The weather today has been highly variable ! When I left for work this morning it was bright and sunny, but fairly cool. By midday, or maybe 1 pm, it had warmed up a bit, but at that time the sky was as black as night, and we had rain, hail, thunder and lightning. When I left work, to come home, it was bright, sunny and felt quite warm, and it has almost remained that way, but there are thick dark clouds in the eastern part of the sky, and more rain is almost certainly due soon.

 After my three days off work I was not very keen to go back to work. I still felt achey, and did not seem to have hardly energy left after washing my hair, showering, and geting dressed. Yet I felt that I should go in to work, and set off for the station feeling quite glum. When I arrived at Waterloo East station it seemed that half my joints were creaking as I got off the train, but somehow I seemed to be able to race up the slope from the platform to the link to Waterloo mainline station with more energy than I dared believe I could have. Of course I arrived on the mainline concourse almost puffing and panting, but I seemed to have done in almost record time - which was truly amazing when I originally thought I would be down on my hands and knees from halfway up the slope !

 I was not sure what time all the trains were that would call at Earlsfield station, but I did know that there was one at exactly the same time as I would have caught to go to Wandsworth Town station - 07:33 BST. With five minutes in hand I nipped outside for a quick smoke before getting on the train at platform 3.

 One of the things I was not keen on was the fairly long walf from Earlsfield station to work. Like at Wandsworth Town station, there are two fairly frequent bus routes, but I decided to walk, and that was obviously the right decision because the first bus passed me when I was almost at work (or the bus stop closest to work). Perhaps when it is raining I may wait for the bus and see how it works out.

 I fely very grumpy when I got to work. Some of it was because I was still suffering discomfort from various aches and pains, and some was because I had to go on several expeditions trying to track down tools that had gone missing, and other stuff that I couldn't find. A couple of paracetamols helped with the aches and pains, but I was still very tetchy for most of the morning. By the afternoon I was beginning to be able to some normal work and began to feel a bit calmer.

 One incident that had a happy ending, but added to my frustration, was that after doing a long overdue update of the Kubuntu installation on my dual booting work PC, I found that the boot loader, upon being updated, had decided that it wasn't going to give an option to boot Windows XP. For the moment, booting Windows is fairly important, but at some time in the future I may be able to do everything I need using Kubuntu Linux. Fixing the problem did not take all that long after a few false starts. The cure was probably a good example of the sort of expertise I have gained while using Linux, and may be typical of many less-than-guru "experts". I did not know the exact incantations to edit the grub bootloader, but I knew where to look, and fortunately the actual file, called menu.lst, provides some examples in a comments area. A quick bit of cut and paste, and I was booting Windows again. It is a shame that Ubuntu, unlike Mandriva (I think), does not provide an easy to use grub configuration utility, but I guess doing it the hard way (not that it was particularly hard) was good practise for me (even if I did "cheat" by using a graphical text editor to do it instead of vi).

 One other annoyance at work is the new I.T. system. The new firewall seems to have blocked port 22. This is the port used for the ssh and scp protocols that I use to access my server here at home. So I could not write anything here while at work. I doubt it will work, but I am going to try and see if a high numbered port has been left open that I can translate in my firewall back to port 22 on my server. If not then I am just going to have to think up a good excuse why port 22 should be opened up. Of course I have just realised that all that last paragraph was probably rubbish. The real reason I probably could not access my server is because port 22 was only open to two i.p. addresse's, and the one at work has just changed to one that is not valid. I have now changed that rule in my firewall, and hopefully I will be able to access my server from work tomorrow.

 I felt fairly good when it was time to go home. This is not that unusual, but after a fairly crap, and sometimes uncomfortable day, it had more significance than usual. I left at my usual time (i.e. a bit earlier than I really should) and did a fairly fast walk to the station. I was quite surprised to get there, puffing and panting, and rather sweaty, in time to get the 16:05 train. That got me to Waterloo in time for three quarters of a fag, and time for a quick wee, before getting my favourite 16:29 train back to Catford Bridge.

 I arrived back at Catford bridge still damp with sweat. This was in part because it was reasonably warm out, and in part from all the rushing around (at Waterloo I had my fag "on the hoof" as I walked around the outside of the station to get from one side to the other, and then had to rush across the link to Waterloo East in order to have enough time to have that wee before getting on the train). A fast walk to Tesco perpetuated that sweat, and Tesco's tends to be quite warm inside. When I finally got in after lugging three heavy bags of shopping back, I was hot and sticky, and dying to have a good sit down. I do wonder if some of that sweat was anything to do with the dying off of whatever bug has caused all my grief this week.

 Very soon now I will be off to bed. Just in case I can't write anything here when I am work tomorrow, I will mention here that it is possible that I may stay late at work to have a drink with some of my workmates. In which case I won't be drinking in Catford tomorrow night.

 

 This morning it is a bit grey, although there are plenty of breaks in the clouds where the sun could shine through if it so desired. The temperature is sort of middling. It is at least a few degrees above freezing, maybe around 5° C, but it still feels fairly cool. I haven't seen any forecast for the day ahead, but my guess is that it will be similar to the weekend - some sun, and some showers.

 I still feel a bit ill after Friday nights binge, but not as ill as yesterday, and that was an improvement on Saturday. I should think that by the time I get home again from work I will be feeling tired, but reasonably OK.

 Today marks the start of the last week in the old work premises. I can foresee that much chaos will ensue, particularly towards the end of this week. Then there will be more chaos for another week, or maybe more, as we all settle in to the new premises. I have a strong suspicion that there are some at work who still believe that the move will go smoothly, and that production will be up to full strength in a matter of days. They have obviously not experienced a move like this before. Having seen it at first hand, in my previous job, I think I am better able to predict what will happen. It was the chaos (and the extra travelling) that caused me, and something like 20 out of 24 of my former colleagues to quit the last job. I think this move will not be quite so destructive, but it will certainly be disruptive.

 Today has been wet interspersed with sunny intervals. This is very similar to yesterday. The temperature is somewhere in the middle of warm and cold. Yesterday morning it felt mild enough to go out to the local shops without a coat on, but it is still a little too cool to stand around not moving.

 On Friday night I went for a beer in the local Wetherspoon's with the lads. I had written that I hoped I could get there early, and leave early too. One of those things happened, and the other didn't. I was summoned to the pub just as I was outside locking the front door, on my way there, at a little after 7 pm. When I got there the latest Wetherspoon's beer festival was still in progress, and there were about five different beers to sample.  Several of those beers were to be served by a very charming young barmaid by the name of Sarah who, amazingly, complimented me about my hair, and asked what shampoo I used (Tesco own brand !) Sadly she was only on loan from The Bankers Draft - the Eltham branch of Wetherspoon's - and it is unlikely our paths will cross again for some time.

 I had left some dinner in the oven on a very low gas while I was out drinking, and was still intending to be home fairly early. Sometime around 9 pm I bought myself two halves of beer so that I could say I had sampled all the special beers on offer that night.  On finishing those I had every intention of going home. By then I was feeling fairly "happy", and it took remarkably little peer pressure to stay for two more pints (The opportunity to chat a bit more to Sarah never even entered my mind !!!). Sometime in the next 90 minutes someone, Kevin I think, had persuaded Sarah that we all needed a hug before we went home. Remarkably that did happen, and I think we all left the pub feeling very happy. As we chatted outside the pub plots were hatched to go drinking in Eltham the following lunchtime.

 I don't know if anyone did go for a drink Saturday lunchtime, but I certainly didn't. I woke up with a terrible hangover. It was one that kept me feeling ill all day long ! Some of the blame must lie with just one of the beers I had drunk the previous night. That beer was Marston's Pedigree 6%. As it's name implies it is a strong beer with an abv of 6%. It was very nice, but also very devastating.

 By 10 am I was just about ready to go out and do a bit of shopping. I wanted to buy a small plastic 4 drawer, cheap and cheerful, storage unit to put some loose stuff in to try and make the place look a bit tidier. I went out feeling decidedly worse for wear, and dreading the long queues in the local Argos store. Much to my relief the store was still almost empty, and I was served amazingly quickly. It was still a relief to get out of there and to get back home. I had just enough energy to make the drawer unit up, but after that I just sort of collapsed into a stupor ! It wasn't until late afternoon that I started my tidying up, and even then I really had to draw on energy and enthusiasm that I really didn't have. My reward for almost finishing the job was to treat myself to a takeaway. I bought a couple of dishes from an Indian restaurant that specialises in Nepalese dishes. One of the dishes I had was a sort of Nepalese lamb and potato stew/curry. It was delightful in it's simplicity, and had a delightful spicy taste.

 After laying around for much of the day I didn't feel sleepy until it got very late, although I was still feeling drained of energy. I eventually went to bed around, or even some time after, midnight. I awoke this morning after just five hours of sleep (maybe less - I was not really paying that much attention to the exact time). I fed Smudge, and played on the internet for something like an hour, which gave time for Smudge to eat, go out and do her "business", and then come back in again. Then I went back to bed, and didn't wake up until almost 11 am. I was still feeling very ropy, and because of that, plus the fact that it was raining quite hard for a couple of hours, I did not get out to Tesco to buy my fruit for work, until nearly 1 pm.

 Today I still feel very horrible, and it is going to take a good week of dieting to get my blood sugar, and blood pressure, back down to safe limits again. Next Friday, if we are drinking again, I must try and avoid an excessive amount of beers !

 Just for a change, but mostly because I have cleared enough space to use it, I have written today's piece using my iMac.  It is still painfully slow to directly type stuff in. So I wrote the majority of this using Apple's "TextEdit" and pasted it into Nvu ().