...gathers no parsnips.

Wintery weather, and as usual the UK can’t cope. Everything grinds to a halt. Blame gets tossed around, but in truth it’s not that we’re not prepared for it, more that it’s too expensive to keep large amounts of salt and machinery in store for the chance that there might be some snow. Which, for the vast proportion of the country, may be only once in three years.

A run out for coal and bread found us in town eating parsnip soup and buying organic porridge oats. Such is the slightly hippy/veggie vibe that surrounds the place. A point that becomes increasingly attractive.

'10

January.

My new year really started yesterday not on the first as it has done for the last few years. The work-pattern precludes normal Christmas and New Year holidays, so I mentally start on the first available Monday. I’d like to look back at the last year with fondness, but to be quite honest apart from a couple of things, it was shit. I didn’t have any money, there was virtually no work around and the house still didn’t sell. The only saving grace was the decision to marry the Short Brunette, as she was then. A decision that wasn’t taken lightly, or in haste, but one which I’ve had no reason to regret. Her 5’ of bubblyness drives me through each day in a way that I couldn’t quite have imagined.

This brings us to today. I don’t really buy into all the new year = new start crap. The date is just a marker point; a filing system for Westerners. A change where everyone joins a gym and makes promises to themselves that they have broken by the second week of February. I have ideas of what I would like to do this year, but then they are no different to the ideas that I have at any other time of the year. I need to work a bit more and make a bit more money (according to government markers I am living below the poverty-line). I wasn’t sure whether I would write anything here again. I’d looked at it over the last couple of weeks and thought not. Again questioning why I am here at all: so much has changed, so many others have changed. Many of the blogs that I read have gone, or in a couple of cases gone private (don’t understand that one). One at least, due to the computer change, I’ve lost the link to. It’s probably still there, I just don’t know where. Most people have stopped blogging altogether or have changed persona. I understand this. It’s a tight fine line that we walk, especially those who open their souls (and occasionally their legs) to the world in a semi-private style. There was a point in time where I would have fallen into that bracket. Now however there isn’t really any need to crouch behind a pseudonym. No longer do I get described as enigmatic as I once did when I trotted out erotica for the thinking woman. I may one day post more of that style of writing or even put up pictures of my cock... but I think it unlikely. (Does anyone actually get off on the cock photos?) The shape of what I write here has changed dramatically, and will probably continue to do so. And as I tend to think after every post... this may be the last thing that I write.

Happy Christmas

Fixed.
As is usual this time of year it gets very busy around here. So a break from proceedings. If I write anything it'll be somewhere else.

I'm contactable in all the usual ways.

Mr. Innocent

Ramble

Snow.
Not unusual anywhere else, but unusual here.
I don't know whether this affects internet speeds, but I have a slower load time that I ever got on dial-up at the moment.

First day off after a week of very early mornings (for me anyway). I struggled to keep awake all evening, gave up at 10.30, then got jumped on by Mrs Innocent at midnight on her return from her Christmas party. Probably for the first time in my life that I thought all the way through, can't this wait till morning. Thus I have now discovered that I am growing old. All my life dreaming of being woken by horny women, now....

I had tried the drag and drop, but to no avail. Computers and me just don't mix.

Uh-hmmm

You may have noticed that there is a subtle colour change. And, the blogroll has dropped to the bottom. The colour change was my idea, the page imploded and even a complete change of template and back again won't restore it. Technophobe moi?

Summary

For some reason I'm thinking different this week.
I am just missing a nervous breakdown.
It's that time of year again...oh no it's not.
It's the end of the ice age.

Not a ph...

Here’s a question for you.

As I mentioned earlier Mrs. Innocent has spent the last few weeks immersing herself in the ins and outs of early Tudor history. While not shocked, she raised an eyebrow when faced with the fact that young royals were married off as young as 12 or 13 and forced to copulate, often with others present. The demand to create heirs to the throne being paramount (interestingly the literary and documentary written evidence shows this, but the film and TV representations shy away making them much older). This has coincided with me finishing Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ (part of my continuing drive to work my way through the back catalogue of American literature) and has sparked off several conversations about the acceptability of teenage relationships and the laws surrounding them.

How young is young?

Is the fact that a girl (or boy) has reached sexual maturity reason enough? And the big point: Why is it still acceptable in many cultures to marry off 12 and 13 year olds? Have they got it right? Do some states of the highly conservative USA still allow it? I’m thinking of the case of Jerry Lee Lewis and his entry into England in the 60s with his new 13 year old bride, how that caused uproar here and more or less stopped his career in its tracks. After all, this was a legal marriage in whichever state he had come from. Did he do the right thing, or we do the wrong thing by planting our sensibilities onto him?

Is the fact that I can, without using a search engine, but by just ambling about and clicking through a couple of links find amongst all the other stuff photos of girls and boys who, although it’s not billed as such, are obviously sub16. I’m not putting links here, but you may combine the following to see what I mean: spliffy, xxx, clips, com . Is this acceptable bearing in mind that only half the world would find this unusual? And going back to the 16^th century example, presumably as the royals were doing this, then the population as a whole was doing it. When did this attitude change, and why?

These questions will I fear remain un-answered.