Dismissal

Heard at the bar, a little while ago - 'What, you've got a girlfriend?' It might have been meant as a joke, but the recipient of the remark was conspicuously silent. I remember being told by a girl, a long, long time ago, in just that tone of voice, 'dance with you?'. That tone of dismissiveness, maybe not even a conscious thing from the instigator, is one of the most soul destroying, spirit destroying things imaginable, as far as I'm concerned.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

That was the weekend that was

I'm back in my local after my day and a half's trip west, a visit that I had some uncertainties about, but which proved to be reasonably painless overall, given that it was the first time I'd seen my ex for more than eighteen months, and the first time I'd spent a night in Cornwall for almost as long, albeit in the anonymity of a Travelodge. K's performance was the primary reason for the visit, and I wrote about that last night, but my ex also wanted to discuss some issues around K's move up here. Those discussions were civil enough, although I still suspect that my ex would rather our daughter was staying with her, and did have the beneficial outcome, from my perspective, of my being able to pick up a handful of bits and pieces my ex had rescued from the old house. The last act of the weekend, apart from a rather tortuous journey back, was my going to lunch with K, although my girl wasn't at her sparkling best - she's not been too well of late, and she was very tired today. Hopefully she'll perk up over the coming days, not least because she's got her GCSE art exam on Thursday and Friday, but also because of her forthcoming plans for the Easter holidays, including her first visit to the flat in a fortnight's time. I'll be looking forward to that, needless to say.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

My daughter knows me too well!

The performance went well, at least as far as K was concerned, although one or two of the others had some missteps. K will always be my star, of course, but, being objective, the most talented performer on view was someone else. When I asked K afterwards who she thought would have caught my eye, she got it right first time. Because as well as being obviously accomplished in all three elements the stage school teach - singing, dancing and acting - the student in question was, if I had some kind of real life version of The Sims, close to being the perfect boy I'd design for myself. Good looking, talented, intelligent (as K told me - he goes to the boys' equivalent of the girls' grammar school she attends), smiley, friendly, enthusiastic. If there was anything I could change to complete the perfection, I'd maybe make him a year older and give him blond hair, but, otherwise, short of finding a way of bringing Xander to life, I could barely imagine anyone more to my tastes. All, as ever, simply daydreaming, but that's one of the few 'boy related' things I can do without hurting anyone, and without getting myself into trouble.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wasted, totally wasted

I've made it to Plymouth, despite some rather non-user friendly traffic holding up the replacement bus service coming into the city, and I'm now chilling with a quiet beer before heading out to the suburban venue for K's performance. On my way from the station to here, I espied an extremely easy on the eye cutie, 13 or 14, but with his arm wrapped around a not all that attractive girl of around the same age. I succumbed to some very impure thoughts about him, I have to admit - he's wasted on her, without a doubt!
(I am joking, of course, in case anyone is in the slightest confused.)

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Facetime

As previously related, I'm off to the West Country tomorrow for K's last day at her stage school. But there is another issue, too. I'll be seeing my ex, face to face, for the first time in eighteen months or so, and for the first time since we divorced. We've spoken on the phone often enough, including this week, and it's been reasonably amicable, for the most part, but it's still a difficult situation for me to negotiate, especially as I didn't want us to split up in the first place. We're going to meet up for K's performance, and all three of us are going for a meal afterwards. Like a lot of things about what's happened, I've got very mixed feelings about how it might go. How are you supposed to relate to someone you still love, but who doesn't love you anymore? Someone you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, but who threw you out almost without a second thought? It's not going to be an easy day, I suspect.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Seek....

....and sometimes you'll find. After some weeks of fruitless searching, I found a copy of Another Country on DVD this afternoon, in the unnecessarily vast Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush (about half a mile from where I lived during my previous sojourn in London in the eighties, coincidentally, although Westfield hadn't even been dreamt of back then), where I'd gone after work to look for something else entirely. I'm not sure if I'll get round to watching it tonight, though - after my ninth pre-4:30 alarm call in a row, I have serious doubts about whether I'll be able to stay awake beyond the opening credits! Still, at least my run of earlies has now come to an end - in fact, I'm now off until Monday night, so I can feel some R & R coming on!

2155 edit: Contrary to my expectations, I did stay awake long enough to watch the film, and I still think it's wonderful, if not the happiest viewing. And Adrian Ross-Magenty was even more of a cutie than I remembered!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Someone else I daren't meet

A definite slip at work this morning, albeit one I got away with (I think). The colleague of mine who is amongst those I most regularly work with, and get along with probably the best of all of my workmates, is, as I've mentioned before, the father of two sons. I'd seen a picture of the older boy (who's now 13, and not at all difficult to look at) before on his dad's phone, but I'd never seen a picture of 'little bro'. Until this morning, when my colleague came back to his position after I'd relieved him for his break, and put his phone down on the desk. His 'lockscreen' wallpaper was a photo of his younger son, taken at Wembley when they were there for a football match recently. And the little guy is just lovely, blond and very good-looking (he takes after his mother, apparently). The words came out before I even had chance to think - 'he's cute'. Fortunately, my colleague seemed to take my use of the word 'cute' in its parental/familial version, and agreed with me, although he also said, jokingly, that the boy was 'a monster'. If he looks that good on an unposed photograph, I wouldn't want to see him in 'real life' - I could very easily 'out' myself in the face of such beauty, and that wouldn't, I suspect, do much for my career prospects. And it's not entirely out of the question that I might find myself invited, at least, to some event or other where I might see the boys - my colleague and I do get on pretty well, and there have already been 'near misses' as far as getting together outside work goes. What I would do if I received such an invitation, I don't know. Another example of the minefield that life as a boylover entails.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nearly, but not quite

Seeing my daughter, that is. She'd made impromptu plans yesterday to take a day trip to London today (the first fruits of my having managed to keep her travel concessions alive), something she has done before, albeit to catch up with friends rather than to visit me, but I received a text fairly early this morning to say that she'd overslept, and, not being able to catch the first service from Plymouth, had scrapped the trip because any later journey wouldn't have left her enough time up here to make it worthwhile. I will definitely see her next weekend, though, when I head west to see her Stagecoach swansong, and I may, now, see her in the school holidays, too. Only because cute boyfriend has other plans for the first half of the week she was planning to visit him, though, around the band he's in. It might even be a two day visit, although another of her friends, who lives in Surrey, may be an alternative destination for one of those days. I'm grateful for the crumbs from her table, anyway!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Soooo cute!

On my way here - my new local - from work, one of the series of buses I took was more than a little busy. As I made my way towards the back of the single-deck vehicle, it was apparent that there was only one seat available. Next to a small boy. And I mean small - he was only around 5 or 6. He wasn't on his own, needless to say, dad and big brother - who was actually far cuter than the little guy - were sitting immediately behind. Almost as soon as the bus pulled away from the stop where I'd boarded, we got stuck in traffic. At which point my young seatmate seemed to wilt almost in reaction, and fell asleep. Against me. Although I'm sure there are those who wouldn't believe me, it provoked nothing but an 'awww, soooo cute!' reaction, very paternally rooted. It actually reminded me a lot of my daughter at his age, and younger - K's capacity for falling asleep on just about any means of transport you can think of, from aeroplanes to shopping trollies, was almost legendary! And, unlikely as it might seem, the little guy was called Sammy! Big bro called his name to wake him up when the bus reached their stop. My alter ego's alter ego, junior edition!
There was a dark cloud wrapped around the silver lining, though - it struck me that on the equivalent Saturday, exactly half a year ago, I spent a wonderful afternoon and early evening in the company of a very special young man. And it all ended in disaster. J, of course. There's always something there to remind me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

He'll be sadly missed - not

I've just read that Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church bigot-in-chief, for those who might not know) is dead. To shamelessly plagiarise a Spike Milligan joke - if I remember correctly - doctors describe his condition as satisfactory.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The plans they are a' changing. And a posh cutie

This news is almost two days old, but I haven't got around to posting about it until now. In spite of our having arranged it weeks ago, and my having booked leave accordingly, K isn't now going to come up to stay during the school holidays next month. It's her choice, of course, and, to be as fair as I can, the gig she was going to go to in London that week has been cancelled, but I'm still disappointed, all the more so because she delivered the news in such an 'oh, by the way, I forgot to mention' sort of way. I might, if I'm very lucky, be graced with her presence for an overnight stay as she makes her way to her boyfriend's, where she's heading instead. Yeah, capricious teenagers, and all that, but I wasn't very amused when she told me on Tuesday.
A (barely) teenage cutie was a sweeter moment this afternoon, though. And to say that he was posh is, if anything, an understatement, because he was a pupil at Harrow School, which is about as upmarket as it gets. My latest circuitous route back from work took me past the school earlier, and there was a small cross-section of the school population on view, mostly on their way to or from games lessons, it seemed. Oddly enough, though, the average attractiveness (to my eyes) of most of them was a notch or two lower than I might expect to see on passing a bog-standard state school. The boy in question, I have to say, was very much the exception that proved the rule. He was gorgeous, tallish, dark-haired, athletic looking, even allowing for his being in sports gear. Just stunning. Good enough to eat. And you can take that any way you like!

Love & best wishes
Sammy B

A boy moment, or close to one, at least

Today was my first early turn since moving, and involved me getting up even earlier than my commute from 'domicile-ville', by around 15 or 20 minutes. It all went smoothly enough, though, as did the shift itself. It was a nice afternoon, so I decided to meander back, by bus, and not by the most direct route, stopping off at my nearest large supermarket to pick up some shopping on the last leg of the trip back home. Which was where the boy came in. Or out, actually - he was exiting the gents as I was going the other way. He was 12, 13 maybe, certainly passably cute, a little look of mischief about him. He looked at me, then looked again, just a hint of a smile in evidence. Then an adult, who he was seemingly with, appeared, and the moment of contact had passed. Another ghost, no doubt, flitting through my life for scant seconds, never to be seen again. What would I have done, had the connection been more substantive? I've no idea, really. But nothing, 100% guaranteed, that the boy didn't want. Just a daydream, realistically, but one, especially given my recent downbeat state, which was undoubtedly better than nothing.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Emptiness, revisited

This post has been fermenting, as it were, since it was largely composed in my head at around 10:00 this morning. I was going to publish it, then I wasn't, mostly because of the self-censorship I've been prone to of late, because of what people might think of it, or of me. But, ultimately, only a tiny handful of people read this blog, so my thinking in terms of 'consequences' is really rather self-aggrandising, even masturbatory. And, of course, even the few, much appreciated as they are, aren't forced to read in any way, so I'm going to 'publish and be damned'.
It began with a thought on the first bus I caught today, from the flat into the local town centre. I realised that, having set out from home, I had absolutely no idea of where I was going to go. Then, it struck me that it made no difference where I went, because, whatever my destination, there was nothing and, more to the point, no-one there for me. The feeling of emptiness, pointlessness, was as sharp as any I've felt since the very early stages of my split from my ex, two years ago. I need someone to take my hand and lead me away from this place I've found myself in (sorry for the plagiarism, David, but it was such a lovely, lovely phrase, and one that struck such a chord with me), but, given my lifestyle and my personality, I simply can't see how it could come about. I'll keep going through the motions, no doubt, for K, at least, but going through the motions is all it will be. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to do one of the few things I do seem to be able to do effectively, and get drunk. I may be some time.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nice day, but not a good day

I've just washed up in my new local, after eight hours of meandering around various bits of Greater London. It's been a thoroughly nice day, weatherwise, and there have been plenty of people about, including a reasonable number of cuties, I had a nice lunch in the shape of a duck sandwich at Borough Market, my first of the year - K will be jealous! - but, all in all, it hasn't been the happiest day of my life. I've been a bit too introspective, I think, brooding on worst case scenarios and the absent, and probably unattainable, positive in my situation. I'll get over it, not least because I'm off to see a good friend tomorrow, and I've got another two days off after that, so I guess today is best consigned to the dustbin of history.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another Country

My second favourite film of all time, but it was originally a play, by Julian Mitchell, and a new theatrical production has opened in London, which I saw advertised on the tube on the way back from work the other night. I was, momentarily, tempted to go and see the play, but the film has such resonances for me that I don't think it would be worthwhile, because I would almost certainly spend the whole time simply playing the film in my head, and comparing the play unfavourably. Why? Well, a number of reasons, really. Apart from the subject matter, which is very close to my heart (I won't put any spoilers here, in case anyone who might want to watch the film reads this), the 'look' of the film - the cinematography, I guess - is so beautiful, right from the opening credits, shot from a punt. or similar, adjacent to the 'school', something that could never be reproduced in a theatre, but, most of all, the characters are so imprinted on my mind, having seen the film so many times, that anyone else playing them could never engage me in the same way. Rupert Everett, in particular, is Guy - if there was ever a role an actor was born to play, it must be this one, as far as I'm concerned - but there are others, too, Adrian Ross-Magenty as the only 'junior' with a prominent role, Wharton, is (was!) a little cutie, while Colin Firth as Tommy Judd (a role Everett played on stage, something I can hardly imagine!) is outstanding, a precursor of his subsequent stellar career. I haven't actually seen the film for quite a while - before the meltdown of my marriage, I owned two copies of it on DVD, but contrived to leave both of them behind when I moved out, somehow, one of the most grievous losses amongst all that was lost two years ago - something I need to remedy sooner rather than later. Maybe that might be a good 'mission' for my forthcoming long weekend - scour London for an Another Country DVD! And some eye candy, of course.

Edit: I've just found a full version of the film online - but it was dubbed into Spanish! Bugger!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Inertia

I was originally intending to go shopping this morning, but the mechanics of actually getting ready and going out, then returning an hour and a half hence to immediately turn around and go back out to work have proved to be an insurmountable obstacle, so I've put it off, probably until tomorrow evening on my way back from work. There's nothing I've actually run out of, in any case, so the day and a half's postponement isn't going to be too much of a problem. Motivation, or its absence, seems to be a recurring theme in my life at the moment - after the weeks of running around arranging the rental of the flat, and the activity, if not excitement, of the actual move, I'm feeling a bit flat just now. I guess it's a bit of an 'interlude' period - I'm in the new place, but K isn't, and won't be for a few more months, and there's nothing much else going on in the immediate future apart from work, although there is a possibility of my brother and sister-in-law coming up to stay this weekend, given that I'm off for a few days. Even if I don't have any visitors over the weekend, it might be a good idea to make specific plans to go somewhere and do something, just to have a focus, albeit a minor one. And, after all, what's the point of living in London if all you do is go to work.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another day....

....another pack of tabloid lies. The front page story in The Sun, screaming about the 'shocking revelation' that the son of the author of a series of well-known children's books is 'a member of Paedophile Information Exchange'. A member of an organisation that ceased to exist in 1984? I don't think so. The story also referred to the man's mother being 'devastated' about her son's 'obsession' with boys. The implication, of course, is that we should be completely ostracised, even by our 'support network', our families and friends - presumably the haters think that if our lives are made miserable enough, we'll all either magically be 'cured' or decide to end it all and save 'society', or the local vigilantes, the bother. I wouldn't wipe my arse on that vile excuse for a newspaper.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Which way?

I've reached one of those periodic points when I'm questioning whether my blog is worth going on with, or not. It certainly seems to me to be in 'treading water' mode, perhaps because I don't have anything much that is new to say, but also because I'm finding it increasingly difficult to 'be myself', even here - quite frequently, of late, I find myself thinking that I have to 'self-censor', not say what I want to say, for fear of attracting opprobrium from the haters, or even (and perhaps still more disheartening) from friends. I can't change who I am and what I feel, because if I could, I would. Maybe the best thing would be for me to just shut up and go away, keep it all inside, as I have to in my 'real' life. Or lack of a life, as the case may be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Les yeux bleu

I took a slowish meander into work this morning/lunchtime, leaving earlier than I had over the past few days and going all the way from the flat to Waterloo by bus before catching a train to 'worktown' - it was a pleasant enough day, and I didn't have anything pressing to do, so why not, I thought. I ended up by tripping over a bittersweet reminder of one of the more traumatic days of my recent life, though - on the last bus I caught, from Baker Street towards Waterloo, I ended up sitting behind a French (speaking) family, presumably tourists, including a boy of 8 or 9. He was pleasant enough to look at, although nothing out of the ordinary, but, when he turned in my direction to look at something or other that had caught his attention, it felt like I'd been physically struck. His eyes were so like J's (my cousin's son, that is, the catalyst for the meltdown between us last autumn), big, clear, beautiful pale blue eyes, almost exactly the same colour and even a similar shape to those of that special little guy. I wish there was some way I could be part of J's life, and have him be part of mine, but I know it will never be, despite the instant bond that formed between us that fateful afternoon. It's better that way, I guess, because although I could easily give a 99% guarantee that he would come to no harm from me, the only way to make the guarantee 100% watertight is for me never to see him again. I know too much about myself for it to be any other way.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More time-consuming than I expected

My 'new' commute, that is. Distance-wise, it's almost exactly the same from the flat to work as it was from 'domicile-ville', but the need to cross London, and the fact that I haven't got a mainline station particularly close, means that it's taking something like half as long again to make the journey as it was before last weekend. Not that I mind, really, because I've got lots of different permutations of bus, tube and train that I can take, rather than flogging up and down the same 17 miles of railway line every single day. Variety is the spice of life, and all that!
Speaking to K on my way home last night - a pleasant way to occupy myself en route, of course - it seems that she's getting rather excited about the move. She was certainly full of plans and suggestions for the flat, and rightly so, because, after all, it's going to be her home every bit as much as it's mine. Whatever else, I doubt that having her around is going to be boring!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tips for living with my daughter

I'm going down to Plymouth in three weekends time to see K's swansong at her stage school - the one that's contributed more than a little to our poverty over the past decade! - leading to an unintentionally (probably) amusing comment by my ex a couple of days ago. She'll be at the performance as well - it will be our first face to face meeting for over a year, although we speak regularly enough on the phone - and she's promised to give me some 'tips for living with K'. With all due respect, I really don't think I need any 'coaching' in relating to my daughter - we've always been pretty much on the same wavelength, and I expect that continuing to treat her as an intelligent equal will probably have the desired effect. I have little doubt that there will be points of friction now and again, but I can't imagine that we'll suddenly become mortal enemies. One of these days, my ex will (I hope) come to realise that K isn't a little girl anymore, and, when she does, I'm sure it will do wonders for their relationship, too.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Middle Saxon

Well, after my first night sleeping in the flat (at home! - I'm still more than a little giddy about the idea of having a proper home again!), I guess I can now claim to be a fully-fledged denizen of the ancient county of Middlesex, the territory of the Middle Saxons. It's been an exhausting few days to get to the point of being able to say that, though - memo to self, don't move house in between a string of night shifts! If I had five hours sleep over the weekend, that was about as much as I did manage, having had to get to the flat at midday on Saturday to pick the keys up, before spending much of Sunday, with the help of my brother and sister-in-law, making the actual move. At least, given that I was moving from a furnished room to a furnished flat, there wasn't too much in the way of heavy lifting, but there was still plenty of running around, shifting bags and boxes, and a couple of Sunday afternoon shopping trips to get hold of a few things necessary for a convenient life but not included in the flat's inventory, frustrating, in a way, because had I been able to move directly from Cornwall to here a couple of years ago rather than having had to take the long (timewise) detour via 'domicile-ville', I would have had some of them rather than having to buy replacements, as well as picking up some basic groceries, cleaning materials and the like. Then, yesterday, I spent several hours unpacking and putting stuff away, managing, given that the flat has plenty of storage space, to find a sensible place for everything - not that I'm a 'neat freak', but I do like to have things reasonably organised. There are still a few more bits and pieces missing, as I've discovered over the past 24 hours, but nothing major, and nothing that can't be brought home on the bus.
There is, of course, one huge piece of the jigsaw missing at the moment - K. Nothing to be done about that, though, until her exams finish at the end of June, although she will be here for a few days in the middle of next month, during the school holidays. If current plans come to fruition, I'll also meet her gorgeous boyfriend for the first time, because they're supposed to be going to a gig in London that week. That's likely to be an interesting encounter, to say the least!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B