Mother – she’s sold her house in Northumberland and is coming down this weekend to come and look at houses in our neck of the woods.

HeroQuest – I’ve nearly finished all my stuff on my HD clear out (Unspoken Word will be getting a chunk of stuff off me soon), Molad.org is up to about 80 members, with nearly 900 posts in four months and Robin Laws is doing a new version and he’s canvasing for opinions on my forum!!! Bumped into one of the writers for HQ the other day and from what he was saying glad I’m getting out of the HQ writing game!

Furnace is well and truly smoking. Some good games have already been promised (Mark Galeotti running Mythic Russia, Dom Mooney running an aliens style 2300AD using Savage Worlds, Rik Kershaw-Moore running three games of Cthulhu) and more on the way.

Monkey research is nearly over. Got a good grasp of Chinese magic and mythology, and how I want to present it in the game. I expect the first complete draft to be done by easter.

Secret RPG project is still secret but coming along nicely in the small chunks of time I have to do writing.

Laptop from work is a godsend. Not only can I do writing/surfing and keep Rach company but its also giving me the opportunity to finally twiddle with Linux in its Ubuntu flavour. Next stage some coding.

Garden – Is starting to come to life. Looking forward to doing more this year.

Weekend was crap, was trapped under some black ice of depression. Heavy doom ladden stuff that I haven’t experienced since the early 90s.  Rach was working a long day on Saturday and I was feeling tired and drained so the spring clean I had planned just didn’t materialise. I consoled myself by having a mini Goodies mathathon (repeating on Paramount 2 on Fridays). Then to make matters worse Rach ended up staying in Halifax hospital overnight, with false contractions. Don’t worry shes alright, she just needs to take it easy which means she will be finishing two weeks earlier than planned.

Rach got in 10am on Sunday and although I was pleased as punch, I was still drained.  The chaps came round for roleplaying in the afternoon, which did lift spirits some but after they left started to feel down again. Got more grumpy as the evening progressed, until I just couldn’t stand it any more.

Then it occured to me how good my current circumstances are, despite recent scary events, and with a quick laugh the black ice broke!

Which just goes to show at the end of the day, I’m in charge of my mind and not a victim of my situation. 😀

Yesterday was Brian’s funeral.

The day started off pretty much like any other non-work day. I got up, did some tidying up checked my email, got Rach up. The day was bright and sunny. Then suddenly all the Newport’s arrived. First my brother then my parents. My parents came down from Northumberland and my bro George came over from Sheffield which was very nice of them. Rach then disappeared to help at her mum’s, and I directed Newport’s to Half Way House round the corner for a pub lunch. I had about 40 mins to myself then donned my suit and black tie and up the road to Elaine’s I went.

Was there for about five mins and then more people arrived, this time friends of Elaine’s from her college days. Time wizzed forward again and suddenly the Funeral directors, with the hearse and limo arrived.  Me, Rach and Elaine got in the black limo. Its the same limo that we’ve been in for both Rach’s Grandparents funerals, and I nearly made the joke that its a shame that every time we get to ride in it there’s less of us.  My humour however was rapidly draining away.

Slowly drived across Oldham. I decided that Oldham amoungst other things is not a place I ever want to get stuck in slow moving traffic. Got to the Crematorium and there a much larger turn out than I had expected. Chris the Vicar (who did our wedding and is Rach’s and Elaine’s Vicar) led the service. It was amoungst the slowest and most painful 30 mins of my life. I withdrew to a very dark and lonely place where all the pain and suffering about Brian’s death had curled up and laid. Then it was over and we walked out phyisicaly from the chapel and me mentally from that dark place into the bright daylight.

After that the day picked up immensely. It was like an emotional weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Elaine had hired the function room at the Spring Inn, a family for funeral’s and weddings, and many a pint was downed in honour of the old lad.

I’m still sad about Brian’s sudden death, but I now feel that life truely goes on.

Sunday a week ago (March 4th) my father in law Brian Smethurst, died suddenly from a massive heart attack.

It was completely out of the blue. Only the day before he had come in and ripped out the skirting boards from the nursery and then me and him had gone for a few lunch time pints. In fact him and Elaine (Rachel’s mother) were just going out Sunday shopping, when he put his coat on and complained about a tightness across his chest. Elaine rang me at 11 to say they were in the ambulance going to Oldham Hospital, not to wake Rachel up (who had just come off a night shift at 9) and that she would ring me back when there was any developments. I carried on as usual doing my tidying tasks, but was worried witless. At 1pm on a particularly bleak rainy Oldham day Elaine rang back to tell me things weren’t looking good since Brian had been taken into resuss and to wake Rachel. We got our coats on drove to the hospital and met Elaine in the little family room they have in A&E. Five minutes later the Doctor and nurse came in to say despite best efforts he had died. Twenty minutes later we went to see him laying in state.

The funeral is this Wednesday, both our and Elaine’s front rooms look like flower shops. Without going into detail here its been the week from hell, both me and Rachel have been off work last week. We are all trying to get on with life, but there are occasions when the grief gets too much. I’ve spent a lot of time staring into space missing Brian.  More than a few tears have leaked out as well.

I’m going to miss the old lad. Despite keeping very much to himself and immediate family, and being generally grumpy about the rest of the world, he had an infectious sense of mischief and laughed a lot in a way that shook his whole body. He was also generous to a fault, in a way that many of our ‘me-generation’ could never comprehend.

Our family have a very stoic ‘get over it and get on with it’ attitude, but its going to be very hard comprehending life without Brian.

(For those of you that know Rach here’s her take on all of this)

What kind of goth are you?
Created by ptocheia

Had a top weekend, feel all nice and warm and relaxed and ready to face the week.

Friday Went to a dinner dance with Rachel and her parents at Manchester Golf club,which was jolly nice. It was in aid of Rachel’s church’s roof fund. I didn’t do any dancing (it was a cheesey pop disco with a man with a laptop attached to the pa), but the four course meal was really nice and exceeded my expectations 🙂 It was also nice to get out with Rach since we’ve not been out since my dad was up over Christmas.

Saturday Walked into Royton Town and did some shopping, visited the libary (picked up Superman Red Son, a illustrated history of Oldham, and bought for the princely sum of 20p The Creative Writers Guidebook ) and picked up my copy of Wild Talents (a gritty superhero rpg by Denis Detwiller and Greg Stolze, with world building chapter by Ken Hite) which had finally made it over from the States from the Post Office. Then spent the rest of the day chiling.

Sunday General tidying around the house, a fair dose of COD2, and work on my new RPG project. Rachel has set me a challenge. By the time she finishes work (March 31st) I am to have a pdf for sale on RPGNow + all my existing HQ stuff finished and printed off and placed in folders so that I have something physical to show after 5 years or so of wiffleing about. Also had a liquid lunch with Brian which was fun as well 🙂

..which is something that I’ve never realised before. However as part of the War on Lard I am now under orders to CHEW MY FOOD PROPERLY, AND ENJOY EVERY MOUTHFUL putting down the fork in between instead of shoveling it down to get a mad serotonin rush.

*crunch, crunch, crunch*

In other news feeling much more balanced after yesterday were I didn’t know were I was coming or going. Which isn’t much fun if you need to have rational access to your brain since you work as a programmer…

Me “What the hell I am I working on now?”

Metoo “P-I-G”

Father in Law Brian ripped out half the nursery yesterday. Rach is wisely at work today while he does the rest. I tell ya those fitted cupboards are doomed.

Long live the bookcases!!

Was a good one overall.

Friday tired from the long week, which saw yet another programming project end (whheee!), I had a quiet one in with a few beers.

Saturday started the final push on the middle and back bedrooms. Also re-watched Jet Li’s Hero (a damn fine classic) and Fearless for the first time which was also very good, even if it took tremendous historical liberities.

Sunday finished off clearing out the back bedroom (aka the nursury) so Father in Law can rip out fitted cupboards and sort out electrics today. Middle bed room now finally tidied, and ready for some fitted cupboard ripping out as well (hate fitted cupboards, must smash, replace with bookcases). Also the chaps came round for roleplaying. We finished off the quick game of Cyberpunk 2020, report to follow, and we’re having a break for two weeks due to various people being away. When we regroup in three weeks time looks like I’ve been talked into running HeroQuest based in Black Horse County. A game of heavily armoured knights riding demon black horses what is there not to like 😀