Here's lookin' at you, kid!

I was browsing through some updates on Flickr yesterday, when I noticed some new scans of the 1962 panoramic school photo... and there I am! Forty-nine years ago in April 1962, I was a 13-year old third-former - looking shy, timid and a perhaps little apprehensive. I wonder what I was thinking? Certainly not that one day I'd be sitting here remembering back almost five decades to my schooldays. I was never given to introspection, nor particularly to casting my mind forward to what the future might hold. I was always a "let's get through today" sort of pupil, young for my age and anxious to keep out of trouble.

It's odd in a way that I now think back so nostalgically as I'm certain I didn't feel like that at the time. I just wanted to get through school and get out of there,which is probably why I never really gave it so much as a backward glance: I don't think there ever have been any "reunions" as such anyway, and I didn't keep in touch with anyone much after I'd left. Whatever the line of reasoning, I do now enjoy looking back with some affection: my education had more of a lasting effect on me that I ever gave it credit for and it's certainly nice to swap reminiscences with other ex-pupils albeit coloured with the benefit of hindsight.

It's all good clean(?) fun... honest!

As I've written on here before, I love wearing high heels, and I've been in them most of the time in the house this week - slowly getting something approaching basic competence at walking in 5" stilettos, if not exactly proficiency. I even savoured the secret thrill of wearing my rubber ankle boots to put the bin out early yesterday morning: I guessed I'd be pretty safe as it was still dark outside - but I will admit to a very slight twinge of disappointment that I hadn't been noticed.

Since I first started posting pictures of myself wearing them in the spring of last year, they've rapidly become, I think, the most popular category of photo I've uploaded. So when someone asked me if I could take some photos of me in them perhaps wearing tight shorts or "a denim miniskirt" it sounded to me like a perfect opportunity to show off my leather miniskirt, together with some fishnet tights - and the boots, of course.

It livened up a cold wet winter afternoon no end, and I got a huge kick out of doing it. If I'm honest I do quite enjoy a bit of crossdressing and have done for quite a while - albeit on a small scale. But I suspect I wouldn't need much encouragement to actually go further - maybe to a party or something. I don't, I hasten to add, look enough like a female to pass off as one just on clothes alone and I can't ever see myself donning wigs, falsies and the like. Anyway, here is the finished result, so you be the judge!

Fan club?

I was exchanging emails with a guy at the end of last week, who's into thighboots. As I've written on here before I've got a bit of a thing about boots, including high-heel ones. So we had quite a friendly chat about it and the upshot was that I decided to take some pics of me wearing mine and upload them: they're knee-high rubber stilettos! It's something I'd had half in mind to do for a while in fact. So I set up a little mini photo-shoot with the boots, some black wet-look leggings and a corset to complete the ensemble.

It was a terrific fun way to spend a wet breezy Saturday afternoon and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. I have no pretentions whatever to being photogenic, although the focus was on the boots and not on me. Nevertheless I was gobsmacked to see that my Flickr stats have since absolutely shot up seven-fold on the strength of it!! The obvious inference is I am not by a long chalk the only guy who's into stilettos - it is moderately obvious that it's a guy who's wearing them. If only I could master the art of walking in them as easily?

PS - I've kept the corset on: I really must get properly back into the habit of that.

The scattergun effect!

One of the most annoying things about searching on the internet is the way a search for a specific subject or topic will produce a ton of unrelated material which, because of the way it's indexed, takes the right constituent pieces but puts them together in the wrong order.

To give an example, I usually check out which of my Flickr photos have been viewed the most, and how people found them. It's not much more than idle curiosity on my part, but it's a bit of an indication of the sort of stuff that it's probably not worth bothering to upload. Most searching seems to give fairly predictable results, but the one that caught my eye yesterday was "hairy beach stud" - and this is what they found:

It's an old polaroid holiday snap from the 1980s, and the caption reads: "On the beach with Sweep (the dog)- Me in tight jeans and DM boots with our first dog - a nice hairy one named Sweep. I was the envy of all the local lads in those boots: the 14-hole ones had only just come out and they all wanted to know where I'd got them from."

So the "beach" came from the title, the "hairy" from the subtitle, and the "stud" from the 'studded' tag I used to label the studded leather belt I was wearing. But rather obviously (or so I think, anyway) neither of us really fits the description of a hairy beach stud!

Ah well.... life is full of its little disappointments for someone.

Serendipity n. - the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident

Last autumn, when I came across the Flickr photos which first inspired me to start reminiscing back to my schooldays, there was a link to a GeoCities site on which it looked like there would be a lot more material. As luck would have it, it was just after the time that Yahoo pulled the plug on GeoCities, and the guy who'd posted the link couldn't remember whose the site was. It didn't seem to have been archived or cached anywhere and he tried e-mailing (using that part of the URL which was an e-mail addy) but without getting a reply. For some while afterwards I tried searching occasionally to see if anything turned up about it, but I'd more or less given up hope of finding any clues.

But then the other night I was looking at the updated profiles on Friends Reunited, when I spotted that another ex-pupil had put the same link in his profile. On the offchance, I shot him a message asking if he knew whose the site was, and he replied the following night that it was his! He said he wants to re-upload it when he's found a suitable ftp hosting for it: I'm not sure how keen he is, but he did say that there had been quite a bit of material on it, so having done what I assume would've been a fair amount of work, and now he knows he's got an interested reader, it may spur him on. I'm hoping so, anyway, having unexpectedly found the missing piece to my puzzle!

Maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time?

I've been posting pics on a fairly regular basis to my Flickr photostream. They're only snapshots, but it's been quite fun, people seem to like looking at them and commenting on them, and I've joined quite a few of the groups on there as a result.

Now I don't know what inspired me to look, but I searched yesterday to see if there were any groups that might relate to my old school, and was staggered to find a direct match. It had been going a couple of months but only had one member (the Admin), there were no pics or discussion threads, and it said "Anyone who was at Leamington College between 1963 and 1970" which wasn't the exact time I was there. Nevertheless I sent the guy a message saying I was interested in joining (there aren't that many ex-pupils around that he can afford to be too picky over the dates, I thought). I was gobsmacked to get an automated message back in the evening to say the Admin had left the group and as its longest-serving member (a few hours!) I was now the new Admin! I'd thought it was a bit odd that there wasn't any obvious connection with the school in his profile or photostream: I've no idea who he is/was, nor what he set the group up for. I suppose he has his reasons for the anonymity of it all.

Anyway, I'm giving it my best shot at kicking it into life. I've done a bit of spamming and got several members, and between us we've added some photos. In the space of 24 hours, it certainly looks like it's being used, but realistically I suspect its growth potential is pretty limited. Even so, I've done a better job on it than its previous owner did!