Sunday 29 March 2015

Sunday brunch, revisited

The real deal, this time, for K and I - omelette, bacon, sausages, baby potatoes and mushrooms sautéed with chorizo. I don't think I'll be eating too much for the rest of the day! And I've got to leave for work in a few minutes! And it's still bloody raining!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Welcome to British Summer Time

The clocks went forward overnight, marking the start of British Summer Time. And, guess what? It's pouring with rain this morning, and forecast to rain all day. Welcome to the great British summer! Seriously, though, we are actually only a week into spring, and the clock change is welcome as far as I'm concerned, heralding the onset of lighter evenings, even if, being on lates all this coming week, I'm not immediately going to benefit from the phenomenon. Extra cutie-spotting time, here we come!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 27 March 2015

Faces

Three, originally, seen on my way to work yesterday, but a fourth was added on the way home. The first was that of a boy of 13 or 14, on a Northern Line tube station platform. He looked like a slightly younger version of someone I used to work with, and who I haven't thought about for many a long day. He was one of the juniors in my workplace in Birmingham (my company doesn't employ anyone under 18 now, but 16 and 17 year olds used to be part of the workforce) who I became very friendly with, even close to. I was in my late twenties at the time, not that much older than his then 16 when we first met. I was attracted to him, but never did anything that would've let him know, and our friendship was genuine and mutual - I ended up spending quite a bit of time with him outside work. There was never a chance of anything more - apart from the fact that, even though he would be 'legal' nowadays, he wasn't then (the gay age of consent at the time was 21), he was, as I described him to one of the very few people who knew at the time that I was a boylover, 'a disgustingly normal little boy' (tongue in cheek, of course, he was neither little nor, in any way, disgusting!). We eventually drifted apart as he reached 18, and went off to his first 'senior' post, at around the same time I left the Midlands forever, heading back to Manchester. We did meet up once after that - a mutual acquaintance, another of the former juniors in Birmingham, who'd ended up working in the West Country, somehow found out I was living in Cornwall - I guess because the 'community' in our industry in that part of the world is pretty small - when my friend was due to go on holiday there, duly putting us in touch. My ex, K and I met up with him and his family for what proved to be a very nice afternoon in the early 'noughties', but that was the last time I saw him, and, to be honest, almost the last time I'd thought about him until yesterday.
The second 'face' was much more the sort of scenario that characterises my life these days - another beautiful 'ghost'. But, wow, was he beautiful, the most gorgeous boy I've seen for months. Around 12, on what was evidently a school trip in town, blond, smiley, dimples, simply breathtaking. And, of course, gone forever in a matter of seconds, as my bus went on its way. I felt like crying, and almost did, not, of course, that tears would've made any difference whatsoever.
Once I'd got off of that bus, and caught the train to 'worktown', I wasn't expecting anything more out of the ordinary, but another 'face' intervened to affect me, but in a completely different way. This time the face of a young man, late teens, maybe even into his twenties, handsome, particularly attractive eyes. But very obviously mentally disabled, having to be helped onto the train by a man, possibly his father, and speaking in what was pretty much 'baby talk'. Very, very sad, that anyone should be disabled in that way, but all the more so for someone who would otherwise be in the prime of his life.
The final encounter of the day was perhaps the most unexpected of all, given the time it happened, and its effect on my mood. I'd been relieved at the latest possible time that wouldn't have constituted lateness on duty by one of my colleagues who lives no more than ten minutes drive away from our workplace, and missed what would've been my homebound train by literally one minute as a result. Needless to say, I wasn't at all amused, as I waited for a different train that marked the beginning of a 'Plan B' that I knew was going to get me home substantially later. But then, the last 'face' of the day came onto the scene. Just a little guy, maybe 10, with, to judge by their respective ages, his grandparents. Not at all the sort of person you expect to see around so late on a school night. He wasn't supercute, but he was happy, smiling, full of life, and instantly cheered me up, A lot.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 26 March 2015

Midweek sleepover

Unusual during the school term, but K had a friend stay over at the flat last night - they'd been to a gig, and it would've been tricky for her friend, who lives in East Surrey, to get home afterwards. To be fair, K was up in good time for school this morning, helped by the fact that she doesn't have to go in until 10:00 on Wednesdays and Thursdays, sixth form privileges, and all that, while the Easter holidays at her friend's private school have already begun. K's own Easter break doesn't begin until the end of next week, and, sadly, it looks like I'm going to be working for almost the whole two weeks, so 'quality time' is going to be thin on the ground. K was talking about going to stay with her mother for part of the time, anyway, although things have gone quiet on that front in the past few weeks - my ex has been keeping a pretty low profile of late, with me, certainly, and seemingly with K as well. It's her call, at the end of the day - if she wants to get in touch, she knows she can, but I won't be forcing the issue. Maybe, three years on from our split, a 'new thing' is finally taking shape, possibly for both of us.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 24 March 2015

Anathema

I've just clicked on an online story I hadn't looked at before, and clicked away again after the very first paragraph. This is a subject I've written about before, but it's something I feel very strongly about, so I make no apology for revisiting the topic. It was obvious from the language of that first paragraph that the young character mentioned there was undoubtedly going to be abused, possibly raped. And even though I know it's fiction, no more real than the stuff I write, for example, the idea of writing or even reading a story where boys are coerced, objectified, hurt is something I simply can't countenance. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would say what I want, a consensual, loving relationship, is just as hurtful and damaging to boys as being raped, and long experience has taught me that once people have made their minds up on this subject, it's all pretty much set in stone, but I have what I consider to be a moral sense, and I would never, ever knowingly hurt a boy, in any way. And reading about people who would, or even want to fantasise about it, is, to me, simply anathema.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 23 March 2015

You can take the boy out of the night shift....

....but you can't take the night shift out of the boy! Not yet, anyway. I finished my week of nights just before 7:00 this morning, I haven't been to sleep yet - that would've been a complete waste of one of my rare days off - and I am, frankly, knackered. I did meander a little bit this afternoon, and even saw a cutie or two, but it wasn't long before I subsided into my local, where I'll doubtless stay until I start literally falling asleep. I'm off again tomorrow, but my return to work on Wednesday will mark the beginning of a run of 11 straight late shifts, so I'm determined to make the most of my clear Tuesday. Whether my good intentions come to anything remains to be seen, though!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 21 March 2015

Eclipse, and the start of the new football season

Yesterday's solar eclipse was a bit of a non-event, at least in this part of the world - it was only a partial eclipse here, anyway, and, given that there there was 100% overcast, absolutely nothing to see. The only discernible effect was to render the morning unusually dull and cold for the time of year, with the reduction in sunlight hitting the tops of the clouds. It's all a perfectly natural phenomenon, of course, but that hasn't prevented assorted religiots from claiming it as a 'sign from God', the 'beginning of the end times', et al. I was particularly amused by the claim, in one report, that, because the line of totality crossed Northern Europe, 'God's message' was particularly aimed at us European heathens. The only message here is that these people ought to have paid more attention in their school science lessons (if they ever took any), as far as I'm concerned.
When I got up again yesterday afternoon, in full accordance with Sod's law, the clouds had dispersed, there was blue sky as far as the eye could see, and warm sunshine. It wasn't the worst of all possible worlds, though, because a number of the 'local' boys, the ones that live in our block, were out in the communal garden at the back for the first time in several months that I've seen, playing football. Including, most notably from my perspective, the 'next door but one' cutie. Being on nights severely restricts my 'eye candy spotting' opportunities, so it was a nice outcome for the eye candy to come to me, as it were. Bring on the summer!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 19 March 2015

What does this even mean?

On the way back from work this morning, I was on a bus in Central London that passed the site of a new development at the bottom end of Regent Street. Amongst its supposed 'attractions' was that it will offer 'Bespoke Concept Dining'. What the hell does that word salad mean? The best guess I can come up with is that people with far more money than sense will be able to buy miniscule portions of snail foam ice cream at a price that would feed the average family for a week. An incontrovertible argument for expropriation, as far as I'm concerned.

1620 edit: Reading back, the phrase 'word salad' in this context might be seen as a witty pun on my part. Sadly, it was purely accidental!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 17 March 2015

King Crimson!!!

As it now says - including the gush of exclamation marks! - on our kitchen calendar against a date in early September. I heard a snippet on Planet Rock just after 4:00 this afternoon about King Crimson having added 'extra dates due to demand' to their UK tour. Shit! I didn't even know they'd announced a UK tour. But, after ten minutes or so of slightly frantic internetting, I had the booking confirmation for the purchase of two tickets, for K and I - yes, she has inherited her father's inclination towards prog, and even thanked me for introducing her to the genre, when she was about 8, not so long ago - to go to one of their London gigs. They have arguably become my favourite band in recent years, and they're undoubtedly the band I've never seen live that I most want to see, so I'm certainly more than happy to get the chance. Roll on September!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 15 March 2015

Run

There are times when I feel like running away from all of it. All of the petty sniping and heedless homo/xeno/gyno/(insert any other 'outgroup')phobia, the mindless parroting of tabloid bullshit, hang  'em, flog 'em, castrate the 'paedos', scroungers, immigrants, blah, blah, fucking blah. But, apart from the fact that I'd never abandon my daughter, where could I run to? Is there anywhere better? Human nature being what it is, I seriously doubt it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday brunch

Well, that's probably overstating the case a little, because it was originally only going to be bacon sarnies for K and I this morning, until I realised we had some eggs that were getting towards their 'use-by' date, so I made omelette as well. Sunday is virtually the only day we ever have a cooked breakfast (unless you count toast), and even then, not every week by any means, between my working most weekends and K's typically teenage addiction to the warmth of her bed! Still, a nice way to sugar the pill of my having to leave for a late shift in half an hour or so, before I launch into my latest week of nights tomorrow night. Oh, joy!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 14 March 2015

Haunted!

If the cuties are 'ghosts', then I've undoubtedly been haunted today. They've been out in droves! One in particular, on his own, in a slightly 'off the beaten track' bit of North London, 13 or 14, was so lovely, two seats away from me on the little 25 seat 'hail and ride' bus, but, as ever, so far away, so out of reach. My mood, though, is in a place where I'm more pleased to have been able to see him than I'm disappointed at his inaccessibility. Maybe, one day, someone like him will fall into my arms. But probably not.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 13 March 2015

Into it

Drinking, that is. I make no secret of the fact that I like my beer, but there are times that I'm more up for it than others, and this evening is one of those occasions. The Kronenbourg is really slipping down easily at the moment. I might regret it in the morning, but I'll deal with that as and when. I'm not proud of my alcohol consumption, but I refuse to be ashamed of it, either. If it ultimately kills me, at least I'll have died of something I enjoy.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 12 March 2015

Cuteness, and the latest slip of Farage's mask

I headed more or less straight home after work yesterday, partly through exhaustion, and partly because I had a couple of domestic things to do, most notably washing. I stopped off in our local town centre on the way to pick up a few bits of shopping, and on walking back through to the bus station, found myself getting on the same bus as a boy I thought I recognised. And, indeed, as we alighted at the same stop a few minutes later, it proved to be my cute next door but one neighbour. I hadn't seen him for three months or so (ironically, given how close he lives), and, in the intervening time, doubtless under the influence of puberty, he's got even cuter - he was a bit on the 'chunky' side, but he seems to have got taller without gaining much weight, if any, and his face is losing the last of its 'little-boyishness', leaving him heading, apparently, for decidedly handsome youth. The ratchet of temptation tightened another turn or two, just what I need on the doorstep!
On the journey into work this morning (the last 'stupid o'clock' for a while, I'm delighted to say!), one of the main items on the 6:00 news was the vile UKIP leader's latest pronouncement, that he believes that racial equality laws should be abolished, because 'racism isn't a problem anymore', and that employers should be able to hire on the basis of 'nationality'. Apart from the self-evident fact that Farage's very statement proves that racism and xenophobia are decidedly alive and well, there is a completely obvious 'domino effect' here - if racial equality laws are scrapped, what rational person would imagine that curbs on gender and orientation discrimination wouldn't go the same way in very short order? I read a Guardian report just now about Farage's comments, which described them as 'a lazy appeal to lazy voters'. Unarguable, but, as I've bemoaned before, being lazy and stupid doesn't disenfranchise anyone.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Another of those coincidences

I was listening to Planet Rock on my little pocket DAB radio on my way to work this morning, when the song Caroline by Status Quo came on. They play the track often enough, but, on this occasion, for some unknown reason, it brought to mind my brother's first serious girlfriend, from when he was around 14, who shared her name with the song. It's been years since I've thought much about her, although we were quite friendly, strictly platonically, even if I have to admit that I was somewhat attracted to her, mostly, I think, because she had, at 14/15 as she was then, a distinctly 'boyish' physique. And that leads very neatly into today's coincidence. As I got off of the bus outside my local, forty minutes or so ago, and crossed the road, I passed a beautiful boy, 13 or 14, crossing in the opposite direction. And he really was very reminiscent of Caroline, in looks, colouring and physique, albeit, of course, in a masculine key. Would that I could be half as friendly with the boy as I used to be with the earlier girl, but, needless to say, it's very unlikely that I'll ever see him again. Another 'ghost', but one with a kind of indirect backstory.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 8 March 2015

On the downhill side, finally

It seems to have taken forever, but I am now, at least, past the halfway mark of my run of early turns - five down, four to go. I'm mind-manglingly tired, though - roast lamb, roasted baby potatoes and veg will be on the table for K and I in about twenty minutes time, and once the meal is done, I strongly suspect I'll be asleep in pretty short order. I know it's in a good cause - i.e. for my daughter - but it doesn't get any easier to convince myself to keep doing it week in, week out. Still, no point moaning about what I can't change - except to get it out of system, I suppose!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 6 March 2015

Friday evening in my local....

....and there's a cutie sitting about six feet in front of me, who I'd love to take home and cuddle (and he's perfectly built for cuddles, not fat, but not skinny either, just - well, cuddly!) to within an inch of his life. I doubt either the boy or his parents would be all that keen on the idea, though!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 5 March 2015

When is a trough....

....not a trough? In the case of my current state of mind, when I got to a point when I was too bloody tired to think about it. Nothing has changed, nothing, assuredly, has been resolved, but after two early shifts, I'm so shattered that my brain only seems to be functioning on an autonomic level. And I've got seven more 'stupid o'clocks' to go. As I said to K last night, I think I'm getting too old for this kind of endurance test, but I can't afford to give it up. Work until you drop, then disappear into the remorseless dustbin of history, unlamented, unremembered. Ain't life grand?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 3 March 2015

The day of not doing things

There were two things that I had in mind to do today, and, in the event, I did neither of them. The thing my day was built around almost happened - I decided I was going to look for 'the boy on the bus', and got within a mile, give or take, of where he presumably was at the time (mid afternoon, cutie time), but then realised that, firstly, I would be gutted if I didn't see him, but, even more, that it made no difference if I did see him, because there's no possibility of his ever being my friend, still less anything more. So I diverted to my local instead, a simple manoeuvre, given that the buses to each potential destination left from the same stop.
The second thing had been sloshing around in my head all day, after passing a certain organisation's local office on my first bus of the day. I'm deep in a hole at the moment, and I could really do with talking in a non-judgmental situation, but, in the end, I chickened out, as I have more than once in the past. Maybe their online option might work better. I'll investigate - or maybe I won't. Boys don't cry, after all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Feel the love

Another loving, caring Christian. If this goon can't be locked up in a padded cell, any chance of his being prosecuted for inciting violence? (Yeah, I know, First Amendment, blah, blah, but there are limits, even to that get-out clause.)

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another turn of the hysteria ratchet

In this morning's news, a new proposal which could lead to teachers and social workers being sent to prison for five years if they 'ignore' sexual abuse of children. Leaving aside the fact that I can't believe that anyone in that kind of profession would deliberately ignore any such allegation, how could it ever be proven? Will registration for your average infant school class go something like this - 'Good morning, children. Please raise your hands if you were sexually abused last night'? OK, that's probably reductio ad absurdum, but, more seriously, if a teacher, or anyone else, has a threat of a jail sentence over their head, they're going to report anything and everything, 'just in case', which could well lead to more families - including children, of course - being dragged into the quagmire of the 'sex abuse industry', with its automatic assumption that any adult, especially men, are 'guilty until proven innocent, and probably still guilty anyway'. There is, of course, an election coming up very soon, so the politicos will jump on any bandwagon they think will win them a few more votes, irrespective of the potential for innocent people to have their lives destroyed. Maybe the answer is for children to be taken from their parents at birth, and raised in complete isolation from the world, having no contact with anyone at all. A recipe for intractable psychosis, of course, but at least they'd be 'safe'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 2 March 2015

Linebashing, and its consequences

'Linebashing', for the uninitiated, is the practice of travelling on a railway line for no other reason than that you've never travelled on it before. And that's what I indulged in earlier today, travelling on a branch line at the very southern fringe of the Oystercard zone I'd never used before. There was a nice view back towards London as the train approached the terminus, the sun was shining, and all appeared to be set fair. But then it all rather fell to bits. My original plan was to walk to the station at the end of another branch, which I had visited before, albeit a very long time ago, but it soon became clear that it was further than I'd anticipated, and would involve walking uphill along a busy main road with no footpath, so the fact that a bus stop, with a bus ostensibly due, presented itself seemed like a much preferable 'Plan B'. Except that the bus didn't turn up. And it was only an hourly service. After standing in the cold for almost half an hour, I ended up catching the next bus in the other direction, discovering en route that the missing bus had broken down, finding myself in the local town centre, even further out. I did 'tick off' another Wetherspoons, but, even by the time I left there, I was starting to feel decidedly sniffly, and now, eight hours or so later, I've got a horrible feeling that another chesty thing might be on its way. I'll have to see how I feel in the morning, but it looks like I might end up paying a high price for traversing about four new miles of our rail network!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

Sunday 1 March 2015

Floundering

I know this is going to sound like a cracked record, but I'm really struggling with the 'boy issue' at the moment, more than I can remember for years. Each time I see an attractive boy, and they seem to be everywhere at the moment, I'm feel like I'm being shot by both sides, on the one hand by the frustration of not being able to have what I want the most, and on the other, especially when it comes to the younger guys, by the guilt of wanting at all. It really is a maze with no way out, because I can't possibly justify hurting someone else to make myself feel better, while what I could legitimately have I simply don't want - no amount of attempted 'redirection' is ever going to make me anything other than a boylover, because if it was possible, I'd have done it in a heartbeat, years, decades ago. All I can do is apologise for going over the same dead ground yet again, but it really is a big issue, maybe the biggest of all, in what passes for my 'life'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B