A good first day off work today. Although I would have preferred to sleep in til about...4pm, but... instead, I was up at cold 7am and then Mrs Fitz and I drove to Melbourne Town in the Big Traffic for about an hour and a half to the Eye Hospital (officially called the Royal Eye Hospital but I will not call it that, ever, as I despise the Sassenach invasion and occupation of Ireland). We waited for an hour or so, dozing in the dozing voluminous cloud of crowd there, and then I saw an eye doctor who said the recent laser surgery worked 'Hunky Dory' and, well, blink, that's good! Thank you very much. Great skills. I came home with 2 eyes yet again, and both still in their own individual sockets. I love being married to Mrs Fitz for many reasons but the main one is that I enjoy her company and, for some odd reason, she enjoys mine. She went off to work this afternoon so I am a bit sad being without her for the hours. In the interim, at home, I prepared a pretty good birdbath and bread experience for the backyard bird fly-ins, and a kind of tiled spot for the carnivorous kookaburras and crows, and left them with an offering of a pork rib bone. Beautiful sunny day today, and a tree in the yard is full of pink blossoms, humming with harmonic bees. Birds are occasionally gambolling about in the yard. An hour or two before sunset, I could well mow the small backyard, just for the green smell of the grass. Tomorrow, early again, we are off to get new tyres for the Nissan 4WD ute at Fawkner, a suburb 20 minutes away, rather than locally because the Fawkner folk throw in a free wheel alignment, then we'll have some lunch and I'll drive Mrs Fitz to work at the airport, and then pick her up when she has finished her work there. If we have time, in the evening, we will get back to ruling the Universe.

Perspective:"It's a matter of perspective. The thing with regret is this, Bill...yes, as a father you were a bit of a dickhead at times, but you treated the kids pretty well over all. No violence, no horror. Sure, the absences were too long. You failed at things you didn't want to fail at, sure, and your kids don't like you much at all, but that's not unusual. You should put down the regret for awhile. Don't worry, when you miss it, you can pick it up again. Remember that if you were a great Dad, the world being the random entity it is, for all you know, while driving the kids to Disneyland, you all could have been slaughtered by a truck driven by another happy Dad driving fast to bring home gifts to his happy kids. That kind of thing happens a lot to perfect parents."

as a police detective in China, noted: "it is easy for some artist to run away and complain about us, and sell his paintings in new york. it is much harder for me to do that, as i have a responsibility to catch murderers and rapists here, and it takes up all my working time. Nothing is perfect, but I will catch them."

The Hong Konger protesting folk are slowly realising their place in China...that no matter what they do, Beijing will not do anything. Beijing granted HK autonomous status, and they have it. If they wish to destroy HK in a fit of wanting to be someone else, they can. They can bankrupt their parents, destroy buildings, break the laws, destroy the economy, and nothing will happen...except they will be worse off than they were. They are most upset, not about democracy, but the simple fact that Mainland China is growing exponentially more wealthy than they are.

Australia from the air - stunning footage by the ABC's drone pilots | AB...

Friend living in Hong Kong who owns a small shop. "I carry a machete and a small ax in my car now in case stopped by violent pro-democracy people ordering me to keep my shop shut and to go home. I'm not going to do that".

Looking at the Brexit thing...well, yes, it will happen soon and things will just go on, or change, as they normally do to deal with change. People will do this, and do that etc. Nothing very interesting. The UK is not a dynamic or interesting 'thing' to anyone outside it, nor to a lot of people in it. That won't change. Grist for the mill of history. Kingdoms naturally die...it may well be what Kingdoms do best.