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