Another year gone. The highlights of my year are always going to involve having sex with Emma. This year I have had her in every room in the house except the bathroom - an omission I mean to rectify sometime soon, despite the cramped conditions. In addition, I made mad passionate love to her in hotel-rooms in Llandudno, Chester (two hotels), Redruth, Warrington, Shrewsbury and Llangollen. We really enjoy sex in hotels, especially if the room is large enough to take some decent photographs. 2008 was also the year that Emma got her tits out in the great outdoors for the first time - this photo marks the occasion. Unfortunately, there was no sex in the open air - something else that needs to be remedied in the New Year. And that’s about it. Of course, I have also seen and read some wonderful, exciting things on the Blogs I visit. Thank you one and all, too many to list. However, I will mention just one: It has been a delights to see Heather in front of Joe’s camera lens this year. Beautiful!.

Emma: What d’you call it when it’s like that?
Alfie: Nothing. I haven’t really thought about it. Well, not to give it a name.
Emma: It must have a name, though.
Alfie: How about Mr Droopy?
Emma: Don’t be daft. I mean a proper name.
Alfie: Percy? John Thomas?
Emma: Be serious. What would the doctor call it?
Alfie: How the hell should I know? Maybe he doesn’t give his cock a name. Not many people do.
Emma: Oh, you’re hopeless. Look. It’s not erect, is it? So what is it?
Alfie: [The penny drops at last] Oh, I see. It’s flaccid. That’s the word, Flaccid.
Emma: “Flaccid.” I love it when it’s “flaccid”. It feels lovely and soft in my mouth. Mmmmm…
[Enter Mr Stiffy]

This is a picture of a shag. Not to be confused, despite the rhyme, with the common cormorant. Nor does it lay its eggs in a paper bag, as we have been led to believe. I well remember my first sighting of a shag. I was bird-watching on the sand-dunes at Formby and came across a couple so engrossed in their flamboyant courting ritual that I was able to observe them for a full half hour. I couldn’t wait to tell my bird-watching buddy KC of the spectacle I had witnessed, and he insisted on hearing every detail before going to see for himself. Alas, by then the birds had flown and there was not a shag to be seen. The courtship ritual of the shag is a delight to behold, and our Blogging friend Lapis Ruber has a fine collection of videos of shags at the seaside. [Watch one of them here.] Let’s declare 2009 the Year of the Shag. Get to the beach, twitchers, and keep your eyes peeled. They’re out there, and you may be lucky. One thing I can guarantee, you’ll never forget your first shag.

Emma and I love to learn about other couple’s lifestyles and we enjoy reading their Blogs. I hope we do so with completely open minds. And while we may not wish to emulate them, we are in no way judgemental. Who are we to pass comments on other people’s choices? I was a tad miffed, therefore, on reading Sebastian Horsley’s review of the book whose title I have used above. [The book is by Mark Brendon, by the way.] Horsley asks, “What is the point of a person who doesn’t share themselves? It’s like a bank without money. Christianity without Christ. By being monogamous, you are making one person happy but all the other people in the world unhappy. What right have you to do that?” Apart from the unfortunate syntax [He should say, “people who don’t share themselves” if he wants to avoid the awkward “a person who doesn’t share himself or herself”] and apart from the reference to Christ, which I completely fail to understand, what makes him think I am “depriving all the other people in the world” by screwing only Emma? Hell, I’m not that good at it! He goes on to claim we are not swingers because we “haven’t got the guts”. Why can’t he accept our choice with the same grace as we accept his? Surely all those lovely swingers can’t share Horsley’s viewpoint.

Emma and I spent a few days in idle luxury this month. And I don’t mean during the Christmas break, which Emma spent slaving over a hot stove. [Surely they should have been waiting on us. Where did we go wrong?] It was the week before Christmas that we stayed at the Wild Pheasant Hotel in Llangollen, pictured here. We took the notebook with us, of course, to check up on our favourite Blogs. We hate to miss anything you guys get up to. I composed a post or three to describe our own nefarious activities, and naturally I took plenty of photographs. But since I haven’t downloaded a photo-editor to the notebook, I couldn’t publish the posts at the time. In fact, it’s only today that I’ve finally found the time (and had the privacy) to download the photos we took. Jeez, I’ve now got so many posts lined up, I’ll have to do some serious weeding.

This is farewell for a few days - at least until Saturday. And the picture is a reminder of what I will definitely not be getting for Christmas. Boo, hoo! It’s not just the thin walls and the incredible bouncing dog. I will have eaten too much, I will have drunk too much, and will have stayed up too late watching the festive rubbish on television. It’s my way of coping with Christmas - eating, drinking, sleeping - an enthusiastic pretence of enjoyment for the sake of the family. And especially for Emma, who loves the occasion., and looks forward to it with the excitement of a six-year-old (from about mid-July). Usually, when I am prized away from my computer for more than a day, I schedule a couple of posts to be published in my absence. In this case I won’t. Who would read them anyway over the Christmas break? So from Emma and me, it’s au revoir. Have a wonderful Christmas everyone and don’t forget to return after the break.

Yesterday, when looking back over the year looking for highlights to include in my end-of-year State-of-the-Blog report, I took another quick peep at Anna Louise’s video, which always cheers me up. (Watch it again here.) I was suddenly reminded of my deputy, Brenda G, whose photograph this is on the left. Shortly after my promotion to Head of Department, Brenda prepared an end-of-term dinner-party for the four members of the Department. Her husband was away on a course. We all got rather drunk, and when the other two teachers left, Brenda and I finished the last bottle of wine. As she poured me a glass, Brenda brushed my arm with her ample bosom. I remember saying something like, “You don’t get many of those to the pound.” With that, she pulled up her sweater, turned her back to me and asked me to unfasten her bra, which I did. And reaching round from behind, I weighed her fantastic breasts, one in each hand. I had never imagined anything so full and round and heavy. Nice. Cutting a short story even shorter, I politely declined her invitation to a fuck. I said it was the wine, but in fact I really didn’t want to. Emma was waiting for me at home - no contest. However, Emma’s invitation was also declined - but this time it really was because of the wine.

Today is the shortest day of the year - at least it is in our half of the world. Or, to put it another way, tonight will be the longest night - which may or may not have its advantages. More likely not, if the hectic preparations for Christmas have taken their toll. And for those sad souls who suffer from SAD, it could indeed be the gloomiest of days literally and emotionally. So perhaps it is time to remind everybody that from this point on, the days will begin to lengthen and we can at last start the countdown to Spring in earnest. “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind,” said Percy Bysshe. And who can argue with that? I’m not sure if I have published this composite picture of Emma before, but it serves to remind me of the pleasures to come - at least weather-wise. (It also reminds me how small Emma’s tits used to be. Small, but perfectly formed.)

This shows a couple of pages of the album which led to yesterday’s outburst (so to speak). And, if you really want to go there, this is a shot I took immediately before yesterday’s. And if you did go there, don’t say you weren’t warned. When Emma returned home from her shopping expedition, she asked me what I had been up to while she’d been away. I told her I had been looking through our X-files and had “come across” a couple of photographs I might publish. The pun was intended and, once I’d spelt it out to the innocent woman, it led nicely to a discussion on how much of a turn-on her pictures could be to the lonely and forsaken male. Thinking quickly on my feet, I quickly stressed that it was no substitute for the real thing. Hugs and kisses. Grope, grope. Emma asked me to run a bath for us both. She needed reviving after all that hectic shopping, not to mention the hours spent on public transport. We splashed around in the bath for a while. Then I splashed around inside Emma. A perfect way to celebrate our reunion.

Emma left me yesterday. Don’t panic, it was only for twenty-four hours - the rare delight of late-night shopping with daughter Eva without the additional burden of a reluctant, complaining male to drag around. Home alone for the night, I messed about on the computer until chronic boredom set in. Unable to sleep without Emma at my side, I lay on the bed browsing through our private albums, ostensibly to look for photographs worth publishing in future posts. In reality, it was simply to enjoy the luxury of a throbbing erection, and the chance of a very long, very slow hand-job to orgasm. I can’t remember when I last experienced such a pleasure without the eager, impatient help of Emma (who always insists on receiving my tribute inside her pussy). I’d quite forgotten how delightful it is deliberately to take your time, seeing how near the edge you can get (and how often) struggling at times to regain control, until that final climactic moment of release. Coming over her image was an offering to my wife, who will return to me later today.

I remember a cartoon in Penthouse or Playboy, which I would have tried to reproduce here is I had any talent for drawing. It pictured two adjacent houses. In one bedroom of each house, there was a guy with binoculars looking into a bedroom of the other house, where a woman could be seen undressing at the window. The women are virtually identical. Like all the best cartoons, it had something to say about the human condition. When Emma and I were in our thirties, I would sometimes creep up to our bedroom if the sun were shining (as it used to in those days). Looking out of the window, I would lust after our next-door neighbour as she sunbathed in the garden. She was a few years older than Emma and less attractive. So what was I doing eyeing her up while Emma was downstairs? Forbidden fruit perhaps? This rather modest picture is of Emma at the time. I don’t have a picture of the neighbour.

I have gone through life trying never to hurt anyone, even in retaliation. And when I do hurt people, it invariably hurts me as much as it does them. Referring to Sunday’s FYAT post, it is to my eternal shame that I never spoke to Sylvia J again, even to explain that I had gone back to my first love. I had told her how beautiful she was. And she was beautiful. I had told her I loved her. And I did. I am sure that if Emma had not come back onto my scene, we would have had a long-lasting relationship. Maybe this Blog would have been called “Alfie loves Sylvia”. She will have long-since forgotten me, but I have never forgotten her to this day - the way one remembers a first (okay, second) love. But the fact remains that I dumped her without even having the decency to explain why. I regret that more than most things in my life. It’s just that my reunion with Emma blew everything else clean out of my mind. And what makes matters worse is that some twenty-five years later, my mother’s hairdresser said to her, “Your son Alfie broke my kid sister’s heart.” I do wish the old girl hadn’t told me that!

It’s all too easy to get into a rut, especially in the winter months. After a day of pottering and tinkering, it can feel so cosy to sit watching television in the evening, going to be, and fucking gently before going to sleep. And I hate to admit it, but that’s how it is for much of the time with Emma and me. There is something comforting about routine, but it’s insidious in the true meaning of the word: “Working in a subtle or apparently innocuous way, but nevertheless deadly.” This is why we try to arrange a complete break from routine as often as we can - no more than a couple of days in a comfortable hotel. We much prefer this to one or two longer holidays, and a package tour would drive us nuts. But between these breaks, it is a photo-shoots which rejuvenate us. When Emma says (as he did lat week) “Didn’t you say you wanted to take some photographs?” she rally means, “Hey, lover-boy, I think our sex-life needs livening up.” It works every time.

[Sunday, 14th December, 1958] Met Emma Jane off the bus at half five. Went to chapel so the lads could see we are back together. Spud blushed like a beetroot when Emma spoke to him - he is still as besotted with her as I am (with far less reason). KC said “Alfie has never stopped thinking of you, you know.” Good lad! Took Emma back to Lyon Street. Mum answered the door and was surprised to see Emma - and obviously pleased on my account. Spent the next couple of hours snogging and petting in the front room. Can’t describe how great it was to get my hands on Emma’s chest again. Struggled to get her bra undone until she told me it was a front-opening bra and showed me how. Seventh heaven. Tried to get into her pants but she wasn’t having any. Thought she must be on [=having her period] but suddenly she grabbed my hand and shoved it up her skirt. Finger pie after so long! Came copiously too soon and let out an embarrassing groan. Took her home on the last bus and had to walk back to Garston in the rain. Cold and wet and too happy for words.

We went to visit Mr and Mrs C our former next-door neighbours on Wednesday to check out their lovely new house. We were suitably impressed, but Emma was not in the least bit envious I’m relieved to say. It would be out of our league. In any case, Emma insists she prefers our tiny cottage. She likes small things - thank goodness. For our taste, the new house had the feel of a show-house about it. This is not simply because they have only just moved in. Mr and Mrs C are minimalists. For example, from what I could see, they have only one book between them (a dictionary) whereas Emma and I have hundreds. They are around us in every room, together with all kinds of other clutter we have collected over the years. Occasionally, Emma insists that we have a sort-out, which means hiding stuff in cupboards to make room for more. To each his/her own. [By the way, we are away at the moment.]

[Friday, 12th December, 1958] My cousin Geraldine - “Flash” to her friends because of her speed, lack of - called tonight at teatime. I’ve not seen her for two years. She removed from her shoe a piece of paper Emma Jane had entrusted her with. On it was written her phone number, which I already knew of course, and the time 7.30. Flash said Emma just wanted to hear from me how I was getting on (without her?) After the longest two hours of my life, I phoned her from the kiosk outside the Gasworks. I couldn’t hold back to tears on hearing her voice but managed to hold it together. She asked if I was interested in going out with her again because she was ready to stand up to her mother. She had wanted to write to me but thought I might have found someone else. I didn’t tell her about Sylvia J. We have arranged to meet on Sunday evening and she can stay till half nine (the last bus back to Woolton). I can’t believe we will be together again.

Today is Llywelyn II’s Day. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (died December 11, 1282) is also known as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (Our Last Leader). He briefly united the principalities of Wales under a single rule, and was the last prince of an independent Wales before its conquest by Edward I of England.

How time flies when you’re enjoying yourself. Christmas I almost upon us again (so the shops will soon be stocked with Easter eggs). So is my birthday - yawn, yawn. Emma is determined to make an issue of it this year, having no doubt read one of my many posts where I complain about my birthday always being subsumed by Christmas. Whatever the reason, we are booked into a splendid hotel in Llangollen for a few days next week. There we will enjoy a meal with daughter Eva and her husband and still have couple of days on our own to luxuriate. The camera will be put to good use, so I must remind Emma to pack a few frivolous items - at the risk of her catching cold. We have passed by the hotel a hundred times on our way to Wrexham, and I have always fancied the idea of staying there, although a full suite was a bit too pricy at this time of the year. I’ll let you know how we get on and post a few pics when we return. In the meantime, here is one I took earlier.

I love photographing Emma unawares, and often prowl around the house camera in hand in the hope of catching her doing something completely ordinary while showing a bit of leg or tit. In the summer, of course, she will often strip down to bra and pants while doing the ironing or the hoovering. In the winter (which seems to be nine months of the year) the opportunities come few and far between. Here she is busy sewing, having just washed her hair. Working without a pattern as usual, she’s making a blouse for herself and needs to try it on frequently - hence the incidental flash of tit. Having seen what’s on offer, you’d expect me to say, “Put that sewing away and get’em off”. But I’m anxious for Emma to get this garment finished. She has promised to make some more enticing items with the Blog in mind, and we even bought the material when last in Shrewsbury. But practical garments come first in Emma’s book.

I was born and raised in a heavily-industrialised suburb of Liverpool, where the only greenery was in the local park, where we played a rough-and-tumble war-game we called football. The only flowers I came across were dandelions and similar weeds, and the flowering privet around my grandmother’s tiny patch of garden (which I noticed made me sneeze). Even in the grander parks where Emma Jane and I misbehaved, there were precious few cultivated flowers, easily avoided. But when Emma and I married, we lived with her parents in Liverpool’s most fragrant garden suburb. It was only then that I learned just how debilitating hay-fever can be. I was particularly affected by lupins - Emma’s mother’s favourite bloom. Perhaps this was a deliberate choice on her part, who knows? Nowadays, we can avoid most of the triggers, but there is one very odd reminder. For some inexplicable reason, whenever I was on the point of saying something sexy or provocative to my young wife (e.g. “Suck it, you bitch!”) I would sneeze. Damned inconvenient. And it still happens.

If the background seems unfamiliar - who’s looking at the background? - it’s because our bathroom, with its much-derided avocado suite, is not exactly photogenic. It will be brought up to date (“You can have any colour so long as it’s white”) after we have a new kitchen fitted . This picture is one of a series I have just taken for the album and perhaps to illustrate future posts. I must admit however that the candles are merely props. We don’t normally bathe by candle-light. Despite their alleged mood-enhancing properties - and they certainly seemed to put Emma in relaxed and sexy mood - scented candles are normally out of the question, because all perfume brings on my hay-fever. Which reminds me of a rather odd phenomenon I must tell you about some other time. Tomorrow, perhaps, if nothing else occurs to me.

The fantasy won’t go away. I was looking through some of the one-on-one shots I have taken to illustrate recent posts and stopped at this one. It reminded be of a comment I once overheard as a much younger Emma Jane passed a couple of guys standing at the bar as I waited to be served. “Jeez, look at the arse on that!” My thoughts precisely. I often dream up the scenario when Emma is paying me lip-service: some other guy comes into the room, sees that generous arse of hers and … Well, who could resist the temptation? This is obviously a very well-established fantasy of mine, because it was the inspiration for my very first composite photo. In the old days, it could only be done by covering up one half of the lens at a time and taking two shots. Even the slightest movement between these shots would give the game away, because it was essentially a double exposure. It’s so much easier with digital editing. This imperfect attempt based on yesterday's picture took only fifteen minutes. To make it fit my fantasy, I really ought to have cloned someone else’s head on the other participant.

It’s been that sort of a month already, and we’re only five days in! Perhaps it’s because I have a birthday coming up - as I may have mentioned once or twice before, both on the Blog and to Emma. Whatever the reason, for a couple of nights Emma has been more than usually willing - keen even - to get her lips around my aching cock. And for a change, it hasn’t just been to stiffen and lubricate it ready for action elsewhere. When I came in from the bathroom, she was kneeling at the edge of the bed and reached out to take hold of me and began to play. In seconds, I was hard and throbbing, and I thought I was in for the usual quick hand-job. I was standing at the bedside with my eyes closed enjoying the attention, when suddenly she took me in her mouth with a vengeance. I dared to hope that she was about to deep-throat me, but no such luck. Somehow I don’t think that’s a trick she’s about to learn. The blow-job may have been for longer than usual, but we still ended up screwing. The following night, I was again in her mouth with us both kneeling on the bed. Will she suck me to orgasm soon, I wonder.

I like tattoos - on other people. I don’t mean the multiplicity of designs that turns the body into a picture-gallery. I mean the tasteful less-is-more tattoos that draw attention to a part of the body rather than to the images themselves. I especially like the tattoo that many young women display across the small of their back. It seems de rigeur nowadays to display not only the tattoo, but also the thin waistband of a thong to underline it. Slovenly but nice. It’s the permanence of tattoos that would worry me. A simple red rose on a full breast might look attractive, as might a ring of roses around the navel, or a fairy maiden on a well-turned ankle, perhaps even a mythical beast standing guard over the pubes (all for future posts). But I’m sure there would come a time when I longed to see a different image, or none at all. As their colours faded, so would their appeal. For my delight, Emma will sometimes apply one of those temporary tattoos we used to call transfers a useful compromise.

A workmate of mine regularly used to pay for sex, readily admitting that it was the only was he was going to get it. On one occasion, he informed us, the insensitive woman looked disdainfully at his equipment and asked, “Who is that supposed to satisfy?” His answer was simple: “Me!” Which brings me to the point of this post. I have always considered myself phallicly challenged. In my teens, I dreamed of buying one of those penis-enlarging pumps, but I would have been at a loss to explain what it was for if my mother had come across it - as she was bound to have done. (Do they work, by the way?) When Emma and I finally got round to having sex, it was a great comfort to me that she knew no better. She still doesn’t, which suits me fine. There was a link on someone’s Blog last month to a guy who actually flaunted his small penis and welcomed comments. [I’ve lost the link. Help me please if you’re reading this and know it.] I admire his attitude immensely! It is about time someone spoke up for less-endowed mortals and encouraged us to come out of the closet to say (as the ancient Greeks did apparently) small is beatiful. Well, at least its okay.

Wow! I was totally bewitched by Anna Louise’s video-clip of her beautiful bosom last week, and she has kindly agreed to my linking to it here if you need reminding. A recent Channel Four series - Miss Naked Beauty - extolled the virtues of the natural, unspoiled female body. It castigated the fashion and glamour industries for promoting false images of womanhood. It made its point, particularly about the increasing desire for surgery. But how many times does the point need to be made before young women stop paying the earth to have a couple of cantaloupes stuffed under the skin of their chest? Even if the results were aesthetically pleasing (which is debatable) the finished article seems to be strictly for looking at. I don’t speak from personal experience, of course, but silicone tits appear to lack the feel, the swing and the bounce of the real thing. I suppose there must be guys out there who lust after silicone-enhanced boobs, but I’ve yet to meet anyone with that preference. Real is best, as Anna Louise proves.