Dismissal

Heard at the bar, a little while ago - 'What, you've got a girlfriend?' It might have been meant as a joke, but the recipient of the remark was conspicuously silent. I remember being told by a girl, a long, long time ago, in just that tone of voice, 'dance with you?'. That tone of dismissiveness, maybe not even a conscious thing from the instigator, is one of the most soul destroying, spirit destroying things imaginable, as far as I'm concerned.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

That was the weekend that was

I'm back in my local after my day and a half's trip west, a visit that I had some uncertainties about, but which proved to be reasonably painless overall, given that it was the first time I'd seen my ex for more than eighteen months, and the first time I'd spent a night in Cornwall for almost as long, albeit in the anonymity of a Travelodge. K's performance was the primary reason for the visit, and I wrote about that last night, but my ex also wanted to discuss some issues around K's move up here. Those discussions were civil enough, although I still suspect that my ex would rather our daughter was staying with her, and did have the beneficial outcome, from my perspective, of my being able to pick up a handful of bits and pieces my ex had rescued from the old house. The last act of the weekend, apart from a rather tortuous journey back, was my going to lunch with K, although my girl wasn't at her sparkling best - she's not been too well of late, and she was very tired today. Hopefully she'll perk up over the coming days, not least because she's got her GCSE art exam on Thursday and Friday, but also because of her forthcoming plans for the Easter holidays, including her first visit to the flat in a fortnight's time. I'll be looking forward to that, needless to say.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

My daughter knows me too well!

The performance went well, at least as far as K was concerned, although one or two of the others had some missteps. K will always be my star, of course, but, being objective, the most talented performer on view was someone else. When I asked K afterwards who she thought would have caught my eye, she got it right first time. Because as well as being obviously accomplished in all three elements the stage school teach - singing, dancing and acting - the student in question was, if I had some kind of real life version of The Sims, close to being the perfect boy I'd design for myself. Good looking, talented, intelligent (as K told me - he goes to the boys' equivalent of the girls' grammar school she attends), smiley, friendly, enthusiastic. If there was anything I could change to complete the perfection, I'd maybe make him a year older and give him blond hair, but, otherwise, short of finding a way of bringing Xander to life, I could barely imagine anyone more to my tastes. All, as ever, simply daydreaming, but that's one of the few 'boy related' things I can do without hurting anyone, and without getting myself into trouble.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wasted, totally wasted

I've made it to Plymouth, despite some rather non-user friendly traffic holding up the replacement bus service coming into the city, and I'm now chilling with a quiet beer before heading out to the suburban venue for K's performance. On my way from the station to here, I espied an extremely easy on the eye cutie, 13 or 14, but with his arm wrapped around a not all that attractive girl of around the same age. I succumbed to some very impure thoughts about him, I have to admit - he's wasted on her, without a doubt!
(I am joking, of course, in case anyone is in the slightest confused.)

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Facetime

As previously related, I'm off to the West Country tomorrow for K's last day at her stage school. But there is another issue, too. I'll be seeing my ex, face to face, for the first time in eighteen months or so, and for the first time since we divorced. We've spoken on the phone often enough, including this week, and it's been reasonably amicable, for the most part, but it's still a difficult situation for me to negotiate, especially as I didn't want us to split up in the first place. We're going to meet up for K's performance, and all three of us are going for a meal afterwards. Like a lot of things about what's happened, I've got very mixed feelings about how it might go. How are you supposed to relate to someone you still love, but who doesn't love you anymore? Someone you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, but who threw you out almost without a second thought? It's not going to be an easy day, I suspect.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Seek....

....and sometimes you'll find. After some weeks of fruitless searching, I found a copy of Another Country on DVD this afternoon, in the unnecessarily vast Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush (about half a mile from where I lived during my previous sojourn in London in the eighties, coincidentally, although Westfield hadn't even been dreamt of back then), where I'd gone after work to look for something else entirely. I'm not sure if I'll get round to watching it tonight, though - after my ninth pre-4:30 alarm call in a row, I have serious doubts about whether I'll be able to stay awake beyond the opening credits! Still, at least my run of earlies has now come to an end - in fact, I'm now off until Monday night, so I can feel some R & R coming on!

2155 edit: Contrary to my expectations, I did stay awake long enough to watch the film, and I still think it's wonderful, if not the happiest viewing. And Adrian Ross-Magenty was even more of a cutie than I remembered!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Someone else I daren't meet

A definite slip at work this morning, albeit one I got away with (I think). The colleague of mine who is amongst those I most regularly work with, and get along with probably the best of all of my workmates, is, as I've mentioned before, the father of two sons. I'd seen a picture of the older boy (who's now 13, and not at all difficult to look at) before on his dad's phone, but I'd never seen a picture of 'little bro'. Until this morning, when my colleague came back to his position after I'd relieved him for his break, and put his phone down on the desk. His 'lockscreen' wallpaper was a photo of his younger son, taken at Wembley when they were there for a football match recently. And the little guy is just lovely, blond and very good-looking (he takes after his mother, apparently). The words came out before I even had chance to think - 'he's cute'. Fortunately, my colleague seemed to take my use of the word 'cute' in its parental/familial version, and agreed with me, although he also said, jokingly, that the boy was 'a monster'. If he looks that good on an unposed photograph, I wouldn't want to see him in 'real life' - I could very easily 'out' myself in the face of such beauty, and that wouldn't, I suspect, do much for my career prospects. And it's not entirely out of the question that I might find myself invited, at least, to some event or other where I might see the boys - my colleague and I do get on pretty well, and there have already been 'near misses' as far as getting together outside work goes. What I would do if I received such an invitation, I don't know. Another example of the minefield that life as a boylover entails.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B