After a brief hiatus where the inevitable boring stuff known as work and other life ‘stuff’ distracted me from my weekly contribution I have felt the inspriation return once more to tell you about more of my life until now.  Sorry for the gap, feel free to punish me somehow ;-)…please

My last trip down memory lane involved me dredging the depths of my early perversions and not fully understanding them, this time I’m forced to think about the time following that where I would repeat previous ideas and revel in being more adventurous and then end that experimental stage when I discovered the internet.  Not to say the internet killed my ideas but because there was so much new and exciting stuff to discover!

After my trips to the local army surplus store, most of my gear purchases revolved around knitted 2-hole SAS style balaclavas, ski or snowboard gloves (which HAD to have a substantial wrist strap) and boots.

I’d visit the local motorcycle shop and tell them stories of how my dad had asked me to check out helmets as he was getting a bike again and I could go pillion.  I’d often dream of plucking up the courage to actually buy one, but I think the boner I’d get was more of a negative than a  positive as for most of the time I still didn’t really understand why I had this fascination with what I now know as gear.

Most of the items I struggled to buy brand new and therefore I accepted the gear as gifts from friends who unknown to them I would be using it in a different way to the fabricated elaborate back-story I’d tell them.

I managed to find myself being woken up one morning to my mum wondering why I was wearing ski gloves in bed….I think that experience has somehow affected my ability to sleep geared up…I simply can’t get to sleep.  The only way I’ve managed to wear gear to sleep in was when I was slipped a sleeping tablet whilst in a smooth skin wetsuit…but more of that tale another time.

During my late teens I’d get distracted with other activities like getting drunk and stoned which I’m glad to say I don’t bother with now…too many years sat vegging out and laughing at crap and then getting the munchies.  My first year of University I went from clean cut boy next door (with a kinky secret) to a dope head who couldn’t think of anything else….peer pressure is not a good thing.

I didn’t complete my first year of Uni and then went to work in a warehouse where I found even more dope heads and I didn’t really improve my life.  Instead I was stagnating in a dead-end job and socialising with people I didn’t really like.  I now know the drugs were a substitute for a lot of who I am now.

I managed to convince myself that buying my first gasmask was a brilliant idea and I felt the need to yet again come up with an excuse at the army surplus store.  I have hayfever and was due to go to Glastonbury Festival 1999 so I bought it under the pretence that I’d be wearing it to combat the pollen…not encourage the hormone!  I did take it to Glasto’ but I didn’t wear it in public…or even dared to in private considering all I had in the way of privacy was a thin layer of canvas.

The gasmask got used a few times, and as I’d been exposed to poppers a couple of years beforehand, I tried inhaling them in the mask and they blew my head off…

I tried taking up snowboarding and of course this was the perfect opportunity to buy some kickass snowboard gloves and boots.  Sadly I could only afford the gloves, but they seemed to make a difference to me and the rental boots weren’t bad.  I’d love to try ‘boarding again, but other hobbies take precedence these days, but the longing is definitely there.

A lot of my money during the nineties would go on magazines. No, not porn (at least not in the normal sense) but motorcycle magazines, snowboard, paintball, and car magazines (especially if even just one page had a picture of a driver behelmetted) and I’d dream of being able to do the things pictured.  Of course the biker mags proved to be the most thumbed and often the most stained ones too.

After years of doing the same things day in and day out, becoming a shell of my former self always with dreams of better things I decided to go back to University.  I made the enquiries and enrolled three years after I left.  Determined to not get distracted again I decided to commute instead of living on campus.

My parents knew of my troubled social activities and didn’t want to show any disappointment in me, but when I said I was returning to Uni, they supported my decision and bought me a computer to do some of my work on….this of course, opened up to me the as yet undiscovered World Wide Web…

 As I planned to write my next installaton about my first steps onto the interwebs I shall cut it here and see you in a week(ish)

~Boots