Spend, spend, spend!

Well, perhaps not quite to the extent the exclamation mark suggests, but a fair bit of money has left my bank account today. Most of it was reasonably justifiable, though, and a good proportion of it was centred around making the flat a suitable place for a bandwidth-hungry teenager to live. I finally got around to signing up for a phone and broadband package this morning, a 'top of the range' package at that, with unlimited data over a high speed fibreoptic connection and a phone line with unlimited calls. It's going to cost about £50 a month, but it should provide more than enough phone and internet to cater for both of us. The only downside is that we've got to wait about 10 days for it to be installed, but the wait should be worth it, once it's up and running. As an 'add-on', we had to go out and buy a pair of cordless phones this afternoon, as my ex had claimed our old one (not, I hasten to add, in any way that induced acrimony), but that wasn't, in the scheme of things, too much of an expense. I also bought K an Android tablet for her to take on her forthcoming trip to America - she was thinking of taking her laptop, but we decided that a tablet would be both more portable and less of a loss if it happens to be damaged or misappropriated. The last element of our buying day was the cheapest, but the most frivolous - in amongst the grocery shopping, K asked for a huge scented candle in a jar for her bedroom, while I bought a grossly overpriced toothbrush holder and a bottle of wine I'm sure I'll enjoy, but which I certainly could've lived without. Oh well, what's the point of working my backside off if I can't go and waste spend some of the proceeds once in a while!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Doing our own thing

Another aspect of K's arrival that I'd thought about, but wasn't sure how it would pan out, was the extent to which our lives would be separate, as much as to what extent they would coincide. Today has been, I hope, an example of how it might work. I was on earlies, and thus gone hours before K would even have thought of being up, although she was bright and early, by her standards, because the landlord had arranged for a tradesman to come to the flat to do a couple of small repairs. Once the work had been done, K went off on a trip of her own, didn't think it worth my meeting up with her, because she wasn't planning to be out for long, and then went home, while I've come to my local for a beer or two before heading for home in the very near future. There's no reason that I can see that we shouldn't live our own lives, in between the together times, and to be able to do that in a calm way is rather encouraging.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Living with a teenager

It's 2:00 in the afternoon, it's my day off. I've been up since 7:30, had breakfast, taken the van back, done two loads of washing, put a pile of stuff that arrived at the flat yesterday away. K is still in bed. *sighs*

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Middle Saxon the second

Around 6:30 this evening, after a rather longer journey than I'd hoped for (mostly due to wrestling with the M25 in the rush hour), I parked the hire van outside the flat, turned to K, and said 'Welcome home'. The breadth of her smile made me feel that, for once in my life, I might just have done the right thing.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Maybe it will be goodbye this time

I'm currently hiding out in one of my erstwhile stamping grounds, 'stereotypical suburb' Wetherspoons, passing an hour or so prior to heading back up to town to catch the overnight train to Cornwall, where, tomorrow morning, I'll be picking up a van, scooping up my daughter and her possessions, and taking both to North London. Will I ever go back to Cornwall thereafter? I did say, a good while ago, that if I was ever forced to leave I would never go back, even for a day trip, because seeing what I'd had and lost would be too traumatic. It's still 'home', in my head and my heart, but not in the 'real world'. Loss, loss, loss - it's always loss in my life, so it seems.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

At least I wouldn't be enslaved....

....because, being gay, I'd be stoned to death instead in his theocratic dystopia.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another of those memos....

....to myself. To remind myself that whatever I write, and however much emotional capital I might invest in it, no-one has any obligation whatsoever to read it. Once I click the 'Publish' icon, my words are 'out there', to stand or fall by their own merits, and by the judgment of others of those merits, or otherwise. If I can't accept that, I should give up blogging immediately.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

BBQ, beer, boys and bottling it

Last night's engagement party turned out to be a rather bigger affair than I'd expected - there were probably fifty-odd people there all told - based around a barbeque in the beer garden of an East Kent village pub, marquee and all. I'd had a few 'I wonder' moments about who might be there, and, in the event, there were a number who made my evening more complicated than I would, ideally, have chosen.
It was only a few minutes after K and I had arrived when the first hiccup manifested itself, in the shape of a pair of brothers, on my nephew's fiancee's side - big bro, 13-ish, was right in my AoA, and not at all difficult to look at, but it was little bro who out-cuted him by many a mile - even K, completely unprompted by me, called him 'adorable'. A slightly later arrival, though, induced an experience verging on the surreal. My sister-in-law's niece arrived with her family, including her youngest - a boy who looks so much like she did when I first met her as a pretty (but more than a little boyish) 11/12 year old, albeit that her son had an almost militarily severe haircut, maybe imposed by a father (who I only know very slightly, but what I do know, I don't find at all appealing) who wanted to make sure his son looks as masculine as possible. Despite the scalping, the boy attracted a good deal of my attention during the evening, but discreetly - he doesn't know me at all, and I'm as sure as I can be that he wasn't aware of my interest.
One of the last family groups of all to arrive, though, brought with them, for me, the most difficulties of all. I'd known since I'd spoken to my brother at lunchtime that one of my oldest friends, the best man at my wedding, and his wife would be there, which, given that I hadn't seen them for almost three years, was very welcome news. What I didn't know, though, was that their son would be there too - or that he would turn out to both bring out so many resonances of that disastrous night in Manchester last autumn, and to be so special in his own right. Special, that is, in exactly the same way J was, very bright, engaging, so much fun to be around, just a delight. The fact that I was so taken with him, though, led me into an act of cowardice I was ashamed of almost immediately, but couldn't bring myself to overcome. I'd told my friend in an e-mail more than a year ago that I felt that I owed him an explanation as to why my ex and I had split up, given his role on our wedding day, but that I wanted to tell him face to face rather than hiding behind the anonymity of a keyboard. As I've said before, my handful of 'comings out' have been of two kinds, the basic 'I've known I was gay since I was 12' version, and the properly honest 'but I've never been attracted to a man in my life' full version. I really wanted to tell my friend 'the whole truth', but I simply couldn't face the prospect of losing another person who I've been close to for more than half of my life had he concluded that his son was at risk (which I can truthfully say he would never be) from me. So, despite whatever 'Dutch courage' might have been engendered by the several beers I'd had by that stage of the evening, I 'bottled it', and stopped after the first clause. There are times when I hate myself so much. This is one of them.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Off to the country

Well, sort of, anyway. K has just texted me to say that she's caught the through train from home, so I'll be meeting her at lunchtime, then go on to my brother's place, before we actually do head off into the country, albeit eventually, for my nephew and his fianceé's engagement party at a village pub near my home town. The sun's shining, I'm not at work until tomorrow afternoon (for a change!), it should be a good weekend!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

London life....and its pitfalls

Living in London has numerous advantages, access to pretty much any sort of culture, entertainment, music, shopping, food, with lots of interesting places to visit and a very cosmopolitan range of people to share the city with, even if, like me, the interactions are mostly confined to 'people watching'. It's not all roses, though, and I fell into one of the pitfalls this morning. I left for work half an hour earlier than usual, thinking that would leave me more than enough time for a 'retail experience' en route, namely acquiring a new pair of trousers for the 'do' on Saturday evening, something, given my ample physique, that requires me to go to clothes shops that cater for....well, ample physiques! I knew where to go and how to get there, though, while more or less sticking to a fairly direct route to work. And it all went according to plan, for the first twenty minutes, at least, but then - enter the pitfall. Traffic. To be exact, a seemingly intractable traffic jam (due to roadworks, as it transpired) my bus became entangled in. After crawling little more than a few hundred yards in a quarter of an hour, I simply gave up, got off and walked the mile or so to the nearest railway station, not only arriving before the bus, but before the bus had even come back into sight. So there was my extra half hour, gone, the shopping trip was scrapped, and I headed straight into work. At least I had, during my revised journey, the consolation of seeing a supercute tourist boy, Mediterranean looking, with flawless olive skin, russet brown hair and a lovely face, on the bus I took to 'cut the corner' between two mainline stations on the way to 'worktown'. Too young - aren't they always? - but still so nice to see. London life!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The power of the internet. And the bank of Dad, part the zillionth!

The power of the internet, but in a good way. When you wake up to find something that was posted overnight, that not only puts a smile on your face in the moment, but a smile on your whole day.
The other event of the morning so far was the result of finding out that my early Christmas present to K is one that keeps on giving - I've transferred some money into her bank account so that she can go clothes shopping, both for her forthcoming holiday and for more general use. To be fair, it was my ex who asked me to do it, rather than K herself - K's preparations for next week's move have revealed that her wardrobe is pretty sparse at the moment, at least in terms of stuff that still fits her. The joys of parenthood! - but, of course, I would never begrudge my girl anything she needs that I'm able to provide. I love her far too much for that.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The traveller

After a few hiccups, mostly around her travelling companion's passport, K has finally booked her flights for her American trip at the end of next month. As things have worked out, her itinerary is somewhat simpler than the original version, but has cost slightly more, but between her savings and my 'early Christmas present', it's still affordable. She's also going to be away for a couple of days longer than originally planned, which in turn means that the first couple of days of my summer break are going to be solitary ones, but we should still have a week - jetlag permitting! - to do a few things. One thing that has been mooted is a trip to Jersey - I really love the island, although finances have meant that I haven't been for several years, and K hasn't been since she was about eighteen months old, a visit she obviously doesn't remember, so a reacquaintance with the place certainly wouldn't come amiss. I don't know if the Moulin de Lecq or La Pulente still exist, but I wouldn't mind finding out!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Off the leash

After my eight consecutive night shifts, today has been a bit of an 'R & R' day, which, me being me, has meant my consuming more alcohol than is realistically good for me (and I'm probably not done yet!). I'm back to the grind tomorrow, though, working yet another overtime shift - my post-hospital intention of this time last year to work no overtime at all has long since evaporated in the face of financial necessity - but, at least, I'm not working until the afternoon, so I might just manage a bit of catch-up sleep in the morning. For once, though, I have got something other than work to look forward to later in the week - my nephew, my brother's son, has just got engaged to his longtime girlfriend, and they're having a bit of a do on Saturday evening in one of the villages just outside my home town. There will undoubtedly be a few good friends there, as well as the family, and K is coming up, too, so it should be a thoroughly good night. I certainly hope so.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Local cuties

Walking to the bus stop last night on the first stage of my trek to work, I saw a quite stunning boy on a bike, maybe 12, fair hair, lovely face, slender, athletic body, a walking wet dream for the likes of me (and, no, I won't feel guilty about finding him desirable, because I'd never do anything to hurt someone like him, in any way, it was strictly an eye candy experience). Even more local, though, is the cutie who appears to live in this building. I've seen him around a few times now, mostly out in the communal garden at the back of the flats, playing football with his friends. And while I'd no more hurt him than any other boy, he is an example of a phenomenon I've been concerned about for a while, namely a cute boy living almost literally right on my doorstep. The fact that he's more than a little reminiscent of R, the boy at school who was the first I fell in love with, doesn't exactly help. either. 'Stay away' has, as I've said many times, been my protective mantra (for the boys and myself alike) for longer than I care to think about, but having someone like him living so close by doesn't make my life any easier, to say the least.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A happy awakening. And a shadow from the past

My sleep in preparation for my last night shift for now (finally!) was interrupted an hour or so ago, but the culprit was immediately forgiven, because it was K, texting me Fathers' Day good wishes. She's had her piercings done, it seems - yesterday, actually, but, rarely, I didn't speak to her yesterday, because she was out and about with friends all day and well into the evening, after I'd gone to work. I love her to bits, of course, and I know she loves me, but to have an extra bit of reassurance, even if it is only a text message, is always welcome.
I could have written this next part in the comments section of another blog, but I think it's impolite, in most circumstances, to have third party conversations at other people's blogs. A line in the first comment at that blog's latest post rather concerned me, that someone who caused a lot of hurt and dissension amongst people I cared and care about - people in the plural, that is, although, of course, one particular person was and is closest to my heart - might have resurfaced in yet another 'shape-shifted' guise. The blog owner thinks not, and that's good enough for me, but while I agree that what happened, in overall terms, was a pretty small earthquake, it did a lot of damage to what had begun to develop into a nice, friendly little community. I guess 'firsts' - first love, first loss, first deception - have the most impact, emotionally, for me, anyway, and so, yes, there is still some animosity and suspicion when things happen that hark back to that situation, even tangentially. I wrote a comment on a blog post at the time about forgiveness, but not 'forgiveness at any price'. That's still how I feel about what happened, right or wrong.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Endings, modifications and dreams

The effective end of another era today, that of K's educational association with the West Country - right back to pre-school, all of her education has been undertaken in or, in the case of her senior school, very close to Cornwall. But her last GCSE exam was today, and marks the final time she'll attend her very high quality, but rather old-fashioned school as a pupil (she is going back for the prom next month). And how has she decided to celebrate the occasion? By getting her nose and lip pierced. Why an intelligent and attractive young woman would want holes drilled in her face in the interests of fashion is utterly beyond me, but, then, I'm just a Boring Olde Farte®, who feels exactly the same way about tattoos and other 'body modification'. Thus have the generations differed since time immemorial!
There was an interesting example of how the subconscious 'recycles' elements from the conscious mind and spits them out as dreams during my (once more inadequate) sleep time today. I read an online story while I was waiting for my landlord to come around for a pre-arranged visit this morning (yes, that type of story!), which featured, amongst other characters, a pair of twins with unusual names. The connection resurfaced in a dream I remembered in rather more detail than usual, in the form of twins, with the same unusual names, playing football for Manchester United. Why football, why Manchester United, when I'm not a fan? Who knows? The mind moves in mysterious ways!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Work/life balance

Or its absence. My days at the moment are split into 14 hours of work, or travelling to and from work, and 10 hours for everything else, including sleep. I'm getting very, very tired. And I'm only halfway through the week. If it wasn't for the knowledge that I'm doing this to facilitate K's education, and, hopefully, her future well-being, I'd be tempted to walk away from the whole shooting match. Yesterday.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Beyond explanation

I wonder how the parents of the 'beautiful, innocent children' explained to them why they couldn't go to Disney World. I doubt if the apposite phrase, 'because Mommy and Daddy are bigoted imbeciles', came into the equation.
And one from K, a story I haven't seen myself, and can't vouch for, but one which sounds plausible and more than indicative of the skewed 'priorities' of modern society, especially in places where the right wing are in control - apparently a London borough council has installed retractable spikes on park benches to stop homeless people sleeping on them, at a price higher than it would have cost to actually house those homeless people, and with the consequence that people now have to pay to use the benches, the payment of the fee causing the spikes to retract. You couldn't make it up, still less explain it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Motivation breakdown

Maybe it's the onset of another week of night shifts, but I can't seem to find the enthusiasm to do much of anything at the moment. Yesterday, it took me literally hours to persuade myself to get ready to go out and do some necessary grocery shopping, while the flash of indignation I experienced on spotting the headline story in the Sunday Express, a news-free, faux-outrage piece about 'paedophiles' soon evaporated into apathy rather than leading to the rant I began to form in my mind with a view to posting here. Now, even after a relatively good day's sleep by my night week standards, I'm still feeling unmotivated and flat. And then, oh joy, in just over three hours time, I'll be off to work again. 'Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death', as Mr Waters memorably wrote.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lifeache

Even to myself, I'm sounding like a cracked record, but today hasn't been going well. Pouring with rain this morning (although it's nicer now), 'ghosts', most of them too young (as most would doubtless say) to even look at, haunting my every turn, and now, in my local, Daniel, the legally legitimate but still unobtainable, to taunt me further. The most disturbing thing of all, though, was something I wasn't involved in, but witnessed, at lunchtime - a street fight, with people attacking each other with metal poles, amongst other things, and, worst of all, one of the participants getting into a car and trying to run someone over (and almost succeeding - the 'target' ended up limping heavily, suggesting that a glancing blow, at least, occurred). It happened rather a long way from where I'm sitting now, on the diametrically opposite side of London, in fact, but it still disturbed me more than I would have expected, so ironic given what I wrote about yesterday. The main concern, of course, was the sort of environment I'm bringing K into in little more than a fortnight, especially when compared to the safe, quiet area she's done most of her growing up in, but there was also more than a little regret at my having lost that same safe place in my life - my first thought in reaction to the incident, before K even came to mind, was 'I want to go home', 'home', needless to say, being Cornwall, in this context. But I can't, because, in practical terms, Cornwall isn't home anymore, and maybe never will be again. Self-inflicted or not, I can't help but think how utterly shit my life is now, in so many ways.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Something inside

Whatever my other faults and failings, I think most people who know me would consider me calm and even-tempered. What most of them don't know, however, is that there's another strand to my personality, one that I'm well aware of, but which surfaces only very rarely. Its last appearance was, I believe, in a fracas at Plymouth bus station well over three years ago, but it was very close to reemerging at lunchtime today. And, in fact, the circumstances were rather similar - I was on a bus that was stuck in traffic, looking idly out of the window, when we very slowly approached, and then stopped adjacent to, a drunk sitting on the pavement outside a building. He evidently assumed I was looking at him in some way he disapproved of, and launched a volley of foul-mouthed abuse in my direction. Maybe it was the memory of the earlier event, but I experienced such a surge of anger that it took all the resolution I possessed not to jump off of the bus and kick the shit out of him. There's a lot of frustration, on a number of levels, inside of me, and I know, from more than one previous incident, that it's not impossible for that frustration to express itself in violence. My awareness of the issue is there, but the wrong combination of events could overcome my self-control. All I can hope is that the wrong combination never comes about.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What, indeed?

I saw, lying about on a windowsill at work this morning, a pamphlet called 'What does the bible really teach?' - I believe it's a Jehovah's Witness publication, they seem to have a campaign going on at the moment to hand their stuff out at stations in London. Well, I drew a deep (metaphorical) breath, and, in no particular order, came up with - misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, religious intolerance, approval of slavery, approval of genocide, stoning of disobedient children, rapists being allowed to marry their victims on payment of a fine to the victim's father....
Need I go on?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

That low?

I heard a story on the radio yesterday (I would've blogged about it then, but my hectic, action-packed lifestyle, as discussed in my last post, must have driven it from my mind!), which left me somewhere between bemused and exasperated. The gist of the report was that seven out of every ten parents of 11 year olds had needed to discuss 'the facts of life' with their children - as though that was a terrible thing betokening the collapse of civilisation (the internet, that fount of all evil, was blamed). My question would be not why so many had talked to their offspring about the subject, but why not the other 30%? One female vox pop, who seemed to have fallen through a time warp from a 1940's public information film, cut glass vowels and all, grated on my psyche particularly, opining about how she hoped her 10 year old son would still be cuddling his teddy bear and reading Enid Blyton stories rather than asking such questions. That such people still exist in the second decade of the 21st century leaves me looking for a desk that I can bang my head against.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Little to report

Which is why I've been off the air for a couple of days. What has happened has been pretty mundane - today, for example, work, in the form of my eleventh early shift in twelve days, with two more still to come, was pretty challenging, and I think I did it almost as well as it could have been done in the circumstances, after which I found a new pair of shoes of a kind I'd wanted for a while, but hadn't found in my size, and now I'm having a couple of quiet beers on the way home to what will almost certainly be another early night. Nothing earth-shattering amongst that lot! I guess I'm rather marking time at the moment, waiting for K's arrival, three weeks tomorrow, aided and abetted by being at work, or commuting, most of the time. Mind you, I suppose that compared to a year ago, when I was having my all too thorough experience of the NHS, routine is good!

Love & best to all
Sammy B