Christmas edition 2016

Ever since starting this blog in the beginning of the year I had thought about doing a Christmas edition rather like as if we'd been around of each others houses and said "How  was Christmas with you?"

For me I was a bit late getting up as I had a migraine on Christmas Eve that was reluctant to  shift so I got dressed and came down for a light breakfast before messaging my Caregiver and opening my presents.

That's some of them stacked up so I wonder just what might possibly be inside of them?

The Beano was a staple comic of mine growing up even if today it's only available on download and we always had the Christmas Annual so getting that as a hardback with the stories of Gnasher, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and co really is a ritual I love.

 The Dandy suffered a bigger fate as it was discontinued outright but they do one off editions and a annual so I like to read new adventures of Korky the Kat and Desperate Dan of Cow Pie fame.

I love reading although with my learning disabilities I can't manage anything other than junior fiction and even then anything getting more above a reading age of 12 is hard going so mummy bought me this First edition of the new Jacqueline  Wilson novel set in Victorian England.

She also bought me the last Historical novel she wrote in a series looking very much at life in  Great Britain from a child in hospital in the early nineteen-fifties. I'll write a full review when I've read them .

I had this originally in Paperback but had been longing to find a copy with the original text in so my Brother gave me some money toward buying this used copy lacking its dust jacket as original hard backs are really quite rare and expensive.

I had some chocolate oranges, money and biscuits too from people that care about me.

Being little

Teddy Bears were always a big big part of me, associating them very much with comfort and emotional stability not just as huggable items although god knows I could use a hug or two at times but also as playthings, in imaginative play.

I'd have them set out as a family unit, interacting with each other doing things like looking after the younger members or even taking afternoon tea together, exchanging small talk,  taking turns.
My childhood was messed up for situations in my family as much as my disabilities and how people at times treated me because of it, casting me out.

That's why I feel this younger side of me needs to be let out.

The "Barney" Mysteries

The old adage "You can't but a good book down would seem to apply around these parts of late  as some more new to me books by Enid Blyton arrived recently.

These copies are actually editions from the very early nineteen-seventies where while still in hardback form they have been cheapened by printing the frontspiece and spine direct to the jacket and missing off the rear of what would of been the back of the paper dust jacket the original hardbacks had.

 There are six novels in this series of mystery adventures that feature Rodger and Diana Lynton and their cousin Peter, ophaned, who goes under the name "Subby" in the series and his dog Laddie who are also joined by Barney an motherless circus boy who has been on a quest to find his absent father and who has a money called Miranda.

The "Barney Mysteries" is the title these usually are grouped under although some use "R Mysteries" with the "R" coming from the R in the names of all the titles.

The children visit sleepy villages and seaside towns that it transpires are riddled with intregue and it's that they look into.

One of the strengths of this series is the stories are full of atmosphere and good humour, the strong characterization making for much more depth  than most of her work and more sophisticated language that made it the only series Enid herself recommended just for those of eleven years and upward.

Advent

Yes it's getting to that time of the year and guess what? I didn't have to get mine this year because Mummy bought it me!

 With the help of the Secret Life of Pets, I can count down the days toward Christmas while noming on small squares of milk chocolate.

Don't ask what Marmalade, the original "fat cat" may make of it!

In other news, our community Christmas Tree is up, ready for it's inaugural switching on and carol singing.

Thoughts on this blog

This blog seems very much to have been going for a while now from the earliest days of literally grabbing all the material on a really old computer, typing at home and while for once we had some spare time at work over a few weeks, the works one too(!!!) which was a bit quicker.

Rather like me, it's been evolving over all that time as I began to try to understand what  made me, well me, how the more child-like side slotted in with the bits that deal with the adult world because with me this is less playing a role I can just click my fingers and be out of so much that it comes out of me from The Child Within.

It's seen me interact initially with people online in various forums and sometimes going through forums as I realized they were not really for me to getting to know people face to face, spending time with them for several days at a time.

In that time with support I have been working on some of my difficulties such as Math and English finding time to study, reading either by myself or  sometimes a shared book learning to discuss it with others.

As well, this time has seen me become more confident as this adult little boy as I started to get that whole life working better with additional support and structures routed very much in meeting the child-like needs I have properly so I'm well grounded, learning to do more and be more responsible.

I have been tidying up this blog a little, correcting odd mistakes, changing the odd image while preparing a couple of new entries ready for the next hundred  editions.

At the more techy side only 49% of you use Windows with Chrome followed by Firefox being your preferred browsers showing just how far we've moved from the early days of blogging.

Here's to the enduring success of Chris's Boy talk

Think Pink!

The Pink Panther was a childhood favourite of mine both in the Cartoons made during the sixties that I saw as a child and also the Peter  Blake directed movies staring Peter Sellers as the hapless inspector on the case.

I collected a lot of merchandise as a child such as plushies, notepads, toys and calendars and bought Pink Panther themed bubble bath so you could say it was an obsession of mine.

Fall 2016

Slowly waking up here after the overnight rain.

This time of the year give or take a few weeks is one of my personal favourites not least for the rich colours that vary by the hours, something living here I really appreciate being able to literally just stroll on over to the woods and fields.

Around of this time of year  I often see the local grey squirrels leaping across the trees branch by branch carefully balancing , going across the road and into our gardens burying their Winter store.

I find it really keeps my spirits up.

Triggered and trying to pick up the pieces

The week was due to end on something on high and anyone that read the post on Friday  on the other blog may well of been forgiven for thinking that  as I looked at how over the years I had actually developed and as a result of that the blog had reflected those changes in me.

Some of those things included people who were going to have a more parental input in my life to help me better manage it because I was struggling with it providing guidance and oversight and also by consent, spanking me which has worked well.

It's perfectly true to say emotionally and psychologically, many of us carry some baggage around with although for most it's something they have control over but for some of us it goes much deeper than that.

You might think you have it safely contained where it doesn't cause you any problems however this sort of traumatic events can jolt you back back very much in that moment reliving those raw terrifying emotions, freezing you, leaving you shaking badly.

For me personally I do go 'mute' in stressful situations, I stare out oblivious to what is going on around, I just shut down and curl up. It's a vulnerability I have to live with when I'm so overwhelmed I can't act to look after myself.

That's what makes a triggering episode like the one I had on Thursday really bad bring back painful memories of witnessing verbal abuse and physical violence at home and of inappropriate physical contact outside of it. It goes that much deeper than just something you'd rather never happened.

I supposed in a way it had to happen at a site very much for adults because with my mixture of learning/developmental disabilities I don't really slot into sites well because I do need generally a higher degree of moderation and 'hand holding' than most sites expressly for adults offer but either that sites that do are strictly under 18 or more general ones where some topics would (understandably)  be off limits.What I need more - an more older kid style of site -  but for over 18's doesn't exist.

It just happened that in innocuously questioning a part of the main site entrance,  it opened up discussion things that directly triggered emotions from those experiences that left me shaking in my tummy  just even typing it.

I just feel at the moment typing this I need  to try to get this under some control and a part of that is to take a break from the site in question until I feel ready to log back in seeing posts without all these memories flooding back.

I think the whole topic that lead to this needs to resolved, "put to bed" so the thread and everything in it can just float away or be closed off.

For me at some point when I feeling better than I am presently, I would like to work toward some permanent closure  with the individuals concerned and  not just from a personal point of view  that's obviously a very important for me but also for them to try to work through their feelings on what happened and how it's left things.

To me it is that within my limitations, I do need when I'm better to resolve all of this in a mature way rather than just avoiding people who I did really like and mostly likely never saw where things would end up.

The A-Z of Chris staying with you

When you get to see this I will be almost ready to go away for a few days so in the intervening time I have been super busy organizing my transportation, making sure I take what I need and that it is all been properly washed and any outstanding business is taken care off.

When it comes to going away things are always different with me compared to most in that in the first instance whoever I stay with assumes some responsibility for me because of the limits on my abilities not just physically but also when it comes to my abilities to exercise responsibility and make quick judgments.

In a good many respects I have the position and all the authority of a ten year old boy staying with relatives because while I do have a say, the higher level decisions are made for me and I am subject to house rules in a direct way.

This is for a number of reasons such as I struggle with options, often getting confused around implications and consequences to the point of just freezing over, often I require supervision to make sure breaks and get to bed at a reasonable time so I have a no later than bedtime and can be sent to bed if I'm tired.

I do wear uniform when I am with them at all times except if we're going in a place where regular folk congregate such shops and the like.

Also I am scolded and spanked by them should I be dishonest, disobedient or disrespectful to them or anyone else during that period as most adult ways of dealing with this just don't work with me but that does.

To be honest, I find this actually quite a lot better for me not least for it is a less anxious experience, that if I do mess up (and I'm prone to it) at least everything is over and done with and as necessary I'm helped to put things right to other peoples satisfaction where whenever I had been with people before I just messed up and we just got to the point I was dead nervous about going and they'd be left feeling they'd 'have' to take me or I was for a forever kind of punishment.

That it ties in with my little/middle side and its needs helps to keep some inner tensions down between trying impersonate a grown up and in many ways the lack of such a side in me which just added to the difficulties following higher level discussion of the sort you expect of adults.

It is also helping me more deal with my emotions, sorting some of my attitudes out which people just faced with a potential meltdown in adult company didn't deal with.

In another world

 

This could of been me so easily in actual childhood, sat in class with textbook open upon the wooden desk staring into space, daydreaming or otherwise distracted which it had to be said wasn't something your teacher way back then was very partial too and most still aren't.

Actually as much is it seen settings such as school as a attention or discipline issue, a lot of research has shown that's it not time wasted so much as time and skills at problem solving and using your imagination that can benefit people.

Of course we can all think of just dreaming up an imaginary world which for some may well be preferable to their only too real one, but that imagination can be channelled into drawing and writing fiction.

Perhaps that's why it doesn't surprise me a good number of those writers and artists tended to fall foul of the school authorities. 

The Secret Seven and the missing words

One of things I have made a bit of a start on is getting replacement hard back copies of my Secret Seven books that I originally wrote a bit about on here a few years ago with the bulk of them being modern edition but with good original illustrations and the other five being 1970's paperback ones.

This series is for me a link of that nine through thirteen period where  having moved from the first 'proper' reading books I had from around  six with Mr Twiddle, I was looking for something a bit more 'grown up', a bit challenging both by the style of writing and also use of a wider vocabulary and that of older children.

It's an adventure series of a group of children who meet up having adventures while trying to solve mysteries and in it we see their personalities such as a somewhat bossy Peter, club leader.
In many ways it touches on that sense of longing to be long to a group, a circle which as a child of that age  you sure felt and in the series we see Susie, one of more quick thinking children kept out, perhaps more that she might undermine Peter than anything else.

They have a scottie dog called Scamper who rather like George's dog Timmy in the Famous Five plays a big role, big enough to be counted as a member even!

Actually it is the similarities that invite comparison between both of Enid Blyton's adventure series usually to the the detriment of the Secret Seven in which two later stories do clearly reference Famous Five books almost as if she was saying "If you read this, please consider reading the Famous Five!" but that's negate the point which is this is a self contained series aimed at younger children or children with a lower reading age which was probably why I got them given my reading issues when I did.

The series was started in nineteen forty-nine  and concluded in nineteen sixty-three and like the Famous Five editions later copies were subject not just to things such as changes in currency but also in dress where the girls generally wear pinafores rather as I do now but these were again changed for jeans or shorts and the boys wore jeans unlike boys even in the early to mid nineteen-seventies in school who wore tailored hard wearing lined shorts.

The text also was altered in recent copies to 'reflect' modern social ideas so where in the second novel, Secret Seven Adventure, Peter says to Jack as he is being scolded for allowing his sister Suzie to have his  Secret Seven badge she should be smacked for it and a grown up says to the children  the girl at the circus should be spanked for her constant fibbing, that is removed. Given it was written in nineteen-fifty that would of happened and I can well recall when I did something like that in the nineteen seventies I and my peers sure  were smacked or spanked.

It's small details like that, the references to things in 'shillings' that set the backdrop of this adventure as are things like the circus acts a child of that era saw, regardless of our own views on that today and why apart from the feel of having the hard back I'm slowly building up a collection of them hopefully all with dust jackets, to read and enjoy as I did back then.

Family life

Somedays things just come crashing to you,  a bit of the past that jolts you as if a meteor struck you as you were just walking on down the sidewalk.

It was really about some thoughts that I had with my second best friend at high school at the time, she faced a lot of physical challenges in her life but she had hours of time to try to understand me and we were chatting would of been early 1982 about tv and what we saw mattered to us.

You know, the kind of totally random teen stuff that actually in hindsight was really pretty significant for how I saw and felt.

Let me explain. On commercial tv there was a long running American tv show about family life across the decades called The Waltons that featured this extended family sharing lifes ups and down together in rural Virginia, and the head of the family John Walton Snr, operated a lumber mill and supplemented their income with a small-scale farming. They took in people and shared a lot as a family united, attending church on Sundays.

That's probably was much as I need to say for the purposes of this entry as I'm not writing a essay on the series or anything as it's what's in more modern parlance a "Slice of life" series seeing the family grow and change over time in accordance with events such as the Great Depression, WW2, the Great Society and Civil Rights  era and so on.

The thing Linda and I were discussing was Family: what it means to be in a family, our involvement or interaction if you like with with Mom and Dad, your immediate siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. The extent it is a 'unit' and all that.

We were also comparing and contrasting our own relationships  with our families to what we had been watching.

In a lot of ways she saw many parallels  between that of how she cared for them as much as they had to do quite a lot for her and the fictional family we saw.

I once said half joking to Denise one recess If it was like mine, then everybody would be off doing totally their own thing, with Mom trying to hold the thing together and me behind a chair on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

That may sound kinda melodramatic but there was and still is the lack of bonds between everybody, no real sense of feeling for one another, for me it wasn't a place of safety with one sibling who'd think nothing of verbally and financially abusing me which wasn't really helped by my being able to spot in seconds any outright lies he was telling to get more for himself as he felt hard done to and obliged to report it.

That's before you bring in Pop who'd explode at the slightest thing, throwing stuff across the room, propelling me in a chair into corners like trash, threatening to burn down the house.
You see, that's the big comparison  between what family was like for her and for me and to open about this really hurt.

This whole experience left a big legacy with me, not least a very strong feeling of longing, almost desperation to loved and cared for.

What I wanted so much was physical and emotional intimacy, a feeling beyond mere words of what it means to 'belong', to be bonded and have bonds that outlast their very beginnings, that provide emotional comfort promoting personal confidence and development.

A relationship that would teach me what I needed to know to get by with people, to be able contribute to it, helping me to stand on my own two feet as a grounded individual within the wider unit.

A wider unit that shared a common purpose, the raising of and looking after that family that was prepared discipline me in a loving, structured, affectionate way so fulfilled my role and expectations within it and our wider community.

I wanted to be...in the Waltons family.

The world beyond the city

 One distinct advantage of where we are is the Peak District national park is on our doorstep, indeed it is in part of our county although neighbouring Derbyshire tends to claim it which was where in many ways we explored and played in growing up.

The hills and fields figured more in the latter for being able to have a runabout, hiding behind things, being totally absorbed in imaginary play, in battles and campaigns that just developed in real time.

Other times we'd visit monuments and churchs often made from locally sourced material, practise identifying architectural styles and types of windows on properties.

That to me was fun!

The return of the original Famous Five

This edition, composed on the chromebook is part of a restoration theme I am engaged upon being linked in part to getting back in touch with some people I was close to a few years who may have some different reasons for their interest than I but is a place where I can discuss that side of reading that for me is rooted as much part with my past and present child-like sense of being as much as a love of reading, my difficulties with reading aside.

Enid Blyton was as no doubt for many of us in the British Commonwealth the author we were introduced by schools and parents keen for us to reading something other than comics and preferable to the big threat of our era, the TV in the corner which was feared for turning us into passive unthinking consumers.

She wrote for all ages although there was a age-range guide for each series so we'd start with something like Noddy or Mr Twiddle which I loved and move through to a series like Malory Towers and the Famous Five to the very top end Junior Fiction and the cusp of Young Adult Fiction and adult fiction often tied to what we studied for English Literature around our mid teens.

I'm revisiting the Famous Five series after re-reading newer copies of them in 2012 mainly because of they way chunks of the situations around the lives of George, Dick, Julian, Anne and Timmy the dog have been altered dramatically that they no long ring true even if the basics of the plot remain.

What I'm in process of doing is replacing these somewhat altered versions with originals from the 1950 and 60's in hardback form.

Although much of the adventure and the sense of being young are universal across each era's children inevitably it is set in the past with it starting in 1942 and ending in 1963 so as amazing as it may sound one thing is they used a different currency and with it a different sense the value of things. 

This was one of the first things to be changed following the UK adopting decimalization in 1971 was references to money and strangely enough the decision by one paperback publisher to put all the children in Jeans even though that wasn't what was worn back then  plus ignores a common theme in the novels which is how 'George' rejects femininity as expressed in dresses and ribbons in preference to the shorts of boys and boyish pursuits.

At a stroke a big part of her gender role rebellion is diminished by removing the contrast to that societies norms.

My start point in revisiting the series begins where I first met them in chronological childhood  and that's with the first three novels that were put in an omnibus edition which to be honest is how most likely I'd of been given these novels and so I got a 1964 copy of "The Famous Five Big Book".

That contains the very first story Five on a Treasure Island that sets very much the scene introducing us not just to the Island and the children but also to their families and the social order within it, not least that the adults are the Authority Figures and that the children are spanked (and expect to be) which was the norm back then.

More recent editions remove that completely and attempt to suggest a more negotiated form of parenting that simply wasn't the case and what the children  who read the stories originally would not of recognized because the lives of Julian, George, Anne and Dick where very much like theirs in that way!

Some of the copies I have do have their original dust jackets, some of which are like this - a little the worse for wear although I used transparent tape to repair a few tears on this one - that are enjoyable to look at although because so many got lost or badly damaged copies with them tend to at a premium regardless of the actual condition of the book itself.

For me then while I love the dust jackets, it's the original text and the illustrations by Elaine Soper that have never been surpassed that are the reasons why I'm replacing the other set and enjoying re-reading the stories as they were originally written as I identified with them as that child.

I don't appreciate having my memories messed with.

The importance of honesty

One of things that does matter is telling the truth not that going by popular opinion  is it something we expect from people in positions of power such as business leaders or politicians although I feel our expectations ought to higher even if at times dashed.

The must basic reason for this is we have a need to feel the other person has a sense of honesty and integrity about them, that what they say is based on reality rather than either wishful thinking or something having no basis at all in fact.

Most of us can understand  and relate to what are sometimes called 'magical thoughts' where belief is suspended because the illusion of say" seeing an elephant fly" is preferable to us than the reality which is of course that they cannot. That whole notion is very child-like and because we saw it in our imagination it may feel real but isn't.

Telling the whole truth is something we can all struggle with especially if by doing so it shows us  in a poorer light so we do not so much say something it isn't true: we omit that which  shows our culpability and responsibility for what really transpired.

If there is a hierarchy when it comes to this it is the outright lie, the very thing that had no basis in reality at all that takes pole position.

We use it to place ourselves where we were not, to claim credit for things we did not do, to transfer the blame from us to others when we have done wrong and remove ourselves from situations where we had a responsibility but chose not to exercise it.

I am - and others around me expects me to tell the whole truth at all times and whenever I'm not there's no question of not being punished because of its seriousness.

Socializing and behaviour

Sometimes where you're thinking about how in any given situation we react around each other whither or not it's at home, at work or even say online in a forum it's as well to remember contrary what is often asserted, not everybody involved is in state of permanent fully realized maturity.

While to me and a good number of my closest friends we know we are not and fully see the child within come out in good ways and sometimes not so good ways such as getting stroppy or otherwise appearing rude because as littles this is what we know it what we also see is others who may not identify as we do but exhibiting similar behaviour.

Sometimes it helps if you visualize in such situation say men who might may appear to be so disgusted by the notion of being swept away by emotions as boys in their short pants they feel the need to act up to push away your emotionally driven drama seeing it as a weakness rather than engaging with it working through it to a resolution.

They're repelling something they can't cope with and that to them threatens their rumbustious sense of being, bringing to the surface their 'must hide' insecurities.

It isn't just men who may act like that so might anxious and insecure women and that can aid us in understanding them.

I think when you do see that, it can lead you to toward having a more tolerant view of obnoxious behaviour because we can now see they are still growing and developing feeling able to let more as much as we and they need to work on them.

Sometimes it appears to me, that's the problem, we see people as being "mature" we impose standards on them that they are bound to fail at when they like us are a work in progress in need of appropriate guidance and correction.

Littleness, regresssion and age-play

As ever on Tumblr there's a battle going on between people over what being a little is and any involvement of those under 18 in it however as ever there is more heat than light being generated by the keyboard warriors with many meme's and posts being put up and commented on.

This one is quite well intentioned in trying to explain the difference between age-playing and what emotionally appropriate behaviour that comes from being in actual state of regression where your responses come from the child within and less than any kind of scripted character you play.

 I do feel they have however got Little Space actually quite wrong because that is the emotional and behavioural environment  that as  a person who has regressed you have got into - you feel and so respond as that child - and not the act of being a little.

To get into it it is true you need to regress or otherwise release that child within an adult body or if you are like me not to have developed into it fully anyway.

There are some who are trying to put in a schism between the ChIRes advocates of littleness by regression and that of Caregiver/littles who are being characterized as a part of of the more 'adult' bsdm side.

For  me the whole point in a CG/l relationship is effectively that while in that headspace the Caregiver is providing the love, nurturing and support that is the equal of a parent or guardian arising from those needs as their little you have.

It is not necessarily sexual although some may enjoy that however meeting any sexual needs may find themselves which might be only in their 'Big' side of life.

They are not so much opposites degrees in which individuals chose to live their lives making informed decisions recognizing as appropriate the issues of informed consent as the bottom line always is that as adults legally only we can consent-minors regardless of any other feelings simply cannot deemed the responsibility of others such as parent(s) or guardians.

Of course the other big problem is there is too little recognition of the existance and needs of adult little boys in those communities -everything seems geared around girls and "daddies".

The splendour of Summer

As we enter the August bank holiday, I thought I'd  like to take look back to the Summer  when I was I was away and I saw this group of trees.

 It just appealed to me greatly so grabbed my camera  and took this picture in the early morning of it while other folks were doing other things like getting up.

Nature has always held a fascination for me, not least in my childhood being surrounded by countryside.

 

It isn't just flowers that interest me, even leaf structures do too.

Summertime Cub

 

Summertime means many things but being out, exploring, going on a hike is very much a part of what it means and was a part of my original boyhood as much as relatively unstructured play with my mates was.

Scratch the surface of this boy and you will find the eternal cub scout at his happiest playing games. learning new skills and having fun under the guidance his leader so it really was no accident at the age of fifteen and sixteen I went back in time, wearing cub scout uniform.

Today although officially you can't be a cub scout within the organization, I do shadow and follow much of what cub scouts do and learn to gain their badges having a specific uniform for such activities that include short trousers.

For a boy who hasn't really past ten years of age being taken back to learn the life skills I need while having fun makes a lot of sense

Summertime with more play

Summer for me always brings back memories of vacations of the past typically in traditional seaside resorts with beaches, long shore lines to walk on and playing in the sand, making big sandcastles with moats.

It includes the days we went down to the park for a game of footy or just a made run about making up games as we went along.

It's also days out at the fair, visiting the amusement arcades, eating ice cream, going on the Dodgems and riding the Merry-Go-Round with its distinctive rhythms without a care in the world.

It's also the place adult but child me really feels at home in, doing what I understand the best having fun.

Summertime play with your mates

Summer means time together exploring and doing things together in our very own spaces so we'd make dens or climb up to our tree house for a pow-pow and sesson together for ages or at least until our Mum's called us in (and home).

It is most emphatically NOT a girls zone, you have your own with your own kind so only boys are allowed to partake in play and rituals we, as boys, love and so we have our action figures, games and toys like guns we play with with much badinage and horse play tossed in for good measure.

We definately know what boys are here as we form a tight bond and that's how we like it  enjoying our masculine ways while the girls do their thing no doubt feeling better off for not having to accomodate us.

Of course there are times we might do the odd thing together but otherwise this suits all of us down to the ground.

I'm glad to be a boy.

Summertime 2016

A few weeks in the Summer, that period where on the last day of school you'd be feeling quite elated for being free of double maths period and the cross country in all weathers for a while and yet a couple of weeks on you're bored.

It's almost as though you cannot cope without that routine, knowing exactly where and what you'd be doing at any one point in time.

Holidays when I was younger had more of a routine planned into them by parents or other bodies such as schools just to get around of this.

It wouldn't be summer without some consideration of summer attire which for boys like me means more t shirts and casual shorts as in beach or sports types as like most boys as much as I like uniform, just breaking out of it for periods is great.

Boys like me belong in and wear Speedo type swimming trunks in and around the water, tight fitting and making us look rugged and, heck more attractive even compared with the swim shorts we used to wear.

Time for a ninty-nine me thinks...

Summer and me

Summer after the Whit Holiday was always something to look forward to as after six weeks of lessons, end of term tests and all that we had the Hols, six solid weeks away from school and all its boring rules and petty swabbles between classmates except for the fact after two weeks "we woz bored"!

Sometimes the period tied in with key events such as sorting your subjects to study at the end of the third year for GCE's (or C.S.E's) for the next two years and the examinations or moving up to anothe rpart of school like the last term in Infants or the Fifth Form where come september you'd be in sixth and treated more as a young adult.

Summer term in 1974 was big with me as we'd just moved to a new school building with lots of new things we could now do but we'd only have a whole school year before we'd make our own ways to differing secondary schools.

Also being a year older I was finding I was getting more out of popular singles of the time as I understood more about what the songs were so my tastes were getting a little more sophesticated and an example of that was "Jarrow Song" by Alan Price which was about the march protesting being out of work  and One Man Band by Leo Sayer.

Spring bank holiday

 Late spring bank holiday, always a bit of funny time ever since the Labour Party added May Day to our traditional Bank Holiday calendar, wis another day off so why wouldn't you spent that time with friends doing things?

Just pack a few things and go off with your mates for a day having fun, perhaps hiking or something a bit like that in the open  countryside, seeing how many different species you can see along the way.

Weak?

The oldes trope for men and boys was the association of physical ill health with a loss of your masculine mojo which as a boy who has disabilities and who had periods of ill health growing up I am bound to say is a bit of a nonsense.

Your health depends on your physical fitness that as a boy you should be encouraged to build up and maintain but you can do little about innate health conditions only learn to master dealing with the consequences such as making up for lost time and looking after yourself through those periods.

Anyone that knows me soon realizes I've gumpton and balls.

New old you

The new but old go together with a modern bedroom with traditional wooden draws and desk to do your school homework on and space for your bags and wardrobe to keep your clothes all tidy ready for school and any social occassions you are expected to attend.

That mirrors how you dress which is less mid 2010's and more 1970's prep school avoiding that shift to long trousers all year that crept in even if you have a modern smartphone which in an age that doesn't feature the phone box as the place to ring your mates is a must and makes sending notes via text messaging a doddle.
 

School and boys

 

Around the early 1970's you tended to see a higher proportion of women teachers in school particulary Primary although when it came to Headship, Headmasters and deputies still were mainly male perhaps because of the assumption women couldn't "own" the same respect as men.

I first had a female Headmistress in my last years in high school which it had to be said felt very much a different experience not that I'm suggesting in any respect she wasn't up to it as on reflection she was excellent.

I think the problem area is when a high proportion of teaching staff are female boys feel their is no one who knows and understands what being a boy is like, what makes them "tick" and so acting up and the like increases apart from those boys who don't have good male role models at home being at risk of going down the wrong path.

Outdoor fun

 

When people think about boys at play they tend to think of things such as playing with objects such as model cars, aircraft or whole miniture worlds such as model railways often with others.

If that's not the case they are thinking of games either indoors ones such as board games and role playing games or outdoor games such as tag, cowboys and indians and as I did war games.

Thing is boys do play in other ways such as this boy who is drawing with chalk on the pavement which is something we tend to see more girls doing making the street scene far more interesting for children of all ages than what the groan ups put there.

That's the kind of thing I love too.

Seeing things in 3D

As we get into spring which takes me into spring cleaning I thought I'd look at things I recall from the past

One thing I remember having asa boy was a ViewMaster Viewer which used natural light to view still images that were mounted on a card wheel that rotated.

Technically speaking each frame used super 8 film with each image coming as a pair taken stereoscopically so when viewed through the viewer you had a three dimensional image.

There were may packs of images in set that covered disney films, cartoons, tv shows and cool scientific things like space.

I loved using mine and until around the 1990's it was still here living on the bottom shelf of the vegetable rack.

Ending the colour bar tyranny for boys

There was always this issue growing up around what colour tops boys could wear as it appeared some colours were seen as okay for boys such as red, blue, yellow or orange and others such as pink were not in any form.

This in 1972/3 would of been unthinkable.

A boy in pastel horizontal stripes and pink play shorts both specifically marked to and for boys in much the same way mens soccer teams do wear pink tops and shorts too.

I'm actually very glad todays boys and young men have a much wider range of colours they can wear without fear of ridicule, bullying or even assault and only wished we'd had that.

 

Options

There are other ways of being LB beyond the grey short trousers form of presentation and that includes wearing Kilts.

This does happen within scouting for instance such as in sessions, ceremonies and basically anything that's not climbing mountains.

It isn't unknown for some schools in Scotland to have kilt based uniforms and many weddings today not only have the groom in a kilt but all the boys whither playing roles such as page boys or not.

There's no reason why you shouldn't wear one with pride.
 

Role playing

It was oh so simple then.

Boys were do-ers, always active, always in the thick of any activity leading it with authority playing games.

Girls did play games, sometimes they'd play with us but they preferred to play amongst themselves being nurses, teachers even if sometimes they'd wear cowboy outfits or dress pretty.

In 1970 it was straightforward, mirroring more how our parents lived and so they were our role models when it came to what being a boy or a girl was.

It was great being a boy back then.

Getting it together

We played a lot with our toy cars and trucks that some talk about in a more collecting context but for us they were toys to be used so we'd have them lined up with a story for imaginative play with pile ups, delays, even crashes and what not going on.
 

There are actually some websites for boys like us such as this but they tend not to last for very long either because the hosts don't really understand what they and we are all about or some folk seem to forget just why you need rules about what you can post and where.

Cowboys and Indians in the 70's and 80's

One thing looking back at my boyhood was I had and enjoyed playing games that featured cap guns and back then there was less issues around what boys "ought" to playing and around having toy guns on you in the street.

We did play "Cowboys and Indians" splitting into two groups, fighting, trying to capture each other and mock kill them with our cap guns copying the rituals we learned from "Westerns" we saw on tv.

For us it was just a game, we didn't look deeply into historical context or any racial motives where our imaginations ran riot in gardens, local woods or countryside.

I enjoyed playing it even the being captured and tied up cos we knew what was acceptable and when you were being hurtful or otherwise mean and the grown ups we knew also could tell when play was fine to left alone and where they might step in if things were out of hand and we needed chastising.

It was better to let us work with our boyish streaks than to try to make us be more like girls.

I was never a softie for all my disabilities.

B is for birthday

Seeing this is a new blog I guess we need to set new  rituals and that starts with writing about an annual event 

The number of times a period of fifty-two weeks elapses in my life is considerable but in truth I'm never really older is in feeling simply because I am incapable of getting older that way and in lots of ways in real life more than perhaps for some through age-play, I remain forever young.

You just get more practised at being your emotional age that's all!

This return trip saw me have a good number cards from family and relatives although because here in the UK because they had Mothering Sunday on the same day that meant not just more going on it meant both Mum and I being at a joint meal.

There's a down to earth local public house here within a few minutes walk that often has people we know in so we went for a joint meal where I opted for Vegetable soup, a Turkey Roast  and Chocolate Fudge Pudding with ice cream which was delicious.

I had a couple of books by my favourite living authoress

A modern retelling of What Katy Did that I kinda missed out on reading for some reason or other

The latest part in the Hetty Feather historical adventure series that came out late last year in big book aka Hard Back form.

They arrived by courier less than half an hour before I was due to go out!!!

I had some money from my folks a brother and an aunt which can diverted to something appropriately little and some Amazon vouchers from my older brother that I'll need to look at how to get them to my account as techno stuff just loses me at times.

I had also like a good number of Middles and Littles  the Disney animated full length emotion movie Inside/Out on dvd and a few cds although I tend to get them through across the year whereas when I was younger they tended to be more things I had at birthdays and Christmas's

I'll conclude by thanking my friends for their birthday wishes.