Belonging

I've spent this morning teetering on the brink of another messy, tearful meltdown, but I think I've managed to pull myself together now.
Reasons? Thinking about acceptance, and belonging. Thinking about who accepts me, and why. Thinking about finding a place where I feel I belong. It's not, as I see it, a pretty picture.
Acceptance. I fall at the first hurdle, because I can't even accept myself. It's seems that I've fallen for the propaganda. The tabloid headlines that scream at me day after day. 'Fiend'. 'Vile'. 'Unnatural'. 'Predator'. 'Paedophile'. 'Evil', 'evil', 'evil'. The hatred of what I am. It's not even 'the love that dare not speak its name' in the eyes of the world. It's not accepted as love of any kind, just selfishness, manipulation, the destruction of lives. Innocent victims drowned in a torrent of unspeakable lust. Those who accept me for what I really am can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. For the rest, I can only gain acceptance by hiding, pretending, playing a part, biting my tongue when I want to speak out, deception and lies, all the time. Utterly soul-destroying.
Belonging. I read a story this morning, which proved to be the proverbial final straw that threw me into my latest chasm of despond. The main character, a boylover, talked about finding 'somewhere he belonged'. It made me feel that there's nowhere I belong, at least within the confines of my current life. That brings me back to the 'scrap my life' possibility I thought about recently, but while I might feel I've got issues I want to run away from, there's nowhere viable to run to that would make it any better. You can't, after all, run away from yourself, can't run away from the real world.
Tman had it right when he commented on yesterday's post - until I can love myself, I'm not going to progress. The problem is turning that insight into action.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

More local attractions

After bemoaning for years the dearth of cuties in our immediate area, I came across another one earlier, only about four doors away from us - a tallish, dark-haired boy of about my daughter's age who was very, very nice to look at. I haven't seen him before, so he might have been a visitor rather than a resident.
While many might think that all I'm interested in is inveigling some innocent boy into my bed, that's really not what my desire for a 'Young Friend', as the boylover parlance has it, is centred on. The only YF I've ever had, my cousin when I was in my twenties, was a completely sexless, but very close relationship, because that was how he wanted it to be. I would be more than happy if I could find someone who I could have a similar connection with now.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I want, I want, I want

I want to stop deceiving people close to me.
I want to call my time my own.
I want to be able to look after my family in the way I think they deserve.
I want to meet one particular blogger whose blog I follow.
I want some sunshine in my life.
I want to write stories that people want to read.
I want a boy in my life.
I want to be free to be me.

In no particular order, and just a wish list, not a plan of action. None of them are likely to be achieved any time soon, sadly.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

There's cute....

....and there's super cute! In order of seeing them, there was a boy from my daughter's Friday drama club who she likes and who she'd arranged to go into 'town' with today - it wasn't quite a 'date', but she was very happy that he'd wanted to go - and who I hadn't seen before, because my wife normally does the 'taxi' duties for the Friday activity. He was nice looking, but not, to me, jaw dropping, so the potential nightmare scenario of my falling for one of my daughter's friends is postponed, at least. Cute, though.
Part two of the day's encounters was somewhat different, though, with my third brush with the boy (visiting/revisiting) next door. Oddly enough, it was my wife who spotted him this time, looking through our living room window - she seems to think that he's our (divorced) next door neighbour's son, although on what evidence, I've no idea. If he is a blood relation, I've probably had a near miss from what could have been a very sticky situation, because he's so lovely, and to have him actually living next door would have made it very difficult to go about my daily life without quickly giving away my interest.
If I might be allowed a little 'soapbox' moment, I spotted this quote from David Cameron on another blog (It's Getting Better, thank you Micky) a couple of days ago, talking about homophobia - He added: “Britain is a diverse, open, tolerant place. This is not the sort of country where we label people for being different.” I wonder if his comment would be extended to boylovers like me. I suspect not.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Quiz and garlic

I had the chance to exercise a couple of my talents yesterday. I've said before about feeling guilty about the fact that I seemed to be accepting the generous hospitality of my brother and his family without giving anything back, but, for once, I was able to repay them a little by cooking them a meal yesterday evening. I have no claims to be any sort of culinary expert, but there are some dishes that I can make a reasonable fist of, and paella is one of my specialities. I'm quite interested in Spanish food in general, and its Canarian variant in particular, so I added a side dish that anyone who's been to the Canary Islands might recognise - Papas Arrugadas con Mojo Rojo. Mojo is a garlic sauce which has a number of variations, my version of it being made with lots (and I mean lots!) of garlic, smoked paprika and olive oil, which is then served with the Papas Arrugadas, wrinkled potatoes, which are small potatoes cooked in their skins. The traditional way of getting the skins to wrinkle is to boil them in heavily salted water, but I cook mine in the oven in a small amount of olive oil, which seems to have the desired effect. It all seemed to go down pretty well - there was nothing left over, anyway! - but it left us all smelling very garlicky, something even heavy teeth cleaning couldn't overcome! My niece ended up going to buy some mints to try and become a bit less anti-social!
After the evening meal, we went to a village pub a quarter of an hour or so from my brother's house where he plays in the pub quiz league. Perhaps my most notable ability is answering general knowledge questions - I seem to have not only the sort of memory that can retain trivia, but also the capacity to recall it pretty effectively. I have, albeit not recently, had my proverbial 'fifteen minutes of fame' by appearing quite successfully on a couple of TV quiz shows, so when my brother's team found out I was potentially available last night, they were keen to bring me on board as a bit of a 'ringer' to help them along (it was all legal under the quiz league's rules, I hasten to add). It turned out to be quite a competitive game, but we managed to prevail in the end, and I think I made enough of a contribution to justify my existence. I would've been most disappointed if I hadn't ended up on the winning side - without wishing to seem conceited, I'm not used to losing in pub quizzes, and, even allowing for the fact that I don't play very often these days, it's a good few years since I have been on the wrong side of a result.
Just in case we hadn't had enough garlic earlier in the evening, the after-match food provided by the host pub included some fairly piquant garlic bread. It's a good job you can't overdose on garlic, because we'd have been in great danger of doing so otherwise!
I'm back at home now, having just about managed to drive back to Cornwall after work this afternoon without falling asleep at the wheel! I'm now starting to get into 'holiday mode', with a nice glass of Chardonnay on hand while I'm writing this. As has been said before, it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Weary

I've not been posting as much as usual of late, principally because my lifestyle with the new job and all the long-distance commuting seems to be very tiring at the moment. Apart from the obvious requirement of being awake to type, the fact of being tired all the time seems to have dulled whatever mental faculties I possess still further, so that I end up with nothing interesting, or nothing at all, in my head when I do get some free time. I'm off all next week, though, so I'm hoping that some Cornish air (and rain, if I know Cornwall!) might refresh the parts other air can't reach (Brits of a certain age will probably recognise the paraphrase  - if not outright plagiarism - of an old advert!).

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Feeding frenzy

Just under 6 weeks to go, and it appears that the annual ritual of people spending ludicrous amounts of money on things they don't need, otherwise known as Christmas shopping, is already in full swing. When we went to our regular supermarket at lunchtime today, we struggled to find a parking space in what is a pretty large car park, while the store itself seemed to be awash with humanity, all intent on completing their particular retail mission, with little or no consideration of anyone else in the process. My daughter and I apparently got in the way of some thuggish looking bloke at one point, and he looked as though he was tempted to push her out of the way - all I can say is that I'm pleased, for his sake and mine, that he didn't succumb to that temptation, because I would've lost it completely if he'd laid a finger on her. As it was, I made a sarcastic comment, very audibly, but he chose to stomp off to his next port of call. Preparations for the season of goodwill, evidently.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B