Appeasement, and the impossible

Well over a million people have signed a petition calling for Trump's recently announced state visit to the UK to be cancelled, but, needless to say, the supine shower of appeasers masquerading as our government have fallen over themselves to rubbish any such suggestion. Meanwhile, the headline in today's Evening Standard referred to May's 'mission to tame Trump'. Yeah, fucking good luck with that - even his 'inner circle' can't do anything to prevent him being the complete loose cannon anyone with two brain cells to rub together should've known he was from the outset, so what price a Brit, and a woman to boot, suddenly persuading him to become a paragon of diplomacy?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Badge of shame

The fascist tabloids made a big deal of the fact that our unelected dictator - sorry, Prime Minister - was the first 'world leader' to meet Trump since his inauguration. In any sane world, kow-towing to neo-Nazis would be an unmitigated badge of shame. But we don't, it seems, live in a sane world anymore.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

One of these days....

.... I'm going to have a serious meltdown in public over boys. I wasn't a million miles away from it today, as I contemplated a cutie on a bus during my meanderings who I hadn't even noticed until he was getting ready to alight from the vehicle. I can't deny that it's all rather obsessional, and I'm equally aware that no conceivable boy would ever be interested in me, but I simply can't come to terms with the 'never' scenario. Because accepting that defeat would be tantamount to accepting that my whole life has been a failure. And who could countenance that with equanimity?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A lie, by any other name

'Post-truth'. Now 'alternative facts'. They're still lies, and no amount of political spin or fascistic repression will ever make them anything else. My dad, when I was growing up, used to say I'd make a good politician, but before I was much beyond my mid-teens, I had to disagree with him. Because I realised I was far too honest to ever succeed in that most mendacious profession.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Aching and breaking

Apologies in advance for another downbeat post, another variation on the theme of all too much of this blog, but I’m going to write it anyway. I had a bad day yesterday, after coming across something that was simultaneously achingly desirable, from my perspective, and heartbreakingly unattainable. All I felt like doing was going out and getting ruinously pissed, but, not for the first time, shift work, a late shift on this occasion, saved me from myself. I'm somewhat recovered today, but not because there's any resolution in sight - it's simply a case of keeping on keeping on, existing but not living. If there's a point to it, I'm afraid it's escaped me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Hope and prosperity

I saw a brief snippet of the BBC News Channel's coverage of Trump's inauguration last night, including a 'vox pop' with a Trump supporter - white, of course, male and middle-aged - who opined that yesterday was the 'beginning of a new era of hope and prosperity'. Yeah, you hope, and the oligarchs prosper. How's your health insurance?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Do you hear the chimes....

....of the Doomsday Clock? It currently stands at three minutes to midnight, but with a thin-skinned, fascistic megalomaniac now inhabiting the White House, and an equally fascistic, but more calculating megalomaniac in the Kremlin, I would imagine the next review of the Clock's status might well be counted in seconds. Sweet dreams, all of you who voted for these people.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Coming of age

I hate 'coming of age' records. Planet Rock has just played Photograph by Nickelback, a prime example of the sort of song that, for me, dredges up all the pain. the 'otherness' I felt through my teenage years, and beyond. A mostly gay boy, trapped in an unremittingly homophobic (even if the word wasn't used in those far-off days) milieu, including, in my case, an all-boys school, who then discovered he wasn't even 'normally gay', but was entranced by younger boys. And now, forty years on, I'm still trapped by my sexuality, and society's attitudes towards it. As I've said before, a life sentence without the possibility of parole. No escape except death. What was it the world said about 'choices', again?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Just me, again

The festive season is officially over. K went back to 'uni-town' this afternoon, so it's the 'me, myself, I' syndrome at the flat again. I'll be back to work tomorrow night, too, so the hamster wheel will definitely be asserting itself in the weeks to come. If there was any discernible light at the end of the tunnel, it might be more tolerable, but there isn't. As Marvin said, 'Life, don't talk to me about life'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Breakout

I finally got out of the flat for a couple of hours yesterday evening, meeting K for something to eat at Wetherspoons - including my first couple of beers of 2017! - before heading back to my place of incarceration about 8:00, and promptly crashing out for several hours. I am getting better, though, finally, and I'll head back to work on Monday, unless anything unforeseen happens. Being in my preferred hostelry did remind me of some unwelcome facts, though - the absence of my old local, and Cammy with it, for almost a year now, that the school holidays are over - I saw a number of youngsters in school uniform on my way out - meaning that the eye candy quotient will be down, at least on weekdays, until Easter, and, most of all, that K will be back off to 'uni-town' tomorrow. She has been talking about coming up for a weekend towards the end of the month, so it's not as if I'm not going to see her at all in the coming weeks, but it certainly isn't the same as having her at home every day. Get used to it, though, I keep telling myself - she an adult now, 19 in a few weeks time, living her own independent life, and that is exactly as it should be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

House arrest

Well, in a manner of speaking, at least. Since I got in from work, early on Sunday afternoon, I haven't been out of the flat, due to my ongoing health issues. I'm not quite coughing as much I was, but I'm still having occasional bouts that leave me breathless, and I'm completely unable to sleep lying down - I tried the night before last, and ended up coughing so much I was almost sick. On top of that, I'm in the throes of a very painful attack of gout that came on yesterday. Isn't growing old lovely?!
At least K is still around, and has been kind enough to do some bits of shopping for me, in between catching up with friends before she has to go back to uni at the weekend. We did have a bit of a mad day trip planned for tomorrow, but that won't happen now, given my ills. I'm still hoping to go out for lunch with her before she disappears to start her new term, but whether I'll be able to is still very much in the balance at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

2017 sucks already

When I wrote the previous post, the last of 2016, I was already aware that I was teetering on the brink of coming down with something unpleasant, and it duly arrived yesterday. I've picked up yet another chest cold/borderline infection, and I feel bloody lousy, probably as bad as at any time since the early stages of what became pneumonia in 2013. I did go to work yesterday, but I was really struggling, and rang in sick last night. So a shedload of money down the drain to begin the new year, as I was supposed to working at bank holiday rates today, whereas now I'll earn precisely nothing for today. So, how to occupy myself indoors for the day. Read some online fiction. Yeah, that worked out well - I went back to a story I'd read the first chapter of before Christmas, which has now expanded to five, and which is showing signs of being a good one. Except that, on a story site with many tales by, for and about boylovers, even the writer of this story couldn't resist falling for the propaganda that anyone over about 16 can only interact with a younger boy by raping them. It's bad enough that 'society' hates us, bitterly and vehemently, without us turning on each other. If we can't even portray ourselves in anything but negative terms, the haters have surely won. Not for the first time, it made me wonder if I want to carry on, and if so, why. It looks like it's going to be a long year.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B