Never Surrender

luckily im a college student with mostly afternoon lectures (if any! rock on 7 contact hours a week on average), so i drink my vodka from about 11am onwards

RIP Trebs

orange juice, apple juice, hot chocolate or a double shot of vodka, depending on what i have to face in the day!

Im sure other older and wiser people will have better advice, but as a commitment phobe ive done the whole breakup thing.. quite a few times. That said, im probably not the best person to take relationship advice from either!! Honestly id just be firm but fair with him, its not fair on either of you to be flogging a dead horse with this whole thing. Just sit him down, make it all pretty friendly, and tell him that it isnt working out and that you think you should both go your separate ways. Dont budge on this issue, the more you bring it up and do half a job, the less seriously he will take you the next time (in my limited experience). If this isnt enough, tell him that your feelings have changed, and you no longer want to continue this relationship. If he still tries to convince you its all fine, its time to be blunt. Tell him that you arent compatible, that youre ending the relationship, etc. and make no compromises, dont have a discussion about it, dont respond to him if he cries or rages or pleads, if you want to end it then it needs to end. On the other hand, is it just that you have different interests? You dont have to be under each others feet 24/7, is there no reason that you both cant pursue different hobbies and lifestyles in your own time? Why cant he go out clubbing with friends whilst you unwind on your own? Sure its good to share interests, but relationships are about compromise and no two people are identical. Personal space is great Even if you went clubbing or to a cocktail bar or a pub one evening a week and he chilled out with you one evening a week, and the rest of the time you didnt see each other much except for at dinner and bedtime or whatever? might be viable option if you want to go down that route?

Happy Birthday! :D

Happy Birthday Sammy!

The youngest one i know is mid-20s ish, so a little older than Alex but along the same vein. Don't forget that in England, titles can be inherited from your parents. In all honesty, without sounding like a pretentious twat, within the equine and countryside community there is a hell of a lot of money circulating, and its a world that is difficult to believe unless you live in it, or are lucky enough to work along side it as i do. We are rich by no means, but thanks to my job i can list people who attend schools such as Eaton, Harrow and Westminster. A friend of mine has a triple barrelled surname. My ex-boss, who is now a close friend of mine, was talking about how her husband, who works within the top 10-15 people at Rolls Royce, is going to be getting a bonus next year that 'would be enough to buy a small house, if we wanted to i suppose'. This is the same woman who spent $5000 one weekend to buy a horse, because she 'didn't want a mutual acquaintance of ours to have it'. Another person i worked for spent over £55,000 (so nearly $100,000 dollars) one day because she fancied a new horse transporter, but didnt bother to tell her husband she had spend the money until months later. Hell, a seasons worth of fox hunting (which is now drag hunting, but whatever) will set you back over £2000. This is why those who own large amounts of land or large homes will often strike deals with hunts in order to attend the hunts for free, or a reduced rate, in exchange for the use of their land. Mark is right when he mentioned that many of those who would be counted as upper class in the UK are land rich and money poor, but there almost seems to be a new generation of people who are both land rich and money rich, which is how CAP is so plausible, at least from the perspective im seeing it from. Alex has been written very well, as often those who have the titles and the large amounts of land are the last to flash it around. Aside from their language and their mannerisms, you would find it difficult to guess that they had any form of wealth, be it money or land, at all. This is the impact of old money, and what often seems to be lost (at least in my experience) by those who could be counted as 'new money'. As of yet in CAP, i havent seen Alex or pompous at all. I dont doubt that Mark will probably turn Alex out to be the CAP version of Voldemort now i have stuck up for him so strongly, but just because he has been brought up to abide by the morals, social codes and standards that have been set for him by his 'world', does not mean that we should forget that he is actually a 20something year old guy with the same thoughts, feelings, urges and desires as the rest of us. Had it been Gathan or Will or someone else who had been in Alex's shoes, the outcry probably would have been much less from the readers purely because we have been allowed 'inside their heads' so to speak. Although i cannot comment on whether it is the same for those who have money in the USA, Alex would have been brought up to show all of the airs and graces whilst in company or with those who he was trying to 'woo' and to keep showing emotions to a minimum. This is highly likely to conflict with what else he is dealing with inside his head, as we know that he would not have had an overly fond upbringing from his mother, i would be interested to know whether his father was around much whilst he was young as i cant remember whether it has been mentioned and those who carry titles arent always family men (much as those who dont arent always into the 'school play thing'), and the fact that we also need to throw in the average desires of the teenage-young adult male, so stuff like sex, food, sleep, concerns about careers, wanting to have fun, etc. Sounds like one hell of a mixed up person to me. [Essay Over ]

i have nothing much to add, but thanks to having horses, hunting on horseback, countryside sports and being involved in that part of life, i know a few lords of varying ages and some of them definitely talk like Alex much to my amusement, its great fun to mimic them when we are bantering around. Mark does very well to portray his speech and actions in a plausible and realistic way, even if that does make him sound pompous sometimes

Happy Birthday Jammi

Happy Birthday!

I feel like I am possibly in a minority of people, but I honestly don't think Alex has done anything wrong? Sure, Wade wanted more and Alex didn't deliver to him but did to Matt. Sex is sex, and if the attraction and desire to do something isn't there, it just isn't there. Just because he is capable of doing something, doesn't mean he should have to do it? Sure, being a caring and considerate lover is great, but sometimes life just doesn't work out like that. I have ended up in what seems to be a partially similar situation in real life in the past (what can I say, I was an easy college student... oops) if everything is taken at face value. Guy A was great, Guy B was great, Guy A and Guy B were good friends so talked a lot, but even though I liked A better and I knew that doing xyz would set him off, the reason I COULDN'T do it was because I liked him so much, and it would have pushed me majorly out of a comfort zone to do something like that to a guy that I cared about. I had no problems doing it to B, however, because I didn't see him as anything more than my bit of fun (this is sounding worse and worse...) This didn't mean that I was malicious or evil or manipulative, just that we were sexually incompatible. In case we hadn't noticed, CAP and Escorial doesn't seem to be brimming with purity and clean, straight laced morals. I just feel like if we are going to slam Alex for this when we know little about the situation and his reasoning, we are going to have to do a lot more slamming of situations that we have actual evidential proof of people being twats in. I would also like to note that my 'dont jump to conclusions or judge too quickly' stance doesn't extend to Zach. He can take a hike

Having nothing to do with my life currently, i have looked into this in a very shallow and non-thorough fashion. The best i can find is that it isnt academics specifically, but anybody who works in a high pressure high stress job. This can be found here >>> http://faculty.kfupm.edu.sa/COE/gutub/English_Misc/Retire1.htm (Optimum Strategies for Creativity by Dr Sing Lin). Most other articles on online websites of questionable academic use (http://www.iol.co.za/business/personal-finance/retirement/retire-late-die-early-1.1062767?) and (http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2007/07/374/) basically cite this as the basis for their claims. Im sure it could be ripped to bits from a research perspective, but im not THAT interested in this Countering that argument, its also worth noting that most of the newspapers in the UK quoting saying that thats a silly myth, are also the ones primarily read by those who are in more affluent jobs or positions of power within organisations and im sure that most of their readership would not appreciate being told to stand aside and retire because they are too old there are a lot of web pages declaring it a myth but i have yet to find any actual research into the topic. The Daily Mail declare it a myth, but also state that if the individual chooses to retire they will have no (or limited issues) compared to if they are forced out of work, at which point you have bigger problems. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2430399/Retirement-age-NO-impact-life-expectancy.html) Therefore.... Mark, you're fine as long as you jump ship before they push, once you get to the age of being like... ancient

Great chapter That said, I would like to join the ranks of 'readers who hate specific CAP characters' since I have now decided that Zach can take a hike, preferably somewhere very far away, and somewhere that he can attempt to find a backbone, or a brain. That said, no slam against you Mark because it was well written, and the fact that I'm so annoyed proves that I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. I'm also enjoying the English accent worship From that perspective, long may Alex remain!

Happy Birthday!

sorry im late, but happy birthday uncle mann!

Happy Birthday :D

to be fair, i do find getting free nuggets pretty awesome mainly because id use words like 'amazing' for the other things you describe, instead of awesome, since awesome is now seen as a way of saying 'pretty cool' or 'really good' where im from, and id describe the Grand Canyon as more than 'pretty cool'! incorrect the British have a dislike of the letter 'z', so its nearly always an 's' so it would be pressurise just to split some hairs haha

Definitely 'The Butcher'. The tag line, 'Rest in Pieces', should tell you all that you need to know... got a whopping 2 stars on imbd, and wasted a lot of time that i can never get back. eurgh.

Pulling this forum straight back off topic, but every auction (admittedly most have been horse auctions, although never to Ascot or Newmarket for the racehorses! but i have also been to livestock and poultry auctions) i have been to in the UK has been conducted in guineas in the past and still is today. A guinea is still worth approximately £1.05 (1 pound and 1 shilling), and in the olden days the auctioneers used to take the shilling as their commission for selling the horse They will often have an electronic board displaying the amount in guineas with the amount in pounds sterling next to it. Hopelessly impractical and i have seen more than one person caught out by it. Just shows that guineas are still used at all levels of auctioneering, not just in the world of gentlemen

Happy Birthday!

---> im afraid that it is my duty to inform you of the immediate demise of any intimate life that may have occured between Mr Irri and yourself. Sucks to be you! on the bright side, i still kept my options open LOL

For home, not a lot. I live in a town in England, with a population of approximately 25,000, in a Conservative majority area. Although i cant imagine being attacked for being LGBT, you wouldnt want to walk down the street in drag either as im sure the curtains would start twitching! As far as i know we dont have any gay bars, etc. - we dont even have a sex/erotic shop! That said, its also quite an 'old' area for the most part so i cant imagine there being a big party scene here anyway. I would guess that those who were attracted to that sort of scene would go to one of the bigger cities surrounding the area, as within an hour or hour and a half you have places like Manchester, Stoke on Trent, Liverpool, Sheffield, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Leeds, etc. At uni, i think its nearly the same. I go to university in a town which has a population of approximately 10-15,000 'natives' and about 6-10,000 students, so it really is quite small (trying to avoid people you have previously played 'scrabble' with is absolutely horrendously impossible!). It doesnt have any specific gay venues, but its meant to be one of the most liberal and gay friendly universities in Britain.. as a whole, Aber is a pretty tolerant place to be and fairly non-judgemental (although there are always going to be exceptions to the rule), so being gay is seen as nothing newsworthy at all. The LGBT society is pretty strong, but they tend to roll through the normal bars, pubs, clubs (i think we have like 3 clubs now ) and socialise like the rest of the student population - house parties, nights out and bonfires on the beach. It also doesnt have a sex shop LOL

Happy Birthday Uncle Stellar!

no worries, its often hard to portray and to understand the tone of the comments made over the internet, and i think we both fell foul of that let us both relax and eat ben&jerrys, and move on

British accents are fascinating - im sure it is the same in other countries, but in the UK i can drive 20mins north to a different city and end up with a totally foreign sounding accent to the one i have just come from. I used to live in a place called Loughborough, but if you go to any of the three main cities within an hours drive the accents are totally not similar. I have before had tourists come up to my friend and myself and ask her why she doesn't have a 'proper British accent'. Im not sure whether i sound stereotypically British either though - that would be a question for somebody who has actually heard me speak who wasn't from the UK. Id be interested to know why and how such a small place managed to collect such a diverse range of accents. As is stands, im still fairly poor at identifying the locations of American accents. Whilst in Chicago, i spent three days thinking a woman i had become friends with was from the New Jersey area... she was from Minnesota, and always had been! And ill never forget one of my room mates at the hostel asking another (who was from Oklahoma) why, if shes from the south part of the USA, doesnt she sound like Honey Boo Boo. I both cracked up, and died a little inside.