Putting a massive update dump for those who are wondering how I've been doing.

I've been taking to performing at open mic nights on a regular basis over the last five weeks, with a friend, Greg Slater. Those of you who have heard Somewhere Out There (the project file, since it was never properly released on Newgrounds) will recognise his Claptonesque guitar playing. Occasionally, a bassist friend, Nigel Coleman, joins in.

Normally we do it at a nearby pub -- the Wellington -- on Monday evenings.

(For those of you who don't already know, I also play ukulele now. Seán started teaching me but I shot past him in skill over the last few weeks. Also, following the Monday on which these photos were taken, one of the people who came to the open mic night gifted me with an electric uke -- acoustic-like, but with a contact mic and a quarter-inch jack port. Seán got me an amp to go with it, in one of our favourite places on earth, the car boot sale.)

Yesterday it was just Greg and myself though. Soundskills held their 29th(?) open mic night. It was my first, that's for dang sure. We performed a good few original numbers and a jam, which went down well with the audience, but Seán was only able to record a few of these.

Remember some time ago I mentioned a police investigation? Well, the investigation is inconclusive and the case has been dropped, but not without a caution towards the person who did this to me. It is a (historical) rape case. This person raped me, but was let off with a caution due to lack of / inconclusive evidence.

I understand the whole point of it; you need cold hard evidence if you're going to prove someone guilty beyond reasonable doubt. I'm still wound up about it though, still very distraught. Seán is shaken by it too. But as he told me earlier, not guilty =/= innocent. Between Seán, myself and my assailant, we all know what has happened. If he's too much of a coward to admit it, then it's on his conscience. I often find myself beating myself up for doing the right thing, i.e. reporting this to the police in spite of the high probability of something like this being inconclusive. I'm often deterred from doing the right thing now because of it.

One good thing I can derive from this is that I'm not alone. However few they may be, there have been people who have stood by me, and I thank the good Lord for them.

Seán and I have taken to doing various things together. 6 October marked three years since we first met, and it was a really special day for us.

One big thing we've been doing, because we felt we could, is restore the grave of Seán's maternal family (including his maternal grandparents and great-grandparents). It's taken us a month to get to where we are now, but to give you a quick summary -- we split the work over the course of several weeks. We need to find the gravesite, and then clean it up, and then take away the peeling letters, and finally touch up the site. Also, because there's not much space left on the headstone, two out of the names of six people buried there are not mentioned. We intend to right that.

The grave in its original state of disrepair.

And this is how it is now. Notice the MASSIVE difference in texture, colour and visibility of letters. While I helped with the paintwork, I had to take a break and used that break to take a shot of Seán at work.