Early birthday presents

My birthday isn't until tomorrow, but I've already had what you might call a couple of early pressies. The best has come this morning, in the shape of my Saints pulling off a stunning victory, on 'enemy territory', to boot, against one of the best AFL teams of recent years, albeit a team who have struggled so far this season. To say I'm stoked, as the Australian vernacular has it, is a considerable understatement.
Yesterday evening's 'gifts', however, were a little more ambiguous, but, on balance, more welcome than not - another couple of delightful 'ghosts'. The first, who was probably just about legal, sat opposite me for several stations on my middle train of three en route to work, but even he was eclipsed by a simply beautiful boy - decidedly not legal, probably 11/12 - at the station where I changed for the last leg of my journey. As always, there's more than a hint of bittersweetness about such encounters, so much beauty and desirability, from my perspective, so close but always out of reach, but I still think my life would be the poorer without them.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Family stuff

I've been down to darkest rural East Kent today, for the christening of my grand-niece, my nephew's daughter. I have to say that I'm 110% against infant baptism, not because I'm an atheist, but because I consider it against the child's human rights - I don't think anyone should be 'claimed' for a religion, as the form of words of today's service had it, until they're old enough to make the decision for themselves. Despite my distaste for the process, though, I went because it was one of those rare opportunities to catch up with a goodly number of family and friends all at once, not least K, who made a special trip up from 'uni-town' to be there. The christening wasn't the only family thing of the day, either - my niece and her fiancé have named their wedding day, so there will be a trip to East Anglia, all being well, for that event around this time next year. I'm not, on the whole, all that clannish, but it is nice, sometimes, to acknowledge that certain people in my life are more significant than others.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Oh, I wanna, I wanna....

....see you again and again and again. But I'll be leaving in a quarter of an hour, and you'll be another 'ghost'. A boy, of course, the same age, more or less, as Cammy, who was definitely aware that I was looking at him, and smiled, just like my lost 'little friend', rather than showing any signs of freaking out. Would that I could escape to some parallel universe where such moments could evolve into something more concrete. Not in this place or this life, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Maps

Another of my perennial fascinations, since I was very young. The idea of being able to explore an area, to a degree, at least, that you've never visited, and maybe never would or could, has always​ been an attractive one for me. And, in conjunction with an​ app I’ve downloaded in recent days, a mapping and public transport app, some maps I've been looking at this evening have piqued my wanderlust for the first time in quite a while. I've been procrastinating about renewing my passport for literally years, but looking at the Paris Metro map might finally thrash me into actually doing it - K has said on a number of occasions that she wants to visit there, preferably with me as a 'tour guide', I suspect, and I've always been a big fan of the city since I first went there on a school trip when I was 13, so maybe it could happen, sometime soon. A rather more distant prospect, both literally and figuratively, was raised by perusing various maps of Melbourne. The main motivation, really, is Aussie Rules, and my beloved Saints in particular - being able to visit places like Moorabbin, and, given a visit at an appropriate time of year, the chance to actually go to one or more AFL games would be the proverbial trip of a lifetime. Will it ever happen? Probably not, but looking such places on a map makes it seem feasible, at least.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Well, thanks a bundle, America

I spent most of the first four decades of my life living through the Cold War, with its implicit threat of 'mutually assured destruction'. After a fair period where such a threat was substantially diminished, if never completely alleviated, it's taken Trump less than three months in office to have senior Russian officials talking about the possibility of 'real war'. The ever-present flaw in democracy - the fact that any moron can vote.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Best friends

K and I went out yesterday afternoon and evening, meandering before going to the nicest remaining local-ish Wetherspoons for food and drink. As ever, the conversation was eclectic and thought-provoking, but something K said not long before we headed for home really made me feel good about myself, a thoroughly rare occurrence - my girl told me, unbidden, that I was probably her best friend. There's no doubt whatsoever that K is my best friend, there's no-one even close, but for her to say the same about me was as uplifting as it was unexpected. They say that parents should never be their child's best friend, but we agreed unreservedly that such an assertion was nonsense, as long as the younger person was happy with the situation. We've got a lot of common interests, we've been on the same wavelength since K was very young, so why not? Not to mention that I love her to bits, of course.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A good night out

K and I were out gigging again last night, over at Shepherds Bush to see The Jesus and Mary Chain. And they were a good couple of notches better than when we saw them just over a year ago - they hadn't long been back together after a lengthy hiatus last time, and the gigs they've played in between seem to have taken them back close to their best. The only slight disappointment from my perspective was that they didn't play my 'personal national anthem', Never Understand, this time around, although there was plenty of early stuff, including The Living End, a clear number two in my J & M C 'hit parade'. There was a little bit of last-minute doubt around the outing, because K has come back from uni for the Easter break in none too wonderful health - she's had a chest infection, with symptoms along the lines of those that put me in hospital in 2013, albeit not as severe, hitherto - but she declared herself fit to go, and enjoyed the evening almost as much as I did. She's been pretty much out of circulation today, though, feeling tired and not up to much, which is a shame, given that I've been off work and that the weather has been almost summery, sunny and very pleasantly warm. Still, her well-being comes first, of course, and we should have a few more chances for some quality time together before she heads off to spend Easter weekend with her mum.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How much more ridiculous....

....can these people get? Not satisfied with being intent on destroying the economy, some of the Brexiteers are now threatening to declare war on Spain over Gibraltar. Realistically, it's a pretty unlikely scenario, but the fact that it's even been mooted shows how easily the UK could follow Trumpistan into über-nationalistic fascism. How willingly the 'raving right' are prepared to shed other people's blood - overwhelmingly poor people's blood, of course - to further their political agenda.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B