Okay, so work up quite leisurely this morning. Coffee, book, more coffee. Megan was staying over. We eventually got up and walked the dogs over at the field. Came back and went to the Mall. I hung around in Game, did the fastest lap competition and drove really badly. I’m not sure the guy there was actually convinced I was the actual developer, but I’m pretty sure that before he finished his shift he would have checked my name in the credits. We ate at McDonald’s, I’m pretty sure the last time I ate there was in the States about a year ago, and to think I used to eat there daily when I was a service engineer. Dropped Megan at the station. Mowed the front grass. No need to do the back any more due to the dogs. Did a recheck for a Jack Russell. He’ll probably die of lung cancer, I was gagging by the time I left, can’t stand cigarette smoke anymore. Lovely dog and lovely people though. Came back and presented tony wall for forty-five minutes. Did the accounts. Had a bath. Now waiting for Jamie to cook my dinner. Off to London tomorrow. Won’t be back until Wednesday night.

Ended up staying up until 5AM. To be honest I can’t remember too much between about 2AM and 5AM, too much wine. But all very exciting. The exit polls did indeed turn out to be pretty accurate. The conservatives ended up with an overall majority. I think people in the end decided that actually the last five years weren’t too bad, so lets give him the time to finish the hob off. Plus Milliband is a bit of a twat.

Got an email from Google staking a copyright claim on some of my jingles on YouTube, I’ve disputed it, as oddly it was one thing I had bothered to print out the license for.

Work was mainly finishing off the very last of the presentation. Which is now all down, uploaded, together with the new video. I did one more rehearsal, I was great.

Slight cockup with the dogs at the vets. One dog has now been vaccinated twice and the other one is now a couple of months overdue. Dillon now at vets tomorrow.

Went to Pump. Had a bath and phoned mother. She should feel privileged.

So here we are. Release day. After three and a half years. The reviews came out yesterday, we are currently on a metacritic (which is an average of all scores) of 86. Which is pretty good. On day 1 (it’s not out in US yet) there are currently over 10,000 on line players on steam, God knows how many on PS4 / Xbox One. But everyone seems pretty happy. There are a few issues, there always are. You can’t please everybody all of the time. Instead I go for pleasing no one most of the time, which is considerably easier to achieve. But for me it was all pretty much business as usual. Finished off the bulk of the SDK upgrade, all that’s working now. Walked Sasha. Went out for another walk this evening.

In other news, it’s also election day here in the UK. So I’ll be watching torture porn of a different kind this evening.

And on the plus side I didn’t discover any one new who had died today, I got an email and two answering machine messages from my mother, don’t put one and one together.

Do you ever try and find old friends on Facebook? Well I tend to. I found one of mine a couple of years ago, fairly boring profile. For some reason last night I looked it up again, it hadn’t beed updated since 2013. I then started going though his ‘friends’, found his wife. Went through her profile. Lots of recent updates, all pictures by herself strangely. Then I found a very odd post, “Just think the conversations Terry Pratchett and Markee will be having now”. I then went on to his mothers profile and found a post. I had the telly on quite loud as normal. But suddenly everything just went completely silent. Then the penny finally dropped.

The internet connection in heaven is a bit shitty.

I first met Mark when I was about 17. It was at the ‘Cock of the North’ pub in Henleaze. I was with Paul. Mark was probably the first disabled person I ever met (he was in a wheelchair). Wasn’t too sure how to react, it was a bit strange. But I do remember that during our first conversations he hoisted his leg on his lap, removed his shoe and scratched his foot. It took me several weeks to work this out…

Over the years we became great friends. We did a hell of a lot together, let me see if I can recall some of the stories.

Oh dear, so many. We used to meet up at his place before we went to the pub and smoked huge amounts of weed. One day he’d got hold of some ‘Nepalese pollen balls’, we smoked a few, decided they were dud and went up the pub. Paul walked in after about 10 minutes, then suddenly started babbling boring computer stuff as usual. Mark and I looked at each other and just collapsed laughing, I think Paul actually walked out.

We spent near enough every Sunday evening together, either at the pub or watching weird TV. We got through entire seasons of ‘Inspector Morse’, and things like ‘Sapphire and Steel’.

We went away to Scotland together. It was just when CD Rom drives had come out. We found a distributer, great, it was in Scotland. We then did about a fourteen hour journey across Scotland to pick up these things.

We went to Ireland together, on the way there we couldn’t remember the name of the guy who was in ‘Some Mother’s do ‘av ’em’. No idea why we were trying to remember his name. After about two hours I actually stopped in a petrol station and asked, finally got the answer ‘Micheal Crawford’, we were very relieved. We were running seriously late, if we missed the ferry we would have been charged shit loads. So I rang them up and said my passenger was disabled and he’d shit himself and I had to clean it up. We didn’t get charged.

Another one, we went to Jersey. We had the only parking space at the hotel. It was full of coach parties of old people. We were the only ones there under 60, by a long way. We had a table right on the dance floor for access. Every night the oldies would order a single glass of wine, we’d order a bottle each and then finish it before the main had even arrived. I got my ear pierced there. We bought a pair of long drop pearl earrings and wore one each at dinner. Then smoked huge cigars. We had a great laugh. I also bought my necklace there on that trip. I’ve worn it everyday since, except for the time earlier this year when I had to get it repaired.

Then there was the Garby incident. Now this is the first time I’ve ever told this one. On one New Years Eve, we were at the pub. With Navy Jim, Monica (who was Mark’s girlfriend at the time) and her friend Garby. Anyway, to cut a long story short, both Jim and I were chatting up Garby. At about 2AM she goes home with Jim. Next week, we are at the pub again, this time without Jim as he’d gone back to the Navy. I ended up going back to Garby’s flat. Apparently Jim was a bit of a failure after drinking his own bodyweight in Whiskey. So I had her, she was a kinky bitch, she liked stuff up her. Put it this way, I almost lost my watch. So when I saw Mark again, I gave him all the gory details. Hence, every time we mentioned Garby in future conversations it was always accompanied by a shake of the wrist.

We ran a very unsuccessful business together. Once Mark said to me, “I want to buy something completely useless.” I replied, “How about a mountain bike?” We laughed on that one for over twenty years. He passed his RAE exam and bought a radio and never used it, just to annoy Paul.

Mark knew more about me than any other person, even now. We had probably over twenty years together, I pretty much grew into an adult in his company. We had very few secrets from each other. He knew that BST didn’t stand for ‘British summer time’, but instead, ‘Blond surfer type’. He went through my relationship with Nat. Then there was the complete ‘cunt face’ saga. I must write about that one day, but lets just say for about a year I was on the phone to Mark about an hour a day giving him constant updates. Those were fun times. I went through his whole break up thing with Monica.

In later years, after Mark split with Monica he went on a few dates and finally ended up with pretty much a ‘ready made family’. He moved from being a free spirit to more of a family man, including moving house. The woman he married, hmm, jury is still out on that one. He met Jamie (we went to Marks wedding together). We ended up seeing less and less of each other. There was no local pub any more, so no escape. Eventually we just stopped calling each other, he was happy in his relationship and I was happy in mine. We just no longer had anything to talk about. Even though we hand’t spoken in years, it was nice to know he was still there.

Mark always said that due to his accident he would never reach forty. He made it and a bit more, I think he was forty-seven. Marked passed away sometime in July 2013, it appears he died of cancer. He was surrounded by the people he loved, and that would have meant the world to him. I’m just a bit sad that I never got the chance to say goodbye.

The world was a better place with you in it.

I started at a reasonable time considering. Still doing the SDK update which is a pain. Now got to the point of updating the shader compiler and that’s now broken a load of stuff. Walked Sasha, mainly in the rain. Walked myself this evening, mainly in the rain. Still finishing off one of the books of an exam I’ve already passed, but just want to do it for completeness. There has been an interesting turn of events. May be more details at a later date.

So this morning started without any effects of alcohol which was good. Some last minute revision, coffee, breakfast, fed dogs and out. Was at Staverton in good time. James arrived a few minutes later. After the niceties, it was straight on with ‘Human performance and limitations’. Loved that paper, knew the answer to every question easily. 100%. Straight on with ‘Meteorology’, this was the one I had to learn the most for by far. Again, knew the answer to every question. I got one wrong, which I’m still debating why, Captain James couldn’t give a good explanation. It was to do with air temperature, if it increased and you had QNH the same and maintained your altitude where would you actually be. Now my argument was that as temperature increased, air density would decrease, so the altitude read would by higher, so you would be lower. Anyway, it was a pass. Then, out with James, did a couple of circuits, then I was on my own, knocked out an hours worth of circuits. Came back in, picked up James. We had lunch and coffee. He took some people out on a pleasure flight in an R44. I was left with ‘Aircraft general’ and ‘Flight performance and planning’. Aircraft general was okay, I knew pretty much all the answers. Flight planning, Jesus, that was way off the scale. The problem at the moment is all the syllabuses are changing, so the books I have don’t match to the exams. So I was suddenly presented with a map. No fucking idea. I had to learn map reading in forty-five minutes. God that exam was hard. James came back, we refuelled the R22 and off we trotted. Went out to the north, he pointed at some mountains and a motorway and said ‘just stay inside that’, went back to the airfield and dropped James off. Then I was on my own, took off to the north and then for the first time, crossed the road of the ATZ boundary. I was then in Class G, uncontrolled air-space on my own for the very first time. Scared? Actually, no, not at all. I’ve gone beyond the ‘this thing is going to kill me’, stage. I’m pretty much in charge of it now. If it throws me a curve ball I can deal with it. Okay, I don’t have the skills of Captain James, but I think I can keep myself out of trouble. I had great fun meandering about for an hour. Lost the airfield numerous times. I had a map, but I would have been just as better off taking a toaster with me for all the good it did. I was just looking around and enjoying the view at £5.20 a minute. Got a vector back to the airfield, it was about six miles away, so did a small circuit round and then headed back in. Good approach and taxi back. All over. I’d passed aircraft general with one question wrong and flight planning with three wrong. I passed both exams. All I have left now is radio communications and navigation. I’m actually really looking forward to navigation, you get to go places, that’s really what it’s all about. Okay, at the end of today there was a big bill and there will be no flying for the rest of the month because of it, but I’ve taken a major step up. The end of the course is now in sight, and it’s a very achievable goal.

The rest of this week I’m expecting to be total shit.

Started with coffee and then revising all my notes on meteorology. Followed by yet more coffee. Today was spent in a succession of books and tests. Apart from a short walk and walking the dogs that really was the entire day. Jamie sniffed Sasha, to see what she had eaton, which is, in the grand scheme of things, quite weird. Had a bath. Lots of flying and exams to do tomorrow. Joyous fun.

So this morning started with coffee, followed by coffee. Then read the rest of one of the aircraft books. Basically today consisted of doing a hell of a lot of reading, followed by a hell of a lot of tests on four different exams. With fairly mixed results I must say. We popped to Tesco’s, I walked the dog. Did more testing. Finally we washed and put something with less dog hair on and went to the theatre lovvie. We saw ‘The Producers’ which is a musical based on an old Mel Brooks film. I must admit, it was really good with a great cast. The actual staging of ‘Springtime for Hitler’, the musical, was just so outrageously over the top, it was brilliant. Jason Manford, Louie Spence, Phil Jupitus were all great, and the leading man, who’s done lots of stuff but no idea what his name was. Great night out, a lot on my mind though, which isn’t so great. There are currently some people I’d like to kill, one in particular. What do they say, keep friends close and enemies closer. I may have to move next door.

Okay, so this morning did start with a bit of a headache, I was in such a mood last night I really did clear up my own body weight in wine, I’m not going to mention how many bottles. No reason. Just a few things had got on my tits. No Alison, Jamie wasn’t one of them. Anyway, watched the second half of a reasonable film. So this morning was all about editing a power point slideshow. And then this SDK update. Thankfully a colleague came to the rescue on that and it’s all working now. Had my hair done. All looks good. Did lots of work. Walked to the gym again and did Pump. Did more work. I need to do a shit load of studying over the weekend. These exams won’t pass themselves.

So started off with early breakfast, walked Sasha and then headed to the station. I’d almost left plenty of time. Then just at the end of the road got stuck behind a learner driver who was turning right. Now I have quite a lot of patience for learners, but after the 3rd time of stalling I was beginning to get pissed off a bit, anyway, the train was six minutes late so didn’t matter. Studied ‘aircraft general’ on the way. HQ was only a few stops on the tube and just off Oxford street. Anyway, had to present to a group of four, including the head of UK Development. I can’t go into it as it’s very confidential content, but it all went according to plan and to time. The only thing I really have to do is magnify a couple of the slides. I was back on the train at 3:45 and back home by 5:30. So went about editing a couple of the slides and then went for a walk. Got some petrol, then Sarah came round and picked up that bath. Did a bit more study. Weekend looks shocking for flying, but may be okay Monday. So up with the study, then hopefully have a pop at some of the exams on Monday.