Space .... and an appeal ...

Yep ! More internet spaceships. But a bit more later too about a friend.

I suspect it's showing that I've been enjoying my time back in Elite since restarting the character ... I've definitely been in the game a lot (albeit in short-ish doses befitting my current attention span) and that's in comparison to spending a few months away from it after completing the preparations for the April Fools post.

I suspect the Plan this time is better. And that's to eventually own every ship in the game, trying them all out, instead of ignoring most of them and just driving up to the big ones. Who knows, the keenness to play may evaporate at some point as I find something different. Like going back to the game that pushed me back to Elite ! That'd be Bounty Train.

So what did I do at the weekend ? Outside of watching the cricket that is ! Well done to England again today. Great win and hopefully I'll watch almost 5 days of great cricket starting from Friday (the almost is because I'll be working in the morning on Friday).

I'm organising my time in Elite a fair bit around the weekly community goals. This time around the community goals were first to bring lots of rare booze to a station in the Harma system and the second was to protect the people bringing in the booze. So a trading run and a combat run and an excuse to try out a little fighter or two :

That's the Imperial Eagle ship called Katherine Of Space and I'll come back later to why the little fighter has that name. (Ha ! First pic becomes the thumbnail for the post and that's the thumbnail this post needs !)

The first fighter was an Eagle ship called the Elizabeth Sparrow after one of the more memorable characters on the HeyChrissa discord chat server. A name from a little fighter definitely befitting a little fighter.

I enjoyed taking the two ships out for a spin, although I was learning a little about handling them in flight too. Elite works partly on Newtonian physics, so if you Go Very Fast in a particular direction, you stay going Very Fast in that direction until the thrusters compensate. One idea I have is to turn off what's called Flight Assist in game to let me quickly flip around to bring the guns to bear. Doesn't quite work like that .... Because you end up several km away (and out of gun range) and moving further away.

Need to learn better space combat tactics.

That's the Elizabeth, which joined the growing fleet at the weekend. I now have 10 of the 31 that players can buy and the in game cash is coming together to buy a lot of those remaining. The community goals help a lot with that ...

But that's gaming. Gaming's fake. It's not real life.

It can be good to effectively hide in the gaming though. When I'm in the game, I'm only thinking about the next trade stop, I'm in the second to second of staying alive in combat, finding the next target and trying not to bite off more than I can chew. Where I'll be exploring next.

I'm not thinking of the state of my outsides or all the other problems I have. The gaming is an escape.

Which brings me back to the Katherine Of Space ... Why that name ?

It started as a tribute to KatherineOfSky, who is one of those lovely gaming people. Perhaps a clutching at a straw for finding names. Maybe.

But it's gone on from there as I remember a Katherine that was and a Kate that is. Katherine was someone lovely who used to be in the same team as me, who had a small smile that I still remember. I mirror people and how they feel and when walking past Katherine on the way to grab a coffee, if a smile was seen from the Katherine then it made me feel so much better.

Katherine was lost to us due to breast cancer a few years ago and inspired my Pink Hat cricket tribute where I wore that Pink Hat for a season of cricket. I thought about attaching charity collecting to that but ... I'm just too frail to support that. But it did inspire lots of questions, which I answered with memories of someone lovely. Here's the pic of that Pink Hat.

The Kate that is is someone I met a few years ago with the Psoriasis group. The mob hasn't had a chance to meet up since but it would be good to see Kate again before it's too late.

This Kate is a single mom who has been fighting all the challenges. She's a single mom, she has fought the life changing condition of Psoriatic Arthritis which isn't just the signs you see on the outside, it viciously attacks the joints on the inside too and as it's an auto-immune disease, the treatment severely damages the immune system. And she has terminal cancer as well.

But we know our Kate will keep on fighting as long as she can.

Hopefully long enough to meet up with us Patchy People of the Psoriasis group again and also for ...

Time for an appeal ! A couple of the ladies of the Psoriasis group have put an appeal together to provide the funding for Kate and kids to have a chance to build some great memories together. HERE'S THE LINK !

I very rarely post links to charity pages but I think this one is worth it. Only met once but some people you meet ? You get an instant feeling that they're great people.

Memories are very precious. I still hang on to the great memories of my nan and the good memories of my granddad, both are no longer with us.

I'm still hoping for a miracle that would see the Kate-that-is stay with us for a good while longer.

And if I name any of those Internet Spaceships after anyone, one that is a pretty little fighter has to be named as tribute to the Kate-that-is.