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I believe the obituary said he was 61, too young and to nice a guy to be gone that soon.

An excellent book! Working out which books have influenced me, as opposed to informing or amusing me, has been an interesting exercise. There are an almost overwhelming number of books from which to choose - I am writing this in my library surrounded by a lot of books. However, with one exception, the books which have influenced me, the threads from which are still in my brain unconsciously shaping my views and perceptions, are books I read when I was young. It is not that I have not acquired a lot of knowledge over the intervening years, but this later knowledge is held in the conscious mind and I am aware I use it. As a child I had free run of my grandfather's library. I have warm memories of sitting by the window, the sun and air coming in from the garden, my nose buried in one of his books. One of which was inscribed to him at the age of eight and presented such a joyfully insouciant picture of thumbing the nose at authority that it had me riveted. Clearly under the right circumstances nose thumbing was more than ok, it was ones duty! Granddad’s book said so and at the time I knew him Granddad was every inch the respected citizen, so it must be so. I knew better than to ask him for confirmation, he was now Granddad with standards to uphold. But this book ‘The Lost Squire of Inglewood’ was well thumbed. My absolute respect for Authority never recovered. Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Kim’ is another book I read when young that encouraged adventure rather than compliance with any particular set of behavioral expectations. The variety of people and unfamiliar thought patterns fascinated me and left a lasting interest in ‘the other’. ‘The World Over’ a two volume collection of short stories by Somerset Maugham embedded an interest in understanding social structures and the suspicion that social structures and attitudes may not be all they were cracked up to be. It helped that several stories had gay themes. Top of the gay list, apart from a medical text with illustrations of the syphilitic brain which has forever lead me to practice very careful sex, are books of two very different types, romantic versus gritty. The romantic are the novels of Mary Renault, particularly ‘The Charioteer’ and ‘The Persian Boy’. Gay was normal! Gay was in fact just as I felt it to be. How happy was that! Now I could stare down the prejudices of the World for what they were – dumb nonsense. The gritty is ‘Ruling Passions’ the autobiography of Tom Driburg, Lord Bradwell, the Labour politician. It lyrically describes a cum stain as resembling a map of Ireland. I read this when it came out in 1977 and it was an eye-opener to how easily and randomly the gay male sex drive could be satisfied. I remained a Renault-romantic, but with eyes more wide open. Also in the gritty camp is a spy novel with an openly gay subtext, given to me that Christmas by an aunt who knew I had read Driburg’s autobiography. The protagonist remains closeted, has increasingly sad lonely hook-up sex and dies a sad fuck. The conclusion embedded in my mind is the one I suspect my aunt was aiming for: Renault is a better model than Driburg (but an occasional Driburg moment is fun). I have searched the shelves and can’t find the book. A more sophisticated influence is Machiavelli’s ‘Discourses’ into which I feel he put both his intellect and his heart, while ‘The Prince’ received only a narrow sliver of his intellect. It gave me a subconscious warning bell that in human affairs nothing is stable and that democracy is the best system but a very fragile one. That bell has been ringing off the hook in recent years. The last and most recent influence by many years is ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’ by Katherine Boo which I picked up in India thinking it was a novel. I could not believe how deep the characterization’s were. Then I read the dust jacket more carefully and discovered it was in fact non-fiction based on long-term contact with a group of slum dwellers. What struck me was the entirely different logic of survival in the slum to the logic of survival in my world. To survive in the slum I would have to un-learn much of what I have learnt and a successful slum-dweller would have great difficulty transitioning to my world. You really need to make the effort to understand other people’s frame of reference because you can’t assume it is your own.

The new next door neighbors are having a session where he's spanking her and she's clearly loving it. Another neighbor opened his window and screamed "salope" at them. Me, I'm like "I haven't had sex in more than year. Let me listen to them and get off!"

Looking forward to hearing the adventures! 1,200 Business class airfares from USA? That is incredible. I found I could often get business class to Bangkok cheaper than business class to Brazil. It seems that the number of business travelers have really dwindled during Covid.

Poseidon had a wine dinner last week which they told me was fully booked. I'm hoping to arrange a few days away in Pattaya in April to coincide with their next wine dinner, I'm hoping the dates don't clash with Songkran as I am getting too old to get a soaking.