How did you get so serious?

A mild paraphrase of the title of the new Royal Blood album, but no actual connection. For the first time in ages, I called into the Chinese takeaway, a couple of minutes walk from where my old local used to be, on the way home this evening, to be confronted by a 'blast from the past'. But, oh, such a change from that past. Behind the counter was N, once the happy, smiling little guy I played catch with on Christmas Eve 2014, but now almost unrecognisable, still only 10 or so, but looking like he had the weight of the world on his young shoulders. My instinct was to want to give him a hug and ask him what the trouble was, but, needless to say, to do any such thing is unthinkable in today's societal climate. All I can do is to hope that whatever was ailing him is susceptible to remedy, as soon as possible.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tormented

I didn't sleep at all well last night. Despite being very tired, I was woken several times by what you might call an episodic nightmare. The 'centrepiece' of the dream was my finding a website full of videos of young people, girls as well as boys, being abused, raped and even murdered - by me. The 'dream me' was frantically trying to delete the evidence, but more and more kept appearing. The sleep/wake cycle happened probably three times, and each time I was dropped back into the miasmic swamp of my subconscious. I really don't know what to make of it - I'm well aware that many would consider me irremediably evil just for being attracted to (mainly) boys, but, in my waking hours, I genuinely don't want to hurt anyone, and try my utmost to live my life accordingly, so why all of this horrific stuff should have presented itself is mysterious and disturbing in equal parts. Maybe I'm just reading too much into a dream, but it must have come from somewhere, some dark place within. All I can do, I guess, is to isolate myself still further from the slightest hint of temptation, painful as that might be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Why do you have to ask why?

I read a blog post this morning about a particularly rabid christofascist opining that the US was being run by and for 'satanists'. Amongst the torrent of stupidity, there was a claim that this supposed 'hidden government' condoned 'paedophilia'. Why, the post author mused, do the religious right always use such claims? Well, it's fucking obvious, isn't it? Who could possibly be a softer target, a more convenient scapegoat, than a group of people no-one would ever dare defend publicly, even if they had reservations about the relentless demonisation of those attracted to younger people. How better than screaming 'they're coming for your children' to terrify the sheeple into bankrolling such idiocy?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A weekend with K

I’m 80%, more or less, through one of my all too rare five day long weekends - my last day off is tomorrow, before I launch into a run of nine early turns - and I've been lucky enough to spend a goodly chunk of it with my girl. Not during the day on Friday and Saturday, because K has got herself a summer job, working for another branch of the chain of photographic shops she had a part-time job with for a time while she was doing her A-levels, but both of those evenings, all day yesterday and a good part of today. I've been lucky in another way, too, because the weather has been very warm and sunny, if a little humid for ideal comfort, K and I taking advantage of the fact today by going for a picnic lunch at a country park not too far from where we live, with panoramic views right across London. While the food and, especially, the company, along with the views, were great, there were, as seems inevitable in my life, a couple of clouds wrapped around the silver lining - the knowledge, as I've said before, that K will be gone, more or less permanently, in three months time, and the fact that the country park is very near to where I believe Cammy lives (not that he'd have been there at lunchtime on a schoolday, of course), reminding me once more how much I miss the little guy. Maybe Wetherspoons saved me from myself by closing my old local, but that really is clutching at the faintest straw of positivity.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A joy for....

....a quarter of an hour. Not a thing of beauty, but an achingly beautiful person, in this instance. A boy, of course, on the Tube on my way to work at lunchtime. A rather different sort of boy, in some ways, than would normally catch my attention, though, and a rather different kind of reaction on my part. As I've said many times, I like the 'all boy' type by far the most, but this boy, wearing a sweatshirt with a Royal Ballet School logo, was what you might expect with such an affiliation, slight, almost elfin, high cheekbones and all. But oh, so, so beautiful. Like a little jewel. And my reaction to him was on that aesthetic level. I didn't, really didn't, want to touch him, he was, thinking about it now, eleven hours or so later, beyond sexuality. All I wanted was what I had for those few minutes, possession of the eyes, just to watch him and luxuriate in his beauty. He never once looked my way, so he couldn't have been disturbed, still less distressed by my absorption. By the time he and his family got off of the train, two stops before 'worktown', I felt close to tears. I certainly won't forget him in a hurry.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

So.... what now?

Well, the election didn't go the way most people expected, certainly not back in April when the Tories sprung it on us. I wish I'd put my shirt on a hung parliament at that point, I reckon I'd have got pretty good odds. Despite Labour's almost surreally good performance, against the landslide that was widely predicted - I remember seeing speculation they'd only get around 75 seats, as opposed to the 262 they've ended up with - the news still isn't really that great. The Tories are the largest party by some margin, and seem to be heading towards an 'understanding' with the DUP, a bunch of frothing Christofascists, if ever there was one, which, when the Ulster party's 10 seats are added in, gives May a potential overall majority. My constituency didn't manage to unseat the useless backbench warmer masquerading as our MP, either, although it was a close-run thing - his majority was reduced by something like three-quarters compared to 2015. There are mutterings, too, that Boris Johnson fancies his chances of replacing May in the aftermath of her perceived failure, which, while it wouldn't be close to the fiasco that is the Trump presidency, would mean our country being led, if that's the right word, by an egregious buffoon. On the other hand, the good news is that UKIP have been virtually wiped out, down to 2% of the popular vote (and that's 2% more than they deserve), even if their legacy, in the form of Brexit, will plague the country for years. So, as with the EU referendum, the electorate have spoken - and done little but muddy the waters. What happens in the coming days will be nothing if not interesting.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

You can't say you haven't been warned

May promised yesterday to 'rip up' human rights legislation, beginning on day one of a prospective new administration, if she wins tomorrow's election. The 'justification' is 'fighting terrorism', but history illustrates that such illiberal measures are widely used for purposes other than those declared. Anyone who votes for a party that announces their authoritarianism in advance deserves to be the first against the wall, as far as I'm concerned. And that's before consideration of the fact that any such erosion of civil liberties is a complete victory for the terrorists. If you're eligible to vote tomorrow, use your vote carefully.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The ache

It never goes away, but resurfaces, sometimes, in unexpected settings. Like at work at around 5:00 this morning. One of my colleagues was reading yesterday's Daily Telegraph, and mentioned, as a humorous aside, a rather inane 'letter to the editor'. What caught my attention, though, was where the writer of the letter lived. The small Cornish town where I worked until my transplantation to London in 2010. And then the memories kicked in. Memories of sitting in my old workplace, as, day after day, the most beautiful boy in the world walked past. Yes, I never really knew him. Yes, he's a boy no longer - he's a year older than K. But the feelings I had for him are as strong as ever. DBJ. Lost, but never, ever forgotten.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Redistribution

So, it's official. In withdrawing the US from the Paris Accord on climate change, Trump has clearly illustrated that the multi-billionaire oligarchy is so consumed with greed, with the need to further intensify the redistribution of wealth from anyone not themselves, that they are literally prepared to destroy the world to facilitate that end. Didn't Mulvaney, Trump's 'budget' director, say something the other day about it being essential to gut social and environmental programmes so that his notional future grandchildren wouldn't have to pay the bill for them? With this decision, and the domino effect it's likely to set in motion, those unborn children will have a good chance of paying for this generation's selfishness and greed with their very lives.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B