Writing day

After yesterday's excursion into the great outdoors, today has been, almost exclusively, a case of the great indoors. I did get as far as the supermarket just along the road, but that was my only external foray of the day. Instead, I've spent several hours working on my story, which is now just starting to head into the denouement phase. Another couple of days, hopefully, and it will be ready to unleash on an unsuspecting world.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

In the city

Accompanied by inanity and excess. I was on standby to work an overtime shift today, but two people who'd been off sick resumed for the new week, so my services weren't required, and I was left to my own devices. I prevaricated about what to do, before deciding in mid-morning to indulge in a change of scenery from my customary hermetic isolation, heading up to London. I didn't really have any clear objective in mind, although there was a vague plan lurking in the background, which didn't even come close to fruition, and never really had a chance of doing so, hence the inanity. Having caught the train to my usual 'commute' station, using my normal season ticket, and then caught a bus from the station to as close to Central London as was possible, my next connection led to whatever small purpose the day achieved, because I was able to head more or less directly to Tate Modern, for what was my second visit there. My previous visit, getting on for two years ago, had been to see a specific temporary exhibition, whereas today's trip was a much more general, random amble around the galleries. I saw works by some very well known artists, including Picasso, Braque, Monet and Matisse, but one particular pair of pictures, hung close together, made me feel as though I'm not quite so much of a poseur about modern art as might be assumed. The first of the two I looked at was by Kandinsky, and I found it very garish, with patches of almost fluorescent colour. The second picture I didn't recognise at all, but my first impression was 'I like that'. When I read the information panel, the painting proved to be by Mondrian, easily my favourite artist, one of his late relatively figurative works before he graduated to the completely abstract, primary colour style he's best known for. And here it is.

It's as well there was some degree of aesthetic satisfaction in the day, because the cuties were very much conspicuous by their absence. There was one 'near miss', marginally beyond the upper end of my 'window of attraction', at the gallery, just too old, just too deep-voiced (when I heard him speak to his companions) and 'grown-up' looking, leaving me wishing I'd encountered him a year or two ago, because I have no doubt that he would've been delicious at that stage. All that was left for me to do, given my abject lack of restraint, was to end up in the Wetherspoons pub near 'work town' station, drinking far too much Stella, before wobbling back to 'domicile-ville', and the coup de grace to any remote hope of a healthy living day, in the shape of a Chinese takeaway. Oh well, I've got to die of something, it might as well be something appetising!

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Thrash them into submission

It would have been bad enough coming from a firebreathing member of the Tory 'hang 'em and flog 'em' brigade, but for a Labour MP, and former education minister, at that, to say that the riots in London last year happened because parents can't smack their children is totally unforgivable and arrant bullshit. Sorry, Mr Lammy, smacking kids isn't discipline, it's assault. If a person hasn't got the intellectual wherewithal and emotional maturity to be able to explain to a child why they should and shouldn't do things without resorting to violence, then they shouldn't be having children in the first place. Violence breeds violence - if a child learns that it's valid to be forced to do something they don't want to do by someone hurting them, then they're just as likely to apply that lesson in their own lives. I hope when the inevitable next story of a child being beaten to death by their own parents comes to light, Mr Lammy will be able to live with his conscience.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Vacuumation, and the joy of Android

One of the more impenetrable post titles I've come up with, I think. Hopefully, all will become clear - or clearer, at least.
What the hell is 'vacuumation'? I saw the word on the side of a van belonging to a company specialising in drain clearance on the way to the station at lunchtime, so I can only assume it's got some meaning to any drain clearing aficionados out there. I'm all for neologisms, they're the lifeblood of a language in many ways, but it's nicer when they seem not to have been created by an infinite number of monkeys throwing Scrabble tiles at each other.
Much less opaque was a minute or two of boy watching at the other end of my commute - the town centre at the work end has seemingly been in bits for months, as paving has been relaid and 'street furniture' rehashed, the latest phase of the work reducing the pavement near the station to half of its usual width, leading to 'pedestrian jams', in turn meaning that I was 'trapped' in a slow moving file of people about half a pace behind a very cute boy. Too young by at least a couple of years, really, but still very nice to look at.
I loathe late shifts at weekends, and this weekend, I've got the added pain of covering my least favourite position, too, on the 'assist' desk - basically, it's a lot of sitting around waiting for anything which might require an extra pair of hands on one of the other positions to happen, which it rarely does, especially at weekends, shuffling the odd bit of paperwork, and, horror of horrors, making the tea for everyone else! Thirty-odd years, and I've graduated to teaboy! Marvellous! Which is where Android came in - my (still relatively) new phone, and some of the more or less mindless games I've downloaded for it, was the only thing standing between me and total brain-frying boredom. And I've got to go and do it all again tomorrow! I can hardly wait.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's never been like that before

I've written about 300 words of my story this morning - and the word 'gruelling' hardly does the process justice. I've spent almost as much time crying as writing. I have had my moments, in the past, of having my emotions pulled about by reading stories, but never by writing. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Getting into it

Maybe a bit too much, actually. The new story, that is. I've written a fair bit more over the past two days, but I've also been thinking about where it's going next, and I've got quite a bit of stuff in my head. In thinking about one particular scene, it got to my emotions to the extent that I was getting quite upset. Maybe it's a sign that it might tweak the heartstrings of a few readers, who knows? I've also, possibly, seen a way to get into the so far elusive denouement, perhaps not the end, but at least the beginning of the end (yeah, I know, cliché, cliché!).
Apart from my literary efforts, it's been much of the same old, same old - work is....there, the financial storm clouds continue to gather, with some pretty heavy stuff in the offing, and not even as far away as the horizon. Ultimately, though, what will be, will be. No amount of fretting is going to produce a single extra penny, so we're trying not to get any more stressed than is unavoidable. A bit micawberish, it could be said, but better than dropping dead of a heart attack.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cuties, in fiction and reality

I progressed some more with the new story this morning - in fact, I almost made myself late by struggling to drag myself away to get ready for work. There's a beginning, written, a middle begun and with the next section sketched out in my head - all I've got to do now is to find out where to go to find the end. I've imagined a couple of genuine cuties as major characters, almost totally fictional for once, rather than being based on one or another real life boy as many of the characters in my other stories have been.
There was a real world boy to brighten my day a little, too, on my way back this evening, unusually, although I did finish on a break, so I was travelling a little earlier than usual for a late shift. He was waiting on the platform when I arrived at the station, complete with his mother and their respective bikes, so I positioned myself where I could surreptitiously admire him without being 'caught looking' by mum, but he didn't seem to be waiting for the same train as me, so that when they not only got on my train, but onto the same carriage, I was pleasantly surprised. Where they sat in relation to me wasn't ideal, but I got quite a few nice glimpses of him for around 20 minutes, until they finally got off three stops before me. As ever, all just eye candy, but a nice way to enhance what would otherwise have been a strictly routine journey.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A mere 15 hours, door to door

Another marathon of a day, leaving home at 7:30 this morning, travelling back 'up country', straight to work, full eight hour shift, an hour back to the domicile, finally staggered into my room at just before 10:30 - so my claim in the title of this post is actually an exaggeration, but only by about five minutes. It hasn't helped that I've been feeling pretty rotten for most of the day - my wife was struggling with some sort of bug over the weekend, and it might be that I've picked up a little of whatever she's had, the battle between my immune system and whatever version of 'the dreaded lurgy' is kicking around leaving me thoroughly washed out. As ever, I'm sure I'll live, but it all adds to the general malaise.
The first few minutes waiting for and then on the first train this morning were interesting - it was the Cornish equivalent of the 'boys' school train' I sometimes catch back from work when I'm on nights, and there were a couple of very watchable cuties aboard. There was also a sighting of one of my daughter's former primary school classmates, who now attends the boys' equivalent of the girls' grammar my daughter goes to, and someone my daughter has kept in touch with. He arrived at the station shortly after I'd been dropped off, and looked at me for a few moments as though he might have remembered me, but we didn't speak, in the event, which was a shame. I can't blame him, though - I only really knew him through his coming to a couple of my daughter's birthday parties, and I hadn't seen him at all for nearly three years. To actually talk to a boy, even a brief, casual chat, would have been a nice change. Not to be, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

So bloody sad, yet again

Dead, for trying to be himself.

Unbelievably depressing. People are people, what the hell is wrong with live and let live?

R.I.P. Phillip.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Finding my voice - maybe

After last night's post, I've spent a goodly chunk of today exploring a way of expressing what I found so difficult to say, and, not for the first time, it's been by trying to fictionalise the scenario. The story I'm working on was one I'd started quite a while back, but which lacked much direction. When I was thinking of a 'new' story to help me get past my reticence, this particular fragment came to mind, and has been expanded considerably, and given a new focus, over the course of today. It's still got a long way to go, and, given my habitual indolence, it might never come to fruition, but we'll see.
That apart, the only other news of the day was a shopping trip at lunchtime to our regular supermarket, with a few cuties to sweeten the pill. One little blond thing, left to look after the trolley while his dad went searching for some item or other, and wearing a chunky winter cardigan with toggle fastenings, particularly caught my eye - I could easily envisage undoing those toggles, slowly and sensuously, one by one. Revolting to the majority, no doubt, but only extant in my head rather than reality, so I'm not inclined to be too worried.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I can't bring myself to say what I want to say

I've spent quite a while this evening trying to write a post about a phenomenon I've noticed of late, but I can't get the words to come together. Maybe it's not so much that anything has changed recently, more an admission on my part of something I've known all along, but haven't wanted to be true, haven't been able to concede, even to myself. Something that would make me even more hateful, to the world at large, certainly, but also in terms of my own self-esteem, or lack of it. I feel like I would imagine the stereotypical first time Alcoholics Anonymous member would feel, waiting to be invited to stand up and admit to their affliction in front of their peers. But there is no-one else with me, to listen and empathise and support, just me sitting in an empty room with the keyboard on my lap, typing these words. And skating around the issue. Again.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Motivation, or its absence

I had a plan today, to head into 'town' to get my wife a present and card as it's her birthday tomorrow. And I did enact the plan - eventually. It was a major struggle to get myself going, though, for no particularly obvious reason, other than the fact that I'm still feeling very tired and not quite as well as I might be, two issues that are probably not coincidental. Lunchtime had come and gone, and I was on the verge of falling asleep, before I finally managed to flog myself into getting ready and walking up to the bus stop at almost 3:00 this afternoon. The trip was fairly painless, in the event - I set out without a clue as to what I was going to get by way of a present, but I managed to find something that I hope will be well received. I'll find out tomorrow, I guess.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Set the controls....

For no better reason than this song plays itself in my head on a regular basis. Enjoy.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Here is wisdom

This is a bit trite, I guess, but I couldn't resist the temptation of marking my 666th post with a little bit of my favourite film. We were talking about films at work a while back, and when I said Damien - Omen II was my all-time number one, one of my colleagues said 'I can't believe you like that film, it's $?*^ing rubbish!' What I didn't say, of course, that at least 90% of the reason that I'm such a fan can be summed up in three words - Jonathan Scott-Taylor! And the part where he's reading from Revelation 13 (from 3:45, or thereabouts, in this clip), in his delicious, mellifluous boyish voice, pretty much free of the 'midatlantic' accent he affected for much of the film, is close to being my favourite film scene of all.
As an atheist, the plot is all nonsense to me, of course - I obviously believe in the Antichrist no more than his supposed adversary - but isn't escape from reality one of the major aims of the film industry, after all?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Long day's journey into....Cornwall

With apologies to Eugene O'Neill!
Well, for much of today, I wasn't really looking forward that much to coming home, which was a depressant in itself, but now I'm here, I'm starting to feel more at one with the world. It hasn't helped that I've been feeling both very tired and a bit under the weather, and that my journey back seemed to take forever - I finished work at 1:20 today, but didn't walk through my front door until 8:10, virtually twice as long as it would have taken if my car was on the road - but the main issue was how my reunion with my wife might play out, given the very strained state of our relationship at the moment. In the event, it wasn't too difficult, although we haven't said a great deal to each other, really. At least we've managed to avoid any immediate acrimony, which has gone a good way towards my more positive frame of mind than that of a couple of hours ago.
I doubt that it would have gone down too well, though, if my wife had known what I was looking at while I waited outside our local station to be picked up - there's a church opposite that seems to host a lot of local activities (my daughter used to have dance classes there, several years ago), and there had obviously, by the attire of the participants, been something sporty going on this evening. And helping to tidy up were two absolutely delicious boys, one in particular, around 12 or 13, being an utter delight. Cornish cuties, again. One of the myriad reasons I love living here, and hate being away so much.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Too much thinking

When I read the comment that Jay kindly left on my post of yesterday, an immediate association sprung to mind. I've spent a while trying to remember the exact quote, but I haven't managed it, so I'm going to have to paraphrase. The exchange came from a book I like a lot, The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov, and was between one of the central characters of the middle (and best) part of the book - it's in three parts - a 'Rational' called Odeen and his tutor, discussing why Odeen was so embarrassed by the equivalent of 'sex' for his species, to which the tutor replied 'Too much thinking', leaving Odeen wondering how thinking could be 'too much'. I've always had a goodly amount of fellow-feeling for young Odeen, if one could be said to have 'fellow-feeling' for a fictional character, and an 'alien' at that, and also for his precociously and atypically intelligent 'mid-mate', Dua, because I can see parts of my character in both of them, the clever but socially gauche 'boy', and the emotional, passionate 'feminine' element represented by Dua. And the propensity towards introspection, of course, which I seem to be blessed or cursed with. I can still cringe with embarrassment at things I said and did literally decades ago, and which anyone else involved has doubtless long since forgotten, and even a casual perusal of this blog clearly illustrates my capacity for introspection taken, sometimes, to the point of outright navel-gazing.
How much thinking, then, is 'too much'. I've always had, as far back as I can remember, character traits comparable to those I have now - even as a child, I was a fairly intense, serious sort of person, who found it rather difficult to connect with others, and with a tendency to towards not liking myself too much. Maybe those feelings came from a sense of 'otherness', of not fitting the pattern somehow, of not being what people expected a working-class boy to be like in the 1960's and 70's. I certainly didn't have the same interests as my peers, especially after I went to senior school and headed towards and then into my teens, and I think quite a bit of that difference was down to the fact that I thought about things more, and differently than others my age - I don't think it's too much of a coincidence that I both became an atheist and realised that I was attracted to boys at around 13 or 14, and spent quite a lot of time thinking about the implications of both, although I came to terms with the former a lot sooner than I did the latter. Who knows how different things might have been had I not been so inward-looking, been more of a typical teen instead, living for the moment?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

No place

....reminds me of a warm, safe place

where as a child I'd hide

More rock lyrics (from Guns 'n' Roses' Sweet Child o' Mine, as I'm sure the great majority would know) which set of a chain of thought. And, surprise, surprise, not a happy one. The next link, the next word in the chain was 'Utopia', More's fictional ideal society, but whose name derives from the Greek for 'no place'. Utopia doesn't, probably never can exist. My personal utopia certainly seems not to exist. No 'warm, safe place' for me, being what I am and wanting what I want. Never has been, almost certainly never will be. 

Just as a bit of timely irony to underline the hopelessness - Planet Rock are, right now, playing The Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want. Or ever get what you want, as the case may be.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Slob Sunday

It's been one of those days - I haven't had the motivation to do anything, so I haven't done anything. I can excuse myself a little, though, given that I didn't finish the last shift of my week of nights until 7:30 this morning, then had the delight of a trip back on a 'rail replacement bus service' which took almost an hour and a half to get from 'work station' to 'domicile station' rather than the 32 minutes the train would have taken had the normal service been in place. By the time I'd had some breakfast - treating myself to bacon butties, as we would have had if I'd been at home - and wandered down to the new local supermarket to get some groceries (so, I suppose, I did actually do something, contrary to my claim of inactivity), I was more than a little surprised to glance at the clock and find it was almost midday. Given that I'm back on earlies tomorrow, the day was well advanced by that point, because I daresay I'll be in bed pretty early tonight, illuminating once more the delights of shift work. The morning wasn't entirely negative - the bus journey allowed me to admire a moderately cute paper boy I wouldn't have seen had I been on the train, and the shopping trip allowed a glimpse of a very sweet, albeit very young, blond cutie, one of the 'strictly only to look at and say "awwww" about' contingent, given that he was only about 8 or 9. A delight to look at, though, and no mistake.
This afternoon has been a slobfest, though - on the computer, a beer or three (although I've nearly run out now, sadly!), and another meal, stuffed chicken thighs and veg, a sort of simulacrum of a Sunday roast, impending. More torment for my liver and furred arteries, but is this the face of a worried man?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Aiming for zero

Having graduated, if that's the right word, from 30 pageviews a day a week or so ago, then 20-odd earlier this week, then into the 'teens' over the past couple of days, I now seem to be into single figures. Zero isn't far off, evidently.
But that's not necessarily all bad. If there's no-one here but me and the mouse, anything I might want to say, short of getting the blog nuked, I can say without fear of offending anyone, because there's no-one around to offend. So I might as well begin with the arrant, disgusting hypocrisy of so-called 'Christians' in the wake of the case I alluded to yesterday, the unconstitutional 'prayer banner' at a Rhode Island high school. The teenaged girl who was brave enough to stand up to the bullying and bigotry in her community has been deluged with electronic 'hate mail' in the days since the judgment, up to and including threats of rape and even death, simply, as various commentators have correctly said, for telling the truth and standing up for the American constitution. There has, reportedly, been some law enforcement investigation of the threats made against the girl, but I hold out little, if any, hope that any of the perpetrators will be held to account for their hate crimes - unlike, I have no doubt at all, if the positions were reversed, and a Christian teen was receiving death threats from atheists in similar circumstances. In that instance, not only would the authorities be all over the case, but I strongly suspect that lynch mobs would be roaming the streets. The forces of reaction on this side of the Atlantic have weighed in as well, an article in the Daily Mail implying that those evil atheists have forced the school to remove a banner which simply entreated students to 'be kind to each other'. I'm sure Ms Ahlquist might have a view on the 'kindness' of her fellow students and other in her community who have been responsible for much of the abuse she's received. The paper's stance is hardly surprising, though, after David Cameron's venture into the preaching of theocracy last month - if Cameron stood up and advocated killing every non-Christian in the world slowly and painfully, the Mail and its ilk would find a way of putting a positive spin on it, given the level of servility they display to all things Tory.
While I'm on the subject of nasty fascists masquerading as mainstream Conservative politicians, I've had the misfortune to hear a couple of adverts for the film The Iron Lady on the radio this afternoon. Given the incalculable damage Thatcher and her policies did to this country, the hagiography surrounding her is especially distasteful. I'll freely admit my partiality in this issue, given that my dad was one of the millions of her victims, for no crime on his part more heinous than being a coal miner for 45 years of his life. I'm almost never a malicious person, for all my misanthropy, but I would shed no tears at all if that appalling petit bourgeois harridan suffered a painful demise, just like my dad did.
A brief interlude to speak to my wife, which achieved nothing except generating more friction. Even if we, by some miracle, manage to extricate ourselves from the financial quagmire, the point to which our relationship seems to have ebbed might still be terminal. And, to be honest, the way I'm feeling about it at the moment, I'm far from being convinced that it's even worth saving, aside from the effect it would have on our daughter. I've spoken, in one or two contexts, about thresholds of tolerance, and I get the feeling that I might be getting close to mine. If where I've found myself in my life was what I really wanted, wanted the most, then I might be more inclined to 'go the extra mile' of compromise, but to suffer all the heartache for something that is, at best, a second-best, even if the optimum is unobtainable, might be becoming unsupportable.
Well, given that, just to add to my joy in living at the moment, my commute to work is going to take almost twice as long as usual this evening because the trains are diverted in connection with engineering work, I guess I need to make some effort to think about getting ready. I doubt that cutting short this post is going to cause anyone to lose much sleep, in any case - not even me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

When the millennial kingdom arrives....

.... and theocrats rule the world, this is, presumably, the kind of loving, compassionate society we can all look forward to.
Those of you fortunate enough to be enfranchised, please use you vote wisely.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Acceptance

Acceptance, in the sense of how an individual relates to others, to society as a whole, is, it seems to me, a slippery concept. Humans are a social species, and most people want to fit into the pattern somewhere, even relatively misanthropic types like me. What cost, though, is worth paying to become, or remain, a member of the 'in-group'? I've said, on several previous occasions, that I'd carry on with this blog even if no-one read it, but, having, over the past week or so, published what might be called, in a loose sense, 'advocacy' posts, trying to make a case that those with my sexual orientation are not automatically evil, predatory potential rapists, and having been met with almost complete silence and a still further falling off of my already thin readership, maybe that assertion, that I'm not concerned about readership, with its implicit signals of approval or disapproval, isn't true after all. Not that I've been actively dishonest hitherto, but maybe mistaken, and that I do care, at least to a point, about what others think of me. What isn't clear to me, though, is what to do about it. I can't renounce my sexuality, because it's intrinsic, not some kind of eccentric 'choice' I've made, so it seems to me that, in the context of cyberspace, the only options I have are to continue on the path I've followed up to this point, of being honest about my thoughts and feelings, perhaps at the risk of being totally ostracised and ignored, or to lapse into silence on the subject, and give up a substantial portion of the raison d'être of the blog. And, perhaps, losing a portion of my individuality into the bargain. I remember saying to my cousin, at a time when I was very deeply in love with him, that I was willing to give him anything - except my individuality. Maybe that remembrance might answer my question, in a way - if I wasn't prepared to compromise my sense of myself to the person who, arguably, has been the greatest love of my life, then why would I compromise to persuade a few people to read my blog? Framed in that way, the question is a no-brainer, really.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Taking offence, and a vertiginous dream

I've seen a story in a couple of different places in the last day or two about the University College London student union trying to force the college atheist/secularist society to stop using a 'Jesus & Mo' cartoon to publicise its meetings, because some Muslim students have complained that the image is 'offensive' to their religion, and that it would be 'disrespectful' to those people to continue to use the image once the complaint had been made. Well, I'm offended, as I've said more than once recently, by the suggestion that anyone attracted to those below the age of consent is a rapist, so should I expect all and any such claims to be removed? I doubt it, somehow. I'm also offended by what I see as the way that some versions of Islam treat women and children as chattels of the patriarchy, so Islam should be banned, right? Well, no, I don't believe that, either. People have the right to believe in whatever they want, as far as I'm concerned, but what I don't subscribe to is any suggestion that they have an inalienable right for their beliefs to be sacrosanct and immune to any and all criticism. If you disagree with what someone is saying, debate them on it, and persuade them of the correctness of your opinions. Don't expect to be able to 'win' your argument by censorship of the other side.
I woke up at some point during the day, literally breathless, after an exceptionally vivid dream. I was, in character as one of a group of daredevil teens, edging my way along the roofline of a building (a castle, maybe?) perched on the edge of a sheer cliff, dropping hundreds of feet away below me, when a huge vertigo attack set in. Amazing how the human mind can construct such images, even in the absence of any real world stimuli - I was asleep in my bed, after all - to the point of inducing strong physiological responses. The power of imagination, and no mistake.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Rationality, but only to the point of expediency

Another example here, I suspect, of my wasting my figurative breath, but 'nothing ventured....'.
I read a post on a blog earlier on, a blog whose author I agree with on a goodly number of issues, a person who presents himself as atheist, rational and sceptical, all traits likely to commend him to me. The post was arguing against yet another attempted justification by the religious right for their opposition to marriage equality. Amongst the recycled nonsense from the hater was the ridiculous non sequitur about gay marriage leading inevitably to toleration of polygamy, marriage of people and animals or inanimate objects....and the inability to justify 'discriminating' (the hater's word) against paedophiles. The blogger had little difficulty in elucidating the stupidity of the hater's 'arguments', but, of course, when it came to the final point, the armour of rationality (not so) mysteriously vanished. The difference, the blogger argued, between 'paedophilia' and homosexuality between consenting adults, was that 'paedophilia harms someone against their will, before they are of an age to make a rational choice', whereas consensual homosexuality 'obviously' doesn't. Of course, being a 'rationalist' blog, you would expect some evidence for such a claim, some definition of terms like 'harm', 'against their will', 'age to make a rational choice', even 'paedophile', wouldn't you? Well, you'd expect in vain, I'm afraid. Just the bald statement of the 'fact', no definition of anything. If the word 'paedophile' was being used according to its correct definition, describing the attraction of adults to prepubescent children, I would probably be inclined to agree with the 'age to make a rational choice' assertion, at least, but in the total absence of evidence that the word was being used in that way, I'm afraid I have to reserve judgment. What does seem evident to me, however, is the readiness of even those who are otherwise rational and dedicated to fairness and equality to throw the likes of me 'under the bus' to make their point. And just to put the icing on the proverbial cake, I saw, on a different post, that (literal, in this instance) juxtaposition of 'paedophile' and 'rapist', again. What was it Goebbels said about 'The Big Lie'?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Heterodoxy

When I got in from work this morning, I left a comment on this post, the comment being based around a quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four (not for the first time) - 'Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness'. Apart from being impressed, as ever, by Orwell's acuity and prescience, it's made me think about how my opinions and beliefs relate to those of the 'general public'.
I'm already nowhere near being in lockstep with most of the people I interact with on a daily basis. The reasons are pretty obvious, really - I'm a gay, atheist boylover, which automatically puts me on a different 'page of the hymnsheet' from at least 99% of the population, but I'm also, in my 'political', in the loosest sense of that word, opinions, both liberal and libertarian, a combination that doesn't often seem to fit together too well. I believe in 'society' in the sense that those who are able to do so should contribute, by way of taxation or whatever mechanism is generally agreed upon, to provide a safety net to those who aren't as able to look after themselves - a 'welfare state', in other words - but I don't believe that government has any business dabbling in people's personal lives, except in enforcing a legal code which prevents harm to others by an individual's actions. To put it in a 'soundbite' kind of sentence, I believe that people should be able to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't negatively impact anyone else. Legislating 'morality' is never, in my opinion, going to work - the American experience with Prohibition in the last century is one of the best examples I can think of to support that particular assertion.
I'm well aware that many people will disagree with my worldview, and that, of course, is their perfect right. Without apology, though, I'll continue to think about issues, as they affect me, as rationally as I can, try to reach conclusions based on evidence, rather than 'faith', and do my best to steer clear of the Orwellian trap - remain conscious, remain heterodox.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Uncomfortably sensitive

When I was a child

I caught a fleeting glimpse

Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look, but it was gone

I cannot put my finger on it now

The child has grown, the dream has gone

Many people will know the next line, of course.

I have become comfortably numb

From the Pink Floyd song, which I heard on the radio a few minutes ago, the second of two linked....I can hardly think of the right word....issues, experiences. The first was thinking about an exchange with someone who was a very close friend at the time, almost 30 years ago, and one of the very small group of people in my whole life who have known about my being a boylover. Then, as now, I had my moments of being very down about my sexual orientation, about the frustration, the deceit, the hiding, the hatred, and he was aware that I was struggling badly on this particular occasion. With, no doubt, the best of intentions, trying to make me feel better about myself, he told me that he'd had a brief sexual relationship with a male cousin when he was in his teens, just boys 'messing around', experimenting. Rather than making me feel better, though, I felt even more bereft, thinking that he, who was as straight as they came, had experienced what I so much wanted, as a throwaway, once or twice 'game'. That feeling is with me again now, the sense of 'missing out', of being denied what might have been the defining moment of my whole life.

I caught a fleeting glimpse. Well, I didn't even get that far. And I'm anything but comfortable, or numb. At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, it hurts. Every day. And the knowledge that it's never going to change in any foreseeable circumstances just makes the hurt worse.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

A specious connection

It's long been an assertion, but it seems now to have become an uncritically acknowledged 'fact'. Almost everywhere of late I've seen the word 'paedophile', the words 'rape' or 'rapist' are adjacent. So, the connection between sexual attraction and rape is universal, then, by that argument. That means that every 'normal' teleiophilic man who expresses his sexual attraction to a woman is a rapist, then. No, I thought not.
I doubt that my saying this again will change even one person's mind, but I'm going to say it anyway - just because I, and those like me, are attracted to those below whatever arbitrary 'age of consent' society chooses to enforce, doesn't mean that all my morality and self-control is automatically jettisoned. I can only speak for myself, but I'd be extremely surprised if it didn't apply to the vast majority of others in my position - I'm not remotely interested in raping anyone. Male or female, young or old. Rape is one of the most appalling crimes I can imagine, one which no-one should ever have to suffer. Funny, then, how many of those who cleave to the idea of the amorality of 'paedos', and their own moral superiority, advocate those same 'paedos' being raped in prison, should they find themselves there. Hypocrisy isn't a strong enough word for it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Recapitulation, and a 'What the hell do I say?' moment

I wrote in my New Year's Eve post about how little I felt the fundamentals of my life had changed during 2011, and that's been underlined this morning. Just for my own edification, I read through some of the posts I published around this time last year, and the sense of being on a roundabout rather than a rollercoaster was palpable. There was even a paragraph in one of them about the consequences of my being recognised through my blog, as per yesterday's offering. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, because there is no end, it's a closed loop, seemingly.
And a big part of that, of course, is my oft-lamented 'double life'. This was brought home to me again by an episode at work yesterday evening. My colleagues got to talking about which film and TV actresses they found most attractive. It didn't take long to degenerate into an 'I'd do her' kind of conversation, and I found myself sitting, literally, in the middle (physically in the middle, because of the position I was covering) of this maelstrom of testosterone fuelled banter, keeping my mouth shut, hoping desperately that no-one was going to ask my opinion on the subject. Because what could I have said? An unconvincing lie? I couldn't conceivably have told the truth, because had I done so, the list would have gone something like this - Jonathan Scott-Taylor in Damien - Omen 2, Peter Bjerg, who played Kim (the blond boy, for those who know the film) in You Are Not Alone, Andrew Ellams, who played Matthew in a 1980's TV adaptation of Chocky, to name but a few. Or even the cute blond boy, eating a large banana, of the double entendre things he could have been doing, outside the station at the 'work' end of my commute yesterday lunchtime. Fortunately, after what seemed like an eternity, the conversation moved elsewhere, and I breathed a secret sigh of relief. Pointless and redundant to say it, but how I wish I could be myself, rather than this perpetual cycle of pretence and deceit. Never going to happen, though, certainly not at work, not anywhere readily imaginable in 'real life'. It's so dispiriting, sometimes.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Risking the consequences

I saw something last night that has given me pause for thought. I was reading some posts on a message board, by and for those with my predilections, which I occasionally read, but that I've never participated in, when one particular thread caught my attention. A boylover who seems to be fortunate enough to have a loved boy in his life had posted about recent events in their relationship, no references, of course, to anything salacious, saying that he felt his life was going well at the moment. One of the respondents asked the poster why he was putting his happiness at risk by talking about it in a public forum and thus raising the possibility, however small, of his being identified. The response included the statement 'they (the authorities/haters) will be out to destroy you, even if you've done nothing illegal (my emphasis)'. And that would almost undoubtedly be the outcome, if the man and his boy were 'outed', given the oft-mentioned hysteria about cross-generational relationships that appertains nowadays.
It's made me think, again, about whether this blog is a good idea, or not. My blog has the advantage of not being widely read, but there are more than enough clues here, if family or friends stumbled upon it, to give away my 'real' identity. What might the consequences be of any such revelation? Mostly personal, I would guess, losing my marriage, possibly losing access to my daughter for the next few years, until she reaches (legal) adulthood, possibly losing my job, either directly, by the company deciding I'm 'bringing them into disrepute', or indirectly, by my colleagues refusing to work with a 'paedo', losing friends and contact with family (such as they are). Given the benefits my blog brings, is it worth the risk? I have already, as I said recently, had one seeming attempt to 'out' me, presumably inspired by moral disapproval. The outcome of any 'cost/benefit analysis' I might make about whether to carry on are not immediately obvious to me, I have to say. Should I stay here, and take the chance, should I scrap this blog and start again with a different, and more deeply anonymised 'avatar', or should I give up altogether, and crawl back under the stone? I don't know at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The borders between fiction and reality

This post, if I actually get around to publishing it, is going to address my sexual preferences in rather more specific terms than usual, so please be aware that some might find it offensive.

I was reading a story from a well-known internet archive earlier on, as is my wont from time to time. This particular story contained a lengthy and detailed description of a pre-teen boy engaged in penetrative sex (with an older boy, not a man). I freely admit I found it powerfully erotic. But, for all the physical effect it had on me, it's not something I could ever see myself doing in reality, even in the unlikely event of finding a potentially willing partner. I'm big, heavy and clumsy, and I can't envisage any way I could do it without hurting the boy. And that's the anathema, as far as I'm concerned - whatever anyone might think about the morality of my attractions, there's no way I'd ever want to hurt a boy, or anyone else, for that matter. There are activities I would engage in, given informed consent, and I make no pretence to the contrary, but not anything with even the possibility of causing pain. I put some of my thoughts about this topic into the mouth of the 'Albie' character in Confluence last month, most notably, in this context, the line about not being a person who gets his kicks by hurting or dominating others. 'If it's not shared, it's not fun', as Albie said. I'm not claiming that attitude makes me a 'good' person, but perhaps not a uniformly bad one.
In other news, I'm very pleased to see that two of the most egregiously theocratic Republican presidential candidates, Perry and Bachmann, appear to have fallen at the first hurdle, in Iowa yesterday. I sincerely hope voters in the remaining states maintain the same level of common sense.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

And why did I bother?

Yet another mistake on my part, it seems. All my extra time at home has achieved has been to allow me to be in place to get involved in another bitter argument about money, after my wife made a phone call I told her wasn't a good idea. Don't listen to me, then blame me for the outcome. Just for a change. I'm fucking sick of it all.
There are times when I fervently wish I'd stuck to boys, even if that had led to nothing more than frustration....or even conviction.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's not over till it's over

After a little creative perusal of timetables, and with the aid of my wife's generosity in agreeing to give me a lift to the station at 5:30 in the morning, I've managed to extend my New Year break by 12 hours or so, and gain an extra night at home. I was originally expecting to be able to travel back tomorrow morning, until I was taken off of my rostered late shift and put on a briefing day starting at 10:00 instead, but after this morning's investigations, I can still make it to where I need to be (which is in 'domicile-ville', as it happens), with about 15 minutes to spare - if the trains run to time, of course! In the circumstances, I'm prepared to take the chance - these briefing days, as I've said before, are as much about bureaucratic 'box-ticking', allowing the management to 'prove' we're being kept up to date, as anything genuinely substantive, so if I'm a bit late, little as I like being late, I won't lose too much sleep.
The weather might have improved by tomorrow, too (although, as I look out of the window now, it's brightened up quite a bit already) - it was absolutely foul here this morning, cold, raining heavily and blowing a near-gale. As my wife left for work, and I waved her off, I saw a teenager en route for the local senior school, who started back today, looking thoroughly bedraggled - and he still had another 15 or so minutes walk to go, at the point he was passing our house, poor lad. I'm sure my daughter was even more pleased that she would otherwise have been that her school are taking a 'Baker Day' today, and that she doesn't start her new term until tomorrow, thereby not having to brave today's uncongenial elements.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Embracing my inner geek

I've just finished watching a documentary on BBC Four about the history of science and science fiction programming on British TV over the past 60 years. I don't go back quite that to the beginning of the period in question, but I found I wasn't surprised simply by how many of the programmes I remembered, but how many I remembered fondly. There were successive segments about the Open University 'lecture' programmes which engaged so much of my time in my teens - I had the first TV of my own, a huge, old black and white receiver, bought second-hand, and which took pride of place in my bedroom, for my 14th birthday, and promptly disappeared from view for huge chunks of the next four of five years, watching hour after hour of OU programming on BBC2 - and Blakes 7, easily my favourite sci-fi drama series ever, even if the sets and special effects were legendarily wobbly. Then there were, among numerous others, the 1980's BBC adaptation of The Day of the Triffids (and why, especially in this CGI age, has no-one made a film or television version of The Chrysalids?), Doctor Who (of course, although I can only claim to go back as far as the second 'Doctor', Patrick Troughton), Equinox, Q.E.D., the infeasibly wonderful Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and, probably my all-time favourite TV series in any genre, Horizon.
Geek, moi? Well....yes, actually!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Who does this dick think he is?

I came across this post today, illustrating an attitude which, even by the execrable standards of fundamentalist Christian bigotry, is thoroughly nauseating. Santorum, should the world have to suffer the misfortune of his being elected US president, will look to 'invalidate' all existing, legal, same-sex marriages in the US. Any retrospective law is reprehensible enough, but one that is based strictly on prejudice is particularly objectionable, as far as I'm concerned. To extend this sort of argument ad absurdum, I could be considered to be a participant in a 'mixed marriage' - my wife is a Christian, I'm an atheist. Despite my atheism, we were married in church, because that's what my wife wanted, and I wanted to make her happy. Could some future theocratic government come along and say 'you don't believe in our God, so your marriage vows, and thus your marriage, is invalid, and the fact that you've been married for 20/25/30 years is irrelevant' (never mind my being gay and a boylover)? The 'slippery slope' cliché doesn't even begin to address my concerns.
I fervently hope that this self-righteous piece of shit soon finds his well-deserved place in the toilet pan of history.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another year....

....another hangover, another piece of arrant stupidity on my part. The hangover was something I predicted last night, because I wasn't too restrained in seeing in the New Year, and it duly arrived this morning. At least hangovers have the advantageous characteristic that they get better as the day progresses, so that after a couple of hours, and some toast and coffee, I was feeling much more human. It didn't stop me doing something unbelievably stupid in mid-morning, though, after my wife had finally surfaced from the pit - she was talking about the cat, to which I said something humorous about my position in the household pecking order, which in turn lead to a comment about the picture I posted a while ago of the cat curled up on a dining chair, looking like she was expecting to be waited on. My wife had seen the picture before, but said she couldn't remember it, so I went straight to the 'photo album' on my laptop to find it for her. The only problem is, all of the boy pictures I've 'borrowed' from the internet are in the same album. There's nothing pornographic, not even any 'swimwear' shots, but there are a dozen or so cuties. I managed to scroll through the album to leave it sitting at a point where none of the boys were visible, but I've no idea what, if anything, she saw of my 'collection', because no comment was forthcoming. I don't make New Year resolutions, but if I did, inanely outing myself to my wife wouldn't have been amongst them. At least she liked the picture of the cat!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Blydhen Nowydh Da!

A Happy New Year to one and all from sunny Cornwall! OK - damp and rainy Cornwall!
Have a great 2012!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B