So so week. Could be better, could be worse.

Monday and Rachel (OT) was in attendance. They did “plan and goal” setting and Rachel confirmed all the details of kp’s upcoming swimming lessons with a OT/swimming instructor. In the afternoon, at about 3pm, kp went to the gym with Nat and that went very well, kp feeling very agile.

I had a helicopter lesson in the afternoon and that lesson was climbing and descending turns. That went fine, and I think because it was going so well, he thought he would see if I could hover, so we descended down to this barren bit of land and he got it in the hover and passed the controls to me. I managed to keep the hover for an impressive 1/3rd of a second, probably even half a second, before I lost it. So, can I hover ? Can I bloody hell !!! I left that lesson deep in thought, thinking “HOW ON EARTH will I have ever crack that ?”

Monday night, and kp had another cracking sleep. Her sleep is MUCH improved since she is now on more amytrypteline.

Tuesday and Syd came in the morning. He was pleased at kp’s positiveness and all the good news. I left halfway through for another heli lesson. We did more climbs/turns and hovering. And I had been thinking A LOT about the hovering, where I was going wrong etc…. and something clicked before the lesson. I put it into practice and the hovering was much improved. I managed a 20 second hover before losing it. I still can’t hover reliably, so I need to work on that. But, also, when I lost the hover, I need to be able to recover it. So, still a long way to go there !

Wednesday was another good day. Natalie was off, so kp had a relaxing day, and rang VD in London. She hasn’t spoken to her since her mood dropped, so great that she felt strong enough to call her and they had a great chat, so that was good to hear when I got back from another heli lesson. Wednesday’s heli lesson was more hovering, which I think was worse than the previous day . So, need to rethink things there. And we did autorotations, that’s the same as an engine cutting out on a plane, basically, no engine powering the rotorblade and you come down to earth rather quickly. We just focussed on entering autorotation, controlling it, and we don’t do the landing bit until much further on.

Thursday, weather was awful, so I was reading up on Aviation law all day, while kp and nat went to the Metro Centre.

Friday, weather still grim, and kp’s plan walk of the dogs with Nat, was cancelled. Instead they chatted most of the day and Nat took kp to the doctors in the afternoon to get the prescription changed and a few other things. The first time I haven’t been to the doctors with her since the accident !!!! Instead I gave her a list of things to go through with the doctor. I think the doctor was impressed she was on her own.

Saturday, Nat was unavailable, so I was on support worker duty and took kp to see her sisters in Middlesbrough. It was the monthly sister’s day and they had a nice meal at Joe Rigatoni’s in Middlesbrough. Whilst they did that, I went back to Michelle’s to fix her computer. kp enjoyed her banana-split but was a bit teary on the way home. I think she felt like she wasn’t keeping up with the conversations fast enough.

But, we had a good night watching the Eurovision Song Contest. Russia put on a great show, and Graham Norton was very good, although a bit too talkative at times.

Today (Sunday), and we were walking the dogs at 5am. kp has a few things on her mind, and hasn’t been to bed at all, so I expect she will catch up later in the day. We have lots of good programmes to watch to take her mind off things later, so we should have an “ok” day.

I’ll end with a photo. On one of my heli lessons, we were flying back at about 5pm, which is a busy time for Newcastle Airport, lots of planes coming in and departing. I do all the flying apart from the low-level hovering, taking off and landing at the moment, which suits me given my lack of skill in those areas . So, we are approaching the runway and are asked to perform orbits over the golf course, which we did. Whilst a plane lands, and 1 takes off, I am constantly flying circles in the air, which gets a bit dizzying, so the instructor sets us up in a hover and asks me to take over and that seemed to go ok. Then we are given clearance to land and the instructor tells me it’s just as well as “Marky Mark” needs the helicopter for his traffic report. It turns out the local “eye in the sky” uses the training helicopter to do his rush-hour traffic report. So, after landing, I didn’t have to fully shut down the helicopter, instead we just handed it to the “eye in the sky”. Here is a photo of “Marky Mark” at the controls. What’s interesting about this photo is that the tail rotor is straight, but in this photo it looks like it’s bent – optical illusion to do with shutter speeds and the speed the tail rotor rotates I expect.

So, good week generally, could be better, could be worse.