My year

For me it's been a relatively good year, which is a welcome change. Every year since 2006 when my business failed up to and including 2010 was unpleasant and negatively stressful in some way. I say "negatively stressful" because there is such thing as "positive stress", which is what I have been thriving on this year. Those previous years brought nothing but stressful losses, whether financial, of personal relationships, of employment and even my home. I can't say that I've regained all of those things because that would be far from the truth, but I do believe to be on my way in a sustainable and realistic manner.

I started 2011 unsure about my current job and I was tempted by a very extraordinary opportunity that came across my path. I wasn't offered the position in the end, I fell at the last hurdle during the recruitment process. I'm glad that happened now because my position at Glide developed and improved dramatically throughout the rest of the year and I am very settled there now. I see myself staying with the company and being involved in its development and future diversification for some time. Although I have been in higher paying positions in the past I can quite honestly say that it is the most rewarding job I have ever had and I really wouldn't swap either it or the people I work with for anything less than something that I'd simply be an idiot to pass up.

With greater happiness in my job came greater acceptance and belief that my move from Manchester to Birmingham was a positive step, because for a while I quite honestly wasn't sure, and this lead me to be able to move in to a place of my own in the middle of the city in November, which has made me immensely happy. Living on my own, on my own terms, in the middle of another fantastic city and with everything in walking distance again is a dream come true and I cherish it every day, whereas when I was living in Manchester I took it for granted. I'd like to thank all those who were so instrumental in helping make it happen for me.

2012

As I mentioned before I've a list of New Year's resolutions and I'm so determined to stick to them that I have designed a spreadsheet that measures my success with each on a month by month basis. By that you can obviously infer that "be less anally retentive" isn't one of them. However, also as mentioned before I'm not sharing them.

I've high hopes for my job and my team as the company I work for grows. We're moving offices at the start of March to the Alpha Tower from our current base in the Jewellery Quarter, which should make things a little easier although I'll actually have a smaller desk and my team will lose the separate room that we greatly enjoy at the moment. My team will expand (probably two-fold) and the company's diversification plans are thoroughly exciting. A pay rise would be nice but Rome wasn't built in a day.

I want to continue to improve and expand my skill set and experience as you might expect. As mentioned before I've learnt more in my current position than in any other position so I don't expect that curve will get any shallower any time soon, nor would I want it to. I want to get into mobile applications if possible as it would be nice to have something that just earns money for me while I sleep, but as with most software development you typically (but not always) need a problem before you can come up with a solution.

There are some demons still haunting me from the collapse of my business that I want to put to rest this year, finally, I think if I carry those over to 2013 I really will be doing something wrong.

The rest is all personal, really. Yes, I'd quite like to meet another fella, before you ask, but this isn't high on my list of priorities, mainly because I'm old and ugly enough to realise that such things will happen to you when you least expect and whether you like it or not, so to seek them out would be a futile waste of precious time. That said, I've not been as "eligible" as I am now for some time now, so who knows.

I wish everyone who's bothered to read this far a fabulous 2012. Let's hope it doesn't all end horribly on 12th December, eh?

Notable despatches

This section is a footnote really in the absence of a full review of news events this year. I would note that I actually read and/or watch the news every day with a keen interest and during my early days of blogging I would blog almost every day with my comment on whatever was going on, however, more recently Facebook and subsequently Twitter have provided more effective means of comment, meaning that rare is now the occasion where I will create a full blog about current affairs.

Banned shopping

Col. Gadaffi, the Libyan despot who ruled for 42 years since taking power in a military coup. An unpleasant relic from the 20th Century, no doubt, but I think many people will secretly miss the entertainment that he used to provide to the rest of the world. Modern world leaders may well be safe, responsible (Gordon Brown notwithstanding) and largely democratically elected but I can't think of a single one who I would describe as "a character", nor will any of them be remembered much beyond their tenures, not that I'm suggesting infamy to be something to aspire to. The circumstances surrounding Gadaffi's death, however, raises worrying questions about Libya's brave new future.

Invented nuclear fusion

Kim Jong-Il, the "Dear Leader" of the bizarre world that is the North Korea, itself also a haunting relic of the 20th Century that the world could well do without. Kim's death was not unexpected, and although he was an abysmal failure as a leader, despite what North Korea state media insist, his passing on is not necessarily a good thing. The pampered idiot he's left in charge is just that and nobody in the rest of the world wants a nasty coup in a rogue, pariah state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and the world's fifth largest army. Orwellian societies were never designed to leave the printed page.

Bins taken out on Bank Holiday

Osama Bin Laden, the criminal mastermind behind the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, who was tracked down to a compound in the middle of an affluent area of Pakistan near to a military academy, which embarrassed the Pakistani authorities immensely and has since strained relations between the two countries. This news was not entirely surprising what with the tenth anniversary of September 11th and Obama's pledge to remove US troops from Iraq looming large. His elimination was a necessary pre-requisite of being able to say the job was done. May America's wounds now heal properly.

Also mad

Steve Jobs, the visionary creator of Apple, now the world's most successful company. I've been an Apple user for coming up to 6 years now and I have never looked back. Jobs initially tempted me away with the iPod and Intel-based Macs, and has continued to deliver ever since. The world needs more people like Steve Jobs. He has no clear heirs-apparent in the computer industry. There are contenders, without a doubt, but only time will tell if they end up making the sort of difference that he did.

The BBC have a slideshow on more notable deaths in 2011.

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So sure enough, one random morning in August some men turned up with some noisy machines and started clearing the previously overgrown plot, in readiness for the construction of two new 5 bedroom houses on it. The six day per week early morning noise of this project is what I've been moaning about so much on Twitter recently. We couldn't imagine how they would get two 5 bedroom houses on the plot but it turns out they both have three storeys, allowing smaller footprints.

My side bedroom window looks out upon this building site, which is chiefly why I have suffered so much with the noise. Angle grinders outside your window at 7.45am aren't funny. Still, regardless of this, I was able to slowly observe the construction and I took a number of photos of key points of progress. Even though the houses aren't complete, I cannot take any more than I already have because my vantage point is now completely blocked by the brick wall of the side of one of the houses.

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They are all .uk domain names and are listed below. If you are the original registrant of any of them and you would like to retain it, or you are otherwise interested in acquiring one or more of them, please contact me.

The domains are: blimail.co.uk, blogerati.co.uk, bloggerati.co.uk, bluelightening.co.uk, bluelightningmail.co.uk, bogreport.co.uk, burt.me.uk, doofdoof.co.uk, duncaninternational.co.uk, fairlakeholdings.co.uk, gamesanimal.co.uk, gay-lo.co.uk, gaylo.co.uk, innit.co.uk, l1ve.co.uk,  l1-lexington.co.uk, l1-liberty.co.uk, l1-lincoln.co.uk, l1ve-lexington.co.uk, l1ve-liberty.co.uk, l1ve-lincoln.co.uk, lexington-building.co.uk, liberty-building.co.uk, lincoln-building.co.uk, qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm.co.uk, sheeponheat.co.uk and stuii.me.uk.

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However, the fact of the matter is that I miss blogging, so I've decided to start again with a fresh site using WordPress, which, if you haven't looked at it recently, is seriously impressive web publishing software. I previously rolled my own blogging software because things like Blogger and WordPress didn't do what I wanted them to do, but things have moved on since.

Over time I'm going to import a number of old posts from my old blog, but certainly not all of them. Not only are there 1,641 of them, making a full manual import to WordPress impractical, but the other reason why I took Stuii Times down was that I had also decided that some of the posts, especially the older posts, were perhaps not suitable for public display any more given how much my life had changed in the seven years that I blogged. With that borne in mind, my future posts are likely to be less about me and more about the things that I am interested in. I've imported all posts from 2008 so far and will work backwards from there.

I'm not making a big song and dance about the launch of this site at the moment, I'm going to give it a "soft launch" and see if it gets any traffic or comments over the next few months. If I like what I see and where it's going then I'll tell everyone.

Update 24/06/2009: Unfortunately the first comment I received from a "reader" of the site was quite obviously spam, so I've turned on the setting whereby people have to register in order to comment. I didn't want to do that, but having your first comment as spam isn't a good omen. Sign of the times, I suppose.

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Spotted in Liverpool

What a total shithole Liverpool is. I went there on the train today to fix something that had gone wrong at Chris' Dad's as yet unused new office there and the place hasn't changed at all since I last went, which has to be three months at least.

There's still a sky full of cranes from any number of building sites, each one of which has imposed some sort of temporary road closure in its environs, which would normally be acceptable except all the different construction companies don't appear to communicate with each other regarding their road closures and temporary one way systems and so it's actually possible to get trapped in a one way system from which there is no escape, if you're in a car. Even pedestrians come up against sealed off streets with no alternative route presented, and I know the particular area of the city in which this office is reasonably well; heaven help a visitor to the city. The roads and pavements that are open are all wet and filthy with building site muck.

Yes, I know that all these building sites will eventually make Liverpool a better place and that it's in the middle of a transition period at the moment, but I do have ask to ask to what end? Liverpool, far from being the globally important shipping hub that it used to be, is just another boring British city, trying desperately to catch up with its trailblazing Mancunian neighbour, but it's just too late to the party if you ask me. Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield are the same, they're all building sites too at the moment, keen to compete with Manchester, but it's all a little trite now. Manchester's done it; it's rebuilt, revitalised and it's fabulous. Why bother with anywhere else? I love it here. Were it not for the fact that I have family in Surrey I probably wouldn't ever leave the city, holidays notwithstanding.

The Liverpool locals haven't changed either, but then I didn't expect anything else. They still seem to actually go out of their way to get in mine. I don't know what it is about Liverpudlians, they just seem to have this knack of getting in my way more than locals in any other city in the country.

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<babywafn> ew
<babywafn> all they had was
<babywafn> diet caffeine free pepsi twist
<babywafn> which is basically pepsi's way of saying FUCK YOU

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Throughout my teenage years I developed feelings for a number of my friends, although I wasn't entirely sure why and I simply assumed that such feelings would pass. Which they did, of course, for the friends concerned, but my general feelings of attraction to other blokes did not. Without any evidence to the contrary in my sheltered northwest Surrey world, caught between wealthy commuter areas and council estates, I simply assumed that my feelings were a phase, even if it did seem like quite a long phase, and that they would pass in time.

I initially screwed up Sixth Form at Fullbrook School. In my first year I took the wrong subjects and lacked the maturity to deal with them properly. Towards the end of the academic year 1992 to 1993 it was clear to all concerned that I was not going to fare well in the first year exams and that I really wasn't enjoying my subjects at all. I took the decision to restart my time in Sixth Form in September 1993, except with two different subjects, which were of more interest and ultimately of more use to me.

The upshot of this of course was that I spent three years in Sixth Form instead of the customary two. Being "old in the year" in terms of the academic year this meant that by the time I left in June 1995 I was nineteen and a half years old, leaving a school that by that point accepted pupils that had just turned eleven. This combined with my efforts to have uniform at Sixth Form abolished gave rise to me being called "sir" by some of the younger students in the main school towards the end of my tenure, but I digress.

So, the academic year 1993 to 1994 saw me start my courses again. Although I was in Lower Sixth classes the school considered to be Upper Sixth due to my age and standing with my peers. I remained close with my Upper Sixth peers and due to my exposure to the new Lower Sixth students I very quickly formed some new friendships with them too. Things were well with me again and I was happy. I still fancied some of my mates, but that was nothing unusual and, of course, it was just a phase and it would pass!

During the remainder of that academic year, in 1994, my close Upper Sixth peers also became friendly with some of the Lower Sixth students, a group of girls, as one might expect. The trouble is, rather than being just friends with them, my Upper Sixth peers started to develop romantic attractions and relationships with them. This is not an unreasonable thing to have happen, we were all senior teenagers and that is of course what teenagers do, I had no problem with that. What caused difficulty for me was that this group of girls didn't particularly like me very much. Sure, we had occasions when I got on like a house on fire with them, but when they started dating my friends we didn't get on so well. I don't know which of us saw the other as more of a threat, but that's what the problem was. I saw them as a threat because they were taking my friends' attention away from me. They probably saw me as a threat because of exactly the same reason, but vice versa.

The other new feelings I experienced were the desire for such a romantic relationship for myself. Although at that point I had not accepted that I was gay, I knew that I definitely was not interested in a relationship with a girl, and I think for that reason I found it difficult to fit in with my friends because they had discovered this new aspect to their lives and I was unable to join them in enjoying it. I became ostracised from them for a period, instead preferring to spend time with my own Lower Sixth friends. I became quite depressed about it, mostly during the spring and summer of 1994.

Ultimately this difficult period had no bearing on my relationship with these friends. As is common with teenage romances, their relationships came to an end and everyone moved on, especially since in September 1994 they all left to go to university, having completed their A-Levels of course. Because I had restarted my courses, I was of course a year behind, and was to remain at Sixth Form for a third year.

The academic year 1994 to 1995 started much like the previous years, except without my Upper Sixth peers and with another new influx of Lower Sixth students, the previous Lower Sixth having been promoted to Upper Sixth. I was now Super Upper Sixth; the school gave me a special "Year 14" designation, possibly because their computer system would have been confused by anything else. I remained heavily involved in the students' committee, which I had been a part of for 18 months by now, which contributed to an increased level of popularity amongst my fellow students which I greatly valued.

I was doing well at my studies, I was enjoying a fantastic social life, I was fit and healthy, I was immensely popular, I had a bit of money due to taking a job in the petrol station at Tesco in Brooklands and I didn't have any reason to be unhappy whatsoever. I'd still not come to terms with my sexuality, but at that point it just wasn't important to me, especially since the difficulties of the previous academic year had come to an end. Other than that, I had it all. It was one of the high points in my life.

Ball On A Boat was by then a regular and popular event on the Fullbrook Sixth Form social calendar. As its name suggests, it was an evening party on a riverboat in London. My contemporary committee members and myself had organised two already: one in December 1993 and another in the summer of 1994. The third such event was organised for 21st December 1994, to celebrate the breakup for Christmas.

The event went off without a hitch, save for the inevitable necessity to stop the coaches on the A3 so that those who had over-imbibed before departure may relieve themselves on the hard shoulder; this was normal. Everyone arrived on the boat in his or her smart clothes, there was no fuss, there was no trouble and everybody seemed to be having a good time.

Then it happened. Everything changed.

About halfway through the evening I was on the bow of the vessel with a few other people. A blond boy from the Lower Sixth came out by himself, looking a little nervous. He wore a blue shirt that he'd spilt something on (not unusual, it was a party on a boat, after all). He glanced at me briefly and then looked towards the Houses of Parliament, which we happened to be passing. A couple of minutes passed and the other people went back inside the cabin, leaving me with the blond boy on the bow. He turned to me, smiled, extended his right hand and said "I'm Daniel".

Capillary dilation, fluctuation of the pupil and involuntary dilation of the iris (also known as the "blush response") was my immediate actual physical reaction. I'm also pretty sure that my heart stopped beating for two or three beats before it then started back up again, beating harder than I had ever felt it beat before. Everything I thought I know about feelings for other people, in that instant of time, changed drastically and permanently. Quite literally, I fell in love with this boy on the spot, and completely ill prepared for it. My world had, in the blink of an eye, changed forever.

"I'm Stu," was my response. I shook his hand. I maintained eye contact with him for longer than either of us were comfortable with and we look away, at the sights around us on the Thames. I don't remember what we talked about then, it was probably just small talk about the party, but it was short lived as some friends dragged me into the cabin for some reason or other. I told him I'd speak to him later, perhaps.

The rest of the evening played out without a hitch. But there was just one thing on my mind. When the coaches arrived back outside the Black Prince in New Haw Daniel and I engaged in some further small talk, but he was soon torn away by his own friends who wanted to make their way home to Byfleet.

The 1995 spring term did not start until 4th January, a full two weeks after Ball On A Boat (such is the nature of the Christmas break). During that period I was absolutely beside myself with my new and quite frankly unwelcome feelings that, no matter what I tried, I could not seem to shift or even alleviate. I was simply ill prepared to deal with them, I didn't know what they were much less what I was doing, and I was scared, confused and upset by it all. From the moment I woke up to the moment I (finally) went off to sleep all I could think about was him. What the living fuck? What on earth had I done to deserve this? I felt like someone had kicked my legs out from underneath me and was continuing to kick me very fucking hard in the guts whilst I writhed on the floor. All day, every day.

On the first day of term I was making a cup of tea in the Sixth Form common room kitchen, a room that usually boasted untold horrors of cleanliness and "facility", although that is a different story. As I was making my morning cup of char, I saw a blond head go past the window. It turned to look at me as it went past, presumably having spotted me through the previous window. We exchanged very brief eye contact before he passed on, on the way to whatever lesson he had. My heart, again, jumped up into my throat, and at that point I knew that this just wasn't going to get any easier very quickly. I was stuck with this and I had to deal with it.

Oddly enough it was Daniel's birthday on the same Wednesday that the new term started; he was turning seventeen. A group of lads with whom I had become acquainted in the weeks leading up to and including Ball On A Boat invited me to an evening on the weekend in a pub to celebrate one of their mates' birthdays. I quickly discovered that the mate in question was Daniel and so of course I agreed to attend. I think it was in whatever pub the Harvester in West Byfleet is attached to, but I can't be sure. I do know that it had a pool table, which was one of the major requirements of the selected venue, although whether it still has a pool table today is anyone's guess.

I bought him a birthday card and I turned up at the pub. It was a pretty normal evening as far as evenings in pubs with teenage friends goes. There was lots of beer, lots of pool and a fair amount of small talk between everyone, including Daniel and myself. I found out that he lived in Byfleet, was the eldest of a large family of boys (three or four younger brothers), his major hobby was Tae Kwon Do (with which he had become very advanced) and that his father was a tradesman. I also met his best mate, Paul, who did not attend Fullbrook Sixth Form, with whom I got on immensely. He had been Daniel's closest friend since they were kids. Although I gleaned all this information casually and nonchalantly in reality I wanted to find out everything there was to know about him.

What was to become a very close albeit brief (in the grand scheme of things) friendship had begun. I still don't know whether it was the correct thing to do in terms of handling my feelings, but at the time I just had to be part of his life in any way that I could, and he seemed to be open to a friendship.

Being the data-harvesting nerd that I was (and still am), I had of course computerised the guest list for the Ball On A Boat party. Somebody, I forget who, suggested to me that I should print out the final guest list for Ball On A Boat and pin it to the noticeboard in the Sixth Form common room and put up a notice next to it encouraging people to draw lines between names on the list who had "got off" with each other. This may seem puerile and immature now, but it is what teenagers do at parties when drunk and so to facilitate the resultant humiliation and friendly jibing seemed like a good idea at the time.

This started out as a right laugh. There were some very legitimate lines drawn between people, and some not so legitimate ones, including a number of lines drawn from one particular person to a great many people, which was mostly true, but nonetheless created a fair amount of shrieking in the common room when the person concerned found them.

But it stopped being funny for me when, after the lists had been on the board for a day or two, someone drew a line between Daniel and me. I don't know who it was, it might have been him, it might not have been, but it certainly wasn't fucking me. I totally panicked and ran out of the building and down the road to where the canteen was, eventually losing my breath and leaning against a wall, holding my head in my hands and fighting back the tears. I knew that there could have been only three possible explanations for the line:

1. It was a random prank. But how unlikely was that? Out of a guest list of over two hundred, why was the line drawn between him and me as part of a "random" exercise? It didn't make sense. It was too much of a coincidence. It had to be.
2. Someone had found out that I had feelings for Dan. How this was possible I didn't know. Perhaps someone was better at reading my own body language than I was. This scared me immensely. Not only was I not ready for anyone to know that I was gay but I certainly wasn't fucking ready for Dan to know that I had such feelings for him, or for anyone else to know for that matter.
3. It was him. By God, what if it was him? Was he trying to tell me something? What the hell should I do now? I had no support network, so I couldn't take advice. I was on my own.

I decided that the best thing I could possibly do was ignore it and let the line drawing exercise work itself to its natural conclusion, which it did after a couple of weeks or so, at which point the lists were taken down from the noticeboard. I discarded the lists, except the page with the line between my name and Daniel's. I still have it.

Six weeks into the term Valentines' Day came around. Thinking back to the guest list incident, I very carefully considered what I should do, if anything. I decided that Valentines Day had given me the perfect opportunity to respond to the guest list incident as it allowed me to send him a message without him knowing who it was from, which is essentially what the line on the guest list did for me, although it was and still is unclear as to who actually drew it.

I sent him a card with a number of words pulled from the dictionary. Were one to look up each word in the dictionary, one would notice that each started with the letters "stu". It went as follows:

Be keen, be diligent, apply oneself to, be a supporter of; keen on, fond of, partial to; eagerly; enthusiasm, application, inclination, fondness, affection; party spirit, partisanship; foolish talk, folly, silliness; simple sighted, silly, fool; stun, astound, be stunned, be astonished, be brought to a standstill, marvel at, become amazed, senselessness, astounded; ravish ...

I sent it to his home address, unsigned of course, posting it from outside the school just in case the postmark would have been different had I posted it from closer to my home. He received it. He told me so when the subject of Valentines Day came up between us. He said that he received one card and it that it had a weird poem or something in it. I too received a card. It contained a large question mark flanked on both sides by two smaller question marks. There was no message. I have absolutely no idea who sent it as the envelope was typed and the postmark gave nothing away.

Our friendship continued to grow, and with it did my feelings for him. I believed at the time that I loved him, and now, twelve years later, having now been in love a number of times, I know I was right. I've loved others as much as I loved Dan, but never more. This is no bad reflection on my previous relationships whatsoever as I believe that I have merely each time experienced the maximum effect on myself that being in love can have. Dan was no different. I loved him, totally.

We very quickly became best friends and very close indeed. So much so that certain behaviours started to be exhibited by both of us. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear to me now that these behaviours were not what you would call normal between two people who were just supposed to be friends. This is not to say that I now believe that he had feelings for me similar to those I had for him, but I do believe that something unusual was going on between us.

For example, because he was in the Lower Sixth and I was in the Upper Sixth (or whatever you want to call it), and we were on completely different courses, our academic timetables were completely different. We didn't share any lessons together and we weren't even in the same tutor group, so the only time we would be together was if we both had a free period at the same time, and then at break time and lunchtime as one might expect.

Often one of us would have the whole afternoon off whilst the other had lessons all afternoon. Yet, despite this, the person with the afternoon off would always wait until the end of the day for the other to finish, even if it meant sitting in the common room for two hours, just so we could walk to the gate together. Once at the gate we would say our goodbyes and walk off in completely different directions, so it wasn't even as if we shared the journey home together. It literally was the walk from the Sixth Form block to the gate of the school. It was over in 5 minutes, and yet each of us would faithfully wait all afternoon for it. Similarly, we used to meet each other in the common room every morning, without fail, whether either of us had a lesson in first period or not.

Each evening one of us would phone the other. There was no rule or pattern as to who phoned who, it just happened one way or the other. Despite spending most of the day with each other, we would still find things to talk about and each call generally lasted between 40 and 60 minutes. Quite often during these calls there would be long pauses, and when I say long I mean up to a few minutes, where nothing was said. This might seem strange now, but at the time it didn't. We just both stayed on the line, not feeling pressured to say anything, but eventually of course doing so when another topic of conversation was thought of. It was as if each of us was just happy knowing that the other was there, on the end of the phone, whether talking or not.

When we went out in the evening and I was driving, it would always be the case that I would drop off any other people in the car before dropping Dan off, even if it meant going out of my way. Sometimes I would even drive past Dan's house in order to drop someone else off before dropping him off. One on occasion I thought I would test this and pulled up outside Dan's house with someone else still in the car. He insisted that we should drop off whoever else it was in the car first. On this and every other occasion I dropped him off, we would talk in the car for a quarter of an hour or so before he got out and went into his house. Similarly with the phone calls, such conversations often included pauses that anyone else would consider awkward, but not us.

Another thing that happened reasonably often was prolonged eye contact. Often we'd be hanging out together and engage in eye contact that lasted way longer than eye contact normally lasts between two friends, be they best friends or otherwise. Sometimes it would even take the interjection of an unwitting third party grabbing our attention in order for the eye contact to be broken off. It was weird, but as with the phone calls, did not feel wrong or unusual, at least not to me.

There was also a almost constant stream of little incidents. For example, on the day of the school photo, we were all asked to line up in height order, as is the way with these things. Dan was noticeably shorter than me, by a couple of inches, but he refused to stand in line anywhere else but in front of me. A number of people suggested that he moved forward since they were obviously taller than him, but he point blank refused to do so.

These things, of course, are all reported from my own perspective. Perhaps I was looking for things that weren't there. But with hindsight it's very clear that they were unusual to say the least. Were Dan to write his side of this story, he might write something very different.

During all this I had of course been thinking about my now obvious sexuality, regardless of any feelings I had for anyone else. Falling in love with Dan had been the proverbial saucepan being struck very hard across my head, wielded by a robust matronly woman who was basically saying to me "you have to deal with this now, you are gay, it's not going to go away, it's not a phase, it's part of you and you have to accept it and make it a part of your life otherwise you'll never be happy". She was right, of course. But although I wanted to act on her advice, I was still petrified of what might happen to me.

I lost weight at an incredible rate through a combination of my feelings for Dan and the worry over the unknown regarding my sexuality. I lost three stone (42 lbs, 19 kg) between January and March of that year; that's a stone each month. Everyone started to notice. At first it was healthy remarks, saying I looked a lot fitter and healthier, but soon the remarks became expressions of concern that I was starting to look thin. Even the head of Sixth Form, an outwardly hostile and uncaring man (although this proved not to be the case once you got to know him), remarked that my face looked "very angular" and asked if there was anything wrong that I wanted to talk about. My college work also started to suffer, which was perhaps his ultimate concern since it was him that dealt with me restarting Sixth Form eighteen months earlier.

My big problem with dealing with my sexuality was that I had no support network. I knew I had to get a support network, but I didn't know where to start since I had no frames of reference. I didn't know any other gay people and at the time there were no local youth organisations that I knew of and because of Section 28 nothing about homosexuality had been taught in the school, including the Sixth Form. Internet access was difficult and expensive, and even if I had it the Internet did not boast the sort of resources for gay people that it does these days. I quite simply didn't know where to start.

I decided eventually that I should carefully select some friends to tell. They should be female, so as not to invoke a reaction that at the time I believed typical of what a bloke's reaction would be, and they should be relatively recent friends whom I'd only known whilst at Sixth Form, not before, because I only wanted my recent years of life to be taken into account when discussing matters. I don't know why this was important to me but it was at the time. It was possibly due to the fact that I was massively more popular at Sixth Form than I was in the main school or any school before that. I was a different person.

I told two girls: a close friend from the "first" Lower Sixth, i.e. technically the year below me but the year into which I had been adopted when I restarted Sixth Form; and one from the "second" Lower Sixth (the same year as Dan) whom I'd become friendly with and I valued her for her maturity and reason. I trusted them both, as did I one of my French teachers, who I selected as the third person to tell. I wouldn't have told any other teacher, but this particular teacher seemed to be much more open minded about things than any of the others and she had this air of experience and trustworthiness that put my mind at ease. I wanted to tell a teacher in addition to the two friends because I thought it was important to get more than one type of perspective on the matter.

I told a total of ten people in the end before I went to university. However, I only told the first two, Nicola and Marie-Ann, about my feelings for Dan. They were so personal, so much more personal even than being gay was, that I only felt comfortable extending my revelations in that regard to Nicola and Marie-Ann. Whilst they were sympathetic, there was of course nothing they could do to help me feel better beyond being shoulders to cry on. But I knew this, and what they could do for me was what I really needed.

Marie-Ann bought me a ring-bound notebook and suggested that I used it to write down my thoughts and feelings as such a exercise had helped her in the past. It did help, and I used it extensively up until the time I went to university. I wrote some pretty terrifying things in it sometimes. I still have it.

The other people I told included a number of my male friends from my native Upper Sixth. They were all very good-natured about it, which relieved me immensely because telling another boy was a very big step for me. One of them wept when I told him, partly because of all the anti-gay jibes he had made over the years but also because I had chosen him to reveal this personal secret to. It was very touching.

So, the year progressed through the spring, through the final A-Level exams and into the summer. My friendship with Dan grew, as did my friendship with his friends from the Lower Sixth. It came to a point where the whole group of us was as thick as thieves. A long hot summer awaited us after the exams were over, most of which was spent in various pubs and clubs in the area (straight clubs of course). One weekend I invited the lads down to my Dad's Thames Hut, with which some readers may be familiar. It's basically a large chalet type thing on the banks of the Thames in Sunbury with a mooring and easy access to a local pub across the river. I'd taken groups of friends down there before in previous years although before it had always been my Upper Sixth friends, which incidentally we now do again every year.

The weekend went off as you might expect - lots of beer, lots of food, lots of larking about in the boat and in the river; that's the whole point of going down there. When it came to go to sleep, we all bundled into the chalet because nobody had thought to bring a tent of course. No matter, I'd fit eight people in there before and so it could be done again. Being the gracious host I of course bagged the sofa. Everyone else had camp beds, air beds, roll-up mats and sleeping bags. I forget what Dan had, but he pitched his bed right next to me on the sofa. This didn't surprise me as by then I was used to automatically sitting next to him or having him sitting next to me pretty much wherever we went. The lights went out.

I led on my side, facing out into the room. Alcohol and the effects of a little too much sun caused images of the day to race through my head. About 5 or 10 minutes after the lights went out, something very strange happened. Dan, whose bed was a fair few inches lower than mine, put his head up on my bed, so that it was in front of mine. It was so close to mine that my nose ended up in his hair, the back of his head facing towards me. His hair smelt of the same chamomile shampoo that I used at the time (common amongst blonds). My heart immediately doubled its rate and I began breathing very quickly. He must have noticed and he must've known that I wasn't asleep.

Then it became even stranger. After just a few seconds, he lifted his head away again. My breathing instantly returned to normal and I continued to pretend to be asleep. What happened then still isn't clear to me, but after he lifted his head up he made some sort of deliberate contact with my face. It felt like a very light peck on the temple, but because I had my eyes shut and all sorts of other things were racing through my absolutely petrified mind, I couldn't be sure and I still can't. There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for both events, but even now, twelve years on, I can't think of one.

I spent the next week thinking about nothing else. I thought about it in combination with all the other signs - the close friendship, the eye contact, the guest list, the phone calls, the obvious pining for each other and the strong desire to spend as much time as possible with each other. But I still did not have the courage to do anything about it or approach him and ask him what was going on between us. My reason for this was simple: if I had it wrong then there would have been a very real chance that I would lose him as a friend, that I'd ruin it all and I would lose him completely. I was simply not willing to risk that, he meant too much to me, and even though my love for him was almost crippling on a daily basis, it was the price I had to pay in order to avoid something worse.

The lads went on holiday on some dreadful Club 18-30 jaunt in the summer, taking Dan with them. Although I was obviously invited, I didn't go, partly because my mother wouldn't let me spend my money on a holiday like that when I was about to go to university, and also because my holiday was planned some months previously in the form of the Venture Scouts summer camp, which was basically an 18-30 holiday except with tents and pubs instead of hotels and clubs; very little actual "scouting" was involved, such was the unique nature of 1st West Byfleet at the time. I missed him terribly when I was away, and of course at the time mobile phones were still reserved for the rich and there was no such thing as text messages.

The summer came to an end and a few days after an almighty party with the boys I went off to Aberystwyth to start my new life as a drunken university student. There was no big goodbye with Dan, we just said goodbye on the last day that we saw each other in the normal way. It was as if we were just going to see each other the next day as usual. At university I kept in touch with him by phoning him occasionally (no mobiles, so had to queue up at payphones) and I also wrote the odd letter because, although I had been blessed with the power of e-mail, he had not.

The trouble with starting a new life anywhere is that, no matter how good your intentions, you do lose touch with your old life to a degree. I had started off as I meant to carry on at university and I had come out to everyone I met as I met them. I was determined not to hide my sexuality any more, and so I didn't. I was young and very pretty with my blond hair and thin physique inherited from the past nine months and so naturally I was very much in demand by the other gay boys. I took full advantage of this of course. The upshot of this, combined with the distance now between us, meant that Dan and I stopped being as close as we used to be.

When I came home from University at Christmas 1995, I met up with Dan and the lads as one might expect. By that time I wasn't afraid to come out to pretty much anyone, and I came out to many people, full of confidence and relieved of my fears and apprehensions. A couple of them made stupid remarks, but they weren't particularly close friends and they very quickly got the message from both me and everyone around them that they were being idiots and were no longer welcome in the conversation.

I told Dan in the car, sitting outside his house, after an evening out, just like we always used to. This was the last ever time in my life that I was apprehensive about coming out to anyone. I valued his friendship immensely, but I was no longer afraid of losing it by coming out to him because of all the overwhelmingly positive responses and acceptance that I had received from so many people up until then.

"Dan, I've got to tell you something. For the past few months I've sort of known that I'm gay". I deliberately made the time frame refer to my months at university rather than the months previous. That's all I said. I didn't tell him about the feelings I'd had, and to some extent still did have, for him. Just the gay bit.

"Wow, I'm really sorry," was his reply. He went on to explain that the reason for his apology was, as with a number of other friends to whom I had come out, because of all the gay jibes he made, at gay people in general rather than anyone specific. But gay jibes amongst groups of straight teenagers are not uncommon and they never bothered me, because I knew that they weren't meant in a homophobic way. Most people, once they discover that one or more of their friends are gay, immediately stop and often feel bad about it.

I told him not to be concerned and that his apologies weren't necessary, indeed I then apologized for not being more honest with him earlier, which he said not to worry about. Of course, the truth was that I still wasn't being completely honest with him.

A large part of me saw my coming out to Dan as a possible opportunity for him to tell me any secrets he had at the same time. I thought that it would be an opportunity for him to come out to me if he was gay, and possibly even to admit that he had feelings for me. But Dan did neither. If I'm totally honest I was very disappointed. Me telling him that I was gay was way more effective at clearing the way to acknowledging any feelings than Valentines cards or drawing lines on a guest list. Perhaps all those things really were nothing, perhaps I was just reading too much into them, seeing what I wanted to see rather than what was actually there.

So, was he or wasn't he gay, and if so, was he or wasn't he interested in me in the way in which I was interested in him? With the benefit of twelve years of hindsight, I would certainly say that there were some pretty strong signs that would answer both questions positively. But even if he was, for exactly the same reason that I did nothing definitive about it, he might not have been able to either. I lacked maturity to deal with it properly, and I was two years older than him, so he certainly lacked the necessary maturity. Perhaps he too was as petrified if not more petrified than me as to what might happen if he acted upon his feelings.

Perhaps he wasn't gay at all and it was all in my head. Perhaps he was going through a phase and was too confused about his feelings to be able to deal with them.

The fact is that, unless I ever meet him again and have a very honest and frank conversation with him, I'll probably never know. Even with my twelve years of hindsight and wisdom, I can't make up my mind for sure. I guess it'll forever be the biggest "What if?" of my life.

I lost touch with Dan after my first year at university as I by then had moved on and discovered boyfriends and the gay scene and all that jazz and we lived in completely different worlds. I sent him a few birthday cards over the years but I never heard anything back from him. I've heard on the grapevine and through doing cursory Google searches that he now works for a marketing agency and runs his own martial arts club.

I hope he's happy.

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General Manager
Welcome Break Services
M1 Motorway
Junction 14/15
Newport Pagnell
Buckinghamshire
MK18 8DS

Dear Sir/Madam

I write to complain about the state of the gents toilets at your Newport Pagnell establishment on the M1. I am aware that most motorway service station toilets require a little adjustment in expectations from the norm when one is using them, but I’m afraid that my visit on the afternoon of Thursday 28th December was quite unacceptable.

It wasn’t so much that the cubicle I had selected was dirty, neither was it so much the fact that the seat sanitizer facility was not working. This sort of thing I am, albeit reluctantly, accustomed to at most motorway service stations. What I find completely astonishing was that when I had finished my business, I opened the cubicle door and tripped over a "health and safety" cone which one of your thoughtless cleaners had placed outside the door whilst I was occupying the cubicle. The cone was around 18 inches high and a very similar colour to the floor itself, and so to all intents and purposes it was invisible to me.

Were it not for the fact that I am quite a strong and agile chap with a keen sense of balance, I would have had a reasonably serious accident by falling to the floor after having the blasted thing tangled up between my legs. This would not only have made for a good You’ve Been Framed clip, but also a healthy court case brought to court by one of those dreadful “accident claim” companies who advertise on the television during the day. As it happened I merely kicked it to the other side of the room as part of my recovery.

I’m sure you’ll agree that the thoughtless placement of this cone very nearly had the exact opposite effect of its design purpose. I might therefore suggest that your cleaning staff do not put such health and safety devices where they themselves might become hazards. Having them in a more contrasting colour to the floors on which they stand might also be a good idea.

I trust that you will give this matter your full attention.

Many thanks, and a happy new year to you.

Yours faithfully

Stuart Benjamin Ford

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Turbo cars, I hear you say? But surely they exist, and they are really fast!?

Correct. But they are not fast because they are "turbo". They are fast because they are fitted with a device called a "turbocharger", which works by using the power of exhaust gasses to compress clean air back into the engine, thus further aspirating it, making the combustion stronger and thus and making it more powerful. It does this using a turbine, much like a very small (and indeed very fast) windmill. Observe HowStuffWorks: Turbochargers for more information.

But still, the word "turbocharger" has the word "turbo" as a subset, so it might imply that something is fast - right? Yes, but implication and meaning are two different thing. It is called a turbocharger because it uses a turbine. "Turbo" is a latin word meaning "an eddy , whirling round; a mental or political disturbance; a child's top; a reel; a spindle" (reference: UND Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid) - which obviously relates to the turbine as that's the part that does the whirling and spinning. But that doesn't mean that "turbo" means "fast", it simply means "spiral", "whirl", which, in the context of a combustion engine, is used as part of one method to make the engine more powerful without adding significant extra weight.

So why oh why oh why do people slap "turbo" stickers on irons and computers when no such whirling or spinning parts are present (CPU fans don't count, smartarse, making the computer fast is not their purpose). Turbo does NOT mean fast, it means spiral, whirl, spin. Show me where the spinning turbine is on a super w@w turbo iron or the latest Phillipine sweatshop products that you put on your feet.

Yes, yes, I know that the word's now become so common that its implied meaning is now generally accepted, like a lot of other silly words that make it into the OED every year, but that's not going to stop me from ranting about the stupidity of it.

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