Another retrospective

As you do, or some do, at this time of year. I guess, compared to its two predecessors, 2014 hasn't been so bad. After all, my life didn't disintegrate like it did in 2012, and I didn't spend months being ill and weeks in hospital like last year. I end the year having something resembling a proper home, even if I don't own the property itself or most of its contents, and, by far the best, I've got my daughter here with me. We had cuddles when I came in a while ago, and when I told her that my highest priority for 2015 was for us to stay friends, she replied by saying that would be for always, which certainly engendered a warm glow. Do I deserve her love? Probably not, given all that's happened, but I'm not going to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. K, and my relationship with her, aside, though, what else would make me happy in the New Year? Well, I guess, much what I've wanted for several years, but maybe with a twist, perhaps born of my getting older - after all, I'll be 55 in four months time, not even able to claim to be in my 'early fifties' anymore - what I want now is to be able to be close enough to a boy to have the sort of cuddles K and I had earlier, loving, affectionate, but sexless. I can't lie, if I found a boy who did want to play sexy, I wouldn't say no, but that side of things really isn't that big a deal anymore. Love is the thing that matters, the thing I want the most, by a huge margin. I can't imagine it will happen, any more than this year, last year, or the year before, but I'm still wishing, dreaming, hoping.
Well, we're pretty close to 2015, at least here in the UK, and my old year, certainly, is close to its end, given that I'll need to go to bed soon to facilitate getting up at 4:15 to go to work, so I'd like to wish all of you who are kind enough to visit and read my meanderings a happy and prosperous New Year. I hope 2015 is good to you all - and maybe even to me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

'Good and kind'

There are times when I really feel like aiming some trenchant remarks in my ex's direction. I never do, because I know she's too fragile to cope with any such thing, but some occasions bring me closer than others. Like today, when she texted me about the amount of money she wants for the coming month, with a bit tacked on the end about me being 'a good and kind man'. Not good enough to transcend her precious 'values', though, and not kind enough to be allowed to be part of her life. If that sounds bitter and twisted, that's probably because it is. Something to do, maybe, with spending twenty-odd years of your life trying to give the person you love the best you can, only to have it all thrown back in your face in a heartbeat.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Winterish

It's been pretty damn chilly today (by the standards I'm used to, of course!), not exactly what I would've chosen to mark my return to getting up at stupid o'clock after a few weeks when early shifts have been. mostly, conspicuous by their absence for me. At least it didn't snow, unlike many other parts of the country - my ex rang to let me know K had moved on to her next port of call this morning, and described having to shift quite a bit of snow from the car before she could give my girl a lift to the station. And welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned - as I say every winter, if I never see another snowflake in my life, it will be a day too soon!

Love & best wishes
Sammy B

Solitaire

After the pre-planned 'hone alone' day yesterday, I was hoping to get out and about today, given London's availability of Boxing Day public transport. In the event, though, I've ventured no further than 24 hours ago, because I woke up this morning feeling decidedly under the weather, a bit of a flare-up of the symptoms of last weekend. I think, overall, staying in has been for the best - after staying warm, swallowing meds and intermittently snoozing, I think - or at least hope - that the worst is past, and that I'll be fit to head back to work tomorrow morning. These past couple of days have been advantageous in another way, too - I've largely come to terms, I think, with the fact that once K has gone on her way, after her education is complete, I'll be on my own permanently, and, as I get older, I'll doubtless be less inclined to venture out as much as I do now, so that becoming used, or used once more, to my own company is a useful preparation for that situation. Gradually back away from the world, in so far as I'm involved with it now, which isn't, in all honesty, greatly, before the final, inevitable withdrawal.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Home for Christmas

The first time I've been able to say that since 2011, having arrived back at the flat around an hour ago after a fairly restrained trip to my local. Home alone, as I've already said, K being away, but home nonetheless. And, unless anything unforeseen happens, I won't be leaving the building again until sometime on Boxing Day.
I've even had a little prefatory Christmas present - a boy moment. A little boy, but none the worse for that. After vacillating for a while before leaving the pub about options for my evening meal - I had, and have, stuff in the fridge and freezer, but was lacking the motivation to do anything with it - I decided I fancied a Chinese takeaway. I didn't even know if the place down the road from the pub would actually be open, but it turned out that they were, so in I went, and ordered. The only other person in the 'public area' of the shop was a little guy of 6 or 7 I'd seen there once before, the son (or possibly grandson) of one of the staff. He looked more Mediterranean than East Asian, a pretty enough little thing, but not in a sexual way, even for me. He was bouncing what we used, as kids, to call a Powerball around, a small and very lively article, rather like the boy himself, and it wasn't long at all before I found myself involved in an impromptu game of 'catch' (or 'drop', by me as much as by him!) while I was waiting for my food to be prepared. It only lasted a few minutes, of course, but it was just one of those things that happens occasionally which can nudge me into half-believing that not everything in my life is darkness.
And, on that reasonably positive note, and given that, in this time zone at least, we're only a little over two hours away from the 'big day', I'd like to wish all my readers a very happy and peaceful festive season. Enjoy, guys!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

And then there was one

K went off to the Midlands this morning, and will be away, in all probability, until after New Year - she's staying with her mum until the 27th, then going on to one, or maybe two friends' places in the same general part of the world. So, for the second time in three years, it's just me for the festive season, albeit partly by choice - I was invited to my brother's, but it wasn't really practicable, given that I'm on earlies on Saturday, and there are no trains on Boxing Day. I did most of my grocery shopping for the week this morning, and I've treated myself to a couple of nice things to live up to the usual seasonal indulgence, a nice bottle of fizzy stuff for Christmas Day, and some posh ice cream, to be specific. This is, of course, all assuming that my health holds up - I still feel like I'm teetering on the brink of not being well at all, the meds I'm swallowing just about seeming to keep it under control at the moment. Whether that will be the same after the two night shifts I have to do before my Christmas break remains to be seen.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

F'lup

I'm still not sure quite how, but I not only managed to cook our festive dinner, but to eat it as well, despite it being on the large side. K enjoyed it, which is the main thing. I saw a post earlier about a light-hearted secular seasonal card, with the logo 'Axial tilt is the reason for the season', which I rather liked. As it's the shortest day (for us Northern Hemisphere types), I'll just say - Happy Solstice!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cat mode

I've been asleep for something like 14 of the past 24 hours. Not because I've suddenly discovered my inner cat, though, but because I really haven't been well at all. I thought, this time yesterday, I was on the way to coming down with something really nasty - I had a headache, shivers, aches and pains, and a sore throat - but, after at least double the amount of sleep I would normally expect, and plying myself with assorted medication, I do finally feel somewhat better. I haven't been out today, though, but, at least, I should be able to cook the planned 'alternative Christmas' dinner for K and I in a while, before my girl heads off to her mum's tomorrow. I just hope the symptoms don't flare up again - even though I'm having a quiet, 'Christmas-free' festive season, I have no ambition to feel ill while I'm doing it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

You can tell it's nearly Christmas....

....when your local is noisily full - of people you've never seen before, and probably won't see again until this time next year! I can remember my dad grousing, on occasions, about 'once a year drinkers', and here I am, doing the same! Never mind, it's going to be my and K's 'alternative Christmas' this weekend - she's off on Monday to spend the festive season with her mum - so I guess I should stop being so 'Bah, humbug!' and get into the spirit of things.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Education

The one thing theocrats hate above all else, because they know, ultimately, that their influence can only hold sway if their congregations are prevented from assessing the merits of their nonsense in the light of knowledge and reason. Hence the appalling events in Pakistan yesterday. Eventually, and I'm convinced of this, humanity will grow up enough to reject the prehistoric superstitions that hold so many in thrall at present. I just hope that no more innocents have to be slaughtered in the interim, although I know in my heart that my hope is in vain.
Incidentally, this is post number 1500 in this blog. I wish it could've involved a less traumatic subject. Thank you all for your continued support.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fatalistic

Another day, another news bulletin, another panicked descent into a slough of despond. The more I hear and see, the more convinced I am that I'll die in prison, or some kind of 'concentration camp', or do the deed myself to evade that consequence. I could talk at length about the hatred of the world at large, but, when it comes down to it, no-one could ever hate me more than I hate myself.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Pity life didn't imitate art

The Mail on Sunday had a frothing dose of 'outrage' on its front page this weekend, around the BBC's decision to broadcast a reading of a short story about the fictional assassination of Margaret Thatcher. As far as I'm concerned, no public figure in this country, in my lifetime, has been so richly deserving of being assassinated than that vile petit bourgoeise harridan who destroyed so many lives, including my dad's, with her 'greed is good', 'no such thing as society' policies. One of the quotes that might have made me laugh at its hyperbole, had it not been for its source, was the one which described the story as 'a sick book from a sick mind'. Who was the quote from? Norman Tebbit, one of the most deeply unpleasant people ever to have served in any UK government, in my opinion, almost more doctrinaire in his Thatcherism than Thatcher herself. 'A sick mind'? Physician, heal thyself. The woman was dreadful almost beyond words when she was alive, to have her become the subject of a posthumous 'personality cult' is positively stomach-turning.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The one?

On a bus, not very close to here, at lunchtime. Dressed as though having been (or going) to school. Not of legal age, but not too far off. 14, most likely. I looked, the look was returned. Then, a few stops later, it was time for me to get off. There were traffic lights just ahead of the stop, so the bus didn't move off immediately, because of the queue. I glanced up, towards the top deck. He was looking down at me. I looked away, looked back, and he was still looking. No sign of fright, of freaking out, of distaste. What was there? Curiosity? Interest? Then the lights changed, the bus went on its way, and the moment was gone. The answer to any question was almost certainly 'no', why would a reasonably cute guy of his age show the least interest in a fat middle aged bloke? But what about the 1%, that remote chance that, after all these years, he might have been the one? If he was, and I've missed my chance, all I would want to do is to tear my own throat out, and messily, slowly, bleed to death.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Dream or nightmare?

I'm in my local, and a family who have just left after having a meal have left me pondering the question above. A family consisting of the requisite parents, and three cute boys. Could I have coped as 'patriarch' of such a family? Somehow, I very much doubt it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Yet more Christian love and compassion

He'll probably be taking the credit for poor little Ronin's suicide. Fucking scumbag.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What I don't need....

....when I'm already not exactly feeling at one with the world, for various reasons, is a bunch of 'media luvvy' types (there are some well known film and TV studios not too far from here, which figure in K's career plans) ya-yaing about Cornwall. Not 'my' bit of Cornwall, but close enough to rub salt into the wounds. Here's what you could've won - or did win, and then lost again. They've gone now, so I'll drink some more beer. But it won't dull the sense of loss, needless to say.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sacrificed

Another young life sacrificed to the herd, to the bigotry learned from the cradle in societies dominated by organised religion and their prehistoric 'values'. Another fucking heartbreak. R.I.P., Ronin.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The corner

The one I've painted myself into, that is, seems to be getting smaller by the day. K and I came as close to an argument, before I went to work last night, as we have since she moved in. I was more to blame than her, because I reacted, not so much to what she did, but to how it reminded me of other things, past and present. It reminded me both of how isolated I am, in literal and sociological terms, and also of how her mother and I related, or more accurately, failed to relate to each other during the latter part of our marriage. K and I did, I think, mend fences before I had to leave, but it's left me with a sense of having to walk on eggshells as regards what subjects, or aspects of subjects, I can talk to my daughter about. And not wanting to lose her as well as everything else that's gone, that is inevitably going to lead to a 'blanding-down' of our interactions, an aversion to talking about anything that might be in any way controversial. Just like this blog, really. There's going to be a lot more having to be held inside. Whether that is, ultimately, a good thing is doubtful, to say the least.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Withdrawal

I start nights tonight, and managed to get back to sleep for a while after K had left for school, but it wasn't a comfortable experience, in a psychological sense. I had a dream, almost a nightmare, about everything in my life breaking down, leaving my dream avatar almost at the point of mental breakdown. Then I woke, for the second time, to hear two radio news stories which have left me even more unsettled, fearful of what this society wants for people like me. Repression, and revenge, as far as I can see. So, given that a large part of the raison d'être for this blog has been to discuss my life and experiences as a boylover in today's world, a discussion the world simply doesn't want to have, there may well be a considerable diminution of my blogging activity. I don't feel safe even talking about the issue anymore, despite my remaining pseudonymous, and, in that connection, my 'Invitation to a discussion' page has also been removed. The blog will remain here, at least for the moment, as will Nephelokokkygia, but if conditions become much more negative, I may have to review that position. There probably will be new posts, but I suspect that blandness and mundanity will be the watchwords. I'm sorry to have to do this, but I have K to think of, as well as myself, for at least the next couple of years, and I feel it's simply too much of a risk to draw attention to myself in this subject area any longer.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Made, not born, part the zillionth

I'm rarely surprised by stories like this, and certainly not in this case, given its geographical provenance - it's not a part of the world renowned for its tolerance of 'the other', in whatever guise - but some cases are more egregious than others. Especially if you follow the link to the original BBC news item, and look at the particular version of the bible verse included on the worksheet. It's a wonder they didn't include a 'dummies guide to bullying and bigotry' in with the assignment. But, of course, all religions only preach peace and love for all. Except when they don't.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Chiaroscuro

The dark places in my head still seem to want to assert themselves, far more than usual, for what reason I don't know. Trying to exorcise them through fiction rather than action is the best I can come up with at the moment.
But there is a bright place, too - I've spent the last week or so, on and off, reediting Alexandrine, in an effort to weed out all the typos and awkwardly worded passages I keep finding. To make my perfect boy's story perfect, or as near to that point as, with my limited abilities, I can. So it can be the light to counterbalance my darknesses.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Drafting and Thanksgiving

Well, having read the analysis, as well as my limited, armchair fan knowledge, it looks like my team haven't done too badly in today's draft - we certainly needed a full forward, so let's hope the no.1 pick turns out to be a star in the making. The other draftees seem to fill obvious deficiencies, too, so I'm hopeful it's been a good day's work.
And I would like to wish my American readers a happy Thanksgiving Day - I hope you and yours enjoy the festivities.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sorry, but I think you're wrong

There's so much propaganda, so much hatred directed towards boylovers from 'society' that, as I've said before, it's difficult not to succumb to it at times, maybe most of the time. But when you read something that comes from this side of the fence that parrots 'the party line', it's even more depressing. A foreword to an online story in which the author states 'I doubt that a relationship between a boy and an adult can ever rise above anything sexual'. Capitulation to the haters, and nothing else, as far as I'm concerned. The man is always a predator, the boy always a victim, that's exactly what they want you to believe, that you're selfish and vile and worthless. Well, I totally disagree. It is possible for a man to genuinely love a boy, and for the boy to love him back. And to have such a relationship where sex isn't involved at all. I know, because I've been there. I didn't choose my sexual orientation, so, as long as I don't force anything on anyone, I don't see why I should have to give up any chance of love forever, simply because of societal hysteria. Because love, ultimately, is what it's all about, what I want so badly.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Out late

Well, later than usual for me, at least, certainly in this neck of the woods. K is at a gig tonight, one she's been looking forward to for months (albeit that I have to admit that I've never heard of the artist concerned, except in so far as K has mentioned him), and I am, as arranged with my girl, around as a bit of 'insurance' to make sure she gets home safely, given that it will probably involve night buses. She's not a child, of course - she wouldn't have been going to the gig in the first place, otherwise - but a little reassurance (for both of us, if I'm being honest) doesn't do any harm.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The darkness within

Nearly four years ago, I wrote a story. Easily the darkest piece of fiction - and it really is fiction, no part of it has any real life analogue - I've ever written. It's said, though, that all fiction is autobiography, to some extent, and I think something that's happened this afternoon bears that out in this instance. I was on a bus, leaving the bus station in our local town centre, when I spotted a boy. A boy on his own, despite not being very old - perhaps 11, 12 at the most - who looked as though he really ought to have been in school, given the time of day. As the bus carried on its way, the boy was quickly out of sight, but certainly not out of mind. I spent the next few minutes lost in rather lurid fantasies of what I could do with such a boy - or, maybe more significantly, what I could do to him. I like to tell myself that I'd never coerce anyone sexually, but there are times when I doubt whether, if a genuine opportunity arose, I'd really be able to resist temptation. I can hope, of course, but I'd be blatantly lying if I said I could guarantee it. And that knowledge, the implacable knowledge of the dark places inside me, is why I find it so hard to live with myself, so much of the time.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How many more?

How many more children have to die before the US comes to its senses and divests itself of its ridiculous gun fetish? Last week, a 13 year old bleeding to death in his parents' arms in a hotel room after being shot in the head by a bullet 'accidentally discharged' in a neighbouring room, this week a 12 year old shot by police in a playground for the heinous crime of having a toy gun (I'm sure the fact that he had brown skin was a pure coincidence). FFS grow up, the fucking lot of you, and stop pretending you're living on the wild frontier. Guns have only one purpose - to kill. Consign them to the dustbin of history, where they belong. And those of you on the other side of the pond who might read this, and say that I'm just an effete Brit who doesn't understand your country - you're right, I don't understand. I don't understand how this carnage hasn't brought about change decades ago.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cutie in the house!

Whenever I find myself in my local on a Saturday afternoon, I always hope I might see 'smiling boy', the one who raised my spirits so dramatically the first time I ever came in here when I was flat hunting in January. I never have seen him again, but, today, there's an absolutely gorgeous little guy on the premises, blond and beautiful in spades. Perhaps fortunately, he's out of sight from where I'm sitting, because I could very easily 'out' myself by gazing at him like a lovesick adolescent!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Waste of a good day off

I finished my latest run of night shifts at 7:00 this morning, and my intention was to head home, have breakfast, get ready and go out and about. Sadly, though, my metabolism wasn't having any of it, and I ended up asleep for three hours instead. By the time I did eventually drag myself into the outside world, it was almost 2:00, so, inadvisedly, I went looking for 'the boy on the bus'. Needless to say, I didn't find him, despite my timing not being too far off - there were a number of pupils from his school on the bus I caught - so, having nothing much else on my agenda, I headed straight for my local, where I've been ever since. Another day of spectacular underachievement. And, given that I'm off for eight of the next nine days, the first of many to come, I suspect.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The worst bit of good luck I've had for a while

I got away from work an hour early this morning, through various people being on overtime, and coming in early or staying on, which normally, of course, would be a thoroughly good thing. It didn't quite work out that way, though - I needed to go shopping on the way back (the supermarket I was heading for is one of the 24 hour opening variety), so that by the time I'd got there, and made my purchases, I emerged for my bus home right into the teeth of the rush hour, including 'travelling to school' time. I just missed one bus, the next one mysteriously failed to appear, despite being listed on the TfL 'countdown' app, so it was hardly surprising that when one did finally appear, it was ridiculously over-subscribed. To the extent that I had to go two stops beyond where I needed to go, because it was physically impossible for me, from my top deck position, to get off the bus before then, when numerous schoolkids alighted and reduced the crush to below 'cattle truck' level. The only saving grace was finding myself sitting a couple of rows of seats behind a very pretty boy - very young, only 9 or 10, so unequivocally in 'look but never touch' territory - and more than a little reminiscent of DBJ at that age, the age he was when I first saw him. A sweet taste, in the midst of an otherwise thoroughly frustrating couple of hours.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

When the mask slips

I heard on the radio news that the UKIP candidate in tomorrow's Rochester by-election (an election necessitated by his own defection from the Tories) was in favour of EU migrants being told to leave the country if the UK leaves the organisation. Leaving aside that it would be an economic disaster for Britain to 'opt out' of Europe, the story gives the lie to UKIP's frequent claims not to be racist or xenophobic - frankly, xenophobia is the central plank of everything they stand for, the attitude that all of the UK's problems are the fault of 'Johnny Foreigner'. And the saddest thing is that such an attitude, and the demagoguery that has always gone with it, is what has convinced so many of the 'sheeple' to vote for them of late. What those dupes will largely be unaware of, and probably wouldn't care about if they did know, are some of UKIP's other policies - I found this article when I was checking the radio report online before launching into this post. Legalise handguns, have an 'American-style' health system, and admire Putin? Anyone espousing such stupidity should be a candidate for a psychiatric institution, not elected office. Farage and his scum should be nothing more than a joke, along the lines of the Monster Raving Loony Party. It speaks volumes about the political illiteracy of British voters that they're anything but at present.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

If it ain't broke....

I'm absolutely not a Luddite, in any shape or form - I'm a complete advocate of science, and its practical applications in technology, innovation and experiment has brought us from being nothing more than marginally intelligent apes to where we are today, the most advanced known species of life anywhere. (Yes, I'm well aware that the path to where we are, and the way some of our intelligence and its products have been applied leaves very much to be desired, but that, as far as I'm concerned, is a sociological issue rather than anything inherent to the scientific process.) That said, though, there are times when I wonder why some things are deemed to need changing. This little story is, no doubt, a very trivial example of the phenomenon, but, I think, illustrative to the point I'm trying to make.
A few weeks back, K asked if we could have 'proper' roast potatoes as part of a Sunday dinner, something we hadn't had since she moved in with me. No problem, said I, except in one respect. Amongst the myriad things 'left behind' when it all fell to bits in 2012 was the potato peeler. A very simple piece of kitchen equipment, unchanged in basic design for my whole life, but essential to facilitate what my girl wanted. So, when I went shopping for the makings of the meal, I looked for a potato peeler in the local big supermarket. And they had one. But not of a design I'd ever seen before. But, as it was the only one they had, I bought it. When I got it home and tried to use it, though, it proved to be stupidly fiddly and ineffective. Technique, I suppose, or the lack of it, on my part no doubt had a bearing, but I couldn't help feeling anything but that the device had made a simple job unnecessarily difficult. So, when I went shopping in our local town centre yesterday, I managed to find a peeler of the type I'm used to - it was even described as a 'traditional vegetable peeler' on the packaging - at half the price I'd paid for the new-fangled version. and when I used it an hour or so ago to peel the remaining potatoes for this evening's meal, it took, literally, 10% of the time compared to the last, awkward, edition. The 'modern' peeler won't totally go to waste, though - K reckons she can use it for a craft project. Well, my girl, you're welcome. If it ain't broke, don't bloody try to fix it!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saints and magpies

No, I haven't suddenly changed my AFL allegiance! I'm still the same masochist I ever was, and a member again for the first time in three years - I dropped out for financial reasons originally, and then, with all the upheavals in the intervening time, I hadn't got round to renewing. I've treated myself  - my Christmas present, if you like - to an international digital subscription, though, so I'll be able to watch all my beloved team's heavy defeats next season! The expensive unlimited broadband that only K seems to use to its full potential will soon be getting a good workout!
The 'magpies' reference was to do with the old rhyme, 'one for sorrow....', and all that. I saw four of the birds together in the communal garden when I was getting ready to go to work yesterday, and, as most doubtless know, it's 'four for a boy'. But it was K who got the boy, not me. It seems that she's well on the way to being 'an item' with yet another cutie - she showed me his picture on her phone - in her year at school, and who lives all of one bus stop away from us. I'm so bloody jealous! But not really, I just want her to be happy, of course. Although I can't help thinking that I wouldn't mind a little bit of happy for me, too.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The wrong kind of love

'Love is all you need', as the Beatles lyric has it. It has, so it seems, though, got to be the right sort of love to have the slightest chance of finding societal acceptance. Some comments on a blog post elsewhere that I've read this morning make that clear. Even those whose own version of love is widely vilified aren't immune from demonising the love of others. Shit flows downhill, as ever. Well, here's my twopennyworth - if it's shared, genuinely, by both (or all) parties concerned, without coercion of any kind, physical, emotional, psychological, then love can never be wrong. I dreamed about DBJ the night before last, for the first time in years, and the dream was of a shared love, nothing more. There never was love between us in reality, and almost certainly never could have been, but if he had known of my love for him, accepted it, and returned it, would it have been wrong, just because of the age difference? Not as far as I'm concerned. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I? Because I'm the lowest of the low, after all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Chocky

I wrote recently about the new radio adaptation of The Chrysalids that I'd tripped over a couple of weeks ago, but, in the past few days, another dramatisation of a John Wyndham novel has come into my mind. While I was somewhat disappointed with the recent BBC radio offering, the earlier example, made as a children's TV series, was one that I very much enjoyed. I'd read Chocky several times before the TV series was made, and, as I tend to do, had my mental picture of the cast of characters and the settings pretty much ingrained, leaving me rather dubious about the prospects for the adaptation, all the more so because of its target audience - dumbing down was very much in my mind. In the event, though, the series was pretty faithful to the book, albeit time-shifted twenty years or so forward to be contemporary to the mid-eighties release date of the programmes. There was another reason I was such a fan of the series, too - the main character of the novel is a boy, and the young actor cast in the starring role, Andrew Ellams, was an utter cutie! Another of my boy crushes, immortalised forever by the magic of celluloid! And not just celluloid - a little 'research' the other night suggested that the series is available online, so I might well be reacquainting myself with 'digital Andrew' before too long!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I'll sleep when I'm dead

Or that's how it feels at the moment. After my 'one night stand' at work on Wednesday night, I was back to the grind five minutes short of 24 hours after I'd signed off - we are, technically, supposed to have a minimum of 24 hours plus a shift, i.e. 32 hours in my case, rest between duties involving a change of shift, but hey - via a 4:15 alarm call. More of the same tomorrow, then a late shift on Sunday, before I'm back on nights from Monday. I am, quite frankly, bloody exhausted, and apparently coming down with yet another cold into the bargain, but I've got to keep going, because I simply can't afford to be sick at the moment. With the outgoings for the flat, and making sure K has what she needs, as well as supporting my ex, losing an extra Sunday and the enhanced night rate just isn't an option. I know very well that I'm far from unique in being in thrall to the bills, but there are times, and this is one of them, when I feel like I'm killing myself for very scant reward.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another anniversary

But one which, in contrast to my reaction to my cousin's birthday, raised barely an emotional ripple - in fact, I almost forgot about it altogether. It was a big deal not so long ago, though, albeit only ever to me, because the other person involved never remembered it, from beginning to end. Yesterday, November 12, marked the 23rd anniversary of the day I met my ex. I used to call it 'our alternative anniversary', and always bought her a little present and a card. This time, though, I didn't even think of it until about twenty minutes to midnight, more or less a third of the way through my one-off overtime night shift. I'm not sure whether my forgetting the day is good or bad - am I starting to get over what happened, or am I so dead inside that nothing matters anymore? I certainly don't know the answer to that question.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A birthday

A day that would've been marked, for more than half of my life, with my at least sending a card, and usually a phone call, but no more. My cousin's birthday. Last year, with the day falling so close to the meltdown between us, any regretful thoughts were overwhelmed by the nightmare that was those early weeks, but now, with rather more distance and perspective, I've been thinking about him more than a little. What happened can never be repaired, not least, and this is the most surprising, and maybe the most hurtful thing of all, because even if he approached me, I wouldn't feel able to trust him anymore. What I can't forget, though, is that he really has been the greatest love of my life. And now it's all gone. Like so much else.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

No, not another one of my periodic diatribes about UKIP, but my reaction to a news story I saw in the Metro on the way to work earlier. A grandfather, the same age as me, coincidentally, took one of his grandchildren to a falconry centre near Bristol, and enjoyed the experience enough that he wanted to go again. So he went, on his own. And was turned away, on grounds of 'child protection'. The centre, and they're not unique, apparently, have a policy of refusing admission to unaccompanied adults. Now if this had been somewhere like one of the places we used to take K when she was small, with rides and attractions aimed at under-10s, a middle aged man turning up on his own would certainly have been incongruous, at the very least, but a falconry centre? Surely that's an unsurprising venue for a middle-aged man to attend? There might have been a bit of reductio ad absurdum creeping in, but I couldn't help wondering what the centre's reaction would've been if a gay couple had turned up. Would that be considered twice as dangerous, or would being a couple exempt such men from suspicion? What about an all-male group of twenty or thirty ornithology enthusiasts? What if this sort of policy became commonplace? There would be precious few places I'd be allowed to go, given that the prospects of my ever being anything other than single are somewhere between infinitesimal and zero. And what about public transport? Would I be obliged to get off the bus and put a paper bag over my head until any children had dispersed? I've commented often enough about 'paedo hysteria', but this seems to go even beyond that, to full-blown societal insanity. When is someone with influence going to stand up and say 'enough, this is completely out of control, we're going to be raising a generation incapable of any social interaction at all'? Not for the first time, I won't be holding my breath in expectation.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A cautionary tale

From my own subconscious, no less. I had one of the more vivid dreams of my recent past overnight, and it's illustrated that, even if I try to convince myself otherwise, sometimes - 'the boy on the bus', and all that - I know, if I'm honest with myself, what my future realistically holds. The dream involved a family - not one I recognised as having real-life analogues - I'd somehow befriended, including two brothers, 12-ish and 8-ish. Little bro was childishly affectionate and cuddly, but it was big bro who my dream self was drawn to. Not sexually, though, but wanting nothing beyond love and cuddles. When I did eventually get to hug him, though, he called it 'homo', and shied away. I was left to make abject apologies to him and his family, the dream ending with me looking down on him at a bus stop, as if I was in a helicopter, my heart aching. A psychological truth being told, I think - in this day and age, even friendship, never mind anything more, with a boy is out of my reach forever. That realisation hurts like hell, but if I believe anything else, it's simply delusion.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not that I watch much TV....

....but this programme might find its way onto my 'unmissable' list, if it was available here. There's probably an element of schadenfreude involved, but to see the unthinkingly fundamentalist shredded by a breeze of cool reason would be more than entertaining. One admission, though - us Brits are almost as bad when it comes to 'foreign' languages, expecting everyone, anywhere, to be able to speak English. Mind you, in Scandinavia, not only do most people speak English, but a lot of them speak it considerably better than we do!

Love & best wishes
Sammy B

Easy go, but not so easy come

My return to work tomorrow will, including commuting time, cost me twelve hours of my life, and earn me around £150, give or take, after tax and National Insurance. Not bad for a day's work, it could be said, certainly compared to many. The irony is, though, that I spent almost exactly that much in five minutes in our local town centre at midday today, all on K - renewing her monthly bus pass, so she can get to school, topping up the pay-as-you-go element of her Oystercard, so she can tube around town, as is her wont, and making sure she had enough money for her weekend doings, including meeting up with a friend today, and for her dinner money and the like for next week. I don't begrudge her the cash for a moment, but the ease of my parting with it, as against the time it takes to earn it, is interesting, to say the least!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Same old

No boy on the bus, I contrived to miss him for the second time this week, K, after going off to a gig last night - and getting back very late, although, to be fair, she did get up in good time this morning with only a modicum of 'persuasion' - has gone over to her cute (is he, isn't he boy-)friend's place for the evening, so here I am, once more, in my local, sitting in the corner out of everyone's way. Invisible as ever. At least I've done one substantive thing today, in managing to drag myself (figuratively) kicking and screaming into the barber's for a necessary haircut. That's about it, though - not exactly a tale of major achievement, by anyone's standards. And in around 44 hours time, I'll be back at work. Wonderful.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Churning

Well, just for a change, I can't go through with it. The thoughts that have been roiling in my head for much of the evening need to be expressed, but I'm too much of a coward. My being introspective beyond reason isn't exactly a new phenomenon, but I'm really struggling with a specific issue at the moment. It ties in with the little post I made in Nephelokokkygia last night, prompted by my revulsion at even fictional boys being sexually coerced or mistreated, but I can't say what I want to say. because I'm too concerned about what 'they' would think. There may be limits to self-loathing, but I don't think I've plumbed those limits yet.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Rather disappointing

I found, by accident last night, that the BBC had aired a new radio adaptation of John Wyndham's The Chrysalids last month on one of their digital channels, and that it was still available on iPlayer. Given that the book is one of my all-time favourites, and that I first came across it as a radio serialisation in the summer holidays when I was 11, I couldn't resist giving it a listen. There had been another version on the radio a few years back, which I heard a few snippets of two or three years after it had been broadcast, and which I absolutely hated, not least because the voice cast sounded like they were strolling down to the posh bistro in some leafy Surrey commuter town rather than struggling to survive in post-apocalyptic Labrador. That issue, at least, was addressed to a degree by using UK regional, predominantly northern English accents for most of the characters, but I still didn't enjoy the adaptation as much as I hoped I would. I knew the story would be abridged, because the 'series' consisted of two hour-long episodes, but the way it was cut to fit the time slot left a lot to be desired - the ending, in particular, was ridiculously rushed, and left out a very important - to me, anyway - aspect of the plot (here comes a spoiler), namely Michael returning to 'fetch Rachel away', rather than just jumping on the Zealand flying machine and leaving her to her fate, something which underlined the 'think-togethers' loyalty to each other in the original. There were also some minor irritants, most notably Rosalind's father having his name changed from Angus to Matthew for no discernible reason, given that he's only ever referred to, rather than being a foreground character, even in the book, never mind the adaptation. I suppose that when you've lived with and loved the book for forty-odd years, any new version would have to be extraordinarily good to pass muster, but I still think it could have been so much better without undue effort. And I also think, particularly in this CGI age, when the mutations inherent to the story could be relatively easily portrayed, that it would make a fantastic film.
More disappointment this afternoon, too - I went looking for 'the boy on the bus', but ended up running ten minutes or so early, and missed him. There were some other cuties to admire a bit later on, but I still ended up feeling a bit down in the mouth. Another day, maybe.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not helpful

I'm in 'second string' Wetherspoons, sitting close to a TV playing the BBC News Channel with the sound muted. They've just screened a lengthy report, which I surmise to have been about regional political autonomy, given the 'talking heads' in evidence, focusing on Cornwall. I recognised just about every scenery backdrop they showed, and all that was going through my head was 'home, home, home'. Most of the time, I can cope with most of what's been lost in the past two and a half years, but losing Cornwall, if I think about it too much, is very difficult to come to terms with. I'm feeling very homesick just now.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tired, in spades

Well, I made it through the nights, just - on my way to work on Friday, I felt so rough I didn't think I had any chance of even getting through that shift, never mind its two successors - and now I'm into another week off. After a week of averaging about four and a half hours sleep a day, though, I'm so bloody shattered that I can hardly think. I usually manage nights fairly well, so why this particular week should have been such a struggle is a bit of a mystery - I certainly can't blame K's half-term holiday, because she was hardly at home all week, and she isn't exactly rowdy in any case. Maybe 35 years of shift work is finally starting to catch up with me.
I thought another crisis was in the process of descending yesterday, too - my laptop had a fit of refusing to load any web pages at all, despite the broadband working as it should. My finances are still sort-of, kind-of OK, but I certainly wouldn't want to be rushing off to PC World, or equivalent, to buy a replacement. Everything was, seemingly, back to normal this morning, though, so I'll just have to hope it was one of those unaccountable glitches us non-techies look at with glazed-over eyes, desperate that 'switching it off, and switching it back on again' works the oracle!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Pyromania

Now that Halloween is over for another year, we're immediately into the next 'season' that used, in my youth, to be a one day production, namely 'fireworks week', or Bonfire Night, as it used to be called. Rather than remembering November 5, Guy Fawkes, and all that, the pyrotechnic bonanza now lasts at least a week - I've seen adverts for organised events relatively locally beginning tonight and continuing until at least next Saturday. A real fireworks afficionado could probably find a display to go to every night in the interim, quite apart from the 'back garden' displays that many people still seem to want to undertake. Each to their own, of course, but I'm afraid I view fireworks as the literal embodiment of 'money going up in smoke'. Still, it keeps the sheeple happy for a day or two, so, no doubt, the government view it as a useful distraction from their incompetence.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Trick or treat

Halloween, when I was a kid, was, in this country, just another day. I guess most people had heard of 'trick or treat', but it was seen as an American thing, and simply didn't happen here. Fast forward to 2014, though, and Halloween seems to have become yet another commercially driven 'season', advertised weeks in advance and dragging out over days rather than a few hours of October 31. Odd, too, how young people who have 'stranger danger' dinned into them, directly or indirectly, day in and day out, are then encouraged to go and knock on those very strangers' doors and beg for sweets. Isn't the classic 'paedo' tactic supposed to be offering sweets to small children? As ever, it's all hypocrisy and inconsistency. My plan is to leave for work early and take a slow meander there by bus, before anyone gets the chance to knock on my door. K has already gone off to her Halloween party, so there's no incentive for me to sit around waiting for the chance of being 'tricked'. And even the outside possibility of opening my front door to be faced by some unaccompanied cutie isn't a position I want to put myself in. The whole 'holiday' stinks, as far as I'm concerned.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nothing days

Typical of being on nights, really, the past couple of days have comprised almost nothing beyond the work-commute-sleep-eat-commute-work cycle. The feeling of being disconnected from the rest of the world has been accentuated by the fact that I've seen almost nothing of K - she's in her typical 'school holiday' mode, travelling far and wide. She went down to the West Country on Tuesday to catch up with one of her friends, then headed off yesterday to stay with her potential bandmates - she still seems to be their preferred candidate for being their new bassist - sleeping over there last night and showing no signs of heading back any time soon, while tomorrow she's off to a Halloween party at one of her schoolfriend's places, relatively local, but once more with an overnight stay. The upshot is that between Monday evening when I left for work, and some time on Saturday, I'll have spent, in the sense of face to face in the same room, all of about ten minutes in my daughter's company, the last few minutes before she set out for Buckinghamshire yesterday morning. I'm off work again next week, continuing my programme of using up my remaining annual leave before the end of the year, but she'll be back at school, so I doubt I'll see much more of her then either. There are times when we seem more like random housemates than anything resembling a family. Mind you, I doubt that I'm unique amongst parents of teenagers in those types of feelings!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The big lie

A 'propaganda technique', as the first line of the Wikipedia article on the subject describes it. Make a claim that is so egregious that 'the average person' believes it because they can't imagine anyone being able to make up something so outlandish. The phrase is most commonly associated with the Holocaust, but, these days, it seems to be fair game for religious right bigots. Dehumanise your hate object/scapegoat, in an attempt to justify and legitimise their persecution and ultimate destruction. Vile in the extreme.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Full circle

Almost, anyway. More than four and a half years, and getting on for 1500 posts after I first dipped my toe into the cyberspace ocean in February 2010, I'm back to where I started, just me, the keyboard and the contents of my head. The few 'cyberfriends' I've been lucky enough to interact with over the years have pretty much all melted away, and why not, of course? Who in their right mind would want anything to do with a perpetually depressed, self-pitying 'paedo'. Especially that last, needless to say. People are so terrified of being found 'guilty by association', that in saying anything that isn't bitterly excoriating about the likes of me they would be seen as, at the very least, 'condoning' my attractions, or worse, from their point of view, of being a closeted 'paedo' themselves. Never mind that I don't get any closer to boys than reading online stories for fantasy material, never mind that I've spent decades keeping my desires under control, so as not to hurt anyone, I'm still 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know' in varying proportions. So, frankly, fuck it. I'm fed up of battering my head against the wall of societal hatred. Yes, I'm a boylover. Yes, I want to have sex with a pubescent boy. But only, only ever, with any such boy's informed consent. If anyone reading this finds that offensive, that's too bad. Go and read something else.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Whispering into the void

A phrase I used in one of my very, very early blog posts. And how I feel right now. The corner I've painted myself into seems to be getting smaller and more imprisoning almost by the day, in cyberspace terms and IRL. Self-inflicted wounds, of course, but wounds nonetheless. And wounds that I seem not to have the slightest idea how to recover from.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Winter is here again

A line of dialogue from Damien - Omen II, but, more to the point, descriptive of today, the day the clocks went back to GMT. It's just after 5:00, and dark already, and if that doesn't make it winter, I don't know what does. Allied to the fact that my isolation seems more pronounced than ever of late, spring appears to be an awfully long way away.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Moronic theocrats live here, too

More evidence that the US is far from unique in having religious right blockheads who somehow manage to convince enough of the sheeple to vote for them to get elected, in this case to the so-called 'mother of parliaments'. Even without his antediluvian views on education and marriage equality, anyone who says 'I agree with Farage on almost everything' should be instantly disbarred from public office for life - and mercilessly pointed and laughed at, to boot.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sheep!

I was in Wetherspoons in another 'quondam Middlesex' part of Greater London, not too far from base, an hour or so ago, when a buzz went round the pub. The mayor of London had been spotted at the road junction just above the pub - he's aiming to be the next MP for the area, and was doubtless undertaking a 'man of the people' photo opportunity. The number of people who rushed out with their phones to grab a picture of this fascist buffoon was, in more or less equal parts, surprising and depressing. Boris Johnson has been touted, apparently seriously, as a future Tory leader. The prospect of him and Farage in some kind of coalition to run the country after the next election is so horrifying I can barely bring myself to contemplate it. And yet the sheep in the pub would, by the comments I heard, apparently welcome such a prospect. And these people are entitled to vote! The fundamental flaw with democracy, that any credulous moron is enfranchised. Boris for PM = me leaving the country on the first available flight.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sammy's paradox

Why are the lows always so much deeper than the highs are high, especially when they're in close proximity? Like my feelings a couple of hours ago, on a bus in West London. There was a boy involved, predictably enough, sitting opposite me in the company of his mother, cutish, fair haired, 11/12, but the real hook was his bubbly personality, his very obvious joie de vivre. The sort of person who you would love to be best friends with. But then, of course, after 20 minutes of basking in his aura, his 'boyness', he was gone, the buzz was gone, replaced by the relentless knowledge that, as close as he'd been sitting to me, he was out of reach forever, the dead hand of 'never' strangling the spirit out of me once more. I'll get over it, there's no alternative, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

And in between....

....today's two earlier posts, I had a lovely day with K. She was off school on a 'Baker Day' today, as an add-on to half term, which is next week, and she suggested, rather to my surprise, that she wanted to come on one of my meanders, so that's what we did. The original plan was for us to have lunch somewhere as part of the trip, but, in the event, my girl wasn't hungry, probably because we had a rather late breakfast, bacon butties at 10:30, so that element was eventually ditched. The rest was simply quality time, though - K did go into 'teenage mode', with her head in her phone, on a couple of occasions, but I can easily forgive her that - with our 'on the same wavelength' relationship more than evident. And she even conceded that she'd like to do it again, soon. I can't wait!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Looks like someone's just had a birthday

Namely Daniel, the cutie who works in my local. It now appears that he's serving at the bar, which, given that hitherto he's only been waitering and washing up, suggests that he's just turned 18. He still looks at least a couple of years younger, though - and, yes, he's still cute.

1940 edit: And he's just served me. And I even got a smile, albeit a 'professional' one. Keep the customers happy, sweetheart!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another step towards thoughtcrime

Potentially, at least. I heard a report on the radio this morning to the effect that 'child protection' campaigners want it to be made a crime in this country for an adult to send any message of 'a sexual nature' to a minor, even if the message is 'text only' - sending 'sexual' images is illegal already, of course. Given that almost any image involving a minor can be deemed to have sexual connotations when it suits the authorities' purposes, I can't imagine any legislation involving text will be any less widely drawn, raising the prospect of any contact at all between adults and minors, unless the adult is related to or in an authority position in relation to the minor, being effectively barred. I recall reading about one, at least, American state (Maine, if I remember correctly), enacting a law that made it illegal in many circumstances for an adult even to look at a minor, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who would like that to be the case here as well. It wouldn't be many steps beyond what is being proposed for books to begin to be proscribed - if you own a copy of Lolita, or Sandel, or myriad others, you're doubtless already a 'suspect' - and not many more until the Orwellian concept of 'thoughtcrime' was invoked, on the basis that if you even think about minors in a non-neutral way, you'd be presumed to be a 'molester in waiting'. And once one aspect of freedom of thought is suppressed, how long would it take for politicians to realise that extending those powers far more widely would be highly conducive to maintaining their position and privileges? Not very long at all, I would venture to suggest.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Unconvincing

I'm in my 'second-string' relatively local Wetherspoons, getting into my kind-of weekend off - I'm not working again until Sunday morning, and then start nights on Monday - and I've had the dubious pleasure of listening to a youngish woman on the next table rather obviously trying to proselytize her companions, waxing lyrical about how wonderful her god is, because she can freely drink beer and generally go about her life, but that there will, after death, still be a 'judgment day'. Maybe I'm being too cynical, but if anyone can explain to me how such a laissez-faire deity can be distinguished from the atheistic universe I believe to be the real one, I'd be interested to hear the evidence. Because evidence was, to me, the big 'missing link' in the woman's argument. Hence the title of this post.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The penultimate Orwellian job?

I've just read a blog post quoting a religious right functionary who was described as his organisation's 'vice president of orthodoxy'. Only his boss, presumably, could be closer to 'Big Brother' than that.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Reality checks can be helpful

And this afternoon has been evidence of that. I saw 'the boy on the bus' again, not, I have to admit, entirely coincidentally, but now that I know that the connection I was hoping for is illusory, I was able to simply enjoy sitting a few rows of seats behind him - or, rather, him sitting in front of me, given that I got on the bus several stops before he did - and admiring his good looks and general 'boyness'. Hopefully, that's the best option - I get to see him, but in not trying for more, by approaching him or whatever, he won't get to feel in any way uncomfortable, or worse. The chances for me to see him are pretty limited, in any case, given my working hours and the very narrow 'window of opportunity' for our paths to cross, even by design - it's the bus, or nowhere, effectively. No doubt there would be those who would still criticise me, even for wanting him as eye candy, but, frankly, that's their problem.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

School holiday views

K is on half term holiday next week, but some schools are off this week, and that proved to be the double-edged sword I've mentioned before when I finished work today. 'Worktown' station was 'eye candy central', with three absolutely delicious boys in evidence as I waited for my train home, albeit that one of them was a little guy who was too young by far to do anything other than coo over. The usual heaviness of heart ensued, though, the knowledge of the untouchability of those I'm enamoured with reinforced once more. When I did get back to the flat, there was another little example of that, too, as my next door but one neighbour got off of the same bus as me, a boy of Asian extraction who is, it seems, in his first year at senior school, so 11/12, who I've seen around several times, and who is more than a little cute (his younger sister isn't difficult to look at, either). Seeing 'ghosts' when I'm out and about might have its bittersweet aspects, but having a cutie on the doorstep, almost literally, is potentially rather more problematic. The temptation to try and drum up some sort of acquaintance with him is compelling, but, ultimately, probably not a very good idea. Hopefully, my habitual cowardice will keep me out of trouble.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Freedom - to be what we tell you to be

Another weekend, another gay man's blog and e-mail account obliterated by Google for unaccountable reasons. Sadly, nothing new there, but, in this case, I'll freely admit to partiality, because the blog in question belonged to a good friend of mine, a good man. But personal virtues have no value, it seems, in this context, all that matters to Google and their ilk is to kowtow to those pouring their corporate advertising budget down their collective throat. And those 'paying the piper' appear to me to be driven by motives of christofascist repression, especially when it comes to the LGBT community. I have two hopes - to see Jay back in cyberspace sooner rather than later, and for the corporate fat cats to choke on their own disgusting excess.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Well, that didn't take long

Back to work at 7:30 this morning after my time off, and, within 20 minutes, the latest dose of 'paedo-baiting' was on, again in response to a TV programme - the delightful phrase 'you'd rip his head off and shove it up his arse' was trotted out on respect of some or other 'character' in the documentary. The phrase that came to my mind was 'isn't it easy to be judgmental when you're not involved'. If the person who was deemed to be worthy of decapitation has coerced anyone, of any age or gender, then punishment is deserved. But 'thoughtcrime' style vilification of who someone is, rather than what they've done, is the top of a very slippery slope.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Where did that go?

I'm now into the afternoon of the last of my 12 days off work, and I can't believe how quickly it's gone, especially considering that I've done almost nothing of any substance. It's back to the grind - and getting up at stupid o'clock - tomorrow. The fact that my alarm will have to be set for 4:30 in the morning means that there's going to be no 'big finale' today - in fact, I haven't been out of the flat yet today, despite getting up before 7:00. I simply haven't been able to work up the energy or enthusiasm, although I may venture into what is a pleasant enough autumnal day after lunch.
There was a little unexpected bonus last night, though - I was out and about, and when I rang K after she'd finished school to see if she wanted to meet up with me at my local for something to eat, she actually said yes! So, tea at the pub it was, and some very congenial time spent together, for once. This time next week, K will be on half-term holiday, but we won't get the chance to do too much during her week's break, because I'm on nights, and she's also planning to go down to the West Country for a few days to catch up with her friends down there. So, last night was all the more welcome - I might even be able to coax her into spending some more time with her boring old dad, who knows!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's always the love stories

That make me cry, that is. Especially the stories of unrequited love. Five years ago, give or take, I first discovered a couple of web sites with stories about boys. Men and boys, boys and boys. The specifically erotic ones had the effect that, I guess, they were designed to have. But it was always the love stories that really got under my skin, to the point that I had to stop reading, because I seemed to spend half of my life in tears. I've just read one single chapter of one of those stories, and ended up with tears in my eyes again. It all came back, the tears born of the knowledge of all the mistakes I'd made, the knowledge that I was in love with someone - DBJ, of course - who would, could, never be mine, the realisation that there would almost certainly never be a 'happy ever after' for me. I remember K asking me, that autumn, what was wrong, and my telling her that I couldn't explain it to her. Except that I did, nine months or so later. And now, the beautiful boy I fell in love with in a small Cornish town, who I haven't seen for more than four years, will almost be a man - he's 17, at least, a school year above K, could be 18 already - and more out of reach than ever. And the tears are back.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Honesty

Getting up this morning, and finding a post at a friend's blog which had been published overnight, has made me realise, in connection with what I wrote yesterday, that maybe there is something I can do to revitalise my blog. Lose my cowardice at the potential reactions of others - in the end, as I've said before, who am I trying to appease anyway, hardly anyone even reads the damned blog - and inject a dose of honesty. Total honesty. That said, I'm still going to remain pseudonymous, but that is strictly to protect my daughter's interests - my job would be in jeopardy if my blog came to the attention of my company, I strongly suspect, and given that K needs food, shelter and the wherewithal to complete her education, and there's no-one else able to do that for her, I need to carry on keeping my cyberspace and real lives strictly separate.
So, what was the topic of the post which 'inspired' me, if that's the right word? Well, today is apparently 'Spirit Day', where people are encouraged to support and show solidarity with the LGBT community by wearing purple. All very laudable, on the surface, but my immediate reaction was to wonder how much solidarity the 'community' would show towards me, as a boylover. Somewhere between minimal and zero, on the basis of my experience. Many gay men hate boyloivers even more than those in the 'mainstream', because they're terrified of being tarred with the same brush, or because they think that joining in the chorus of mindless excoriation of 'paedos' will gain them a few brownie points to put towards their acceptance by 'society', and that's without even starting on what the 'L' contingent think. 'Equality' without genuine inclusiveness is a concept that isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Talked out

I'm in one of my periodic phases of doubt about the future of my blogs. Nephelokokkygia is virtually moribund, whatever muse I had whispering in my ear seeming to have deserted me completely, but even this main blog is looking more and more like a closed circle, where I simply talk around and around the same subjects, and one subject in particular, achieving nothing. I don't think I'm able, at least as things stand at the moment, to relaunch the blog in a different direction, so is there any real point in going on? It might be argued that it's a forum for getting stuff out of my system, but I've tried that time and again without succeeding in feeling any sense of catharsis. Maybe it's just that I'm all talked out. All those posts, all those words over the best part of five years, and I'm in a worse position than when I started, with all that's been lost. That certainly wasn't part of the 'master plan'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Obtuse

I pride myself on being 'bright', it's always been my greatest asset, but there are times when I need to be beaten over the head by the glaringly obvious before I'll take on board things that I should know from the outset. Like this afternoon. Not only was I stupid enough to go looking for the boy on the bus from the Friday before last, but I found him. And he looked straight through me. Absolutely no reason, of course, why he should've done anything else, but it took my seeing it with my own eyes to accept that the moment of humour we shared was just that, a moment. And even if we had, by some unaccountable miracle, 'clicked', it would only have taken a millisecond to work out that if he'd happened to mention to his parents that he'd made a friend on the bus, but that the 'friend' was a middle-aged bloke, what the reaction would've been. I'm not upset - except with my failure to engage with reality.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

From the school of mindless hyperbole

It might seem like I'm trying to portray Americans as particularly prone to this sort of idiocy, but it's just an artefact of the cyberspace haunts I frequent. We've got plenty of morons of our own over here, who say equally ridiculous things.

2055 edit: As I was saying, we have them as well.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

From little to less

If recent days have filled me with a sense of underachievement, today has been an even less fulfilling experience so far. I do have a minimal excuse, though - the weather has been absolutely vile, wet and windy, with the promise of more to come. So, frankly, I've just slobbed around all morning, and now, into the afternoon, playing word games on the computer with the radio on the background, for the most part. I did, very briefly, look at one of my draft stories in Nephelokokkygia, but all that succeeded in doing was making me realise that the story didn't have anywhere to go, at least not without more or less starting again from scratch. It was only another man/boy relationship story anyway, albeit one that wasn't going to contain a sexual element, so much of a muchness with almost everything else I've written. Rather like my life, really - repetitive and pointless. I can hardly restrain my enthusiasm.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Underachiever

I'm now more than halfway through my 'summer holiday', and it has to be said that I've achieved almost nothing that could be remotely considered to be 'positive'. I have done a bit of cleaning in the flat, but only stuff that had been put off for too long, and then, only because K had a friend staying over last night, but, otherwise, I've just been meandering about, feeling sorry for myself, and drinking too much. The 'feeling sorry' bit was rubbed in all the more today, because it was almost a reprise of yesterday, with cuties around almost from the time I stepped out of the door to the last bus back home - 'last boy' was 14-ish, and, I'm sure, easily old enough to have made his own mind up had I had the balls to ask 'the question', which, of course, I didn't. So far, so predictable, but the deeper question is, as ever, unanswered. What, if anything, can I do to escape from the corner I've painted myself into? Would that I knew.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Just say no!

This speaks for itself. Just say no. Don't do organised religion.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Swarmed

With cute 'ghosts', that is, on my travels today. Mostly blond, or at least fair, always my favourites, but almost all of them far too young, even for my despised tastes. K commented yesterday that there are far more adverts about these days showing gay relationships in a positive light, and quite right too, but, as I said in reply, how long will it be before an intergenerational relationship, even a celibate one, is given comparable treatment. Not in my lifetime, I strongly suspect.

1910 edit: And yet more, in my local (which is in far more civilised mode than last night) - a little guy, who seems to have gone, but, right now, a cutie who is much closer to legal age, and who is wearing some very skinny jeans. My cup runneth over!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Politics and pillocks

And, in some cases, their intersection. UKIP. the party I've always described as 'the National Front in a suit', a description I stand by, now have an MP after a by-election yesterday. He was the sitting Conservative MP for a constituency in Essex - where else, the place is a byword for antediluvian stupidity - who recently 'defected' to Farage's collection of fascist xenophobes, misogynists and homophobes. If English (and I use the word advisedly, I can't see UKIP winning many votes, let alone seats, in Scotland or Wales) voters are stupid and bigoted enough to elect a such a farcical bunch of halfwits, they deserve all the crap they'll undoubtedly get - and I'll be leaving the country, forthwith.
Continuing the political vein. I saw this earlier on.

It's seemingly been doing the rounds for a while, but I hadn't seen it until a couple of hours ago. The last sentence could, with 'UKIP' substituting for 'Republican', be just as apposite over here.

And as for pillocks, my brief visit to my local earlier exposed me to enough to last me the rest of the year. For the first time since I started frequenting the place in January, I felt genuinely uncomfortable being in the pub - it seemed to be full of the same brand of mouthy, alcohol and testosterone fuelled pondlife that used to make Friday and Saturday evenings in 'domicile-ville' Wetherspoons so unpleasant, the type that would just as soon smash a glass in your face as shake your hand. And it wasn't as if most of them were 'kids', either - the majority seemed to be nearer 40 than 20, even older in one or two cases. I can quite happily live without that kind of company, and baled out without much delay. I'll be back, of course, but at a time when I can more reliably expect a 'quiet life'.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

You get what you pay for

I've bemoaned, several times, my lack of motivation in writing fiction in recent times, so when not only a story idea, but the oomph to set about doing something about it, came to me earlier on, I was pretty pleased. I spent the best part of an hour writing three or four introductory paragraphs, and all was going well. Until the 'free WiFi' in my local crashed, and I lost the lot. Not only that, but when I began a post complaining about my fate, the system crashed again, and I lost that as well! Now I'm back at home, with a paid-for WiFi, my words seem to be destined to be preserved for posterity. Q.E.D.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Erudition (postponed), and reconciliation (maybe)

One of the attractions on offer in London for nerds like me are lectures, often free, on all sorts of esoteric subjects. That said, I've been to precisely none so far, although I did seriously consider going to one, given by a historian I've come across several times on various TV programmes, this evening. In the event, though, I was distracted by other considerations (which didn't work out, surprise, surprise) and didn't make it, but there is another coming up in a couple of weeks time, on dark matter, which I'm really keen to attend, work permitting. Given the amount of time off I've got in the near future, I might get lucky.
One reason I was left to my own devices this evening is that K is over at her (recent) cute ex-boyfriend's, 'hanging out', as she described her plans to me last night. When I asked if a reconciliation was on the cards, she shrugged and said 'err....maybe'. I have to admit I wouldn't be too upset if they got back together, for reasons that are, frankly, pretty selfish - I'll certainly try to become better acquainted with him, given half a chance!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A tale of two boys

One real, one imaginary. I've been out meandering again today, on what has been a much nicer day than yesterday, cool and breezy, but with more or less unbroken sunshine. The latter part of the morning and early afternoon were spent debating with my better judgment about whether I should try once more to 'find myself' on a certain bus route at a certain time, but, for once, common sense won the day, and I managed to restrain the impulse. I don't know if I was more afraid of screwing up the schedule like yesterday, or getting it right and having him (most likely) ignoring me, or, worse, freaking out and thinking I was stalking him. I did end up perhaps no more than 3 or 4 bus stops from where he would have been after school, but that was a genuine coincidence, because I was on a different route, going, in terms of where he was, in the opposite direction. To what has become my 'second string' Wetherspoons, where, in amongst the beer, I finished re-reading Alexandrine yet again. At least I can love Xander without deleterious consequences.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Bucket list, item 1 of 1

I was just about to go out on what is the first of 12 days off, but I've just looked out of the window to see it pouring with rain. I'll still go, though, maybe just a little later. Because I'm utterly fed up of being at the bottom of the heap, despite trying to live my life in a way other people might find acceptable. Except they don't, of course, whichever way I turn all I see is society's view of me as a cardboard cutout villain. Well, call me what you will, because I'm going to make sure I'm on the same bus I was when I had my 'oasis moment' on Friday. I have almost no doubt that I'll end up disappointed, but there's nothing much left to lose, anyway, so what does it matter?

1615 edit: I actually saw him, but not on the bus, and in circumstances that were so stupidly depressing, or depressingly stupid, or both, that I can't bring myself to talk about it. When the fates seem to be so determined to make your life a misery, all that's left to do is to consume enough liquid anaesthetic to render yourself insensate.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Flowing downhill

No matter your position (real or perceived) in life's pecking order. there always seems to be someone lower to be dismissively judgmental about. But these judgments are more often than not in the eye of the beholder. Perversion being one of them, it seems. Shit flows downhill. At least until you find yourself in the position designated the 'lowest of the low'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Do you dream in colour?

That was a question I didn't know the answer to, about myself, anyway, for many years, until one night in my twenties, when I had a very vivid (non-sexual) dream about the daughter of a friend of mine, in which she was wearing a bright orange bathrobe. I had another vividly coloured moment in a dream in the early hours of this morning, involving a small boy on a ferry with intensely green eyes, greener than any I've ever seen in waking life. I don't remember anything else about the dream, just those eyes.
The dream boy wasn't as head-turning as a little guy I saw leaving Hackney Central station with his (presumably) mother as I was passing on a bus yesterday lunchtime, though. Blond hair, lovely face, too far away for me to see the colour of his eyes, although blue would have been a good guess, given the colour of his hair. Not the slightest sexual element to my admiration of him - he was only about 4 or 5 - just appreciation of the perfect beauty of a delightful little boy.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Oh well!

K is a single woman again - cute boyfriend the second was apparently 'a child'. Would that it could have lasted a bit longer so I could have got to have known him better, because if he's 16 going on about 12, as K suggested, and seemingly with, at least from what my girl has said, a bicurious past, he would've been a good match for my 54 going on 12! Damn!!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A rubber stamp moment, and an oasis moment

My second work medical in less than a month, this one supposedly a follow-up in connection with my long-term sickness last year, was a thoroughly perfunctory affair, with exactly the same outcome as its predecessor, namely that I'm still fit to do my job. It got me out of a late turn, if nothing else, with the collateral advantage that I'm now in my local rather than wage slaving, so it can't be all bad.
Not half so good, though, as a little moment of connection with a more than passably cute boy on my meandering way from town to here. It came on an after-school bus, where I was occupying my favoured eye candy spotting niche, the left hand seat at the front of the top deck, while he was in the corresponding seat on the right. A gaggle of girls, from the same school as him, as far as I could tell, were getting off the bus at the first town centre stop, and were giggling maniacally about something or another. The collective noise they were making was, to say the least, strange, like a laughing gas attack on an aviary, and both the boy and I turned to see what was going on. He very obviously rolled his eyes and blew through his lips, and our eyes met just at that juncture. It was evident that we had pretty much the same thought in mind - 'Girls!!!!' - and that shared second caused us both to break into spontaneous grins. These things never have a sequel, of course, but, as I've said before, any oasis in the wilderness of life as a boylover is thoroughly welcome.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Black and white

My heart was in my boots almost as soon as I got to work yesterday afternoon. There had apparently been a documentary on TV on Wednesday evening about a person who had set up a fake website to entrap 'paedophiles' by posing as various young girls, and the programme was the first topic of conversation, along with a recent case of a school deputy head who'd committed suicide after having been found to have secretly taken pictures of boys in his school's changing rooms. Cue the usual kneejerk reactions, the 'hang 'em, flog 'em and lock em' up and throw the key away' bullshit 'cut and pasted' directly from the tabloid press, without any further thought process at all. Nothing I haven't heard umpteen times before, but the reason I was so downhearted by it on this occasion was that the conversation was initiated and pretty much led by probably the only person at work I would consider a friend as opposed to a colleague, the guy I work with regularly who's the father of the two boys, including the supercutie whose photo is his phone wallpaper, I've mentioned a number of times in the past. The knowledge that if I let my mask slip, even for a second, I'd become a hate figure for him really hit me hard. But, of course, my attractions are a 'choice'. Ask any 'right thinking' person.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The big city

'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' So said Dr Johnson, a couple of centuries or so ago. Well, I've been working in London for just over four years now (the anniversary fell in the middle of last week), and actually back living here for seven months, to add to my almost two years here in the 1980s, and while I perhaps wouldn't go as far as Johnson as a metropolitan afficionado, there are, for me, decidedly more pros than cons. There are days, though, days like today when the sun is shining, the city isn't too ridiculously busy and congested and I can sit on the top deck of various buses, watching the world flow by outside, that I come close, at least, to loving the place. Maybe I'll go back to Cornwall one day, maybe I'll leave the country completely and find somewhere the sun shines more or less every day, but, in the meantime, I could think of far, far worse places to be than 'the big city'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cutie time is cancelled....

....due to emotional fragility. I've deliberately avoided my usual after-school eye candy search, and come to the pub instead. Because, ultimately, what is 'cutie time', anyway? Nothing but me with my nose pressed to the toy shop window, gazing at what I want the most, but can never have. Life is shit enough as it is, without torturing myself further. '(Eye) candy is dandy, but liquor is....' more reliable.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Desolation

If you've heard this all before, and find it tedious, feel free to stop reading now. I haven't been in a good place for several days now, and it isn't getting any better. This time next week, I'll be embarking on almost two weeks off, using up the annual leave I haven't used earlier in the year, because I've had nothing to use it for. And that's still the same - in those two weeks, and a couple more later in the autumn, I've got nothing to do, nowhere to go, no-one to see. No point at all to my life, apart from keeping my daughter fed and sheltered until she's ready to go her own way, sooner rather than later. Last weekend, with my brother, the subject of 'bucket lists' came up in conversation. As I said at the time, there's only one item on mine, and it's 99%. at least, certain never to come to pass.

Nothing.

Nowhere.

No-one.

For always.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

She's done it again

From the brief view I had before I staggered off to bed this morning, anyway. It seems that K has acquired a new boyfriend, same age as her (and thus legal) - and he's cute! In some ways, maybe even cuter than the previous model to my eyes, because he looks a tad younger, maybe a year or two, than his chronological age, Not, of course, that I'd try to come between my girl and her beau, even in the vanishingly unlikely event that I was able to, but if, in due course, they 'move on' - well, I certainly wouldn't say no!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not fit to be seen

One of K's schoolfriends is staying over tonight. I'm pleased, of course, that's she's made friends readily at her new school, and that she seems to have fitted in to the community without difficulty, Not that I would've expected otherwise, she's a nice person to know, and has vastly more 'people skills' than I do (albeit that's not much of an achievement, virtually everybody has more people skills than me). It seems, though, that I'm not even deemed worthy of even the briefest of introductions to her new friend - they've been sequestered in K's room since they arrived from school, almost two hours ago. Yeah, OK, teenagers, but is K that ashamed of me that even a few seconds of socialisation is beyond the pale?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another day, another pill

And, as I've just found on getting up, another medical next week. As to the pills, though - since the weekend, I've been suffering from an unpleasantly itchy rash, which had reached the point where I really had trouble sleeping yesterday, problematic given that I'm on nights this week. So it was off to the doctors' this morning, where, without much delay, I was diagnosed with urticaria, and prescribed antihistamines as treatment. At least I slept better today, doubtless helped by the fact that one of the side effects of the pills is three to six hours of drowsiness.
When I did eventually resurface, an hour or so ago, it was to find a letter that had been delivered earlier 'inviting' me to a 'review medical' next Friday. It was too late to speak to my new boss today, so I'll call him in the morning and see if any light can be shed upon this development. I was under the impression I'd been passed fit for my job until 2018, so I'm interested, to say the least, as to why the goalposts appear to have been moved again.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It should go better this time

Exactly 52 weeks ago, I was on a train to Manchester for a visit that degenerated into one of the worst days of my life. In a couple of hours time, I'll be heading off on another trip, but I'm not expecting it to be anything other than congenial this time. I'm off to my brother's, to take him and my sister-in-law  out for a meal to belatedly celebrate their fiftieth birthdays - my sister-in-law passed the milestone a month ago, my brother a fortnight later. I'm looking forward to what I'm sure will be an evening of good food and good company - and I don't feel I'm tempting fate in the slightest by saying so.

Love & best wishes
Sammy B

Too politically correct, obviously

I met up with some work colleagues in town this afternoon, for a drinkies session that had been mooted several weeks ago. It was advertised as a 'civilised drink', but that was always a little doubtful, given some of the participants. Somewhere along the line, a visit to a well-known topless bar had been pencilled in, and I'd made it known that I wasn't at all interested, but, even so, everyone seemed surprised that I actually meant what I'd said, when I refused to have anything to do with it. My objections have nothing to do with my orientation, but revolve around what I consider to be the demeaning effect of such places, to the customers as much as to the staff. I went elsewhere, assured that they wouldn't be there long, but, two and a half hours later, when I hadn't been invited to rejoin them, I gave up the ghost and headed towards home. Maybe someone will add two and two, and make five, but if so, that's their problem. Contrary to what some might think, I have principles, and I intend to stick to them.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not what you expect....

....on a number 2 bus at 6:00 in the morning, even in Central London, but there he was. No ambiguity about legality, he was probably in his early twenties - and drop dead gorgeous, even to my boyloving eyes. As I've said more than once, I've got no discernible 'gaydar', but I'd be very surprised, given his attire and demeanour, if he was straight. Once I'd got my breath back, though, my mood collapsed into a miasma of pitiful inadequacy, the knowledge that someone like him would never be accessible to a fat old mess like me. And probably never would have been, even when I was his age, but, once more, I cursed my stupidity and cowardice for not even having tried to be myself back then, instead cravenly attempting to be what those around me expected. There's a scene in the film Papillon where the main character dreams of being charged and found guilty of 'a wasted life'. That's me, to a T.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

About as close to....

....a warm glow as I ever get. The last hour or so has been spent on YouTube, sampling such delights as Lagartija Nick by Bauhaus, Never Understand by The Jesus & Mary Chain, and a selection of Extreme Noise Terror tracks, while eating gelateria style ice cream (half price at Sainsburys!). But most creamy of all, a video of clips from Omen III - The Final Conflict. which featured, more than once, the most gorgeous boy to have appeared in any film, ever, as far as I'm concerned - Barnaby Holm as Peter Reynolds. And, as often - and I mean often! - as I've seen the film, I spotted something I'd never noticed before. Anyone who's seen the film will probably remember the hunt scene, but I didn't realise that Peter winked at Damien and gave him the cutest of wry smiles before the hunt proper began. Talk about dripping with homoeroticism! If it was physically possible, I'd quite simply have been left as a gooey puddle on the living room carpet! Wonderful!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B