To be honest, I shall be glad to see the back of this year.
Everything seems to be going belly up. My grand plan to escape being made redundant from Connect by changing careers seems to be foundering. My partner's willingness to remain in this mortal realm is up for grabs and my love is not enough to tip the balance in favour of him staying put.
If I could time travel back to 1995, before this Journal and before meeting Ross, would it simply be much better if I scrapped everything and travelled down a different path?
Silly thought really. I simply am where I am.
I say. I say. I say.
Our Christmas tree is suffering with a sore throat.
Yes. It has tinselitis.
After a not very inspiring meet earlier in the year, Vinny disappeared from view. Recently, however, a new profile has appeared on escorting sites so I reconnected and discovered that he was not able to host at present.
So, I put a proposal to him.
I'd never previously in my life organised a dirty afternoon in a hotel. I was sort of inspired by my encounters with Leon, Alex and Alex and Damien earlier in the year. The circumstances of those encounters had all been set up by the escorts themselves. I'd never organised such a thing for myself.
I wondered if he'd be up for it? If I organised a hotel room, would he be OK to meet there?
The answer came back yes.
So, early in December, I found myself drinking americano coffee at the Caffe Nero on Castle Street reading Fault Line by Robert Goddard and wondering if I'd done the right thing.
Then the door opened and Vinny breezed in and I got him a coffee. We chatted for a while and caught up on the past few months
And then the encounter somehow became very hot.
We sauntered over the road to the Tune Hotel, rode the lift to the third floor and just about made it into the room.
We were all over each other before the door even closed shut.
Clothes came off.
Hands on cocks. Cocks in mouths. Tongues all over the place.
Sex on the bed, over the bed, off the bed, standing up, bending over, in the shower, in front of the mirror and, finally, back on the bed with his legs over my shoulders, him cuming thick ropes of spunk over his face whilst I shot my seed inside him.
We took a while to clean up and then went off to our separate homes for an evening meal.
Shortly after, I was off to Odeon Switch Island to watch Live at Royal Opera House performance of new productions of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Damiano Michieletto's take was to set both works in the same small town on about the same day in a mid-50s-ish Italian urban setting. Mostly the works were allowed to tell their own stories and the inevitable move towards violence in both narratives felt grittier in the altered settings that in the faux realism of a Zeffirelli.
Antonio Pappano gave us a full-fat Italianate reading of the score, impeccable but wholly unafraid to let passions flow exuberantly.
Eva-Maria Westbroek's Santuzza gave an all too believable portrait of a woman seduced, scorned, abandoned and wronged. Rustic chivlary became street justice.
Aleksandrs Antonenko gave us Turiddu in the first piece and Canio in Paggliacci. Dimitri Platanias had been Alfio before the interval and returned afterwards as Tonio. Carmen Giannattasio was Nedda.
I loved the show with its clear deliniation of life backstage and on stage. The reaction of the on stage audience to the violence that played out before them was probably the best I have witnessed.
Despite making time to drink sherry with Roland at Lunya, I'm still feeling utterly exhausted.
Cat love helps. It is, after all, truth universally acknowledged, that a 61 year old man in possession of a good length of red ribbon must be in want of a game of chase with a 13 year old tom cat.
And, in the middle of all of this, I took Ross over to Aintree Hospital so that a Consultant could look up his nose and decide that an elective procedure was needed although a timescale was not mentioned.
And then I made my worst decision of the year.
I persuaded Ross to come with me to the Playhouse to see their production of The Haunting of Hill House. Having seen the film, I thought that we would simply be in for an unnerving ghost story which maybe wasn't about ghosts but more about people's susceptibility to irrational explanations for fear.
However, the play returns to material from the novel not used in the film. Suicide, and particularly suicide by hanging, featured graphically.
Just the sort of thing that you need to see if you are dealing with a catastrophic failure of the will to live. I was so upset with myself.
We took it quietly for the next couple of days with a visit to Lady Green Nursery and coffee at Costa where read The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill which turned out to be something and nothing really.
Then there was Ross's big pre-Christmas treat. Madonna.
Having seen Madonna in concert in Manchester with Ross back in 2004, I didn't feel the need to experience the star in performance again so Ross arranged for his parents to pay for Sam to go with him as a carer.
Thus, he travelled up to Glasgow to attend a performance in Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour at the OVO Hydro staying overnight in a local chain hotel.
They probably had a better time of it together than Ross would have had with me. But it does go to show that, despite everything else that is going on, when Ross wants something, he will find a way of making it happen.
Sam was supposed to have been making use of the train journeys to continue his medical studies.
However, night shifts, a trip to Potter World and pushing Ross around in his wheelchair for the Madonna Concert all took their toll on the little imp.
He didn't get much revision done on the journey home.
While they were enjoying themselves north of the border, I was attending a Speed Awareness course having been flagged as speeding. It was better than being fined and having points on my license. I learnt a couple of things from attending and, in the discussions, was asked by the Instructor if I had taken the Advanced Drivers' course. No but I was taught by Albert to be very aware of all of the other fools on the road.
Will this rain never end? Our house is filled with the smell of damp pussy. Talk about a pair of soggy moggies.
Well, the police are clearing out the equipment from a cannabis farm in the top flat of the house next door. Must have been a storage point because there's hardly ever been a light on in there. The place has a long history of n'er-do-wells.
Ross spent quite a bit of time on the doorstep chatting "casually" with our next door neighbour, Julie. And I didn't get a smile from the fresh-faced earnest young copper wearing tight cargo pants when I went to the shops.
There are two ways that I know the current weather is mild for the time of year.
- We have proper floor tiles in our kitchen. In summer, I can walk on them barefoot. I can't usually by December but I can this year.
- Our cats are moulting and have furballs. I know this because, when I came into the kitchen this morning to make myself a coffee, I trod barefoot in a pile of sick.
Then it was over to Ross's parents for the festivities. We stopped off at the Ferrybridge Services on the M62 for a coffee to break the journey.
The opening of family presents happened at Ross's sister Megan's home in Grasby in Lincolnshire. My lovely man looked so lost and cut off from everyone.
The festive meal was absolutely monumental leaving us all absolutely stuffed.
Boxing Day called for some fresh air.
Ross and I went down to the Waters' Edge Visitor Centre and Country Park on the banks of the Humber close to the great bridge.
The ducks and geese were wondering why there were so few people there to feed them.
Then with the fabulous festivities completed, we journeyed home stopping as usual for a break after the Penines at Birch Services. Stories of sink holes on M62 in the Rochdale area appear to have been greatly exaggerated.
Needing some me time, I contacted Vinny and persuaded him to accompany me to a gay sauna in Northwich. Goodness only knows why it is situated there: it's hardly one of the UK's premier gay locations. But maybe that's the point. It's away from the neighbours but in easy reach of major connurbations and of North Wales.
The building used to be a display centre. Now, the ground floor has the changing rooms, café, showers, sauna, jacuzzi while the first floor houses the private rooms, cruising area, play area with stocks, St Andrew's cross and sling.
After a brief period in the sauna where Vinny entertained an appreciative audience by wanking himself erect, we decanted to one of the upstairs private rooms.
The room was as large as the average main bedroom or sitting room in the classic middle class family home. Half of it was taken up by a raised area upholstered in a studded leather covering. The platform?/dias? was was (as we proved) about the right height for some one to bend over and lay their torso on so they could be comfortably be fucked from behind whilst standing on the floor. We also proved that it was the right height for someone to lie on their back with their legs in the air whilst being fucked by someone standing on the floor.
My favourite moments, however, involved both of us being on the raised area together. The fucking surface was walled on three sides by ceiling high mirrors and it was lit by spotlights which changed colour and intensity. There was a monitor in the room which broadcast a steady stream of porn so the air was always full of the moans of sex: some from the porn in the different cabins and some from the people in those cabins doing what they will. Shagging Vinny doggy style and with his legs over my shoulders whilst watching our reflections going at it in different coloured lighting was highly arousing.
After one session, we went for a tour but Vinny wasn't keen on the sling or the more public areas - so we went back to the private room and had another session.
Fun finished, I drove us back to the Wirral. We broke the journey on the waterfront at Parkgate sitting outside enjoying each other's company, the pint and the mild weather.
Roland and I rounded the year off with two very satisfying pints in the Edinburgh and the sort of grumpy old men conversation that warms the cockles of the heart!!
Ross and I rounded the year off by attending the new Star Wars movie The Force Awakens. Ever since the first trailer dropped back in April, we've both been looking forward to seeing this movie immensely.
JJ Abrams has concocted the sort of new Star Wars movie that long time fans can only dream about. The plot moves forward. Old favourite characters return. A new generation is introduced. There are nods to the tradition and the canon whilst being innovative in where it is all going.
It was utterly fabulous. I really enjoyed every minute.