Girls, boys, trains, heartache

Sixteen hours and five minutes it took in the end. My day trip to Plymouth to my daughter's Christmas concert. The actual travelling took over ten hours, the return journey in particular being decidedly tortuous, although that was my fault, up to a point - had I left a quarter of an hour earlier, I'd have been back well over an hour sooner, but I decided to stay with my daughter until the last possible moment. In fact, I was seriously considering staying overnight in Plymouth at one point - I'd found a hotel room online - but the knowledge that I would have had to get up ridiculously early to allow enough time to avoid running the risk of being late for work today eventually put paid to that scheme.
The concert itself was much as expected, lots of seasonally themed music and a few Christmas carols, all performed reasonably competently, including my daughter's little contribution, accompanying a Hawaiian-style song on her ukulele. There were aspects of the event I was uncomfortable with, though - the afternoon performance I attended, while open to parents and family, was more for the school itself, so I was one of only a smattering of adults, surrounded by umpteen 11-18 year old girls. Some would find that kind of thing enjoyable, no doubt, but it wasn't my thing, at all - I felt decidedly out of place. I found myself distinctly annoyed, too, about the overt attempts by the minister of the church where the concert was held to proselytise a captive audience of, largely, children, in his introductory speech - the school has a fair number of pupils from a non-Christian background, apart from anything else, as well as, presumably, more than one atheist parent, so for the 'message' to be pushed quite so shamelessly at what was supposed to be a secular event was something I found distasteful. One or two of the songs got under my skin on a more personal level, too - one in particular, sung as a solo by one of my daughter's friends, on the theme of love, home and family, left me aching inside, and fighting back tears. Amongst other things, it's left me doubtful about whether to take up my brother's invitation to spend Christmas with his family - I can envisage myself having another meltdown on the scale of the one I had when I was down at their place just before my birthday. The contrast between what they have, and what I've lost, might be too much to cope with, and I don't want to spoil their Christmas by moping around like a wet weekend. I'll probably have a chat with my brother over the next few days.
Apart from the obvious pleasure of seeing and spending time with my daughter, there were some other bright spots, mostly involving cute boys. Getting off of the same train as me when I arrived at lunchtime were a group of four boys, ranging in age from 15/16 down to 11/12. The youngest boy, in particular, was an absolute cutie, but I'd have quite happily taken all four of them on, simultaneously if necessary! That seemed to set the tone - apart from my time at the church, with its deluge of girls, my meanderings around the city centre offered plenty of very palatable eye candy, and even on the very last train of the day, at almost midnight, I shared a carriage for ten minutes or so with an older teen, maybe 18 or 19, a guitar case strapped to his back, who was more than a little eye-catching. Not, of course, that he'd have been remotely interested in an old fart like me, even in the unlikely event of his being gay, but still pleasant to observe.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B