Monday 29 February 2016

More heartache

After yesterday's tale of (totally one-sided) love and loss - the 'meltdown' was all about Cammy, in case anyone thought otherwise - comes an anniversary. The last time there was a February 29 on the calendar, that phone call happened, the one that caused my life to implode. OK, it was an accident waiting to happen, and I don't blame anyone other than myself for the way things have gone, but that doesn't make it any easier to live with. There are some sentences that, as I've said before, really are for life, with no hope of remission. Ever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 28 February 2016

Meltdown

When I got home. K got caught in the crossfire, unfortunately. She deserves better, a lot better than an excuse for a father who can fall in love with an 8/9 year old boy. Who I'll never see again, of course. As ever, life's shit. Except when it's really shit.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

No, no

No chance of contact with two cuties on the bus, even though they were almost close enough to feel their body heat.

No proper glasses in the bar, in case some football hooligan can't control themselves.

No Cammy, so his little wave on Friday night really was the end.

No local, in just over three hours time.

No happiness.

No.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B


Saturday 27 February 2016

Serial haunting

I described him as 'the ultimate ghost' just before Christmas, but maybe he's more of a revenant, because that same utterly entrancing boy has been in my local for the past two evenings, after my not having seen him for more than two months. His family haven't stayed long on either occasion, just having a meal, then leaving. Given that the pub will be closing forever in around 29 hours time, though, today's 'haunting' probably will be the last time I'll see him. More's the pity.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 26 February 2016

A historic moment

In a very minor way, but still. At 5:45 this evening, give or take, my daughter bought me a pint, for the first time ever. It was something we'd talked about, going back three or four years, that when she was old enough she'd buy a round, but it didn't look, given recent developments, that it would happen in my local, because K was 'booked up' for this weekend. As it turned out, though, her 'social' for this evening fell through at the last minute, so we've had a meal and a couple of drinks here. Amusingly, she's now had a proper look at Daniel (who's been very pally towards me of late - probably without significance, but I can daydream!) and agrees that he's 'cute'. I told her she'd have to share! Sadly, though, she went home literally five minutes before Cammy arrived with his family, so she didn't get the chance to catch a glimpse of my 'little friend'. I'd love to have the opportunity to say 'goodbye' to him in an organised way, but I seriously doubt that will be a viable option - I can hardly walk up to an 8/9 year old in the teeth of his family and initiate a conversation, I'd probably get lynched. I got my wave from him, though, so it certainly could've been worse, if that really is the proverbial 'it'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 25 February 2016

Was it or wasn't it?

As I was leaving our local bus station an hour or so ago, I spotted a boy running to catch a different service. He wasn't in view for long enough to be sure, but it could very well have been the erstwhile 'next door but one cutie'. He was certainly wearing the 'right' school uniform, if nothing else. I hope it was him, not because I expect to see him again, but because it would be nice to know for sure that he's alive and well, after his family's rather precipitate departure from our block of flats before Christmas.
And now, the weekend starts here (I'm not working again until Monday night), the last weekend of my local's existence. It's a sad situation, but it could make for interesting times. I just hope it's going to be good interesting rather than bad.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 24 February 2016

When I'm what age?!

I've been to the doctor's this afternoon, for yet another 'follow-up' appointment, meds again as well as feedback from the liver-related blood test I had the other week. My meds were tweaked again, but then (finally, alleluia!!) signed off for six months. The results of the blood test prompted the title of this post, though - the doctor said that they backed up the test I'd had before Christmas, but that there was no sign of anything serious, or of immediate concern. Then came the 'punchline' - 'but I'd be concerned at what state your liver would be in when you're 70.' 70!! I haven't the slightest expectation, and almost as little ambition, of being around at that age, and told the doctor so pretty unequivocally. 'If you could cut down on your drinking, your liver would thank you for it', he said as parting advice. So what else could I do in the circumstances but head straight to the pub?!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 21 February 2016

Minor irritants add up

It's been one of those days, the sort I guess almost everyone is familiar with, where nothing major goes wrong, but numerous little things fail to fall into place, leaving an overall feeling of having been worn down. Work was, to be fair, pretty straightforward, but my commute, especially heading back, was a bit of a mess - after being stuck in traffic on various buses, I finally decided to finish my journey by tube, only to find that the line I wanted to use was suspended because a tree had fallen on the track! So another bus it was, after all. Even my local has been a mixed bag - I decided to eat here, K being off at her boyfriend's for the weekend, and the food was as good as any I've had in the place, but the disabled girl I've mentioned before has been here for an hour or more, and has been particularly difficult. I know it's not her fault, and I know equally that I could never have coped had K been born with similar problems, but it really has been hard work having her sitting two tables away, especially as her cute brother has been conspicuous by his absence. And now it's time to go home, and crash out in preparation for yet another 'stupid o'clock' start in the morning. Just remind me how much fun I'm having.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 20 February 2016

The ache inside....

....is always there, but sometimes, it's worse than usual. Like now, for instance. Cammy's here, in my local, but he's sitting on his own in a corner, while the 'family and friends' group socialise. How I would love to engage him, talk, find out what he's interested in, try to help him have an enjoyable evening. But, of course, if I made the slightest attempt to approach him, the 'paedo' alarms would start going off all over the place. So here I am, forced to sit and witness the boy's exclusion, tears close behind my eyes, my sadness all the deeper in the knowledge that after Sunday week, and the demise of the pub, the chances of my ever seeing him again are effectively zero. Life is too appalling, all too often.

1915 edit: Sweet boy! He's given me a smile and said hello. As much as I can ever expect, but none the less welcome for that.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 18 February 2016

This could be the last time

Cammy's just arrived at my soon to be no more local, with his parents. He flitted into view for, literally, a couple of seconds, looking for a table for them, before they ended up sitting behind me. He didn't notice me. Given the circumstances, that could be my last moment, ever, of seeing him. He's going to be my boy, I wrote, months ago. Of course he isn't, I could never be that lucky. And after the day of 'torture by cutie' I endured on my travels around London earlier, all I want is to be free of this 'life sentence'. 'Cruel and unusual punishment' doesn't even come close.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 17 February 2016

Pointless

A woman has been approaching customers in my local this evening, asking for signatures on a petition to 'save the pub'. I declined to sign, not because I'm anything other than totally gutted at its impending demise, but because it would achieve nothing. The place has already been sold (to Nandos), so there's nothing that will prevent the closure, even if the whole population of the area protested. Anyone who thinks otherwise fundamentally misunderstands the nature of 21st century capitalism. People, and their wants and needs, don't matter at all. Money, and its concentration in the hands of the '1%', is the only significant factor. Until the sheeple realise this, nothing will ever change.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 16 February 2016

Capitalism....

....hate it or loathe it, you can't possibly like it, to paraphrase Marvin the Paranoid Android. I've just found out that my local is closing in less than a fortnight, as part of a Wetherspoons 'review of its estate', i.e. the place isn't screwing enough out of the punters to satisfy the bean counters. Bad enough in itself, but when you factor in that I'll never see Cammy again, in any foreseeable circumstances, I'm compelled to hope that Tim Martin chokes on his wealth.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 15 February 2016

18, and 1800

My little girl is all growed up! It's K's 18th birthday today, she is, almost unbelievably, legally an adult. It hardly seems any time at all since the Sunday lunchtime in 1998 that I held her in my arms for the first time, but, of course, how much has happened, how much has changed, in the intervening time. But whatever else, my girl has emerged from the process as an intelligent, well-adjusted and attractive young woman who I love very much and who, unaccountably, loves me back, which is plenty to be grateful for. We went out for a very nice meal at lunchtime, and she's now gone off to host a little get together for her school pals at her friend's house (there simply isn't the room to do it here at the flat). I won't see much more of her this week, her half term programme is packed, to say the least, including another university interview and some time staying at her mother's, but she'll be back at the weekend, and we've still got another six months, give or take, of cohabiting, so all is far from lost.
Purely coincidentally, this post is number 1800 since the blog began almost six years ago. Not that the number 1800, or any other, has particular significance beyond a statistical quirk, but, as you do - or some do! - I thought I'd mention it anyway!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 14 February 2016

Missing you already

The past couple of afternoons have seen the seasonal re-emergence of one or two of the 'local boys', those who live in the same block of flats as me, into the communal garden to play football, the school half term holiday and somewhat lighter evenings no doubt being the catalyst. But, for me, all it has done is to underline the knowledge of one who won't be there. 'Next door but one cutie', now departed with his family. Where are you now, beautiful boy? Not in my life, that's a certainty.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 11 February 2016

Internalisation

I've spent a good proportion of the last day and a bit feeling, at least intermittently, angry and frustrated. The 'seeds' were two news stories from yesterday, and, on reflection, I think I know why. Because either of the stories could have featured me as the 'bad guy'. One, the 'just the wrong side of legal' story, elicited most of the frustration, but the other, very, very much darker case, the horrible, unconscionable violation of a young person, has caused most of the anger. Anger directed almost totally within. Because I can't convince myself that I would never do something comparably appalling, if the wrong set of circumstances arose. The knowledge of 'the darkness within' is indescribably difficult to live with.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Once more, what's the point?

I went off on a ferocious rant, purely in my head, in response to a news item when I was on my break at work yesterday evening, but, by the time I got home and had the opportunity to write about it, my indignation had evaporated, and I wrote nothing. Because when you know that just about everyone disagrees with you on a subject, and that hardly anyone reads what you write in any case, why bother? I'm never going to change anyone's mind, any more than I'm ever going to get even a hint of what I want the most. My blog as an analogue of my life - an exercise in utter futility.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 8 February 2016

Creeping illiteracy

Words and I definitely don't seem to be on the same wavelength at the moment. Not only am I struggling to come up with much of substance to say here - and even more so in Nephelokokkygia - but my performance on the word games I fritter my time away with all too often is at rock bottom, too. There used to be a 'meme', although it's quite a while since I've heard it, about how many brain cells are supposedly killed off by each alcoholic drink you consume. Maybe I've passed the tipping point, and I'm now on the way to irrevocable mental disintegration. Oh well. Shit happens.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 7 February 2016

The cyclical nature of history

Some time in the late 'noughties', I read, at my then workplace in Cornwall, on one of the odd occasions when I had anything resembling a usable signal on my mobile broadband there, a review (a customer-submitted review on Amazon's US website) of a book. A review that annoyed me enough that I wanted to write my own take on a loving relationship between a man and a boy, to counter the assertion of the reviewer that such a relationship was always abusive, that love, real love was never a possibility, the man's only motivation being sexual gratification. The story that I began to write, in pencil in an exercise book - it predates my entry into Blogland by at least 18 months - has never been published, and maybe never will, but others along the same lines, most notably Alexandrine, have documented my belief that such relationships, not necessailiy sexual, can exist, with consent and mutuality, and without any hint of 'abuse', even if I've never been lucky enough to find such a connection myself. And, for whatever reason, I searched the book on Google again earlier this evening, finding another review barely differing from the earlier one, accusing the (obviously fictional) main character of taking advantage of a vulnerable boy simply for his own pleasure, once more implying that to be the only reason for a man to engage with a boy. I've been struggling to find the motivation to write anything substantive in my blog of late. The reiteration of a point of view I fundamentally disagree with has rather renewed my incentive to continue being 'a voice in the wilderness', saying things that most probably find anathema, but that, as far as I'm concerned, need to be said. We, boylovers, are not rapists. The clue's in the middle syllable. You know. Love. It's not rocket science.
(The reviewed book, in case anyone's interested, is Loving Sander by Joseph Geraci. I love it. But I would, wouldn't I?)

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 4 February 2016

A boy. And a boy

One on the tube to the 'Ultima Thule' end of the line, on the way from work to my local, 14-ish, on his own (shock, horror!), not wildly cute, but no gargoyle, either, intermittently laughing at whatever it was he was watching on his phone in an utterly endearing way. The chance to have taken him home would've been a dream come true, but they never do come true, of course. And now, in the pub, Daniel, in social rather than work mode. He must be nearer to 19 than 18 now, given the length of time he's been serving behind the bar when he is working, but he could still pass for 16, still as much boy as young man, to my eyes, anyway. Another hopeless daydream. But a legal one, if nothing else.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

One of the more unusual musical links

Planet Rock has recently played My God is the Sun by Queens of the Stone Age. And my immediate reaction was to associate the song with illness. My own rather serious illness in spring 2013. I checked the release date online, and it did indeed come out in the UK in early April of that year, just as my health was really on a downward spiral, leading to me first being more or less 'housebound' in my accommodation in 'domicile-ville', before I finally ended up in hospital a month or so later. The song, being new at the time, was played pretty regularly on Planet Rock, and being indoors most of the time, as I was, I had the radio on for much of the day. I'm sure there were other songs that were played as much, or even more, during that period, but, for whatever reason, this one is inextricably linked with what was a very difficult time in my life. The power of music, not for the first time - and probably not the last, either.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 2 February 2016

Ummm....don't plan to be househunting there

I found a story on the BBC News website about a survey into levels of 'satisfaction with life' in the UK. The immediate hook was that I apparently fall into the demographic group least likely to be happy - males aged 45-59 - and I can't say I disagree with that, but there was also a link to a questionnaire which purported to illustrate which area of the country best matches your personality traits. It seems that I should be living in rural Lincolnshire. Presumably on the basis that I wouldn't actually meet any people there!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 1 February 2016

8.3333333% of the year gone already

The past two or three years seem to have been characterised by how quickly they've passed, and it looks like 2016 is going to follow the trend - it's February already! I'm loath to tempt fate, but the winter in this part of the world, certainly in terms of anything cold, is still conspicuous by its absence, which suits me absolutely fine. Get through this month, and spring will almost be here. Not, in a way, that the climate will make much difference to my February - it looks like I'm going to be spending most of it working. Even K's 18th, two weeks today, is going to be difficult for me to get involved with, the way things are shaping up. At least she understands that I'm doing it for her and her education. Because who else is there?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B