File under care packages, things that help you get through no fun matters like this 'ere lock down that we're living with presently where school is out and you can't go anywhere much either, just a bit of local exercise.
December 8th 2012 was for a good number of us a rather sad day as that was the last regular print issue of the Dandy comic, something I'd (allegedly) grown up with but it went out with a bang.
There were some great new stories featuring the likes of Korky the cat and Desperate Dan of Cow Pie fame Winker Watson who I loved, the schoolboy who always try to get the better hand against the staff and the like and a reprint of the very first issue that for those interested in comic art shows how the they moved from an illustrated story to the modern cartoon strip.
My copy got lost so I was able track down a copy in great condition for posterity.
What we didn't anticipate was that the Summer Specials would continue (this years is available to order at D.C. Thomson's site coming out Mid May) as would the annuals.
In 1982 D C Thomson, the publisher of the Beano and of course Dandy started a short lived series of A6 sized books based on popular cartoon strips in each that came out two per month at pocket money prices.
Initially at twenty pence, the 'new' soon went from our decimal currency, each had 68 pages and run until 1997 and 340 issues.
I got this of early issue from 1983 of my beloved Winker Watson of Greytowers, the fictional public school he and his friends attend being forever in the third form which featured extended stories of wanglering we loved.
Korky the cankerous cat was also a favourite who got that extended treatment in an edition that also came out in the same year
Talking of annuals, to help me cope, I got a good condition copy of the 1976 Annual which you'd of had in 1975 for Crimbo and which I'm sure we had at one point as I used to buy annuals from school fairs and the like when I was younger full of stories of my favourite Dandy characters.
I just love the idea of Korky playing with his train set as I used to play with mine, filling up the goods wagons as the mice remove bits of the track!
Of course modern train sets unlike my dads use digital controllers and sound effect modules so the engines and that from Bachman tend to be expensive.
Last weeks post was mainly written before the events of Thursday late afternoon UK time except for a hastily altered paragraph which saw my entire family of three Tumbr accounts terminated which naturally included The Traditional Schoolboy whose anniversary was of course the very subject.
I will address the future of that on here by saying that Tumblr will continue on the Wordpress back up blogs I established for them in the light of the December 2018 changes because every change for the better came from them, they are the record of that and by working through new entries with more text to which links will be posted weekly it can continue.
The other big advantage of that and will also apply with (the)Traditional Schoolboy2 and the Scouting blog (link on a tab here) is the content is less likely to be removed because outside of a few reblogs straight to Tumblr I'll be using it to promote these external blogs rather than making the posts on it.
At some point I'll insert links for the WordpressTSB and TSB2 on this blog to improve navigation.
I received at various place some comments so I'll also address them on what is the 200th post here of which the first is the frankness and honesty of my account of the ALB/ASB side of my life.
I write very much from within, even within the confines of Tumblr I do inject an element of that to posts and reblogs because to me communication stems from having something to say that might appeal to others.
This blog and Scouting & Me are personal even when I am talking about things, places and happenings because they express how I feel about them, any connectedness to my own life past and present.
I don't deposit a topic and run.
The second is that for me as I explained (and got some plaudits for saying) at ASB.com for some of us it is that this life is the place where for some of us who have trauma, who experience developmental disabilities that in many respects leads to us in real life being very much child-like in our thoughts, likes and actions apart from an upbringing through physical disabilities feel like our natural selves.
In a very real sense for some of us we are walking, talking boys of adult ages who do struggle with being expected to be fully adult which isn't like role playing say a schoolboy for a fixed period however great and maybe in its own way needed for you but for us being an adult little boy is a permanent thing.
As a person who I won't mention their name put it,to put on a school uniform and be with a person who let him let out fully the boy that he is all the time, knowing he will be cared for as that boy, is.
He feels, I'll be honest and say I also feel a freedom from trying to act and not very well like an adult you lack the skill set of so for us to walk about in uniform as ourselves.
For me that is the life, the odd adjustment as needed is I need and am living.
Another blog pointed out the connection between things such as books, comic and music and how they transport us to the times and emotions of the past which is why on a few occasions I'll write a little about them on here.
It's also the case that they may also figure as presents as they did in boyhood and so I'll write in the present context about them.
Looking at the domestic side of being me this Easter Weekend as no doubt some might be I might be helping out, making drinks and setting tables.
The scene wouldn't be a million miles removed from that cos I'm always little at home, highly likely to be in uniform which does include socks like those
It is Easter so while Easter Bunny like most things wasn't in the mall this Easter thanks to you know what, I had my bunny in the window and have been nom'ing through my Rudolph Egg, the way that I have from been a little and often poorly boy.
Well I'm almost through with this captivating and in places quite sad story of Jamie who loses his parents and home in Liverpool to the Blitzkrieg and a fifty year early parallel of Sidney who died tragically in a circus act that young Jamie sees as his escape from the hard realities of war, forging a new life.
These are tough times that no child ever asked for as much as for Jamie it was in different ways and books that deal in a understanding but unsentimental way with loss, trauma and finding the spirit to survive help boys cope.
In the end, as much as it hurts and we feel like crying curled up in a ball, that's the only way forward for us.
This Friday we'd of marked the second anniversary of That Traditional Schoolboy on Tumblr which came around a period I had just resumed more personal blogging after having a mainly photographic blog after being having a blog on Friends Reunited around 2005/6 when it got bought and ruined by ITV who wanted ad revenue and clicks rather than its unique offering.
That uniqueness was just perfect because it was centred on places particularly schools and colleges so you could and many of us did pick up from the playgrounds we left behind getting back in touch with past school mates such as Jacqueline as we both left juniors to different schools than most of our year group and gender aside were kindred spirits.
It wasn't all just that though, for me it was stepping back to my original peer group and before I had the language even of exploring the world that still resonates to me because in so many ways I was still that boy permanently in that mindset.
Of course it was also the era of "School Disco" which in some ways made re-exploring your school days seem more mainstream that it might of done a few years before with people buying uniforms of varying authenticity to dance the night the away with former class mates in just like it was a year group school disco of the sort we all attended.
I discovered the short lived ASB.org site which while brief, being very much missed even if I was on a different path than some was to prove quite instrumental because to be quite frank as Edward knows when I landed at tumblr around this period I was not in a very good spot at all being exposed to the only age regression communities around who were more into sissification and pushing degendering at me to the point I just lost touch with who I was as much as I tried pushing back.
ASB provided for me a safe place to explore much of business of relating and socializing with just adult schoolboys with no distractions and no pressure to be anything I wasn't comfortable with because it was like being in a virtual school where there was less of a set uniform so much as a common set of understandings about what we all wore.
I soon feel into line presenting in the text book British convention from underwear onwards conforming and people checking how I presented for the first time in ages while I got used to being treated just as a boy. I started dressing every day as that schoolboy.
I had started to explore around my childhood and age regression at ASB to try to get to the 'real me' but that was something I really got into on Tumblr looking what I did, why I did them and what I felt being that boy because those other influences had started to really dine out on them really messing my head up
One of things that came about through that was that so much of that childhood experience was very much within that of everyday boys rather than in any respect exceptional that the attempts to push labels that qualified being a boy as if it was insufficient or I was in fact anything other than just a boy soon lead to me starting the process of moving from all of that.
Some indication of this was in coming out on sites which anything self identity was ambiguous as just male and even as an adult little boy just short of using that very phase, re-writing profiles and gaining respect from people for just being that being an actual gender.
Totally moving away from those influences followed as I understand where there was any real discomfort it had nothing to do with gender but really was around being actually adult which for certain reasons connected with developmental disabilities I don't have many of the abilities to navigate that world and permanent inhabit the mindset of a school boy with all of his needs to the point I don't relate to adults as one.
I also joined sites that keyed into aspects of being ALB such as a site devoted to one writer of Children's Literature and to a private Age Regression site for both sexes using my name and being openly ALB even if with the latter it has mainly females being their on just my own terms.
One thing I have done more over this two years is transition to an openly ALB life not just indoors or behind the keyboard but outdoors so while being mindful not to be seen in things like caps, blazers and satchels particularly with actual school logos around the times chronologically aged boys do travel to and from school or loitering purposely outside one, I do present as my boyself.
In part that is more about being comfortable in my own skin as an adult little boy with no ifs, buts or maybe's but also to detach myself openly from fully adult expectations because - and if you're not like me you won't get it - being expected to act as a adult male when you lack the abilities just because of chronological age is very stressful and I am fortunate to live in a community that having see me 'grow up' with those issues actually accepts I'm not even if I have done important things in my 'adult' life with it.
Thus it is an everyday thing now to see a 'boy' in grey shorts grey blue turn down socks and shirt walking about or like last year voting in uniform and being respected and equally for men to talk to me more as that boy to the point they will effectively instruct me as if I was their son as the adult authority figures in my life.
That's my Easter Egg that ALB me will be enjoying this weekend even if chunks of Easter have been affected by this virus thingy.
Back to one of the origins of this blog this week, photography admittedly in the digital age and as one of things I have been doing to deal with the stresses of the current Coronavirus emergency is to go out for some exercise although we are restricted presently.
Whatever else may be going on, as far as nature is concerned it is Spring and so the many daffodils have emerged and here is a group of them I spotted the other day.
We are subject to limits, the exact distances not being defined but expected to be local to you so given I've cheated death twice and am vulnerable, I cross-crossed to stay in a figure the local constabulary would accept spotting these two lovely trees just on the border of the more built up urbanized area with less people about.
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I was able to get a terrific picture of this seventeenth century half timbered cottage that originally was split into three residences and sympathetically restored a few decades back complete with thatched roof, hidden amongst the post war sprawl
Farmhouses are to be found around the edges of North Staffordshire usually with some extensions and this is a local example with the original wooden windows in not those ghastly uPVC ones.
A field with saplings planted in it looking quite colourful nearby.
More things planted for later while a tractor was going around the more distant fields.
There we have a group of pictures taken out in grey shorts and socks no less while on a series of walks that hopefully are restful and helping deal with the stresses and strains of the current emergency.
