Charlie

I used to have a 1954 Mercury (actually, I can't tell from the photo if it is a '54 or a '53, because they were the same except for the taillights). I used to spend as much money on oil as on gas for it, although I never looked quite like that guy.

George Orwell lived in that row of houses at Highbury Corner, but he was not at home when the bomb hit it. When I lived in London in the 1970s, there were still many abandoned buildings that had suffered damage in the war and still hadn't been repaired after three decades. Now London property is so valuable that there is no sign of them anywhere.

I didn't realize she was that old. The first time I saw her was in Il Pirata in Philadelphia about 1965, before she made her Met debut. She held the high note at the end of one scene for so long that she apparently fainted, and they had to hold the curtain longer than scheduled before she could continue. I saw her several times after that, but she did cancel often. The last time I saw her was at Carnegie Hall, at a birthday tribute for Marilyn Horne about 30 years later, and the voice had hardly changed.

If they are "good friends" of yours and don't need anything, presumably including money, I would give them a small art or craft piece that suits their taste. They will always say, "Oh, cany10011 gave us that as a wedding gift;" they won't remember your gift whenever they look at some $100 bills.

Those were all the same advantages that led me to live on Canonbury Rd near the Essex Rd tube stop, except that when I lived there 45 years ago, it was also fairly inexpensive (there was still WW2 bomb damage to nearby buildings).

Here in the desert the highs through last week were still in triple digits. It was only 74 when I got up at 6am, so I wore a jacket to walk the dog, but the a/c was running, because the house holds warmth for a long time. We only use the heat for a few months in the winter, when the lows are in the 40s and the daytime highs around 70.

I used to live a short walk from Upper Street, which is now a lot more gentrified than it was in my day.

Those who know that I am basically an opera fan might be surprised that two of my favorite popular singers were Edith Piaf and Janis Joplin. I guess it was the incredible drama in their voices.

I remember going to see the film when it first came out, mainly because I had heard about the gay subplot.

Interesting: I have recently read Jean Edward Smith's biography of Grant, which I thought was quite good. I am currently reading a history of the first hundred years of the Rocky Mountain News by Robert L. Perkin, written in 1959, which I bought for $1 at a thrift store. It is 593 pages long, but I bought it only because I was interested in an incident involving my grandfather that was in the Denver news at the turn of the century. To my surprise, the book is a fascinating history not only of the newspaper itself, but also of Denver, Colorado, and the West , and I haven't been able to put it down.

Oh dear! Another red pencil moment: an escort is hung; a murderer is hanged.

The problem, Gman, is that what appears to be a "glaring" error to you is minor and unimportant to many people, if the evidence of most escort ads is considered. I wonder if there is even some auto-correct glitch in the sites' programs that turns "dominant" into "dominate." And it is human nature to resent having one's errors pointed out by a stranger, or even by a friend. Let it go. Those of us who have been here a long time understand your quirks.

Tsk, tsk. Don't you know it should be "Screw grammar if I were hiring for an hour."? (You will never impress an escort if you don't recognize the need for the subjunctive form of the verb.)

I never got to the north, but I visited all the places you mention in the south. In general, I preferred the south, especially Kerala.

Because I was quite young--17--when I came out, it was natural that most of my gay friends and sexual partners were older than I was. The 42 year difference I referenced in my opening post was a result of being ready to sleep with almost anyone who was willing, and one of my first gay friends was a man who was 59. I was the one who initiated the relationship, and he was somewhat hesitant. I really had no idea how old he was, until another acquaintance invited me to a 60th birthday party for him. Many of the men I had sex with when I was a teenager were in their 30s and 40s, because they were the only ones who had a place where we could do it; I didn't have a place of my own until I was 21, by which time I had already had a lot of sex. As I aged, I still preferred men who were at least my own age and usually older; I only had one serious affair with someone younger (4 years younger). Even when I started hiring escorts, they were rarely more than a few years younger than I was, until I approached retirement, when the mature escort demographic thinned out.

It was because of my love of Indian food that I was interested in visiting India. I first discovered Indian restaurants in NYC in the 1960s, and became a regular at them when I lived in London in the 70s. When I visited India in the 80s and 90s, the best Indian food was usually found in big hotels, although I did eat in a couple of good independent restaurants in Mumbai. Even street food never made me sick, but the water was something else. In the countryside, the safest thing to drink was coconut water from a coconut slashed open right in front of you.

This sounds like one of my trips to India and Indonesia. We even stayed in the Shiv Niwas in Udaipur.

42 years. (I was the younger one)

The SCOTUS decision legalizing marriage at the federal level came in 2013.

My partner and I recently celebrated our 50th anniversary living together. After the first three honeymoon weeks together, we both admitted that we were attracted to other men as well, and the only way our relationship was likely to survive was if we were honest about it. Therefore, we accepted the fact that sex with others was going to happen, maybe even affairs--they did--and we shared the necessary information about who we were sleeping with. We also had an understanding that, because we loved each other, we would let one another go if one of those other relationships reached that level of importance that one of us wanted to leave. It got close a couple of times, but we always decided that our relationship was too important to us, and we split with the potential new partner. I started hiring escorts partly because it eliminated the potential for emotional involvement. In 2013, we got married, and we have been monogamous ever since. (OK, OK! I'll admit it has been easy, since we don't get any other offers nowadays.)

I have discovered that the microwave is a great way to cook fish. I buy a 1lb slab of salmon at Trader Joe's; I cook it for one minute on each side in a frying pan, then transfer it to a microwaveable plate and cook it again for one minute on each side. It comes out cooked just right, still moist and tender.

That takes serious organization. You're a stronger man than I am.

I am amazed that someone as active here as you are was unaware of the "New Posts" option. That is what I click on as soon as I have checked my "alerts." I find it simplifies the whole process as I drop in and out of the site.

Those turkey sausages do have potato starch, salt, dextrose, sugar and spices (unspecified) added to them. The list of ingredients added to most baked products, including bread and muffins, is a lot longer than that. Nevertheless, I am not about to make my own sausage (believe it or not, I have done it once, from a freshly slaughtered pig) or bake my own bread any more, so I pop my store-bought sausage in the microwave and muffin in the toaster, and try to forget about the extra ingredients.

Then you should probably avoid most processed foods, since these are fairly common ingredients in them.