Evolving relationships.

 

Things certainly are feeling different with me as those at the forum can well imagine following Mum's death recently not least with the continuing business of organizing the service with all the arrangements and potential options available.

But in many ways it feels more like a new start as the old and sometimes troubled relationship with dad usually from a single minded obession of his interests to the point of too often just taking us as children to where he wanted to go or changing the tv program to one only he really wanted as if we were just passengers as he starts to drop those old barriers, talking more about what WE might like to do and accept he MAY of got things a bit wrong.

It also means I have to adapt too, responding more with maturity, letting go of past grudges, be prepared to work WITH him, accepting his authority Man to Boy and metaphorically at least stop blowing a raspberry in his general direction because of past issues.

With that comes another need which is to accept for the first time in a long while some growing pains as I adapt to and master a changed relationship with the complications of being more emotionally more child-like with my needs.

He knows and accepts that side of me.

Adventures in Comicland II

 As no doubt many of us are aware with the "cost of living crisis", times are hard presently and this affects those things that come from any spare money as people of necessity look at what they are spending on non essentials.

On Friday last, it was announced some three hundred jobs were to go and some forty titles were to be discontinued by the Scottish publisher DC Thomson known for the iconic Beano comic and many regional and national Scottish newspapers.

In the list of publications for being discontinued is Animal Planet Kids which was an excellent animal and ecology centred publication with a more eight to thirteen readership in the main looking at species, needs and current threats to their population in an easy to understand accessable way.

It also has features such as pieces about the COPPT conferences, work in restoring climates and a lively letters page.

The younger age range was covered by Animals and You which short pieces about animals  and that too is earmarked to be closed.

Apart from effecting D C Thomson staff, freelance contributors and the like it affects the printing industry that today takes the electronically produced magazine in its page layout and turns them out as physical magazines.

I am sorry to see such a great magazine go.

Just William at Christmas

 The week has been something of a rollercoaster emotionally after a difficult month that did eventually see me complete reading a short collection of stories I had started around Christmas when I quite poorly.

Christmas is a funny time of year with expectations sky high, especially if you're a child served at times with crushed dreams and funny things just happening and in the World of Richmal Crompton's most perfect homage to ten, eleven year old boys and their lives, William brings forth much hilarious misunderstandings, idealism runs riot with the sense of belong that comes from being a part of, even the head of a Gang, The Outlaws.

This unlike some of my favourite boys stories isn't a vintage original - no first editions here I'm afraid - but a really nice 1995 bound edition with a dust jacket that pulls these Christmas stories into one enjoyable read,

The illustrations often showing the social world of the well to do world of nineteen twenties and thirties families and their less well off neighbours in their striking differences, bring the stories to life.

Re-reading these stories, laughing out loud at William's escapades really helped.

Pooh bear got that right!

Thoughts for February

We enter a new month which has seen some growth at the forum with new members contributing to our discussions around past childhoods and adult little boy/adult schoolboy life which is a always a good thing cos everyone brings a different take to the whole.

We've always kept things to that which as boys then we knew and were appropriatefor within our eyes and ears back then rather than getting more into things that come under "adult content" rather like this blog does and for the same reasons.

Our world include a lot of wholesome stuff whatever misfortunes as individuals we may of faced and for me there is a lot of the spirit of Christopher Robin and Winnie The Pooh in that very boyish innocence and to me honouring that matters.

For me there is something quite profound in what AA Milne sets out around the value of friendship, true lasting friendships and looking for the good because they help sustain our basic human needs even in the most difficult of situations we may find ourselves.

These are the things we need to be prepared to hold on to and where needed, renew.

The cup of love for one another replenishes the soul.