Jeff Ellis

One of my absolutely favourite stories. You really mustn't miss this one.

On 21 October it will be the 50th anniversary of the 1966 disaster at Aberfan, when a coal waste heap avalanched in a South Wales mining valley and engulfed a primary school. 116 small children, their headteacher and four teachers died, together with people in neighbouring houses... a total of 144 victims. It happened at 9.15 in the morning and despite heroic efforts nobody was rescued alive after 11.00 that morning. Huw Jones wrote a magnificent story here recounting a boy's emotional survival at the loss. It would be fitting at this time to read it here... http://awesomedude.com/huw_jones/Hiraeth/index.htm A particularly moving locally written blog of the disaster can be read here... http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/aberfandisaster.htm An unsung hero of the following night was the volunteer miner who stood on the remains of the waste heap (which was still moving). He stood there in the dark with a siren to warn the rescue teams if the tip started to accelerate towards them... His task was to sound a warning until he was killed... a great man. I never heard of his name.

Darker than we are used to. I like it... a lot

Aw shucks Rutabaga has stolen the word I wanted to use... delightful As always Cole catches the mind of a 13yo so well Is it my imagination... I think his recent work has a sharper edge to it. I find it attractive

Gracious me, Cole. That is really kind of you. In many ways Adult Fiction was a wish-fulfillment story. All my friends were at school, and the school holidays could seem interminably lonely. To have actually met another boy like that would indeed have made my summer. Prehaps it's that intense desire for companionship that attracted you to it. Thank you. As they say... it's what keeps us writing.

Many thanks guys, your kind words are much appreciated. I do believe the Boy and the Level was the first thing I published here and at iomfats, that is, on a "quality site". Shades of Gray was still a nifty style romp in need of vigorous revision at that stage. The conscious sequel to the Level was "Adult Fiction" set in the bookworms local library. Both AF and B&L are largely autobiographical in setting... its just that the bookworm is generally luckier than I was, for me school holidays were lonely and the library was a refuge from boredom (did you know Charles Dickens invented boredom... the word I mean) Incidentally the level in question was last used in WW2... as an air-raid shelter for the nearby grammar school. That wasn't my school, we wore a rather stylish black and silver. The locals wore green... I could never have lived with wearing green!

It's hard to believe that he comes from the same nation as Donald Trump... until you realise that the poem is addressed to 14 year old Donald Trumps. The next generation of Trumps is out there, waiting their turn to take advantage of their place on the top rung.

It's nice to see this short story in the blast from the past section. It was one of the first things I wrote, so it's close to my heart... Thank you Awesomedude. Read it here... http://awesomedude.com/solsticeman/boy_and_the_leve.htm I fear I have been silent for a long while, an emotional wobble and work on the next novel have distracted me, but the new work is nearly done, a naval tale set in the Restoration Fleet of 1660, a century before Hornblower and Ramage.

Oh dear, I raced to check how badly wrong I'd got in Wandervogel. If I ever have a penguin I shall call him Ben.

I'm much more comfortable with Nigel's number of 30%. I went to an elitist boys school that selected its kids from a catchment area of about 1000 sq miles. That's 90 boys a year, or in a village our size, one every few years. The other village children wore a uniform of a different colour, and these things mattered. It was difficult to have close village friends! Why did that matter? Well all sexual development happened at school from 9 till 4. What happened at school stayed at school and there was very little input from outside school. The result was that what today would be thought of as gay actvity, essentially mutual masturbation, was widespread at school... and was simply fun. It carried no overtones of sexual orientation, no-one commented adversely. It was simply what we did to find the release that if we had gone to the village co-ed school would have been found in the back row of the cinema with a girl. In my class (and it happened class by class, a little within a year and in my experience virtually never across years) about 50% of us played amongst ourselves (it completely trashed my study of Latin). That was from an onset at 11 until the summer we turned 15. That summer it suddenly became known that what we were doing was "homo", and the penalties if caught would be dire. Those destined to be hetero ran for the hills. The number of boys I could play with dropped to half. In my case I still had three mates who I played with regularly until they left school at 17. Two were in my class, thats 3 out of 30. There were other groupings in the class but we had each other. So were we "gay"? Well, according to Friends ReUnited, The three of us in my class have ten children between us. The fourth (Rico in my story "Shades of Gray") I'm pretty sure would today be thought of as gay, his chances of surviving the 80s would not have been good... take it from me! So, what I take from my own childhood, is that if boys dont know that "gay" exists then homosexual activity is simply play. It's the moment that they realise that "gay" exists that the numbers drop, and that is to avoid trouble and for no other reason.

This story ought to be slipped into the school system somehow, send free copies to every straight/Gay alliance or better yet get it into redneck awareness programs. Perhaps the LA police could make use of it. Seriously, its one of the best and most timely pieces I have read in years, well done Cole.

ChrisR. Many thanks for an undeservedly generous comment. It's readers that make writing worth the effort... and you just did. Kudos to you too.

When two guys I respect say something is good I feel obliged to follow... and yes, they are right it's a nicely built pair of characters and a neatly and sparsely drawn setting. I shall certainly be looking forward to more.

Chapter 3 has lived up to the promise set by 1 and 2... but then who would have expected otherwise, it is a Cole Parker story after all. I can so identify with the anti-hero... or is that un-hero.

Well done Drake. How times change. When I was his age in the 1960s I had never met an openly gay male. Not one among the 1200 boys in our school, nor any in our (large) village. I came across none at university either (another 6000 or so). Of course, with my closet door tightly shut my view of the world wasn't that good either.

I recall a nice story of a pair of engineers watching a missile falling off its launcher, with a tonne of amatol in its nose. One ran like hell and the other just stood there. After a large crunch and long silence his athletic colleague returned and asked him why he had stood frozen on the spot... "Either the Safety and Arming Unit was going to work, or it wasn't. I couldn't run fast enough to make any difference." Thats what SAU's are there for, to turn lethal weapons into litter. Way to go guys... well done the SAU engineers, though its a bit of a pity that the B29 broke up. As another wag said "the difference between missile engineers and aircraft engineers is that the latter kill pilots by accident.

loved it. The Conservative Club in our village was entirely working class Labour. At Xmas, members got 72 free pints, about a weeks worth. In summer they did a coach trip to the seaside, it had to be police cleared because 74 coaches caused gridlock on small country roads. It was the centre of village life

Indeed dude, not forgetting Only Boys Aloud! The thing is... nine of the boys in that choir went to the school that the boy in Adult Fiction refers to, when describing the loneliness of going to an elitist school that only accepted one child from each village every couple of years, as does the boy in The Boy and The Level. That school is also the backdrop to Shades of Gray (and more so its predecessor on Nifty, Caught in the Lower School Bogs). Look at those boys as they mill about at the start of the clip below. Fifty years ago they would have been the sons of miners, faced with a career underground. Today they are the grandsons of miners and faced with structural unemployment if they dont learn how to strive to "be more than I can be". Tough kids I think, they were in my day... we took no prisoners. In many ways the progress between Gray's setting in the 50s and today is illustrated by the difference between the anguished cry of "Is this all there is?" in Gray and... the conductor of the choir. He lives in the next village to where I grew up. He is openly gay and lives with his partner. More to the point, nearly two hundred sets of parents set all that aside to trust their teenage sons in his care. That I think is progress. Here is the choir in probably their most effective moment when they could still take people by surprise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AARrVAHnkdY

Well guys I'm a tad humbled by how my little story has awakened memories of childhoods spent in libraries. I am with Steven in his comment too. I am sure that word must pass around amongst LGBT and support groups that there are stories aimed at them here and a few likeminded places. I have consciously aimed my own at the kid who wonders whether as a gay teen he is doomed to a life in the shadows. My characters come out fighting. My plots are less "heres how to cope with homophobic parents" and more a case "you lift me up to more than I can be", and yes that does mean I love youth choirs, I love PCCB, Libera, Tom Daley, Straahlen and all boys who strive to rise above peoples expectations of what they are capable of So thank you guys, I'm touched

Yes, a very nicely structured story where you know there will be an interesting end... and there is. So then you wonder if you missed any clues on the way. Well done Nigel, I enjoyed it immensely.

Yes, a triumphant debut here indeed! I have been aware of Joe's fascination with the beauty of the young tsarevich Alexei, so I suspect that the inspiration for the story is one of wish-fulfillment. Very well done Joe and welcome.

Well Pedro, just about everyone I respect on here has said how much they enjoyed the cat... so it only leaves me to repeat --- what they said!

The language of Heaven (and Patagonia)

Thanks for that, I love a heartwarming story.

Awesome! what else can you say... awesome!