Something for the road

It is hard to believe we are in Spring not least with the recent very windy and cool temperatures most recently.

Getting out always was the thing when I was younger be that to the informal what today they'd call unstructured rustic play areas with grass and a few trees dotted about where in the absence of play equipment we created our "play" in our heads, running around, kicking a ball in the street or going to park which in those pre subsidence works tended to be muddy and sinking in the middle.

The other kind of out tended to involve short car journeys where we'd pull up play for a bit before having a packed lunch and a rest to let your dinner go down.

It wasn't uncommon for us to bring comics, magazines and books with us from the ever popular I Spy series to the "Observer book of..." series that you might read in the car but more often just resting by a tree on your picnic throw and whicker basket with the food and drink in feeling carefree.

That was how this thing was with us.

Looking after each other as Boys

 While the international picture is a matter of considerable concern my thoughts are more centred elsewhere.

It's not the most comfortable thing to say but as men and boys we struggle with emotions, some coming close to denying whole areas of them unless deemed to be "manly" they are experiencing, that are actually affecting how and why they are behaving at that moment.

We do experience trauma and loss that as much as we don't wish for any soppy stuff is affecting our actions and relationships.

We "shut down", we become unusually irritable, uncooperative or even angry because we are affected as much as we're trying to kid everybody we are not having not processed our feelings.

Yelling "Get Over It" really is nothing like the answer because we just haven't as anyone whose been through PTSD will tell you.

We need to learn to accept help and be the help for our mates who may be struggling with issues.

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

Getting proper started

It is a pretty warm week having been out without even a coat on enjoying the fresh air between keeping an eye on our Forum which as own falls down to me as the person who is held by the host to be in charge of it.

We do see a far bit of talk around the differences in school type uniform from the days we saw it first time around to todays.

One area tends to be around wearing dress shirts and ties  as some schools usually combined infant and juniors have ditched them for school polo shirts and yet others have reverted to old school shirt and tie even if it's a clip on tie rather than the sort you tied yourself.

The other thing is the perennial shorts lengths discussion give how many school where shorts still are an option tend to be just above the knee  where for many of us they were appreciably shorter and always worn with long usually turn over socks.  

This summer Japanese Uniform isn't a a bad compromise keeping shirt and tie in even if the shirt is short sleeved and sleeveless jersey with logo.

What caught me eye were the sensibly short short trousers for comfort and plenty opportunities for fresh air and sun on your legs and the medium length socks that are more flattering than ankle socks.

For the modern touches it is very much in touch with spirit of traditional school boys uniform.

Somehow there seems to be a dirth of traditional comic type adventure stories for boys of the sort we loved to read and I really don't see that modern boys at the core are that much different even if the publish companies seem to be very PC.

Of course it isn't all helped by the battle for space in newsagents and the trend since the 90's for tv and cartoon based tie in publications.

There just has to be a way of getting such material out to a potential audience.

Too good to be true

After last weeks muted comment on the Current Affairs story of the year so far and as we are marking the Seven Hundredth anniversary post on the Scouting and related blog elsewhere I was looking forward to a fairly low key entry on here except for a brief and clear as mud note to say some content was found on my account they thought *may* breach their standards and *may* be illegal and was removed.

It didn't say what or from where or even say categorically it is so I suspect this is an auto content checker as it happened with moving one old but discontinued blog from one account to another using the export/import routine from three minutes of downloading the .xml file and importing it.

The knowing would state at that point "well they hosted it before without issue" and that is quite true, just over five years in point of fact, but with Tech business like Google that's irrelevant because the clock ticks from the start they set.

I have removed anything that might fall foul from that and although I'm 99% sure nothing here was involved I have taken  similar steps here which does leave the odd gap to paper over when I have a spare moment.

I've also done back ups ready in case any further issues.

Still best regard this as excuse for a bit of a make over and a learning curve to go with.

We'll see if the expected snow comes in a few day's time.

Thoughts on conflict

There's much going on this week that's been on my mind such as the War in Ukraine especially how it is impacting boys and girls having to take shelter, education being disrupted and with their families having to flee the conflict completely taking very little with them.

It is heart-breaking to see them clutching hold alls and plushies with all the can carry making that journey even risking being shelled trying to escape and you cannot ignore how children here feel seeing that going on too.

It just shouldn't be and how many of us can say we'd of expected such a conflict in our lifetimes when the prevailing wisdom was everything including the cold war was over since 1989.

We had tensions in 1962 and 1983, the latter I recall well personally but whatever you thought of their politics, everybody involved understood the risk to us all and kept a lid on it which isn't how many of see things today.

My emotions then and now are basically the same because I am the same boy who saw and was horrified by Vietnam and the IRA bombings in most respects and their impact on children.

The rights of child matter even in war.

Was there something I was meant to do?

 

A feeling I'm very familiar with as I easily get sidetracked away from what it is meant to  be looking up or doing into something else and find I've run out of time which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't that others are relying  on me and I flunked it.

I think with me it's tied in with being autistic and having adhd, I oscillate between a lack of urgency to get started and complete a task and hyper focus where I i'm lock on to on thing to the point I have to completely finish the task regardless of any others or other needs such as eating regular.