What's the collective noun....

....for a group of cute boys? There must have been a 'Baker Day' in some of the schools in the area where I work, because there were quite a few school age youngsters out and about in 'civvies' when I finished at lunchtime, most notably a group of four boys coming out of the station as I was going in, who were all pretty damn gorgeous, if too young. A pulchritudity of boys, I suggest!
Something odd is happening in connection with my blog at the moment - the post 'Oddities', from about a week ago, has, ironically enough given its title, received fifty or more views in the past couple of days. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, so I would guess some web crawler or similar has got its claws into the post. Each to their own, I suppose.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lucky, lucky boy

Here's something that will surprise my regular readers (brave souls as you are!) - a post with some good news in it!
The tale actually began after I finished work yesterday evening. I needed a few grocery items, so I briefly called into a supermarket near the station on the way to catching my train back. I was short of time, and rushing a bit, but I still remembered by 'eco-friendly' credentials, and fished a carrier bag out of my backpack to reuse. I shovelled my purchases into the bag, and made a rapid exit to the station, arriving on the platform with about two minutes to spare. I rang my daughter as the train was running in, as I hadn't had the chance to speak to her earlier in the evening, and spent virtually the whole 30 minute journey chatting to her, only ringing off as the train was arriving at 'domicile-ville' station. I picked up my shopping - and realised my backpack was missing. I'd taken it off of my shoulders to get the carrier bag, put it on the floor by the checkout while I was packing my shopping, and forgotten, in my haste, to pick it up again, and hadn't noticed my mistake until that moment. I was mortified - my nearly-new Kindle was in the bag, grievous enough a loss, but, even more significantly, it contained my medication as well, a situation which had the potential to cause me serious problems. It was too late to ring the supermarket by that time, as they would already have closed, so there was little I could do apart from heading back to my accommodation, castigating myself every step of the way.
I had little expectation, having left my bag in a West London supermarket, that I would ever see it again, but I rang the shop shortly after their advertised opening time this morning. After being bounced through a series of options offered by a 'virtual switchboard', I found myself talking to a voicemail box. Great. I left my message and my contact details, and gave them a couple of hours to respond. When I hadn't heard anything by 10:00, I tried to ring again, ended up at the same voicemail stage, only to hear 'the inbox is full, you are unable to leave a message, goodbye'. End of call. Bloody marvellous! Needless to say, my opinion of the supermarket concerned, and my mood, were pretty low at that stage, but I decided, far more in hope than expectation, to leave for work half an hour earlier than usual and go to the shop, just on the off chance that the bag had been handed in. I walked into the shop, went to the customer service desk, and, after having struggled for a minute or two to explain my problem to an employee whose native language evidently wasn't English, spoke to another, seemingly slightly more senior employee, who said 'Yes, we have the bag'. Five minutes later, I was walking out of the store, reunited with my bag, and with its contents intact. To say I was amazed is an understatement, but I remembered to be grateful - I thanked the supermarket staff profusely - and relieved, too. It's one of the few pieces of good luck I've had in all of this traumatic year, and all the more welcome for that. After all, it gets pretty boring if you lose all the time!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Incurable

If only I could wish it away, I'd do it in a heartbeat. It's like dragging a millstone around in my soul, all the time. And still they call it a choice.
I'm a hopeless case, there's no doubt about it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I want to go home

All very well, apart from the fact that I haven't got one.
It hasn't, in all honesty, been a very good day. It's the last day of my time off - I'm due to get up at stupid o'clock for early turn in the morning - the weather has been vile all day, cold and unrelentingly wet, and, even by my standards, I've felt very isolated. On top of that, I seem to have come across all the rude, selfish arseholes in the western world, London at its uncaring worst. To say I'm homesick for Cornwall is putting it mildly, underlined by a number of reminders of my adoptive county, including a group of rugby fans up for the England international from the Falmouth area, as I deduced from the placenames they were quoting, and even a holiday magazine in a shop with the headline 'Beach Heaven' referring to the area. I've no idea what I can realistically do about it, given that my job is here, and if I did go back, I'd be effectively homeless, but in the face of many more days like today, I'd be sorely tempted to just pull the plug and go for it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Oddities

It's been a rather strange day, all in all. Not in terms of how it began, or how I planned to spend it - I woke up at least an hour earlier than I ideally would have liked, was unable to get back to sleep again, and then got ready, a little earlier than anticipated, to head up to London - but in terms of what I encountered while I was out and about.
A couple of religionists were among the most odd of the oddities. The first was, perhaps, not quite fully compos mentis, as he began loudly reciting biblical extracts on the top deck of a bus, from the seat immediately behind me, as it happened, before being engaged in conversation by another man who identified himself as a 'born-again Christian'. Given that they were so close to me, and that the volume of the exchange was hardly less than the initial declamation, I couldn't help but hear them agreeing on the literal truth of every word of the bible, and that the 'end times' were upon us. I was sorely tempted to turn and ask them when they had last eaten shellfish, or worn clothing made of mixed fibres, and why, in the reasonable expectation that it would have been recently, they hadn't been stoned to death, but I managed to restrain the impulse, largely out of self-interest, I have to say - I wasn't really in the mood for the sort of discussion that probably would have ensued. Then, little more than an hour later, and apropos of nothing at all, I was approached near Marble Arch by another man, who said 'Hello, Jesus loves you', before quickly walking away without giving me the chance to respond. Just as well again, really, because I doubt that what came to mind would have pleased him, namely that whatever Jesus may or may not have thought, even taking into consideration the dubious premise that he existed at all, evidence suggests that many of his followers would, in the face of my being both gay and a fairly outspoken atheist, advocate that I should be killed, not exactly indicative of any sort of love.
Then this evening, as I visited one of my regular licensed haunts on the way back to 'domicile-ville', I found myself in another unaccustomed position, being drawn towards, at least in the sense of looking at, and even making eye contact with, a male who was well beyond the age of consent. He did have a certain boyish look about him, but he wasn't even one of the 'barely legal' individuals I occasionally come across, he must have been at least five years the 'legal' side of the line. Not, of course, that anything came of it - I'm still old, fat and unattractive, at the end of the day - but it was the sort of thing that makes me wonder what might happen if a confluence of circumstances resulted in my having to make an actual decision along those lines. It has never, consciously, been what I want, but who knows what is bubbling under the surface, especially in the wake of recent upheavals. Strange times.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Inertia

Here I am, sitting reasonably comfortably a few feet away from a nice fire (albeit a 'flame-effect' gas fire), having had an enjoyable, if rather larger than anticipated meal and a few beers. Faced with the dilemma of it getting fairly late, and still needing to get back to my domicile at some point, but of finding my current situation more than a little congenial, I'm having difficulty in finding the incentive to leave. Especially as all that's waiting for me at 'home' is my 15 by 8 'cell', and solitude. Maybe, as I said to my daughter when I spoke to her a little earlier, I should just curl up and hibernate right here. Someone wake me in the spring, please!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Weekender

For the first time since my last visit to our old home in Cornwall, the best part of six months ago, I've spent more than one night away from my accommodation in 'domicile-ville' this weekend, staying with my brother and his family in Kent. The main object of the exercise was to take my brother and sister-in-law for their birthday meal, postponed from September, and that was achieved, albeit not quite in the way that was originally envisaged. It looked for most of yesterday morning as though the outing was going to have to be rearranged again, because my sister-in-law wasn't feeling too well, but after a little rest, she declared herself well enough to go out for lunch, rather than the evening meal we'd had in mind. This turned out to be the first of two pieces of serendipity, because, after some prevarication as to where to go, we found ourselves in a village pub ten or so minutes drive from their house, and which has recently reopened under new management and of whose food good reports had been starting to emerge. And they were right, for once - the food was excellent, and not by any means overly expensive. It turned out to be one of the best pub meals I've had in years, and, more importantly, given that it was my joint birthday present to them, my guests had much the same opinion.
The second piece of good fortune was linked to the first in more ways than one. My sister-in-law had wanted to eat at lunchtime because, given her indifferent health, she didn't think she'd be up to a late night, which left my brother and I free to go out yesterday evening, and arrangements were soon made for us to meet up with some old friends of ours who I hadn't seen for a couple of years, one of them being my closest (non-related) female friend. I was a bit nervous about how she might react to my divorce and the reasons behind it, but she was so lovely and supportive, as I should have expected, as was her husband, who's also one of my oldest and closest friends. The evening as a whole was thoroughly enjoyable, and something I very much hope to repeat, sooner rather than later. So as not to leave the connection to lunchtime hanging, the previous time I'd been in the village pub where we'd eaten, which was several years ago, was to play in a pub quiz which marked the final ever appearance of an almost perfect quiz team line-up, including myself and my female friend, perfect because as well as all being good 'quizzers' in our own right, we covered each others' weaknesses in the subjects we were individually strongest in. Not only did that team never lose, we never even came close to losing. Nevermore, though, as spake the raven, because one of our number emigrated to Australia shortly after that match, and it's a bit far to  commute to a quiz!
Today has been rather quieter, a family day whose centrepiece was a very, very good Sunday lunch cooked by my brother, all most enjoyable, especially in comparison to my now rather habitually solitary lifestyle. A good weekend, all in all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Happy Birthday, David

I wish you all you would wish for yourself.

((Hugs))

Love & best wishes

Sammy B

Falling out of love

Or not, as the case may be. I woke 90 minutes or so ago from a dream of my ex-wife, a dream in which we had reconciled and were about to remarry. It will never happen in actuality, in any foreseeable circumstances, but it's illustrative of what's going on in my subconscious. I wish, in a way, that I could fall out of love with her, because it would make the process of adjustment to my new situation so much easier, but I just can't. It's hardly a surprise, though - as I might have said somewhere before, I've never really fallen out of love with any of the people in my life I've had strong feelings towards, so the fact that the person who had meant the most, for the longest time, in my life is still embedded so deeply in my psyche is pretty predictable, in all honesty.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Meeting and meandering

I met up with my brother in North London yesterday, close to where he's taking a work-related course this week. We went out for drinks and something to eat, and it was all very congenial. The conversation was fairly wide-ranging, although almost any conversation would fall into that bracket compared to what my circumstances usually entail, helping to resuscitate my sociability quotient somewhat. He seemed to be keen to repeat the dose, possibly as early as today, but it seems that the workload of the course is rather more than he expected, so I reverted to solitary-ish meandering instead. Even though it was a school day, it wasn't a completely eye-candy free zone - one bus I was on was swamped by a large group of French tween/teens, presumably on some sort of educational trip, and one or two of them were very cute. At least sticking to 'window shopping' doesn't involve having to overcome any language barriers!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Chinese Whispers

I had an interesting conversation while I was on my break at work yesterday afternoon. I rang my cousin and best friend, because yesterday was his birthday, and I wanted to pass on my good wishes. He knows, of course, about my divorce and the reasons behind it, and about most of where I am in the aftermath. Others of his branch of the family seem to have acquired a different picture of events, though. He told me that his uncle had asked him what he knew about me walking out on my wife and daughter to go and live with another man. Whaaat?!, as my daughter said when I mentioned it to her later in the evening. A little more background, though, shed some light on where such a tale might have originated. My sister, who I, frankly, loathe and haven't spoken to for several years, had seemingly visited Manchester for a wedding, and had stayed with some of our relatives up there. Who had told her about my marital breakdown I don't know, but it certainly wasn't me, and I'd lay pretty good odds on it not being my ex-wife, either, so it looks as though she's heard something from somewhere, added two and two, come up with a good deal more than four, then decided to spread her version around anyway. That apart, it was good to talk to my cousin again, for half an hour or so, and catch up with our real-life news as well as the product of the rumour mill. It's one of those 'talking a good fight' scenarios, given that it's been proposed several times over recent months, but we've provisionally arranged for me to go to Manchester in the middle of next month and actually get together. I hope the plans finally do come together this time, because although we do speak on the phone semi-regularly, it's more or less exactly three years since I've seen him face-to-face, and a couple of years since I've been to Manchester at all. I wouldn't say I actively miss the place, but it is, just, still the area where I've spent the largest chunk of my adult life - thirteen years, as against twelve for Cornwall - and I did have some good times there.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Downtime

Yesterday was the last of seven early turns in a row, and, predictably enough, I was left feeling pretty tired by last night. Still, I've just got one late shift to work today, and then I'm off work for nearly a fortnight. I have got one or two things planned - I'll be meeting up with my brother tomorrow, all being well, as he's on a course in London this coming week, and I'll be going down to his place next weekend to take him and my sister-in-law out for their birthday meal, postponed from seven or eight weeks ago - but, for the most part, I'm mostly looking forward to simply chilling out and recharging my batteries. Whether that will come to fruition remains to be seen, but that's the plan at present.
Given that I didn't have to get up too early this morning, I went out for a few drinks after work yesterday, and was rewarded, if that's the right word, by a little eye candy - there was even one who was indisputably legal, as he produced the requisite ID and was served at the bar at one place I visited, but still decidedly boyish looking. Not that he was any more accessible to me than my usual cuties - he was with a good looking young lady - but it was something a little different, by my standards. The 'eye candy of the day' award went to a much more predictable candidate, though - an 11/12 year old boy, waiting with his parents for the same train as me as I headed back to 'domicile-ville' last night. Blond, cute, playful, just irresistible, from my point of view. Irresistible, but as out of reach as if he lived on Mars. FML.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

D - Day

D-i-v-o-r-c-e day, that is. As of around 10:00 this morning, I'm officially a single man again, after a couple of weeks short of 19½ years of marriage. I was at work when the deed was done, and I was really too busy to get overly stressed by the goings on 200 or so miles away in a Plymouth court, despite my fearing yesterday that I might end up having some sort of meltdown. Thinking about it rationally, who would have gained by my cracking up? No-one, as far as I can see. It certainly wouldn't have changed anything - my ex-wife, as she now is, had, with hindsight, decided within minutes, if not seconds, of my coming out to her in February that the marriage was over, and once she gets an idea in her head, it's virtually unshakable.
What none of the foregoing answers, though, is what I do now. The two things I want most are, in one case, as close to unobtainable as makes almost no difference, and in the other, could involve deeply upsetting, and possibly completely alienating, the one person I've now got left in my life to whom it really matters whether I live or die. I wish I had an easy answer, or even a relatively difficult one, rather than the intractable maze I seem to be trapped in at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Appalling

I don't comment on stories like this very often, because I'm well aware it leaves me open to charges of hypocrisy, but this case is one that I find just as horrifying as anyone else undoubtedly would. A young boy being abducted, abused and threatened in this way is atrocious, heartbreaking and unforgivable. I really hope the boy concerned (and also the girl who was abducted but seemingly not abused, to judge by the report) gets all the help he needs to recover from his trauma. It's difficult, in many cases, for me to castigate anyone, having the desires that I have, but I have nothing but revulsion for this offender and his crimes. This is the sort of case that adds fuel to the flames of hatred of anyone who is attracted to younger people, but I hope people can understand that few with those attractions would ever do anything like this. I know I'm part of the same 'spectrum' as this man, and many would say I was little, if at all, better than him, but the things he did to that boy are as far from anything I would ever want to do as I can imagine.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Who am I trying to convince?

Myself, probably. I've been thinking about the past week, and the time my daughter and I spent in and around London, and it occurred to me that many, if not most, of the cuties who caught my eye were decidedly at the younger end of my 'age of attraction' scale. There was one in particular, on Thursday morning in Regent Street, a boy of around 11, who, apart from his hair colour, which was a sort of autumnal reddish-brown, was so like DBJ at that age, utterly beautiful, but he was just the cream of a largish crop of boys of that age, and even a little younger, who I found my gaze drawn towards. When this sort of phase, and these things do seem, for whatever reason, to run in phases, has happened before, it has often led to my plumbing the depths of self-loathing, of buying into the propaganda and thinking of myself as nothing more than a totally worthless paedophile deserving of nothing other than revulsion and contempt. And there would be many people who, I have little doubt, would say that's exactly what I am, but, on this occasion, not myself. Because, ultimately, I'm only looking, with no conscious intention of enacting my desires. Maybe it's easy to say that in the absence of any more concrete temptation, of any access to a boy of that age, but I really believe that I wouldn't engage so young a boy sexually, both for his sake and mine, his because while I certainly would never, ever knowingly hurt a boy physically, I could and probably would hurt him emotionally, and I wouldn't ever want that, either, and mine, because I really have no ambition to spend my declining years in jail, as a member of the most hated, lowest of the low, class of criminal. I feel, despite what the haters might think, that I have a moral sense, and that includes not doing anything sexual without informed consent, consent derived from genuine knowledge of what was proposed and the motivations behind it. I still don't believe that a young person has to necessarily be 16 (based on the age of consent in this country) to be able to make that decision, but I can't imagine that more than a tiny handful of those as young as the beautiful boy I saw the other day would have the capacity to realistically weigh the issues and decide for themselves. So, as long as I just look, admire, but otherwise leave the objects of my attraction sacrosanct, while I'm not claiming to be a good person, I can't believe I'm irredeemably bad, either.

2300 edit: On my way back from work, I saw another mind-manglingly cute boy leaving 'worktown' station as I was arriving there. And, almost needless to say, he was another one around the 11-ish mark. This week certainly seems to have had a theme.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The last goodbye?

I've just seen my daughter off at the station, on her way back to Cornwall. It's unlikely, unless something unexpected happens, that I'll see her again this year. I suggested that she could come and stay with me at Christmas, but she's made it clear she doesn't want to. She might well be going to another meet-up with her internet friends on December 27, though, so it's obviously a case of knowing my place, and my significance to her. Much the same as her mother, really, keep my nose to the grindstone and keep the money rolling in, at least until the financial vultures get their grasping hands on it, or I drop dead, or both. And, at the risk of sounding revoltingly selfish, what do I get? Fuck all. As per usual. What the fuck do I carry on doing it for? Self-sacrifice is one thing, self-immolation is quite another.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Doing the right thing

My daughter and I were out and about in London again yesterday, doing a couple of things she wanted to do, more or less touristy things, and just meandering around seeing the sights. And talking. Which led to me doing what I try not to do when she's around, and falling into a very low moment, thinking about the 'What do I next?' question that's been in my mind for the past week or so. The problem is that whatever I do, someone is going to get hurt, badly. If I follow my heart, and go to Gran Canaria, my daughter is going to be hurt. If I follow my head, and stay, carrying on doing my well-paid but thoroughly unloved job, living alone in my hermit's cell, and with the possible additional issue of having most of whatever money I do earn taken away by the financial vultures, I'm undoubtedly going to be hurt, maybe to the point of finding it all intolerable, which would, of course, rebound on my daughter.
The specific thought that almost reduced me to tears yesterday afternoon was one of those unanswerable questions that sometimes spring to mind. How, despite trying for 20 years and more to do the right thing by those I love, of suppressing my real self and working myself to the point of ill-health, how, after all that, can it all have gone so wrong? And now, when there's almost nothing left, can I bring myself once more to sacrifice what I want for the benefit of someone else, albeit the person I love more than anyone in the world? I wish I knew the answer, because I most assuredly don't.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B