A rhetorical question answered, probably

I'd said to my daughter that I wanted to talk to her during her current stay about the implications of my possibly moving to Spain, and we did just that yesterday evening, once we'd met up again after her having spent the afternoon with one of her London-based internet friends. Her reaction was pretty clear, really - it was evident that she was quite upset by the idea of my disappearing over the horizon more or less permanently. While she doesn't have an absolute veto on my moving, which I made clear to her, she is really all that I've got left after the implosion of my life in recent months, and I love her to bits, so, although no irrevocable decisions have been made, it doesn't seem likely that I'll be leaving the country any time soon. Whether I carry on as I am, or try to find something more congenial here, most notably whether I can find a scenario that could see me move back to Cornwall, remains to be seen, but it looks like Gran Canaria is off the agenda, at least for now. Ironically enough, we went on from the pub where we had our chat to eat in a tapas bar, and very nice it was, too. A taste of Spain, if nothing else.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A long day, and a new toy

I've been on a long day trip to Cornwall today, leaving 'domicile-ville' before 8:00 this morning, and not arriving back until almost 6:00, simply to get hold of a prescription for my medication, given that I haven't got around to registering with a GP in Surrey yet. If I needed any further incentive, today's ten hour round trip has probably done the trick - it wasn't much fun at all. One of the few saving graces was a couple of Cornish cuties, including one utterly stunning 12/13 year old boy on the bus back to the mainline station for my return journey. If he'd had slightly darker hair, he could have been the 'model' for my mental picture of Cammy in Optimal and Diary. Breathtaking, literally, as he glanced at me as I was getting ready to get off the bus, no doubt having noticed that I was taking more than a passing interest in him on the journey.
The other item which rescued my trip today from being completely insufferable was my new toy. I haven't bought myself any 'new technology' for ages, apart from upgrading my phone a year or so ago, but that was pretty urgent, as the old one had started to crash randomly, and eventually died altogether, but I couldn't resist on this occasion, especially after I picked up a couple of hundred pounds more in my most recent pay packet last Friday than I was expecting. I went out yesterday and treated myself to a Kindle Fire HD, a sort of early Christmas present to myself, I suppose, and it's a pretty impressive piece of kit. The only downside is that it can only be connected to the net through WiFi, and while its performance when it is connected is most impressive, that's of no relevance when you haven't got access to WiFi, as is the case here at my accommodation. Still, I've no doubt it will be well used when I'm out and about - I've already got an account to use the free WiFi in Wetherspoons pubs, the deluge of junk e-mails I'll probably receive from them being a small price to pay for not ruining my eyesight still further by trying to read web content on the relatively tiny screen of my phone!
And my girl arrives in London in around 15 hours time. I can't wait!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nearly there, and a traveller

This week of nights has dragged a bit, but it is finally coming to its conclusion, just tonight's shift (with a 'bonus' extra hour to work because of the clocks going back, oh joy!) to go before I get into my time off. The five day break will be pretty busy, though, because I have to make a flying visit to Cornwall on Monday, before meeting up with my daughter in London at lunchtime on Tuesday. My mileage is going to be rather dwarfed by hers this coming week, though, because the girl is currently in Birmingham, having travelled up there during the day today, staying overnight with her aunt before going on to Cumbria tomorrow morning. She'll be doing some extra miles when she's up there, too, because the friend she's staying with lives quite some distance away from the town where she's arriving - in a different county, in fact - so it's a good job she seems to have inherited my 'wanderlust' genes, and maybe my ability to navigate around railway timetables, too!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cultural hysteria

This post appeared in my blog reading list overnight, and I saw it not long after it was published, being in the midst of a quiet few minutes at work as I was, so I've had plenty of time to consider its implications. It seems to me to be evidence of a degree of paranoia in society about the issue of 'paedophilia' (I use the word in quotes because I consider it to be, in terms of current usage as opposed to its correct dictionary definition, one of the most misused in the whole English language) which is rapidly becoming indistinguishable from cultural hysteria. A number of issues seem to me to be raised by the post, which I'll attempt to address separately - from my own perspective, of course.
First of all, the question raised by the post title, 'Is it the same as underage pornography?'. My understanding of the word 'pornography' is the definition given in Wikipedia, 'the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter'. If that definition is accepted, then pictures of children playing football, or any other sport, are unequivocally not pornographic. If, however, the meaning of the word is extended to include any image that may conceivably be used by someone for purposes of 'sexual gratification' then, although this may be seen by some to be a reductio ad adsurdum, no image of any child in any situation is permissible, because there might always be a person that could use an image in that way. And that doesn't just mean photographs, it means any portrayal of a child in any film or television programme, any artwork, ancient or modern, even cartoons - it's already illegal in many jurisdictions, including the UK, to possess sexually explicit cartoon images of minors, even though the characters are completely fictional, do not exist and have never existed, except in an artist's imagination. Given that, amongst other things, attractive children are used by advertisers to attempt to induce people to buy everything from cat food to holidays, I can't imagine that such a broad definition of 'child pornography' is ever likely to be enacted, but if that's the case, who draws the arbitrary line between what constitutes pornography and what does not?
Another point regards the taking of 'unauthorised' images of children in public places, whether surreptitiously or openly. If this is deemed to be unacceptable, where does that leave the status of the literally millions of CCTV cameras monitoring seemingly everyone and everything in this country, some even, according to a recent report I read, installed in the changing rooms and toilets of certain UK schools? Is the suggestion that children should be prevented from appearing in public at all? Raising a generation of children and young people with no experience of interacting with the 'outside world' hardly seems to me to be conducive to a healthy society. As was stated in one of the comments to the original post, many children have been so inured with 'stranger danger' that they are terrified of any contact at all with any adult they don't know, and, conversely, many adults would never approach a child not known to them, no matter how great the danger or distress the child might be in, for fear of being accused of molestation. And the sad irony is that study after study has shown that around 90% of all sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by people, family members, friends and acquaintances, or authority figures, already known to the child.
Returning to the suggestion made in the original post that the sporting pictures were intended to be used for sexual gratification, even if the assertion is true, I would ask 'Who is harmed?'. If the children concerned are not aware of either the pictures being taken, or the 'nefarious' use to which they might be put, or both, in what way is any such child damaged? My daughter has posted (completely non-pornographic) pictures of herself in cyberspace. If someone saw them and used them to fuel a masturbation fantasy of some kind of which she was totally unaware, how would she be harmed? I've never taken pictures of children not personally known to me, but, given my status as a self-confessed boylover, I will admit to having used my 'mental photograph album', my memories, particularly of DBJ, in the privacy of my bedroom. Given that I never even approached him, still less molested him, in actuality, does this admission mean that I've violated him in some way? If so, how?
No-one, of any age or gender, should be subjected to unwanted sexual advances or any kind of non-consensual sexual contact, but the balance between protection and infringement of individual freedom seems to me to be in danger of tipping too far in the direction of the authoritarian, 'Big Brother', version of society. Freedoms are hard-won, and all too easily lost.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

¿Debería ir allí?

The past 24 hours have found me musing at some length on that very question (albeit not in Spanish!). Should I, could I, given the impending renewal of my single status, do what I almost did a couple of months before I first met my wife, and go to Spain, specifically to Gran Canaria. But for one consideration, it might not be a very hard decision to make. I really haven't got very much left to hold me back - except, of course, my daughter. I don't see very much of her now, but it would be pretty difficult to put myself in a position where I effectively wouldn't see her at all. It's not something I'm going to be able to decide on overnight, and nor should I, but if there is going to be anything for me in any of this fiasco masquerading as my life, I definitely feel I might be more likely to find it on 'my desert island' than in this benighted country. Dare I?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Unreasonable behaviour

Guilty as charged, apparently. Not that I've actually been asked anything by anyone, apart from a few questions on a standard questionnaire, but this exhaustive judicial process has deemed that 'the facts found proved being the Respondent's unreasonable behaviour'. Unreasonably being faithful to my wife since the day I met her, unreasonably sticking to my marriage vows, unreasonably working all hours to provide for my wife and our daughter, unreasonably suppressing my real self for over twenty years. Sentenced, as of two weeks tomorrow, to becoming an ex-husband, nearly half of my life consigned to the dustbin of history.
I knew there was a reason why I should've stuck to boys.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Vividity, and resurrecting Resurrection

For no particularly obvious reason, I've been having a series of unconnected, but markedly vivid dreams over the past few days. I've dreamed of being involved in the filming of a Time Team-style programme in an old country house, of walking on a waterlogged path beside a unidentifiable preserved, steam hauled railway (a pretty unlikely scenario, given my lack of interest in steam trains, and even greater lack of interest in getting my feet wet!), and, oddest of all, perhaps, I had a very lengthy and detailed heterosexual erotic dream. Given my recent life experiences, I can't imagine much I would be less likely to get involved with at the moment than a sexual relationship with another woman. Dreams are unaccountable things, of course, but it seems that my subconscious is following some odd byways at the moment.
I have a story, in draft in the post list of Nephelokokkygia. It's been sloshing around, in one form or another, since before I even had a blog, something like three years. I keep going back to it, reading what I've written, tinkering about with minor bits and pieces, but never really progressing it beyond the 'middle' it reached something like two years ago. I'd really like to finish it, somehow. I have thought of a pretty major plot twist in the last 24 hours, but will it be enough to resurrect Resurrection? I'm not giving any written guarantees, that's for sure.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Crumbs from the table

As I prepare, in an hour or so, to leave for work to embark on another week of nights, I've been trying to look for the positives in my present situation. At the risk of descending into yet another misery fest, I have to say that there are precious few. The only potentially good thing in the near future is that when I finish my last night shift, next Sunday morning, I'll be heading into five days off, of which, unless there are any changes of plan, I'll be spending two and a half with my daughter - the current version of half term week sees her arriving in London (after her visit to Cumbria/Northumbria) mid-afternoon on Tuesday week, and heading back to Cornwall on Friday morning. That apart, things are as grey as the weather has been in recent days. Autumn in the air, matched by autumn in my life, seemingly. I guess I need to take what crumbs of comfort I can, because it looks like being a long winter, literally and figuratively.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wreckage

On the way back from work this afternoon, less than five minutes away from my accommodation, I unexpectedly came upon a cute boy, 13 or 14. Why he wasn't in school, I don't know, but it was evidently 'official', because he was with a woman who appeared to be his mother. I looked at him, as is my wont, and he looked back, for a second or two, before quickly turning away. Not that I expected any more interest from him, but once I got indoors, and happened to see my reflection in the mirror, I could easily see why he would have averted his gaze. Looking back at me was an old, tired, unshaven face, wild-haired, given my aversion to haircuts, and looking haggard through insufficient sleep and the pain in my foot, another dose of gout having reared its head in the past 24 hours. I doubt the pain in my psyche helped the impression much, either, the look of a person whose spirit has more or less been broken by all that's happened in the recent past, but also going much further back, to the boy who could never dare to be himself, too afraid of the consequences, of what others would think, who chose instead to hide. But the one person you can never hide from is yourself. And then one day, you look in the mirror, and all that's left is the wreckage of a life, smashed beyond repair.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

So much

It was nice seeing my daughter yesterday, and it will only be two weeks until I see her again, at half term. But it underlined, once more, where I am now. I miss her so much, I miss Cornwall so much, and, specific to this trip, I was hoping so much, slender as that hope might have been, to see DBJ. But that, I guess is typical of my life. So much lost, so much out of reach, forever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Let's don't go there

Much as I'm looking forward to seeing my daughter on Sunday, I'm finding myself daydreaming as much, if not more, about the prospects of chancing upon DBJ. There are a number of reasons, if I'm rational about it, why this is a terrible idea. The most obvious is that it very probably won't happen, but there are others that might well come into play if I did see him - he'll be 15, going on 16 now, and my image of him as my perfect boy could be tarnished by seeing a more 'grown-up' version, and, even more likely, if I did find the opportunity and courage to speak to him, the result would be the kind of disinterested rejection that I dreamed, and blogged about ages ago. There's no reason, of course, why his reaction should be any different - even if he remembered/recognised me, there was never any real connection between us before, just my dreams and fantasies. For all that, though, it's so hard to let go of the tenuous hope that we could connect in some way. That's what unrequited love can do to you, I guess.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Impromptu

Half an hour or so ago, I was contemplating another Sunday mooching about rather aimlessly in London, but now I'm going to Cornwall to see my daughter instead. And not only that, I've booked accommodation for the night in the small town where I used to work, so there's always the slim, very slim hope that I might see DBJ, too. Whether seeing him would be positive or negative is difficult to say. It's probably academic, anyway, because I'm pretty sure he and his family have moved. Seeing my daughter will definitely be good, though, even if it is only for an afternoon.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Emptiness

I've been reflecting a little more on the implications of the stories I linked to yesterday, which seem to me to boil down to religionists attempting to impose their worldview on the next generation, if necessary by intimidation of or even death to any who dare to think for themselves. If conformity has to be enforced by fear, surely that is an admission by the enforcers that their philosophy is devoid of intrinsic merit, because if it was self-evidently 'the best way to live', then people would follow its tenets voluntarily. Atheists are often accused of living empty, pointless lives, but what is empty or pointless about using intelligence and reason to attempt to make sense of the universe, rather than relying on the infantilising credo of 'God did it, and that's just how it is, no need for further explanation', the philosophical equivalent of the parents' 'because I said so' justification for instructions to their offspring. Most of the advances made by humanity over the millennia have been instigated by individuals 'thinking outside the box', not by those slavishly following what went before. John Wyndham wrote this (of  'the Old People') in The Chrysalids: 'They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units.'. That seems to me to be a pretty good summary of the deleterious effect of religion on society. Let it be consigned to the dustbin of history, in my opinion, and let's make a new, better thing, based on reason rather than blind faith.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Just when you thought they couldn't get any more insane....

....the fundamentalists prove you wrong. When I first read this post, I thought it had to be a spoof, but I followed one of the links, and did a follow-up Google search, and it appears to be genuine - at least, if it is a spoof, I'm not the only one to have fallen for it. As I think I've asked before somewhere, doesn't the US have laws against inciting violence, or to protect children from this kind of lunacy? If so, why isn't this cretin behind bars? And, in the ultimate irony, this politician is described in one of the articles I came across as 'pro-life'. Yeah, I know that phrase is a euphemism for 'treat women as chattels and brood mares, and certainly not as autonomous human beings', but still. I'd like to say 'utterly unbelievable', but, sadly, it's all too believable, and there will no doubt be many who would readily vote for nightmarish theocrats like this pitiful excuse for a human being.

1600 edit: And the very next post at the same site goes to show that Christianity has far from cornered the market in vile, dangerous fundamentalist stupidity.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What to say?

I'm in one of those moods that comes upon me from time to time, sitting in front of the computer keyboard, feeling that I want to write something, but not really knowing what. It's not as if I haven't discussed the issues that I find important in my life, fifty times over, I guess, pretty much ad nauseum, really. My life situation doesn't change substantively from day to day, not least because I don't engage in many activities, if any, that might facilitate such a change. The news of the day is that there is no news, because all I've done is work, staying on this morning to cover the first part of an early shift after one of my colleagues rang in sick, sleep, do my washing and cook myself a meal. Hardly earth shattering stuff. Routine. One of those insignificant, forgettable days, that make up many people's lives, I suppose, not just mine. It seems such a waste, really, given how pitifully short, in absolute terms, human lives are, that so many of our limited supply of days are taken up by nothing more than the mechanistic process of everyday life, and for what? To earn enough money to repeat the same, vapid experience tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. In those terms, it seems like a circular argument, a pointless exercise. But how to break the cycle, and make life more worthwhile, or at least to give the impression of being more worthwhile? I don't have the answer, because if I had, I would enact it. Or would I? Risk aversion is almost an instinct. Cling to the familiar, even if for no reason other than that it is familiar. Safe. The anodyne low road, but still a road that leads to the grave, ultimately.
The question is not just what to say, but what to do? The problem is that I don't know.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Quiet Sunday

After the 'outing and abouting' of the past few days, I've had a pretty quiet day today. I did venture along to the end of the road for some grocery shopping at lunchtime, but that has been the extent of my interaction with the outside world. Part of that is because I'm starting my latest night shift week tonight - I'll be leaving for work in just over an hour - but I was also pretty tired this morning, not helped by the fact that I was woken by a phone call from work at 7:00, asking me to go in for an extra shift. I blearily declined, not least because, without a car and with an engineering work closure affecting the train service until mid-afternoon, the round trip 'commute' would've taken about four hours! Unwelcome as my 'alarm call' was, though, it proved to have a hidden benefit in that I was able to top up my sleep this afternoon to the tune of around three hours, so I'll at least be starting the night week feeling reasonably fresh.
I spoke to my daughter earlier on, as we began to plan getting together during her half-term holiday at the end of the month. I've got most of the week off, so she'll probably come up here for a few days, although she has got the possibility of a visit to a friend in Northern England in the offing as well, so nothing has been finalised yet. I just hope I get to have a couple of days of quality time with her - of all the things that have been lost in this year's upheavals, not seeing my daughter on a regular basis has been perhaps the most difficult for me. Yes, I speak to her on the phone most days, but it's not the same.
I've posted another little story in Nephelokokkygia today, and its genesis was quite interesting, in a way. The train of thought that led to words on a computer screen was set in motion by nothing more than smelling a fragrance in a West London pub yesterday evening. Strange how these things work, sometimes.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

If I could choose a friend....

....I came across a candidate this afternoon. I went on 'eye candy patrol' around West London after work, without a great deal of success, almost all of the cuties I saw being markedly too young, even for my tastes. One, though, caught my attention for reasons other than carnal. He was one of a group of three boys who joined the bus I was on a mere couple of hundred yards from where I used to live in my first sojourn in the metropolis, thirty years ago. They were all roughly the same age, 11-ish, but the one I noticed was the smallest, and possibly the youngest. He was without doubt, though, the leader of his little 'gang'. He had attitude, but in the right sort of way, full of bounce and self-confidence, maybe a hint of mischief and devilment, but nothing that seemed malicious. The sort of boy I really like, and not for any salacious reasons, but just simply because of the sense of joie de vivre, the capacity for fun that boys of that age can have in full measure. Not, needless to say, that it would ever happen, but I would have loved to have been able to make some sort of connection with him. Another ship passed in the night, or the afternoon, as the case may be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Perspective

You think you're in a bad place, and maybe, in absolute terms, you are. But then you find out that someone you care very much about is in an even worse place. And it seems so selfish to think of your own issues. Oh, for a magic wand, or a genie's lamp, to make it all right. But they only exist in fairy tales. Real life is far crueller.

Love & best wishes to all, and most of all to David
Sammy B

Gone

My daughter's Tumblr has disappeared from cyberspace. She didn't mention it when I was talking to her an hour or so ago, so I don't know whether she's deleted it herself, or whether Tumblr have taken offence at something she's posted and nuked it. Her blog's demise seems to underline something I've been thinking about this afternoon and evening - I've been looking back through some of the early comments people left on my blog, going back to its first, 'Semicentennial', incarnation. Comments left by people, and about people, who are no longer around in Blogland, for various reasons. It's only two and a half years ago, but it almost seems like a whole different life, in some ways. It was all new to me then, and there seemed, at least with some people, to be a genuine sense of connection, of something greater than the sum of its parts, but that feeling began to wane, abruptly, with the realisation that one particular blog, rather central to 'our' corner of cyberspace, wasn't what it purported to be. 'Firsts' always tend to stick in the memory, for obvious reasons, I suppose - first love, first heartbreak....first betrayal. It's not the same now. Much that was worthwhile doesn't appear to me to be present anymore. Gone. But not forgotten.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B