2016 - Year of the fascist

Well, it's nearly over. And, frankly, good riddance. From losing my local (and, potentially, at least, my boy with it) to Farage and Brexit to K going to uni (although, of course, that's a good thing, in absolute terms) to, most benightedly of all, Trump and his proposed cabinet of fascists and warmongers, it's been shit. It makes me wonder how 2017 could be worse, but with far right bigots, cheered on by their religious hangers-on, setting the political agenda, it probably will be. But in spite of all that, I'd like to wish you all a happy and healthy New Year, even if I don't expect either for myself.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sums it all up

The first phone call I've received over the 'festive period' - I did speak to my brother on Christmas Day, but I had to ring him to facilitate the contact - happened about an hour and a half ago, and it was a wrong number, albeit from someone I know. It just serves to underline the fact that, apart from K, no-one in 'meatspace' could care less whether I live or die. And why should they, when the list of 'non-carers' includes me?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Season's greetings

I don't really 'do Christmas' anymore, but my curmudgeon status notwithstanding, I'd like to wish everyone the compliments of the season. I hope your festive day brings all you would wish for yourselves. Meanwhile K and I will set about slobbing around, eating and drinking too much - we've just begun with Buck's Fizz for brunch, so you can probably tell what sort of day it's going to be!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A most welcome face from the past

K arrived back from her stay with her mum this afternoon, and we decided to go out for our evening meal, to the nicer of the two Wetherspoons I now use most regularly. All very pleasant, but on the way back we needed to call into the supermarket more or less opposite where my old local was, to round off the Christmas grocery shopping (a mission we accomplished, fortunately - shopping on Christmas Eve is absolutely no fun at all!). As we meandered around the shop, I caught sight of someone I recognised -  one of the regulars from the former pub. A few seconds later, though, that moment of recognition was eclipsed by another - his son. The boy was always a cutie, and the passage of nearly a year, bringing him much closer to my AoA, hasn't diminished that impression at all. Only a fleeting moment, but nonetheless a welcome early Christmas present.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Incitement to violence

I've mentioned this arsehole before in my blog, as he appears all too often in another blog I read daily. But what he's said on this occasion simply makes me wish I could drag him from in front of his computer, take him to the nearest convenient open space, and kick him to death.
On the other hand, kudos beyond measure to Avery's parents, to not stand in the way of her being herself, when many (particularly religious) parents would have opted for some kind of hideously abusive 'reparative therapy'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The girl is back in town!

K got back from uni for the Christmas break yesterday, after I'd left for work, unfortunately, but it didn't take long before we began catching up, talking for two hours late last night after I'd arrived home. Then this morning, we've had one of our very occasional weekend brunch fry-ups, and very nice (and heavily slanted towards carnivory!) it was, too. My girl will be off on her travels again tomorrow, going to spend a few pre-Christmas days with her mum, but she'll be back on Friday, and here for the following two weeks or so. I know I've got to get used to her not being around as she moves further into adulthood, but I can't help feeling that the flat seems 100 times more like home when K is in it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Transformational

The BBC News Channel is on in the pub, and while I was at the bar just now, I saw some Trump mouthpiece describe his paymaster as a 'transformational president'. Yeah, transforming the world into a fossil fuel poisoned, if not nuclear weapon destroyed, wasteland. Thanks a lot, (most) white American voters.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Horribly predictable, and predictably horrible

No, I'm not referring to Trump's cabinet nominations, although they fit the title terrifyingly well. Instead, it's that the only possible candidate for misusing the appalling 'P-word' more egregiously than the tabloid press would be a christofascist. As indeed is the case.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Waste, want

I finished my night shift week this morning, and, as usual, that takes me into (at least nominally) two days off. I had intentions of doing something with today, but a combination of being excruciatingly tired, some thoroughly unappetising weather (cold and damp) and, frankly, inertia has meant that I've done nothing of the least consequence. I have found my way to the pub - surprise, surprise - but today has otherwise been a more or less complete waste.
I've said more than once that I have a 13 year old boy who lives in my head, and his petulant side was close to the surface at 'worktown' station on my way home this morning. As I arrived on the platform to await my train, I saw a boy, in 'civvies' rather than school uniform, who was more than a little like my mental image of the young Xander in the early stages of Alexandrine. And who sent me off into a big huff - 'it's not bloody fair' was the phrase that rattled round in my mind - about the absence of a boy in my life. Most of the time, I'm well aware that I'm never going to have what I want more than anything else, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another loss in a grim year

Apart from the horrific political landscape, the saddest theme of the past year has been the number of high-profile musicians have died. Yet another today, in the form of Greg Lake. I first came across his work, as most probably would have, I guess, as part of ELP when I was a sixth-former at school, but, for me personally, another role of his that I discovered a little later, as a founder member of King Crimson has been the most important. I suppose it's not that much of a mystery that so many heroes of my youth and subsequent life should die so close together, because many of them were born in the same post-war era, but it's thoroughly sad, nonetheless.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nothing matters

What I do, what I don't do. What I say, what I don't say. I'm never going to be anything other than hateful in the eyes of the world. I could remain celibate for the rest of my life (and very probably will), 'society' will still have the same attitude towards me they would if I raped a baby. Why the fuck I bother to carry on is completely beyond me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lazy Sunday morning

Not that it's going to last much longer, because I'm working this afternoon, but I certainly haven't been over-exerting myself since I got up. I found a lovely e-mail from K in my inbox when I arrived in cyberspace this morning, written a bit in vino veritas, by her own admission, but none the less welcome for that. She'll be home for the holidays a week on Friday (although she will be away again, staying with her mum for a few days in the run-up to Christmas), and I'm looking forward so much to her return. As I said to her in my reply to her e-mail, she really is the centre of my universe, my raison d'être.
Yesterday marked, I guess, the start of what little 'Christmas season', K excepted, I'm likely to have. I met up with my brother and sister-in-law for a late lunch and a catch-up session, and it was as congenial as ever. Although it's still three weeks until 'the big day', it was the last chance we had to get together, because of work commitments - my next weekend day off is Christmas Day itself, while the few midweek days off I'll have in the interim aren't convenient for them. We have made provisional plans to meet up again early in the New Year, though.
So, a late breakfast (bacon rolls, yum!) beckons, and then it will be time to get ready and head back to the grindstone. Are we having fun yet?!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Subconscious truths

I've written about dreams a few times in this blog, and while the picture show in your head is often an inchoate and illogical mess, there are occasions when an underlying reality is elucidated. One such this morning, as I woke in the middle of a notably vivid dream about my cousin, as he was at 13 or 14. There was, in the last moments before I 'resurfaced', a distinct erotic element, but most of the dream was about love and cuddles and closeness. The feeling, as I was able to begin to think consciously, told it all - he's still, despite the cataclysmic meltdown of three years or so ago, the greatest love of my life, bar none, and the person I'd have unhesitatingly chosen as my life partner, had he been willing and able to fulfill that role. My darling boy. My irredeemably lost darling boy.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

All gone

I had it in mind to write a post about how benighted November had been - Trump, mostly, but this 'football abuse' business over here, too - but then I read something, a blog post from ages ago, which has set me off on a different tack altogether. There aren't any new insights, and I have talked about this before, but, once more, it's occurred to me that of the nice little 'community' I was lucky enough to find my way into when I arrived in cyberspace nearly seven years ago, there is literally only me left. Everyone else, for one reason or another, is gone. I'm the one who has to switch the lights off when I leave. And that's a dispiriting place to be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What's the difference?

Using someone's dreams and aspirations as a means of manipulating them to submit to your desires, to facilitate your gratification.
Giving someone you care about, and who has consented, as much pleasure as you can, because you want them to have the best you can give.
What's the difference? None at all, in the perception of 'right-thinking' people, where relationships with boys are concerned. Because anyone who desires boys is self-evidently predatory and evil.
Sorry, but I believe there is a difference. If what you want is the most important thing, then there's a strong likelihood that you're a child molester. If what the boy wants is the most important thing, then, maybe, you might be a boylover.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How much longer?

How much longer, that is, can I justify keeping this blog, and Nephelokokkygia, for that matter, going? In the face of another 'historic sexual abuse scandal', this time around youth football, and the lurch towards right-wing, if not undisguisedly fascistic politics that seems to be rife at the moment, being a self-confessed boylover, even pseudonymously, seems likely to become an even more untenable position than it has been hitherto. Because there's nothing more that fascists love than a convenient scapegoat. I like to think that I'm not a coward, but there is a line between courage and recklessness. I really need to seriously assess which side of that line my staying in cyberspace will place me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Almost to the point of insanity

I've written often enough about the torturous nature of my life, but there are occasions when it all seems gratuitously cruel. A few days ago, I spent hours while I was meandering thinking about Cammy, only to be 'ambushed' at a bus stop by a boy who looked hauntingly like DBJ. Then at lunchtime today, as I was out and about again, I found myself close to being washed away by a tsunami of hopelessly unrequitable desire for a quite exquisite 'skater boy' who got on the bus I was on, 13/14, blond, dimples framing a mischievous smile, as close to irresistibility as I could imagine or invent. When he got off, fifteen minutes or so later, I simply felt like crying, unshed tears of frustration and absence of fulfillment. Torture is hardly a strong enough word for it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fascists and dominionists, oh my

Two weeks into the 'transition', and Trump is filling his government-in-waiting with a selection of neo-Nazis, Christofascists and one-percenters. And suggesting that Farage - Nigel fucking Farage - would be an ideal candidate for British ambassador to the US. If the effects of this insanity were confined to their country of origin, all well and good. But the old adage about America sneezing, and the world catching a cold has never been more apposite, as far as I'm concerned. Or more frightening.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

End of the weekend, and an unwelcome guest

This weekend has been the centrepiece of my time off, because K has been home and not otherwise engaged, so I've had my girl's undivided attention for a couple of days. She's on her way back to 'uni-town' now, though, so it's back to 'me, myself, I' for another month, until the university term finishes. The time with her, and the associated reminder of the justification of my still being on the treadmill, has certainly been very welcome.
Not at all welcome, though, was the news today that Trump has apparently been invited for a state visit to the UK next summer. The thought of such a vile twat riding in state through the place where I live is positively nauseating. I'd say he should fuck off and die, except that would mean President Pence, which would be even worse.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

In need of inspiration

Given the waves of apathy my posts in this blog are largely met with, I've begun to feel the need for something with a bit more 'job satisfaction'. And, not for the first time, my thoughts have turned towards producing something substantive in Nephelokokkygia. There are all sorts of drafts over there, even stuff that is plotted as far as its denouement, but what I think is necessary is something along the lines of Alexandrine, a story that really catches my imagination and gives me the incentive to put in the hours of work required to come up with something worthwhile. Will it happen? Don't hold your breath in anticipation.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Frittering

Today is the first of eleven days off that I've managed to engineer, wrapping my six remaining annual leave days for this year around one of my all too rare long weekends (two in our thirty week roster cycle, don't spend them all at once!). So what do I do with this first day, a mild and sunny one for this time of year? Nothing. I simply couldn't get motivated this morning, doing no more than slobbing around in the flat, and when I did finally get showered and out of the front door, I came straight to the pub, where I still am. R and R is worthwhile, but the privilege can certainly be abused. Mea culpa.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monologues

There have been quite a few lately, in my head, rehearsing my side of conversations I might potentially have with friends, colleagues, anyone really. Conversations about me and my life, past, present and future, who I am, how I've come to be that person, how that 'who and how' relates to the world at large. There was a good example this morning, as I was in the shower getting ready to go to work. My mind found its way to DBJ, from my first sight of him as a pretty nine year old passing my former Cornish workplace with his family through to the last few times I saw him before my move to my present job, when he was 13, going on 14, and, in my eyes, the most beautiful boy in the history of the world. How I might describe him, how I could explain my reactions to him, in so far as I understand them myself. Words are always inadequate for such descriptions and explanations, it seems to me, because they are, for the reader, if not the writer, disconnected from the emotions of the real situation. How I saw him, the feelings he engendered, are unique to me. And in a more general sense, if you've never loved a boy, how can you possibly understand how a boylover feels? We're all prisoners of our own psyches, ultimately unable, by definition, to see the world through anyone's eyes but our own. Always, as Petra says in The Chrysalids, 'one at a times'. Trapped forever in a well of loneliness.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A quarter of a century ago

I met my ex. 25 years ago today, November 12 1991, at 9:05 in the evening, in a pub in Greater Manchester. I fell in love with her in a matter of days, proposed to her less than four months later, married her fourteen months after that. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But it wasn't to be. In fact, it was probably the worst mistake of my whole life, and there are many candidates for that accolade. I thought she was the one to save me from myself, and fooled myself accordingly. But, ultimately, the one person you can never fool, for any length of time, anyway, is yourself. There is K, of course, so it hasn't been a complete disaster, but, my daughter apart, when I ask myself the question 'would I rather have never been in that pub on that fateful night?', the answer, I’m afraid, has to be 'yes'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

With the benefit of a couple of days of reflection....

....I still think the election of Trump is the most stupid, self-destructive thing any electorate has done in my lifetime. And the fallout has begun already, with numerous reports, as in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, of naked bigotry, particularly racist bigotry, and even violence against those perceived as 'the other'. And plenty of gloating from those who now consider themselves to be the 'chosen ones', which, in Trumpland, basically means straight, white, Christian (however nominally, eh, Donald?) males. If you don't fall into that demographic, you're at best a second-class citizen, and at worst concentration camp fodder. Good luck, America, making it through to the next election. If there is a next election.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

You fucking morons

Brilliant, just brilliant, America. You've signed your own death warrant, and the rest of ours as well. And underlined the perennial problem with democracy - that any fucking idiot can vote. President Trump. You should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Disbelief

On the eve of the US presidential election, I simply can't understand why Trump is still seen as having any sort of a chance of winning, but it appears to be a possibility, even now. Irrespective of his policies - assuming that the disconnected word salad that issues forth whenever he opens his mouth are worthy of that honourific - he is, as far as I'm concerned, the most unsuited candidate, temperamentally, for the most powerful political office in the world that I've ever seen, almost the most unsuited I could imagine. Plenty of parallels have been drawn between Trump and Hitler during both the primary and presidential campaigns, but I've only seen one reference to a much closer likeness, to my mind - Mussolini. Trump seems to be exactly the same kind of puffed-up, preening buffoon as his Italian predecessor, but with one terrifying difference - Mussolini didn't have the world's most powerful military at his disposal. If the unthinkable happens, and the world wakes to President Trump on Wednesday morning, it might very well be a case of life imitating the words of Ford Prefect in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - 'Drink up, the world's about to end'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Green-eyed monstrosity

A comment at work this morning, by my friend, our shift manager, at that, left me almost weeping with frustration. He, no doubt, thought it a mere throwaway, as he mentioned that his older son was off visiting his long-distance girlfriend (they met on holiday earlier this year, and she lives 200+ miles north of London), and what they might get up to. If I'm being honest, my feelings weren't anything other than jealousy - not towards the boy (who, in all honesty, is pretty much a young man now, 16 in three months time and right at the very top end of my AoA) but towards the girl for being with the sort of person I'd give my eye teeth for. Once I'd calmed down and stopped gritting my teeth, it didn't take long to realise the futility of it all  - there wouldn't the slightest chance of the boy being with me even if he was exclusively gay, but, more than that, there is hardly any chance beyond the infinitesimal that any boy would ever be with me. As I've said more than once before, 'never' is the most terrifying word in the dictionary. But 'never' is very, very close to being what I have to live with. Forever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Some dark and some light

It's been one of those mixed weekends. Friday wasn't good at all - it didn't begin too badly, outing and abouting in some sunny weather, but, for no particularly good reason, I soon descended into a real trough. Cammy was, I guess, part of the issue, as it occurred to me that it was eight months to the day since I'd last seen the boy, the Friday of the weekend that my old local closed. There was nothing even close to a relationship there, more's the pity,  just a few smiles and waves, but I still miss him, far more than I should. Yesterday morning was little better, initially - I was expecting to hear from K about her possible visit to the big city, but by almost midday the silence was deafening, and the paranoia was kicking in, thoughts of her turning against me beginning to roil around in my head. But then the text arrived, she was on a train and on her way. Ninety minutes or so later, I met her at Waterloo and the good bit of the weekend began. We had a late lunch, albeit 'street food' rather than sit down, before heading back to the flat so that my girl could pick up a few odds and ends. Amongst the conversation, she imparted a piece of thoroughly good news, as far as I'm concerned - she's going to be spending Christmas with me, something that was previously undecided. Call me selfish, but I can't help but be pleased that she's going to see her mother in the period leading up to the 'big day' before returning home on Christmas Eve. That little oasis only lasted three and a half hours, or thereabouts, before K headed back to 'uni-town' for a social in the evening, but it did leave me feeling far more at one with the world. Today has once more tended towards the downside - it was very grey, dank and misty for the most part, but even more depressingly, it was the day the clocks went back, so that it was dark by 5:00. Winter is here again, and no mistake.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sometimes the brainwashing works

I did, ultimately, drag myself into the outside world earlier on, leaving the flat just after midday. Ninety minutes or so later, I was on a fairly busy single-decker bus, but one with a few seats available, including the one next to me and the equivalent seat on the opposite side of the aisle. Two young girls, 11/12-ish, of South Asian extraction, joined the bus, and looked around for seats. The slightly smaller, and perhaps slightly younger girl had no hesitation in sitting down beside me, but her friend, with a note of panic in her voice that was almost palpable, refused to sit in the seat opposite, saying 'I can't sit next to a stranger!'. The irony was that the person she would've been sitting next to was a middle-aged Afro-Caribbean woman, hardly a 'high-risk' seatmate for a girl of her age, even if there hadn't been a busload of people and four (yes, I counted them) CCTV cameras recording everything that was going on. There's nothing wrong with instilling caution in children, after all, my ex and I did just that with K when she was younger, but to hammer the message to the point that the girl was terrified in what can't be described as anything other than a safe situation can't possibly be proportionate. Or healthy.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Vacillation

The middle morning of my week off, and I find myself unable to decide what to do. I don't really want to stay in, because I can't see myself doing anything in the least constructive if I did, but, on the other hand, going out isn't exactly an attractive option either - the weather is dull, grey and miserable, I'm tired and still full of cold, as well as being faced with the perennial dilemma of half-term eye candy, whether the pleasure of seeing the numbers of cuties I have so far this week outweighs the depressive effect of knowing that they're all out of reach. Oh well, I guess I'll drink my coffee, faff around on the computer a bit longer and try desperately to come to some sort of decision before it starts getting dark.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Oasis in the quagmire

If that isn't a contradiction in terms. The quagmire, or the latest one, at least, has been mostly around my health, or lack of it - if sniffling, coughing and spluttering was an Olympic sport, I'd be straight in the team - but my mood wasn't helped last night by a raging bigot, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, the whole nine yards, who dumped his vile self a couple of tables away from me in the pub and proceeded to express his views loudly for a good hour, and was still doing so when I left. The temptation to ram a beer glass down his throat was close to irresistibility. The oasis, though, was a thoroughly pleasant one, five hours and more of quality time with my girl as I visited her in 'uni-town'. Her company is one of the few rays of light in my life, and, unaccountably, she seems to enjoy our connection just as much. I might actually see her again as soon as Saturday, as she's got provisional plans to come up to town during the day, although any time together would be decidedly briefer than yesterday, because she's got a social back on the coast in the evening. Any crumbs of comfort will be gratefully accepted, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It can't be a coincidence

First day of a week's leave, and, surprise, surprise, I'm full of cold. I know my immune system is shot to pieces after my pneumonia three years or so ago, and that I'm prone to picking up any bug that's going around, but the regularity of my being ill to a greater or lesser extent when I take time off suggests to me that there's a common factor. Maybe there's a psychosomatic element, the conscious knowledge that I don't have to go to work feeding back into a subconscious feeling that it doesn't matter so much if I succumb. Whatever the reason, it's a thoroughgoing pain in the arse.
Notwithstanding my iffy health, though, I have been out and about today, encouraged in that regard by the fact that it's half term this week. And, right on cue, it's been 'blond cutie' day. There were three or four groan-inducing lovelies on my travels, but the 'arch-cutie' of the day was a little guy crossing a North London road, with his mother, in the opposite direction to me, at around midday. He was, quite frankly, flat out gorgeous, even if he was too young to do more than sigh over. One of these days, I'm going to be found, on some London street or other, as a puddle of lachrymose mush in the face of such beauty.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Infinitesimals

I've just found the dates for godheadSilo's 2017 tour. The nearest to where I am that they're playing is New York, so the chances of my seeing them are not good. Another date on the tour has even more of a frisson, though, because it's close to the home town of the friend who introduced me to the band in the first place. The daydream that engendered, though, is numerous orders of magnitude less likely than winning the lottery.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Degrees of separation

I had a dream in the early hours of this morning, of my being on some sort of day trip to a seaside place, then getting on a coach to head back to wherever my 'dreamworld home' was supposed to be. And cuddling into my side on that coach was a lovely boy, blond, 10/11, wearing a Chelsea football shirt. No-one I consciously recognised, though, in the moments after my alarm brought the tableau to a crashingly abrupt end. Something nagged at the back of my mind, though, and was still doing so an hour or so later as I sat on the tube at my local station, waiting for it to depart on the first leg of my journey to work. Then it clicked. The boy in my dream bore a strong resemblance to a boy I've written about before, the victim of an awful crime, decades ago, being raped and murdered by a family friend. The shock of recognition made me feel physically sick, not just because of the heartbreaking horror of his fate, but because I know how few degrees of separation there are between me and the perpetrator of that crime. I can talk all I want, in hypothetical terms, about how anathema rape is to me, how I never want to hurt a boy, how I could never do such a thing, but hypothetical is all those assertions are. If I'd been in that attic, that day so many years ago, could I have resisted the temptation the rapist failed to resist? Not knowing the answer to that question is one of the most torturous enigmas of my whole benighted life.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wouldn't it be better?

A document, apparently a guidance briefing for managers in our company, appeared at work this morning. It probably wasn't meant for the eyes of us 'foot soldiers', but someone had evidently found it on our 'intranet' and printed it out. The guidance was on how to cope with issues raised by transgender employees. Needless to say, it was raw meat for the fuckwits, especially the 'archbigot', who made no effort to disguise his scorn at the idea that the company should even have thought of producing such guidance, still less implement it. Much later in the shift, our one openly gay guy, who has now completed his training and has become a member of my regular 'gang', the colleagues I work with most of the time, glanced at it and said 'wouldn't it just be better to treat everyone the same?'. 'Would that it was as simple as that' was my immediate reaction - of course it would be better if everyone was grown up enough to follow a 'people are people' mantra, but I'm sure he would know from extensive personal experience that many, if not most of those in our industry are distant strangers to tolerance and equality. And that's towards someone like him, who's a fairly 'moderate' example of an alternative lifestyle, with a long-term partner and a mortgage. I know, from the cesspit of bigotry I wallow in on almost a daily basis, that any trans person who was unfortunate enough to end up working with most of the people I work with would have their lives made a misery. As, of course, would I, if I was careless enough to be 'outed'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Another in my long and lengthening....

....series of abject failures. I've chanced to re-read some of my posts from 18 months or so ago referring to my propensity towards 'self-censorship', and how, if I were to continue blogging, it wouldn't happen again - say what you think, or don't say anything. What a pathetic effort I've made to live up to that aspiration. Without exaggeration, almost every day sees me ranting inwardly about this, that or the other subject about which I disagree with 'society', but how often do I commit those thoughts to cyberspace? Virtually never. Who and what, exactly, am I afraid of? Given my freely admitted status as a boylover, most people are going to hate me anyway, so what have I got to lose? Maybe my cowardice could be excused in the face of the opprobrium aimed in the direction of those like me, but I can never excuse myself on those grounds. I should be more determined, not less, to 'have my say' in the face of the world's disapproval, but I simply don't seem to be able to do it. 'Don't let the bastards grind you down' might be an admirable aim - if you can manage it.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sums up my workplace perfectly

After a day when I've been close to being driven out of my mind by an avalanche of cuties, I tripped over something, 100% accidentally, on YouTube that brought me home grinning, a very rare occurrence. It's not often a song fits so well with a situation, but this one matches my workplace, or, more to the point, all too many of my colleagues to a 'T'. I present to you Fuckwit City.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It never gets any easier

And nor will writing about it, yet again, change anything. But I'm going to write, all the same. The lovely boys I see, as I stumble through the days of my benighted life, so close, close enough to touch, but always, always out of reach. It tears me up inside, every time. No, I don't want to have sex with all of them, or even close to that. I want to be friends, to be around them, to talk about their interests and doings, maybe get lucky enough to get an arm around the shoulder, or even a hug. That would be more than enough. But even that degree of connection seems as unlikely as my flying to the moon. How much longer can I bear this torturous lifestyle of mine? It's an open question.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tables turned?

I had a rather odd encounter on the way back from work this evening, maybe an 'inverse ghost' moment. I got onto a busyish tube, making a beeline for a vacant seat in the corner of the carriage. In doing so, I had to step around a youngish Asian guy, maybe in his early/mid twenties, who moved his bags from the seat between the one he was occupying and the one I was aiming at, for which I thanked him. He then proceeded, for the three stops our itineraries coincided, to spend a lot of time looking my way, before smiling at me as he got off of the train, and even looking back as the train moved off, smiling again. He was perhaps ten years too old for my tastes, albeit not at all difficult to look at, but the fact of his attention gave me, possibly, an insight into how the boys I find so irresistible could feel if and when they become aware of my scrutiny. It was, as best I can describe it, a mixture of flattery and trepidation. Very strange, and no mistake.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Implosions

Potentially a good end to a pretty good week - after the UKIP pantomime a few days ago, it now seems that Trump's presidential campaign is going down the tubes after a tape of him saying some thoroughly egregious things about women came to light. Despite the fact that Clinton is unpleasant enough in her own right, such unpleasantness pales into insignificance compared to the frankly terrifying prospect of Trump as the most powerful person on Earth.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I should keep my mind shut

As I was waiting at the bus stop outside the flat this morning, awaiting the first stage of my journey to work, I looked up and down a road that was more or less devoid of any pedestrians, never mind eye candy, and mused 'where are my Saturday cuties?'. As they say, careful what you wish for, because, beginning less than ten minutes later, I was positively swarmed with the delightful, but untouchable. Ironically, my time actually at work was the most difficult to cope with, because there was a boy there for most of my shift, a boy I've seen a few times before, the youngest son of one of my colleagues, who is now both growing up fast and obviously fairly bright with it. He's still too young, but getting a lot closer to my 'window of attraction' than when I first met him, and the fact that his father was working the position next to mine made for more than a few tricky moments as the afternoon progressed - avoiding saying or doing anything unequivocal while trying to concentrate on my own work was certainly a challenge. He wasn't cutie of the day, though - that accolade went to a skateboarder, one of a group of four at the station where I picked up the third link of my workbound itinerary. He was 12-ish, blond, perfect size and shape, in short the loveliest boy I've seen for weeks, if not months. And, of course, yet another 'ghost', almost certainly never to be seen again. C'est la guerre.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A shaft of light

Only a small one, but it appears that the loathsome UKIP is imploding - their new leader resigned a couple of days ago after less than three weeks in charge, while today, one of the leading candidates to replace her has ended up in hospital after an alleged fistfight with one of his fellow UKIP MEPs. Rarely, if ever, certainly in British political history, would the demise of a political party be more welcome. Except, of course, that the Conservatives have taken most of UKIP’s policies onboard, repositioning themselves as the party of racism and xenophobia. Fascists, one and all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Unbelievable

Over the past couple of days, the Tories have been holding their party conference, and a major theme appears to have been May and her cohorts trying to portray themselves as the new champions of the working class. Anyone, and especially any working class person, who believes such a claim is, as far as I'm concerned, a moron. The Tories have always been the party of the rich, by the rich and for the rich, and to hell with the rest. Like Trump, the only way they can engage with the hoi-polloi is by appealing to their racism and xenophobia. And such appeals, I suspect, will become ever more strident as the economy collapses into the abyss known as 'Brexit'. This country could become a very ugly place, in very short order.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

October

Already. Winter is nearly here, again. Four weeks today, the clocks go back, and we'll be drowned in dark evenings for months. And this on top of all the ongoing vicissitudes of my benighted life. Look on the bright side, people say. Would that there was such a thing in my situation.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Autumn, and autumn

The changing of the seasonal guard hasn't quite officially happened yet - in theory, there are three more days of summer left - but no-one seems to have told the weather that. After a couple of thirty degree plus days earlier in the week, it's been grey, windy and very cool today. A foretaste of the months to come. I can hardly wait.
The blog might be entering its own autumn, too. Regular readers (assuming any are left) will probably have noticed that my posts have become briefer and more sporadic lately. There's a simple reason - I feel pretty much 'all talked out'. My life, in itself, isn't at all eventful, all the more so now K isn't around anymore, and there really are only so many ways of saying 'I still haven't got a boy in my life, see no prospect of that changing, and that absence hurts, every day'. The blog isn't formally in hiatus, but the next post might be tomorrow, or six months hence, or never. Time, as ever, will tell.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

godheadSilo

A couple of years ago, a (sorely missed) cyberspace friend of mine linked me to a track I'd never heard of, by a band I'd never heard of, thinking it might be to my taste. He was right, in spades. I'm now a massive fan of both the track, and the band. Elephantitis of The Night by godheadSilo. Awesome. Do your ears a favour, and seek it out on YouTube. Thank you David, for, as you did so often, progressing my musical education.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sometime, maybe

So, I had my trip to 'uni-town' yesterday to deliver K's stuff to her, and we spent about three hours together, including a shopping trip to get her some household bits and pieces, followed by a late lunch. All too soon, though, I was on the train back to London, with the knowledge that our next meeting could be weeks, if not months away. I suppose I lived in much the same way between 2012 and 2014, when she was still in Cornwall and I was in 'domicile-ville', so it could be said I should be used to it, but things don't seem to work that way. I made the mistake of getting too accustomed to her being around, I guess. And now I'm paying the price.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

So there is some good news

I've just found this, which can, as far as I'm concerned, be paraphrased very simply - fucking excellent!
And I've just had the pleasure of K's company for a couple of hours, as she came back to the flat to pick some more of her stuff up. I was originally going to go back with her to help, but I've been ill for the past few days, and I'm not quite up to it yet. All being well, though, even that cloud will have a silver lining, because, health permitting (and it should), I'll go down and see her tomorrow, which wasn't part of the original plan, but will be far from unwelcome. All gifts gratefully accepted!.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Goodbye girl

Six hours ago, give or take, K left for her new adventure, her next phase of life as an undergraduate. I know it's all psychological, but the flat seems unbelievably quiet and empty already, and far less of a home. It's not, of course, that I'm never going to see her again - she'll be back on Wednesday to pick some more of her belongings up - but it certainly does mark the end of an era. Unless something completely unforeseen happens, I'll never again live permanently with anyone else. I've been trying to get myself ready for this moment pretty much since K moved here more than two years ago, but if the way I feel now is anything to go by, I've failed abjectly. 'Missing you already' is usually no more than an ironic cliché, but it's never seemed more real to me than it does right now.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A year on

A year ago today, a very good friend of mine died. A friend I only met in person once, on a summer afternoon and evening in 2012, the rest of our friendship being by way of cyberspace. But, nonetheless, one of the closest friends I've ever had, not least because, in many ways, we had much in common. Including the opprobrium of 'society', which, as far as I'm concerned, was what drove him to do what he did those twelve months ago. Gone, but never forgotten. My friend Jay.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not waving

Not quite drowning, either, but nearer the latter than the former. I finished my 'out of circulation' week this morning with the last of my latest batch of night shifts, and I'm now into a couple of days off, but it's done little to raise my spirits. Not only are these my last days off before the end of the school holidays, with the obvious implications for daytime eye candy, they're also the last before K disappears to uni - she'll be gone by this time next week. And she's busy on both of them, as well as most of the rest of the week, although my being on lates from Wednesday renders that pretty much academic. Not, of course, that I would ever dream of trying to stand in her way, even if it was possible, but going back to the sort of isolation I experienced between the end of my marriage and K's arrival in London just over two years ago is hardly the most enticing of prospects.
If there is any sort of light on the horizon, though, it may be by way of Nephelokokkygia. I never make promises about my fiction writing, because there have been far too many false dawns, but I do have two ongoing projects there that have a chance, at least, of coming to fruition. The muse could desert me at any moment, though, so I'll say no more until I can say something substantive.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Ideal, in every respect but one

Back to work this afternoon, and the 'stay out of Zone 1 and pay half the fare' route to 'worktown' I now often use threw up one of those bittersweet moments I have no doubt any boylover would recognise. I spent 22 minutes, give or take, on the tube sitting opposite an achingly cute boy, 13-ish, a sort of a mashup of DBJ and (former) 'next door but one cutie', with a beautiful smile reminiscent of my niece at that age (no, I didn't harbour desires for her, but she did have a beautiful smile). And he gave the impression of having quite a bit more about him - the banter he was sharing with his two friends made it obvious that he was bright, and imaginative, and just fun. Ideal. Except, of course, that he could, would never be my friend, still less anything more. And, equally certainly, he'll be another 'ghost', never to be seen again. Once more, I feel like the pauper boy, nose pressed against the window of the toyshop whose delights he'll never be able to reach out and touch.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The end of summer

Well, probably not quite, but today is certainly the last day of my 'summer fortnight' off, and, with it, the good weather I've been lucky enough to enjoy during my break seems to have come to an end as well - it was damp and drizzly yesterday, but it's been more organisedly wet and windy today. K and I did have plans for a rather unusual and potentially interesting trip today, but it involved heading to a 'ghost village' on Salisbury Plain, not a particularly appetising place to visit if, as the weather forecast suggested, horizontal rain was going to be the order of the day. In the event, we did have a few hours of quality time, including lunch at a branch of her favourite burrito chain, so all was far from lost. So, back to work tomorrow it is, although I don't, at least, have to get up at 'stupid o'clock', being on a late shift, so it could be (marginally) worse. It wouldn't take much encouragement for me to carry on with the past two weeks' lazy lifestyle, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Uni, and a bucolic frolic

K got her A-level results this morning, and while they were a little short of her hopes and expectations, they were good enough for her to get her first choice university place. She's pleased, of course, and rightly so, and I'm just as pleased for her. Going where she's going has also resolved another loose end - given that she'll be in halls of residence for her first year, I will, subject to confirmation by the landlord, be keeping the flat on for another year, so that K has still got a home to come back to in the holidays and at the end of the academic year.
The rest of the day, K being off celebrating with her friends, has centred around a trip to the country. I met my brother and sister-in-law at a main station midway between London and their place, before driving out to a pub, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, which used to be a family favourite, but which none of us had visited for many years. As luck would have it, it was still as good as I remembered, and we had a long, relaxed lunch in the sunshine. All very pleasant indeed.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How time flies

When you're not at work, even if the 'fun factor' is rather thin on the ground. Just three full days left of my first two week summer holiday for longer than I care to remember. Still, I have got things planned, at least provisionally, for each of those days, before the treadmill reasserts itself on Sunday afternoon. Some say that retirement is a recipe for boredom, but, if it wasn't for the need to finance the remainder of K's education, I know I could find more than enough ways to amuse myself without having to be a wage slave. I hope to prove myself correct in, give or take, three years time.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Big Brother could be watching

Apropos of nothing in particular, I had a decidedly paranoid moment on my travels this afternoon. I was waiting on a station platform when it occurred to me that, because I have a 'registered' Oystercard, the proverbial 'they' could have been tracking my every move around London. That, alongside the forest of CCTV cameras festooned seemingly everywhere, would make it rather difficult for me to travel 'discreetly', should I want or need to. I suppose that my awareness of the issue at least gives me the opportunity to take 'countermeasures' - I'm sure untold numbers travel around the capital day in, day out without the 'surveillance culture' ever crossing their minds - but, short of decamping to some far-flung hilltop or island, and eschewing any kind of electronic transaction, covering your tracks is nigh on impossible nowadays.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Don't smile like that

Unless you mean it. I was in my regular Wetherspoons last night, and Daniel was working. There wasn't much interaction at first, because the place was busy, but as the evening drew on and things quietened down, he became decidedly friendly. And smiley. Even as I left, although he was in the middle of serving someone, he raised his hand in my direction, smiling once more, saying 'see you later'. Does it mean anything? I can't bring myself to believe that it might - I can't envisage a more than passably attractive young man of 19, or thereabouts, ever having any interest in a fat bloke nearly three times his age, and one with a pathological fear of looking stupid, at that. But the glimmer of hope born of those smiles simply won't go away.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Well, of course he wasn't

Since my old local closed, I've been torn about visiting the Wetherspoons in K's (now-former) 'school town'. Why? Because I had it in my mind that, given where I think they might live, it could've been an alternative venue for Cammy and his family to have their 'meals out'. But, with all the uncertainties, I didn't want to go there hoping to see 'my little friend', only to be disappointed. Until this evening, when I did, indeed, go there. And, needless to say, the boy was conspicuous by his absence. Equally predictably, I was thoroughly down in the mouth about that absence. Gut instincts are rarely wrong.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The diminishing store of quality time

Out and about in town with K today, wandering along the South Bank, having something to eat at Borough Market, before bussing circuitously back towards home. Plenty of good conversation, as ever. But, despite the enjoyable nature of our time together, the knowledge in the background that it's all going to come to an end in a matter of weeks, when my girl heads off to uni. The past two years or so have spoiled me, quite honestly, having K around on a regular basis, even if we have been like the proverbial 'ships in the night' at times, and I can't deny that going back to a predominantly solitary lifestyle will be a wrench. It has to be done, though - there's no way I'd want to hold her back, even if I could. That doesn't mean I have to like it, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A minority of one

Another session of 'paedo-bating' at work this morning, a slightly different cast of colleagues today, but the 'vigilante' videos once more the centre of attention. Unlike my anger, at their bigotry and stupidity, and frustration, at not being able to kick back without bringing what little remains of the edifice of my life crashing down, of yesterday, my predominant emotions this time were loneliness and fear. I was, for long minutes, the same terrified boy I'd been at 13, sitting on my own at school literally trembling at the potential consequences of my peers discovering the 'real me'. I'm sure there would be many who would say I deserve every bit of unhappiness I get, given my desires, but, for the umpteenth time, I didn't choose to be this way, I'd have had to be insane to make such a choice. If I could wish it away, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Not, of course, that anyone other than another boylover could possibly understand my situation, or even care. In the specious court of public opinion, we've long since been summarily tried and condemned.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Seething

There are times when I loathe the place I work, or perhaps better, some of the people I have to work with, almost more than I can express in words. And this lunchtime was most assuredly one of those times. Someone had found on YouTube a series of videos made by some vigilante-ish group, who spoof 'paedos' into meeting up with what they believe to be underage girls, then turn up to confront them, or worse. Needless to say, the mindless bigots were gloatingly lapping it all up. I, on the other hand, was teetering on the brink of a complete meltdown, hardly more than a heartbeat away from smacking someone, almost anyone, in the mouth. Luckily for my career prospects, my relief arrived and I was able to escape with my mask still intact, even if my blood pressure took rather longer to recover. The only saving grace, apart from not outing myself, is that I've only got to get through one more shift, tomorrow morning, in the bloody place before embarking on two weeks leave. The temptation to walk out of there in 20 hours or so and never go back is more than a little attractive.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Knives in my head

Memories that burn. Last night, getting in late after coming back from work via my regular Wetherspoons, K and I ended up talking until 3:00 in the morning. And DBJ came up in the conversation. In three weeks time, give or take, it'll be ten years since I first set eyes on, to me at least, the most beautiful boy in the world, and, a couple of weeks later, six years since I saw him last. I know, of course, that he'll be all grown up now, 19, possibly almost 20, given the school year he was in, but his 12/13 year old perfection is seared indelibly into my brain.
And now this afternoon, in another Wetherspoons, my favoured but less-frequented relatively nearby haunt, more of those knives, someone at the bar talking about Cornwall (and mispronouncing its Cornish name, leaving me muttering darkly and gritting my teeth), quickly followed by someone else mentioning the closure of my old local, which, apart from the reminder of the loss of the pub, bad enough in itself, threw Cammy into my head once more. I'm sure dwelling on the past isn't a good idea, but when the present and future are so benighted, it's a difficult temptation to avoid.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tantalised

I viscerally dislike late shifts at weekends, and always have, so when anything happens to exacerbate the already vile enough scenario of being at work on a Saturday afternoon, it's particularly hard to take. And this afternoon was a prime example. Because one of my colleagues brought his youngest son into work. I've seen the little guy a couple of times before, but not for nearly a year, and, while he's still very much in the 'eye candy only' realm, he has begun to lose his 'little boy' looks as he heads towards puberty. And, to make matters worse still, those changes have made him more than a little reminiscent of Cammy - he's much the same age as my 'little friend', who I haven't seen since the demise of my old local at the end of February. I've thought of Cammy quite a lot of late, because for all the tenuousness of the connection between us, I really believe we could have been friends, and I genuinely mean friends, not some kind of 'grooming' situation, had we had the opportunity. Just Out Of Reach is a lesser known song by The Jesus & Mary Chain. Lesser known, but very apposite in this context.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Disappointment

I guess that it's self-evident that blogging has had more positives than negatives for me over the piece, because why else would I still be here, almost six and a half years on, if it was otherwise? There have been disappointments, though, mostly around people who have moved on, but, if I can be selfish, perhaps the biggest downside has been how poorly Nephelokokkygia has been received. I would never claim for a moment that I'm some sort of undiscovered 'great writer', and I'm well aware that some, maybe the majority, of my output portrays relationships that most might find 'beyond the pale', but, even so, the fact that the pageviews the blog receives are minimal, and that the last comment I received was over a year ago, is disheartening. People are, of course, at perfect liberty to read or not read, comment or not comment, as they see fit. Some kind of response, though, even if it's only to call me a worthless hack, would be preferable to the wall of apathy my 'creative' efforts seem to induce.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sadness

Sad news this morning - a friend of mine, of more than 20 years standing since he came to work in the same office as me in Manchester, has died of cancer. He was a few years older than me, but was only in his early sixties, far too young to go. I hadn't seen much of him in recent years, but he'll still be sorely missed.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Another member of the diaspora returns

I finally escaped from my latest week of nights (and sickness, in this instance) at 7:00 this morning, and, as usual, I haven't wasted my 'what remains of the day' day off by going to bed. I had an unputoffable mission to attend to, and dealt with that in the latter part of the morning, before meandering, probably even more aimlessly than normal, for a few hours into this afternoon. It wasn't unduly late, though, when I fetched up in my 'most regular, but not very local' Wetherspoons, only to be greeted by a familiar face behind the bar - a young lady who worked in my old local, initially waiting tables and washing up until she turned 18, before graduating to serving alcohol. I have to admit that I have rather a soft spot for her, not because she's especially attractive from my standpoint (although she isn't at all difficult to look at, even for a boylover like me), but simply because she's a thoroughly nice person, so to see her again, evidently back from uni for the summer, is certainly welcome.
Speaking of boys, though, there's another new member of staff I've seen for the first time while I've been writing this post. First impressions were that he was no more than 15, but he's served drinks, so he's undoubtedly of legal age, 18+. And very cute. Not that I have the slightest expectation of any interest in me, but from an eye candy perspective, I'm not complaining!
Oh, and speaking still further of boys, 'supercute blond teddy bear', my friend at work's son, has reached the grand old age of 10 today. Happy birthday, J, hope you're having a lovely time.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sick, and heartsick

Somebody, somewhere seems to have been absolutely determined that I shouldn't go to work last night. When this week's roster was originally published, I was shown as being on leave for one night, which I certainly hadn't applied for and didn't want. The error was quickly corrected, but, ironically, when I woke up late yesterday afternoon, I soon realised that I couldn't go to work, and rang in sick, basically because I was, for all practical purposes, deaf. My right ear had been clogged up and sore all week, but when its opposite number 'joined the party', that was the 'coup de grace'. I've evidently picked up some kind of infection, and have spent today liberally dosing myself with eardrops, which have begun to work, so I'll be back in harness tomorrow night.
The second part of my current malaise, though, is almost certainly incurable. This morning, I tangentially came across a story, new to me but not particularly recent, one all too familiar from my perspective, of a man sentenced to 35 years in jail for a loving, consensual, long-term relationship with a boy who happened to be under that arbitrary age of consent I rail against. 35 years. I doubt he'd have received such a sentence if he'd raped and murdered the boy, it's disproportionate beyond belief. Then, to turn my deep sadness at the couple's fate into something much more akin to depression, I saw, while I was out on a brief shopping trip at lunchtime, a beautiful boy of around the same age as the jailed man's YF, even if there were no other obvious similarities. The knowledge that even if such a boy wanted to have a relationship with me, the potential consequences for him if any such liaison came to light would render it impossible is soul-destroying. It's not exactly news, but knowing that 'society' doesn't just want to punish you, but wants to completely destroy your life and that of any boy who might be able to bring you happiness makes it so difficult to carry on sometimes.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A 'You know when you're old moment', and cuties

Or maybe the moment is better characterised as a 'You know when your offspring has grown up' scenario. As I walked into our local town centre at 5:00 this morning, on my way to work, K and the friend she went on holiday with were heading up the hill to crash out in the wake of a birthday bash they went to last night. My girl was looking a little the worse for wear (which she told me this afternoon was down to the fact that she'd been asleep on the night bus), but at least she hadn't got herself into the sort of state that landed her in hospital last winter. Whatever, meeting in the street in those circumstances is definitely indicative of a 'changing of the generations' - I can't remember the last time I was out, socially, until dawn!
Although I was working this morning, I had been off for the previous couple of days, and the weekend has been notable for a veritable cavalcade of cuties. Boy of the weekend was a rather loud, to the point of being obnoxious, 12-ish fair-haired guy on Friday - obnoxious, maybe, but oh wow, was he cute! Interestingly, though, the most head-turning individuals of both yesterday and today have been girls, quite similar, in a number of ways, blonde, pubescent, or thereabouts, unmistakably female but with a distinct boyish tenor to their shape and form. It made me think, not for the first time, of one of my cousins, the first girl, with hindsight, that I ever fell in love with. She was very much along the same lines, no mistaking that she was a girl, but there was a lot of boyishness in her too, both in terms of looks and personality. Would my life have been different if she hadn't emigrated to Australia with her family when we were both 11? Who can say, but it certainly makes for an interesting 'what if?'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's official

The UK has become a joke, albeit a decidedly sick one. Any nation that would appoint Boris Johnson as foreign secretary deserves nothing but derision. He's not fit to be the Minister of Silly Walks as far as I'm concerned, never mind the face of Britain's diplomacy and international relations. And if that wasn't bad enough, Andrea 'Thatcher-clone' Leadsom has been made environment secretary. Just what the environment and countryside needs, a 'greed is good' free market ideologue to rabidly deregulate and concrete everything over. Where's William Blake when you need him?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

Only one thing left

Between the political and societal shambles the country is in, the Great British Summer weather (i.e. pissing down with rain), the Damoclean sword about to slice through my skull and take away the few remaining dregs of my life, and even my 'shadowland' solace seemingly unavailable, there's only one alternative. Go and visit Xander. So I will.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss, as Mr Townshend wrote. Except May is even worse than 'silver spoon boy' Cameron, with her authoritarianism and overt homophobia. Big Sister is watching you. Especially if you're not straight, white and fascistic.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Even more doomed

Further to yesterday's post, I found something online (written by an American, actually) which depressed my mood still further as regards this country's future leadership. May and Leadsom have both (apart from a couple of abstentions) voted against virtually every bill enhancing LGBT equality proposed in their parliamentary careers. Leadsom in particular, from my perspective, has said some worryingly theocratic things, too, most notably about marriage equality 'hurting the feelings of Christians'. As I said in the wake of the EU referendum, not a good time to be anything other than straight and white.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

We're doomed

As my friend at work said this morning, at the end of a discussion about the Tory leadership contest. The fact that both candidates are female is irrelevant, it's the fact that we'll end up with a prime minister who is either a raging authoritarian or a wannabe Thatcher clone that, in the light of the Brexit fallout, is deeply disturbing.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

General apathy

How many divisions does he have, to (kind of) quote Stalin, for the first time in the history of this blog. K used the phrase to describe her state of mind yesterday, although she has gone off to the West Country today to catch up with a friend of hers (male, but platonic), but it could equally apply to me at the moment, especially as regards blogging. It's not that I couldn't find things to write about, it's that, of late, I can't be bothered. My blogosphere 'career' has had its peaks and troughs, and it's as likely that this is just one of the troughs as anything else, but the motivation to write is very weak currently. As I often seem to do in my lower times, though, I'm reading Alexandrine (yet) again. If anyone can inspire me, I guess it will be Xander, even if he is a figment of my imagination.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

Feeling the pressure

I had a moment this morning when I was really struggling, in a way I'm really not used to. I had what was, in effect, an anxiety attack, as I contemplated the pair of Damoclean swords I perceive as hanging over me. My arrhythmia certainly went into overdrive, if nothing else. Most of my problems are, of course, self-inflicted, but when it gets to the stage that you're terrified of the prospect of the doorbell or phone ringing, because of what that might portend, life really does become pretty difficult.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

A new visual arts star is born

K, who's still at her boyfriend's, texted me earlier on, telling me that her A-level photography work is good enough to have been submitted to a university exhibition, and will be on display there for at least three months. She's delighted, naturally enough, and rightly so. Let's hope the commissions start rolling in!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

Good news and bad news

I was substantially cheered when I discovered at lunchtime that Boris Johnson had decided not to pursue the Tory leadership - the last thing this country needs, as far as I'm concerned, is a Trump-style buffoon at the helm. My upbeat mood was short-lived, though, on hearing that Gove had entered the contest as the 'ultra-Brexiteer' candidate. I find the man and his opinions utterly vile. The fact that every time I see his smug face in the media, the more he reminds me of Himmler isn't much of a recommendation, either. All Tories are scum, to my mind, but the fact that the dyed-in-the-wool authoritarian Theresa May strikes me as the least worst option speaks volumes about the rest of the contenders.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Funny where inspiration comes from

I've struggled to find the slightest silver lining in the funereally dark Brexit cloud over the past few days, but there may just be the faintest glimmer after all. While I was on my break at work this afternoon, my musings about how the country might support itself in the aftermath of a complete economic collapse (which, incidentally, I still see as a possible outcome of the post-referendum shambles) gave me an idea for a story. Given my lamentable fictional output in recent times, there are absolutely no guarantees of even a beginning to the tale, still less a denouement, but the very existence of an idea is, at least, vaguely positive.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

Ignominy

As if the Brexit vote and its aftermath weren't bad enough, England have contrived to be knocked out of Euro 2016 by Iceland. How much further is there to fall?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B 

Sweet and sour, once more

I had a smidgen of quality time with K last night - we met up for drinks after I'd finished work, the company and conversation being much nicer than I probably deserve - before she heads off again at lunchtime today. The aftermath of the stupidity of the electorate was a major topic for discussion, of course, as the country continues to descend into chaos, with both main political parties seemingly on the verge of implosion and the currency still falling like a stone. And, most worryingly, stories of a massive increase in overt racism and xenophobia, as a substantial cadre of the 'white British' population appear to have taken the referendum result as carte blanche to do and say whatever they like. I can only hope that no-one is killed as a result, because the veneer of civilisation in the UK seems to be thin to the point of invisibility at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The wanderer returns - momentarily

K got back from her Canarian adventure at 4:30 this morning, slightly singed around the edges, but otherwise safe and well. Our reunion will be decidedly brief, though - she's asleep, naturally enough, at the moment, I'm working another late shift this afternoon, and then she's off again in the morning to spend the rest of the week with her boyfriend and his family 'up north'. Get used to it, I guess, given that it's only a matter of weeks before she'll be away at uni, leaving me to 'enjoy' the single life again. I can hardly wait.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Madness, and after

On the back of a tide of toxic nationalism, racism and xenophobia, the great and wise British - or, more accurately, given the voting figures, English - electorate has decided to leave the EU. Cameron has announced his resignation, the stock market and Sterling are in free fall, far-right parties all over Europe are calling for referendums of their own, Scottish independence looks inevitable, as, possibly, does a return to violence in Ireland. So England, my country for good or ill, will be 'independent', as the vile Farage gleefully crowed - yes, independent as a third-world backwater ruled by fascists, fuckwits and bigots like Johnson, Gove and Farage - will your German wife be deported, Nigel? - with a destroyed economy and no human rights (although Cameron wanted to tear up the ECHR as far as this country was concerned, too). And, no doubt, a heavily intensified tendency to look for scapegoats. No time to be non-white, non-English, gay - or a 'paedo'. I think renewing my passport and looking at flight schedules might be in order.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

By their love, ye shall know them

There's not much I can add to this post. Apart from to wonder whether this christofascist really believes his words would please his imaginary deity, if it actually existed.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The boy on the bus isn't

Isn't a boy anymore. I thought I'd seen him a few weeks back, but I wasn't sure if it actually was him or not. Today's encounter left no doubt, though. And there was equally little doubt that in the eighteen months or so since I last saw him, puberty has got hold of him, big style. He's got a moustache, albeit one of the insubstantial type youths of his age and a little older often sport. Another reminder, if any were needed, of the most fundamental issue boylovers face - transience. If DBJ walked through the door of this pub right now, the dissonance between my memories of him and the grown-up reality would probably reduce me to a pile of lachrymose mush, but any such reaction would, of course, change nothing. Boys grow up, inexorably. Luckily, their little brothers do, too!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Last and first

A rather significant couple of days for K - she took her last A-Level yesterday, and while she's officially on the register until the end of term next month, that effectively marked her last day as a schoolgirl, given that she doesn't have to go in this half term except for exams. And today, she's gone off on what might be described as her first 'adult' holiday - she had her American adventure two years ago, but that involved staying with the families of people she already knew, while this trip is just her and her best friend from school off to the Canary Islands sunshine and staying in a hotel. Two 'growing-up' milestones, without a doubt.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Limits

I've long known that the 'archbigot' at work was irremediably racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and - well - bigoted, but I didn't realise until last night at work that he was a moron as well. He loudly expressed his hope that Trump would be the next US president, on the basis of his - surprise, surprise - racism, xenophobia, misogyny and bigotry. I thought there were limits to stupidity, but apparently not.
I've read a good number of posts about the weekend's appalling events in Orlando, including a depressingly large number calling the victims as evil as their murderer, and, most notably, one from a 'Christian' pastor gloating that there were now '50 less paedophiles in the world', disinterring the ridiculous meme about 'all gays being paedos'. I thought there were limits to hatred, but apparently not.
I was sitting behind a thirty-something man on a busy rush hour bus on my way back from work this morning, and it was very soon obvious that he was watching porn on his phone. Sitting next to a young woman of South Asian extraction, at 8:15 in the morning. I thought there were limits to how little self-respect, and consideration for others, a person could have, but apparently not.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Conspiracy theory

I am, as regular readers will doubtless have discerned, a thoroughgoing sceptic, completely unconvinced of the existence of any 'supernatural' power, whether benign or malevolent. The obstacle course that seems to have been put in the way of my achieving a superficially straightforward aim over the past couple of days, though, has almost been enough to make me reconsider - it really has felt like some odd conspiracy has been set in train to thwart me. There has been one serendipitous outcome, though - I've finally got around to acquiring a new mobile phone, something that was long overdue, the old one being almost as decrepit as its owner!
The frustration of my weekend was heightened even further on the way back from town, as I was tantalised by glimpses, and only glimpses, of an achingly lovely boy on the Tube. Would that he could've been the 'prince' I've been waiting for all these years. Not the remotest chance of that dream coming true, needless to say.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nothing compares

To you. I've seen a lot of beautiful boys (and a few attractive girls), both in cyberspace and real life, of late, but none of them have come close to eclipsing the boy. Not my boy, never was, never could have been, but enshrined in my memory, nonetheless. The standard by which all are judged, and, through no fault of their own, found wanting. The boy, as I've said many times before, who changed my life. DBJ. Love you always.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

21st Century cryptoid man

With apologies to Mssrs Fripp, Sinfield et al.
I've always been cognisant of the pitfalls of allowing my 'cyberlife' and real life to interact too obviously - the pseudonymous nature of this blog is something I've guarded jealously, as long term readers will know - but, as I get older, and find my way into some rather tenebrous places, my habit of caution is becoming ever more pronounced. Complete internet anonymity is, I suspect, a vain hope, but the more convoluted the path you follow, the more difficult it is for those you'd rather not find you to achieve that end. Maybe.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

But rather more of a genuine surprise

As I went to the bar after finishing the previous post, I was brought up short by another intending customer. He didn't look old enough to get served - until I recognised who it was. The young (now-ex) barman who used to work in both my old local and this new regular haunt of mine. He always did look, even two and a bit years ago when I first saw him, too young to be serving behind a bar, but now, with a much shorter haircut, he could easily pass for 15 or 16. And if he was cute then, he's positively delicious now. Pity that he still presents as 100% straight, not, of course, that he'd be remotely interested in me even if the opposite applied.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What a surprise - not

The Mail on Sunday's main headline this morning screamed about the 'Brexit' campaign - those who want to vote for the UK to leave the EU in this month's referendum - having been 'hijacked' by the far right, with tales of National Front and BNP alumni involved. No-one with two brain cells to rub together should find this even slightly surprising - I've always considered UKIP to be nothing more than the National Front in a suit, including the loathsome Farage, the ultra 'Little Englander' with his nose firmly in the European Parliamentary trough, never mind all the thuggish hangers-on. Nationalism always brings the worst pondlife imaginable out from under their rocks, as far as I'm concerned.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Bye bye, Luke

And Will, too. Two brothers who were in my regular Wetherspoons until just now, part of a family group seemingly celebrating an elderly relative's birthday. Luke was 'little bro', 9/10, and markedly cuter than his 12/13 sibling - surprise, surprise, I suppose - but I would quite happily have taken either or both of them home for cuddles, given the opportunity. As it is, I'll be heading back shortly to an empty flat, and, at best, fictional boys. Loving every minute, or not, as the case may be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Home, and its impending absence

Maybe, anyway. K and I have had a couple of conversations in recent days about what happens, accommodation-wise, when she goes off to uni in three months or so. The original plan was for her to get a flat, somewhere she could live all year, but she's now decided that she wants to go into halls of residence for her first year. That suggested to me that she would need both somewhere to stay in the holidays and somewhere to store some of her things, leading me to think that it might be worth keeping the flat for another year. K was unenthusiastic, to say the least, saying that she was planning to 'downsize', and that any 'surplus' could go to her mother's. Given that it would be a stretch, financially, for me to pay for the flat and contribute enough to maintain K, I can't justify keeping it if she's not going to use it as well. Which would leave me homeless again. Why does life have to be so unremittingly awful?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Preoccupation

So, I guess this marks the end of the longest involuntary interval between posts - involuntary in the sense that I hadn't made an active decision not to write, as has been the case on a few previous occasions - since I began the blog nearly six and a half years ago. Why the hiatus? Partly work, given that I've been on a run of eleven straight working days, the last four of them night shifts, partly material, a lack of what I considered interesting things to write about. But the main reason is that I've been more than a little preoccupied by a subject I really can't write about, even in this pseudonymous environment. No-one else is involved - don't worry, no skeletons have found their way into cupboards - but I've spent, even by my standards, an inordinate amount of time contemplating the rights and wrongs of the issue, and of my life in general. Without, needless to say, coming to any useful conclusion. The maze without a solution is still the best metaphor for where my existence has led me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Ache and heartache

This time three years ago, I was languishing in a hospital ward in Surrey having comprehensively lost a battle with whichever bugs cause pneumonia. That potentially life-threatening experience certainly raised my awareness as regards my health, but whether it's tipped the balance too far in the opposite direction, towards hypochondria, is something I haven't resolved yet. Today has provided a good example, as I've spent a good deal of time worrying about an ache - it certainly hasn't been serious enough to warrant using the word 'pain' - in my chest, of a pulmonary rather than cardiac nature. The fact that it's on the right hand side, where the bugs did most of their damage, does make me wonder if there's a connection, but, on the other hand, I don't feel ill as such, suggesting that I might be tending towards melodrama. All I can do, I guess, is to carry on as normal while 'monitoring' my condition, and head to the doctor's if there's any evidence of a deterioration.
No doubt, though, about the heartache - as I arrived at 'worktown' station after the end of my shift this evening, I almost literally fell over an exquisitely beautiful boy of 8 or 9, another unattainable 'ghost'. There was another level of piquancy in this case, though, because of his more than passing resemblance to a picture I saw a few days ago of another, slightly older boy, in a decidedly less salubrious place. Life imitating life, or something like that.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Ignorance

I've been 'treated', in the 'open till midnight' Wetherspoons I've stopped off at on my way home from a late shift at work, to one of the most egregious displays of ignorance I've had the misfortune to experience in quite some time. A sixty-something bloke has been opining, at inescapable volume, about everything from football to American politics to transgender people - and has been completely wrong in pretty much all of it. Anyone can be mistaken, but don't abuse the the privilege, please.

2355 edit: He's just said something I agree with, namely that none of the English qualifiers for next year's Champions League have a hope of winning the competition. But I still wish he had a volume control.  That I was in charge of!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

90

That's how old my dad would've been today, had he lived. Would he have wanted to be around at that age? I really have no idea. I know I certainly wouldn't want to be, given the inevitable ravages of the aging process - both my hiccuping heart and my terminally screwed-up ankle have been playing up today, and that's before beginning to consider my greatest fear, namely losing my mental faculties to dementia or similar. I would like to live long enough to have a few years of relatively healthy retirement, something Dad was denied, dying, as he did, less than a year after after the end of his working life, but whether that's likely is, frankly, doubtful.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

No fun, and close to tears

Little more than four hours after I published the previous post, on Saturday evening, one of the main reasons why my life is so difficult asserted itself. Right at the beginning of my shift at work that night, conversation turned to a 'fly on the wall' TV series, apparently focusing on some UK police force, a recent episode of which featured the activities of a vigilante-ish group who have entrapped a number of 'paedophiles' through online chatrooms. Needless to say, all present but me were resoundingly in favour of such an outcome (I wasn't, of course, remotely stupid enough to voice my views on the subject), but the fact that the two colleagues of the group I most regularly work with who are the closest I have to 'friends' at work were among the most fervent 'antis' was depressing almost to the point of tears. They not only don't understand - no-one who isn't 'on the inside' ever can - they don't want to understand, the kneejerk, unthinking received opinion is vastly simpler, and, of course, keeps them aligned with the overwhelming majority of 'society'.
And more frustration today, on a different but roughly parallel track, a goodly number of touristy and school trip cuties out and about in town, so close and yet so out of reach, as always. The most notable was in Oxford Street, an utterly beautiful boy of 12 or so who 'ghosted' in and out of my life in half a dozen heart-melting seconds. Would that, just once, I could connect with someone like him, if only for a few minutes of passing acquaintance. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fun and giggles

I had a short, but memorable dream yesterday, in which I was cuddling with a young boy (not one who bore any resemblance to anyone I know in the 'real world', even by sight). There was a slight sexual frisson, but it wasn't really an 'erotic' dream in a direct sense, the predominant feeling being of fun and happiness, the boy giggling, and me responding in kind. Reflecting on the dream in my waking thoughts made it obvious that one of the things that is conspicuously absent from my life is almost any element of 'fun' - K and I have some jocular exchanges at times, but they're very much the exception, not least because, given our increasingly divergent life paths, I really don't see that much of her on a day to day basis. I guess I've always tended towards being a serious sort of person, even when I was a boy myself, but to maintain that mindset too relentlessly isn't, I think, entirely healthy. Someone to release my pent-up giggles might be distinctly therapeutic.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Depressingly predictable....

....and predictably depressing. I've written on several occasions about how trying I find the near-constant flow of bigotry some - indeed many - of my colleagues spout at work, so I guess that when the 'archbigot' and his nearest contender for that title were working adjacent positions, and I was one spot further to the left, as was the case overnight, it was obvious that I wasn't going to enjoy what I heard. They surpassed even those expectations though, with a screed of such hatred aimed at just about every 'outgroup' you could imagine (albeit, amazingly, not gays on this occasion) that it just left me heartsick at the knowledge that I have to share not only a workplace, but a species with their ilk. As ever, it's all the worse because I know beyond question what their opinions and attitude towards 'the real me' would be. The sooner I can escape from all of it, the job, and even the species, the better. But no matter what, escape from myself is, of course, impossible.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Last dregs of freedom

Well, a little hyperbole there, but the impending 'last orders' call in what was my 'second-string' Wetherspoons for a while, but is now simply an 'after late shift' bolthole, because it's the only pub even vaguely near the flat that's open until midnight, will mark my latest withdrawal from anything resembling a social life for the next week, because I start nights again tomorrow. How five weeks can fly, even when your quota of fun is minimal.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Brown eyes, and an echo

More boy stuff, so if that bores/offends you, look away now. I'm in my regular Wetherspoons - now there's a surprise, or not, as the case may be - and, en route, I saw a little guy of Asian extraction who had the most beautiful pair of brown eyes (I'm normally very much a fan of blue eyes) I've seen in the best part of some time. It wasn't long after I'd arrived here, though, before he was thoroughly eclipsed. By a boy who was more than a little reminiscent of Cammy, about the same age, similar build, even facially echoic. I couldn't, unfortunately, peruse his charms to any great extent, though, partly because he ended up sitting behind me, but more because his family reeked of trouble, from the time they arrived until they left twenty minutes or so ago - they were, to all appearances, 'travellers', not a group that would be likely to be well-disposed towards a boylover. What the encounter has done, though, is to remind me how much I miss my 'little friend'. Would that I had even the slightest clue as to where I might have the chance of seeing him again. I'd head there in a heartbeat.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's busy and noisy....

....in my 'not very' local, but the Kronenbourg is slipping down all too well, K is out with her (probable) new boyfriend, and I don't have to go to work tomorrow, so I can see a hangover coming on. And I couldn't care less.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The painful truth

A day off today, and a warm and sunny one at that, so there was never a doubt that I would be out and about. And there were cuties around, too, mostly of the touristy variety, given that it was a school day, as I meandered through town. At lunchtime, I was wandering around Covent Garden, often a reasonable eye candy venue, but rather than the boys I was hoping to admire, I was confronted with an altogether different sight. For some unaccountable reason, a number of large mirrored panels have been installed at one end of the central former market building, and the reflection I saw in one of them really brought me up short. I'm used, of course, to seeing my face in the bathroom mirror at home on a daily basis, but that's the only mirror in the flat, so when I saw the full, 'as others see me' view, I was immediately disheartened. I have few illusions about myself - I've always been fat and unattractive, even as a child - but to see how old and tired I look, and, perhaps even more, how sullen and resentful, was very much an unpleasant surprise. Every picture tells a story, of course, and, thinking about it, all of the preceding adjectives are completely apposite - the 'physiological' ones are inescapable, but the 'psychological' ones are even more telling. I am resentful of the hand that I've been dealt, and of my abject inability to make anything of it. And I'm sullen because I know that I can never have what I most want - what conceivable boy, even one who might be open to a relationship with someone older, would want anything to do with an ogre like me? They say the truth hurts - and they're right, in spades.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

People

I'm pretty much done with them. K excepted. Yet another apparent friendship seems to have been illusory - the illusion being on my part, of course. Fiction is the only place where people are reliable, as far as I can see - I've finished yet another rereading of Alexandrine in the last couple of days - and I'm very tempted to go and bury myself there, especially given the number of unfinished stories that are kicking around in Nephelokokkygia's post list. It doesn't seem that I can manage at all well in the real world, so maybe creating my own is the best shot I have of any kind of satisfaction, vicarious as it might be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

OK, so....

....it was tomorrow, after all. Because a couple of things did catch my attention. A campaigner, with a #BACKZAC (Goldsmith, the fascist Tory candidate for London mayor, spawn of a billionaire robber baron, just the sort of 'man of the people' we really need running the capital's local government) tee-shirt, proclaiming her message in the broadest American accent imaginable. Is she even likely to be eligible to vote in this week's mayoral election? I doubt it somehow. The phrase 'mind your own fucking business' sprung to mind.
A quarter of an hour earlier, though, my tenuous equilibrium had been tested to its limits, as I left 'worktown' on a bus via a thoroughly posh area, and where I was confronted by a cutie who was a close lookalike not only of a boy, but the boy, as I remember first seeing him, at 9 (the approximate age of today's little guy). DBJ, of course. It will be ten years, at the end of August, since that unforgettable first view of the most beautiful boy in the world, at least in my experience. And my memories of him still affect me as deeply as ever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What can I say?

That I haven't said myriad times before? Nothing, as far as I can see. There may be a hiatus, or there may not, depending on how issues strike me. Ennui has set in, here, and regarding life in general. I'll probably be back, but it could be tomorrow or next year.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B