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My Diary/Blog For the Month of June 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday 29th June 2010 |
| 08:33 BST Consider this picture taken a little before 7am..........  Nothing looks particularly
threatening, but an hour later those interesting clouds had gathered
together and dumped water on us ! After last night's weather forecast
the idea of rain today was not unexpected (although 24 hours previously
the chances of rain were considered as unlikely as the second coming of
the great prophet Zarquon).
However my interpretation of the forecast, based upon the icons the BBC
use on their forecasts, suggested that the rain would not be falling
here until around midday, with a slim chance of it still raining when I
go home at 4pm.
It does seem to be brightening up a little now, and if the BBC got the quantity right, and only the timing wrong, then we can look forward to another warm, going on hot, day with plenty of sunshine later. The forecast is for the temperature to dip to about 26° C today, but it is supposed to rise back up to 28 or more by the end of the week. Maybe we'll have another scorching weekend, or maybe it will snow....... I had every intention of going to bed extra early last night, but I stayed up 10 minutes later than I should have. That mere 10 minutes was enough to get me hooked on a TV programme that did not finish until 9pm. The programme was one from a series that I saw few episodes of called Medical Mavericks. The one last night was about doctors who experimented on themselves to discover some stuff about nutrition that we now take for granted. What the programme did not say, but ideally should have, was that those early pioneers had plucked all the best fruit from the tree. Most new nutritional ideas now are just clutching at straws as sometimes doctors, but more often cranks, attempt to cure imaginary diseases, or extend life by a few more minutes. So I didn't get to bed until just gone 9pm. It was hot and stuffy in my bedroom despite having the window open and a fan on. Unlike previous nights I had no trouble sleeping under such conditions. I may have got up for a pee sometime in the night, but basically I slept soundly until 3am. I did get up then biefly, but 20 minutes later I was asleep until I woke up again at 4.30am. I don't know how I will feel later, but I feel quite refreshed this morning. It is as if I packed more sleep into a shorter time than usual. Maybe I might do something similar again tonight if the magic continues through the day. |
| Sunday 27th June 2010 |
| 08:28 BST The clear blue sky this morning must be to blame for the fact that it is quite chilly this morning. I let Smudge in at 3 or 4am, and when I opened the window it felt like an icy blast compared to the hot stuffiness indoors. Although the forecast suggest there may be more cloud than yesterday the temperature is supposed to hit 30° C today. That might mean the day ends with a thunderstorm, but the forecasters say that the weather will stay dry for the week ahead. Yesterday it was gloriously hot and it didn't appear to be as sticky and humid as the day before. I don't yet know what the final score was for the temperature, but I do know from personal experience that it was several degrees cooler, and wonderfully fresh on the coast. This was most apparent when I stepped out of an air conditioned train from the coast into the heat at Sevenoaks. It felt like walking into an oven until my body acclimatised after some minutes. I had a glorious day out yesterday. The day turned out to be similar to how I suggested it might be yesterday morning. I found I had left things a bit late to go to the shops and Post Office and so I went straight to the station to get the 10:03 train to Sevenoaks where I changed for a train to West St Leonards. For some reason I thought that the walk from West St Leonards to Hastings was less than 2 miles, but the route I took, walking as far as you can along or beside the beach, turned out to be exactly 5 miles. As the maps suggested, the most eastward end of Hastings is where the cliffs plunge almost straight into the sea. To go any further means climbing to the top of the cliffs and walking along the top. That is something I may do another day, but yesterday I turned around and went to Hastings station via an inland route. My original thoughts, mostly based on the wrong assumption that I would only have walked a few miles at that point, were that I would get a train from Hastings station to Norman Bay station and walk back to Bexhill from there. With the reality that I had already walked 5 miles I decided that maybe that was a bit ambitious. Fortunately I was saved from doing that by the first train available in the right direction not stopping at Normans Bay. To get there I would have to wait over half an hour for a train, but only 10 minutes to get a train to the station before Normans Bay, Cooden Beach. It turned out that going to Cooden Beach was actually a wise idea. I had expected sand to walk on, and maybe it was there covered by the high tide, but all I had to walk on for the first mile or so was loose shingle above the water line, or painful (in thin soled shoes such as I was wearing) pebbles. Covering that first mile was very hard work and I was very glad when I came to a promenade that continued all the way to Bexhill. On the assumption that it would have been similar shingle and pebbles all the 3 or so miles from Normans Bay, I think would have abandoned the beach as soon as I could and probably made my way to Cooden Beach station, and then started home using an inland route. Although it was only 2.78 miles to Bexhill station it felt like almost double that, and my feet, ankles and legs were rather sore when I arrived on the platform there. I was quite surprised how quickly my walking bits recovered on the short train ride from Bexhill to St Leonards Warrior Square station where I changed to a London Bound train. At that point I felt comfortable enough to walk around the station without any problems apart from a little soreness from the soles of my feet. The same was not true after travelling for an hour on a cool air conditioned train to Sevenoaks station. When I first tried to walk it felt like my ankles were about to break. After a few moments, and after what felt like a blast of heat as I stepped out of the cool train, my ankles freed up, and I was soon feeling quite comfortable. The train from Sevenoaks to Catford was not air conditioned so I didn't get that same heat shock as I got off the train, and my ankles had not almost siezed up. In fact apart from the soles of my feet still being a little sore, I found that walking back home was as easy as any day. I did all that walking under the hot sun with no sun protection. Fortunately my previous exposure to the sun has given me a lot of built in protection, and although my legs did have a slight tingle last night, no part of me got burnt, at least not enough to cuase any pain or discomfort. I do notice that I have a nice pale line around the redness of my neck where my camera strap was ! Overall I felt really rather good after that double walk. I certainly felt good enough that I managed to restrain myself from eating a huge meal afterwards. Like all my more succesful walks I had eaten comparatively lightly the night before, and then not eaten anything until I was home again. I still couldn't resist the lure of the fried chicken shop, but I opted for just some spicy chicken wings and a small bag of chips. Apart from the addition of two digestive biscuits with some incredibly smelly mature Brie between them, that was all I ate last night. I intend to go out walking again today, and although my feet may still be a little sore, I should be otherwise quite comfortable. I don't know whether to blame it on the excitement, or the summer heat, but I didn't seem to feel at all tired last night. I even had the energy to go through all the pictures I had taken to select and edit them for a web page. I didn't make up that web page last night, but I have done so this morning. So if you want to see some of the pictures I took yesterday click here. |
| Saturday 26th June 2010 |
| 07:17 BST After yesterday's slightly disappointing start I am pleased to say that this morning seems far better. The sky is quite hazy now, but soon the rising sun should clear that haze away leaving the sky an even better blue colour. I belive there will be some patchy cloud appearing from time to time today, but it will stay dry and it's going to be hot. In London the temperature should rise to at least 28° C, but it will be a bit cooler on the coast. Yesterday was unfortunately cloudy for much of the day, but there were times when sun found it's way through the clouds. Towards the evening the cloud thinned out a lot. I think we achieved a temperature of around 26° C by late afternoon, but like many English summer days it felt a bit humid and sticky to me. Maybe today will improve on that. I came home straight from work last night, but really I should have stopped off to get some shopping. There was nothing I desperately needed, but it may have saved me a dilemna today (that I shall explain in a minute). Ideally I would have had another light salad with a few snacks last night, but instead I had chicken curry. I had bought the chicken earlier in the week and decided that I ought to use it up before it sat in the fridge (not freezer) for too long. So I cooked the curry the previous night and left it in the oven ready to be warmed up again last night. It was very tasty, and because I didn't warm it up too much it didn't overheat me on an already warm night. After my recent early nights I thought I might stay up a bit later last night, but after three days of going to work an hour early on the 0603 train I found that I couldn't keep my eyes open that late. I was fast asleep on my bed by 9pm, and possibly a bit earlier than that. After 4 hours of solid sleep I kept waking up. At 3am I decided I could do something that would be impractical if it was a work day. I got up and took a wander into the park. I didn't go very far, or stay out for very long, but it was quite delicious in the cool night air. I didn't see any wildlife on this nocturnal walk, but unusually I did see some people. There was one other person who may have been doing the same as me, and on the other side of the sports track I saw a group of three people walking in the other direction. They looked potentially sinister so I was happy to have the sports track between us. After cooling off I went back to bed and slept for another couple of hours. Today I am going out exploring, but before that I have to make some decisions. There are two tasks I ought to undertake before going out. One of them is to drop off my Virgin Media set top box at the Post Office. After my success at being decisive about getting rid of the cable TV service I was told that Virgin Media would be sending me a pre-paid packet to send the set top box back to them. It was suppose to arrive at the beginning of the month, but only arrived last Thursday. During that wait I recieved another communication from Virgin Media. It was a new viewing card for the set top box. That seemed a bit strange and I wondered if they had cocked up my order, but then the next bill arrived and it showed correctly that I had given up the TV service. So I have to take the box to the Post Office sometime, and today would seem the best day. The trouble is that the Post Office will probably be crowded and hot, and I'll probably have to queue for ages, and that might wear my patience a bit thin. On my way back from the Post Office (assuming I do that today) I could call in at Tesco to get some very useful supplies, but after an interminable time in the Post Office I could get there late when Tesco's itself is crowded, and with slow queues at the checkouts. If I spend too much time buggering around I might lose the urge to go out exploring. My plans for exploring today are very loose. What I think I am going to do is the take a train to West St. Leonards station and walk towards Hastings. This is the opposite direction to when I first visited West St. Leonards. It's only about 1.5 miles to Hastings, but there is the option of walking beyond there. I don't think there are too many opportunities to walk along the beach there because of the cliffs, but above the cliffs is the Hastings Country Park that runs along the top of the cliffs. I might go up there exploring, or I might go back to Hasting station. From there I could get a train going west to Normans Bay station. I think there is a nice sandy beach there, and that beach appears to continue east for some way towards Bexhill. Walking back to Bexhill is about 5 or 6 miles and would complete another long section of coastline I have explored having finished at Bexhill from the Hasting direction last year. As I recall, that walk from St Leonards to Bexhill was done on a very hot day. My diary entry for the day mentioned a forecast for only around 22° C, but I seem to recall it being far hotter than that, and unless I am confusing it with another walk (quite possibly) the reality was closer to 26° C as today is supposed to be. The curious thing is that I much prefer walking while it is very hot. While moving at a reasonable pace there is sufficient air flow to stop me getting too sweaty, although once I actually stop it can get rather unpleasant ! So I am looking forward to a good walk today, but before I do anything else I must get washed and dressed ! |
| Sunday 20th June 2010 |
| 07:16 BST It feels very cold this morning. Tomorrow is mid summers day, and it doesn't feel like summer at all ! The colour of the sky inspires little confidence that things will get better soon. I can see one chink in the drab greyness, and if the weather is coming from the southwest there could be a hint of something better to come, but it might only last five minutes. The weather yesterday was not that pleasant. The sun did come out a few times, but it also rained a few times too. The rest of the day was just cool and grey. The lack of inspiration from the weather only contributed about a quarter of the reasons why I didn't go out yesterday (except for one brief jaunt to the corner shop). The more important overal reason was that I found myself to be quite busy in the morning. I did a small amount of housework, and did two loads of laundry. I also seemed to spend a fair amount of time reading and writing some emails. The net result was that time just passed me by, and before I realised it, it was the afternoon and too late to go out. Besides which, it had started to rain by then. I did end up having a good time later in the afternoon. An old friend brought a computer over that needs some serious doctoring. I took a brief look at his computer, and tried a few simple things, but it was obvious that a complete re-installation of Windows would be the easiest way to get it performing something like the hardware should allow. He did have what should have been a very effective anti-virus programme installed, but I got the impression that there were still some serious bugs lurking in there somewhere. After the brief look at his computer we ended up playing some of the rarer, or more obscure, mp3 files of classic songs of (many) years gone by while chatting about those days. During this I had several large glasses of scotch and ended up thoroughly enjoying myself. By the time my friend had left I was feeling quite tipsy, but somewhere along the way I managed to persuade my friend to let me try to wean him off Windows by proposing that I would make his computer dual boot Windows and Linux. If he can stick to Linux when visiting some of his more dubious file sharing sites he will be a lot, lot safer, and with that carrot he may find that Linux can do most everything else he wants to do and stick with it. I am going to put Ylmf OS 3.0 on his computer because the interface, and useage, so closely matches Windows XP that he may not even realise he is using Linux a lot of the time. I don't do accents, or maybe more correctly, I can't do accents. I do have a very limited vocabulary of French words, and I still can't speak French with anything approaching a French accent (and that's a gross understatement). It's difficult to describe something as subjective as accent, but I think my attempts come out something similar to how someone with a West Indian father, a Chinese mother, and who was raised in southern Ireland would speak French. i.e. very, very badly ! There is a point to this strange confession, and it is that inside my head I can speak with various accents. It's only when that voice reaches the outside world that it all goes so terribly wrong. Now the voice in my head can do one other trick too, and it is best illustrated by something that happened yesterday. While I was in the corner shop buying two bottles of diet coke (because Tesco's seemed to be too far away, and too much trouble), I also bought my first ever copy of Private Eye. I had previously seen some copies of the magazine that were laying about in the canteen at one of the establishments I once worked for, but I had never previously bought a copy myself. Seeing it was only £1.50, and remembering that at least some of it was quite humorous, I bought a copy. The editor of Private Eye is Ian Hislop, and he has also been a team captain on the long running BBC comedy quiz show "Have I Got News For You". So over the years I have had plenty of exposure to Ian Hislop's voice. There is no way that I could ever imitate his voice even if my life depended on it, but inside my head I found I was reading Private Eye in a perfect Iain Hislop voice ! Today I really ought to go out for a nice walk, but I am not sure it is going to happen. Although I have always been reluctant to go out when the sky is overcast, as it still is now, there is a further factor to take into consideration. It is cold right now. So much so that I had to turn the heater on here in the upstairs front room where I am typing this. To go out now would mean wearing a coat and long trousers, and yet this (allegedly) being summer means that in theory it could warm up later on. If I did go out, and if it did warm up, it would be most unpleasant having to walk while feeling too hot in an excess of clothes. Then there is the problem of the light. With the sky being all nasty and grey it gives everything a depressing monochrome look, and that takes all the joy out of walking. Plus it doesn't make for very cheerful photos. Maybe later it may look more enticing out there, or maybe later I will just say to hell with it and go out anyway. Apart from the negative reasons for not going out, there are some positive reasons for staying in. For one reason I have to extend the definition of staying in to mean staying in Catford - I really do need to get some shopping in from Tesco's (or maybe Aldi if the fancy takes me). Another reason for staying in, and this is actually staying indoors, is that I am itching to make a start on rehabilitating my friends computer. Of course if I was truly disciplined I would go and get my shopping the minute Tesco's opened. Then I would go out walking for several hours, and then after some well earned dinner I would make a start on the computer. The trouble is that I am not disciplined, and being here alone means I can act on any whimsy that I chose. So basically I just make it up as I go along. |
| Saturday 19th June 2010 |
| 07:18 BST After a somewhat dismal day yesterday it is refreshing to find that it is bright and sunny this morning. It's hard to predict how the day will turn out, but right now at least 50% of the sky is bright blue, and the other 50% is mostly just light fluffy clouds. Like yesterday, it feels warmer less cool than recently for this time of the morning. Yesterday was a dull day. It was overcast all day, and although it tried to rain several times during the course of the day it never really amounted to anything until the evening. Between roughly 6 and 7pm there was sufficient rain to leave the roads very wet, and a some puddles. There nay have been more sometime after that, but from about 8pm I was unaware of the outside world. Last night I had a drink with Iain. At one point I was wondering if it had been such a good idea to arrange that drink when I realised there was one of those bloody World Cup football matches scheduled for last night. Fortunately the "entertainment" was not due until 7.30pm, and by that time we had left the pub. I must admit that I did have a very small, almost microscopic, interest in that football match. It was England playing Algeria. For some sort of misguided patriotic reasons it would have been nice if England won, but I drew Algeria in the work sweepstake, and obviously the chance of winning £8.50 (or whatever it is) meant that I was officially an Algerian supporter. Patriotism is good in it's own way, but beer vouchers are more important. Despite all that I have no idea who won last night yet. While in the pub with Iain I had one pint of Waggledance, two pints of Kronenberg, and a scotch and diet coke. It didn't seem to be that much, but I did feel rather good when we left the pub and walked over to The Catford Chippy. I guess it is one of the perils of drinking on an empty stomach, but having arrived at the chip shop feeling both drunk and starving, I ordered a slight excess of food. Not only did I get cod and chips, but also rock (salmon) and chips. It was very, very nice, and filled a big empty spot, although I did manage to refrain from eating all the chips I ordered. It's just a pity that there was nothing decent on TV to watch while I was eating. I did a fair amount of channel hopping while eating and didn't really settle on anything I saw. Such was the poor quality of TV entertainment last night that I achieved something I have been trying to do all week. I finally got to bed, and to sleep, quite early. I am not sure of the exact time, but I think I was probably fast asleep as early as 8.30pm. With a bellyfull of beer and chips I should have slept very well, but I didn't. At around 1am I woke up with seemed like a dreadful hangover. I had a headache of migraine proportions, and I was forced to get up to take a couple of painkillers. After something like an hour the intense pain that started in my neck and pushed fingers of fire to the top of my skull abated, and I was able to go back to bed again. This morning I have no specific pains, but I am suffering from all the symptoms of a mild hangover. Nothing actually hurts, but I feel sort of foggy. In a couple of hours, if everything goes by tradition, I will be feeling more alive, and then I hope I'll be able to get out for a bit. I haven't got time to go on a long walk today, but a short walk should be quite good enough to blow the last cobwebs out of my brain. I must go into grumpy old man mode now. It may have been last night, or perhaps sometime earlier, but I have recently seen an advert on TV that stirs my emotions. It made me feel sad for the whole human race as it descends into feeble brained stupidity. This advert concerned hand cleaner, or soap as we used to call it. It warned of the bacteriological dangers lurking on the top of a soap dispenser button. To combat this "deadly" threat the manufacturer has invented a powered dispenser that detects your hands approaching and doles out a measured shot of soap without you ever having to touch the thing. Now I like high technology, and playing with a new mega fast computer with bucket loads of memory and gigantic hard disks is almost sexual in it's experience, but somehow computerised soap dispensers fails to arouse me. Are these people so meglomaniac that they think we are going to be fooled into believing that we are all going to die in the one second between manually dispensing soap, and washing our hands ? I guess they are because they know that the sheeple will buy these gizmos in the misguided belief that they will live longer and more fulfilled lives. Personally, I'll just stick to my usual way of doing things and not lick my fingers once I have squirted them with soap from a "contaminated" dispenser ! |
| Sunday 13th June 2010 |
| 05:15 BST It's hard to tell how today will turn out this early in the morning. An hour ago the sky had a streaky look that I would have guessed heralded a pleasant start to the day, but now the sky seems to be predominately grey suggesting a rather dull day ahead. maybe once the sun is a bit higher in the sky it will "burn off" some of the grey revealing a nicer outlook. Yesterday was not all the weather forecasters suggested it would be. It did stay dry, and was reasonably warm, but it was no more than warm, and there was a lot less sunshine than expected. Nevertheless it was easily good enough for a day out after spending all day at home on Friday. After a day of inactivity, and despite being almost careful how I ate, I did not feel all that good and ready for action. Some of the problem may well have been a legacy to the 'flu like illness I had been suffering from during the week. With all that in mind it may have been foolhardy to attempt the walk I had in mind, but ultimately it turned out rather well. What I had in mind, and what I achieved was my third visit to Rye (two last year), but going via the scenic route. It knew it was a bit ambitious, but I wasn't expecting to cover the 8.75 miles that it turned out to be. In fact when I started out it didn't feel like I would be able to walk more than a few miles. After a couple of miles I began to start feeling better, and after a few more I had past the point of no return, but by that time I was beginning to get my stride and was feeling quite good. There may have been an element of masochism involved, but I seemed to be feeling good enough to walk back to the station instead of getting the bus from Rye Harbour as I had done on my two previous visits. That last bit of bravado took my total calories burned to a respectable 1345. On my two previous visits to Rye Harbour I went via the direct road from the station, but on this walk I went cross country towards Winchelesea. After leaving the roads I took to a footpath/bridleway across fields full of sheep.  One thing I learned on
this
walk is that sheep "droppings" are more like cow pats than, say, the
pellets that deer drop. There was a surprising amount of these
droppings, and I picked up a few souvenirs on my boots !
 Right in the middle of
all the treeless fields are the reamains of Camber Castle. It
was built during the reign of Henry VIII, and was originally on a spit
of land reaching out into the sea. Now the sea has retreated it is
several miles inland.
My walk continued past the castle and the fields full of sheep, through some more lushly vegetated areas, until eventually I reached the sea. The tide was on the retreat, but still fairly high, and there was quite strong sea breeze blowing. It was not ideal, but not bad either. After changing into my wet shoes I had walked along the tide line for around a mile. The water was quite cool, but not unpleasantly cold, and it felt good on my hot feet, although not nearly as nice as when I was paddling in the sea on my recent walk from Goring to Littlehampton. The big problem of walking along the beach between Winchelsea and Rye Harbour is that it is nearly all pebbles and shingle. There was one patch of quite firm sand that was very nice to walk on, but with thin soled shoes it was not that comfortable on the shingle. After my paddle I changed back into my dry boots and walked into Rye Harbour village and stopped off for a pint of beer in The Inkerman Arms. It was the pub I visited on my first trip to Rye Harbour last year, but seemed to be closed when I visited it 6 weeks later with Iain. The garden area seems a bit different, but the bar looked the same. So I am not sure if it had been closed for refurbishment, or for some other reason. On my two previous visits to Rye Harbour I have caught the bus back to Rye station, but this time I felt good enough to walk. I may have made this decision because I had subconsciously decided that there was one more thing I wanted to see on the way back, but it was only as I got near the place that I remembered what it was.  Near the Rye end of Rye
Harbour Road is an Ostrich farm. On the bus journey back to the station
last year Iain had spotted an ostrich or two and was a bit stunned. I
had read about the ostrich farm somewhere, but had not seen it before.
This time I had a chance to get a good look at these weird looking
birds.
My final sight of this day out was something I was not really expecting.  Many miles away from it's
home
turf was this London Routemaster bus RM1799. There were some stormy
looking clouds in the sky when I took this picture, and the quality of
the light has made the bus look slightly maroon in colour in this
photograph, but it was actually in the correct shade of red for a
London Bus.
My feet were aching when I arrived back at the station, but they were not nearly as bad as on some occasions, and considering the length of my walk they were not bad at all. I did have a bit of a headache when I got on the train. It had been coming and going for a lot of the day. So once I was on the train I took a couple of paracetamol tablets. Not only did they cure my headache, but they also worked wonders on my feet as well. By the time I got back to Catford my feet were 90% comfortable again. Apart from the length of the journey back, over two hours, it was actually quite pleasant in some ways. I had several changes of trains to make, and somehow it turned out that at each change of train I had plenty of time to go outside and have a cigarette. If only they allowed smoking on the station platforms again it would make travel very pleasant. Having to go outside at such stations as Ashford International (where I did my first change) means quite a long walk. Back in Catford I was feeling quite good. My feet were comfortable, and I thought the day out was a good achievment, but I was feeling very hungry after burning all those calories. The answer was to treat myself to fried chicken and chips, and very delicious it was too ! It was nice to sit down and watch a bit of TV while I had my dinner, but there seemed to be little on TV. So as I was feeling weary I went to bed reasonably early, but sleep didn't seem to come as easy as I thought it would. When I did fall asleep I slept solidly for 6 hours, and soon after 3 am I was awake again. I did get maybe another 30 minutes of poor sleep after that, but essentially I have been awake since then. I think I am going to feel quite tired quite early today. Being up so early means I have been able to write this, and that is handy because I have a busy morning. Aleemah should be coming over today, and that means I have a lot of housework to do to get the place looking passable for visitors. |
| Friday 11th June 2010 |
| 13:38 BST Ever so, ever so slowly the sky is getting brighter. It was a gloomy start to the day, and chilly too, but there was hardly more than an occasional passing shower compared to the utter drenching the forecasts said we would get. It's not impossible, although unlikely, that the sun could break through later this afternoon. Today I feel a lot better, and in fact I am almost back to normal. Most of the aches and pains are barely above normal levels, and I have stopped sweating to olympic standards. For all that I don't feel very dynamic today. I had been thinking along the lines of going out for a walk today - even if it was raining. The reality is that I can't even be bothered to go out to Tesco to buy some fags. I am running very low at the moment. I think I may have a spare pack in my back pack or shoulder bag, but for now I am using my emergency rolling tobacco. It is a pain to have to stop to roll up a fag, but at least it is cheaper. My really bad sweating stopped quite early yesterday morning, but lugging a pile of shopping back from Tesco did bring me out in a bit of a sweat again, but that is not unusual. I did wonder if all that sweating was purely from the bug I had, whatever it was, or whether it was being made a lot worse because my blood sugar level was too high. That seemed unlikely considering I had an unfulfilled craving for something sweet the day before. So I tried an experiment. Among the stuff I bought in Tesco was some stuff guaranteed to raise my blood sugar level. I scoffed that, and it was delicious, but didn't induce any sweating at all. Later on some highly spiced food did cause me to break out in a temporary sweat, but it was not that bad. It was certainly great to wake up this morning without my pillow being soaking wet. Today, after making a start last night, I have been playing with computers. I put a spare hard drive in my Sony Vaio laptop and did a fresh installation of Lubuntu on it. The desktop used for Lubuntu, LXDE, is not as highly configurable as some other Linux dektops, but with some effort it can be made to look and feel a lot like Windows XP, and that is what I have been doing (amongst a few other things). So far it has been going quite well. The desktop does look very much like Windows XP, and various other bits are quite similar, but I could continue and get things closer still sometime. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be quite good, and theoretically I might feel quite good too. So today I ought to concentrate on trying to get myself prepared for a few hours out in the sunshine. I am considering another visit to Rye. If I do go there I will be trying a more circular route that gets close to Winchelsea. That is a beach I have wanted to visit since last year. At low tide there are supposed to be fossilised trees to be seen - a reminder of how the coastline grows in some places, and in this case erodes away. |
| Tuesday 8th June 2010 |
| 07:49 BST It's wet......very wet ! It has rained on and off all through the night, and it's raining even now. The chances are that it will continue raining for another day or two yet. It is some relief that it is not really that cold, although it is a lot cooler than the seasonal average. The chances of any sunshine today seem very slim, and the sky will probably stay as just one grey sheet as it is at the moment. It seems that I have caught a summer chill, or as I like to put it, I am dying ! I guess those couple of sleepless nights I had really lowered my resistance. Apart from the normal problems of a chill I have one extra bonus problem. My legs feel like I have walked 10 miles. They are really stiff this morning, the left particularly so. In that respect it feel more like I have 'flu, but I don't think the rest of me feels quite bad enough for that to be the case. Needless to say I am not going in to work today, and maybe not tomorrow either, but I'll see how I feel later before deciding on that. Having consulted many learned journals I have concluded that I definitely have man 'flu. Last night I did sleep reasonably OK, but it was possibly just through sheer exhaustion that I apparently slept solidly from a little before 9 pm to 3 am. At 3 am I was up taking my first couple of paracetamol tablets. After giving them an hour to work I managed to sleep again from about 4 am to 6.30 am. That does add up to a full eight and half hours sleep, and in the ordinary course of events that should have been fine, but I reckon it will not be long before I am asleep again. Later on today, maybe after another succesful sleep, I am going to try and eat some fruit, although I think I really want something more comforting like a curry. It will be tricky sticking to that idea because last night I pre-cooked a chicken curry with the idea that I would eat it for dinner after work today. So sitting in the oven is chicken and mushroom curry just waiting to be warmed up and eaten. How will I ever resist the temptation of that ? I will attempt to convince myself that the 4 (or is it 6) pack of Kiwi fruit that are in the kitchen are not only extremely delicious, but very, very good for me. Sometimes miracles do happen ! |
| Sunday 6th June 2010 |
| 06:38 BST After a hot and sultry night it is deliciously cool this morning. Unfortunately it is likely to stay this way with little sunshine to warm the place up. At this hour of the morning it is difficult to tell if the general murkiness of the sky is more mist than cloud, although the last forecast I saw suggested it will be cloud, and that there will be a fair amount of rain today. Yesterday was a very hot day with plenty of sunshine. That was in accordance with the forecasts, but the evening did not turn out as wild as forecast. The prediction was for thunderstorms to brew up as soon as the sun began to set. In reality it did get very cloudy well before the sun set, but it was as late as 11 pm when the first rain fell. At times the rain sounded heavy, but I didn't detect and thunder and lightning. I slept really badly last night because of the heat, and as far as I am aware the rain had stopped by 1 am this morning, and it may not have rained since. Yesterday at 8 am I thought I would be seeing Aleemah later in the day. By 8:01 am I had received a text message to say that she wouldn't be able to make it. That left me free to go out exploring. Before doing that I had a couple of things to do. The first was to get some shopping, and the second was to decide where to go. I was feeling fairly good yesterday so I decided to tackle a long walk, and walk the coast from Goring to Littlehampton. I also had to decide in what direction to walk in. In my earlier walks along the south coast I had walked from west to east. This time I thought it would be better to walk the other direction. The reason for this is that Littlehampton station is a lot nearer the coast compared with Goring (not even remotely)-By-The Sea station which is nearly 1.5 miles inland. I only took a few photos on this outing because most of the coast there is very similar, and has few interesting features. So I am not making up a special photo page, and I'll describe everything here. The last time I walked from Goring-By-Sea station to the coast I mostly walked along the roads, but this time I took a chance on a sort of short cut that went through several small woods and a couple of playing fields. One of those playing fields was all marked out for football and had goal posts set up, but there wasn't a single person in sight. Apart from a couple of people walking dogs I didn't pass anyone on that section of my walk. I guess everyone had headed to the beach....including this young woman.......  That was a nice surprise
and made my effort all seem worthwhile !
I had decided that for this walk I would not use my hiking shoes, but to start off in my lightweight black canvas shoes. I hadn't actually worn those shoes for any length of time before yesterday, and they turned out to be surprisinly comfortable. The useful thing was that I was able to walk into the water as soon as I liked without bothering to change footwear. It didn't take me too long to do that, and I found the water was pleasantly warm. In fact I think the water was probably warm enough that I would have had no objection to lowering my testicles in it. I didn't, but I had taken the precaution of putting my wallet and phone in waterproof plastic bags in case I did go in deeper than usual. Although I didn't wade in to any deep water some of the bigger waves did manage to soak the bottom of my shorts. So my precautions were very worthwhile, and everything important stayed dry. The coast I was walking on is a mixture of sand and shingle with a lot of rocky patches. (See my previous pictures of Goring to see what I mean). All those rocks, particularly when under water, made walking a bit hazardous, and it is why I didn't walk out into deeper water, but I did do quite a lot of walking through the shallower water. When I was a mile or two from Littlehampton I changed into dry shoes and then mostly walked along the road. With just about a mile to go I finally had confirmation that I was entering Littlehampton itself.  By the time I reached
this
sign the sky was looking quite cloudy, although the chances of rain
seemed remote. The picture above doesn't really show that the sky was
so cloudy, but this one does.....
 This is the view across
the
beach on the approaches to Littlehampton. In the background can be seen
the entrance to the harbour. This far from the centre the beach is
still sparsely populated, but in the centre it was quite crowded
(although still a bit sparse in comparison to Brighton or Eastbourne).
One of the most useful things I carry on these walks is my black G1 android phone. Not only can I record the walk using the inbuilt sat-nav, but it is so handy in navigating through the town trying to find the badly signposted station. Using the phone I found the station quite easily, and that was good because my feet were getting quite sore by then. I came out of an alley and saw the station a hundred feet or so to my left, but I turned right in search of a pub. I didn't have to go too far to find a pub that was open and not boarded up like two others I noticed. It was right opposite this rather strange clocktower.  The pub, whose name I
forget,
was undergoing refurbishment, and only half of it was open, but it had
a beer garden out the back where I could enjoy a cold lager and a fag.
It was doubly handy that I could sit in the beer garden because inside
the pub there was some live music being played. It was part of some
weekend live folk music festival going on around the town. The band
were playing what I can only describe as "Irish bomb making music"
which I really don't care for !
When I exited from the alley my tracker said I had walked 6.98 miles. When I stopped the tracker outside the pub it said 7.09 miles. So it was 0.11 miles back to the alley, and a bit more to the station. So I don't think it's beyond the bounds of imagination that my total walk was seven and a quarter miles, and that makes it my second longest walk. It took two and half hours, and I burnt nearly 1100 calories doing it. One very surprising thing is that when I finally arrived home again I did not feel hungry, and yet I was very much looking forward to having my dinner. Had I been feeling hungry I may have opted to pick up a takeaway on the way home, but very unusually I had the patience to prepare and cook my own dinner. Although I must admit that once I started cooking my juices started to flow and I did nibble on a big chunk of cheese. Ignoring the naughty cheese, my dinner was almost healthy, and it would have been so if the cooking sauce I used contained less sugar. The cooking sauce was Chinese Kung Po, and although I hadn't realised it when I bought it, it was almost sweet and sour sauce, and sugar was very high on it's list of ingredients. Apart from that, the skinless and boneless chicken thighs, the new potatoes, mushroom, and pak choi were all good stuff. The finished meal was very nice, but sadly all that excess sugar did not elevate it to the truly delicious. This morning I do feel rather thin, but my guts do hurt a bit. It feels more like muscular pain rather than any digestive upset. Fortunately it is mild and ignorable, but I am not sure of the reason for it unless I have gone weirder than usual and started doing sit up in my sleep or something. The main cause of me not feeling too good this morning is nothing to do with my guts, or to do with my legs and feet which are better than I could have hoped for. It has everything to do with having a sleepless night. I have no idea now huch sleep I did get last night. As far as I am aware I only slept continuously for around an hour at a time. It was hard getting to sleep while it was all hot and sticky, and even after things had cooled down I still found it hard to stay asleep. Having had one succesful and enjoyable day out I don't feel the need to go out exploring again, although it is possible that I might. I think I am going to go out to the local shops and maybe buy a new t-shirt or two, and I may take a look at either the 99p shop or Aldi's (perhaps both). Apart from that I face a difficult decision......Do I attempt to try and catch up on some sleep by taking a few naps, or will that ruin any chance I have of getting a full nights sleep tonight ? |
| Friday 4th June 2010 |
| 07:50 BST This morning sees the start of another fine day. It was cool when I left for work, but with the sky a gin clear blue, and the sun shining, it was starting to feel warm when I arrived at work 70 minutes later. The temperature today could reach 26 or 27° C, and with luck, tomorrow should be very similar. I think it is one of the BBC weather forecasters who has taken to decribing the sky as "gin clear blue". I am not sure if I had heard of the saying before, but I rather like it (although I am not sold on the idea that Bombay Sapphire Blue gin is any better than clear London Gin). I was going to include direct links to the products themselves, but it seems that now most booze websites want to pry into your age. Well I won't give them the satisfaction of that, and if it were possible I would suggest that everyone should boycot products that stoop to such seedy ideas. Of course this is all the result of meddling by those frustrated virgins in the health service who really ought to get out and about a bit more to see the real world. It's about time they realised that lack of alcohol can make you angry, very angry indeed. I haven't had any booze for some time now and I am absolutely livid. My blood pressure has gone through the roof and I will probably die any minute now, and it all because those bastards who call themselves health professionals think they can save a few cases of schirrosis of the liver by condeming the rest of us to a short miserable life. They deserve to burn in hell, or somewhere worse if it can be found. Anyway, I feel reasonably good this morning, or at least I do now, although it has nothing to do with venting my spleen (and possibly other bits). I have noticed that these days I go through three distinct phases in the morning (plus of minus four !). When I first wake up I usually feel a bit stiff, but quite good and alert. After I have fed Smudge and pottered about downstairs on the computer, I usually feel like I ought to be back in bed again. It seems like hard work walking back up the stairs and I wonder how I will make it through the day. Once I have had a shower my energy levels start to pick up again, but I can still feel like it's too much effort to go to work. Once I actually get walking things improve, and by the time I get to Waterloo I am usually feeling OK. By the time I reach work I am ready for a sit down again ! It is possible that is more than three phases - don't worry about it - I hadn't really thought enough about it when I originally said three phases. The fact remains that I feel pretty reasonable at the moment, and I blame that on eating a bit more healthier than of late. Last night I had diced skinless turkey and potato curry. I had cooked it the night before, and it all the flavours had infused into the meat overnight and through the day. Tonight I am also intending to eat a fairly healthy meal. I bought some venison burgers the other day (not from Knole Park where the only venison is still on the hoof). Venison is very low in fat (I think), and I am not going to fry them. What I am going to do is to treat them like meatballs and see how that turns out. I'll cook them in beef flavoured stock along with some cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and probably some new potatos. I might add some herbs too. On account of the amount of stock I will be using it will be a rather big, and also hot meal that may not seem all that appropriate after a hot day, but I think I'll manage OK. Sometimes it's nice to get stuff through the post like Mike's birthday card the day before, but sometimes it can be infuriating. Yesterday's post comes under the latter description. It was the reminder that my TV licence is due to be renewed before the end of the month. This year it a bowel quaking £145 and some odd pence. I can't say I like it, but I suppose it's better than paying many times that amount to Rupert Murdock for the privilege of watching 27 hours of adverts and self promotions a day on his Sky channels. At least the BBC do provide an hour or two of reasonable entertainment a day (averaged out over a week). |
| Thursday 3rd June 2010 |
| 07:58 BST Summer has returned ! This morning the sky is clear and the sun is shining warmly. Unfortunately the sky was clear overnight and that allowed things to cool down, and it would have made for a nicer morning if it had been one degree warmer. I shouldn't really moan about the temperature - it wasn't all that long ago I would have killed for a morning as mild as this morning. On the other hand, wearing a short sleeve shirt and no coat did feel just a tiny bit too cool for comfort. Weather forecasts are such capricious things ! As far as I can remember the BBC said today would be one degree cooler than my morning paper says it will be today, and three degrees higher for tomorrow. I think I will choose to believe what the BBC said last night. So today the temperature should rise to around 22° C, and tomorrow it could be 24° C. The weekend should be just as good, but the warmth could brew up a thunderstorm on Sunday. Before writing any more I must stop to thank Mike for my birthday card. It was a bit early, but with it coming from Canada that is understandable. The card has a picture of the Radio Caroline boat, the Ross Revenge, on it, and it seems we are both having birthdays around the same time. The difference is that I am five years older than that boat ! Yesterday I started the day feeling tired and generally sort of rough. That feeling continued through the day, and I felt exhausted when I got home from work - and that was a bit of a pity because I had the opportunity for a few beers last night. I needed some shopping from Tesco on the way home, and that added to my tiredness. Once I got home I fed Smudge, put the shopping away, and prepared some dinner. My plan was to leave some stuff cooking in the oven and pop out for a pint while it cooked. The problem was that I allowed myself to sit down for a few minutes. After that I decided it was much nicer than walking to the pub. I might have stayed in, but I didn't stay completely alcohol free. One of my workmates went to visit his parents in Germany over the whitsun bank holiday. On his return he mentioned that he had been drinking some Jägermeister at some sort of event. Since hearing about Jägermeister, probably hearing that it was a favourite of many heavy metal bands such as Metallica, I have been curious to try it. Last night I noticed it Tesco and bought a bottle. Having satisfied my curiosity I can now say that in small quantities it is very nice. I first tasted it at room temperature, and that was nice, but it is recommended that it is served at below zero temperatures direct from the freezer. I tried that too, but I am not sure if it was any nicer that way, and possibly it was a tiny bit less nice. I didn't drink enough to get drunk, but it may have enabled me to get a reasonable nights sleep. I haven't checked yet this morning, but there is a way to tell if it did get me slightly drunk. Last night, with my dying breath (!) I made up a new web page with the photos I took last Monday in Sevenoaks and Knole Park. If I was drunk then my writing will contain more errors than usual. The new page can be found HERE. This morning I dodn't feel 100%, but I do feel a lot, lot better than yesterday morning. If I continue to improve I could be feeling quite good by the end of the day. The one thing I must do is not to use that as an excuse not to get to bed, and then to sleep, at a reasonable hour tonight. If I can summon up the corect discipline I will be in bed by 8 pm so I can read for a while, and then get to sleep before 9 pm. |
