Thursday 31 December 2015

Made it through another one

Year, that is. How, I don't always know, and why, I don't really ever know. But here I am, regardless. And life, in its inexorable way, goes on.
I hope all of the readers of my blog have a happy, healthy and successful 2016. And I hope, selfish as it may be, that I have at least some good stuff happening for me. But I probably hope in vain, in that respect.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B



Wednesday 30 December 2015

A meeting

It happened, at work, about three hours ago. After literally years of near misses, I finally met a a little guy I've heard so much about over the past five years. And he was every bit as delightful as I'd imagined. I met his big bro, too, and he's almost as lovely, albeit, at nearly 15, rapidly heading out of my 'window of attraction'. Their dad, my best friend at work, said, after they'd left with Mum - my friend was on nights, and the family had dropped him off after a visit to his niece, whose birthday it was today - that he'd arrange a 'proper meeting' - his words - another time. I really hope that comes to fruition. I didn't quite fall in love with the little man this evening, but it could happen soooo easily. And like Cammy, it's nothing to do with sex. It's simply the idea of an emotional connection with someone so perfectly 'boy'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A find

A film that I'd been looking for, despite my being not even close to being a film buff, for quite a while. I'd found a couple of clips, some stills, and a number of links to rather nefarious looking 'subscription' sites promising the full movie, but in the early hours of this morning, I found a complete version (more or less, anyway, I think the last couple of minutes were missing) I could watch online. I'd seen it described as 'the silliest film ever' on one website, but, given what I already knew about it, that wasn't going to deter me. Because the film concerned was Genesis Children. Famous, or notorious, for its portrayal of naked teenage (and a couple of borderline preteen, maybe 11 or 12 year old) boys. I can't lie, it was that reputation that drew me to want to watch the film. And nudity there was, a-plenty. And a number of the boys were absolute cuties. But, apart from a very brief and mild physical reaction to the first nude scene, I watched unaroused. Because it simply wasn't that kind of film. A review I found described it as 'child pornography' made by and for 'perverts', but that is exactly what it wasn't (I'm pleased to say that review has only received 8 'likes' from 33 responses). There wasn't a single sexual reference, as far as I could discern, in the whole film. It was, instead, a sort of sub-Lord of the Flies experience, a typical (as far as my very limited knowledge of the genre is concerned) 'arthouse' piece of its time, with lots of New Age-ish psychobabble and pseudo-philosophy, but with virtually nothing actually happening. Silly? Maybe. Pretentious? Almost certainly. But pornography? Never in a million years. Unless, of course, you're one of those unfortunates, usually religiously motivated, who find any and all nudity pornographic. Whatever else, though, despite my being pleased to have had the chance to see the film, I very much doubt if I'll ever watch it again. Life's too short!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 29 December 2015

A true original

In today's media, hyperbolic words like 'legend' are bandied around so freely as to become virtually meaningless. There are, though, the occasional exceptions that prove the rule, and one such has been in the news today, having died last night. Lemmy, the founder not only of Motorhead, but of a whole genre of rock music. I've been a fan of the band almost since their inception, although I never have seen them live (and now never will, of course), their brand of ultra-loud, flat out rock being exactly the sort of music I've always been the most attracted to. The Planet Rock DJ who announced the news of Lemmy's death first thing this morning called him a 'true original'. I can't think of a more apposite description.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 28 December 2015

Chaotic

That's pretty much where my head's been today. I guess the fact that I've been up for more than 24 hours might qualify as a mitigating circumstance - finishing nights can sometimes be as problematic as starting them - but, for whatever reason, the emotional rollercoaster has been in full swing. As ever, it's all about boys - I got myself thoroughly chewed up about my attractions this morning, but then deliberately went out on an 'eye candy' cruise (by bus, of course, and cuties there were, in force), before fetching up in my local, seeing the cute brother of the disabled girl, but feeling guilty for even looking in his direction. I'm not suggesting that I deserve to be happy, but a smidgen of equilibrium might be nice, every now and again.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 27 December 2015

Spam doesn't often make me laugh, but....

....I've found one in my 'blog' e-mail spam folder this morning that definitely raised a chuckle - it was advertising a 'Christian dating' website. Quite apart from the fact that I doubt they've got any cute boys on their books, the idea of me, a thoroughly outspoken atheist, looking for anyone by way of their service is utterly laughable.
And to add to the hilarity, the DJ on Planet Rock has just, while I'm typing this, plugged a forthcoming gig by saying it's going to be happening 'at the London Palladium, in London'. You don't say! I never would've worked that one out, without your estimable geographical knowledge!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 25 December 2015

Fifteen minutes revisited, boys and festivities

Our newish, openly gay guy at work was looking after the position next to me on Monday evening, and mentioned that he'd been flicking through satellite channels recently. And had found my proverbial 'fifteen minutes of fame', by way of a rerun of the final of the TV quiz series I'd contrived to win a loooong time ago. I, in turn, mentioned it to K, as she'd never seen my 'performance', and she managed to find it on YouTube, watching the programme on Tuesday. The subject came up at work on Wednesday night, as I was talking to my friend (recently elevated to shift manager). Within a few minutes, not only him, but two of my other colleagues, were watching the final on their respective mobile phones. It was a little bit bizarre, really, thinking about these guys seeing me as I was twenty years ago (the programme was recorded at the end of 1995), and thinking about my life and all that's transpired since.
I finished work for my Christmas break at 7:00 yesterday morning, doing the last of shopping - the all-important Christmas Day beer and wine! - on the way home. K was working, so I had every intention of going out again, but it didn't really happen to any great extent - between dozing in the armchair and some not very user-friendly weather, I didn't leave the flat again until early afternoon, and found myself in my local little more than two hours later. It wasn't as busy as I'd been expecting, and, disappointingly, none of 'my' boys appeared - I was hoping to see Cammy, at least, but it wasn't to be. There was one delicious eye candy moment when I made my way home, though - K fancied a Chinese takeaway by way of our evening meal, and while I was in the shop waiting for the food to be cooked, a family came in, parents and three boys. All of the boys were cute enough, but 'middle bro', 12/13-ish, was a real stunner. Would that I could have taken him away, along with the chow mein and sweet and sour!
And now it's Christmas Day, so I'd like to wish all of you a happy and peaceful festive season. K and I will spend the day pigging out on food and drink, I suspect, probably not the healthiest option, but a fun one! Merry Christmas!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 21 December 2015

Out of nowhere

Last night's adorable boy has taken up residence in my head during the course of today, while I've been out and about, going to the doctor's again to try to sort medication issues out (and failing again - in fact, I've ended up by being prescribed yet another pill, on a 'trial' basis) before dabbling in some Christmas grocery shopping - I'll do some more on the way home from work in the morning. The way he's made me feel is summed up pretty succinctly by a song I heard on the radio this afternoon, From Out Of Nowhere by Faith No More. The first five lines 'Tossed into my mind, stirring the calm/You splash me with beauty and pull me down/You came from out of nowhere/My glance turns to a stare/Obsession rules me, I'm yours from the start'. And then the plaint, near the end - 'And it hurts inside'. Says it all, really.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 20 December 2015

The ultimate ghost

I hardly even know how to describe what has happened in the past hour or so. A précis might read 'came in, ate fish and chips, left'. An expanded version could say that the perfect boy has been in my local this evening, and that I'll probably never see him again. Beautiful, graceful - he was showing off his dance moves - but still boyishly exuberant with it, affectionate, if his interaction with his mother was anything to go by. If I had one, I'd sell my soul for an hour in his company. I can barely believe, even given the numerous precedents, how smitten I am. And now he's gone, almost certainly forever. I don't know what else to say.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 18 December 2015

It's official

'Next door but one cutie', and, obviously, his family, have definitely gone. I've received an e-mail from my landlord regarding some 'issues' with their departure, and the arrival of new tenants. I'm more than used to the 'ghosts' coming and going, but for a beautiful boy I've been more than a little taken with for more than a year and a half to disappear is a bitter pill indeed. Not that I had any expectation that he would ever be 'my boy', but it's still so disappointing that I'll never see him again. Yeah, transience is the boylover's lot, as I've said before, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Unimaginable

At least, it would have been for most of my life, certainly the first three-quarters of it. The last deep coal mine in the UK ceased production today. The job my dad did for 45 years, underground coal miner, effectively doesn't exist anymore in this country. Two days after our elected dictatorship voted, without a debate, to allow 'fracking' for shale gas in previously protected areas like national parks. The politicos talk about 'market forces', but I'm more than sufficiently cynical to wonder how many parliamentary palms have been greased to bring about this state of affairs. All politicians are vile, as far as I'm concerned, but Conservative politicians are completely egregious.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 17 December 2015

It was so nice to see him smile

There's a family that goes into my local, who, obviously, given my all too regular attendance, I've seen on a goodly number of occasions. The various members of the family appear with widely differing frequency, though. Mum is almost never there - I think I've only ever seen her once - Dad is pretty much a regular, albeit probably not quite as regular as me, while the oldest daughter is there by far the most often, for the simple reason that she works there. The two younger siblings are what this post is really about, though. The middle child, who comes in quite often with her dad, is disabled - cerebral palsy, at a guess - and while she's 13 (as I accidentally found out recently), her disability means that she's pretty much at the level, linguistically and behaviourally, of a toddler. Very sad, of course, that an individual's potential should be so thwarted by something completely beyond anyone's control, but such things, unfortunately, do happen. The youngest child is a boy, around 11, who used to come in a fair bit, but who I hadn't seen for some months until this evening. When I have seen him before, though, I've been struck time and again by one thing. With his sister being, perforce, the centre of attention, he always seems to be overlooked. And I'm pretty sure, even at his young age, that he's well aware of it. To say that he has 'sad dog eyes' much of the time is, if anything, a considerable understatement. He doesn't appear to complain, never plays up, just looks heartbreakingly sad and lonely. As was the case when they first came in this evening, and I passed their table en route to the bar. Everyone was fussing around sis, while he sat at the table on his own. For once, though, a few minutes later, when they were ordering food, he was paid some attention - the staff evidently know him through 'big sis' working there - and the change in him was little short of miraculous. He suddenly became an animated, smiley boy, as you might expect of someone of his age. It was so lovely to see, like the proverbial flower blooming. The family eventually left just before I did, but I saw them again in the supermarket across the road a few minutes later when I called in to buy something for my evening meal. The boy looked at me, obviously recognising me, and I gave him a little smile of my own. He returned it with interest, and did a little pirouette, for good measure! Just amazing, that such simple things can have such a profound effect.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Boys, boys, everywhere....

....nor any one to hug. The Rime of the Ancient Boylover, maybe. It certainly has been one of those days, the ones when I'm absolutely swarmed with cuties, all, of course, just out of reach (there's a Jesus & Mary Chain link there, but you'd have to be a rather anorakish aficionado like me to get it). All of them were eclipsed from the outset, though - about ten minutes after I left work at lunchtime, the first cutie of the day, who I shared a bus with for exactly one stop, was achingly reminiscent of DBJ. Not a very close lookalike, but close enough to tweak the heartstrings more than a little. My head was back in that little Cornish town in a heartbeat. Beautiful boy, what are you doing now, all grown up as you are? It's a lucky girl (or maybe boy, but probably not, from what I saw when you were 13/14) who gets to hold you in their arms.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Indifference

Well, I have to say that four page views in the last two days is a pretty conclusive vote of apathy. So, what do I do about it? Try to appease, make myself more 'popular'? Give up completely, and go and skulk in my closet? Or stick two fingers up to the world, and actually be more 'myself'? The latter certainly appeals a lot more than the two former options.
So, in that vein....Cammy. I saw him earlier this evening, albeit briefly, and the way the encounter went encompassed both aspects of the rollercoaster that little guy induces in me. When he came in, he went straight to the person I've been getting all chewed up over recently and started chatting. My teeth were gritted, my fists clenched. The green-eyed monster, once more. But then, two minutes later, he was smiling and waving at me, which I returned in kind, of course. And my spirits were back up again. What would I want from Cammy, in an ideal world? Not sex, and absolutely not penetrative sex, he's far, far too young, and commensurately small, to even think about that. But a friend, and a 'cuddle buddy'? I'd love that so much. Not that I have the slightest expectation of such an eventuality, but the daydream won't go away. Or if not Cammy, one of the other cuties I've seen in my local of late. But they're just as far out of reach as he is. 'Never' used to be the scariest word in the world. Now it's just a fact of life.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 12 December 2015

Innominate

I'd have written this post earlier, but I couldn't decide what to call it. So I've plumped for the oxymoronic.
It's about cuties. Just for a change, eh? Two specific cuties, though. Daniel, first of all. The cute barman at my local. I was in there earlier, trying to make the most of the last dregs of my time off - I'm back to the treadmill in the morning - when he came in, to get something to eat (staff discount, and all that!) before his shift. He's well past 18 now - he's been serving behind the bar for months - but there's still enough boy there to turn my head, every time I see him. I'm not nearly unrealistic enough to imagine that he'd ever be interested in me, even if he is gay, which I've always believed, but have no actual evidence of - he hasn't had a visible boyfriend or girlfriend in the 18 months he's been working at the pub, so the question is still open. If there ever was a chance of being with him, though, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Secondly, 'next door but one cutie'. Except that I don't think he is, anymore. Next door but one, that is. The flat has been in darkness, as far as I'm aware, for at least a fortnight. K suggested that they might have gone on holiday, but it would be a very strange time of year for that to be the case, as far as I'm concerned. I think they've moved, either by choice or perforce - I've never seen any sign of the father of the boy and his sister, so it may be that, if their rent is anything akin to ours, that mum can't afford it anymore, or that they've managed to get a council house. If he has gone, it would certainly be a sadness - he's one of the most beautiful boys I've ever seen, on a long term basis, not on a par with DBJ, but only a step or two behind, and, as I've said before, 'little sis' isn't at all difficult to look at, either. Despite the potential problems living more or less next door to a genuine cutie might raise, I'd much rather that he was there than not.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 10 December 2015

Sweet and sour and sweet

A mixed day, as the title might suggest. The first drop of sweetness tipped over into surfeit - a school on one of my meanders, around lunchtime, was obviously having a half day, because what appeared to be the full complement of pupils were heading for home. Including a very cute boy who got on the bus I was on, who, while he was lovely to look at, started the downswing by getting me thinking about my life as exitless maze, a trough that deepened still further less than ten minutes later when, after having changed buses, I saw an even cuter and even more inaccessible boy from the same school. Inward groaning barely begins to tell the story.
So it was that I arrived at my destination in a less than happy frame of mind, which deteriorated still further when I happened to catch sight of a report on the BBC News Channel. The reporter had been 'embedded' with a police unit en route to an early morning 'child protection' raid, with a nauseatingly smug looking plod saying how 'they knew' the suspect had been 'grooming a child online'. Given the breadth of the definitions of both 'child' and that loathsome word 'grooming' these days, i.e. any contact with any unrelated young person under the age of about 25, and given the propensity of the police to engage in entrapment, I'm afraid my cynicism knows few bounds.
But neither does my disheartenment, either, so I really was pretty low when I went to the rendezvous that was the reason for my being in the area in the first place. But that meeting was when things started looking up again, because I was there to meet K, with a view to buying her Christmas present, a coat she'd seen when she was there with her boyfriend a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, they didn't have what they wanted in her size today, but her company, and the very nice meal we had in a tapas bar near the main shopping street, broke my downbeat mood thoroughly. I probably don't deserve her, but I'm certainly not complaining.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 9 December 2015

The 'Nightmares in a Damaged Brain' ticket

I almost laughed out loud when I saw the headline in this morning's Metro, referring to Donald Trump potentially being barred from entering the UK because his islamophobic rhetoric might transgress our 'hate speech' laws. I'd love to see that happen, little as I like such legislation because it only ever seems to be invoked to stifle criticism of organised religion, all flavours of which are equally egregious, as far as I'm concerned, but Trump is such a fascistic prick that he richly deserves to be humiliated at some airport or another. We've got more than our fair share of pondlife over here too, though, most notably, of late, the new heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Given some of the utterly vile things Mr Fury has said in the aftermath of his victory in the ring, it seems to me that he'd make the ideal running mate for Trump, but for the inconvenient fact that he isn't American. The only difference that I can see between them is that Trump is stupefied by his ego, whereas Fury is simply stupid.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Knowledge

He knows, or knows I know. His aversion to looking anywhere but in my direction when he served me just now said it all. The jealousy is still there, I can't deny it. But there's a protective instinct, too. If he does anything to hurt the boy, in any way at all, he'll end up being very, very sorry.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 6 December 2015

Tantalised

I'm ending what has been a pretty nice weekend - the 'overnighter' to my brother's went well, good company, including meeting up with friends for drinks last night, then getting back in time to cook dinner for K when she finished work this evening - in what is just about the most frustrating situation I can imagine. Cammy is sitting no more than three feet away - but three feet directly behind me. There's no way I can look in his direction without it being glaringly obvious. And the source of my raging jealousy of the other night is hanging around again, too. Tantalus has nothing on me.

2045 edit: I got a 'Bye' and a smile, so all is not yet lost. Little darling!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 5 December 2015

Time travel

I found the most unbelievable, amazing thing online at around 1:00 this morning. A photograph. Of virtually the whole of my senior school year group, taken sometime in 1974. Very early in the school year, I suspect, because many of the guys look distinctly younger than the 14 they must have been to be in that year group (4th Year, as we called it, Year 10 in today's parlance) at that time. I say 'they' advisedly, because one of the few absentees from the picture is me. I have no idea why I wasn't there, and I have no recollection that any such picture was taken, or even of any proposal for one. Our school, pretty much, didn't do official photos, apart from occasional sports team pictures. I don't remember every one of them, but, obviously, I do recall the vast majority, given that I went through seven school years with many of them (and even more with a few, because a number of them had come from the same primary school as me), a good number of friends, either then, or at other phases of my school career, one or two outright enemies. And memories. Mark, my best friend for the whole time at the school, but who I subsequently completely lost touch with. Another Mark, the other member of our 'gang of three', who I'd known literally all my life - we were born in the same hospital ward, four days apart, our families becoming friends and keeping in touch as a result, even though he went to a different primary school - who was later killed in a car crash while working in South Africa. Paul, who I've written about somewhere before, a guy I'd just started to get friendly with when he collapsed and died in a PE lesson just a few months later. Yet another Mark, who I became very good friends with for that school year and the one after, before we drifted apart again, and, looking at the picture once more, as I have this morning, one of the few I'd be attracted to if I met him as a boy now, although there was no conscious sexual attraction on my part back then - partly because I was as deeply closeted as it was possible to be, but mostly because my tastes were towards boys a year or two younger, the 11/12/13 group I'm still entranced by now having been my preference even then. Joey, who'd been one of my best friends at primary school, and who I stayed friendly with, but not close to, through senior school - we simply moved in different circles, both socially and academically. Anthony, who took me on my first visit (of innumerably many since!) to drink in a pub, one run by his aunt, if I remember correctly, a year or so later. And, in the front row, the headmaster and the fourth year form masters, including 'the Major', our form teacher, ex-USAF, a stereotypically loud American (including the shirt he was wearing in the picture, as against the conservative jackets and ties of his colleagues!), notorious for never using one word if he could use a hundred! 41 years ago in a town by the sea. It took me a long time to get to sleep last night.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 4 December 2015

'Tis the season....

....when pub regulars are thrown under the bus of money-grabbing. In my local this evening - and Fridays are always busy here - more than half of the tables are reserved for a 'party', presumably having a pre-Christmas do of some sort. No doubt the management would justify accepting the booking on 'business' grounds, maximising earnings, and all that, and if you look at tonight in isolation, that's probably valid. But where do they think the majority of their income originates on all the other days of the year? From mugs like me who come in multiple times per week, no matter what date is on the calendar. As it happens, I arrived early enough to snag a niche in an unreserved corner, but I suspect there will be plenty of disgruntled locals over the next couple of hours.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 3 December 2015

A war of his very own

'Cam's War', the headline in today's Daily Mirror said. Yes, our glorious leader can now proudly rub shoulders with Thatcher, Reagan and Dubya (and his father) - in the ninth circle of hell, where they belong. Cameron's legacy - generations of radicalised Moslems (and the final relegation of the UK to international irrelevance and, quite possibly, economic extinction if he leads the country out of the EU). Sleep well, Dave.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Why does this always seem to happen?

Quite apart from the emotional hangover of yesterday evening, I'm feeling lousy in a physical sense again today. I really want to go out, see the world, or the bit that's covered by my Oystercard, at least, but, at the moment, I'm just not well enough. It's nothing more than a cold, I'm sure, not even a serious enough cold to qualify as the much-ridiculed 'man-flu', but it is enough to leave me thoroughly miserable. I'm supposed to be going down to my brother's this weekend, probably the last chance I'll get to see him and his family, and possibly some of my hometown friends, before Christmas, but whether I'll be in good enough health to do that is rather in the balance at the moment. Given all the hours I work, and the extra hours of commuting on top, it really is utterly frustrating that I always seem to come down with some bug or other whenever I get any time off.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Headfuck

One definition of which, as I found in a slang dictionary last night, is 'someone or something....causing mental instability'. Sums up perfectly the way I reacted, and the way I ended up feeling in response to events in my local yesterday evening. I was already pretty messed up after the R lookalike boy had been and gone, memories of my long-lost (completely one-sided, although he was my friend, until the day he most definitively wasn't anymore) love churning around in my head. And then Cammy arrived, with his parents. I hadn't seen him, at all, for at least a month, and hadn't had any actual 'connection' with him since the day he waved across the pub at me, at the beginning of October. I started to write about what transpired last night in some detail, but I've decided that I can't post it. Suffice it to say, though, that I became insanely, and I use the word advisedly, jealous of the boy's interaction with another, non-family, adult male. I didn't actually do anything, but it was a close-run thing. Just as well my self-control held together, however tenuously, because I'm sure, at the very least, I would've been barred from the pub, if not arrested, if I'd acted on what was in my head. Cammy did wave to me on his way out, which made me feel marginally better, but it was well over an hour later, and after I'd talked through the evening's events with K once I'd got home, that I calmed down properly. Twelve hours or so on, writing this down makes me feel more than a little ridiculous - how can anyone of my age and supposed maturity be so screwed up by his feelings for a boy, and one I'm not even sexually attracted to, because he's simply too young? Ridiculous or not, though, the feelings the scenario induced were all too real, as, of course, any actions they'd betrayed me to would have been. Another step closer to the edge.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 2 December 2015

And full of all too familiar experiences, as well

Like the utterly unapproahable cute boy, having a meal with his family in my local and who's just left. To rub a little more salt into the wounds, he was a fair lookalike for R, the boy at school who was the first I fell in love with, nearly forty years ago. As I said all too recently, life is shit, except those times when it's really shit.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 1 December 2015

Life is full of new experiences

And one such happened earlier this afternoon. I had my hair cut - by my daughter! K has been cutting her own hair for some time, and it always looks fine, despite her using some pretty dodgy scissors, for the most part, but she recently bought some proper hairdressing scissors (for the princely sum of £8!), so I persuaded her to have a go at mine. And she's made a creditable job of it, despite her initial reluctance (in case you don't like it, as she explained). Given my long-standing (almost fifty year!) aversion to having my hair cut, K doing it is much preferable to submitting to some stranger who'll overcharge me and not produce a markedly better result. The other unusual aspect of my doings today is that, despite my still being off work, I haven't been out, apart from a brief grocery shopping trip at lunchtime. I woke up with a raging sore throat, and other cold-related symptoms, this morning, so I've decided on a quiet day in to give my body a bit of recuperation time. The plan is to go back to my meandering ways tomorrow, health issues permitting. I don't want to waste too much of my 'holiday' being stuck indoors, after all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 29 November 2015

Last man standing

I had one of my periodic 'why bother?' moments earlier on about the blog, given the general lack of interest in what I have to say - not that I'm blaming anyone other than myself, I know what I write is largely self-centred and repetitive - but one thing I hadn't really considered much until now is the issue of continuity. The 'Class of early 2010', the little, or not so little, at one point, group of bloggers I was tangentially a part of, has gone now, for all sorts of reasons. With one exception. Me. I'm sure that most, if not all of those guys (and one girl) couldn't care less if I carry on blogging or not, and why should they, but if I did stop, the last link to that (predominantly) happy few months will be gone. If that was the only reason for me to keep inflicting my thoughts on the world, it probably wouldn't be sufficient justification, but as a reinforcement, it means something, to me at least. So here I still am, for good or ill.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Drowning in words and alcohol

Thinking too much, drinking too much. Not for the first time, when I don't have work to distract me. I'm still trying to write, in tandem, two stories, taking a break yesterday to produce the 'stream of consciousness' - or probably more accurately, remembered stream of consciousness, as I had the thoughts in the morning, but didn't write it down until the evening - thing that's appeared in Nephelokokkygia. It didn't have the cathartic effect I crave, though - after spending much of yesterday meandering amongst a sea of cute ghosts, then writing about a wonderful boy I was lucky enough to get to know properly, I still ended up feeling nothing but contempt for myself, not for anything I've done, but for what I want. And overusing the palliative that is alcohol in an unsuccessful attempt to bludgeon my demons into submission. What will today hold? More of the same, I suspect.

1630 edit: And drowning in unattainable beauty, too - earlier this afternoon, I saw the most delightful boy, waiting at the same bus stop as me, 12-ish, tallish, fair-haired, pale pink lips, the upper with a very pronounced bow shape, so kissable. Two buses approached the stop, mine and another. Needless to say, he caught the other. Another heart-melting, totally out of reach 'ghost', drifting into my life for two or three minutes, then gone forever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 27 November 2015

Unbelievable. Except that it isn't

The BBC News channel is on in my local, as usual, and I've just seen, on my way back from the bar, a 'Breaking News' ticker at the bottom of the screen referring to police in Colorado responding to an 'active shooter' near a Planned Parenthood clinic. Why go to the Middle East to look for religiofascists when they're right there at home? And that goes just as much for the UK as the US.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

War pig

As soon as I saw this morning's Daily Mirror headline - 'Cam is ready for war', referring to our glorious leader's enthusiasm to allow the RAF to bomb ISIS targets in Syria - I immediately thought of a song lyric. 'Politicians hide themselves away/ They only started the war/ Why don't they go out to fight?/ They leave that up to the poor'. War Pigs by Black Sabbath, in case anyone doesn't recognise the reference. War, for several hundred years, and probably longer, has almost always been fought by the poor to maintain the power, privilege and, most notably, the wealth of societal 'elites'. As far as I'm concerned, this latest version is no different.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 26 November 2015

Another turn of the screw

Hardly a day goes by, it seems, without another 'historic sexual abuse' case being reported. And the reports are always couched in the most emotive terms. I don't, for a moment, condone any non-consensual sexual activity, irrespective of the age or gender of those coerced, but such reports do nothing but add to the public perception that anyone attracted to younger people is nothing but a slavering rapist. The fact that some, probably most of us live our lives in such a way as to be anything other than that stereotype is never considered. No matter how moral a life you lead, you're still the 'lowest of the low' in society's eyes. Soul-destroying doesn't begin to describe it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 25 November 2015

Justifiable frustration

At least, I certainly feel justified in being frustrated. I'm in a Wetherspoons, not especially geographically local to the flat, but easily accessible - it's at the far end of a bus route that stops only a few minutes walk from home - a pub I really rather like, it having always been a pub, as opposed to the converted shops, cinemas, and the like the chain seem to specialise in. And it's always been, in my experience, a good cutie-spotting location, probably because it's the only 'family-friendly' pub in its particular area, this evening being no exception. The star of the show has been a delicious fair-haired little guy, 10/11, who came in for tea with his dad after evidently, by his attire, having been playing football. They'd more or less finished eating when a couple, apparently friends of dad, ended up sharing their table. The boy didn't look all that enthusiastic about the new arrivals, but, of course, what boy of his age ever has any real interest in his parents' friends? Within a minute or two, though, a more substantive reason suggested itself. The male friend, who'd sat down next to the boy, seemed completely unable to keep his hands off of him. It was dressed up, needless to say, as 'play-fighting', but its persistence hinted that there might have been more to it. Maybe it's simply projection on my part, and jealousy that the man was able to engage in the sort of body contact I'd give my eye teeth for, but it is a phenomenon I've observed many times before - men, fathers, relatives, family friends, whoever, just seem to be magnetically attracted to cute boys, especially tweens/early pubescents. If confronted, they'd certainly deny any attraction in the most fervent way, and still vilify the likes of me, who admit to those very attractions, as the scum of the Earth. Sheer hypocrisy, as far as I'm concerned. Hence the frustration.

Let's & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Insanity

There's been a lot of nonsense spoken about ISIS, and how to 'deal with them' in recent times, but, in my local this evening, I've heard the most deranged opinion yet. The gist of the 'argument', if what was said could be honoured by that word, was that as the Second World War was ended by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 'we' (presumably 'the West') should drop a 'small nuclear weapon' on Syria. A very brief Google search suggests that somewhere between 150000 and 250000 people were killed by the 1945 bombs, the vast majority of them civilians. How any sane person can advocate something similar as a 'remedy' to the current situation escapes me completely.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 23 November 2015

Two lost hours

K's Saturday night/Sunday morning misadventure has taken on a rather more worrying tone today. What she thought had happened, that she fell asleep at the bus stop near her friend's house, has been contradicted by a couple of things, partly a few details she's now recalled, and partly the evidence of her Oystercard journey history. Some time between 11:30 on Saturday and 1:30 on Sunday, she apparently travelled around 10 miles, from the area where her friend lives to somewhere close to the hospital where she came around, without using public transport. Somebody, evidently, took her on that journey. But she has no idea who, or under what circumstances. Scary, for her and for me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 22 November 2015

Drama in a cold climate

Or cold weather, at least. K decided, despite the bad news she'd had on Friday, to go to last night's 18th birthday party of a schoolfriend she'd been invited to. And she certainly seemed on an even enough keel when she set out, half an hour or so before I was due to leave for work. She wasn't staying over, planning instead on heading back on the last bus from that particular direction, so I was expecting a text from her, our usual mode of communication in such circumstances, at around 12:30 to let me know she was back at home. The text I actually received, though, was rather different. At 2:00, she told me she'd just been taken to our local general hospital in a paramedic car (a mini-ambulance, in effect), followed a few minutes later by a tearful phone call. It transpired that she'd (accidentally, as she described it) had too much to drink, and had fallen asleep at the bus stop - on what was easily the coldest night of the winter so far. Whether someone had called the emergency services, or whether the paramedic just happened to be passing, she didn't know, but there she'd fetched up, in the hospital's A & E department. And then her phone ran out of charge, so I couldn't get any further information. Work was immediately ditched, needless to say - fortunately, the shift manager was my recently promoted friend, who was suitably qualified, unlike some of his colleagues, to take over my position - but the drama wasn't over at that point. Not having a car, my only option was to head for the hospital by night bus. And while London's night bus network is pretty comprehensive, in terms of places you can get to 24/7, some of the routes are neither frequent - or punctual. The journey was, to say the least, tortuous, especially in the circumstances, taking all of three hours, well over an hour of which was, due to a narrowly missed connection and two lots of late running, spent standing at freezing cold bus stops. My immune system has been given a good workout, if nothing else! My trek finally ended at 5:30 with good news, though - K was asleep in a chair, still slightly the worse for wear, but otherwise unscathed. And, to be fair to her, she was very apologetic, both to the hospital staff and to me. I was never going to rant and rave at her - it would've been arrant hypocrisy, given some of the stupid things I've done through alcoholic excess over the years - but she was given a rather stern lecture by the ward sister along the lines that she could've been picked up by someone with decidedly less benign motivations than the paramedic, something I expanded on rather more graphically on the way home. Still, all's well that ends well, to coin a clichĂ© - K managed, after a couple more hours sleep at home, to head off on time and apparently compos mentis for her first shift at her new part-time job, while I've begun my very welcome three week break from work a day early, having asked for my shift tonight (which, being a Sunday, is classed as overtime anyway) to be covered by someone else, given that I didn't know what state I might've found K in when I left work this morning. I just hope there won't be any more 'thrills and spills' between now and December 13!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 20 November 2015

Tragic

As I've said before in this blog, 'tragic' is a much-overused word, almost to the point of becoming meaningless. But sometimes things happen that no other word can adequately describe. sometimes huge events affecting large numbers of people, sometimes on a much more personal level. And news of an example of the latter has come through in the last hour. One of K's best friends in Cornwall, a girl she met on her first day at senior school when she was 11, and who lived no more than fifteen minutes walk from us, has died of cancer. At 17. K knew she'd been ill, of course, but she had been thought to have been in remission. K, naturally enough, is devastated, and I'm doing whatever I can, little as it may be, to help. I'm certainly not going to work tonight - they were understanding enough when I rang in a few minutes ago, but even if they hadn't been, it would've made no difference. My daughter is my number one priority by such a big distance as to render all else pretty much irrelevant, and she's certainly in no fit state, as far as I'm concerned, to be left on her own overnight, even if she is only a dozen weeks away from legal adulthood. Work can resume when it's appropriate.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Cute sardine

When I'm on nights, I have to travel home right in the middle of the rush hour. In that connection, I find myself, maybe two or three days out of any given night week, heading home on a particular train, arguably the busiest of the day on a very busy route, one I've come, completely unaffectionately, to know as 'the sardine train', given its perennial and ridiculous degree of overcrowding. And, for my sins, I've travelled on that train for the past two mornings. But, on both days, the pill has been sweetened considerably, by my having seen the same cute boy, 13/14, on his way, judging by the uniform, to some posh independent school. Even the fact, particularly yesterday, of his looking considerably more than half asleep couldn't detract from his beauty. He ended up sitting directly opposite me yesterday, but was half a carriage away today, offering only glimpses of his profile before, two stations before I got off to change to the bus I catch towards home as part of that itinerary, being swallowed up, from my viewpoint, by a fresh influx of passengers. Having seen him two days in a row, I'll probably never see him again, but his 'company' was sweet, while it lasted.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 17 November 2015

The best value for money book I've ever bought

I'm currently re-reading the book that for me, pound for pound, represents the best value for money bibliographic purchase I've ever made. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Words. At a list price, according to the back cover, of £3.95 when I bought it, twenty-odd, nearly thirty years ago, although I'm pretty sure I paid less for it than that, possibly £2.99, if memory serves. Why do I value it so highly? Well, apart from the fact that it's simply fun to discover what words like 'glockamoid' and 'mesopygion' mean, the illustrative quotations that accompany most of the entries have pointed me in the direction of so many interesting books, and, indeed, authors I would probably never otherwise have heard of. A quick online search reveals that a second hand copy can be bought for as little as one penny (plus the ubiquitous postage and packaging, of course!). I'd recommend it to anyone.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 15 November 2015

A tiny bit of sweetness

One of those 'oasis' moments that happen all too rarely, but perhaps are the sweeter for their scarcity, on the way to work at lunchtime. I wouldn't even have been on the tube, had one of London Overground's routes not been unexpectedly closed by an infrastructure fault, but there I was, on one of the oldest trains the underground has to offer, sitting in one of a bay of four seats, with rather limited legroom. So when, a few stations after I'd boarded, a mother and her small son got on the train, he was parked opposite me and my long legs. He smiled a little in my direction when he sat down, and I responded in kind, albeit surreptitiously - mum was sour-faced enough, without her being led to believe I had designs on the boy (which I absolutely wouldn't have, even if I hadn't been on a busy tube train - he was far too young, only 6 or 7, and, with all due respect to the little guy, not that cute anyway) - so I averted my eyes, as far as is practicable when someone is sitting about four feet away. When it was time for me to change trains, though, 'the moment' took place. I reached down to pick up my backpack, which was between my feet, but as I lifted it, the boy let his feet ride up with it, smirking mischievously. I couldn't help but grin, and say 'thank you' to him when he pulled his feet back to release my bag, disapproving mother or not. And then, of course, he was gone forever, another little metropolitan ghost. But one who left that little taste of sweetness in my benighted life.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 14 November 2015

Suffering?

So, back to the post I was going to write before I was interrupted by K's good news earlier. It began to brew listening to the radio news yesterday morning, when a phrase I've ranted about before, and which doesn't irritate me any less than it ever did, despite its now depressing familiarity - 'convicted paedophile' - surfaced in a report. Whether it's due to lazy 'journalism' or deliberate demonisation I don't know, but, for the umpteenth time, you can't be convicted of being attracted to those below the arbitrary 'age of consent', you can only be convicted of acting on those attractions. Being a paedophile (or a hebephile, as I'll freely admit as a word to describe myself) isn't illegal, much as many might wish to convict merely on the basis of 'thoughtcrime'. Which leads on to another case I read about yesterday, of a man who was arrested in a 'sting'-type operation earlier this year, convicted of 'grooming' (another word I loathe) and sentenced to ten years in jail, despite the fact that he doesn't seem, by the report I read, of actually having laid a single inappropriate finger on a young person. The case and sentence would have been bad enough in themselves, but one particular quote, from one of the lawyers involved, really got up my nose. The man was, according to the legal eagle, 'suffering from paedophilia'. As if it was an illness, by implication, a mental illness. Well, from someone on this side of the fence, I can assure you that it isn't. It's a sexual orientation, just as much as good old vanilla heterosexuality, and no more susceptible to being 'treated'. If those of us with that particular orientation are 'suffering', it's through the attitudes of society, the assumption that we're amoral predators intent only on rape and violation, irrespective of any damage, physical or emotional, that might be caused to a young person in the process. Of course, there may well be some boy or girl lovers who are mentally ill, but, proportionately, I would be very surprised if they outnumber their sexually 'normal' counterparts. I can only speak for myself, but I can confidently state that I'm not mad, not bad, and not dangerous to know, even for the cutest boy. I am unhappy, though, to be tarred with the brush of unthinking prejudice.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A small ray of light

When the world and all its awfulness - Paris, most pertinently - makes everything look stygian to the horizon, any little piece of good news is all the more welcome. And such there was this afternoon, as K rang me to let me know that, after a 'trial' shift today, she's netted herself a part-time job in a photographic shop. It's for two days a week, any permutation, according to what the shop needs, of Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and it will bring in a little over £400 a month for her, not at all bad for someone who's still at school, for a job that very much fits in with her interests, even her education, given that photography is one of her A-levels. Well played, that girl!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 13 November 2015

No contest

Not as far as I'm concerned, anyway. I was on a bus (where else!) in town earlier, creeping slowly, amongst the non-user friendly traffic, up Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square. Given my carriage's glacial progress, I had plenty of time to peruse two groups walking in the same direction. The first was a party of 13/14-ish girls, evidently on a school trip of some description, while the second was a touristy family of four, mum, dad and two boys. I didn't get the chance to get a proper view of 'big bro', but the little, blond-haired guy bringing up the rear of the family group was, on his own, a thousand times cuter than all the pubescent/adolescent females put together. Still, I guess I shouldn't complain, because, without the distaff contribution, where would the next generation of cute boys come from!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 12 November 2015

Too much?

I've finally got to the end of my run of 23 shifts in 24 days, the last 11 of them earlies, meaning that I haven't got up later than 4:15 any day in more than a week and a half. And I have to say that I can barely remember ever being more tired than I am now. When I went back to work after my seven weeks on the sick (including three in hospital) two and a half years ago, I was determined to work no overtime at all, but that soon went out of the window when it became clear that K wanted to move up here, and that failure of resolution has snowballed into my working almost as many hours as I did in the first year or so after my marriage broke up. Which only ended when I was ambulanced off to the general hospital near 'domicile-ville'. Could my health, such as it is, break down again? I wouldn't necessarily bet against it, if I carry on as I have been. But, on the other side, there's K's university career, if all goes according to plan, to come in just a few months' time, which will undoubtedly swallow huge amounts of money. And the only person who can come up with that money is me. Do I carry on, can I carry on, running myself into the ground, or do I, potentially, fail in my responsibility to my daughter, by far the most important person in my life? As in so much of my life, there are no easy answers.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 9 November 2015

Dichotomy, with knives

I'm still haunted, at least daily, sometimes several times a day, by the words I read about a 'celebrity' sex abuse case ten days or so ago. There was a link to an audio file, but I didn't listen to it - instead, the words play themselves in my head, over and over, in my own voice. And the way those words make me feel exactly reflect the dichotomy in my life. On the 'credit' side, my genuine wishes to live my life in such a way as to avoid hurting anyone else, but on the other side, the seething mess of insistent desire, wrenching frustration and implacable self-loathing that are the concomitants of my sexuality. And, somewhere in the middle, the likes of Cammy, or the beautiful boy, 11-ish, on his way to a school football match, I saw on a bus ninety minutes or so ago. It's like a jagged-bladed knife, plunged into my heart and twisted again and again. It's tearing me to pieces.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 7 November 2015

Bittersweet

K is in Cornwall - we've just exchanged texts confirming her arrival - to attend the 18th birthday party of one of her primary school friends. I've known him almost as long as she has - his family moved to the area after we did, starting at K's school when they were in year 3, and she went to his eighth birthday party too, if I remember correctly - and he was always a bright and interesting guy. He's had a pretty rough time over the past few years, suffering depression and self-harm issues, serious enough for him to have been hospitalised more than once, but, from what K tells me, he's in a far better place of late, and long may it continue. Needless to say, I hope the birthday boy and all his guests have a great time, but I can't help but feel the melancholy born of the fact that we're not still living in the little Caradon Borough (as was) town, and that things aren't as they used to be, and never will be again.

2110 edit: And more bittersweetness. Cammy was in my local tonight, the first time I've seen him for weeks, but we didn't connect, shoved, as he was, into the corner of a booth surrounded by his (extended) family, and, from what I could see in passing, pretty much ignored. On a previous occasion, I overheard his father telling a member of the staff 'he (Cammy) isn't very bright'. Hardly surprising, if he's fucking treated like that. Some people really ought not to be allowed to breed.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Psychological projection, in spades

The 'archbigot' induced me to laugh out loud at work this morning, albeit he didn't realise I was laughing at him. He was engaged in a conversation with one of the other, almost equally bigoted numbskulls I'm blessed with having to work with, discussing the recent plane crash in Egypt and how Russia might react to it. Within moments, the conversation had lurched, somehow, onto Vladimir Putin's sexual orientation - 'they say he's a faggot' was the 'archbigot's' delightful turn of phrase - and the supposition that Putin 'tries too hard' to prove his masculinity. At which point I couldn't suppress my mirth, because the 'archbigot' is so paranoically insecure about his manhood since his divorce (around the same time as mine) that he spends endless time and money on (mostly) Chinese prostitutes, and makes no secret of the fact, because he needs the reassurance that 'I've still got a fuck in me', as he said not so long ago. Rest assured that I haven't got any time at all for Putin - he's a nauseating fascist who might very well be covering up his own iniquities by scapegoating LGBT people, as far as I'm concerned - but for my colleague to project his own issues in such a way is just too funny.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 6 November 2015

Flowing downhill

The still relatively new, openly gay guy at my workplace has, on the whole, been accepted more readily than I thought he might (to his face, at least - I've heard one or two pretty unpleasant things said when he hasn't been around, the word 'degenerate' probably marking the nadir). I get along well enough with him, more because he's intelligent, a sadly rare commodity amongst all too many of my colleagues, than because of his sexuality, given that I'm completely 'closeted' at work, but I wasn't at all enamoured of something he said this morning. If I'd confronted him, he doubtless would've claimed it was 'banter', but the very snide remark he made about another colleague of ours (who wasn't present, needless to say, and of whom there's not the least actual evidence of impropriety) who's a Cub Scout leader really got up my back. It was a perfect example of a phenomenon I've mentioned before, whereby someone who is in a disfavoured group tries to find an even less favoured group to vilify. Except, of course, when you're already deemed to be the 'lowest of the low'. Then all you can do is to try to carry on living your life in such a way as to avoid hurting anyone else. Not that the rest of 'society' will think any more of you for your restraint, but at least a hint of self-respect has a chance of being retained.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 4 November 2015

'Mother, should I trust the government?'

When I saw Pink Floyd's The Wall live about a squillion years ago, that line from Mother earned a resounding 'noooooo' from the audience - quite justifiably, given that it was in the early stages of the benighted Thatcher era. Whatever else stank about that period of British history, though, information technology, as the phrase is understood today, had virtually no impact on the everyday life of an average person - no internet, no mobile phones, no toasters controlled by microchips. How different things are now, 35 years on, so that when the current Home Secretary says, as she did today, that 'we must widen surveillance powers', anyone with two brain cells to rub together ought to be extremely concerned. Especially if you actually read what's proposed. The claim will be made, of course, that it's only to combat crime and terrorism, but when our elective dictatorship gets to define what is a 'crime' and who is a 'terrorist', as much on grounds of political expediency as any realistic threat to 'society', I can't help but believe the end of 'private life' and 'free expression' are coming measurably closer.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 2 November 2015

Burning down the house

Well, not quite, but it certainly could have happened. When I got in yesterday evening, I put my dinner in the oven to cook (K was out at a gig with her boyfriend), sat down to check my emails - and promptly fell asleep. For hours. By the time I woke up, the food was no more than a blackened mass, fit only for the bin, the kitchen filling with smoke as soon as I opened the oven door. In the event, the result was no more than embarrassment and the smoke alarm going off, but it could have been far worse. The moral of the story is, I guess, to be more careful when I finish nights and then go out for drinks. I might have suggested welcoming an early demise in my last post, but I wouldn't necessarily want it to happen in such a stupid way.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 1 November 2015

And it is

Unbearable, that is. I've tried it before, tried to write fiction or poetry to attempt to exorcise the demons born of my sexuality and of how that sexuality has virtually destroyed my life, but it never works. Today has been no exception. A lovely sunny late autumn day, my only day off in three and a half weeks, out and about, to be faced with a positive cavalcade of delightful boys. None of whom will ever be mine. Ever. Then memories, once more, of my former next door neighbour in Cornwall, and how he could, just fleetingly, have been 'my boy', had I not been too scared of the implications, the consequences. Then finding a story, not even new, of those consequences, should you act and be discovered - and of what the world thinks of you as a result. My....life....is....fucking....unbearable. The sooner I'm rid of it, the better.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 31 October 2015

Pet hates

I have a few, and at least three of them come along more or less concurrently at this time of year. So, at the risk of being called a curmudgeon, or worse, and in chronological order:

1) Halloween. A totally unwelcome American import, as far as I'm concerned. And one which seems to be going the way of other 'marketing opportunity' dates, by expanding from a day to a week, to who knows how long in future - one local chain of bakeries began advertising Halloween-related products at least six weeks ago.

2) Bonfire Night. 'Remember, remember the fifth of November'. Except that it's been smeared out into the best part of a fortnight now, everywhere sounding like the Somme for days on end - there were fireworks, more than one lot, being set off around here last night, almost a week before the 'official' date, and I have no doubt they'll still be going off for several days after next Thursday, too. Apart from the spectacle of good money literally going up in smoke, never a year passes without people, often children, being seriously injured in firework accidents. Indefensible, in my opinion.

3) 'Poppy Day'. The one that would be most likely to earn me hate mail, but sobeit. There has been a tendency in recent years, perhaps as far back as the Falklands conflict, for those who choose not to wear the Royal British Legion's symbol of remembrance to be vilified as being disrespectful and unpatriotic, but since the Gulf Wars/Afghanistan conflict, that vilification has been ratcheted up to a disturbing degree. Barbara Windsor, that well-known fount of erudition, was quoted a couple of days ago as saying those who don't wear poppies should 'sod off'. As in get out of the country, presumably. Well, I've got news for you, Ms Windsor. I'm never going to wear a poppy, and I'm not going anywhere. And I'll readily tell you, or anyone else, the two linked sociopolitical reasons why. The first is to do with the way my dad, and thousands of others in his position, were treated in this country. My dad was a coal miner, starting work in one of the collieries of the now-defunct Kent coalfield in 1940, when he was 14. By the time he was 18, he'd effectively been 'conscripted' to continue in that line of work, as one of the so-called 'Bevin Boys', and wasn't 'demobbed' from that status until 1952, obviously well after the end of the Second World War. By that time, he knew nothing else, and eventually worked in the mine for 45 years, ruining his health and shortening his life by, perhaps, decades in the process. And what did he get for that lifetime of service on his retirement? Nothing. Not even a letter of appreciation. In fact, when he died, less than a year later, my mum was 'rewarded' further by having her free coal allowance stopped, because, being five years younger than my dad, she was still working, and apparently earned too much (in what, by today's standards, was very much a 'national minimum wage' job) to qualify for the 'perk'. 'A country fit for heroes'. Yeah, right. And how often are the 'Bevin Boys' mentioned around Remembrance Day, despite their vital contribution to the war effort? Never, as far as I can recall. The second element of my distaste for the shallow hagiography that the poppy represents for me is more overtly political. And it's this. Ultimately, wars are almost always fought, certainly in the modern era, exclusively by the poor to protect the power, wealth and privilege of the few, the social and cultural 'elites' and their sycophants. If casualties of those 'resource wars' need financial support, let the people who have reaped the financial rewards of the sacrifices of others foot the bill. A couple of percent on the tax rates of the richest in society would raise far more than the small change of the 'person in the street' being dropped into collection boxes. Johnson said 'patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel'. Especially, in my opinion, the kind of superficial uber-patriotism typified by Barbara Windsor's remarks.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 28 October 2015

Friendly fire?

Over the past couple of days, I've been on the same shift as my relatively new, openly gay colleague - he's now finished the 'classroom' part of his training, and is into the 'on the job' familiarisation. He hasn't been the focus of as much hostility as I thought he might face, and I think part of that, at least, is because he's unashamed, quite rightly, of his sexuality, and more than ready to turn any snide remarks back on their authors. There was some 'banter' this afternoon about a supposedly 'boyish' female celebrity, and someone asked the gay guy 'would you?', or words to that effect. His reply, without a missed beat, was 'Why not just have a boy?'. Damn bloody right, I thought, and I wasn't far from saying so, although I'm sure his idea of a 'boy' is on the opposite side of the line of legality from mine. It's not the first time I've come close to outing myself by openly agreeing with something he's said, and it would be ironic indeed if I did just that in response to a comment from an 'ally' rather than an adversary.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 26 October 2015

One foot in the grave

So, the World Health Organisation has apparently announced that sausages (and other processed meats) are as much as a risk factor for cancer as tobacco and asbestos. Guess what I'm having for lunch?!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 25 October 2015

I could easily have fallen in love

With the most adorable little guy on my train to work this afternoon. He was about the same age as Cammy, 8/9, cute without being supercute, but just so bubbly and happy, and bright with it - when his dad asked him if he was ready to get off (no, no, don't get off, was my unspoken reaction!) at their destination, his reply was 'I was born ready!', which undoubtedly took the man aback more than a little! Cynics might well disbelieve me, but the 'hook' wasn't sex, not for a moment. It was sheer personality. I wanted him to be my new best friend. Instead, of course, he'll be another 'ghost', and I'll never see him again, in any plausible circumstances. Life, don't talk to me about life, as Marvin memorably said.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Winter is here again

I guess I say this in some shape or form most years, but today is absolutely my least favourite day in the whole calendar - the day the clocks go back to GMT, as they did in the early hours of this morning, meaning that it will be dark at something like 5:00 this evening. Knowing that there are five whole months of dark evenings to endure really doesn't do anything for my spirits at all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 23 October 2015

Not fair!

In which I do my best Violet Elizabeth Bott impression, and stamp my little (OK, overly large) foot. Most schools are on their half term break next week (K actually finished yesterday, given that she doesn't have any timetabled lessons on a Friday, and has a dispensation to 'work from home' rather than having to go in just to get a tick in the register, albeit today's working from home consisted of her travelling to the Midlands to spend a long weekend with her mother), but I'm basically going to miss the whole bloody thing, because I'm working throughout, lates until Tuesday, then another four night shifts at the end of the week. All those cutie spotting opportunities, snatched from my grasp! That said, some schools seem already to have finished, because there were more than a few school age guys out and about in 'civvies' when I was on my way to work this afternoon, most notably a 13/14 lovely who looked like a cross between my cousin, my darling boy (apposite, given that I was writing about him, or his avatar, at least, at that very age in my ongoing work on my new story this morning) and R, who longer term readers might remember as my schoolfriend who was the first boy I ever fell in love with. Would that I could've spirited him away to the counterfactual near future of my fictional world, and lived happily ever after.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 20 October 2015

It's taken a while....

....but I finally made it to my first Gresham College lecture today. I first came across the organisation, which, among other things, presents free public lectures on various academic subjects, about three years ago when I was searching online for potentially interesting things to do in London, and had looked several times at the forthcoming events section of their website, but, for one reason or another, I'd never actually got around to attending. Given the length of time I'd been planning to go, it was probably inevitable that actually doing it would be more or less impromptu, and that, indeed, was the case - I looked online yesterday to see if there was anything happening during my time off at the end of next month, only to find a lecture on Einstein's 1905 papers (including those on the photoelectric effect, for which he won his Nobel prize, and on Special Relativity) was scheduled for today. And very interesting it was, too, pitched at a 'general reader' rather than at an esoteric level, and while it didn't really teach me much I didn't already know, it did bring aspects of the subject together in a novel way. I certainly hope my first Gresham College moment won't be my last.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 19 October 2015

Drowning in dysphoria

Back in my local after an eight day break - a sabbatical for my liver, if you will - militated by my having been on nights, and what has changed? How about nothing. My life is still the benighted mess it's been since I can't remember when, my nose rubbed in the realities when I was out and about earlier - it's been one of those days where there have been more than the average number of cuties around, even during the middle of the day when you might have expected them to have been in school, but all of them, of course, completely and permanently out of reach. There might be some point to all of this torture, but I'm afraid I can't see what it is.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 18 October 2015

Wow! And wow!!

This is probably going to seem anticlimactic in relation to the title, but I don't have a wildly interesting life, so anything out of the ordinary can merit an exclamation mark or two.
Just as I was getting ready to go to work last night, I heard a thorough 'blast from the past' on the radio. Gary Gilmore's Eyes by The Adverts. Not only a great song in itself, as far as I'm concerned, but a song that got me into the whole punk genre, my initial reaction to it, as the prog rocker I was then (and still am, I guess), having been more or less entirely negative. I wouldn't say I've never heard the song on the radio before, but it's a very long way from being an everyday occurrence. Back to 1977!
And then, when I got to 'worktown', leaving the station I came across a whole family of cuties. Three brothers (with dad), fairly obviously South African, given the rugby shirts and flags in evidence (their team were playing in the Word Cup quarter final yesterday afternoon). The two younger ones, 10 and 11/12, were cute enough, but 'big bro', 13/14, was just flat out gorgeous. He was wrapped up in a big national flag - would that it could've been my arms instead.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 14 October 2015

Stasis and progress

Much as usual, the beginning of a night shift week has brought 'life', i.e. anything not connected to work, getting there and back, or sleeping and eating, pretty much to a standstill. With one exception. What little amount of free time I've had over the past three days has been devoted to my new story, and it certainly seems to be progressing. The scene is set, some of the main characters introduced, I'm fairly happy with those elements, and still more than keen to continue. I've wanted to write another long story ever since I finished Alexandrine, and this one could be it. The one potential fly in the ointment? I have literally no idea, as yet, of the 'final destination' of the tale, or even of how it could head in the direction of such a point. A moment of inspiration required, please!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 11 October 2015

My perfect boy?

In my local this evening, enjoying my last liquid anaesthetics for a week - I start nights tomorrow. Chilling pretty nicely, in keeping with the cold beer. And then a grenade lands in the middle of the pub. An extended family, three adult women, possibly sisters, and a veritable passel of kids. They were, to be as charitable as I can, more than a bit chavvy. It got a bit raucous, but not ridiculously so. Amongst it all, though, was Ryan. The oldest of the youngsters, 11/12, and seemingly a surrogate carer to some of the smaller siblings/cousins. He wasn't supercute, but he was a nice-looking boy, and, from conversation I heard, not a wide-eyed innocent. Knowing, was the adjective that came into my head. Cammy was here, too, although he didn't see me, and he's a very special little dude, but Ryan, just heading into puberty and beginning to be acquainted with 'the ways the world', would have been just the sort of guy I'd give my eye teeth to take home. Never going to happen in a million years, of course. FML.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sounds like a good idea to me

I've applied to take the rest of my remaining leave for this year in one go, which, given that my next long weekend would be incorporated, could mean my being off work for almost three weeks at the end of next month and into December. I haven't been off for that long at a stretch since I ended up in hospital two and a half years ago. Twenty days off - I could get used to that! I've got to get in practice for retirement, after all!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 9 October 2015

The best I've seen for a while

I spotted a flier while I was out and about earlier, stuck on a lamppost not far from Tottenham Court Road station. It was a picture of a badger, with a logo that read 'Save British wildlife, cull Tories'. Wish I'd thought of that one!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 8 October 2015

The benefits of being a parent

Certainly the parent of someone whose musical tastes overlap your own. K texted me at work this morning to tell me that The Jesus & Mary Chain are playing in London in March. I've seen them before, twice, but not since 1989, so her question (asked, I'm sure, with tongue in cheek) as to whether I might be interested was rather redundant. Damn right I'm interested! And so, it seems, is my girl. As I pointed out to her, she'll be 18 by the night of the gig, so we could have a very nice pre-concert soiree as well. I'll be on the hunt for tickets without delay!

2225 edit: Tickets booked, K and I will be off to see the gig a few months hence!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Paranoia creeping up, again

I called in my local for a few liquid anaesthetics on my way back from work, as is my wont. All congenial enough, until it got better - a lot better. Cameron came in with his parents, the family sitting three or four tables away from me. The boy didn't see me for ten minutes or so, but when he did, he smiled and waved. I responded in kind, of course, and I was thrilled to bits, in the moment. But when I left, shortly afterwards - another 'stupid o'clock' beckons in the morning - tendrils of paranoia started to wrap themselves around me. My 'relationship', such as it is, with Cameron has, hitherto, been one of secret little smiles and the odd quiet exchange of 'Hi' and 'Bye'. I can't imagine, though, that his waving to me is the sort of thing that will go unnoticed by his parents for very long. Given his age, I wouldn't be in the least surprise if the first thing that came into their mind was my second least favourite word in the torturously misused English language - 'grooming'. The fact that I don't know his surname, where he lives, where he goes to school, that he doesn't know my name or that I've never seen him anywhere other than in the pub, and have no expectation of that situation changing, wouldn't cross their minds. Man interacting, even minimally, with an unrelated boy = predator. No shades of grey allowed. K thought I was being unduly pessimistic when I mentioned it to her after I got home. I hope she's right. I wouldn't stake my very meagre life savings on it, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 5 October 2015

Another big story - maybe

Just occasionally, amongst my mostly abortive efforts, a story idea comes along that genuinely catches my imagination. Alexandrine is the most obvious example, along with the 'Cassie and Robin' series more recently. A dream I had in the early hours of this morning might just be the catalyst for another 'big venture'. I dreamt about my cousin, my darling boy (who now hates me, of course, passim) as he was at 12 or 13, but in a distinctly odd setting. For once, I remembered the dream in quite some detail, thought about it more on the way to work, and a basic framework began to assemble itself in my head. There are resonances with my all-time favourite online story, The Geppetto Project, a sort-of science-fictiony, counterfactual thread, and, already, two very cute boys, the avatar of my cousin, and another with dark curly hair and, shall we say, few inhibitions! As ever, who knows where the idea will go, if anywhere, but, if nothing else, burying myself in a congenial fictional world might distract me from my perceived woes.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 3 October 2015

Struggling again

The downs certainly seem to be outweighing the ups at the moment. I slipped back into the slough of despond I was inhabiting on Thursday, basically for the same reasons - fed up with my life, in just about all of its aspects. It was more difficult in another way today, as well - my brother and sister-in-law came up to London to go to the theatre, and I'd arranged to meet them for a pre-performance meal. I warned them when they arrived that I wasn't likely to be particularly sparkling company, and why, but, in the event, I did manage to avoid the worst excesses of antisocial self-pity, so it actually turned out to be a reasonably congenial late afternoon/early evening, even if the 'black dog' was never all that far from the surface. And so my time off comes to an end, and it's up a 'stupid o'clock' in the morning to go back to the den of fuckwittery masquerading as my workplace. I can hardly wait.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 2 October 2015

Randomosity and serendipity

The last fully free day of my latest time off work - I'll need to have an early night tomorrow preparatory to getting up ridiculously early on Sunday - and, like most of its predecessors, my main occupation has been meandering, more randomly than usual. I took several unplanned twists and turns, had lunch at Borough Market when even going there hadn't originally crossed my mind, left Waterloo by train (for the most anorakish of reasons) when I'd decided I was going to stay in town, then heading even further into the outer suburbs by tube. And my reward for my aimlessness was seeing an absolute welter of cuties, most notably three, on two successive buses, within about twenty minutes, including - shock, horror - a girl!! The first of the three, though, was 'cutie of the day', a simply delicious boy of 11 or 12 with light brown hair, a lovely suntan and the most kissable looking lips I've seen in quite a while. He was sitting directly opposite me, too, good, for the most part, aside from having to resist the temptation to gaze at him too bloody obviously! Definitely a better day than yesterday - all I need now is for Cameron to come into my local with his family and give me one of his heart-melting smiles.

2120 edit: Back home, no Cammy. FML. At least Xander is always there for me - yes, I'm reading my magnum opus yet again.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B


Thursday 1 October 2015

Sad dog

I'm sure regular readers of this blog will be well aware that I have days when I feel revoltingly sorry for myself, and post accordingly. Today is one of those days. Switch off now if you've heard it all before. I really am totally fed up with the circumstances of my life. I've two more days off, before going back to 'stupid o'clock' starts on Sunday, back to a job and, with very few exceptions, a group of colleagues that I utterly despise (and who, I'm sure, feel the same way about me). I'm only still doing what I do because of my daughter, specifically for the good of her education, but even that justification is wearing pretty thin. Not because I don't care about her, she's absolutely the centre of my universe, but because, more than ever, what my sister-in-law said when I first split up with my ex, that there needed to be something in my 'new life' for me is, quite simply, a joke. There wasn't very much for me in my old life, but I could buy into the illusion that there was fulfillment in trying to provide for my family, at least to a point. But now, the absent positive, the knowledge that I'll never get what I want, in any foreseeable circumstances, is weighing me down almost to the extent of complete despair. I know most 'right-thinking' people would say that nothing and never is all I deserve. I'm sure they would feel better about themselves for thinking that, too. But then, they haven't had to live this life sentence, without hope of parole, since they were twelve years old.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 29 September 2015

And justice for all?

Another day, another court case involving a 'paedophile'. But one with a big twist. An East London woman has been convicted going to a neighbour's flat armed with a knife, and stabbing him to death - because he was accused of sexually abusing two boys. OK, the man concerned had previous convictions, but none since 1991, and wasn't even an RSO, but she killed him anyway. And was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of 'loss of control'. And had her original sentence halved by the judge, because of the 'exceptional circumstances'. Three and a half years, of which she'll probably only serve a year, for premeditated murder. If, when she gets out, I was to go and find her and do the same to her having 'lost control' because of her admitted actions, would I get the same sentence? I don't fucking think so. And that's completely aside from the fact that if I was convicted of having a completely consensual sexual relationship with a boy even six months under the age of consent, I'd get five years, minimum. I have no doubt at all that there will be a campaign launched, if it hasn't been already, to have the woman released and exonerated, probably backed by The Sun, or some other shit-stirring illiterate tabloid. feting her as a heroine for having rid the world of a 'predator'. That the 'justice' system is inequitable isn't exactly news, but when the prejudice is so egregious, it's impossible to contain the anger.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 28 September 2015

Who sent you?

A question I asked, silently, a long time ago, and, by UK standards, a long way from here, when I first saw the utterly beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who was my number one until DBJ finally eclipsed him, a quarter of a century later. The same question came to mind ninety minutes ago, in my local, in the face of another delightful boy, one I hadn't seen before, having a meal with his family. He wasn't quite on a par with his predecessors, but it was only a matter of a few percentage points. Of course, nobody sends them, it's all a matter of chance - after all, I saw one of my work colleagues at lunchtime, in an area of London where neither of us would've expected to have seen the other - but that doesn't make the pangs of unrequitable longing any easier to bear.

2100 edit: But then something awesome happens. Cameron was here, and, of his own volition, said goodbye to me. The first time he's directly spoken to me. Maybe he is going to be my boy, after all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 27 September 2015

And it was all going so well

Relatively speaking, at least. I met K's latest boyfriend last night, and he seems OK - he spoke to me, if nothing else, a step up from one or two of his predecessors - and my girl is happy at the moment, which is the object of the exercise, after all. Then, venturing out at midday today, I almost immediately came across one of those boys who aren't just cute, or pretty, or sexy, he was all of that, and more, simply adorable. He was just a 'ghost', of course, gone for ever in the mere seconds that my bus was at the stop where he was waiting for, evidently, a different service, but he made me smile inside, a mood that lasted for several hours, and through my seeing several more cuties on what proved to be a beautifully sunny early autumn day. It all juddered to a halt, though, in late afternoon. Why? Maybe surfeit, just one lovely boy too many. The boy in question wasn't necessarily the best looking guy you've ever seen, but the whole package, his 11-ish perfection, was too much for me to cope with, and my mood was comprehensively punctured by the implacable needle of 'never'. And now, back in my local, there's been no sign of Cameron, as has been the case all weekend - he can't come in on his own, obviously, so it's his family as a whole that have been on the missing list - which has made me even less happy with life. But then, 'society' would say, the likes of me don't deserve to be happy.

2250 edit: K's boyfriend has apparently said I'm 'really nice'. I hope my girl disabuses him of that misconception ASAP. I'm vile. The 99%+ of 'society' who would think so can't be wrong. Can they?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 26 September 2015

Irony, irony

Fashion and I have always been total strangers, I've no idea, and even less interest, about what's 'in' this season. So when K mentioned last night that 'loli' was a trending look, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. K knew immediately why I'd reacted in the way I had - 'lolicon' is the female equivalent of the 'shotacon' boy anime I have to discipline myself to stay away from online, because of its unaccountable, given that it's nothing more than zeroes and ones in a computer processor, illegality. Look like a little girl, you're fashionable. Look at a totally imaginary representation of a young person, you're a criminal. And, of course, you're assumed to have 'chosen' your illicit preferences. As if.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 24 September 2015

Off the leash, again

Nine days off. Minimal plans. I predict hours of eye candy cruising and gallons of beer. Bad for me, physically and psychologically, no doubt. But I simply don't care.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 23 September 2015

Torment

A good while back, a good friend of mine described me as 'a tortured soul' because of my sexuality. I good-naturedly disagreed with his premise at the time, but, if I'm being completely honest, there are occasions when his assessment isn't that far from the truth. And much of today has been one of those occasions. And, as is almost always the case, the torture has come from within. However much I try to convince myself that I would never do this, that, or the other, my subconscious simply belies those assertions and, to paraphrase the Nickelback song, 'reminds me of who I really am'. I would love so much for Cameron to be a real friend, not just 'little friend'. But then, almost involuntarily, I find myself having sexual fantasies about him. I'm well aware of the difference between fantasy and reality, but the fact that my imagination so easily crosses a line that I claim would be inviolable in real life fills me, once more, with oceans of self-loathing. And underlines that I have to stay away from Cameron. And any other boy. It rips me up inside, but I simply can't trust myself to do the right thing.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Just because I don't understand something....

....doesn't make it wrong. I've always found gender dysphoria a difficult concept to come to terms with. I might have been conflicted about my sexual orientation for much of my life, but I've never felt my gender identity to be anything other than masculine. In recent years, though, as I've learnt more about the spectrum of human identity and sexuality, I've come across the 'T' part of the LGBT abbreviation - K has two close friends who are trans, including one I've met and got to know to a limited degree. I absolutely accept that their feelings of finding themselves in 'the wrong sort of body' are genuine, and that they have the perfect right to live their lives being considered to be a member of the gender that is opposite to their biological gender, but I won't even pretend to understand how that dysphoria can arise, and how difficult it must be to live your life under those circumstances. Much of the difficulty, of course, is brought about by the attitudes of others. Being a transgender person isn't wrong in any way. This kind of reaction is, though, 100% wrong.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 21 September 2015

Depressingly predictable

I've just seen a trailer for a new BBC adaptation of a book I've been very fond of over the years - I actually owned a limited edition illustrated version, one of the myriad things that were left behind in Cornwall - and it was immediately obvious that major changes have been made from the original. Mostly in that all of the main characters, from what I saw, are much older in this new take on the story than they were in the book. Why? Well, who knows, but I very strongly suspect it's because there are implicit references to 'underage sex' in what is an autobiography rather than a novel, and the BBC, in the wake of the Savile affair and the current climate around this subject, have simply been too craven to be faithful to the author's remembrances. I won't be watching the programme. The book? Cider with Rosie.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 18 September 2015

Dystopia

I read a story this morning at one of my most regular online haunts. An erotic story, superficially, but the socio-political aspects of the plot were more than a little thought-provoking. It was set in a near-future UK where economic collapse had led to a nationalistic/theocratic/fascistic one party state where boylovers had become a convenient scapegoat, their public execution by stoning becoming the modern equivalent of the Roman 'circus'. The means by which this 'dehumanisation' had been achieved were quite plausible, really only a ramping up of the 'trial by tabloid' depressingly prevalent in the 'real world', 'historic sex offence' this, 'paedo' that, with self-seeking politicians and religious leaders jumping on the bandwagon to maintain their positions of power and privilege - and wealth, needless to say. The plot twisted around a boy genius who effectively sold his body to further his education after his rich parents had been discredited and expropriated by the regime, inveigling his way into the system by becoming the 'loved boy' of a typically hypocritical member of the government before going on, as a young adult and boylover himself, to subvert society and wreak revenge on those who had hurt him and his family. The new society, though, despite it being ostensibly by and for boylovers, would be no more to my taste than its theocratic predecessor, most notably because the stonings continued, only the target - the theocrats and bigots - having changed, and because it became obvious that the now-grown boy had become just as greedy and self-seeking as those he had usurped. This was, I have to say, deliberate on the part of the author - 'power corrupts' was the message of the story's last sentence - and chimes with something I strongly believe, namely that plurality and tolerance for the views of others, even if you fervently disagree with those views, are the only viable basis for a workable, cooperative society. I'm commitedly, unashamedly rational, sceptical and atheistic, but as soon as I try to impose those views on anyone else, I become just as fascistic and authoritarian as the worst of theocrats. Freedom of thought and belief are essential, as far as I'm concerned, for society to live and breathe.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 16 September 2015

Named

Well, he was before, of course, but I didn't know what it was. I've discovered - maybe overheard would better describe how it came about - that 'little friend's' name is Cameron. I ended up sitting, to all intents and purposes, right next to him when I arrived at my local about an hour ago, just a narrow aisle between my place and his. He was getting rather bored and restless while his parents and the other adults they were with talked amongst themselves, to the point that his mother told him off, hence my hearing his name, and, to my considerable annoyance, told him he was bothering me. As if! I would willingly, eagerly have engaged with him, talked to him, played a game, whatever. Except, of course, had I attempted to do so, my motives would immediately have, at the very least, been viewed with the deepest of suspicion. OK, maybe if he was four or five years older those suspicions might have at least a modicum of substance (although I still maintain I'd never act without informed consent), but at the 8 or thereabouts that he is now, all I want is for him to be a pal, nothing more. I got my smile from him when I arrived this evening. If he believes his mother's claim about my totally non-existent irritation, they might be in short supply in future.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

KC2, and a couple of oddities

I'm not long back from Birmingham, having been to see King Crimson for the second time in just over a week. It was another excellent gig, albeit not quite as blindingly brilliant as last week's version in Hackney. A couple of bits of irony, too, around the trip - firstly, despite the fact that I've lived more than half of my adult life in the Midlands and the North (including three years actually living in Brum - I walked right past the door of my old workplace on the way back to the station), this excursion was the first time I've ventured north of the M25 for almost two years, and, secondly, it only took an hour and 48 minutes from leaving New Street station to walking through my front door, less time than it takes me to get to and from work here in London on many occasions!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B