Another year's end

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Caution sometimes pays

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Mixed

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

You know you're home when....

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Irony, or what?

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

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

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

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Mind made up

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not what I was intending to post

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

All over for another year

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Just because it's Christmas....

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Felicitation

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Meeting myself coming back

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The longest of shortest days

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sometimes you just despair for the world

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Missing out

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Absence

Clinging like kids to each other.

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

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Making an impression, and no good reasons

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Life imitating art

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Winter, and a pointless opinion

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Rover

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

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

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Apathy

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Intensity

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

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

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lucid - almost

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

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

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

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another casualty

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

RIP Jacob.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sex and money - the dream and nightmare version

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Melodrama queen, again

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Last day

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Angry mode

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not listening....La La La

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

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

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fantasy Land

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Trust

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fifteen minutes

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

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another lurch towards the precipice

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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Who are the barbarians?

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

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


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

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B