But, right now, I’m pondering this – Do you think humans have a ‘Best Before’ date? You know like most food items have. Or perhaps it’s a more formal, more strict Use By date? After which it’s no longer safe to consume, it’s gone off, gone bad, become inedible and unusable.

I was pondering this yesterday during my day job, by which I really mean in the early hours of this morning and during my night job. For as regular readers will know, I am a creature of darkness, in that, I work nights, So really, the night job is the so called ‘proper’ job that pays the bills and the writing is the day and ‘fun’ job that pays peanuts, buts gives most enjoyment.

But, I’m beginning to stray from the point, what I mean, though seriously, do us human beings have such things, I mean certain dates where things are good, delightful and juicy and then a date of a period when they are no longer the sweet tasty product they once were, but still perfectly edible, before the inevitable toss out date when everything goes bad? Are we like a nice fresh banana, or a squeezed out old satsuma sitting at the bottom of the bowl?

It’s a wonder? Are we like food? I mean, I’m a great one of for checking the date on my food stuffs, I’ll even calculate my weekly menu based on what days my food goes passed it’s best before and before it’s use by’s. I stick to them, usually religiously, the obvious exceptions would be cheesecake and well cake in general, which can routinely be used well after it’s best before date, though usually how anyone can leave cake that long is beyond my reasonable understanding. Cake, like wine, has no left overs and is to be consumed within a day of purchase, that’s the law, Jason’s law! (Which may obviously directly contribute to why I’m the size I am!)

As I say, I was sitting at work, when I mentioned I felt a little bit of a tightness in the chest, a small ache or pain on the left side. I informed the gang and had a laugh and giggle about it, me joking that I was having a heart attack. I know I wasn’t, and yes, one shouldn’t joke about such things, and to be honest, it was probably a pulled muscle, or as D suggested wind or indigestion or other such silly frailty, which I am known to have. But, one of the girls, the lovely K, did look sternly at me and told me that, that I really should have gotten myself up to the hospital to be checked out, that a man, my age, is ripe for such things, it’s about this time that the onslaught of dilapidation should start!

You know what though, as harsh as her words may sound, although she said them with jest , care, and consideration, she is right, she’s bloody well right! I am now older, I am now heading to that age, that period of life, when things do go wrong, bits drop off, shrivel up, stop working and give out. I am, me thinks, perhaps reaching that Best Before date!

When you’re young, things like heart attacks, strokes, dementia, Alzheimer’s seem so far off, they happen to old people mostly, people in their middle age, which is years and years away. You always think you’re invincible, that such things are never going to happen. Then you get older, things start aching for no reason, things start going wrong, hair starts to turn grey, eyesight fades, memory develops holes, jean’s shrink without being washed, it takes longer to recover from a night out – longer than the night out itself!

So perhaps, we do, have a best before date, which, I think I’ve possibly hit, , but hey my old china, I’m a long way off my Use By date. So, whilst I may not be the youngest, juiciest fruit on the shelf, I’ve still got plenty of substance left to offer, I may be a little more bitter and sharper than I once was, but hey some people like that, right? but I’ve still got a great taste! Snap it up before the Use By date!

Jason blogs his heart out on The Seafront Diaries on an almost daily basis,  you can catch him there before his UBD  arrives and he’s thrown out with the rest of the dodgy old stock in the dumpster of life!

I’ve never been too much of a political animal,  but this year was a little different,  I did once or twice get on my soapbox and have my say as it were. Plus,  I was commissioned to write a few speeches for a politician who needed just a little extra help.   It took a lot of time up,  but,  was worth it,  in fact very much so.  It really odd writing something,  and then less than 24 hours from you writing it,  seeing a politician speaking your words, as if they came right out of his head!  Money wasn’t bad either!

Anyways,  My Best Gay Blogs friends,  it’s nice to be getting back to normality,  back to reality and the normal grind that is life.     Down here on the south coast of England the last few days have been warm,  on a couple of days around 32c that’s around 89f which is pretty swooffingly hot for these here parts.  You know,  you should come for a visit!

Because of the nice weather,  I’ve been spending a bit more time than usual outside,  well hey,  we’re not used to such sunshine in England,  gotta make the most of it while we can.    So  off I walked to the local big supermarket,  I kinda had a craving for cheesecake and fudge,  I know,  really bad for me,  not on the health food diet I’m supposed to be doing,  but……. I’m trying to think of a good reason to excuse my blatant lack of will power and determination,   but……nothings coming!

Along the way is a local local park,  which at the far end  was one of those visiting travelling  funfair’s in all it’s colourful glory.  I guess it wasn’t open yet, as there was no one around,  all the machines, rides, lights  and whatnot were off,  still and silent.  It’s kinda spooky like that,  but also kinda cool.

I am,  I have to confess,  a bit of a funfair man,  especially the travelling kind,  they hold a special fascination for me, a certain kind of love,  they always have an air of mystery about them.  Dare I say,  running the risk of ridicule,  but to me, they always seem to  instill a tiny, fleeting even,  but nonetheless, feeling of romance in my heart!

I know,  strange huh?  But,  the visiting funfair seems to force memories of childish excitement when the fair came to town when I was a nipper in the middle of the Surrey countryside,  into my mind.   It was big and bright and loud and exciting.  The people that worked there,  always seemed to have such interesting,  exciting,  nomadic lifestyles.  The travelling,  all year long,  a different location pretty much each and every week.  It conjured up exotic images to me a a child and teen.  And, yes I know,  it’s probably hardly romantic at all,  I dare say in fact it’s  probably a long,  lonely, stressful and maybe even empty existence, lacking in roots and a basic sense of belonging and  home.  But to me as a kid,  it was so….enchanting.

You know,  even after I’d spent all my pocket money, what little I’d got, plus the earnings from my paper round,   I’d hang about the place.  Wandering to and fro, between the rides and stalls.  I’d  enjoy the sights, the sounds, the music, and the smells,  my eyes bathing in all human life around me,  the senses alive.    Looking back,  with older, mature and sensible eyes, now,  I expect my fascination with the fair’s that came to town was simply the ideal of escapism.  I guess,  each time,  the spring and the fall season when they drove into the sleepy little Surrey town I called home,  in those brightly coloured wagons, they bought something new with them.  Something amazing,  they bought life,  they bought the outside with them.  And, when I say the outside,  I mean, the wider world,  the distant places, far off towns.    The fact that ”they’  came from the ‘outside’  was  proof that there was indeed an ‘outside’  that there was life away from the little town,  that perhaps,  maybe,  there were places that offered possible escape.

I suppose, I must have thought,  that there was always a chance,  slim though it may be,  that when they’d pack up  all those rides,  those side shows and the stalls, when the slot machines and games had all been  packed away, they would,  let me me tag along, they would,   take me with them.   That I too could escape life,  ride with the funfair and join in that life,  a life on the road from town to town, bringing joy and happiness everywhere we went.

OK,  so  forgive me for having a clichéd notion,  an all too common ideal, a traditional dream.  I can’t help it,  I did, I wanted to run away with the funfair,  and I would imagine that is why to this day, I feel a sense of longing and romance every time I see a funfair.   And whilst I may not ride all the rides,  or  sample all the stalls,  I still love to walk around the funfair,  savoring all the joys, the sights and dreams they bring.

Then of course,  at the end of the week,  or weekend,  they would be gone,  perhaps leaving a few memories and perhaps not. Maybe,  just  maybe, some tears, because I didn’t the parade passing by without me.  But, they would go, leaving all my dreams, down  among the litter.  The different kind of love I thought I’d found was nothing more than sawdust and glitter.  And, yes, typically,  we don’t cry out loud,  no  we keep it inside and learn how to hide those feelings!    Well,  OK  that last bit owes a little bit more to Carole Bayer Sager than me, and whilst it’s a funfair and not a circus,  the feelings are still  the same.  The much anticipated arrival, with all the excitement that brings.  The heady, vibrant, different pleasures of the fair itself, those sounds, lights, rides, innocent fun,  not to mention the dreams.  Yes,  dreams of people,  of possibilities!  Then it’s the turn of sadness to take over, the destruction, the emotionally crushing blow,  when the fair packs up,  leaves town,  leaving those dreams,  slowly disappearing into thin air as the dust settles.  Replaced with a notion, a thought, of what might have been,  or rather what could have been,  but wasn’t.

Although,  maybe,  just maybe,  in my cloudy mind,  the internal twirling of romantic emotion lends it’s self to the hazy memory,  deep in the darkness of my mind.  The memory  of a first kiss,  the very first, romantic touching, with another boy.  Oh yes,  a memory of long ago, of an innocent time,  a time of awakening.  It is, a memory of a teenager from a travelling fair whose tenderness, still warms me now.  Oh those fleeting moments,  those stolen kisses behind the whirling waltzer,  it’s lights blinking, it’s cars turning, it’s music blearing and  people nearby screaming and squealing with delight as the ride went faster and faster. Yet for me, all that blurred, melted away and time for a little while stood still.   It was, the moment, I felt for the very first time the lips of another person,  other than my best friend Jo, hitting mine.  It was my first time tasting another boys breath, lips, mouth and tongue, and feeling his body pull me in to an embrace.  His body pressed against mine, his hands, over my back,  it was an innocent time, and while I guess it lasted probably mere seconds in time back then, it’s also spanned a lifetime,  a life time  in memory.

He was older than me,  in his late teens,  he had dark hair, deep brown eyes,  rough manly hands, his shoulders broad and his arms muscled. He smelt of soap, wood smoke and candy  floss.  He traveled the country with the fair,  he was, stunning, he was exotic,  and I,  well  I drank in everything he offered in wide eyed wonder. He could have taken anything he wanted from me, and more besides, and I’d have gladly given it.

At the time,  I knew nothing and he,  he knew everything,  or at least that’s the way it seemed,  back then.    At that time, I was  intoxicated by the moment,  by everything, by the sensations,  as he awakened not only a sexual desire from within me,  but also a sexuality, a lust, a yarning, a realization and perhaps even a person.

If I close my eyes now,  really tight and force myself to think really hard,  I can almost see his face,  his eyes,  unchanged by the passing years,  and what’s more,  I can almost feel his lips pressing against mine, the first real kiss, my first kiss of passion, desire and lust.   Oh yes,  perhaps that’s why even today the sight of a traveling funfair still has the ability to evoke subtle stirrings of romance from within my heart.   Subtle, sweet, delicate,  but cherished.

Gosh,  is that the time already?  Thanks for reading and the lone of your eyes and mind for this short while.  I’ll try and entertain you again soon.

Don’t forget you can get a daily dose of my ramblings over on The Seafront Diaries.

© 2010 Copyright Jason Shaw

But,  then again,  on a more positive note,  I used to marvel at the fact that  during my one hour lunch time,  I could queue up for what seemed like the whole hour,  to get lunch in the dining hall, find at least, a semi empty table that didn’t have second year vomit or first year blood on it.   Sit and  eat lunch whilst all the time  trying to dodge someone else’s incoming sausage, or low flying potatoes, in an invariable food fight that always seemed to be going on somewhere in the hall!    Then after food was consumed, empty plates scraped or licked depending on the dish, and piled up high by the dinner ladies,  it was time to go outside for some fresh air.   I’d  suck on the straw of my little apple juice carton (back then there were a novelty!)  as I walked round the playground, not to join friends, or class or house mates,  but in order to get to the back, near the fence,  so I could sneak off behind the netball courts.  Once there,  out of sight of the main buildings,   I’d either cadge a smoke off one of the hard lads from the council estate that went to mu school.  Or  I’d spark up one of my own that I’d pilfered from my mother than morning, without her noticing of course.     I’d also have time to have a piss,  avoiding the blue/brown goldfish, the fights, the football games and the dirty first years. On the way, I’d  eat an apple,  bung the core at an unsuspecting first or second year back,  then suck a couple of extra strong’s,  so my breathe didn’t stink of ciggies and still arrive at the classroom early for the post lunch hell that was afternoon lessons!

© 2010 Copyright Jason Shaw

I think I’ve always been a thoughtful person, always one for thinking, some say I think too much!

I’ve always thought that getting older was meant to make you less sensitive and harder to things. Yet I’m still a softie, I still cry at sad movies and I am, at times a big lump of mush, a gibbering messy mush of emotion!

I’ve always thought that getting older was accumulating knowledge, yet as I travel down this highway called life, I find I know less than I thought I knew.

I’ve always thought that getting older was supposed to ready you for anything, yet I find I’m still surprised and shocked by things, perhaps even more so now that I was a few years ago.

I’ve always thought that getting older was more about my own journey into middle age and beyond, yet more and more I’m finding that we are not just ourselves, that we are in fact the sum of what was before. We are, in part shaped by our surroundings, by our own thoughts, desires and dreams.

But also we are shaped genetically, I’m not talking of looks here, nor do I mean our sexual identity or orientation, but our personality. As these days pass by, I feel, or more to the point – I notice more and more that, despite my mental denials, I am becoming more and more like my parents!

Furthermore, I share a house with my brother at the moment, he’s ten years my senior, and it’s frightening at how much like our father he has become. It’s like when he hit 50 a light turned on in the personality lobe of his brain and like father he became. He makes the same jokes I remember dad making many years ago, they were unfunny then, they are unfunny now, but just like dad didn’t notice back then, brother doesn’t notice now.

It’s not just him though, it’s me also, I’m also treading down that awkward realisation that I am the sum of my parentage, that at times I will behave like my father sometimes and like my mother other times. It’s frighting and despite how much I wish it wasn’t so, I am.

There used to be a saying, that if you want to know what your future wife, husband, lover or partner is gonna be like in 20 years time, just look at the corresponding parent. Previously I thought that was only true of looks, now though, evidence seems to indicate it’s personality traits also, which is, if you’re like me scary as hell.

“As you get older it becomes an inevitability; despite strong denial! It’s still fighting! It’s scary when you know exactly how their minds work…..” Said Arthur Watkiss, actor and style guru.

“When we’re young, we want to grow up to be like our parents, when we’re teenagers, we want to be anything other than our parents. In our twenties and thirties we deny all knowledge of becoming like our parents. Then in our forties we can no long deny it, because it’s all to apparent, we have already become our parents!”
Jason Shaw
Thinking his way can be found daily on The Seafront Diaries.

Yes, I can put up shelves correctly if the need arises, and they will be straight and level, if I have one of those bubble things! I can clean, cook, sew, do laundry, plant flowers, dig vegetables, wire a plug, bake a cake and make guacamole. I can do all these because I’ve taught myself to to do them, I’ve had to. However, real technical or mechanical issues and things, well they kinda passed me by. It is not, you might say, my area of expertise, my field of knowledge, my bag of spanners.

I’m not good at fixing things, I’ve tried, oh do believe me when I say, I’ve had a go at most things! Jason is, well, I am as they say in those kind of circles – NFG! I heard a joke the other day about what’s in a gay mans tool box (seriously an actual tool box, not a euphemism !). and that was a can of WD40 and a roll of duct tape. If it moves and it’s not supposed to – use duct tape. If it doesn’t move and it is supposed to, then use WD40. And that’s that! Simple. I pretty much live by that philosophy ! Oh alright, yes I do have a screwdriver and a hammer as well, but you get my point. But it did take me a few tries to learn you can’t really hammer in a screw!

I think perhaps my lack of ability in the fixing things, making things work is what drove my brother to look sympathetically upon me the other day when I was struggling to fix something that had gone amiss on the bike.

He took over, fixed it in a fraction of the time it would have taken me even to figure out what was really wrong. He’s manual and I’m not. He can do things like that and I, well I just can’t, as I say my mind doesn’t work that way. Sure I can make a blog, edit HTML and CCS and stuff but manual labour, I just well don’t.

It has also given birth to a new nickname that my brother has started to call me, this incident with the bike and a few other things, like my appalling memory, my inability to get the right word and my habit of dropping things has all lead him to slap the name of Calamity Jay on me! It’s my new nickname, new Monika, new handle! I could have been offended, hurt and saddened by such a title. But, looking into it, thinking about it, it’s pretty much true, I am a bit of a calamity. I try not to be, but I can’t help it, I am, so now just call me Calamity Jay!

Jason’s blog The Seafront Diaries includes tales of this that and pretty much anything!  But of course,  there is no DIY, fixing or technical things to confuddle this little English guy!

Don’t forget,  you’ve still got time to enter his little competition,  show some love and possible get yaself £100!    Become a Seafront Fan.

It’s true,  when in exercise causes semi isolation, things like running, as Torchy said on his blog the other day, it’s a lonely sport, it’s when then mind and more so the memory becomes over active.  Alone with ones thoughts, for a long period of time can indeed be, well,  risky.  I don’t run, like Torchy,   the metal in the right leg, I fear would clink and clunk way too much.  Besides,  Torchy is training for the marathon,  which either makes him incredibly brave or utterly stupid, depending on your particular point of view.  I’m in training for……well nothing to be honest,  at least not yet –  more details to follow though,  on  what could be the cycling adventure of the year –  for me at least!

Thinking back,  I’ve parted on pretty good terms with pretty much  all my ex’s,  at least I think I have, with the odd exception, here and there,  perhaps to keep me grounded.  Or indeed to fuel the torch song writer’s tendencies I seem to have established.

I was nearing Shoreham I recall,  when the last and most poignant member of the ex files entered my head.   I smiled as my eyes looked out over the ever rolling sea,  yet in my mind I saw his smiling face again,  his sweet youthful smile.  The smile of the boy, that could have been here today,  had I not let him go,  to fly free,  live life,  make his own mistakes.

I paused my ride,  gazed from the waters edge, out to the horizon,  as far as  my sight reached and I thought about him.    I was older and he was younger,  a college guy, a sweet and devoted young man,  who  with a passion and charm rocked my life for a while.   At times  I felt I was the teacher and he’d come to school,  I was his first relationship,  I was an old hand at such and he just a novice.   I had wisdom, he had hope,  I offered realism, he gave dreams. He was ever  such a devoted boyfriend, lover and friend,   I remember how he walked five miles each way, every day when I was in hospital with a broken back,  he gave me pure unconditional love, oh so pure, passionate and fresh.  I gave him…..?

The salt in the sea wind stung my face,  I blinked back tears,  I could at that moment and even now,  see his eyes,  looking right into mine, as if looking into my soul,  my very inner being.  I loved him,  I really did,  but I had to set him free,  at least that’s what I thought at the time,  when I told him that he needed to live some,  to  live and be free,  experience things,  learn things first hand.        He did so, he left,  I’d set him free.

Now as the hands of time press upon my life, I wonder where his is, what he’s doing? If he’s happy?  How he’s getting on with this thing called life?  I wonder if the freedom I gave him was the freedom he wanted and as I believed at the time, needed?  I suppose,  I will always wonder if I did the right thing?

Jason Shaw,  a master of memory, a legend in his own lunchtime and a man on a mission (Only he still doesn’t know what it is!)  Catch up www.seafrontdiary.com

© 2010 Copyright Jason Shaw

I was going to do some creative writing,  you know, some fiction,  like a short story,  especially after the lovely Anne Brooke’s advice the other day.  I will post some up here in the not too distant future,  I promise.   You’ll have to pop over to my blog The Seafront Diaries to get a first look at it,  when it;s done,  just pop the tie site and hit the  tab marked FICTION On and by the by,  you know you can get Anne’s books from Amazon you know,  like the enchanting Pink Champagne and Apple Juice!

© 2010 Copyright Jason Shaw