I knew this week would be somewhat crap. Work was basically a pain, with no decisions being taken. I was too and fro doing other things. Managed to walk Sasha for an hour. Drove to hospital again. Mother was just taking some laxatives, the nurse said they would ‘take about an hour’ to kick in, I set my watch. She is getting the feeling back in her leg now. They have had her out of bed and sitting. Her moaning is back to normal. They delivered a perfectly nice looking dinner of pasta and quorn, she moaned about it. I left her after an hour due to impending bowel movement. I drove into town. Now due to my dodgy leg and a lot of traffic going to the car park I managed to overheat the clutch and it now stinks like hell. Walked the short distance to the Colston Hall. I took my single seat between multiple sets of octogenarians. There was a warm up piano player / singer bloke for about five songs. There was then a twenty minute interval while the oldies emptied their colostomy bags, I managed to hold out. Then Burt came on. He did a great hour and a half set including all the classics and a few less well known songs. He talked to the audience a few times, he is very frail. He had his son there as well playing piano. He was accompanied by three great backing singers and some fantastic musicians. He sang ‘Alfie’ himself which was very sweet. He also talked about his ‘starring roles’ in the ‘Austin Powers’ movies. His final encore was a singalong to ‘Rain drops keep falling on my head’. I got back to the car and it still stank. All seems to work though, I think I just reduced the clutch life somewhat. I did enjoy that, over the events of the last few days it was a nice break. Although I think there is some major fallout about to happen, I’m not sure which side of it I’m going to come out on.

Its been a weird few days. This morning I just wasn’t with it. I wasn’t hung over or anything but my leg was killing and I had to take my own bodyweight in ibuprofen. I picked up my sister and went to mothers house. We picked up a few bits and then went to the hospital. We were told that she was already in surgery. So we dropped her stuff off in her room and had a coffee. I then spent the next four hours on the couch watching shite TV in a sort of surreal mood. Half four came along and we did some ‘car shunting’ and moved mothers car back to her house. We then went to the hospital and she was back in her room. It really was night and day to how she was the night before. No pain, and moaning and demanding shit, so basically she was back to normal. She was throwing up a little bit, but I think it was down to the anaesthetic. She was in great spirits. The NHS have been absolutely magnificent. I’m seriously pleased with how my excessive tax payments have been spent. She’ll be fine. She’ll be in there for over a week, she’s in great hands. Over the past twenty-four hours I’ve met countless NHS staff, every single one has been magnificent and smiling. And I bet I earn more in an hour than they do in a day. I feel very humbled and a tad embarrassed. You are all wonderful, and I salute you.

So this morning started with the usual coffee. Read the paper and then went to Physio. Have some new exercises to do. She also put ultrasound pulses into my muscle and massaged it a lot. I then went to pick up my nephew. Who was still in bed. Drove to Staverton. We actually got out pretty much on time. Flew Daniel for half an hour, he enjoyed it. Drove back. Walked Sasha. Did the accounts. Started to get ready for the brother-in-laws 50th birthday party. Had a call from my sister to say mother had had an accident. Drove down to venue. She was on the floor being treated by two paramedics. After about an hour they got her in the ambulance and told me ‘not to hurry as it will take ages’. I had a swift half and then drove to Southmead. This is a paste from the FaceBook feed, I’m not going to type it twice:

Mum’s doing fine. I left her in Southmead a couple of hours ago. She was beginning to ramble a bit from the morphine. They dosed her up with a ring block and made her comfortable. If I sat there I think she would have just tried to stay awake and ramble all night.
I’m well impressed with everybody at the hospital.
Now I’ve been very silent about this whole EU thing (unless you read my blog posts), but mum was helped by a Hungarian Doctor who gave her an ultrasound and injected the ring block, a Spanish surgeon who went through the operation with her and a Polish anaesthetist who made her comfortable. All of these people worked together with other English Doctors and nurses. And I’m very grateful to all of them.
She was taken by ambulance to Southmead. By the time I got there she was already in a cubical having blood tests taken. Within minutes she was taken for X-rays, and then may be only ten minutes later the Doctor appeared. Her X-ray was brought up on screen and he said she had broken her hip. He said he would call the orthopaedic surgeons but they wouldn’t be there until the morning. They arrived in literally three minutes, went through the operation and did all the paperwork. She was then moved to a very nice single room, with a telly, a call button and no wi-fi. This whole process probably took less than three hours.
I think she’s in the best hands possible and there’s not a great deal I can do other than get her make-remover and hair brush, which is all she requested.
And her last words to me before she dropped off, “Tell Sheila I won’t be able to take her shopping on Tuesday”.
So to all those who voted ‘Brexit’, when your mum has a fall and busts her hip, who the fuck is going to fix it?

I drove back to the venue to consume a couple of pints and eat cupcakes.

It’s been a hell of a long day.

So I stayed up. Well I think I did. I think I fell asleep at 4AM and woke up again at 5AM to find it all over. ‘Leave’ had won, by a very small majority. I went to bed.

So this morning I woke up feeling like I’d really lost something dear. I was in a fucking bad mood, something that happened at woke didn’t make it any better, I have a feeling I may be doing my own ‘brexit’ there soon if someone doesn’t get their ass in gear.

We are now on a voyage of complete uncertainty. I just hope that the soon to be ex prime minister puts a fantastic team in place to negotiate everything. It will be interesting times. I can see the whole of Europe going into a panic and maybe others will leave, maybe the EU will collapse as a whole. But it’s going to be a nasty divorce for sure, it’s not just going to be a fight over who gets custody of the Denby cups.

It could have been saved. We could have had a very close call which would have sent a panic to the EU but we could have then worked with them to help everybody.

But no.

Some cunt in a housing estate on benefits with nineteen kids and a GCSE in fag rolling decided that he didn’t like the fact that the guy who unblocked his toilet was Polish.

The world will continue to rotate, but I feel we are just a very small island again.

Started a bit later this morning, although I’ve done plenty of hours this week. Got my head down and got on with it. Working on tessellation, was trying to do it in game but the iteration time was awful, so finally set up a test suite and got it down to about twenty seconds. Got it all working, very pleased. Walked Sasha, we did a different route, I thought it would be longer, it wasn’t. Wen out this evening looking for a Geocache, took about two and a half hours, failed to find it due to undergrowth.

Now sat down watching the referendum results. Three have declared so far, 68,614 leave and 91,915 remain. The results are looking interesting. It’s currently going against predictions.

Okay, so started a bit late as I just wasn’t in the mood for some reason. But soon cracked on with tessellation and domain shaders, then spent the entire day watching the GPU crash. I still have absolutely no idea why. Walked Sasha and then it started pissing down. Was supposed to finish work on time and didn’t. Went for a walk this evening and wasn’t really into that. Came back and front some Z80 code, I’m trying to teach my nephew how to multiply in binary, it’s an interesting challenge, Dillon has got it down to tee. It’s the referendum tomorrow, I think I’m going to have an early night tonight and stay up and watch it tomorrow.

Again I got some really good work done today. Very few interruptions so managed to just get on with it. Still implementing shader pipelines. Walked Sasha. It was warm but not exactly sunny. Went for a long walk this evening, was meant to meet up with someone but missed the damn email.

Sent our ballet papers off (we have a postal vote). I’m just watching the EU debate on TV now, it should just be renamed the ‘Boris Johnson’ show. It’s going to be very interesting on Thursday, I have no idea which way its going to go.

Still haven’t sent our envelopes off yet. Jamie’s is sealed, mine is still waiting for an answer.

Started work on time and got a good days works done all in all. It rained all morning, but got out with Sasha later in the day. Walked to Combat, limped through that.

Trying to arrange meeting up with a guy in a field that I met on the Internet. I’ll take lubricant and a screwdriver.

So started this morning with coffee and a paper. Took Sasha out and then drove up to Staverton. Had a check flight with Ben as I hadn’t flown at Gloucester for over a month. We only had a 1500ft cloud base so it was a tad tricky. First auto was okay but RPM was a bit all over the place. Second auto I had to do a 180 degree turn, avoid the power lines, keep the RPM in the green and do all the calls in about 1100 feet. RPM dropped to 90 percent and the horn was blaring, I ran out of flare and air-speed dropped to about 30kts before I dumped the collective and recovered the air-speed. Ben picked some real bloody challenges, but each one I recovered successfully, even if a little untidy. Only once did he have to step-in and that was because I almost did an overspeed on the flare recovery, and that was more to save the helicopter from damage than anything else. To be honest folks, if you had an engine failure, the last thing you could give a shit about was over-speeding the gear box. But as it’s polite to hand it over in one piece, when we practice we keep it within the limits. I was signed off without any problems. These check flights are great fun, but can really make you nervous, they always throw in the unexpected just to keep you on the ball. I was very tempted to buy an R22, it was at a very good price, but if I buy one, I think it’ll be an R44. I’m going to do my R44 type conversion in the next couple of months. It’s about 3.5K but you can then fly four people, its a hell of a lot faster and basically it will cost £111 each an hour, which is a lot better than the R22. Plus you don’t have the same seat weight restriction, so the fat bastard brother-in-law can come along.

Drove back. Weather was shite, so didn’t venture out again. Instead I did an hour on the synth, I’m trying to learn Axel-F, I can now play both main and bass parts, if a little slowly. Did the accounts. Had a bath. Now I’m going to cook a curry. Nice relaxing weekend. The only thing that’s really pissing me off still is my leg.

Oh, and I’m not going to fucking Nice in February. It’s like five degrees and miserable.

Oh, another oh. I decided, ‘fuck it’, I’m going to spend sixty quid and see Burt at the Colton Hall. I’ve ordered my ticket. I’ll sit alone. I’ll have a great evening.

So started this morning with the usual coffee and paper reading. Odd occurrence during the night though, got up for a pee and stepped into the draw that is normally under the bed. Gave it a good shove back under and I hear a growl and a rather disgruntled dog emerging from under the bed. Sasha seems to have become somewhat ‘clingy’ over the past couple of days, I hope she’s okay, walking and eating all fine, maybe it’s just her time of the month, even though all her bits have been removed. Anyway. Booked in with Ben for a check flight tomorrow. Booked aircraft for next Saturday to take my nephew up. I asked if he wanted to go anywhere in particular, he said he’d like to land next to a Dominoes. Walked Sasha. Drove into town. Picked up a couple of bits. Did a home check for a dog. Had a bath. Nice weekend I guess. So check flight tomorrow, walk the dog, may do a bit of gardening.