me that I was mistaken, and that I liked girls, really. I'm sure he had my best interests at heart, but I knew he was wrong - I wanted a boy, at that moment, one specific boy, and I knew, maybe even the first time I'd admitted it to myself, that I was gay.
The moment of clarity I had yesterday, writing a shorter version of that weekend in my e-mail, was that it seems to have been a pivotal moment in my life. Had I had the courage to fully accept and embrace what I'd admitted to myself, I could perhaps have gone on to be a gay adult, comfortable in my own skin. Sadly, I let doubt and fear win the day, tried to live my life in the light of others' expectations and, to an extent, my own wishful thinking, that I was, at some point, going to be 'normal', but which, instead, has led me to the emotional mess that I am now, married, closeted, horribly frustrated and, to finally draw the parallel with Lolita, with my boyloving side 'locked in', as though, like Humbert, I'm still searching for my lost, lamented first love.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Arrant stupidity

I've just heard on the radio that Facebook have decided that the cover picture of Nirvana's Nevermind violates their terms of service. That and much of the classical and religious art of the Western World, then, presumably, all those nymphs and cherubs brazenly displaying their genitalia, disgraceful! Michaelangelo's David, get the chisels out! Order an infinite supply of fig leaves! The fuckwitted stupidity of these people never, ever ceases to amaze me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Of course, there is another side to the coin

It's just occurred to me that, given that the readership of my blogs is rapidly dwindling towards zero, there's the potential for a certain amount of liberation. I've spent most of my blogging 'career' with an image of a potential 'typical reader' in my mind, and I've usually tried to write in such a way that considers the sensibilities of this unseen 'Joe/Josephine Public'. However, if no-one, or next to no-one is reading, apart from avoiding having my blog 'nuked', it doesn't really matter what I write, good, bad, emollient, offensive, sophisticated, inane, it's all the same, just words cast to the electronic winds. It might even make for more interesting posts, although that might be too much to hope for. The same mindset, perhaps, as I showed on the way home from work this morning, when, at one of the intermediate stations on my train journey, a lovely boy was waiting for, evidently, a different train than the one I was on, because he made no move to board, so I just turned in my seat and admired him through the window all the while, a minute or so, that my train was at the platform. If anyone saw me looking, and I'm pretty sure at least one person did, from the pursed lips of the woman concerned, that's too bad. There are limits to how much of your life you can spend trying to please other people, at the expense of your own interests, and I think I've had the balance wrong for a good while.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Just thinking aloud

I'm just about to get ready to head back into work again, for more overtime - a twelve hour shift coming up. What I don't get is why I'm still doing it, day after day, week after week, just to not quite have enough to pay the bills, never mind any thought of having a life, somewhere in between. Add to that my well-documented personal issues, local, national and international news that only seems to elicit despair, a feeling of humanity waiting to eat itself alive at any moment, and I've almost been reduced to the point of tears. It gets better, they say. The lack of evidence of that being reality rather than vain hope is grinding me down.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How can he get away with this? And a bit of confusion on my part.

I've found an article which makes me wonder about the rule of law in the US. (Here). This appears to me to be incitement to violence. I'm pretty sure that's illegal in the UK, and would hope that it would be in the 'land of the free'. Or is it another example of the 'some are more equal than others' syndrome?
I've also seen a post saying that Google are going to delete 'all private profiles on August 1'. Is this the end of pseudomymity, as I was wondering the other day? If so, my blogs only have a few days to live, at least on Blogger.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Being yourself, and a way forward

Having read back what I wrote earlier this morning - and having had a few hours sleep, which has helped, too, the joys of night shift, and all that - a few thoughts have occurred to me. First and foremost, I know I've got no divine right to have anyone read my blog. Rather than bitching about being ignored, the answer is to go out and write something better, more interesting, more literate, more in tune with what people want to read. Having said that, what I write can only come from my own perspective - it's a truism, no doubt, but there's no-one else's perspective I can write from. In that connection, though, I appreciate that there are going to be people, numerous people, who are never going to be able to accept that who and what I am is anything other than reprehensible, who believe that even if I remain celibate until my dying day, the mere fact that I find boys desirable is more than enough to justify me being rounded up with those like me and despatched to the nearest gas chamber. Well, I'm afraid that those who believe that and I are going to have to agree to disagree, because, as I've said before, after the best part of 40 years of consciously being a boylover, even if I didn't know what to call my feelings at first, I'm not expecting a 'road to Damascus' conversion any time soon.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Being yourself, and the consequences thereof

Interesting events overnight - it seems hardly anyone has looked at either blog, but I've still contrived to lose one of my few followers. The person concerned only followed 'Cuckoos', but it would still be educational from my perspective to find out what the objection was to - my (typically unpoetic) poem about my distaste for far right, fundamentalist Christian extremists, my short story about the aftermath of an encounter between a lonely man and a boy prostitute, my general ineptitude as a writer, or just who and what I am. I certainly didn't get into blogging with any expectation whatever of adulation, and I haven't been disappointed, and I fully accept that everyone has, as I do, the freedom to look at and/or follow blogs, or not, as they see fit, but a bit of feedback, even if it's totally negative, would be appreciated every now and again.
Ironically, after what I've just said, this blog staggered past 10,000 total page views during the course of yesterday, so to all of you who have taken the time and trouble to visit over the last year or so, I'd like to thank you very much.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Being yourself, under wraps

Having not long got back from work, I was just perusing Blogland prior to heading for my bed, when I came across an interesting post (here) on the issue of using a pseudonym. It touched on how other people might perceive you for not openly using your own identity on line, an issue I've bumped up against recently, when I was accused of various crimes, including hypocrisy, part of the 'evidence' for which seemed to be my 'hiding' behind my nom de plume. The irony of that kind of accusation is that my use of a pseudonym actually allows me to speak honestly, while maintaining the most important prerequisite for me, as far as my carrying on with blogging is concerned - the safety of my family. I have said this before, but perhaps not recently, so I'll say it again - if there was only me to consider, I would blog under my real name. But because I fall into a category of person that attracts so much opprobrium, namely my being a boylover, if I was open about my identity, there are enough vigilante-minded bigots out there who might take it upon themselves to apply their version of 'street justice', and I'm just not prepared to take the risk of anything like that affecting my wife and daughter. At the end of the day, it's no fault whatsoever of theirs that I am who I am, and regardless of anyone's opinion of what I might 'deserve', they deserve to be safe and secure.
Another issue I saw in the blog post I've linked to was that Google have apparently deleted the complete accounts of people who've attempted to use pseudonyms on their new Google+ social networking site. I wasn't intending to join in any case, but if that kind of thinking spreads to Blogger, vast swathes of the blogging community will be decimated. Of the blogs I read regularly, very few indeed are written by those writing under their own, full names. I'll certainly be looking for a new home for my blogs if the use of real names becomes mandatory here.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More gruelling stuff

Well, I got through it, somehow, but it was hard work, and no mistake. The jitters began while I was still in the shower at around 5:30 this morning, and didn't really finish until I was walking back to the station at 1:00 this afternoon. I'm talking about my first shift back at work, of course, after my recent safety incident. To make matters worse, the position I was covering is notorious for being a nightmare on a Sunday morning, due to a regular rash of procedures like the one I screwed up, and it lived up to its reputation. I suppose it was a double-edged sword, in a way - if you're thrown in at the deep end, and manage to keep your head above the waves, it's at least proof that you can cope, but I was as nervous as the proverbial kitten for most of the shift, more nervous, perhaps, than I've ever been at work. Now I'm back at my accommodation, just about to try and get 2 or 3 hours sleep, because I'm back on nights tonight, part of the lovely, archaic roster that we work to, and that I've mentioned before. At least it should, without wishing to tempt fate in the slightest, be a bit calmer tonight. Whether I will be remains to be seen.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Massacre - and what's behind it

I've woken up this morning to news of the appalling events in Norway yesterday. No amount of sympathy is ever going to be enough for the victims and their families, but, for the little it's worth, I add my condolences to those of, no doubt, millions of others worldwide.
What happens in the aftermath is significant, too. The immediate suspicion after the car bombing in Oslo was that Islamic extremists were involved, but after the shootings, a Norwegian, described as a 'extreme right-wing, fundamentalist Christian and Islamophobe' has been arrested as the prime suspect. When Islamic groups have been involved in similar atrocities in the past, there have been widespread, and sometimes justified, calls for groups espousing hatred to be banned, and in cases where foreign nationals have been involved, for people to be deported. I wonder if there will be any equivalent groundswell for bigoted, hate-mongering 'Christian' organisations to be outlawed? Why do I suspect that no such thing will happen? Call me cynical, but I suspect that this event will put down to the actions of one deranged individual (which it may be, of course), whereas if Muslims were involved, it would have been portrayed as part of a worldwide conspiracy. And the 'Christian' haters will be left free to carry on poisoning the world.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Definitely will be

Back to work on Sunday, that is, barring thoroughly unforeseen circumstances. My 'quick chat' with my manager was conducted by phone, and I'd already been slotted into my expected place on next week's roster, so my musing about 'rubber stamping' yesterday seems to have been close to the truth. Not only that, but I've been asked to work overtime next week, so it seems as though I've been comprehensively taken back into the fold. I'll reserve judgment on whether that's a good thing until I've got through a few shifts.
Between waiting for my manager to summon me to the presence (which he didn't, ultimately, as I said) and a not very good night's sleep last night, I ended up doing very little today. This is probably going to sound pathologically selfish, but after the pressures and traumas of the last two weeks, I've actually quite enjoyed being on my own and 'out of the loop', with no compulsion to do anything very much. I even posted a new story in 'Cuckoos', albeit not a particularly long one, and one that had been sitting as a half-finished draft for months as well, but just having the space to do that was more than I've been used to for a while.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nonsensical journalism, and guess what the subject is?

There's been a news report running this morning, which I've caught on the radio, about a man who police have issued a warning about, and who was described on one bulletin I was listening to as a 'convicted paedophile'. Unless I've missed some thoughtcrime laws that have been rushed through lately, being sexually attracted to those below the age of consent isn't a crime, it's only acting on that attraction that's illegal. If I'm wrong, they'll be kicking my door in at any moment, and dragging me away in chains.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Could have been, probably will be, probably never will be

Could have been - it would have been my mum's 80th birthday today, had she lived to see it. Sad that she didn't, and no mistake.

Probably will be - back to work at the weekend. I had my 'rebriefing' today, including a simulator session, the first time, incidentally, I've used one of the simulators my company were so keen on a few years back for training and knowledge consolidation purposes, but which never have been used to their potential, for various reasons, mostly financial. I got through 'satisfactorily', which is the best 'rating' the briefer concerned ever awards, as he told me afterwards, and will probably be seeing my manager tomorrow for a 'quick chat'. That, I'm expecting, will just be a 'rubber stamping' exercise before I'm let loose on the unsuspecting world again. To say I've got mixed feelings about the prospect is a considerable understatement.

Probably never will be - in the arms of anyone like the absolutely delightful boy I saw on the way back from my briefing this afternoon. The school summer holidays have evidently begun here in Surrey, at least for some of the schools, and this particular boy was walking the same way as me as I headed to my accommodation. He was initially 20-30 yards in front of me, and the back view, tallish, coltish, graceful, light brown, not quite fair hair was entrancing enough. He then crossed the road, and I gradually caught him up over the next quarter of a mile or so, until I was almost level with him, maybe a step or two behind, but on the opposite side of the road, by which point it was evident that he was one of the best looking boys I've seen in many a long day, not quite 'DBJ', but 9/10, at least, and just at that 13-ish cusp of perfection, a year ago and he probably would have been too 'little-boyish', a year hence and he might well be too grown up, but now, he's just at that apex of beauty that I find totally mind-numbing. I was hoping he'd walk all the way down to where I was going, but, sadly, he disappeared into a side street, and, no doubt, out of my life forever. For all that, I'm grateful to have had the chance to admire his beauty for five minutes of my life, and in a way that was no threat to him, either - I very much doubt if he even knew I was there, plugged into his music player as he was. Delicious, and I make no apology for saying so.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Gruelling

That's the best word I can think of to describe yesterday, on a number of levels. In a purely physical sense, it was a long day, a 500 mile, 14½ hour round trip, of which I was driving for almost eight hours, up at 5:00, not back home until 9:00 in the evening, an endurance test by most people's standards. That, though, was probably the easy part, certainly the sort of thing I've done often enough in the past. More significant was the emotional component of the day. For me, personally, it was mostly an indirect issue - I'd always got on well enough with my mother-in-law, but it would be an exaggeration to say that we were close - but it was, of course, a different matter for my wife and daughter. They both held up pretty well in the circumstances, but, needless to say, there were some difficult moments during the day. My wife was with her dad and her sisters for the church service, while I was a couple of rows back, sitting with my daughter, so the girl was my immediate focus at that time. She always has been pretty close to her grandparents, and, to make matters worse, it was the first funeral she'd ever been to - she was only 5 when my mum died, so didn't attend on the equivalent day. I did the best I could to help and reassure her - I just hope it was enough. The same goes for the actual interment and after, back at the family home, when I spent more time with my wife.
Oddly enough, though, perhaps the most affecting moment for me of the whole day involved someone else entirely. A man, who when I first met him, nearly 20 years ago, was 60 going on 40, robust in every sense of the word, and who is now a frail, elderly 80 year old, who has been in terrible health himself for most of the last three or four years, and, as we processed out of the church behind the coffin, looked like nothing more or less than a little boy lost. My father-in-law. If my relationship with my mother-in-law tended more towards politeness than warmth, I've always got on really well with my father-in-law, right back to the first day I met him, even if we've had to agree to disagree about many things, especially 'political', in the broadest sense, issues. It was so upsetting to see him as such a shadow of his former self. Cliché, I know, but a cliché that so fits this situation. Thinking about it now, maybe the reason his plight so moved me was that it reminded me of the last months of my own dad's life, another strong man hardly ill a day in his life until he was reduced to frailty by heart disease, albeit at a much earlier age. And, I suppose, there's a selfish element, of being made aware of my own mortality, the knowledge that one day, maybe decades hence, but maybe not, my turn will come.
Having got through yesterday's trials, this morning has had its own challenges. By 9:30, I'd had an anxiety attack about going back to work tomorrow, my wife in tears about our finances and a stand-up row with our mortgage provider. The only good thing is that I've come up with an idea, that I'll put to my manager when I next see him, which might just reduce the chances of me, or my colleagues, ending up in the same position as I did a fortnight ago. It might not come to fruition, but at least it gives me something potentially positive to cling to as I head back into an environment that I really don't want to be in, but can't, seemingly, escape because of the fiscal consequences.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A decision....but the right one?

I'm not particularly prone to brinkmanship, but I woke up this morning still far from decided upon what I was going to tell my manager when I made my prearranged call to him. I didn't speak to him until mid-morning in the event, because I took my wife to the station for her to travel back up to the Midlands, where she needed to be today. By that time, I'd decided the greatest good of the greatest number would be served by my going back to my job, assuming that my manager didn't have a problem with that, which, as it proved, he didn't. I'll be going back for the postponed rebriefing on Thursday, with a view to my being back on the normal roster by the weekend. My wife, and even my daughter, were pleased at the decision I'd made, but I have to say I'm not convinced that it's the right thing for me. As I said after the incident I was involved in, my confidence in my ability to do my job sufficiently competently for my own peace of mind has taken a big knock. It could be said that one 'dangerous' mistake in thirty-odd years is a pretty good average, but it only takes one to kill someone, as I almost discovered. I said to my wife this morning that I'll give it another go, but it really wouldn't take anything very serious to go wrong again for me to run screaming for the hills, the way I'm feeling at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Pressure cooker

DJ - if you see this, or are made aware of it, and you don't want me to use your picture, let me know and I'll remove it.

((Hugs))

Sammy B

I remembered this picture DJ posted a while ago, and it sums up pretty well how life is making me feel at the moment. Apart from the obvious issue of the impending funeral, and the way it's affecting my wife and daughter, I've got a major decision to make some time in the next 12 hours or so, because I've arranged to ring my manager in the morning, to discuss the next steps as far as my job is concerned. And I haven't got a clue what I'm going to tell him. I know what my gut feeling is, but my head says that if I follow that feeling, there will be so many deleterious consequences to contend with. If I wasn't already aware of the mounting pressure, my heart arrhythmia has begun to break through the medication again, an issue that can feed on itself, so to speak, because, as most people probably appreciate, anything affecting the workings of the heart is a big worry in its own right. Stay strong, many would say, but to remain unbending can lead to a catastrophic break. I wish I could find a straightforward answer, but I know there isn't one.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Publish and be damned....or maybe read, at least

After chatting with my daughter, who's found a website where she's posted a few chapters of a (very good) story she's writing, I've decided to dip my authorial toes into the same waters. I've posted a couple of my (in my opinion, only) better, and less racy(!) stories from 'Cuckoos', and they've already had a few reads, in the 12 hours or so since I set the account up. I'm not expecting to suddenly be lionised as some great hope of English literature, but I'm interested to see what reaction, if any, the stories might elicit from a different audience.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Grieving

My wife is back in Cornwall for the weekend - there was nothing she immediately needed to in the Midlands, and she had work stuff she needed to deal with yesterday, given that, on the basis of 'Sod's Law', this week has been the one where her job has been transferred from the old organisation to the new. As might be expected, given how close she's always been to her family, she's been finding her mum's death hard to come to terms with, but the way her grieving has precipitated has been a bit unusual. I have no doubt that the 'archetypal' grief of loss will come to the fore at the funeral on Tuesday, but, at the moment, she seems to be more upset that she's not been able to be around to help her new 'team' settle into their routine. It's a displacement thing, maybe, worrying about work issues to distract herself from thinking about her loss. I've been trying my best to help her as much as I can - we talked for several hours last night - and it certainly hasn't been a totally sombre scenario, in that we've been trying to leaven the situation with some light-heartedness, but I'm finding it a bit disconcerting that more of my support has been needed in talking to my wife about her job, rather than her mum and her family. Still, whatever she needs, and I'm able to give, give I will. She might not know everything there is to know about me, but that doesn't change the fact that I love her.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Poison in the oasis

A place to let the mask slip a little. To be myself. To speak freely. Except that speaking freely, but politely, isn't acceptable in some cases. Life's too short to become involved in meaningless spats. Life's too short, full stop.
This matter is closed.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Today's sermon

I've been told I preach, and I'm comparable to a child murderer, so I might as well combine those two elements and post accordingly.
Just in case anyone is in any doubt about what I am, here is a brief resumé. I'm a 51 year old British man, married with a 13 year old daughter, who also happens to be a self-confessed homosexual hebephile. Without wishing to patronise anyone, that means that I'm sexually attracted to pubescent boys. This is an aspect of my character which has been present since I was a pubescent boy myself, but which, probably more from fear than virtue, I've kept hidden and under control for almost 40 years. I'm not especially proud of my sexuality, but I'm not especially ashamed of it, either, because it is something that comes from within, and is part of me, as little under my control as being brown-eyed or right-handed. What I can control, though, is whether I allow my sexuality to hurt other people, in particular the tranche of the population that I'm actually attracted to. Hitherto, I've managed to avoid that eventuality, albeit due to the courage, in one instance, more than 25 years ago, of an 11 year old boy, who saved me from myself by being able to tell me that he didn't want the sexual contact I mistakenly thought he did. If simply desiring what I desire makes me comparable to a murderer, then all I can say is mea culpa. 'Thoughtcrime is a terrible thing', as Parsons says in Nineteen Eighty-Four. If that makes people want to condemn me, feel free. I'll attempt to answer rational points of view rationally, but reserve the right to deal with kneejerk reactions with the level of seriousness I see fit.
And I'm not going away. any time soon, even though some might think I've outstayed my welcome.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Patience

Although I have my moments of irritability, even petulance, I'm generally a pretty calm character. One of the side effects of the amount of crap that I'm wading through in various aspects of my life at the moment is to erode that habitual patience. I haven't bitten anyone's head off yet, but two people in cyberspace have come very close to having had my spleen vented in their direction in the last 24 hours. I'm trying my best not to offload my frustrations onto innocent third parties, but it's quite difficult at times. I really don't want to alienate anyone - there are few enough out there who take an interest in what I write - but there is a limit to my tolerance, and it's rather lower than usual just now.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Stupidity

Whatever else I'm guilty of, stupidity isn't one of my failings. So why is it that some people in my life insist on treating me like a complete moron? Think aloud, and it's thought that you're going to rush out and do something deranged. Speak the truth to those close to you, and be accused of being uncaring and self-centred. Add in all the layers of worthlessness and guilt that I suffer from all the time, and it amounts to a shitstorm masquerading as life. I'm not waving, but drowning.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A thought experiment

I was thinking earlier on about what the outcome would be of a hypothetical visit to, say, a theme park on a busy summer Saturday, where I was able to photograph each boy I found attractive, and then rank the boys in order of attractiveness from my perspective. If I were ever to do such a 'survey', I would be willing to lay pretty good odds that the 'winner' would be 13 years old. Not a result with any real significance, just an observation, really.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Passage

Life is like a river, bubbling up from the springs of birth, leaping through the rapids of youth, meandering around the quiet flood plains of maturity, before sinking into the sands of old age, hopefully with some sense of achievement and satisfaction along the way.

****

E.W. - R.I.P.


****


Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Waiting for some news

My wife is en route to meet up with her sister and then to go and visit her mum in Staffordshire - the hospice has pretty much open visiting hours for family, apparently - so there may well be some news in the next hour or two. From what my sister-in-law said when I spoke to her yesterday, I just hope my wife gets there in time.
My conversation with my manager actually went better than I'd expected - he seemed genuinely sympathetic and helpful, and didn't raise any objections to my staying off work until at least next week. Not the way I would have chosen to have had some time at home, but beggars can't be choosers. I took my daughter to the doctors today, to be told, as expected, that she has a throat infection, being prescribed some antibiotics to help deal with it. She's been feeling rather better today, apart from the soreness caused by the bug, and might even go back to school tomorrow, although that won't be decided until the morning. I get the feeling she wants to go back, not so much because she's bored at home, but because it's getting close to the end of the school year, and there's various 'fun' stuff going on. I wouldn't want her to miss out on enjoying herself, but, equally, there's no point in her going in if she ends up being sent home again.

2345 edit: My wife didn't make it in time - her mum died at 8:00 tonight. I've just told my daughter, too. They both seem to be bearing up as well as can be expected in the circumstances. Sadness.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Priorities

After a few false alarms over the past weeks, it looks as though the time is near for my mother-in-law, I'm sad to say. My wife is going to travel up to the Midlands tomorrow afternoon, and I'll be calling my manager in the morning to let him know that my 'rebrief' will have to be postponed. He might not like it, but family stuff comes first. Given my attitude towards my job at the moment, if he does cut up rough, I'd probably tell him to shove it where the sun doesn't shine anyway.
Just to add another layer of complication to the situation, my daughter isn't well, either, unusually for her - it looks like she might have a throat infection or something similar, so she's been off school today, spending most of the day in bed looking pretty woebegone, poor thing, and will be off to the doctor's tomorrow if there's no improvement.
Just to alleviate the unremitting bad news, my brother called me to let me know he's got a new job, not only with better pay, but office-based and around a 40 minute drive from his place, meaning he'll be home every night, rather than the extensive travelling he's had to do over the past few years. Hopefully a bit of his good luck might rub off on us.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Never Understand

My personal 'national anthem'. Enjoy.



(My Emphases)

The sun comes up another day begins
And I don't even worry about the state I'm in
Head so heavy and I'm looking thin
But when the sun goes down I wanna start again

You never understandin'
You never understand me
Yeah

Don't turn around until you look at me
Why don't you take a second and tell me what you see
Things I see you only disagree
You never understand that's what I want to be

You never understandin'
You never understand me
Yeah

Not wishing to hide but you just can't see me
I tell you the truth but you don't believe me
Thinking of love but I can't hear what you're saying
Tomorrow I'm leaving
Cause I'm not understanding you 



****


Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

That's as close as you'll get to me coming out today

My wife has just stomped off because I wouldn't expand on a comment I made in response to a documentary I was watching about the 'Maleus Maleficarum', and the history of witch hunting. There was a line in the programme about people in the Salem witch trials being accused as witches themselves if they made any attempt to defend the accused, and I said that there was an issue I could think of where the same scenario applied in this day and age. I was thinking about inter-generational relationships, of course, but I wasn't going to say so explicitly, and when I told my wife she would know what I was talking about if she thought about it, she said she wasn't interested in thinking about riddles, and left the room. As ever - thinking is the problem. If people thought, rather than reacting, there might be a bit more likelihood of understanding. On this issue, though, probably not. Just call me evil, and then switch off. It doesn't change the truth, but it salves the 'normal' conscience.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The News of the World - bloody good riddance!

Let's hope all the other shit-stirring tabloids follow into the abyss The News of the World has dug for itself, the self-righteous, lowest common denominator scandal sheet. A vain hope, needless to say, because there seems to be no end to the appetite of the 'Great British Public' for this kind of non-news, doubtless because it obviates the need for them to engage their higher brain centres at all. As long as the right kneejerk responses come out, all is well, apparently. Of course, as a 'paedo', I would say that, wouldn't I?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Does anyone else find Michele Bachman as worrying as I do?

It could be said that, as a Brit, this is none of my business, but the prospect, however remote it might be, of Michele Bachman being elected to the post which, de facto, would make her the most powerful person in the world, frightens me to death. A racist, homophobic, bigoted, anti-scientific fundamentalist Christian president, one who has apparently said she's in politics and holds the opinions that she holds because 'God told me to', and can thus abdicate any responsibility for her actions to her (in my opinion) imaginary deity, how could it not be an utter disaster? World War 3 (a fundie Christian jihad against Islam, no doubt) and irreversible climate change, or resource wars and 'Kill the poor'. I'm convinced at least one, if not more of them would be inevitable under such an administration. Has anyone got Ford Prefect's phone number, so I can hitch a lift to somewhere else in the galaxy, a long, long way from here?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Long day, short on answers

Away for nearly 12 hours, for a 45 minute session with my manager. Lovely. He told me that I wasn't going to be sacked, which I guess counts as a positive, although, as I told him in return, I still haven't decided whether I want to go back in any case. I've got some more time to think about what to do, because I'm going to be suspended for another week, and then I'm due to be off on a long weekend next weekend, so, if I do eventually go back, it won't be for almost a fortnight, apart from a day to be decided next week when I'll be summoned for a 'rebriefing' session - basically telling me again what I already know, so that my manager can tick a checkbox to say that I've been rebriefed. Bureaucracy gone mad, as ever.
I went up by road, not being in the mood for 10 hours on trains, but, as is the way of such things, I probably would've been better off if I'd stuck to public transport. The journey back, in particular, was a nightmare, all sorts of holdups and swarms of idiots playing dodgems to try and get two places further on in the seemingly interminable queues The only good part of the trip was the last 3 minutes before I got home, when I saw no less than 5 serious cuties, including 'controversial bedroom window' boy and two of his friends, all of whom I would sell my soul for, if I had one to sell!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Bottomless pit?

OK - I'm going to try and be as dispassionate and non-'woe-is-me' as possible about all of this. If I'd written this post yesterday, it would've been much more emotional, but I'm still in a difficult place, both in terms of what's happened and in what I'm going to do about it.
Yesterday morning, in the midst of a desperately busy phase of my shift at work, I made a mistake that could, easily, have led to someone being killed. As it transpired, nothing happened beyond someone being badly shaken, but the knowledge that a person could have died because of me upset me enormously. I've written before about my job being 'safety-critical', but until something like this happens, that phrase is merely words. It's more than words now, and no mistake. Needless to say, I was relieved of duty, and suspended, but all of that was more or less irrelevant - there's nothing anyone in authority could have said that would have been more critical of me than I was of myself. I have, as anyone who has read my blog to any extent will know, serious problems with self-esteem, for various reasons, but the one area of my life I've always felt confident and in control is in my work. As things stand at the moment, that confidence has gone.
 I came back home last night, but I had a call from my manager earlier telling me he wants to see me tomorrow afternoon, so I'm in for another long day trip. What I'm going to tell him is a moot point. My instinct is to say I'm not going back, but that path has the potential for all sorts of 'collateral damage' consequences. If I give my job up, we're pretty much instantaneously bankrupt, so the house goes. If the house goes, and there is real evidence for me saying this beyond self-pity, my marriage would be in serious jeopardy. If that goes, given the propensity of the legal system to favour the maternal over the paternal, I might well lose my daughter, too. I'm really feeling pretty lost just now. This is all my fault, but it still makes me wonder how much further I've got to fall, and how many more blows I can deal with.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

OK, guilty as charged - EPIC FAIL

A week ago, I decided that my blogging 'career' was over, and that 'Sammy B' was going to be consigned to the dustbin of history. It had run its course, the negatives had begun to outweigh the positives, I'd lost all my enthusiasm, etc, etc. Only one small snag. I've found that I miss it too much, that I do actually still need this place as a sounding board, safety valve, comfort blanket, whatever you want to call it. So, if you don't mind, disregard Vale in 'Cuckoos', forgive me for my irresolution and indulge my addiction/compulsion. I don't know yet which direction the blog will head in, whether I'll go back to posting more or less every day or produce something a bit more selective, or even something completely different. When I find out, you'll be the first to know.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B