An Oasis Of Calm

What a weird week that has been, the country has gone to pieces because maybe 5 inch of snow fell, my dad had a bad fall on Saturday and has resulted in him being bed ridden.
I am right in the middle of a lot of re-arranging furniture which should make things a lot better all round at The Orphanage where I live.
I must admit, it is far superior to any work out at the gym!
Its just a three bedroom semi detached house we all share and this week it has been non-stop teamwork, just tonight we have moved our parents bed and my dad who I had to once again carry downstairs and because you can only carry him in a sitting position he is a heavy awkward lift.
Earlier on in the week my dad had suffered really vivid hallucinations of JCB’s in his bedroom and at one point was laughing hysterically at these visions, it all started with a bad fall last Saturday and since my dad is in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease he falls now quite frequent and I thought nothing about it.
But by Monday it was apparent to me that the blow to the head had been worse than I had at first thought, and by Tuesday I was so concerned I phoned NHS Direct, a phone number you call when you want advice here in the UK.
They advised lots of rest but urged me to get him checked by a doctor, The GP Practice asked me if I could bring him to them rather than the doctor coming to me and this coincided with the aftermath of about 3 inch of snow but by now I was getting a bit more used to driving in it.
That was the first time I had to carry my dad down the stairs.
The night before I had set off for the AA, but as I follow from the post I did on Monday, I didn’t make it and what’s more realised how useless I was at driving in snow, I only made it maybe ½ mile and then met my first hill.
I skidded up the hill and noticed a lot of cars were sliding down, some of them stood wedged against the kerb, I then panicked and spun the car round then found myself sliding back down the hill with the brakes full on, only I seemed to be speeding up.
Somehow I managed to turn back on to a road called “Keldregate” where I had first come from and drove gingerly back home and vowed that I would not be going to work tomorrow if the weather remained as it were.
Luckily I did manage to get to work Tuesday and was surprised to have been quite busy all week, though it has tapered off a bit towards today, all together we took out of the gate 686,000 bricks which just shows that our Ice Road Truckers were not afraid even if the other sites gave up and went home.
In fact in the media it seems everything was coming to a complete standstill, Luke was stranded unable to either get to school and also over at his mums, The Ice Maiden, but he was he told me he loved the snowball fights with his brothers and sister.
He phoned me up Tuesday night and after getting back from the doctors , and I gingerly drove over to Utopia which involves a long climb up a really steep hill so after Mondays little episode I was really cautious.
But I have since found out that Luke has got the hot’s for some girl, suddenly his PS3 has been forgotten, he is always on MSN typing away or sending text messages on his phone and in general acting strangely, then he confessed.
Thursday at work another wave of snow hit Yorkshire, luckily me and Shandy Pants had struck a deal with Mr Froggit and now had a good stock of grit and we also had a new Gritter delivered, Betty had chosen to have the rest of the week off and well she had held the fought for me when I was enjoying myself on Monday.
The Teletubbie’s and Father Bell at The Lost World, the two closed sites went home, by the end of the day I was told by someone at Ewoks HQ we were the last brick works left open, but by now I couldn’t see what the problem was most of the roads were clear of this white stuff which had landed from the heavens making us scared of driving our heated tin cans.
Thursday night I was met by my hysterical mum, she said that my dad was in a bad way and had the previous night tried to sneak out into the cold so he didn’t have to die in front of her.
The hallucinations of the night before had clearly been replaced now with intense black depression, an effect of missing his medicine and taking strong painkillers plus the bang on the head, a pattern I was all to familiar with my past as a solvent abuser, I even shared this with my dad as he lay there helpless and weak.
My dad in the deep past was someone I thought of has superhuman and someone who as I have got older have come to realise is a very generous and kind man, I don’t think I quite fulfilled his career aspirations, but since he got Parkinson’s I have watched him become weaker and weaker.
Tonight I have moved his bed downstairs into the dining room and tomorrow Luke is moving into my mum and dad’s old bedroom.
Both the dogs, Miss Boley and Mr Bodie are in the new bedroom and my dad seems really suited to his new surroundings, I told him tonight I reckoned he would love another summer down near the river and I think between us all, my brother Sylar as well we have got a will to live awakened in him again.
I think this rediscovery catalysed by the snow has changed everyone in the UK, if just a foot at the most of snow can bring the country to its knees it shows just how fragile I guess we are, its only in times of crisis that we grow spiritually, and this maybe is the reason for our existence in this earth bound dimension.
At The Monastery, everyone this week pulled together as a great team and despite the dreaded Ice Road, the bravery of those legendary Ice Road Truckers has got to be given a round of applause, this is at the start of a new month so that means a brand new start...
Mv Jan Feb Driver SumOftotal
▲ 52 1 George P30COD 24408
▲ 58 2 Scott T500TTF 23504
▲ 9 3 Donkey Daz 20792
Two of Craig’s Scotland Drivers dominate the top spot and there wagons can take 29 ton sometimes so its hardly surprising that they would be there, it only took our No1 driver, George 2 loads to achieve this feat of 24,408 bricks!
Donkey Daz was waiting for me when I got in on Thursday morning but despite the weather I was still 15 minutes early to the start of play at 730 meanwhile Betty had taken a days leave to playing on her sledge at "The Round Hill"
▲ 39 4 BX08CXN 20792
▲ 104 5 Darren FJ57SUH 20792
▼ 5 6 Orville 20792
> 7 7 Dizzy 20792
▲ 117 8 G Hall 20792
Indeed despite Excels chosen positions for them they too all joint with Donkey Daz with two loads this week, Orville a subject of Lord Archer and Dizzy who is one of the Crowmen
>> NE 9 Richard BX54OVZ 20340
▼ 2 10 Burty Basset 19880
Burty Basset was not going to be left out by the very cold weather and icy conditions
▲ 23 11 Jim S20COD 12204
>> NE 12 Davy M33COD 12204
>> NE 13 Miller M99COD 12204
▲ 45 14 Ian M55COD 12204
>> NE 15 Gary M88COD 12204
And of course the men from Scotland weather like this is frequent all braved the elements to Falkirk to achieve one load each, many others Keith Chicken, Lord Archer himself, Van Damn and even Maximum Moaner collected a load this week making them all joint next 15 with lots of other less familiar faces.
On Thursday it was just me and Ms Bickerdyke listening to the radio, as the snow came down outside, I was busy altering my database system to take our material issues into account with its costing calculations which seems to have calculated something which is right according to the values stored in the LOC system.
Its nearly midnight now on Friday night and tons more moving to be done tomorrow, I feel well strangely calm, I just don’t know why I feel so calm, anyway I better get some sleep or at least a good read of my book, its called "Riemann’s Zeros" and was written by Karl Sabbagh.
Apparently solving this equation of all these reciprocals of powers of complex numbers to be equal to zero, it turns out that they all lie on the real line in the complex matrix with the value 1/2 and the holy grail of mathematics is to prove that there are no other places in the complex matrix that a zero can form.
Apparently proving the Riemann Hypothesis will earn you 1 million pounds and it would unlock the secrets of prime numbers, computers can check the values and have proven for some first 1000,000,000 or so numbers but they can never be certain no matter how many numbers they check that the next number might not lie on the real line in complex space corresponding the value of one half.