Summer fun

 

Yesterday was a bit of an odd one with it raining quite hard first thing when I put the bins out for recycling but by had dried up with some sunshine so I was off to the park with my Dangermouse T shirt, arygle socks and shorts playing on the swing and running around after the school run was over with and I'd got my porridge down me.

That feeling play without a care in the world was and is really the thing I love around around being alb more than just the attire or effects of that past era as much as I enjoy them.

It's just acting on what is in me.

End of month thoughts

 

Well it may be the start of a new month but in some respects it does rather feel more like finishing off various projects and playing catch up here not least for being away across the weekend.

For one thing I did find my abilities to think very much on my feet rather helpful as two trains were cancelled that I planned to travel on and take decisive action proved themselves most useful.

A delayed item, see last weeks post, finally arrived as that didn't get diverted away from Heathrow Airport and was stuck in the backlog, arriving yesterday morning and a recorded ordered a couple of weeks ago should be here today.

We did gain a new member at the forum who did pose the question of this business of dressing like we did is a kink and really unless you bring things from that world into it really no as you are just being that person you feel, you may be re-enacting things from then you enjoyed presenting as he did back then or possibly going back to that point in time mentally.

People of course can and do hold all manner of opinions but the thing about points is everybody's got one and it certainly would never be first time someone tried to say something isn't what you know you do.

I like the feel of just being back in that world, having some responsibility certainly but without the weight of adult concerns and obligations weigning down on me and when with those ewho are doing that "adult" stuff it feels very comfortable, even perhaps natural to me personally.

Who knows what this month might bring?

He's back!

 

There are a few things going on this week, such as preparing to be away for a few days so I'm sorting clothes, wash bag and that all ready to go in the case and making sure my mobile phone is fully charged as I have to met with someone for part of the journey and well all know how that can end up.

After a sluggish start to the new year, forum is back to its usual level of activity which in view of what I said last week was no bad thing.

The greatest news ever however was the arrival of Harry or perhaps more the reaquientance with from the haylcon days of 2017/8 who run atumblr I just adored as really it was the kind of tumblr that had social media had been a thing in 1978-83 I might of had myself.

Harry was an actual schoolboy who was so much like I was back then, very much a traditional boy who loved traditional uniform, scouting and preferred short trousers and in so many ways was my real life muse and inspiration to just come out there and BE the me I felt and always remained.

He sometimes got the wrong sort of attention so I ensured he knew if he needed me to deal with it such as reporting and that I would do that for him cos that kind of attention by adults is totally wrong and for reasons best known to them (and maybe the odd person on Tumblr) he often had his Tumblr account blocked.

That needless to say is what happened to many of us during the great end of 2018 purge and happened this decade when one group of people seemed to think I was another acting as some kind of link to dubious sorts.

The liklihood of that was remote given some of the stuff that happened to me and the nature of the work I did, indeed I reported a few hands worth of those sorts to Tumblr.

But he is back, with an update to his life and is at University which is excellent news.

Memory stick musings

I'm just getting on with writing up this blog over the weekend where I have been a bit low in spoons which happens at times with me and where I have things to prepare for on Tuesday for good measure.

Over the last week or so I've  been thinking a bit about the difference in where I am now and where I was at a good eight to ten years ago which may seem only like yesterday to me given how my brain is wired but actually is a significant amount of time.

This ignores the impact Covid had on me in 2020 and the long covide related conditions I am dealing with too.

For one thing, that was the post breakdown period with me where I hit the buffers trying to play a role I had been encouraged to by a lot of so-called disability experts who today I see as people who fundamentally were trying to deny the major part disabilities play in my life and to a large extent shape by denying the impact and in effect having me do slot into their idea of what a 'successful' disabled person was supposed to be - an achiever showing academic abilities despite disabilities rather than a person who is may well be capable but with significant functioning issues that require constant support.

The other stemming from the same place was they also denied how those limitations mean in terms of mental development, I was functioning several years younger having the overview, language and mindset of a more junior child at high school and several years further on at the same point but being expected to perform at an adult level.

This simply isn't and hasn't in a number of decade hasn't occurred because however good I may be at filling in some gaps, the larger ones remain and to an extent even the fact I do fill the minor gaps leaves me the more vulnerable because people focus on that 'achievement' rather than what I cannot cope with and why I struggle making my way through adult life and situations.

Another of the things around this period was discovering networks sometimes websites sometimes hubs and it was one these that caught my eye Monday when looking through a  memory stick with more of an eye to pictures of my old monitor and its screen saver, I spotted some screen prints done off it from a site I spent quite a bit time on.

Yahoo 360 for the youngsters, was a giant hub where lots of groups had spaces on, you could message and blog and your blogs were interactive, you had a update stream from what your friends were doing  and at the time I was looking around  littles and groups, talking with people, exploring that side of life which I enjoyed until it shut down around July 2009.

That lead to a blog being started *cough* to collate what old posts I originally had on Yahoo 360.
That was a part of my coping mechanism back then as I have been recently explaining a little to people about bringing life back into line with what actually works for me, what meets my actual needs not least the 'little' side of me cos not wishing to sound like a record it's not so much age play as being in an actual age regressed by anyone else's standards headspace without an off button.

One of the first more dedicated spaces I joined was a music related site having shadowed it for a couple of years around the time the Beatles Capitol Albums volume 2 box set came out in 2006 because of some issues that affected initial copies.

It looked at recordings from the "What's the best sounding edition of " and what do you listen with angle which suited me although some there would push you down lines that I didn't find so rewarding and with a times a blind pro older issue policy.

There was a subgroup of "Bones" that had more person rambling conversation on which after a incident got moved to a dedicated site and recently that's been pulled as many of the metaphorically speaking got into bed with Facebook which I never felt comfortable with not least for wanting to keep aspects of this side my life out of limelight of those who misunderstand it.

The other is I do feel more stronger in myself to pursue the life that makes more sense and especially to ensure I'm in those settings that respect my real needs  being prepared to engage with me on the level I'm at, helping me to do what I can for myself while while accepting my child-like vulnerabilities prepared to just step in as needed to deal with any situations I land in.

That's come about through the baby steps I took through that period exploring my needs and making appropriate connections to communities where I really belong.

For me then the 00's were where it all came together,

Rain and Forum rules

 

It may be summer according your calendar and mine but it certainly doesn't much feel like it does it?

That works its way into things like very limited opportunities to be outdoors playing with torrential rain and hailstones even to contend with rather than keeping hydriated and slapping on copious amounts of Factor 50.

Something that does tend to come up from time to time is the Forum rules around content especially as it applies to discussion around spanking.

The first thing to say is whatever you views are or any involvement with it yourself, no one is judged for any view or personal engagement with it by the moderation team or people on the site.

The second ought to go without saying which is we are talking only about legal adults and anything that may apply to parents, grand parents etc really belongs on parenting type sites as we've no business being involved in that debate.

We're a site of Adults who retain much of our boyhood essence and do talk about our pasts.

The main purpose of the restricted discussion can be put quite simply as our hosts have Terms of Service and they don't allow "adult content" nor anything that be seen as child abuse material.

Now while we can rightly say we're talking about our times and that in looking at this part of past childhoods it certainly wasn't sexual, because for some today in other kinks it very much is (and if that's their thing, fine) our hosts slot ANYTHING to do with it under that category.

Upon reporting we'd lose the site and I'd be banned from using them. Simples.

It doesn't prevent you from saying in an introduction that you were - who wasn't back then? - but we don't go into describing the rituals with great quantities of prose such as the colour of your underwear and just were exactly they were at the first stroke.

A second reason even if I were to, involving some expense (and as I understand it current posts couldn't be imported) into a independent self hosted site is that experience at other sites has shown where you do permit greater discussion with pictures for good measure, it some comes to dominate such sites and that impacts discussion of the bigger portion of this life.

It doesn't take long before you get people joining just for that kind of talk and in effect your site becomes mainly a spanking site albeit with a twist.

The years since our conception in mid 2018 has shown there is a very real need for a discussion based site around being an adult little boy that talks about everything else such as hobbies, activities, past real lives and attire.

Those discussions are helping people come to terms with being an adult little boy, getting some of that carefree fun back, make sense of past experiences, making new-old memories even.

Those things are of far greater value than the seventh hundred spanking post whatever that person got from the experience and that's why the rules are what they are.

Sorting out terms

It's been a very hot week with temperatures upto 34.4 degrees C making doing anything rather a chore.

Terms can be hard to understand at times and people have sometimes asked about what ALB means and where it all fits in.

This is my easy to understand version.

ALB is the abbreviation for Adult Little Boy. You could say it's more or less the same thing as adult schoolboy but not as centred on Uniform  and school rituals of various sorts.

Think of things this way first time around: He's a boy obviously and has a social life at home, around his friends and various things he is involved in like sports or cubs.

That's one side of his life.

Because he is a boy and is now say over four years, he is now old enough to attend school where apart from learning things (hopefully) he also has a life in school activities and play in the playground.

The fact he goes to school makes him a school boy but he's also a boy maybe a little boy too.

Taking this forward the adult little boy is an (legal) adult who feels he has much of that little boy in him engaging in similar interests.

An adult schoolboy is that same adult little boy who has an interest in his (past) school life.

He wears school uniform, may do some studying similar to what he did and some may attend  recreated school type sessions where he is a pupil and person is playing a teacher/headmaster.

We alternate between the two sides because that makes us the whole person.

Being dressed as a LB

I wasn't too great at the weekend with a bad episode of Vertigo that left everything rotating to the point every time I tried to walk I kept going to fall over but sometimes you have thoughts in such moments and here's one.

Sometimes I wonder what would really happen if everybody knew I dressed like a little boy
Would they look at you with two heads, may be refuse to speak to you or otherwise be spoken of in whispers or is it that actually they're ok really with it?

I mean this has been going on for ages really

I'm inclined to think most of the time it's a "I'm okay, you're okay" standoff where everybody just holds back on verbalizing how they feel so it's just little game society plays especially after one group of people outed me only to find everyone I knew just wasn't bothered wanting me in roles that involved interacting with others who just may of heard something.

While the experience wasn't good and sure, those people shouldn't of done what did, in one way they did me a favour - they forced me  confront the reality and just be open about it.

Today I no longer deny this side of me at all

Moving on into 2021

In this anything that doesn't quite slot into the either the original blog or that uniformed schoolboy sometimes I do publish some kind of a reflection on the year and other times I just don't.

I suppose the first thing to say was the year was challenging when every single tumblr account of mine was terminated and equally two months later so was my Wordpress blogs so not only did I lose a bunch of Tumblr blogs, I also lost the back ups for them.

That was the reason why having found it, I restored the original blog to provide some of the history and background that never was in that uniformed school boy and that would function more as a tumblr replacement.

I did re-establish That Traditional Schoolboy (TSB) on Tumblr, an age regression centred one (That Smol Boy) and a more general facts, adventure and boyhood interests on (A Traditional Schoolboy) but I am under no illusion that what goes up can go down and that the only way to publish securely what I want is on my own blogs.

That fact does limit what I can post and the ability to publish sequences of posts  without being misunderstood before being terminated.

One facet of this blog tends to be discussion around what boyhood means, past issues around how that affects self image and recovery from all of that which in last year had the struggles of living with Coronavirus restrictions added to the mix.

For all that Coronavirus brought, I moved past many of those issues facing fears head on, exploring and actually enjoying being that boy all over again as with much of the community off work or working from home our worlds crossed and I was accepted for just being that, getting on with life, following the guidance.

I did get away at the start of the year with adventures that in hindsight set me up for the remainder and it was the year that I decided to take the plunge and go back not to just boyhood in so many of its trappings but also to have my shorts taken a good way up to where they were back then.

Mine had been like many of biological age boys of today on or only just above the knee short trousers because they were not long (yuck) but nothing like the short trousers we had then or even adults did wear a leisure wear in the mid nineties.

To be out as I was a week before Christmas exploring, scrambling on your knees in the winter sun with most of legs exposed glistening is and was so evocative of that time I felt just like a ten or possibly twelve year old boy just playing outdoors.

Short trousers of that length are so me, something I feel comfortable in my own skin wearing that I can't see myself wearing except in the most adverse conditions anything else that indeed that's what I'm wearing typing this with temperatures at minus two degrees c.

I did talk a bit across the year about the need to respect and provide separate spaces for boys and men as much as we all would agree equality of opportunity helping us grow as people which I certainly have this last year

It's been very much a boys own year for me learning to embrace and enjoy the male world being out with people and channelling those more masculine interests I had back then and indeed one are where it showed was just a few days ago. 

I had long missed my original action man figures, something I fondly recall playing both on my own and with other boys with, the memory of clearly showing that the odd untypical interest aside, I was just like every other boy of my era.

Well, I finally got a replacement for Christmas and  undoing it took my right back to that era, dressed as I was in school uniform with short trousers in the company of my parents on Christmas day opening it, I was smiling again.

My boyhood hero and I were reunited as one. Boy and Man back together, playing having fun.

2021 cannot be anything like the period before I found ASB and that came back too and Tumblr because I have moved on so much in that time certain of being just a regular boy in a adult body who loves being himself.

I have the right...

to Structure

Something I wish to talk about this week  is the role of Structure within LB/ASB life.

Something that isn't said enough is what enables you to let out your LB/ASB side is that somebody else handles the responsibilities so you need not concern yourself with them, that in other words you do not have to be your own adult (assuming you are fully capable of it).

That totally frees you up to be that adult child because you know, you cannot, will not even be allowed to fall because the "responsible adult" be they a Caregiver in a DD or DM/lb relationship or the Cglre  Dxlb or Mxlb x taking out the "Dominant" with the BDSM kink overtones and in effect making it more paternalistic "Daddy or Mummy" 2 (adult) little boy or a ASB school centred Teacher/Head Teacher steps in ensuring you do not come to any harm.

You are that little boy to them and you will allow them to address you as such.

They also by consent deal with handling any dangerous, rude or otherwise risky behaviour  on your part by stepping in and being the one who disciplines you whither or not it it involves any or no corporal punishment.

The point is, by providing that structure, they enable you to be just you, the adult little boy just being a boy knowing he'll be cared for, safe and not likely to get into situations that work against his needs.

Bringing out the boy

I'm not generally into anything beyond uniform outside of play wear and my footie strip although with many actual schools being off for some days there's an argument for saying the LB/ASB can presently take his cue from events and alter his presentation a little as much as I'm for dress shirts and ties normally. 

Tailoring matters I think in this life and one aspect around tailoring that does make a difference I feel is when it comes to getting the right leg length for you because newer generations are taller than we were at their age and many suppliers are only supplying longer inside leg lengths.

What may be just above the knee on them is more on or even only just above the bottom of my knees almost into Knickerbocker  territory.

By taking up to six inches, while not standing out too much in public settings that on a grey pair redefines me as a boy, a little longer than what I wore then and presents me in a way I feel most comfortable  with.

I like how these shorts presents me as without making super obvious, they do not smooth away my maleness.

Being comfortable in your own skin matters.

That's the difference finding and having your inside leg on your shorts adjusted makes and it is so worth it.

Getting set to go

There is going to be a break in transmission on Tumblr and probably on the wordpress blogs that actually more reworked back ups of tumblrs because in a manner of speaking I'm getting my kit together for spending time as an adult little boy.

As I have sometimes said with a little bit of care over logo'd items, it isn't too hard to live out your life dressed as one at least out of the workplace although with some occupations like the Post Office you can have shorts supplied and just wear plain grey socks and achieve a fair bit 'under the radar' and the post office was far a period an employer of a good number 15 year olds straight out of school before leaving ages were upped.

The reason for being away is for doing things together as most of us don't like to be on our own in this life so rambles and that are best shared where you can and with the other stuff happening in March I really need to make the most of it.

Online rant time

Actually I'm pretty pissed today over something that honestly makes little sense and something that seems to plague online ASB communities.
I publish a few tumblrs, chances are if your ALB or ASB you've encountered mine and we have two sets of problems on Tumblr.
The first is Tumblr tends to inexplicably terminate accounts of those of us are ALB or ASB even though we've not formally broken any of their terms of service, it seems that they see blogs that have a highish if not total preoccupation with perfectly safe for work images of boys with no sexual comments as being in some way connected with Child Exploitation rather than say nostalgic reflections on youth.
This pushes some to become "Gatekeepers" trying to remove anything they think may threaten their own blogs with instances of them reporting others.
The other is people who decide arbitrarily to block you from following them with no attempt to contact you if any aspect of your activity may cause concern.
At the weekend a number of Tumblr blogs of our sort were terminated one of which I did reblog on a regular basis from connected around outdoor pursuits and scouting  even since i established a tumblr specifically around that naturally was very much safe for work respectful of minors and to whom they'd not had an issue with me.
I found on Sunday they'd made a new new account so I messaged them from the same account 'd used before, they confirm it is them and the lo and behold, they had blocked me meaning I cannot reblog from them.
Nothing on my account or that Tumblr had changed in the space of a couple of days and yet they had deliberately stopped me from seeing their profile and reblogging.
You sometimes feel like tossing the towel in with them.

Getting back to where you once belonged

I would be easily to rail at much that is wrong with the world right now but sometimes it's better to let the red mist drift off and look at what is working instead.
This whole life has been going on a pretty long time to be honest a few rabbit holes I was pushed along into excepted and a few attempts at masking aside but with much of the former it really messed me up.
The thing always was from the outset I was much more younger less by the standards of people of the same birth age 'mature' than most and as time went on that gap got bigger to the point  increasingly I had little really in common outside of work and even within to assume I was an adult was an assumption too far.
I had to be handled more like a schoolboy on work experience than a grown man, kept an eye on and have things explained to me simply.
Even if elements of how I presented might of looked more mainstream like wearing mainly Chino pants even if they were fully elasticated then other elements like wearing more school type sweatshirts and having animal design backpacks and cute plushies on the desk were not.
My drifting back after the misguided attempts to take me down other rabbit holes toward being an adult little boy, finally accepting I was in no way functionally adult was a breakthrough as was deciding to present myself at all times as that little boy of junior age has enabled me to be seen and treated more as that adult but child by literally casting the adultness off me whenever I'm in company at home or in the community.
By appearing in my shirt, grey shorts and matching long grey socks, I am no longer mistaken by people for an adult and they feel more able to exercise the kind of protected oversight and authority I need having de-adulted myself in public.
Thus for me life for having made this step is all the more better.

Thoughts from away

The week's been  a bit different for spending time with friends doing things together which to me this whole life is really about rather than just how many times you can put on a uniform or some other outfit because its what you do that brings the sense of being that boy forever out much more I feel.

It is the invoking of the spirit of your boyhood past, what made you 'tick', feeling your whole mind and body was very much alive and allowing that to return to you after years of having to appear grown up but not actually feeling as one with it to being that boy all over again.

Now it is the case not everybody can be living like this all day long because people may have relationships to maintain, jobs to go to that may have dress code restrictions and so on but even spending sometime as that boy reaps dividends

.
As well for reason only known to them Tumblr restored after nine months my original Traditional Schoolboy 2  blog after nuking it in November 2018 which I wrote about on here which I guess is better late than never.
A link to it is Here *

I do need to think through it's medium to long term future because I did in effect replace it even if most the images were not as it was too sudden to have a back up of as having multiple Tumblr accounts is messy.

*  altered 2021 after original account removed to replacement that has most of the posts but was renamed.

The Happy House Children

A part of a solution for me might include not so much just dressing as a younger boy but also having more of the life and interests.

One of my stronger memories of my official childhood is reading, not that I was what you might call a good reader but we did have a fair number of books in the house and stored in a big wooden toy box were some of mine, usually those my Mum thought I'd outgrown.

A good example of which is this one which was really a book for seven to ten year olds that stayed in that box well into my mid teens.

It's a series of two short stories of a group of young children called Benji, Jack and Jane plus dog who have to move together with their parents and their adventures through play with other children and grown ups.

Its very innocence, the clear lessons shown about appropriate behaviour such as owning up if you do something and clear consequences for wrong doing are woven into a fun set of adventures.

It was really that I before I knew the terms I was looking for even in my mid teens as what I now know as regression was even then a part of what made me different than most of my peers not least in my own mind I WAS that younger child.

 It was why I kept the books and puppets from that era which I feel it may make more sense to go back to.

Littles away time 2017

As you may of gathered, I was away for a period last week so I wasn't about for that period not just 'cos I didn't bring the Chromebook with me but in any event the internet where we was was down most of the time so here's how it went.

I caught the bus on Friday (2/9) from our estate to get a connecting bus to our railway station, one of biggest in the UK and the premier one in the North-west Midlands as I was told no taxis were available only to find out later on one did come!

Fortunately the connections worked out fine so I arrived in good time to catch the first train as I needed to catch a service to the outskirts of Birmingham to meet up with a friend who'd take both of us to the large property in Eastern England we'd be at.

I stopped overnight having had biscuits and tea followed by a beef stew for evening meal while we talked about things about what we were doing and some techno stuff.

Upon waking up first thing as we needed to start out around ten o clock, we saw a half inch of snow on the roofs as it had  snowed overnight so we packed a shovel just in case and after a light breakfast set off. It had stopped snowing where we were but as we got near Leicestershire it resumed briefly not without some idiot trying to cause a multiple pile up that would of involved us!

We were a little early so stopped at a famous reservoir nearby meeting with two others in our group before arriving after we had exclusive use of the property during our stay.

After bringing our cases in I quickly had wash as people were sorting out individual rooms which involved putting room signs up so having found mine that was downstairs because of my mobility issues,  I set my room up.

I opened the first lot of Jelly Babies having carried the one kilogram bag with me, putting them in a bowl in the front room and soon the first of the week's jigsaws to finish was set out on a table.

By the time everyone had arrived, it was getting time to order some food as we all were too tired to fix our own so we placed a big order for mainly curries which for me included Chicken Tikka Nega which is like bits of a Chicken Tikka and fries in a bag from a well regarded Indian takeaway.
I changed then into my trademark blue  top and grey shorts with a red "Junior Prefect" badge that was close the last avatar I had here that I had on until Monday.

On of the Sunday, We had a morning arts and craft session where those mystery objects which for me included a clay hedgehog money-box to paint, a goodie bag that included  bits came in handy so I could paint a horse and make it's tail and do a bit of origami, assembling a card pigs head mask and attaching a piece of elastic.

Although I required a bit of help with part of this, actually I found it  really enjoyable putting me in little headspace being the sort of thing we did at school.

As an experiment we had Hot Dogs and Hamburgers for lunch  as we'd normally have a meat salad that soon disappeared  down our tummies like we were ravenous dogs. I think it's safe to say that sure was a hit with everyone.

In the afternoon we were treated to a couple of cartoons from Hello Kitty and friends before moving on the main feature, a showing of The Secret Life of Pets which was really funny and in a couple of spots a bit sad too. During the intermission tubs of icecream were served and popcorn was on tap throughout.

Emma cooked a lovely Beef roast with steamed vegetables that you'd of gladly of paid for commercially as it was that delicious and provided a New York style cheesecake.

In the evening the lesser spotted Catboy that had snucked in with Andrew on Saturday presented a music quiz with a twist: namely most of the questions had a connection to Animals which was the theme of this weeks camp.

I was pleased to see it went down rather well having prepared it, with people having a laugh, making gestures and at one point even singing the Hippopotamus Song which is really the point of this - having fun - and one member and Karl won it!

Monday saw me change dress to a a bluey-grey one with a top  pocket on what would be my left for a handkerchief that I stayed in for the duration of the time.

On the Monday we had in cookery decorating Gingerbread Men overseen by Emma using icing although as I was having a periodic R.S.I. flare up making fine wrist/finger control difficult, I opted to do a little colouring instead. This underscores one point which is while obviously they'd be little point meeting up to do nothing but sit in your room, no one has to OR can make you do any one activity as much as they'd like everyone to take part in theirs.

Later on  we  had a treasure hunt involving finding various teddy bears and searching everywhere for clues.
In the evening we watched a few videos of previous meet ups which was interesting.

On Tuesday we had the second arts and crafts session in the morning and I did some photography as we had extensive grounds plus good light.

After lunch, Alice made a video based on ideas from the group of a group of littles going on a hunt for teddy bears which we called "Unbearable" with us all acting in it shot out in the grounds and edited digitally in the house.

Karl made and cooked a scrumptious Cottage Pie with vegetables for our evening meal before three people played guitar, keyboards and sang a number of songs together which was much appreciated.

On Wednesday we need to leave so apart from packing our cases which I'd been doing a bit at a time, we had breakfast and two by two made our ways off with myself and Andrew being the last to leave so we and Karla finished off some of the salad before driving away.

We hit very dull torrential rain around Northamptonshire and into Warwickshire with some flooding in places coming back.

As Andrew  had other business to attend to necessitating her earlier departure, Martin who was going into town anyway kindly dropped me off at the station to catch the train back to mine ready to get a taxi back to the door to be greeted by Marmalade feigning disinterest.

For me this period was mixture of things, first and foremost time to actually regress in the company of like minded people doing actual child-like things together face to face, building relationships of which for me one important thing was being able to talk and show things with  someone I'd only met online.

It's one thing to be at home with your Netbook or Smartphone talking with people, it's a whole nother thing being under one roof together for days.

It also showed the strengths of our group such as those who catered for us, Beth's inspired littles doodling on plastic backed paper that made the place look and feel like real littlespace that we belonged in and indeed she put a awful lot of thought into everything including the arts and crafts, Sam's activity program so while we had spaces for personal littlespace, it provided the structure for more group things and not least the organizers handling of the booking and monies which went very smoothly. I think I did good with my quiz.

Seeing one of the assembled reinvent the ancient tradition of boarding school midnight feasts  brought a smile to my face. 😃

It also showed how I'd got some control over my social anxiety and had assumed more responsibility to be engaged directly in contributing to our activities, not least helping out and doing my chores.

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.

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.

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.