For some reason, my largely moribund blog has been 'flavour of the week' - there have been more than 3000 views in the last four or five days. I'm sure it's just web crawlers crawling, but it has helped to push the blog, after 13-odd years, beyond 100000 views overall. Thank you for reading - even the crawlers!
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
Before last weekend, the BBC Weather website was promising us snow, albeit light snow, and freezing temperatures for today and tomorrow, so I stocked up with groceries on Friday with a view to staying at home until at least Wednesday - I hate snow and ice these days, given my somewhat fragile health, and my propensity to fall on my backside as soon as slippery conditions prevail. But this morning, the snow has been conspicuous by its absence, and it's been largely sunny so far, although it's pretty cold (by UK standards). So I've spent a good hour trying to decide whether to go out, without much success. I almost never see anyone when I stay here at the flat, and I do like to feel that I'm part of the human race occasionally, but, overall, I would only go to the pub, so the balance of probability is that I'll stick to Plan A and skulk in my man cave instead - isolation is preferable to breaking my neck, ultimately.
There's a longer term conundrum in my life, as well, although the potential risk in this case will almost certainly prevent me from being tempted with the slight chance of what would be a substantial reward - there's a new(-ish) family living in the building where my flat is, and there's a passably cute boy in the scenario. I don't see him very often, despite the fact that he lives about 30 feet away from me - they're on the ground floor, while I'm four flights of stairs above - but he has given me a smile and wave a couple of times, and we have had a very brief chat, just once. I can't lie, the prospect of having a 'young friend' would be beyond awesome, even if we didn't do anything other than talk, but the pitfalls seem unsurmountable - he's pretty young, even by the standards of my 'reviled by society's' AoA, and his English seems to be rather minimal (I'm fairly sure that the family is Eastern European, although what exact nationality, I don't know). So it's really little more than a daydream, in all honesty. But what if....?
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
And tomorrow will be the same, too - me on my own, bumping along the bottom, no-one to talk to, no-one to see. New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, February 25, May 11, whatever random date you like, it's all the same to me. To be fair, most of it is self-inflicted, given my borderline social phobia and my aphasic speech, but it's hard to drag myself out of that rut. K will probably ring me tomorrow (hangover permitting, she's not her father's daughter for nothing!), but that's about the only likely patch of blue sky I'll see to welcome in 2023.
Still, there's no reason for anyone to be as negative as me, and I hope everyone has a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
For me, at least - my daughter has been visiting me over the last couple of days, but she's gone now, down to her mother's place for the actual festivities. It was planned weeks ago, so it's not as if I was left in the lurch at the last minute. The joys of 'broken families', I suppose, and any chance of seeing K is a bonus, given she's living and working 200-odd miles away from me these days. So it's just me until at least after the 27th, and I'll just have to console myself with the food and drink I've stocked up with in the fridge and freezer.
I hope anyone who sees my musings has a pleasant Yuletide. Season's greetings, and all that!
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
We're into the first cold snap of the winter, and it's freezing here (by the standards of the UK, at least). It could be worse - the BBC Weather website was threatening snow earlier in the week, but that dire prediction hasn't come to fruition so far. I absolutely hate snow these days, although I don't have go out on bad weather days, as long as I can keep my grocery stocks maintained suitably, one of the few advantages of early retirement through ill health.
I do get rather isolated sometimes, though, so I try to associate with the human race occasionally. Yesterday was one of those days, and I forced myself (!) to visit my regular Wetherspoons in 'town' for a few pints. I haven't got any acquaintances, never mind friends, at the pub, but I'm recognised by sight there, mostly through the staff, to make me feel I'm part of the community, if only tangentially. One other benefit of the hostelry is its status as a 'family friendly' establishment, which means there are sometimes opportunities to catch a little eye candy. Not this time, though - midweek days in term time are rarely beneficial in that context - so instead I decided to treat myself to a rare takeaway meal when got back to my local bus stop. And my decision turned out to be a win-win scenario - not only was the food up to their usual good standards, I had a 'boy moment'! He was waiting for an order when I arrived, and, in typically teenage ill-advised fashion, he'd decided that a tee shirt and shorts were a good idea - the poor bugger was literally shivering, visibly. Despite my reluctance to engage with anyone nowadays, given my embarrassingly poor speech, post-stroke, we struck up a few minutes worth of conversation. He was 13/14 - his voice had definitely broken - but he was still cutely boyish facially, so he wasn't the only one shivering. No doubt he'll be another 'ghost' and I'll never see him again, but my encounters with boys are so far and few between that anything like yesterday's are an oasis in an almost relentless desert, so I'm going to enjoy them when they crop up.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
Having decided to start blogging again, the first question has to be what I should write about. My general lifestyle hasn't changed overly, despite the upheavals of the Covid pandemic - I've been lucky, or maybe careful, to be fair to myself, in not contracting the virus (as far as I know, although there have been untold numbers of asymptomatic cases, certainly here in the UK), and I've had all of the vaccinations available to me (including the regular flu jabs I've been taking for more than 10 years), so my overall health, apart from the after-effects of my stroke in October 2017 (5 years ago now, doesn't time fly when you're not having fun), hasn't been too bad, I'm relieved to say.
So, instead, how about discussing one of the items that has been helping with my sanity over the last couple of years, namely watching a lot of televised sport. I've been a football (i.e. soccer, for those not in Western Europe) aficionado all my life, so the World Cup is a current favourite, needless to say (I'm watching the Germany v Japan game right now), and I'm also a big fan of many winter sports, the new season of the various Alpine disciplines has started to kick in, and I hope the Nordic events and biathlon won't be far behind. But my greatest passion is, sadly, in the off season at the moment - Australian Rules Football. I remember seeing a few highlights of the sport in the early 1970s (VFL games at that time), and enjoyed it, but then there was a 10-15 year hiatus here, when (as far as I know) there wasn't any coverage at all. But then Channel 4 stepped into the breach with a weekly 90 minute programme during the season in the late 1980s (I think was first shown in 1987 or 1988, but I haven't managed to find the exact year), and before long I was an enthusiastic viewer, firstly of the sport in general, but soon of a particular player - the best forward, in my humble opinion, that has ever played in the history of Aussie Rules, Tony Lockett. And his team was St Kilda, without a doubt the least successful club in Aussie Rules history (27 wooden spoons, one solitary flag!). Given my penchant for underdogs, me becoming a Saints tragic was a no-brainer. And so here I am, 30-odd years later, still riding the roller coaster, the highs and lows (mostly lows!), with my beloved, heartbreaking Saints. We've sacked yet another head coach, replaced him with the coach, Ross Lyon, who's been the most successful for us in recent times (although I wasn't a fan of his even when we were pretty good, 2007-2011, including three Grand Finals, one of them drawn - I thought his gameplan, revolving around ultra-defensive pressure, was hard to watch, even though we were winning most games in that era, especially 2009) after another underwhelming season. But hope springs eternal, the National Draft is happening on Monday and Tuesday (another date in the TV diary!), we might find the new superstar we've been craving for years. But I'm not holding my breath in expectation! Go Sainters!
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
Well, I guessed it was close to 1000, but I was surprised how close it turned to be. Looking at the last post I published here, and its anniversal theme, I idly wondered how many days had passed since my decision to go on hiatus. I could've worked it out, by mental arithmetic, but it was far easier to find a website to do it for me instead. And the answer is 998. 998 days since I was here, in a writing capacity, at least. I have considered resuming this blog a number of times in the interim, but I haven't committed myself, found the motivation, basically, until now. I can't imagine many, if any, of the few people who used to read my ramblings are still around in 'Blogworld' - blogging is a bit passé, I suspect, long supplanted by 'cooler' social media options - but I'm a bit of a stick in the mud, so Blogger will have to do, I'm afraid. I won't be posting daily, all in probability, but who knows? I might find the impetus from somewhere, stranger things have happened.
I'm aware that my blog's name is now an anachronism, given that I'm a sexagenarian these days, but, at least for the moment, I can't be bothered to adjust it yet, if at all. Consider it a quirk, perhaps!
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
