Sunday's weather was not very nice, but it
wasn't terrible. There were some occasional bright
periods, possibly even sunny periods, and it
didn't seem to feel that cold. Yesterday was like
Sunday, but infinitely worse ! It was dull, dull,
dull, dull, and dull ! I don't think it actually
rained, but it looked like it came very close to
it on more than one occasion. To make matters
worse it wasn't very warm. Despite what the
thermometer said, 15 or 16° C, it felt cold. If
that wasn't bad enough, it gets worse today...
You'll note from this screenshot that
"weather warnings" have been issued. This is what
it says ; Met Office
Warnings Issued For: Greater London Yellow warning of
rain From:
0015 on Tue 31 May To:
1200 on Tue 31 May Updated 30 May at
10:21 Active A band of rain,
heavy and thundery in places, will spread
westwards from the early hours of Tuesday
morning. There is the risk that rain will
turn torrential in places, with frequent
lightning. Winds will also increase, with
northerly gales on coasts. Whilst most
places will miss the worst of the weather,
please be aware of the risk of flash
flooding.
So today is not going to be very nice at
all. At least tomorrow looks like it will be a bit
better - deathly dull, but it may be mostly dry,
and it will be ever so slightly less cold. If the
wind isn't howling in from the frozen north like
today, then it could even feel fairly mild (but I
won't be holding my breath waiting for that !).
I felt fairly rotten yesterday. Mostly it
was just the Sunday blues transplaced to the bank
holiday Monday, but it was a little more than
that. One particular malady was constipation. It
wasn't of the uncomfortable variety, but I didn't
fancy going out for a breath of fresh air until I
had "gone". Maybe I should have taken a chance
because I felt quite comfortable almost until this
morning when I went twice as much ! Had I felt in
a stable condition I did have a sort of silly idea
that I might grab my camera and head towards
Southend and see how far I got before the cold
greyness pissed me off.
After deciding to stay in I had to find
something to do. I didn't seem to be in the right
mood to do it, but went through all the pictures I
took on Saturday night. I found 47 of them that
looked reasonably OK, and eventually I managed to
upload them to Flickr. You can see the whole album
here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157668689104502
Most of the pictures were taken using my Canon EOS
1200D camera, but some were taken using my Nikon
D3200 camera. It was interesting to compare the
differences between them.
The Canon camera seemed to focus better on
the subject I wanted, but the Nikon would aften
seem to focus on something behind my main subject.
Some of the time I was using the lens with no
working autofocus on the Nikon, and getting the
wrong focal point was mostly my fault, but not
entirely. The autofocus motor may not work on the
lens, but the "in focus" lamp still lights in the
viewfinder. I think that what I didn't realise at
the time was that there would have been more than
one focal point, and somehow I was choosing the
wrong one. it is a problem I might persist with
because I think the noise in low light areas is
smoother on the Nikon. I must also remember to
check deep in the menus to see if there are any
focus settings I can change - such as the size and
position of the place on the image that focus
detection works on.
Editing those photos took less time than I
imagined - mostly because the best ones needed
very little editing. That still left me ages in
which to get bored and miserable. I had started to
try and eat very sensibly yesterday, but as the
tedium of the afternoon wore on I started to eat
more and more crap. By mid to late afternoon I was
on the Homer Simpson diet - lots of beer and fatty
and salty snacks ! Over the course of a few hours
I polished off three cans of extra strength lager
while I watched TV. I couldn't actually find
anything on "live TV" that could satisfy my
viewing needs, and I ended up watching 3 or 4 old
episodes of "Yes Minister". It sometimes seems
that the best TV was made in the 1980s, and it has
been going downhill since.
Part of my frustration yesterday was that
Flickr was experiencing a problem. All the
pictures I tried to upload seemed to fail to
upload. This went on over several hours, and it
wasn't until I made an attempt at about 8pm that I
managed to upload those pictures from saturday's
gig. Once that was done I looked around for
something else to do because I wasn't feeling
sleepy - although I was feeling rather drunk !
One thing caught my eye, and it was a couple
of plastic storage boxes under my computer desk. I
thought one of them had a bed linen set or two in
it, but it turned out to be empty. The other,
which I thought had a few sheets and pillowcases
in it turned out to have a heap of white t-shirts
in it. One rather unfortunate, and unpleasant
thing was that both box lids showed signs of the
little mouse infestation I had a year or two ago.
I feel fairly certain that since I blocked off
several holes where the mice were getting in, I
have been free of mice since, but I still had to
take those box lids and give them a good scrub in
the bath.
Fortunately the boxes were well sealed, and
there was no contamination in the boxes themselves
- well not from mice. Those t-shirts had been put
away years and years ago when I was a heavy
smoker, and they did smell rather smoky. I don't
really wear plain white t-shirts, and so I dumped
most of them in the recycling bin, but some were
not plain white, and I wanted to keep them. So at
9pm, when I would normally be going to bed, I
decided to wash them. There were 4 of them to do,
and once they were washed and rinsed I hung them
on a clothes horse to dry in the living room. I
tried to help thye drying my leaving the fan
heater set to blow just cold air on them. They
were still very damp this morning thanks to this
damp and horrible weather, and I reckon I will
have to turn the fan heater on full to dry them
when I get home after work today.
I had a lousy night last night. It seemed to
take ages to fall asleep, and I kept waking up in
the night. By 4.30am I gave up and started getting
up. I have plenty to do at work today, and that
should be a good distraction, but I reckon I will
be doing plenty of yawning today. I don't feel
terribly wonderful this morning - it's little more
than the usuaal aches, pains, and creaky bits. The
sort of thing that only a hot sunny day can cure.
Curiously enough, while most of me is falling
apart at the seams, it seems my legs were in very
good order this morning, and particularly so on
that great test of endurance - the mad dash from
Waterloo East to Waterloo mainline station. It
felt curiously effortless rushing up the ramp at
the end of the platform, and it hardly seemed
taxing to race, and overtake many people over the
rest of the link. Life could almost be sweet if
the rest of my body could be as good as my legs
were this morning.
Sunday
29th May 2016
15:49
BST
Yesterday was pleasant enough, but it was
only mildly warm, and there was not enough
sunshine to be memorable. There was one positive
thing about yesterday - it was still mild enough
to walk home in perfect comfort from the pub at
midnight without a coat, and only in a short
sleeved shirt (and still OK at nearer 1am this
morning when the deed was actually done !). This
morning it seemed quite chilly, although it
doesn't seem to be all that long ago when 12° C at
5am would have seemed quite good. There was also a
little bit of sunshine soon after sunrise, but
there wasn't any more until fairly recently. Much
of the day has been grey - light grey, but still
grey ! At the moment there is some bright, but
hazy sunshine. The current temperature is
difficult to quote. The thermometer outside the
upstairs rear bedroom, which faces north, and
never really sees the sun, says it is 22° C, but
the thermometers nearer ground level say it is a 2
or 3° cooler than that. Tomorrow is probably going
to be quite similar to today, and the day after,
the first day back at work after my extended bank
holiday weekend, is still forecast to be cold and
wet !
I made a terrible mistake early yesterday
evening. I had an unnecessary meal. Not only
didn't I really need that meal, but it consisted
of fish cakes, and they say very heavily on my
stomach for the first part of the evening. It made
it quite a challenge to put my best foot forward,
and walk to the pub to see Chain's gig in The
Black Cat.
Apart from the discomfort of sitting there
with a heavy feeling in my gut, it was also a bit
disappointing that the audience for the gig was a
bit thin. It was a typical case of the potential
audience being split among several nearby(ish)
venues. I know there was a small group who went to
The British Oak in Blackheath, a venue that Chain
has played at many times, to see the band Life Of
Brian, and there would have been more potential
audience who would have gone to a gig in The
Partridge in Bromley. I think there was also a gig
on at The Kings Arms in Biggin Hill. Of course the
trouble is that not enough people know how good
gigs are in the Black Cat, It is still tarnished
with the reputation it had as it slowly went down
hill as The Catford Ram.
Those who didn't go missed out on a great
evening, and an even better after gig drink. I am
not sure what the "official" closing time of the
pub is, or is supposed to be, but we were there very
late - at least by my standards we were. I went to
bed rather later than my usual 9pm last night ! If
you don't include the camera in my mobile phone
(that I didn't use) then I took three cameras to
the gig last night. I took both my Canon and Nikon
DSLR cameras, and my little pocket sized Nikon
snapper (The S6300). So far I have only dealt with
a few snaps I took on the latter camera, and
although I have had a quick peak, I haven't
touched the hundreds (literally) of pictures taken
on the DSLRs yet. Maybe I didn't even need them.
The lighting in The Black Cat can be bright enough
not to need any special cameras and lenses for run
of the mill pictures.
This picture is not brilliant, but is passable
as an illustration of the band in action.
The last standing drinkers (although some
weren't actually drinking because they were
driving), and Chris Mayer was kneeling down. Jo
Corteen borrowed my camera to take this snap.
From left to right - Sarah Etheridge, Dave
Etheridge (drums), Rob Dillon, Fenella Corteen,
Sue Radford, and.....well......me !
I wasn't sure whether to post this picture, but
I think Jo Corteen's smiling face distracts from
the ugly git on the left of the picture. As a
side note; this "selfie" was taken on a normal
camera without the benefit of the viewfinder
screen being visible. It came out rather well
for guesswork.
One unusual aspect of
last night was that I didn't feel the need for
anything more than the smallest nibble of food
when I got home from the pub - and that was
after consuming many pints of Guinness. I
guess those stodgy fish cakes really affected
the booze uptake. I felt "very happy" but not
actually drunk when I got in. I also didn't
feel very sleepy, and it was a little while
before I felt ready to go to bed. I have a
vague memory that it was almost 1.30am before
my head hit the pillow, and about another
three seconds before I was fast asleep.
I managed to have a lay in this morning,
but only a short one. My internal body clock
was still trying to wake me up for work at
5am, but I managed to sleep beyond that. That
only lasted until about 6am when I got up for
maybe an hour. Having passed through the
critical hours, so to speak, I was able to go
back to bed at about 7am and sleep until 9am -
but not that well. As I write this it all
seems to be catching up with me, and I am
feeling very tired.
I have very little to show for all the
hours I've been awake today. I've done a
little photo editing, and even the simplest of
some video editing (just top and tailing plus
a fade in and fade out). I've also been out to
the shops for a short while, but basically I
have been lazy - but a specialised form of
lazy. I should be tackling all the photos I
took on the big cameras last night, but I feel
tired enough not to be able to raise the
enthusiasm to do it. I can foresee I'll be
using up my last day off work, tomorrow, the
bank holiday Monday, reviewing and editing
photos - either that or I will suddenly get
the urge to do it at some stupid time tonight.
I think I'll go and contemplate the
meaning of life now, but before I do that I
will leave you with a small video taken last
night. It was taken on my little Nikon snapper
(the Nikon
Coolpix S6300). It usually takes very
good stills, and it copes well with loud music
in video mode, but the autofocus can sometimes
get terrible confused in video mode -
particularly under multicoloured stage lights.
So this video of Chain playing Green Manalishi
has some interesting "video effects" in it -
sort of psychedelic - which suits the song
quite well in some ways !
Saturday
28th May 2016
17:04
BST
It was very nice yesterday - particularly
so in Hastings ! It was basically warm and sunny,
although it started to become a little overcast as
the evening started. I am unsure of the exact
temperatures, and I don't think it was much above
20° C, but it was still very comfortable. This
morning started with rain. There wasn't that much
of it, but all the same....Since this morning it
has dried up and warmed up. There has also been a
fair bit of sunshine, but it has often been rather
hazy. The sky seems quite hazy at the moment,
although it actually only looks cloudy in some
directions. It's currently 22° C on my upstairs
thermometer, but I think it is a degree or two
cooler nearer the ground. Tomorrow is forecast to
reach 20° C, but only a few hours in the late
morning will see any sunshine, and even then it
will probably just be sunny periods. The day after
is currently forecast to be dull and almost cold !
I felt most reluctant to do it, but I
managed to drag my carcass out for some adventures
in Hastings.....no, not really adventures, but I
had a nice walk around in the sunshine, and saw
and photographed lots of things. Among them was
the newly rebuilt/renovated, and very recently
re-opened pier. They have done a good job on it,
and best of all is that they have so far resisted
just filling it up with halls of bleeping,
flashing, one armed bandits. The trust that now
runs it has far greater imagination than to fall
for that. Yesterday there were huge open spaces on
the pier - it makes it very obvious just how big
it is. One novel idea is to have open air cinema
there. I'm not sure that I would enjoy that, or
want to go, but I approve of the idea.
The route I took to get to Hastings, and to
come back home afterwards, was a novel one - to
me. It occurred to me that if I was going to get a
return ticket from boundary zone 6, the furthest I
can travel for free on my 60+ Oystercard, then it
didn't matter where I changed trains anywhere in
the free zone. So I opted for a simple, and well
connected change. It seemed perverse travelling in
the exact opposite direction to where I wanted to
go, but I took a train from Catford Bridge station
to Waterloo East station. Once there I simply
crossed over to the other side of the platform,
and then waited until the Hastings train arrived 8
minutes later. It was the exact same train I would
have caught at Sevenoaks if I had endured the long
tedious journey from Catford station to Sevenoaks
- although that route would actually have been a
quicker journey - quicker by just 7 minutes !
I caught my train from Catford Bridge at
11:56, and arrived in Hastings roughly 2 hours
later. I alighted one station early at St Leonards
Warrior Square station, and then as the map above
shows, walked for 3.84 miles before ending at
Hastings station itself. It was most pleasant in
Hastings weather-wise, and perhaps because it was
a Friday (and the Friday before a bank holiday
weekend) it was not too busy and crowded. The
highlight was obviously visiting the pier, but I
managed to find many other things to photograph.
The whole album, featuring 69 photos, can be found
here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157668197539320
(which I still have to finish adding a few
descriptions, and some tags) but here's a
taster.
The newly renovated pier seen in the distance.
I didn't get home again until just after
6.30pm - which is quite late for me after a day
out. It was quite a long time to go without
breakfast, although I did buy a bottle of water at
Hastings station on the way home. Prior to that I
didn't feel the need for anything to drink, and
even after buying the 500ml bottle I had only
drunk half of it by the time I got home. In some
respects I didn't even feel particularly hungry -
well not until I started thinking about food too
much - but I was patient enough to wait
until a takeaway arrived. If I hadn't topped
up the order with some nice greasy onion rings it
might even have been a sort of healthy meal. It
was of course chicken shish kebab with salad (and
chilli sauce !). It still came with pitta bread,
and while I often leave that, I ate it all this
time.
A few hours after eating I went to bed, but
I did make a start on editing all the photos I
took, but it was a slow process. One reason for
this is that I thought I would give my Nikon P500
bridge camera a good field trip. It is nice and
light, and it's x35 zoom lens is very handy. On
top of that it has a viewfinder as well as an LCD
panel, and that viewfinder is essential for
working in bright sunlight. It takes cracking
pictures, as you'll see if you go to the Flickr
album, and click for an expanded view, but it has
one shortcoming - and it's a weird one ! It seems
the camera does not fit the side of my nose. At
least that is the only explanation I can think of.
During editing I had to rotate almost every
picture by an average of 2° to, for instance, stop
the sea running downhill ! Apart from that, I had
to do very little to improve the pictures -
usually no more than some light cropping to centre
things up. As I say, it is a very good camera, but
I don't think I actually like it !
I am slowly losing the effects of my
internal alarm clock. After what I think was a
good sleep I finally woke up at least as late as
5.30am ! I have a very vague recollection of
waking up sometime around 3am, and after a while I
snuggled under the duvet in a most comfortable way
and fell asleep again. That didn't happen at
5.30am. At that time the bed seemed full of lumps,
and it seemed impossible to find a comfy position.
So I slowly got up feeling all stiff and creaky.
Most of that discomfort evaporated fairly
quickly, and while I got accustomed to being
upright again I made a little more progress at
reviewing/editing my photos. I also read a few of
my favourite web sites. As 8am approached I
thought I had better get up properly, and went to
wash my hair and shower. Once I was washed and
dressed it was just about time to go and and do
some early morning shopping. It's nice and relaxed
in Aldi at that time, but an hour later it can be
frustratingly packed in their with slow queues at
the checkouts.
While I was in there it was nice and free
moving - although I did manage to pick the one
checkout where the old lady in front seemed to
take an eternity to pack her bags, find her money,
and then triple check her change. Prior to that I
had selected lots of healthy stuff, and
surprisingly little unhealthy stuff - although
still enough to wreck any form of diet if consumed
serially ! I bought quite a lot of salad and some
assorted low to medium low fat stuff - which I can
wreck by pouring on all sorts of sauces and stuff
!!
Once I got home again I allowed myself a
small unhealthy breakfast - sandwiches - and then
got stuck into photo editing again. It is amazing
how much time can pass without it seeming you have
done much. I am sure I don't sit there for minutes
on end deciding whether or not to show a picture,
and how I might edit it, but it sometimes I think
I must do that when I consider how long it takes.
Of course having done all that editing, and been
interrupted with a pleasant, but extremely long
phone call, I had to upload the pictures to
Flickr. Uploading 69 high resolution pictures
takes a fair time ! Once uploaded I had to think
up captions or descriptions, plus add tags to the
photos so they are more easily searchable - a task
I still haven't completed !
After all that, I started writing this, and
with a dinner break in the middle of writing it,
many many hours have passed since waking up this
morning, and I have little else to show for it. In
a couple of hours I have to go out and take
another whole heap of pictures. After a long
patient wait, Chain are finally playing in The
Black Cat again. The last time they played in
there it was The Catford Ram - maybe 2 years or so
ago. So tonight I think I might take two cameras.
I'll shoot a bucket load of pictures on my Canon
camera, and another bucket load of pictures on my
manually focussed Nikon camera - at least I
probably will. I had better give some thought
about getting ready for tonight now.
Friday
27th May 2016
09:50
BST
It seemed to take a while to warm up
yesterday, but the afternoon felt very
comfortable. The odd thing was how the sun felt
very hot late in the afternoon, but it didn't seem
to be able to warm the air up to better than 20° C
(and I am not even sure my thermometers said it
got that high). During the night it became
cloudier than it was during the day, and this
morning it is generally rather dull looking
(although there were a few minutes of sunshine a
little earlier). It is currently about 15° C, and
like yesterday the temperature should rise to
around 20° C. The forecast allows for a small
possibility of a light shower at any time,
but there should be more sunshine that yesterday -
although it doesn't seem look like it will be very
sunny from where I'm sitting ! It looks like what
is forecast for tomorrow - mostly rather dull but
with a similar range of temperatures - and some
rain for an hour or so early in the morning. In
other words a typical English bank holiday weekend
!
Yesterday turned out nothing like it was
planned to be ! Early in the morning, prior to any
chance of my new microwave oven being delivered, I
did some laundry, and got it hanging on the
washing line to dry. I also did all the washing
up. Then I sort of relaxed and started to wait for
the oven to be delivered. The oven actually
arrived just before midday - which wasn't bad, and
should have allowed me to participate in a little
photo expedition with Kevin (who I haven't seen
for weeks and weeks) and Iain (who I haven't seen
for a few years now).
The general plan was to go and take some
pictures of, and have a short ride on the diesel
train that goes between Barking and Gospel Oak
stations. That line is the last non-electrified
passenger carrying line in the London area, but
not for long - hence the desire to experience it
one more time. After spending an hour or so there
we were going to travel to docklands where HMS
Duncan, a rather large warship, was going to
thread it's way out of the docks, and onto The
River Thames at 4.45pm - high tide. That could
have made for some good photos, but before all
that could happen I was made a better offer !
This offer did not initially involve beer as
the picture on the left might suggest. It was from
my friend Patricia, and she offered to come and
see me to swap some gossip, and pick up some items
of mail that are still delivered here. In theory I
can see Kevin or Iain at any time, but with
Patricia spending half her time out of the
country, and most of the remaining time with her
partner, Andrew, I often only get to see her a
couple of times a year these days. So my choice
was very biassed in her direction.
She arrived here between 1 and 1.30pm, and
we had a nice chat. I originally suggested that I
would later accompany her part of her way home,
and I, perhaps still in the company of Patricia,
might still meet up with Kevin and Iain in
docklands to see HMS Duncan depart to wherever
it's next top secret destination is.
It was a good idea, but we went to the local
Wetherspoons pub for lunch first. I found I rather
liked the beer pictured on the left, and I ended
up drinking three pints of it as we chatted way.
It was a most pleasant afternoon, and of course
time passed far too quickly. It was almost 5pm
when I saw Patricia onto her bus home by herself.
I then headed to home where I had a couple
of sandwiches. While I was still high on the booze
I did think that maybe I could still make it to
Beckenham where the Thursday night drinking club
was meeting, but I ended up laying on my bed and
having a snooze ! I have a feeling I was asleep
for a good hour, but by then I couldn't be
bothered to keep an eye on the clock. A few hours
later I was back in bed and sleeping fairly well.
This morning I was up bright and early
again, although not as early as yesterday morning
- that was a bit silly ! The only thing of note
that I have done is to wash a couple of t-shirts,
and a few other things, and get them hanging on
the line. I probably should have washed the sheet
on my bed too after a slightly unpleasant
accident...
I recently bought a tub of chocolate flavour
body butter from the Pound Shop. It smells
delicious !
As you might expect, it is brown in colour.
That is an important point to note ! I've
found that some moisturising cream is useful
to keep some of my post operation scars nice
and supple. I probably ought to treat the scar
down my chest, or maybe it is a bit too late
for that one now, but I do occasionally
moisturise the scar on my left leg where the
vein (or artery) was extracted to be
transplanted as the bypasses for my heart.
I don't know how, but the surgeons made
a bit of a mess of the incision at the bottom
of my leg (it goes the entire length of my leg
- right up to, and passed my testicles). The
top half healed easily, but the bottom bit
needed frequent moisturisation to help it heal
properly.
Last night I decided to try this
chocolate flavour body butter. Even if it
didn't do any good, at least it would smell
nice (maybe too nice - it made me feel hungry
!). So as I lay in bed I liberally smeared the
stuff all over the scar, and then got on with
the business of sleeping. This morning I threw
the duvet back in the clear light of morning,
and thought I had had a very childish sort of
accident in the night ! It took me a moment to
realise that the suspicious looking smears
were chocolate body butter, and not something
infinitely worse !
My plan for today, although it is
already late in the morning, and I haven't
even showered yet, is to go to Hastings to
take some pictures of the recently re-opened
pier. At least that is the plan, but as I sit
here typing I can't seem to find much
motivation. I expect I had better go and take
a shower, and see how I get on from there.
Thursday
26th May 2016
11:50
BST
It was horribly dull yesterday, but at
least it stayed almost dry, and while it wasn't
exactly warm, it wasn't cold either. I describe it
as almost dry, but I am sure I felt a few misty
drops of rain on my way home from work, and there
may have been a very light shower in the early
evening (and anything could have happened
overnight). This morning started off rather cool,
just 8 or 9° C, but it is warming up slowly. It's
about 18° C now, and it seems very likely that in
another hour or two it will hit 20° C, which is
about what was forecast. There has been a fair
amount of cloud in the sky since this morning, but
somehow it has also been mostly sunny (although as
I type that the sun has just gone in !). The
forecast does say that much of today will be
sunny, but with occasional dull periods. The
forecast also warns that a short, sharp shower
could happen at any time today. Tomorrow is
currently looking as if it will be a slightly
improved version of today - a little extra
sunshine, and maybe a degree warmer.....or it
might snow !
With the prospect of an extremely long
weekend about to start (today, tomorrow, the
actual weekend, and the bank holiday Monday), I
was in full on couldn't care less mood at work
yesterday. I have to confess I hardly did anything
all day. Such a relaxing day didn't stop the urge
to go home again, and the joy of doing so, any
less. It was just the opposite - which is probably
obvious. What is less obvious, at least it was to
me, was that I seemed to have a little extra
energy.
Soon after I got home I went out again. I
went to Aldi to buy some more salads, and a few
other odds and ends. It was typical of Karma
(probably) that Aldi had £44 microwave ovens
available just when I had ordered one from Amazon
to be delivered today. Mind you, the ones that
Aldi were selling were not as good as the one I am
waiting for. The Aldi ovens were "digital" ovens,
and that means they are stupidly complex to use -
or can be. The one I ordered from Amazon just has
two dials - power level, and a simple mechanical
timer - just like the oven that blew up on me.
I have to confess that I ate terribly last
night. The sandwiches should have been a meal in
themselves, and I should not have eaten any more
after eating them. The salad I had afterwards
would have been OK if I had not added such a large
chunk of Danish Blue cheese. That cheese was nice,
but I think a plainer cheese, and less of it,
would have been better. I'm not even sure how to
account for the grilled fishcakes I also ended up
eating !
I went to bed at about 8.30pm (I think)
feeling fairly full. At first that made me feel a
little uncomfortable, but before I had considered
all the implications of it I was fast asleep. It
was another night where it seemed like I slept
well, but woke up far too early. It seems stupid
that on a day when I have a day off work (the
first of two), and no need to get up until 8am
(about the earliest a parcel delivery might arrive
if your feeling insanely optimistic), that I
actually woke up at 4.30am, and although I did it
in slow stages, I got up soon after.
16:51 BST
This is a bit unusual...It's now very late
afternoon. My writing was interrupted earlier on
by an incoming message from my dear friend
Patricia. These days it only happens a few times a
year (sometimes not even that), but I had an
opportunity to meet up with her, and I have just
spent the afternoon in the local Wetherspoons pub
with her. I only drank 3 pints of beer, but after
that ridiculous early start in the morning I feel
like a lie down for a while. I think I had better
tell the rest of the story of today, tomorrow !
Wednesday
25th May 2016
07:46
BST
If only yesterday had been a bit warmer it
could have gone on record as a lovely day. It
seemed that the sky was clear blue for most of the
day, and the sun was shining, but the temperature
stayed below 20° C all day, and may not have even
exceeded 17° C. It was all very strange - as I
walked home I could easily feel the hot sun on my
face, and yet my hands felt almost cold. Oh well,
at least it was far, far better than today is
forecast to be. All today is missing to be a
complete disaster is rain. It seems unlikely that
it won't rain. It's all best described by this
screenshot.
There are only a few good things about this
forecast. Sunrise at 04:55 was good, and sunset at
21:00 is rather good even if I doubt I'll make use
of it tonight. Of course the other good thing is
19° C with sunshine tomorrow, and 20° C with even
more sunshine on Friday - both days I've booked as
holiday from work. It's a shame the weekend is not
looking good - and it is a long bank holiday
weekend !
It almost felt strange not to be in any
particular discomfort at work yesterday. Of course
it wasn't all peaches and cream - the day seemed
to drag, and there were a few particularly boring
times when I felt my eyes closing and only
intensive yawning kept me awake. It was definitely
a relief to get out into the fresh air and
sunshine to go home again. It's just a shame that
it almost felt chilly when I stepped out of the
building despite the sunshine.
On my way home I went into Tesco where I
found lots of reduced price sandwiches, but no
microwave ovens. The lack of microwave ovens was
both annoying and a relief. Had I found one I
would have had to abandon my basket of stuff
because there would be no way that I would want to
try and carry both home. It would be a struggle
just to carry the microwave oven home. It was also
sort of annoying that I couldn't find any herb
flavoured goats cheese to go with the salad I
bought. It is seeming like the Turkish supermarket
is the only place that seems to stock it at the
moment, and it carries a very premium price !
The evening before yesterday evening I ate
more than I would have preferred, but it evidently
was still an amount that allowed my blood glucose
level to be almost perfect when I got home last
night. I might even have lost a few milligrams too
! I doubt that was the case last night. The plain
goats cheese salad would have been fine if I had
not been unable a strong urge to but something I
haven't had for ages - salad cream ! I have no
idea what is in that gloop, and I probably don't
want to know, but as nice as it is, it is probably
loaded with sugar, salt, and hyper unsaturated
saturated fats - basically everything that is bad
for you.
If that wasn't bad enough, I also ate a
couple of packets of half price sandwiches with
added chilli sauce (known to have added sugar in
it). Just to top that lot off I tried a little tub
of "Asian salad". That was basically shredded
cabbage, some of it red cabbage, plus other bits
of sliced vegetable marinated in a sweet and sour
pickling liquor. The "food labelling" suggested it
packed quite a lot of sugar, but as it was only a
small tub I may have got away with it. The tragic
thing is that it was not very nice after all that
!
One of the things I should have been doing
last night was reading a book. Having read a
comment that said a book, Career
Of Evil by Robert Galbraith ( a pseudonym of
J.K. Rowling) mentioned Catford, and even The
Catford Ram pub, I decided I ought to read it. I
ordered a copy from Amazon, and it was delivered
yesterday. I did have a quick flick through it and
found that one of the characters came from
Catford, but I didn't see any mention of Catford
itself. Sooner or later I'll read the whole thing,
and all will be revealed - I hope !
One thing I did do last night was to wash my
hair. I had been meaning to do it for a few days,
but the mornings have been a bit cool to go to
work with wet hair. It's done now, but it did
delay me getting to bed as early as I thought I
might. Than again, maybe I didn't need to get to
bed so early anyway. Even when I did get to bed I
found my mind was in a strange state that slowed
down getting to sleep.
There must be a word, probably based on
either Greek, or Latin that describes last night,
although on second thoughts it could be an
Austrian word invented by some Austrian accented
psychiatrist. It should describe a state of mind
where you cannot rest because of fear of the state
of your own existence. The most common type of
this feeling is not what bothered me last night,
but I expect everyone, at one time or another, has
laid in bed and realised they are breathing, and
become so obsessed with it that they seem to be
only able to breathe by consciously controlling
it. My case was different.
The idea that I feared anything happening
sounds a bit strong, but I guess that is what it
boiled down to. Rationally I knew I was in no
danger, but rational doesn't always work late at
night in bed, and even less when to take your mind
off it you consider the words you are going to
write about it, plus all the possible variations.
First there is the physical. The most comfortable
position I could find to lay in was also
uncomfortable in as much as it caused a mild pain
in my chest. I knew it was just my ongoing
costochondritus-like problem with one or more of
my ribs, but there is always the nagging doubt
that the pain is from the heart, and you don't
want to die until after you have had a nice sleep.
to do otherwise would be so unfair !
That got me thinking of other ways of dying
in my sleep. It is quite a popular way to die,
even my mum died in her sleep, but I don't know
how it happens. There are so many unanswered
questions like do you carry on dreaming while you
die, or do you wake up and think "oh bugger, I
seem to be dead" ? Having gone through the
possibilities of death during sleep, I moved on to
the existential - or something like that. There is
always the fear that you, and the world you have
invented, are just a figment of your own
imagination, and if you allow yourself to fall
asleep you will not only destroy the world, but
you'll be dead too. Life is terribly complicated,
but imagined life is incredibly more so !
It was probably while philosophising on the
meaning of life (and death) that I fell asleep. It
seems the world didn't end, or if I did I made a
lousy job of imagining a new one. This one seems
no better than the last. At least with this one I
seem to have woken up feeling mostly OK again. I
do seem to get an occasional ominous rumble from
my stomach, but it hasn't come to anything this
morning.
I had an idea for this morning, and then it
seems I did the complete opposite. The idea was to
check the weather forecast, and if the weather
didn't look like it would be all that good
tomorrow I would order a new microwave oven to
replace my current oven that has blown up. It
seems like the weather tomorrow could be fairly
good, and if I felt up to it I would have gone to
the seaside tomorrow, but now I will have to stay
in to accept delivery of my new microwave oven. It
is possible it could come quite early, and I could
still get out. Whatever the outcome is, it will
save me having to lug a new oven back from, at
best, a local shop, and at worse, a shop a bus
ride away. It is not essential to have a new
microwave oven, but it is damn handy !
Tuesday
24th May 2016
07:44
BST
Yesterday was fairly sunny, but a bit more
would have been nicer. Rain was forecast for early
evening, but I can't seem to remember if it did,
or if it didn't - I just wasn't paying any
attention to the big wide world once I got home
from work. In many respects, yesterday's weather
could be described as rather bland. It didn't
really do anything that was notable - it wasn't
hot, and it wasn't cold. It wasn't brilliantly
sunny, but it wasn't dull. I think the temperature
reached about 19 or 20° C. This morning the sky is
gin clear, and of course we lost a lot of warmth
last night. This morning it was a slightly chilly
9 or 10° C. The forecast says today will be very
sunny and dry, but paradoxically it will be a
cooler day than yesterday - just 17° C
apparently. Tomorrow is looking very grim. Thick
black clouds all day, and maybe no warmer than 13°
C. It would come as no surprise if it rained as
well, although I don't think rain was mentioned in
the forecast.
I felt fairly good yesterday...at least I
did most of the time. By the afternoon I was
starting to feel a bit tired, and I seemed to very
quickly run out of energy as I made my way home
from work. Even once I was home I still felt a bit
drained, and I made sure I had an early night.
Before that there was the topic of eating. I had a
very healthy sort of tuna salad. it was a
lettuce-less salad, and I substituted some pickled
eggs for the lettuce. Maybe "substituted" is a
slightly insane use of the word, but I did have a
couple of pickled eggs with the tuna, tomatoes,
peppers, sliced onion, and....actually, that was
about all the salad ingredients I had to hand.
In theory, if you ignore the mayonnaise, it
was a very healthy sort of meal. It's a shame I
ruined things a bit by eating some very unhealthy
snacks during the evening. I meant to check my
blood glucose level a couple of hours after
eating, but I felt too tired to wait up for that.
The good news is that before eating my blood
glucose level was a very satisfactory 5.8mmol/l.
4.0 would have been better, but 5.8 was good
enough.
Now was I tired because I was bored, or was
I bored because I was tired ? It doesn't really
matter because the solution to either was the same
- an early night. I think I deserved one last
night. It wasn't an exceptionally early night. It
was probably about 8.30pm when I went to bed, and
a just a few minutes later before I was fast
asleep. As far as I can tell, I slept rather well.
I recall a few strange dreams about needing spare
parts for a Transit van, and meeting some "very
dodgy geezers", but they were dreams without
beginnings or endings - just meaningless isolated
scenes.
It is an unusual, unfamiliar feeling, but I
think I woke up feeling almost refreshed this
morning - once I had got a few creases out. I
still have a few mild aches and pains here and
there, but to be without them would probably mean
I had died without realising it. If I ignore those
old friends then I do feel rather good this
morning. I seemed to find extra energy for an
unusually fast dash across the link from Waterloo
East station to Waterloo mainline station,
although by the time I sat down on the train in
platform 4 I did wonder if I should regret pushing
myself so far. Having said that, I do wonder if I
could just stop my chest muscles/ribs/ligaments
starting to ache when just breathing a bit heavy,
I could push myself even more up to the point when
I am gasping for air. Then again, I don't want to
end up like a typical broken down, crippled
athlete when I get old. No, wait a minute, I am
already old !
Sometimes I think in wonder that this old
body of mine can still achieve some of the feats
it seems to. In less rational moments I wonder if
it could still be working for it's centenary. In
one respect it would be a bit of fun to take the
piss out of all the people who didn't make it, but
in another respect it could be a very long boring
wait just for a few minutes of fun. Oh well, at
least the cardiac rehabilitation nurse said most
of her clients were back in hospital with more
trouble after 12 months. So there is hope that I
won't have to endure an almost 39 year wait to
have that pointless bit of fun...although when I
think about it. I am 18 months overdue for her
prediction of disaster. Maybe this is because I
didn't let her rehabilitate me !
Tonight is probably going to be another
boring and pointless evening, and if I did sleep
as well as I thought I did last night, I may not
have the solace of going to bed and sleeping early
again tonight. One small glimmer of hope is that
I'll have to endure 15 minutes less boredom this
evening because I'll be going home via Tesco. I
need more salad and stuff, plus I want to have
another check that I didn't miss their microwave
ovens while I searched in there on Sunday morning.
Assuming I don't find a microwave oven in
Tesco tonight, I have a cunning plan. I have
already booked this coming Thursday and Friday off
work, and so I could easily be available to
receive a delivery of a new microwave oven ordered
online (probably Amazon). It's looking as if
Thursday is not going to be a great day
weatherwise. So staying in would not be a great
hardship. Maybe if the oven were delivered in the
morning I could go out in the afternoon - possibly
to give the blood and urine sample that I am
supposed to be giving mid-May......
Monday
23rd May 2016
08:14
BST
After a dry, but slightly dull day, it
started to rain a little earlier than 7pm, the
forecast time, and while it was not particularly
heavy rain, it seemed quite persistent. There was
a good 2 or 3 hours of rain, and maybe more (but I
didn't pay much attention to the outside world
once the sun set). This morning the temperature
had fallen to about 11° C, and the clouds had gone
away to leave a rather nice bright sunny morning.
The weather forecast suggests there should be
sunny intervals right now, and the little
pictogram shows light cloud. The area of sky I can
see from my office window is not like that - it is
bright blue, and it looks as if we will have more
than just an "interval" of sunshine. The forecast
goes on to say that it will be overcast this
afternoon, and that it will rain from about 6pm
onwards. The top temperature will be 18° C - which
should be pleasant enough. Tomorrow is forecast to
start a degree or so cooler, and after a lot more
sunshine than today, it will still be a degree or
so cooler than today !
I found myself suffering from the Sunday
afternoon blues yesterday. I guess it was more
boredom than blues, but blues sounds more
dramatic...maybe even musical ! I poured several
cans of high strength (wife beater/tramp juice)
lager down my throat, and that was a nice, but all
too brief diversion, and it wasn't long before
reality intruded again. I felt trapped in the
transition between leisure time and getting back
into the rhythm for work this morning. Doing
something physical would probably have been a good
distraction, but my laundry was up to date, and I
am not one to do what was once called P.E. in
school - they call it working out now (sounds like
wanking). On top of everything else, it was
raining, and that meant I couldn't hang any
washing out on the line, or go for a walk, or even
walk to the pub.
What I did do was to look at the problem
sideways - at least I think I did something like
that. I knew I was going through what has been
called "the long dark teatime of the soul", and
someone, namely Douglas Adams, he of The Hitch
Hikers Guide To The Galaxy fame, decided to write
a book about it. The BBC, in their wisdom, decided
to make a radio play of it, and I, using methods
that may not be generally approved of, downloaded
it, and listened to it last night. It certainly
helped to bring more life into a book that I found
a little hard going when I first read it, and most
of all it kept me amused for that terrible time -
Sunday afternoon going into Sunday evening !
By pure coincidence the end of the recording
happened at about the right time for me to brush
my teeth, and get into bed at 9pm. I was already
feeling quite sleepy, and I expected to fall
asleep very quickly. That didn't happen at all ! I
can't recall any prior warning like odd pains or
gurgles, but I started farting - and I farted a
lot - and the stench was terrible. Where was it
all coming from ???? After a while I got up and
went to the toilet. After a considerable wait I
did a little, but still I carried on farting at 5
minute intervals.
By 10pm it seemed I was almost deflated, and
by 11pm I managed to get to sleep. I woke several
times in the night, and each period of being awake
was accompanied by several explosive retorts !
When I finally got up at 5am this morning I was
still going, and it seems going to the toilet,
practically normally, made very little difference.
I was still farting as I walked to the station !
Fortunately for everyone one on the train, I
seemed to stop by the time I arrived at the
station. The strange thing is that I feel fairly
good this morning. All the usual aches and pains
seem very mild, or even not there this morning.
Even my guts don't feel that bad considering the
abuse they have had, being hyper-inflated for the
last 10 hours or so.
It was a shame that I was prevented sleeping
when I seemed to need it last night. I don't think
I am going to be very busy at work today, and that
could make the day really drag. I'll probably
spend more of it yawning, and trying to keep my
eyes open rather than working - but I could be
wrong. It is entirely possible that this evening
could be terribly boring. I can't think of
anything I am likely to do beyond preparing
dinner. That is likely to be some sort of salad -
fish and "crudities" seems a good possibility.
Sunday
22nd May 2016
14:58
BST
Contrary to what the forecast predicted, it
was actually dry last night. The rain in the
middle of the afternoon was a minor inconvenience
to what was otherwise a reasonably pleasant day.
It was certainly dry and warm enough to go out
without a coat in the evening. There have been a
few sunny spells today, but it has been mostly
overcast. Despite that it has still be very mild,
although maybe not what you would call warm, and
it has been dry. In fact it has been very dry. To
my surprise I see my thermometer says it is 24° C
right now. It doesn't feel that warm though -
perhaps I've been too sedentary for the last few
hours. Some rain is expected from about 7pm, but
the early hours of tomorrow are supposed to be
dry. Tomorrow may start rather cool, just 11° C,
and at it's warmest it may only be no more than 15
- 16° C. The rest of the forecast for tomorrow is
one of those weird ones - it will be mostly grey,
but there will be a few sunny intervals - but only
when it's raining (what does that mean ?).
Nothing much happened after I wrote
yesterday until it was time to go out and see The
Carlottas playing in The Black Cat Pub. They were
a bit of an unknown quantity, although I was
familiar with their lead singer, Andy Rogers, but
I was feeling quite good, and looking forward to
it. It was not a particularly well attended gig,
but there were more than I expected. The Carlottas
themselves were similar to quite a few, if not
most groups I see - a bunch of middle age men
reliving their glory days - probably using
equipment they could barely afford in their
younger days. After all these years they were well
practiced, and while it would be easy to pick out
the occasional fault, they sounded pretty good in
all departments except vocals. Some of the problem
was poor mic use, and some was just the result of
trying to tackle songs that were out of their
range or competency. It is a common problem
that comes from the "I love this song so much we
just have to do it" school of thought. It's mostly
forgiveable if not taken to excess.
It seems this was the best picture I took
that featured all members of the band. There is an
album of most of the best pictures, in high
resolution, here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157668368205872
I made a new discovery last night - or at least I
found a new photographic technique. They have some
nice bright lights in The Black Cat, but they are
not usually used that well. They tend to be very
strobey (if such a word exists), and that can make
photography difficult (although it can look quite
colourful to the human eye).
I realised that if I set my camera to
continuous shooting mode I could rattle off half a
dozen shots in quick succession, and there was a
good chance that one of the shots would coincide
with one of the periods when the lights provided
good illumination. This method obviously eats
space on my memory card with wasted shots, but
it's far better than trying to anticipate or
compensate for the changing light. It is probably
something like 1 in 6, or maybe even 1 in 10 shots
that come out OK, but when I came to edit them
this morning I found the best needed so little
work to be presentable, usually just a bit of
cropping, that I think it is going to be my
standard way of working from now on. Luckily, 32GB
memory cards are fairly cheap-ish at the
moment !
I didn't stay to the end of the gig last
night, but I did stay long enough for 3, or maybe
even 4 pints of Guinness. I felt like some dinner
after I left the pub, and if I had any form of
patience for hanging around in kebab shops I would
have had a large chicken shish kebab with salad
(and chilli sauce !). That is what I really
wanted, but I opted for speed and went for a small
portion of chips with a battered sausage, and a
saveloy.
After getting home, and eating dinner, I
checked my photos, and was quite pleased at how
some had come out (and appalled at how others had
come out !). I didn't fancy staying up to start
editing them, and went to bed - and I think I was
in bed by 11pm. I was asleep soon afterwards. I
don't think I can call it plan, but my wish was
that I would sleep in late this morning. After
all, it was a Sunday, and no one gets up early on
a Sunday - except me it seems.
I was quite busy this morning. I did yet
more laundry I washed the duvet cover that was
part of the set of bed linen that I washed
yesterday. It may not have been all that bight
this morning, but the (almost) warm breeze was
excellent for drying. I hung that duvet cover on
the line dripping wet, and it was bone dry when I
brought it in a little earlier this afternoon.
I also went out on a mad dash around Catford
this morning. I had a little catastrophe yesterday
- my microwave oven blew up ! It's a little sad
because the electronics still work perfectly, but
I managed to let the cover of the waveguide, the
aperture that guides the microwaves into the
cooking cavity, get contaminated with a few
splashes of food/oil/gravy/whatever. That finally
cause a tiny little arc that grew into a major
flashover that has eaten a chunk out of the metal
cavity. It has effectively brought my microwave
ovens life to an end.
That oven, a Tesco "Value" oven cost, if I
recall correctly, about £39, and it has lasted
about 5 years. That's probably not bad. Now I need
a replacement. So I dashed out to Tesco to buy
another. Unfortunately it seems that microwave
ovens are a seasonal thing, and they have been
replaced on the shelves by barbecue type stuff.
Maybe I will have to wait until autumn to get a
replacement. While I was out I checked Iceland -
they used to sell microwave ovens, but not now it
seems. I did the complete circular tour, and was
going to check Aldi, but they don't open until
11am on a Sunday. They did have some microwave
ovens not so long ago, but that doesn't mean that
still have any left. The same is true of Lidl, but
I didn't check there because it would be hard work
carrying a microwave home from that far away.
I have booked next Thursday and Friday off
work, and if the weather looks to be terrible, I
might order a new oven on line and get it
delivered straight to home - although I hope that
I might be able to finally go out, possibly to the
seaside, on those days. If the speed that I did my
circumnavigation of Catford this morning is
anything to go by, I have plenty of energy for a
good walk if only I can get myself in the right
frame of mind. All I need is a stable stomach and
blazing hot weather !
The rest of today can be accounted by photo
editing, being lazy, drinking high strength lager,
and writing this. The rest of today will probably
be accounted for by drinking more high strength
lager (although probably only one more can) and
some intensive, Olympic level, laziness. I'm back
at work again tomorrow, and I probably ought to
try and get in the right frame of mind for it.
Saturday
21st May 2016
16:47
BST
It just started raining about half an hour
ago, but that was the first day time rain we've
had for some time now. Yesterday was dry,
sometimes sunny, but more frequently just bright,
and comfortably warm until after dark. As the
forecast predicted, there were a few showers
around 10pm (although the exact times weren't
exactly correct). Today started off overcast, but
still fairly bright, and it wasn't all that cold -
maybe 14° C. A few sunny intervals helped push
today's temperature up to 23 - 24° C, but now it's
raining it is starting to cool off. The forecast
says it should be just 15° C right now, but my
thermometer is still saying 22° C ! Assuming the
forecasters got the rainfall correct, we can
expect occasional showers all evening, but the
last of them should end at around daybreak
tomorrow. The rest of tomorrow is forecast to be
dry, but it will be dull and overcast,
occasionally heavily, and rather cool - just 17° C
at best.
I had vague ideas that I wanted to try and
go out and get some exercise/do some photography
yesterday, but once again I ended up mostly
staying in. There were two notable times when I
did go out though, and the first time was to Cash
Generators, a shop like Cash Converters, but
somehow less "pikey" feeling. It was on Thursday
that I noticed they had a rather nice looking lens
in te window, and yesterday I went there to
investigate further.
The lens was a Sigma lens, and while I have
no great knowledge as to how the world views their
products, I know a couple of pro photographers who
rate them highly. This particular lens was just
the sort of thing I was looking for. For a start
it turned out to be for a Nikon camera. Secondly
it was a zoom lens with a large aperture. It's was
a 24 - 70mm zoom lens with a constant aperture of
f2.8. In simple terms that is not a great zoom
range, but just the sort of thing for snapping
bands on stage, and the f2.8 rating means it can
cope with fairly low light. Both these things are
exactly what I wanted for my Nikon D3200 camera.
The lens was fairly expensive, but almost
half the price of a brand new one. So I bought it.
Unfortunately it turned out that it had a fault -
I discovered the auto-focus didn't work. For
taking fairly static images that doesn't matter
too much, but it makes taking sharp pictures of
moving stuff, like musicians on stage, rather
tricky - doubly so when the light is poor ! There
is the potential for a happy ending to this story.
I passed some of the time yesterday by doing
some laundry. It was great drying weather, and I
started with a few shirts, and they dried really
quickly. With plenty of daytime drying time left I
tackled a medium sized bath towel next. They can
be a real bugger to manhandle when dripping wet,
and they seem to have a special property of never
being able to be rinsed out ! After leaving the
towel soaking in bio detergent for half a day I
started to rinse it out. After 6 changes of water
I took a rest for half an hour or so before
starting again. After another 6 changes of water
it still seemed soapy, but I gave up at that
point, and hung it on the line. I brought it in
smelling nice and fresh, and nearly dry at about
6pm last night.
A couple of hours later I was on my way to
Beckenham to see Chain's gig at The Coach And
Horses. It was a daring move, but I only took one
camera. What made it daring was that it was the
Nikon camera with the new lens. It is a very
tricky venue to take photographs because the band
play in a small pert enclosed area, and the
lighting is generally very poor. It is a very good
test of any camera and/or photographer.
My photographs were both good and terrible !
I've seen photos taken there with things like
iPhones, and they do have pretty good cameras in
them these days, but they are still a bit dull and
smeary. My photos turned out, with some post
processing, to be quite bright for such a dull
cubby hole, and my manual focusing wasn't always that
bad ! Technically they are all terrible, but I
delude myself that I have somehow managed to pull
out the best possible pictures in the
circumstances (although my Canon camera with the
f1.4 lens may have been a little less grainy, but
I would have only taken very narrow field views).
Chris and Jo in slightly soft focus, and a
little grainy, but looking bright in the gloom.
I only stayed for the
first set of Chain's gig. This was for two
reasons. One reason was that I was generally
unhappy with conditions for photography. It
feels a little weird to confess that I seem to
go to gigs for the photography and not the
music these days, but somehow that seems to be
the case. That is a bit weird considering I
started following Chain because of the music,
but I seem to have this compulsion to take the
perfect photo now. I guess it is a bug that
gets to all "togs" as they (we ?) are
sometimes known. It does get to us, and we end
up spending more and more on our equipment -
and while there might be the occasional dream
of selling a picture for mega pounds, it is
really just an obsession.
I'll expand the second reason for going
early to two reasons. The first of these was
that it was really packed in the pub, and
getting close enough to see the band was a
struggle. In those conditions it was also
rather hot and sweaty in the pub. The final
reason for leaving when I did was that I was
mindful that rain was forecast, and I had gone
out without a coat. For one the forecast was
correct, and I got very lightly rained on as I
walked to the bus stop to go home.
Back in Catford the rain was still very
light, and so with am air of "I don't care" I
took the long way home via the fried chicken
shop. I hadn't eaten a proper meal all day,
but I had eaten all sorts of assorted crap. I
am not sure if fried chicken, and a rather
large "small portion of fries" can be counted
as a proper meal. but I very much enjoyed it
after getting home. I felt so good after it
that I stayed up and took my first look at the
photos I had taken, and even edited a couple
to see just how bad they were.
At 1am I finally went to bed, and before
I could finish wondering if I would ever get
to sleep I was fast asleep ! My sleep didn't
last long enough, but did incorporate a
seemingly lengthy dream about an auto-focus
element that looked like some sort of sci-fi
weapon ! The core of it was some sort of
silvered block of glass inside a helix of
clear glass. It had a fault where it kept
getting jammed.
One of the first things I did after
getting less sleep than I thought I deserved
was to investigate getting Sigma lenses
repaired. If I am very lucky it may be cheaper
than I imagined. I didn't check the fine
print, but Sigma seems to offer a
repair/service for my lens for just £96. Armed
with that information, plus a few other
snippets of information, I stormed off to Cash
Generators, where I had bought the Sigma lens,
to see what their customer service was like.
They offer a 6 month guarantee , and claim it
is fairly no quibble.
I told the lady in there a fairly
straight description of the problem, and
explained that while it was usable for fairly
static shots using manual focus, it was
useless for the sorts of uses I wanted it for.
I said I wanted to return it, and get my money
back, but I would also be happy if I was given
a 50% discount for faulty goods. We settled on
the latter. So for £150 I have a usable rather
good lens, and it seems likely that I could
possibly end up with a perfect lens for
another £96. The general secondhand price on
Amazon for a used condition lens is around
£360, and the new price ranges from £500 to
£600. I might have ended up with a bargain,
and it is possible that one of my photographer
friends might know a cheaper route to a repair
!
The other thing going on here today was
Mark finishing the painting on the front of my
house. It is looking really good, and my house
no longer stands out from the others nearby.
If I didn't mention it yesterday, I had better
be careful about getting home from the pub
drunk - I have no way of recognising my own
house now !
The finishing touches.
Gleaming in the morning sunshine.
I think I have
only done one other thing of note (apart
from photo editing) today, and that is to
wash a sheet and two pillowcases. It
seemed like the sheet dried almost
instantly in the warm breeze today. Had
rain not been threatened, I might have
washed a duvet cover as well, but maybe
that will happen tomorrow. Tonight I will
be in The Black cat, probably with my
Canon camera (but I might take my Nikon as
well) to take some snaps of The Carlottas
playing there. The lead singer, Andy, owes
me a pint for the pictures I took of him
performing solo at Petts Wood earlier in
the spring. I must try and squeeze that
pint (or two ) out of him tonight !
Friday
20th May 2016
08:52
BST
Yesterday was one of those odd days where
it wasn't very sunny, although there was some
sunshine, but the sky seemed dazzlingly bright.
From late morning, and then probably to sunset,
the temperature was just on a transition point.
During some of the duller periods it didn't feel
warm enough to hang around without a coat, but
provided you were slightly active it felt
perfectly OK in just a short sleeved shirt. I'm
not sure if the temperature actually hit the
expected 19° C, but at best it may have come
close. It was certainly still 15° C at 9pm last
night. This morning is fairly dull, but there has
been at least one sunny period, and more are
expected through the morning, although it will
become duller again in the afternoon. The current
temperature is 17° C, and that seems to be three
degrees higher than the forecast predicts it will
be. The forecast also says the top temperature
will only be 18° C. It would be nice if it also
turns out to be three degrees higher than that.
Tomorrow is looking to be rather dull and rather
cool - just 16° C - and it will rain early in the
evening !
Yesterday was both good and bad. The main
reason that I booked yesterday and today off work
was to go out and do some photography (which is
the new hipster way of saying go for a walk). It
was on the assumption that it would be blazing
hot. Obviously it wasn't ! I still intended to go
for a bit of a walk, but I thought I would stay a
bit local. While Mark carried on painting I went
to the bus stop to catch a 54 bus to Blackheath.
From there I intended to walk across the heath,
and then down through Greenwich Park to get a bus,
or train, or Docklands Light Rail towards home
again.
Unfortunately it didn't quite work out like
that. The reason is that bus route 54 seems to run
on a different timescale to the rest of the
familiar universe. When I got to the bus stop the
countdown time said that the fourth bus would be a
54, and it would be there in 4 minutes. In the
next 4 minutes the first three buses arrived as
described, but the 54 still said it was 4 minutes
away. This was repeated several times, and after a
wait of maybe 15 minutes the 54 was shown as being
3 minutes away. Another 15 passed and it was shown
as being 2 minutes away. By then my back was
starting to ache, and my stomach seemed to be
"fizzing". I was reasonably sure that the latter
was just hunger, but it felt worryingly close to
an early warning that I might need the toilet
soon.
I decided that I wasn't going to go to
Blackheath that day, and decided to just wander
around Catford for a bit. As so often happens I
ended up in Poundland, and bought a bag full of
stuff that will all get used eventually, but
wasn't really needed at the time - although I did
use two of the new coathangers this morning !
After that I went home and surprised Mark because
I told him I would see him in an hour or two
instead of just 45 minutes. One of the success
yesterday was that he made some good progress.
In this picture he has already scraped most
of the loose and flaking paint off, and that by
itself makes everything look better. One decision
that had to be made was about the hardwood
surrounds of the double glazed windows. In theory
they should have been painted with teak paint, but
because they weren't real hardwood, just stained
wood of unknown origin, they had cracks and needed
filling. It was easier to fill them and paint over
them with the same white paint used on the
masonry. This also has the advantage in that it
matches the scheme of the neighbours houses.
Last night's drink was also a success in as
much as I had a few pleasant pints of beer, and
joined in some pleasant banter. It was afterwards
that was rather a failure. There was the initial
problem that the shoes I was wearing seemed to
quite uncomfortable for some reason, and it is
almost a mile walk back from the pub. Once I got
home I had some pre-cooked gammon shanks that just
needed heating up, and I had them with a bowl of
ready mixed steamed green vegetables.
Those gammon shanks seemed like they would
be wonderful in some way, but in fact they were a
disappointment. I don't know it that triggered the
hunger frenzy I developed, or not, but it seemed
worse than could just be accounted for by the
beer. It was very hard not to get carried away
eating all sorts of old crap - some of which was
stuff that I should never had bought from
Poundland in the first place !
One very positive thing may have come out of
eating too much on top of 4 (I think) pints of
beer - I seemed to sleep exceptionally well last
night. I think I might have woken up once or
twice, but only very briefly, and it almost felt
like I had slept solidly from about 9pm to 5.30am
this morning. Even more amazing is that I woke up
feeling unusually good. Most of my usual aches and
pains were very weak, or even not there. Some,
like my recent problem with back pain, were still
waiting in the wings, as I found out a little
later, but it must have been one of my most pain
free mornings for ages.
One of the things that has been bothering me
is that while it was useful taking yesterday off
work, there was a nagging feeling that I wasted a
day off because I didn't go to the seaside, or for
a ramble in the country. On the other hand I guess
I don't have to do these things for a day off to
be beneficial. I am not sure how a day off work
made me sleep better, or to wake up almost free of
pain, but it can't be coincidence...or can it ?
Apart from the tedium of being there, my job is
not stressful on my mind or body, and while it is
a bore, my commuting is not really taxing. I rush
a bit while commuting, but it is only a game that
I like. I have plenty of time to stop and take
photos if I want to, and if I don't I make a point
of walking at least as fast as the other commuters
(or even race them !).
I have undone some of that lack of pain by
doing some laundry this morning. It doesn't seem
to have any particular legacy, but my back was
definitely starting to complain as I bent over the
bath sloshing shirts around in buckets of hot
soapy water etc. I've also done one other unwise
thing this morning, and maybe this was definitely
unwise rather than just taking a chance - I've had
some breakfast, but not just any old breakfast.
I've had a little tub of lentil salad, and lentils
are very high in fibre. I reckon I'll be hearing
from them again tomorrow morning - possibly
violently ! It could make doing something useful,
like going out, tricky !
I think I want to have a another go at going
out this morning, and yet with the sun not shining
yet, I am having difficulty raising the enthusiasm
to do it. Plus I do feel a little bloated after
last nights feasting. That is not a good feeling
if I am going into the middle of nowhere. Oh well,
I'll just have to see how it goes. One thing I do
expect to do today, which I probably would not
feel like doing if I had been at work today, is to
go to a Chain gig in Beckenham this evening. I'm
rather looking forward to it. Maybe I ought to do
some intensive resting beforehand !
Thursday
19th May 2016
09:20
BST
Yesterday was wet, very wet ! Somehow the
rain didn't effect me directly, but there was a
lot of it when I was safely indoors. The only good
thing was that it was not cold. I think the
temperature was at least 15° C, which was a degree
more than forecast. I guess I was lucky that it
wasn't raining when I came home from work because
later in the evening it poured again ! This
morning started dull, but at least it was 12° C.
The forecast for today says it should stay dry,
but it is going to be mostly dull. There could be
a ray or two of sunshine at midday, and the
temperature could peak at 19° C, but it doesn't
seem like it will be a very nice day.
Tomorrow could be very similar, although if we are
lucky there may be a few more short lived sunny
spells.
Sometimes it seems I will never feel
wonderful again, but yesterday was one of the days
when I mostly didn't feel too bad. Maybe I
can thank a couple of paracetamol for that. It was
sort of surprising that the damp weather didn't
make me feel really rough, but I don't think it
had any effect on me at all. There was one period
when I wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep,
but I can probably blame that on boredom.
One person who didn't get on well with the
weather was my friend Mark. He was supposed to
start painting the front of my house yesterday,
but it was just too wet for that, although I
thought that there were some dry periods he could
have made use of. I expect it was wetter in
Catford than it was in Earlsfield.
It was nice to get home from work yesterday,
and I was looking forward to a rather nice dinner,
but before that I checked my blood glucose level.
I don't know why it should come as a surprise to
find it rather excellently almost in the middle of
the "normal" range. I didn't dare check it later
because I ended up eating a few things that I knew
would send it soaring. Part 1 of my dinner was a
simple, undressed salad with some herb flavoured
goats cheese.
I didn't think I liked goats cheese that
much. I only thought I liked it's tart taste in
very small occasional quantities, but the stuff I
bought from the Turkish supermarket seemed very
nice. It still had that slightly tart taste, but
was creamy, and the herbs gave it an extra
something. It went well with salad. Part 2 of my
dinner was rather less healthy. It was a whole
heap of roast vegetables, including the fennel
that I mentioned yesterday. By itself it would
have (probably) been OK, but I added a big chunk
of smoked/baked Polish bacon or ham, or pork
breast, or pork belly (the label was a little
vague !). I ended up eating rather a lot of meat,
and leaving a lot of the vegetables.
Last night was one of those nights where I
felt like eating a lot. I think it was more
boredom than hunger. If I had a tub of ice cream I
probably would not have been able to resist eating
the whole tub. What I did eat might have been
almost as bad. I ate three small "vending machine
size" packets of biscuits. I guess that would be
the equivalent of a third of a packet of full
sized custard creams (and maybe that is a little
optimistic !). That's why I didn't dare check my
blood glucose level again last night !
If my blood glucose level was very high, it
didn't seem to affect my sleep. At least I didn't
wake up in a pool of sweat like I did the night
before. In some respects I slept quite well last
night, although the last few hours were rather
lumpy. By 4am bit of me, mostly my chest and my
back were complaining a lot. I finally gave up
trying to sleep at 6am because I could feel the
first twinges of cramp starting in my right leg.
The first thing I did when I got up was to
weigh myself. It seemed I had put on 20kg...no it
was only 10kg....wait a minute, now I've lost a
few kg....and whoops, it's gone up again. It
didn't seem to feel like it, but my calf muscle,
the one that was just about to go into cramp, must
have been quivering so much that it totally messed
up my scales. After going to the toilet, which is
always a good idea before weighing yourself
anyway, my calf muscle must have calmed down
because the scales settle down really quickly to a
satisfyingly low reading. It wasn't quite as low
as it was on Monday after I had spent most of the
previous two days on the toilet, but it was
acceptable.
Today is the first of two days I've booked
off work. Last week, when I booked the time off, I
had stupidly optimistic ideas that it would be hot
and sunny, and that I would end up at the coast or
somewhere. Unfortunately it doesn't feel good
enough for that, but it is dry and bright enough
for Mark to start painting the front of my house.
It was also good enough for me to go to Aldi
in just shirtsleeves to get in a bit of shopping.
I bought more salad, and more goats cheese.
Unfortunately they didn't have any herb flavoured
goats cheese, but at least it was about half the
price of the stuff I bought in the Turkish
supermarket. I also bought some completely
inappropriate stuff like glazed gammon shanks (at
least I think that's what they were - I was just a
sucker for a delicious looking packet illustration
!).
I don't feel all that keen to do it, but I
feel I ought to try and get out and do something
today. I am thinking of going to Greenwich Park,
and taking some pictures there. It's not far to
go, and there are some good views - particularly
if I take my big zoom lens. Later on there is
drinking to be had in The Fox And Firkin pub in
Ladywell/Lewisham, and because I don't have to get
up in the morning I could throw caution to
the wind and get drunk tonight !
Wednesday
18th May 2016
07:33
BST
I don't recall yesterday morning being
particularly sunny, but there was some sunshine.
The afternoon was, as forecast, lightly overcast,
but it was still sort of bright, and with the
temperature at 18° C it felt perfectly
comfortable. During the night the clouds thickened
up, and the day started at about 12 - 13° C. As I
walked to the station the clouds did not cover
more than 99.52% of the sky, and for 1.8 Seconds I
could see the reflection of the sun in the top
windows of the new blocks of flats near the
station. While on the train between Vauxhall and
Clapham Junction we passed some very black looking
clouds, and the forecast says we shall be seeing
many more of them this morning. It's just very
grey at the moment, but in a couple of hours time
the forecast predicts 4 or so hours of medium to
heavy showers. Later this afternoon, perhaps from
2pm, the clouds will thin out again to just give a
light grey covering, and at 5pm it is possible
that we might catch a glimpse of sunshine.
Unfortunately it is liable to stay rather cool
today - just 14° C ! Tomorrow will be warmer,
perhaps 19° C, and it is forecast to stay dry, but
there will be no sunshine, just shades of grey.
I think I felt fairly rotten yesterday
morning, but at some time in the morning most of
my aches and pains just sort of evaporated. They
did it in such a subtle way that I didn't really
notice it happen. I felt almost OK during the
afternoon, and it wasn't until I was on my way
home, carrying a couple of carrier bags, that I
began to feel rather uncomfortable with mid to
upper back pain. Maybe that pain distracted me
from any others I might have.
I can't quite remember when the idea took
seed in my brain, but by the time I arrived back
in Catford I had this urge to buy something
exciting to eat. I didn't have any carrier bags
with me so I had to choose somewhere that still
gives carrier bags away for free, and that
essentially meant the Turkish Supermarket. It was
also a good place to buy something extra tasty -
in fact, several extra tasty things ! The major
taste addition to last night's dinner was some
smoked Polish sausage. I had that with a heap of
grilled vegetables I had prepared, and part cooked
the night before. It turned out to be quite a
nice, and exotic dinner !
When I first got home I checked my blood
glucose level. I'm not sure why but I expected it
to be a lot higher than it was. It turned out to
be rather good - just 6.1 mmol/l. One less would
have been better still, but it was perfectly
acceptable as it was. It was a little under the
recommended 2 hours after eating that I checked it
again, and it was surprisingly high (8.8 if I
recall correctly). That was annoying, and I
wondered what it was in particular that I had
eaten to send it up so high.
I went to bed at that point even though I
didn't seem to be very sleepy. That wasn't all
that long after 8pm (I was bored !). I think I did
drop off to sleep, but 45 minutes later I woke up
again, and I thought that it might be interesting
to check my blood glucose level again at about the
usual time I do the second check. To my surprise
it had gone right down again to about 6.7 -
slightly higher than a perfect 5.5, but still
under the maximum ideal measurement of 7.0. I
could sleep easy after that. Of course I didn't
sleep easy. I had quite a rough sleep. I have no
idea why it should happen, particularly with my
blood glucose level being OK, but I woke up
sometime between 1 and 2am with my pillow and bits
of my bed soaked with sweat. Avoiding the damp
patches made sleeping a bit tricky after that.
This morning I feel mostly OK - but that
still leaves plenty of leeway to have a moan ! In
the early hours of the morning my chest was a bit
crunchy when I was laying in certain positions.
When I was lying on my left side I could feel all
the ribs, and other bits of infrastructure,
popping and clicking every time I breathed in or
out. It was very annoying at the time, but didn't
seem to leave any lasting legacy this morning.
What I do still have is some soreness from my
back. I've taken a couple of Ibuprofen tablets,
and they seems to have taken the edge of that
discomfort. The only other annoyance this morning
is that I, or specifically my legs, seemed to run
out of power as I walked from the station to work.
I guess I was a half to two thirds the way here
when it quickly seemed like hard work walking the
remaining distance. Another mystery ! I think I'll
blame it on the imminent rain !
Several things will be happening tonight.
The first should be to see if my friend Mark has
made any progress in painting the front of my
house. I suggested that tomorrow and Friday, when
I am off work, might be a good time, but he wanted
to start today, and today it is supposed to rain
for much of the morning - not a great idea when
you're working outside. The only other thing of
note about tonight is that I shall be trying
something new that I bought from the Turkish
supermarket yesterday - grilled fennel. At least I
think it is fennel ! I cut it into chunks and
grilled it along with some tomatoes, courgette and
baby aubergine plus a sprinkle of olive oil and
some herbs.
In theory these grilled vegetable meals I've
been making should be super healthy, but they
don't seem to be working out that well for me. I
could, and probably should blame it on other stuff
that I've been eating, but I don't seem to have
lost any significant weight for ages, and it is a
constant battle to try to control my blood glucose
level. The best weight loss I've had recently was
after my "as good as dysentery" stomach upset
recently. For 24 hours I was so empty that I was a
couple of kilograms lighter ! Oh well, maybe I'll
finally get around to doing some exercise...
In theory that exercise was supposed to
start tomorrow, and it was all based around the
crazy idea that it would be hot and sunny.
Unfortunately it will be neither, but at least it
will be dry and a bit warm. Maybe I might be able
to drag myself out for a walk somewhere, but I
can't imagine doing anything too grand. Ideally I
need baking in the hot sun to get all the creases
(and aches and pains) out before I tackle even a 4
mile walk. I can foresee my days of work tomorrow
and Friday being used more to do stuff late in the
evening rather than the intended doing stuff
during the day. Oh well, there's drinking to be
done on Thursday night, and a gig worth going to
on Friday night.
Tuesday
17th May 2016
07:56
BST
Once the morning chill was over yesterday
turned out quite well. A bit more sunshine would
have improved things, but there were some nice
sunny spells, and it felt quite comfortable
without it being hot. There was often a nice
breeze too, and that was very good for drying
stuff on the line. I'm unsure of the highest
temperature, but I am guessing it was somewhere in
the region of 21 - 22° C. That was a little more
than expected. This morning started off bright and
clear, but the temperature did not fall as low as
it might have. My upstairs thermometer said 9° C,
and the downstairs thermometer said 11° C.
It is starting to get a little cloudy now, but it
is supposed to clear again soon, and this morning
is forecast to be very sunny. Later on in the day
it will be lightly overcast, and perhaps that will
hold the top temperature down to 18° C - pleasant,
but it could be a lot better. Rain is expected
tomorrow, and that is most unfortunate because a
friend is due to start painting the front of my
house tomorrow !
Although I got up a few times yesterday
morning, I essentially stayed in bed until 11am
yesterday morning. By then, apart from a stiff
neck and a stiff back, I was feeling reasonably
OK. Most importantly I hadn't needed to rush to
the toilet for three or so hours. So it was time
to do something. With hindsight it seems that
doing "gardening" when feeling quite rough was not
a rational choice - and yet it probably was. At
least it didn't seem to do any harm to cut down
the dead remnants of a buddleia bush that was more
tree like. In fact it felt good to be out in the
fresh air in just shorts and cutting implements
(and shoes of course), and it felt good to finally
chop that thing down.
Of course I am now left with a pile of
debris, twigs, branches, and stuff cluttering up
the garden, and I have no idea what I am going to
do with it all. Plus there is still a quite thick
4ft high stump left that is going to be a problem
as well. I can possibly feel a spot of pyromania
coming on.... There is other detritus in my back
garden that would help feed a huge out of control
bonfire should I be so bold...
One of the other useful things I did
yesterday was a little bit of laundry, and this
time it was a little bit. It was two tea towels
and one small hand towel. The great thing is that
they were 99.5% dry a few hours after hanging them
on the washing line. Incidently, one of the
advantages of cutting down that tree like bush is
that the washing line is less over hung by trees
and bush. I hope that there will be less spider
webs on it as a result, and there is less chance
that some bird will drop "a little present" on any
washing from above (although this has never
happened before).
My last triumph of the day (triumph ???) was
to upload the pictures I took of Redriffe's gig in
The Black Cat on saturday night to Flickr. I am
not particularly proud of these photos, but you
can find them here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157668472776605
I did my best not to eat yesterday, but my
resolve failed a few times in the afternoon, and
then at my usual dinner time I decided to have a
salad with some salmon. That was far healthier
than the couple of small packets of Hula Hoops,
and the packet of crisps I had eaten earlier, but
it didn't really satisfy. I thought that a can of
soup might be a fairly safe bet, and had it been a
fairly plain, and maybe light soup, it would have
been, but for some reason I decided on something a
bit different. For at least 6 months, and maybe
more, I have had a can of Sauerkraut stew sitting
in the kitchen daring me to try it. I bought it on
impulse from Aldi, probably last October, when
their theme for the week was German Oktoberfest. I
wasn't sure if I would like it, and it turned out
that I slightly didn't. It wasn't unpleasant, but
it wasn't nice. The good thing is that it hasn't
had any bad effects - yet !
I went from feeling OK to feeling very tired
quite fast last night, and I went to bed
around what is my usual time of 9pm. It wasn't
long before I was fast asleep. My next
recollection was waking up from a dream at around
1am, and thinking I must remember that dream
because it was so good - at least I think it was.
I can't remember anything about it now ! I woke up
a few more times in the night, but it seemed like
I slept well on the whole. The fact that I can't
stop yawning as I think about it is meaningless -
or should be.
This morning my guts are back to normal
functioning, although my belly felt a little
tender at first - a sort of mildly bloated
feeling. If my chest didn't have at least one sort
of ache in it I would suspect I was dead, but I
have no suspicion of that right now. I also seem
to have some back ache - both upper and lower back
ache. It's mild enough not to interfere with
anything I want to do, but still annoying. Then
there is my neck ache. I can't really pinpoint
where the ache is apart from it is vaguely on the
right side of my neck, and while it feels like a
pulled muscle, I have dark ideas that it is the
result of some sort of dental infection. On the
whole I feel like I would be far more comfortable
floating in a strong saline solution at blood
temperature with copious quantities of booze and
wonderful food on tap, but the reality is that I
am at work, and I'll have to suffer here until I
go home to suffer there. I think I will be bored
and lazy tonight - not because I particularly want
to be, but because I can't think of anything
better to do.
Monday
16th May 2016
07:41
BST
Yesterday's weather could be described as
sort of bland. It wasn't hot and it wasn't cold.
There was some sunshine, and there were overcast
periods. However it did stay dry, and while it
wasn't hot it was at least on the slightly warm
side of tepid. The breeze took the edge off it,
but the mercury did climb to about 16° C.
The forecast for today has changed slightly since
yesterday. There are now going to be sunny
intervals this morning, and later this afternoon,
but the middle of the day is expected to be
overcast. It should stay dry, and the temperature
should peak at around 17° C. Tomorrow is expected
to be a bit more sunny, and a little warmer. It's
best not to think about Wednesday !
I managed the important bit of yesterday -
going out to get bits to fix my split shower hose.
I didn't feel all that good when I first went out,
but a few minutes walking in the fresh air made me
feel better. Unfortunately it didn't last. As I
came back from the shops I noticed a pain in my
belly. It didn't feel like a stomach upset, but
some sort of organ failure, or something equally
dramatic - appendicitis maybe, but of course it
was no more than a common or garden stomach upset
that needed quite a few explosive, and incredibly
stinky (right off the scale !!!) visits to the
toilet to fix.
In between visits to the toilet I fixed my
shower hose. I can't remember if it was in the 99p
shop, or Poundstrecher that I found a garden hose
adapter that I managed to slightly modify for the
smaller diameter of the the shower head hose. It
is all held together with clear silicone sealant,
and although that stuff can be quite strong when
used in the right way, I am not sure how long my
bodge will work. It may not be long, and that
would be a shame because it looks slightly elegant
(although it does leak a bit). When it fails I can
fall back on one of the rubber cup type adapters
that I had been using for years and years before
it broke. I almost missed it, but notice a dusty
old packet in the corner of Poundstretcher.
On the whole I didn't feel too good
yesterday. It was a continuation of whatever it
was that ailed me on Saturday, and maybe the bouts
of "a good approximation to dysentery", as I have
just informed work this morning, are the root
cause of it. I probably ought to look up gastric
'flu and see if that provides a nice compact
explanation for what I am suffering from. It is
some measure of the seriousness of it that I
didn't really feel like eating yesterday.
Unfortunately I did eat in small quantities
through the day, and then worst of all, probably
under the influence of beer, I ate quite a lot
bacon !
The beer, or at least one bottle of it was
very nice. Two other bottles were nice, but not very
nice. The first two bottles were the bottles that
my friend Barbara had lugged half way across the
country for me to try. They were supposed to be
from local breweries, and one definitely was, and
the other was a little ambiguous.
This first beer was rather wonderful. It was a
nice light beer with a hint of butterscotch
about it.
(Note: it is just condensation that is giving
the dirty glass effect in the top picture).
This was the other beer that Barbara brought me.
It makes a big thing of The Lake District, but
is a little ambiguous about where it was brewed.
It might have been brewed in the Jennings
Brewery, somewhere in the Lake District, but
basically it is a Marston's brew. They brew nice
beer, but are so prolific it makes them not
exotic !
The other beer I had
was Fraoch (if I have spelled that correctly).
It is a beer brewed in Scotland, and
incorporates heather somewhere in the brewing
process. I think the last time I tried it I
had it straight from the barrel at a beer
festival, and I didn't really care for it.
When I saw bottles of it Aldi a little while
ago I thought I would give it a second chance.
This time it seemed pleasant enough. It does
seem to have a hint of the taste of heather,
or what you imagine heather to taste like.
Maybe some would find that a very attractive
flavour, but to me it was just a mere side
note, and not an attraction.
I spent a fair time yesterday going
through the photos I took at the Redriffe gig
in The Black Cat on Saturday night. There were
none that I was proud of, but there were more
usable snaps than I thought there were. So I
have prepared a small album that I shall
probably upload to Flickr today.
I had quite a few naps yesterday, and so
I didn't seem to be in a rush to get to bed
last night, although when I did go I was very
sleepy. I spent a good few hours watching TV
last night. There was plenty to see, and none
of it involved the Eurovision song contest ! I
watched two programmes about railways, and an
old episode of "Have I Got News For You".
There were a few films on the minor channels
that looked interesting, and if I had the
patience and the time to watch them I would
have done.
It was 10pm before I got in bed, and it
took a few minutes to find a comfortable
position. One that wasn't too hot or too cold,
and one that didn't make my back ache, neck
ache or stomach ache seem worse. Having found
that magical position, or fallen asleep while
still trying to find it, I slept sometimes
well, and sometimes badly. Some of my dreams
were quite inventive. In one dream I was
working in a workshop similar to where I work
for real, but with two Polish guys working in
there too. I remember we had the window open
because I was smoking (and I think they were
too).
Half a minute into the dream an old man
walked in. I think he was that character out
of "Only Fools An Horses" (a TV programme I
didn't watch) - the short toothy character
with a big fluffy white beard. He said that he
was obviously retired, but was bored and
wanted to do some work again. I told him that
I would take him to the HR lady, and see if
she could do anything for him. The way he
followed me was like a dog following me, but
eventually I delivered him to the lady who
looks after Human Resources (as Personnel now
like to be called). The oddest thing for me
about the dream was the building. It was
obviously the product of Public Works -
Government buildings - and it was most
probably based on a very much expanded Rushey
Green telephone exchange.
One other dream was novel because it was
a dream about dreams. It is hard to remember,
or imagine, quite what the situation was, but
essentially I was reviewing dreams as if they
were TV programmes. I noticed there were two
unfinished one that I thought I would try. I
didn't care for either, and selected a more
conventional dream - although I have no idea
what that was...except maybe there was a small
hint that it was the dream I had earlier about
the old man wanting work. Was it an earlier
dream, or was it actually the dream ?
After those, and no doubt other
forgotten dreams, I woke up 10 minutes before
my alarm was due to wake me up - and I felt
terrible ! My routine is to take my morning
medication as soon as I woke up. I barely had
time to pop the pills out of the bubble packs,
and get them in my mouth, before I realised I
had about 4.872 seconds to get to the toilet !
How I never left a "skid mark" on my bed I'll
never know. That was the first of quite a few
visits to the toilet. A couple of hours have
passed since then and nothing more seems to be
happening, but my belly is still rather sore.
If I was madly obsessive about getting
to work I could probably have made it without
accident, but a little late. I didn't fancy
taking chances like that, and I called in
saying I was going sick for the day. There is
also the fact that I think my belly is a bit
too sore for me to tighten my trouser belt
properly. In reality it probably isn't, but
why take the chance if you don't have to.
Maybe I'll try it later in the day.
It is going to be a right bind, but
today I feel I should not consume anything
except tapwater until my system is fully
flushed through. One strange fact is that
provided it is well chilled, tapwater is one
of my favourite drinks. It's strange how I
only seem to have it when I have to. I wanted
for nothing more when I was in hospital in
2013. So today I will be glugging tap water,
and......I'm not really sure. I will upload
those pictures to Flickr sooner or later. So
that's one plan. I don't think I fancy going
out anywhere today unless I feel very certain
that I am feeling OK. I'm wondering how I
might feel about doing some "gardening" today.
It might be nice to be in the fresh air, and
my garden is discrete enough that I shouldn't
scare the neighbours if I did it topless -
which might be nice if the sun is shining.
First of all though, I think I'll see if I can
manage to have a nap !
Sunday
15th May 2016
09:39
BST
There was a little bit of sunshine
yesterday, but most of it was probably after
midday. I don't think it raised the temperature up
to what I was hoping for. I think I may have seen
13 or 15° C in the afternoon, but by early evening
it was no more than 12° C. Fortunately the wind
had turned, and was less gusty by then or it could
have felt freezing ! Today has started off
with an occasional sunny spell, but it was very
cold at daybreak. I don't think it was any more
than 5° C, and I'm sure the TV weather forecast
mentioned some areas of the country would be
seeing a frost - in May ! So much for global
warming !! The sunny spells should continue until
mid afternoon today, and that could include some
more lengthy spells of sunshine. It should take
the temperature up to 16° C - not great, but
better than a kick in the dangly bits. From late
afternoon it will be cloudy, but still dry, and
the temperature will slowly drop to about 10° C by
5am tomorrow morning. Tomorrow is currently
forecast to be mostly dull until 5pm when sunny
spells will take over until sunset. It might reach
17° C by late afternoon.
On the whole I felt pretty crappy yesterday.
The previous night I had felt very fatigued, and I
did my best to get as much sleep as I could. That
seemed to make the ongoing fatigue a little less,
but it was in the morning that I first noticed a
malady that wasn't just in the head. Prior to
Aleemah visiting I did some very selective
hoovering. Doing carpet or mats didn't seem to be
any harder than usual, but when I tried to hoover
around ceiling level to remove some spider thread
(and possibly the spider I had seen up there the
other day) I found the extension tube seemed
really heavy, and my arms started really
complaining. I wouldn't really expect that unless
I had something like 'flu, and I haven't got
'flu...or at least I don't think I have.
It was nice getting a couple of beers in for
breakfast with Aleemah, and for a while I felt
fairly good. Unfortunately it didn't last long.
Aleemah didn't stay very long yesterday because
she had to get to a shop in central London that
closed early on a Saturday afternoon. Once Aleemah
had left I felt a wave of fatigue roll over me.
Maybe it wasn't quite like fatigue, but it was
probably closer to that than just sleepiness.
Nevertheless I spent quite a lot of the afternoon
laying on my bed not wanting to do much else.
I don't know how much sleep I got, but I do
know I slipped into sleep on more than one
occasion. One of those occasions was rather
interesting because I seemed to integrating the
radio (Cruisin Radio - http://s11.myradiostream.com:7622
) into my dream. I can't really explain it because
I can hardly remember it, but it seemed like the
songs were being subtly changed to make them seem
more local somehow. There was one song that when a
couple of lyrics were changed it was so
appropriate, but I have absolutely no idea what it
was. All I can remember was the song that was
playing just before I woke up. It was, believe it
or not, "The Wombles Of Wimbledon", and Wimbledon
is pretty local to where I work. I think in
the dream the music was being played off a C100
cassette (quite rare, but they used to exist - the
norm was either a C90 or C120), and it was being
played on a player that was in a sort of melange
of places I have worked in, in the past.
I must have laid on my bed for at least 2
hours, and possibly more, when I thought I had
better get up and visit the real world again. I
had plenty of time to spare, and maybe because of
that I didn't really get anything done.
Eventually, as the time got closer and closer to
when I needed to start getting ready to go out, I
decided on the beer cure again. So I had a can of
super strength lager, and laid down again for
another hour to let it do its stuff.
Eventually I got myself ready to go out to
see Redriffe playing in The Black Cat. Walking in
the fresh air for five minutes partly revived me.
I think I was there before 8.30pm but the band had
already started, and I had lost the chance to grab
a good chair near the front. I must say they were
pretty good, but after one pint of beer, or 45
minutes later, I decided I wasn't feeling good
enough to enjoy the band, or, as it turned out
later, able to take good photos of the band. I
took 90 shots, and most were pretty ropey - more
so the ones where I hadn't noticed I had turned
off auto focus !
This is one of the better photos I quickly
edited when I got home last night. I haven't
had the courage to re-check them this morning, but
there may be a couple that can be made to look
good.
Once again, after walking out of the pub
into the fresh air, I felt a bit better. In one
respect it felt good to have made an "executive
decision" to walk out instead of trying to tough
it out. I had already eaten some assorted crap
during the day, but I wanted to get some comfort
food. The easiest and quickest, and most
traditional was fish and chips. As usual I asked
for a small portion of chips, and got given half a
hundred weight of them. I don't think they
actually know what a small portion is in that
shop, or if they do then I dread to think what a
large portion is like. Do they call a cab to help
you carry it home ?
Anyhow, I got home, and stuffed my face with
fish and chips. As I say, there were too many
chips, and I ended up leaving a handful of them. I
almost wish I had asked for a smaller piece of
fish as well. After eating I took a look at the
photos I had taken. It was not exactly awe
inspiring ! I quickly selected the one above
because it showed the whole band, and uploaded it
to the pubs web presence (this keeps me in good
favour with the pub, and hopefully I'll get
another free ticket from them on the next ticketed
event). I'll probably tart up a few more pictures
later, and upload those too.
The band would have still been on stage when
I went to bed. I'm not sure when it was, but I
doubt it was much later than 10pm. One
curious thing is that I was often quite sweaty
yesterday evening, and that was the case when I
went to bed, although most of the sweating was up
near my neck and face for some unknown reason. I
don't think it was anything to do with my blood
glucose level unless it was incredibly high, but
other indicators were missing for that to be
likely.
It was quite strange that I didn't feel too
hot when I pulled the duvet over me - this was
while I was still very sweaty. It wasn't long
before I fell asleep. I only woke up a few brief
times during the night, and I feel sure I had got
a full 8 hours sleep before I got up for a bit.
After checking my email, going to the toilet, and
stuff like that, I went back to bed. It didn't
really feel like I got any sleep, and yet I do
seem to remember waking up once or twice, and more
time seemed to pass than I can account for.
After all that sleep I feel rather wonderful
this morning....well that is what I am trying to
convince myself ! I found enough energy to finish
washing 5 shirts that I had left soaking all day
yesterday. If I had felt up to it, I would have
had them washed, rinsed, and hung up to dry
yesterday afternoon, but I just could not face
doing them. Well they are all hung up and drying
now, and I am now free to pursue whatever. There
are several things I ought to get up to today.
Editing the other photos I took last night is an
obvious pursuit. I feel I want to go out, maybe
just locally, to take some more photos, but there
is a far better reason to go out this morning, and
it is a very important one !
This morning my shower broke, and I can't
wash me or my hair until it is fixed. It is not as
dramatic as it sounds. I haven't actually got a
shower. What I do have is a shower head attached
by a flexible pipe to the hot tap of the bath.
It's a system that has worked well for the last 30
years, but it does need occasional maintenance. In
the past I have had trouble with the flexible pipe
going brittle, and splitting. On this occasion it
is the rubber cup that goes over the modified bath
tap that has split. It has been leaking water,
fortunately only into the bath, for a while now.
This morning I need to scour Poundland and
Poundstretcher to see if I can find some sort of
replacement. I suspect it might need some creative
thinking, but I am hoping to have a shower before
the morning is out.
Saturday
14th May 2016
07:19
BST
Friday the 13th wasn't a bad day
weather-wise, or in any other way. It wasn't
exactly a bright and shiny day, but as a last
hurrah before we plunge into a series of days that
could almost be described as winter like, it
wasn't bad. It was dry, and there was some
sunshine, and if it hadn't been for the chilly
wind blowing in from the north, it would have been
almost warm. I think the thermometer said it was
about 21° C, but my skin said it was much lower !
This morning it is very dull, and rather cool.
Once again the wind is making a pitiful 9° C feel
almost icy (as judged by standing wet and naked in
my bathroom with the window open just now !). The
latest forecast says there will be some occasional
glimpses of the sun later in the morning, and
during early afternoon, but the temperature is not
expected to rise much above 13° C - if indeed it
rises above that at all ! During the night the
wind will change direction, but that will
apparently mean thicker cloud, no sunshine at all,
and the temperature only rising to 15° C. At least
it should be another dry day !
There were still plenty of things I could
complain about yesterday, but it was the first day
when it seemed over the cold that started at the
beginning of the month. If that is the second time
I have said this then I was obviously lying the
first time, and if I feel I have to remark on
this, say, tomorrow, than I will have been lying
today as well. My only excuse, for which I humbly
beg your forgiveness, is that the tail end of this
cold has dragged on so long, and the symptoms are
trailing off so slowly and subtly that it is
difficult to know when to draw the line between
maybe something and maybe nothing. The fact is
that I very rarely had to blow my nose or cough
yesterday - and they were the most obvious visible
signs of the cold. I still feel I ought to blame
some assorted aches and pains on the cold, but I
seem to remember having a good assortment of them
without having a cold.
One possible hangover from that cold that
was most definitely evident last night was that I
felt tired. Not just sleepy, but lacking in energy
too. Coming home from work was no harder or easier
than the average, but once I arrived back in
Catford, it did seem to need extra effort to walk
to Tesco, and to walk home after shopping in
there. Once I was indoors I didn't feel I had the
energy to go out again. So it was damn lucky that
my friend Barbara didn't take up my suggestion of
going to see Bouncer in The Ladywell Tavern last
night - or maybe it wasn't. Sometimes the fatigue
is all in the head, and it just needs sufficient
motivation to overcome it.
In theory I had two indicators that some
bits of my health were quite good last night. My
blood glucose level was only a little bit higher
than desired when I got home from work (and it was
right in the middle of the desired range before I
went to bed - a couple of hours after eating -
which is impossible !). To go along with that, my
weight was still low (as in relative to a couple
of months back) last night. So the morning reading
was not a fluke. Without an accurate starting
figure it is impossible to say how much weight I
have lost in the last couple of months, but it is
probably about a stone. That is good, and yet
quite disappointing. In theory, if I had been
working at it more seriously, I could have lost
that amount in the first fortnight, and the same
again since then. Oh well, it may be depressingly
slow, but it is happening.
Last night was a bit like the night before -
I half went to bed around 8pm, and then decided to
make it permanent. It is possible that I was fast
asleep before the time I would have set out for
the Bouncer gig at The Ladywell Tavern had I gone
there ! Based on the amount of times I woke up in
the night, and for how long, and how I felt on
each occasion, I judge that I slept really rather
well last night...and yet as I sit here typing
this I don't exactly feel wonderful. In theory I
could go back to bed for another hour, but I doubt
I would sleep (although I am not sure why I doubt
it).
I think the cure must be beer, and later on
I'll be trying it ! In a couple of hours I'll be
meeting my friend Aleemah for breakfast in the
Wetherspoons. She'll have a tradition breakfast
(if a vegetarian version can actually be called
"traditional"), and I'll have pint of beer while I
keep her company. After that it will be DVD time.
I wonder what old rubbish she will bring this time
? Sometimes she brings a good DVD, and at other
times it is one I could easily sleep through !
I'll be having more beer tonight. Redriffe
are playing in The Black Cat in Catford, and I am
curious to see what they are like. Their
promotional description makes them sound good, and
I hope they are. Another bunch of suckers to
practice my photography on...well not really. Some
bands come away with photos they like, and in one
case are so eager to use that they were possibly
prepared to pay for them. I said they could use
them for free provided they acknowledged me. They
were Led Z, and if you haven't seen the photos
yet, you can see them here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157667983128511
if you scroll down the page a bit. I'm quite proud
of some of those photos. Led Z do have a web
page, but it is quite hard to find. It's here http://www.ledzed.co.uk/
These are the two bottles of beer that my friend
Barbara hand delivered all the way from Keswick
way up in the Lake District - Cumbria. I think
I'll be sampling them Sunday afternoon !
Friday
13th May 2016
07:56
BST
I'm pretty certain it stayed dry yesterday,
and I am fairly sure that it was quite sunny too.
I am absolutely sure that it was bright, dry, warm
and sunny when I left work yesterday afternoon,
and that it continued like that for several hours.
It was 21 going on 22° C when I got home at around
6.30pm. The temperature dropped quite sharply
during the night, and it clouded over too. So this
morning it was only 12° C when I walked to the
station to come to work, and it was, and still is
overcast now I'm here. A strong breeze is making
that 12° C feel rather cool ! The forecast says
that the cloud should clear very quickly (which
seems unlikely) and from mid morning onwards it
should be bright and sunny with the temperature
hitting 22° C again late this afternoon. The
weekend is still forecast to be mostly dull and
cool. It should stay dry, but the maximum
temperature could be just 14° C, and 12° C being
more typical for most of the days.
I thought I was heading for a disaster
yesterday. I got to Earlsfield station to find
loads of people waiting on the platform, and every
trains shown as "delayed". That wasn't good
considering I was meeting my friend from "oop
north", Barbara, and had told her quite
specifically that I would be arriving at 16:01 on
platform 1 at Waterloo station. I'm not sure what
service it was that I actually got, but I didn't
have to wait very long for it, and it arrived at
Waterloo at precisely 16:01. Unfortunately it
arrived on platform 2 instead of 1, but that was
good enough I guess.
I had a very, very pleasant drink with
Barbara in The Hole In The Wall pub just outside
Waterloo station. I guess I was pleasantly
surprised that the price of premium lager was not
that much more than what suburban pubs would
charge. I had visions of it being £5 a pint or
more, but a pint of Becks plus a pint of Stella
Artois came to £8.10 - a rip off, but not a
complete rip off ! I think our timing was right.
When we left the place was starting to fill up and
get noisy, but for the hour or so we were in there
it was quiet enough for good conversation.
My thanks to Barbara for a nice chat, and for my
present of two bottles of locally made beer (local
to Keswick in Cumbria - not Waterloo !). I look
forward to trying them soon - maybe even tonight.
It was pure luck, but we left the pub at a
very convenient time for me. After walking back
through Waterloo station, and then across the link
to Waterloo East station, I had just a 4 minute
wait for a train back to Catford Bridge. When I
got back to Catford I was feeling quite tired, and
I was tempted to buy some fried chicken so I
didn't have to prepare any dinner for myself. I
managed to talk myself out of that, and to seek an
alternative form of instant nourishment. That
alternative was to walk down to Tesco where I was
unfortunate enough to find a heap of reduced price
sandwiches. Last night's dinner ended up as just
an orgy of sandwich eating ! It is, of course,
impossible, but after eating far more sandwiches
that I should have, plus drinking 2 pints of
Stella Artois, I seemed to be very slightly
lighter when I weighed myself this morning - and
that was without having a poo first !
It did feel like a bit of a slog walking
home from Tesco, and after my sandwich eating orgy
I felt like going to bed - and in a way, I did !
First of all I decided to lay on my bed and read
for a bit, but then I thought I may as well brush
my teeth so I could go from reading to sleeping
without having to get up again. My memory of what
happened next seems very hazy, and I think that is
because I was fast asleep very soon after that -
and that wasn't very long after 8pm !
There were several reasons why I seemed to
get a lousy night's sleep last night. For one
thing the temperature seemed to be at that awkward
point where it often felt too hot under the duvet,
and too chilly without it, but the thing that
spoiled my sleep most of all was cramps. I can't
remember how many times I woke up with one or
other of my calf muscles locking into painful
cramp. Everytime it happened I had to leap out of
bed, and put some weight on my leg. That usually
cured it, although on one occasion I had to walk
to the toilet and back (without using it) to relax
all the muscles.
I am going to try extra hard not to think
about being sleepy/tired today, and maybe it won't
happen.The rest of me is, typically, good and bad
this morning. My legs seem to be working quite
well, although maybe they are not working as fast
as I would like. My chest, which gave me quite a
lot of discomfort yesterday morning (but which was
completely cured by two pints of Stella Artois),
is slightly sore this morning, but generally seems
on the mend. I did seem to have a new, or at least
fairly rare, extra pain this morning, and I can't
quite work out if it was low in my belly, low in
my back, or from the hips. at my age it is
probably my hips complaining !
At the moment, as I sit here in my office, I
don't feel too bad, and with the first ray of
sunshine just appearing as I write this, and
apparently right on schedule, I have one little
extra reason to feel good, or to try to. Whether I
can sustain this is something I'll have to find
out. If I have the energy I would like to go to a
gig tonight. The band Bouncer are playing in The
Ladywell Tavern tonight. It is easy to get to if I
am feeling fit enough for a 20 minute walk through
the park, but there are some downsides. They are
probably very good, but I don't really like their
presentation, and worst of all is that their
lighting rig always seems to be stuck on red, and
that is useless for photography. I did invite
Barbara to join me if she was bored, and if she
decides she would like to go I will have to find
the energy, otherwise it will be a case of will I
go for zero minutes (i.e. not at all), pop in for
a few songs, or actually stay for the gig ?
Thursday
12th May 2016
07:45
BST
For maybe an hour, at around 1 to 2pm, the
rain was absolutely torrential yesterday. Before
that there had been some odd bits of drizzle, and
after that.....well, I reckon there was no more
water left in the sky to fall, and gradually it
brightened up. The sun came out, and by 5pm the
temperature was up to 22° C - a nice ending for
the day. This morning the temperature had dropped
to 12 or 13° C, and with it being almost bright
(the sun was diffused by some haze) it seemed
worth taking a chance on coming into work in just
shirtsleeves (although I do have a lightweight
coat stuffed in my courier bag). Today is still
forecast to be the best day of the week. It should
stay dry, and there will be a fair amount of
sunshine. The afternoon temperature should be 22°
C. Tomorrow, and the weekend is forecast to be
dull and cool, and maybe wet too !
There were times when I felt very tired at
work yesterday. It was mostly when I was bored.
Other than that, and a sort of toothache, I didn't
feel so bad. As I mentioned yesterday morning,
provided I did nothing to provoke that tooth it
was completely painless and ignorable. I think it
was not as severe as I feared it would be. My
thoughts this morning are that it was probably a
bit of food stuck under the gum that caused a
small local infection, and that now that food
particle has been flossed or brushed away,
everything is returning to normal. I can still
detect some tenderness, but it barely registers
compared to yesterday morning.
I was feeling fairly OK when I left work
yesterday, but that didn't stop me taking
advantage of a bus to get to the station. It was
one of those rare times when a bus was heading for
the bus stop as I was. There might have been a
good reason to get the bus anyway. For a couple of
days the lift at the station was out of order, and
it is definitely knackering to walk all the way to
the station, and then have to walk up the three
flights of stairs to the platform. Last night the
lift was back working again, and so there was less
excuse to get the bus...on the other hand, I
sometimes feel that I am not taking full advantage
of my free travel, courtesy of my 60+ Oyster card,
if I don't do some pointless trips now and then.
It was bright and dry (except for some deep
puddles) for my journey back to Catford, and nice
and sunny when I got there. It seemed the perfect
opportunity to take the long way home via
Poundstretcher to buy a new swing bin type rubbish
bin. I wanted one to replace one that had been
involved in an accident some years ago - I trod on
the lid while emptying it ! Over the years the
cracks in the lid spread further and further, and
it recently fell apart. The only big problem with
buying it's replacement is that there were red
ones and black ones in Poundstretcher, and I
couldn't decide which I preferred - so I bought
one of each ! I now have a bin with a lid on it in
my kitchen, and the lidless one is now for
recycling stuff. The bin outside my bedroom now
has a lid, and there is a spare lidless one there
too that I'll use for...????????
I managed the astonishing feat of only
having a one course dinner again last night, and
this time I even snacked less as well. There were
two results from this. The first is that my blood
glucose level which was back in the safe zone
again when I got home from work, actually went
slightly lower still a couple of hours after
eating. The second is that this morning my weight
was the lowest I've seen it for ages - but still
far, far higher than I'd like, and far, far, far,
far higher than I dream about.
Last night I was in bed fairly early, and I
think I fell asleep fairly early too. It was one
of those nights where I am unsure whether to say I
slept well, or slept badly. I certainly seemed to
get a lot of sleep, but I woke up too many times
for various reasons. The most annoying reason was
that my chest seemed to be going through a phase
where the bones, muscles, and ligaments were
really popping, grinding, and cracking whenever I
made certain movements - and not just movements
like turning over. On many occasion just breathing
would cause popping and cracking sounds (or
feelings like sounds).
This morning my main complaint is a sore
chest. A couple of Ibuprofen tablets have calmed
it down, as they usually do, but it is still
annoyingly tender. The rest of me seems to be in
fair working order, although my head feels a bit
tight like a headache about to happen, and while I
can go for long periods without having to blow my
nose, it still feels stuffy a lot of the time.
That was no ordinary cold I went down with a
couple of weeks ago, and it seems I am not the
only person to suffer from it !
Hopefully today will go fairly pleasantly,
but even if work is rotten I have beer to look
forward to after work. It is a Thursday, but on
this occasion I won't be joining the usual
Thursday night crowd. Tonight (or this afternoon
for the more pedantic) I'll be meeting my friend
Ruby at Waterloo station for a couple of beers
together. It's lucky that she comes to London most
years because popping up to Cumbria for a drink
after work would not be easy !
Spotted on one carriage of one train at Waterloo
station this morning - sunflowers. I didn't look
closely, but I think these were stick on vinyls
put on the carriage to celebrate something or
another - spring maybe, but it could have been
part of something more commercial - maybe even
an advert for South West Trains. There was one
on the rear of the carriage, and a reversed one
at the other end of the carriage.
Wednesday
11th May 2016
07:43
BST
Yesterday was definitely wet, but somehow it
didn't seem too bad. I did have a fantasy that the
forecast may have been wrong, and that the
afternoon would turn bright and sunny. That was a
fantasy too far, but the afternoon was brighter
than the morning - at least I think that was how
it was. There was a light shower while I waited
for my train at Waterloo East on my way home, but
it was mostly inconsequential, and I was able to
travel from work to home without needing to do my
coat up. That was sort of handy because at 17° C
it was as good as warm. There was lots more rain
during the night, the puddles are a testimony to
that this morning, but the main feature was mist
rather than rain as I made my way to work. Once
again it is on the lower borders of warm, or the
high borders of tepid, at 15° C. This afternoon
could see some sunshine among the showers, and the
temperature could rise to 20° C. Tomorrow is
forecast to be the best day of the week. It will
be dry, bright, and sometimes sunny with a top
temperature of 22° C. At the moment the weekend is
forecast to be quite horrible - dull, and maybe
14° C at best !
This was the view from the footbridge
looking in the direction of London at approx 06:30
this morning. It looks dull and damp because that
is exactly how it was. In the centre of the
picture there is the very feint outline of one of
the tower cranes that is almost lost in the mist.
On a clear day it would look sharp and obvious
from the same viewpoint.
I'm trying to remember how I felt at work
yesterday. The fact that I can't remember much
about it strongly suggests that there was nothing
particularly bad to remember. It could also be
that there was nothing good to remember either ! I
do have a vague recollection of feeling tired and
sleepy at one time, but it wasn't nearly as bad as
the previous day. I'm pretty certain that I was
coughing less too. However I was feeling, it was
still a relief to leave work to go home. I felt
mostly OK while travelling home right up to about
5 minutes before I arrived back at Catford Bridge
station. I am unsure exactly what happened, but I
think the train lurched slightly, and that caused
an unpleasant pain to appear slightly above my
right breast.
That would be typical for my "floating rib",
or twisted ligament, or discombobulated muscle, or
mangled scar tissue, or whatever..... It wasn't
terrible, but it was rather annoying. I'm not sure
when I recovered from it because it just slowly
faded away over the course of an hour or so. On
the whole I had a comfortable evening, but there
was one strange anomaly last night - I didn't seem
to feel like eating much.
I planned a two course dinner for last
night. The first course was to be a salad with
some tinned pink salmon (and a few lumps of
cheese). The second course was to be grilled
vegetables, but when they were cooked I found I
didn't really want a second course. It may have
been because I drank a can of super strength lager
with the salad. I'm not sure if that should, or
did make a difference, but it was one obvious
difference to my usual routine. I think it is
probably something I shouldn't exploit in the
future, although some circumstantial evidence does
seem to suggest that my blood glucose level goes
back down quite quickly after the spike caused by
drinking beer. Sometimes it feel like the level
actually goes down lower after drinking beer. I'm
sure that is impossible, but why not believe in 7
impossible things before breakfast ?
The good news is that I finally uploaded all
the photos I have prepared from the ones I took at
the Petts Wood May Fayre. There are still a few
random musicians I should add to the photo album
for the sake of completeness, and I may add them
later, but you can see the album as it currently
stands right here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/sets/72157667983128511
Last night was another night when I felt I
should get to bed early, and yet I didn't feel
sleepy. I still aimed to get to bed by, or soon
after 9pm, and I think I was in bed by 9pm. I
don't remember all that much after that. I know I
woke up to pee a few times, and I was awake a good
10 to 20 minutes before I needed to be. Overall it
seemed like I slept quite well. Now all I hope is
that I don't lapse into feeling like I can't keep
my eyes open for any time today. (I think I did
have one period like that yesterday).
I do feel sort of good again today - but
only for certain values of good ! I still
have a bit of a lingering, occasional cough, and I
still need to clear my nose every now and then,
but it does feel like I am just about over the
cold that has lingered for so long. I note that
several other people I know, people who generally
tend to be quite healthy, have been laid low by
this bug that is doing the rounds. One person
reported it as lasting 4 weeks. I think I may have
fought it off a bit faster than that ! One thing
that puts it all into perspective is my latest
malady. I seem to have latent toothache. One of my
teeth, and I am not sure which one yet, seems
quite sensitive to pressure this morning. If I
avoid provoking it, it is completely painless, but
I don't know how long that will last. Maybe it
will clear up by itself, or maybe it will
eventually drive me to the dentist !
Tonight I have no plans apart from a vague
idea that I hope I don't feel too hungry again. It
would be great if I could just eat the grilled
vegetable I cooked last night, and nothing else.
Last night I may have only had one course for
dinner, but I did nibble on too much cheese, and
even eat a small quantity of peanuts. It is such
snacks that are hampering my efforts to loose
another two inches off my waist, and probably not
doing my blood glucose any favours either.
Tuesday
10th May 2016
08:04
BST
I think the picture on the left, taken
inside my office, shows a good reason why I was a
bit sweaty at work yesterday. It wasn't actually
29° C outdoors, but it was sunnier and warmer than
the early morning forecast seemed to suggest it
would be. I think it probably peaked at 21° C
yesterday. The original forecast said that the
best we could expect was an occasional glimpse of
hazy sunshine, but in reality it was a nice sunny
day until it rapidly clouded over around 4pm (some
3 or 4 hours earlier than expected). About a
minute after leaving Catford Bridge station, on my
way home, it started pouring down with rain -
quite torrential rain for a while !
As far as I could judge while indoors, the
rain eased off to just an average shower a little
while after I got indoors, but it continued, on
and off, through the night, and there was some
"enhanced drizzle" when I walked to the station
this morning. The temperature was still about 15°
C this morning, and that made the rain a little
less annoying than it might have been if it was
close to freezing.
The forecast says it will be heavily
overcast all day, and it will be raining for much
of the time. It's not going to warm up much, and
maybe the temperature won't get any higher than
17° C. It would be nice to think that the forecast
was wrong, and that this afternoon will be
gloriously sunny, but as I look out my office
window that seems unlikely. Tomorrow may be a
little better.
This is looking towards London from platform 1
of Catford Bridge station at approx 06:32 this
morning.
It was all very grey, wet and soggy when the
06:33 arrived to take me to Waterloo East.
I felt pretty awful
at work yesterday, and I am not entirely sure
why. I know I started the day with my blood
glucose level on the high side. That was
evident from how sweaty my forehead was on my
way into work, but my blood glucose level
presumably dropped back fairly quickly during
the day, and by mid morning my forehead was
less sweaty, and probably no worse than the
mild dampness over my whole body as a result
of my office temperature getting up to 29° C
(see picture at the top) !
I guess the heat may have contributed to
feeling bad, and yet I am unsure why - mainly
because it is very hard to pick any one ache,
pain, or discomfort that made me feel
bad.....or maybe there is. I was coughing a
lot, and that made my chest feel sore. It also
seemed to leave me feeling very slightly
asthmatic. I think I probably mentioned that I
felt a bit asthmatic when I was coming into
work yesterday morning. The other thing that
made the day feel bad was extreme tiredness.
At first I thought I had slept reasonably
well, but later in the morning there were
times when it seemed I could barely keep my
eyes open.
It was a relief to finish work and start
heading for home. I started to feel much
better once I was out in the fresh air, and I
felt curiously good as I walked the last few
minutes towards home in the pouring rain. I'm
not sure why that felt good considering that
the waterproofing on my very lightweight coat
seems to need renewing badly, and I was
getting quite wet under it ! I think it would
have been far less fun if I hadn't been so
close to home, and heading for home !
It feels like I did almost nothing last
night except eat - and I ate quite lightly. At
least I think I did. sometimes I don't know
what is a light meal, and what isn't. Part 1
was a salad with smoked Bavarian ham and feta
cheese all dressed in a bit of olive oil and
balsamic vinegar. Part 2 was grilled flat
mushrooms with garlic and some ready made
peri-peri chicken fillets. I think part 2 was
mostly innocent, but one day I really ought to
look up the nutritional values for mushrooms.
I think that is the second time I've said I
ought to do it. Maybe I am scared that I'll
find out that they are full of sugar or
calories - or worse !
I didn't seem to feel very tired after
my dinner, but bearing in mind how bad I had
felt during the day, I brushed my teeth, and
got onto my bed not much later than 7.30pm. I
wasn't expecting to fall asleep, and it didn't
really feel like I had, but I seemed to lose
about an hour without realising it. Staring at
the ceiling, or even the inside of my eyelids
for an hour would have been intensely boring,
and I conclude that I must have slept for that
hour. My whole night seemed like that. I would
lay in bed wondering if I would ever get to
sleep, and suddenly I would be aware that
another hour, or even two had gone past. It
wasn't until I started waking from dreams that
I had more proof that I had been asleep, and
yet even then it still seems like I hardly
slept at all.
The weirdest thing is that this morning,
almost convinced that I slept very badly
compared to the night before, I currently feel
a lot less tired than I did yesterday -
although there is still plenty of time to
start feeling really dozy. The rest of me is
very variable this morning. I felt in enough
discomfort from this, that and the other, to
take a couple of Ibuprofen tablets before
coming to work. I think my chest hurts less
because of them - I was coughing a fair bit in
the night, and that made my chest feel sore. I
also took a couple of puffs from my precious
asthma inhaler. I was originally prescribed
it, at my own suggestion, soon after I came
out of hospital after my quad heart bypass
operation in 2013. As you might imagine, my
chest was very delicate then, and coughing was
a particular difficulty then - and one of the
first things a heavy smoker does after
stopping smoking is to cough up lungfuls !
Opening up the airways made that a lot easier.
I'm not sure how I could convince a doctor
that it is handy to have an inhaler around for
rare occasional use now. So I use my one and
only canister as sparingly as possible, and
only when I consider I really need it. Maybe
it was a bit extravagant to use it this
morning, but perhaps it was worth it for a
little extra spring in my step.
On reflection, there are probably many
reasons to feel bad this morning but somehow I
feel peculiarly good. Maybe it is the freshly
rain washed air, or some subconscious message
from my body that my cold, and more
importantly it's after effects, is almost
over. Now if only I could raise some
enthusiasm to do some work I would probably be
fine. Unfortunately I can't because I want to
be somewhere else - and I have no idea where.
Maybe somewhere with beer might be
nice....well that would always be nice, but
it's probably not quite what I am looking for.
Somewhere nice and green and fresh smelling
might be nice, but then again, perhaps not
when it's raining and muddy. I dunno, maybe I
would just prefer to be at home. Oh well, give
it another 8 hours and I'll be there.
Monday
9th May 2016
07:41
BST
It is difficult to find fault with
yesterday's weather. It was hot, bright and dry,
and that's all I could ask for. Today brings some
unknowns - it could be an acceptable day, or it
could be a bad day. The only definite is that it
will not be a great day. The day started OK. It
was nearly 15° C, and reasonably bright, but the
electronic barometer in my radio linked
thermometer predicted rain, and indeed, as I came
to work the sky clouded over, and some of those
clouds do look rather dark ! The BBC's website is
still predicting no more than light cloud for much
of today, but it does think it will rain around
8pm tonight. So we wait and see - will it be light
cloud, possibly with the sun peeping through now
and then, or will the cloud stay fairly thick with
the odd passing shower. The top temperature is
forecast to be just 20° C, and that seems
feasible. Tomorrow the weather reverts to
something more expected in April. I should make it
into work in the dry, but soon after it will rain,
and then it will rain more, and even more after
that, and so on all day ! At least it will still
be sort of shirtsleeve weather if you want your
arms washed by rain. The temperature will quickly
level out to just 16° C.
I was intending to do more stuff yesterday -
particularly photo editing of the last set of
pictures I took at Petts Wood at the beginning of
the month, but I didn't do that, and I didn't do
much else either. Probably the best scape goat to
blame it on was the Cornettos I ate. They would
ahve made my blood glucose level rocket up, and
made me feel like I had no energy (when in fact I
was brimming over with it if measure in terms of
glucose in the blood). Well, that's one
possibility. Maybe the warmth just made me feel
too relaxed. Whatever the real reason(s), I just
didn't do much yesterday evening. It wasn't helped
by a mild, but growing discomfort in my gut area.
One of the reasons I didn't go out yesterday
was that I feared my guts might have been a bit
volatile after the episode where I vomited the
previous night. I wasn't wholly convinced that was
caused by consuming too much neat whisky. In fact
I was far from convinced about it because while I
may have consumed a fair amount as I sat idly
sipping away at it as I sat glued to me PC screen
editing photos, it didn't seem like an unusually
excessive amount. It turned out that I was
probably right about the whisky, and right about
my guts being a bit volatile. The only problem was
that I was being a bit premature - probably.
Roughly 24 hours later, somewhere near a typical
time for food to transit from one end of the
digestive tract to the other, particularly so for
something the digestive tract doesn't like, my
guts did become very volatile - but not extremely
volatile. Two moderately explosive visits to the
toilet in quick succession seemed to cure the
problem perfectly.
Having dealt with that problem I went to
bed. I had changed one of my pillows to one that
was a quarter of an inch thinner, and didn't have
an imaginary lump in an imagined bad place. So I
was nice and comfortable, and yet I didn't seem to
feel sleepy. I started reading from a magazine
(Fortean Times), and it was difficult to put it
down until I really did begin to feel sleep. That
was at approximately 9.30pm. I think I was fast
asleep quite soon after that, and as far as I am
aware I slept well on my thinner pillow.
If I slept well I should be feeling great
this morning, but I don't. I feel sort of creaky,
and also a bit asthmatic. It seemed to be hard
work breathing as I walked to the station, and it
seemed like my progress was interminably slow. It
is at this point that it seems like I have lost
any remaining ability to think sanely. I left home
at my normal time - between 06:20 and 06:21 - and
yet after what seemed like a slow walk to the
station, a walk that seemed like hard work because
breathing seemed difficult, I arrived at the
station with the typical 7 minutes to go before my
train was due to arrive (on time). In fact
arriving with just 6 minutes to wait is not that
uncommon, and even the occasional 5 minutes. It
seems I must have walked to the station faster
than usual, and yet it seems it took ages, and was
hard work. My brain must be failing badly !
Now I am at work I feel fairly bad. I have
taken to yawning a lot. So the idea that I slept
well must have been a delusion. I was sweating
quite badly (mostly from my forehead) as I came to
work, and that must be a reflection of how high my
blood glucose level went after eating those
Cornettos yesterday. Hopefully it will be down,
nearing some almost sensible figure when I get
home from work again. I do seem to have an
interesting collection of aches and pains this
morning. I don't think there are any new ones, but
it does seem to be an unusually rich collection of
the old favourites. All are mild or very mild, but
they add up to a nuisance. I don't think the
nuisance is bad enough to consider painkillers
yet.
Tonight there is one thing I have to do
(apart from cooking and eating dinner), and that
is yet more hand laundry. It was going to be very
simple. I had forgotten I had changed the little
mini tablecloth on the little table in the living
room (a table that is too high to be a coffee
table, and yet too small to be anything else). I
changed the tablecloth before Aleemah visited on
Saturday, and tucked it away to be dealt with
later - and later has now arrived. It has assorted
food stains in it, and I concluded it could do
with a long soak in bio-detergent. Just doing one
little tablecloth in a big bendy bucket of
detergent seemed a waste so I am doing an
experiment. I have an old coat that I may shrink
into again one day, that needs a good wash. I last
wore it when I was heavily smoking, and so it is
probably a bit brown (although it seems to have
lost any smell over the last 4 or 5 years).
Whether I can wash it, and successfully wear it
ever again remains to be seen, but I thought it
was a good opportunity to start the process this
morning, and see where it leads.
I still have some photo editing to do, and
maybe I'll raise the enthusiasm for that tonight,
but some how it doesn't feel likely this morning.
I visualise myself being very lazy tonight. It
will probably be raining, and that could be the
perfect excuse for an early night. There will be
better nights later on. Towards the end of the
week I am looking forward to one, and maybe two,
after work drinking sessions with my friend Ruby
from Cumbria who will be visiting London then. In
the meantime I had better try and raise some
enthusiasm for doing some work, or at least appear
to be doing some work !
Sunday
8th May 2016
15:13
BST
Summer is here - even if it hasn't
officially started yet ! Yesterday was rather
splendid, but maybe not quite as good as today. It
wasn't always sunny yesterday, but it was still
bright even when the sun ducked behind some thin
high cloud. The temperature hit 25° C, and with a
nice breeze it was excellent drying weather. Today
has been completely sunny, and it is supposed to
stay sunny right up to sunset (which is at 20:35
tonight). This morning it was 15° C when I woke
up, and this afternoon the temperature has hit 26°
C. So we are some way off the magical 30° C, and
it is not going to happen tomorrow or Tuesday !
Tomorrow is forecast to be a dull 20° C, and on
Tuesday it is forecast to rain !
Yesterday was a very successful day,
although it ended on a bit of a sour note.
When I finished writing yesterday I had just hung
out a towel, a sheet, and two pillowcases on the
washing line to dry. It was such wonderful drying
weather that the sheets and pillow cases were bone
dry in a couple of hours, and the towel was almost
perfectly dry except for some dampness at the
bottom. So I took the bed stuff in and put it
away, and took the towel in to finish drying over
the banister rail. I then washed the duvet cover
that went with the sheets and pillowcases. I don't
think I have ever washed a complete set of bed
linen on one day even when I had a working washing
machine, let alone doing it by hand. I have to
admit that final fling did leave me feeling
completely knackered.
It was too late for the duvet cover to fully
dry before night fell, but it was perfectly dry
when I brought it in at about 10am this morning. I
spent a considerable amount of last night photo
editing the pictures I took of Led Z. I am rather
pleased with how some of them came out, but I
still haven't uploaded them to Flickr yet, and
you'll not be able to see them in all their glory
just yet, but here's a couple of tasters -
Tommy Erbi on vocals, and Eamon O'Sullivan on
bass guitar
Keith Whitehorn and his double neck guitar
While I was photo editing I was sipping
whisky, and I probably had quite a bit of it.
Whether that had any bearing on what happened
later is unknown. It is possible that the
marinaded pork belly strips and stuffed
mushrooms were too rich for me, or maybe they
were contaminated in some way, but I was just
trying to settle for bed when I became aware
that my stomach did not feel good. Unusually,
it was the top end of my digestive tract that
was revolting !
Eventually I did some dry heaving
followed by vomiting up what could have been
little more than an eggcup or two worth of
vomit. It seemed to be so little to cause such
a fuss, but it was more or less a complete
cure. I ended up getting to sleep a lot later
than intended. I can't remember exactly when
it was I got to sleep, but I guess it probably
wasn't terribly late for a weekend. As far as
I can recall, I slept quite well, although I
woke up a lot earlier than I would have liked
to - but maybe I didn't need to sleep more.
I haven't felt that wonderful today, but
there has been no particular reason for it. It
is a mix of little different things. In
contradiction to what I have just said, maybe
I did need more sleep. I do feel a little dozy
today, but that could also be caused by it
being so delightfully warm. One ailment is not
so much an ailment but a fear of an ailment,
and it is a continuation of last night.
Nothing has actually happened, and I am not in
any discomfort, and yet I have a sort of
feeling that my guts may be a bit unstable. If
it were not for that I may well have gone out
to take some pictures and take a walk
somewhere, but I just didn't, and don't feel
like it. A far more real physical thing is the
after effects of doing all that heavy hand
laundry. I can feel a few little aches and
pains here and there in my arms, and maybe a
few twinges from my chest too.
I regard the after effects of all that
muscle building exercise as a sort of good
thing, and in reality those affects are so
mild I might ignore them in other
circumstances, but they contribute to the sum
of all the other aches and pains, imagined or
real, that add up to enough to leave me
wasting a brilliant summer day. Or am I
wasting it ? I guess I am. I'm wasting the
opportunity for what could be some enjoyable
exercise, and for building up my vitamin D as
I cook my skin under the sun. On the other
hand, when I look back on most of my coastal
walks, as an example, it is rare for me to go
out on a Sunday because the trains are so crap
! There are no direct trains (from Bromley
South station) to such places as Herne Bay, or
Whitstable today, and there aren't any trains
at all to Charing Cross station today. I could
have got a direct train to Cannon Street
station in the heart of the city, and there is
some good stuff to photograph around there,
but it's all narrow streets that are often in
permanent shadow.
So all that builds up to the fact that
today I am just being bloody lazy, although I
have gone out once today, and that was to the
corner shop. I knew and accepted it was going
to make a complete mockery of my attempts to
keep my blood glucose level down, but I wanted
an ice cream on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon.
I will confess I had a couple of ice creams
because I bought Cornettos. I don't remember
them being that small ! They have shrunk, and
shrunk badly ! So I bought a couple and
finished them in a couple of mouthfuls apiece
!
I think I am going to try and raise the
enthusiasm to edit a few more photos from last
weeks Petts Wood May Fayre. I have left the
worst until last - which is probably a bit
silly, but for the sake of completion I will
include some pictures of other musicians and
singers who appeared on the stage. The ranged
from uninteresting to almost annoying, but I
guess I should include a few snaps of them.
After that I ought to try and get in the right
mood for a nice early night, and a wonderful
sleep before back to work tomorrow. As
unlikely as it seems, it could
happen......
Saturday
7th May 2016
15:41
BST
The weather forecast for yesterday made it
seem like most of the sunshine would be rather
hazy, but my recollection is that it was mostly
very bright outside. Of course I only get a
distorted view of reality looking through my
office window, but whatever the real state of the
sunshine was, it was good enough to definitely
make it feel warm yesterday. I am very sure we hit
20° C, and I wouldn't be averse to saying it was
23° C at it's best. Today has already topped that
- which was not hard considering the temperature
stayed up overnight. At daybreak it was 15° C by
my reckoning, and that instantly make it shirt
sleeve weather ! Today's sunshine is more
like it was forecast to be yesterday - there have
been many periods when the sunshine has been
reduced to little more than a bright patch above
the clouds. Nevertheless, it has stayed dry, and
when I check several thermometers, 2 electronic,
and one traditional mercury, the concensus was
that it was 25° C, and what's more it feels like
it. Delicious ! Tomorrow is still shown as
featuring dawn to dusk sunshine. The temperature
is forecast to be what it actually is today - and
that had turned out to be two degrees higher than
the forecast. Maybe it is possible that tomorrow
could hit 27° C. I've got to get out in that if it
is !
The only lingering bit of the cold I've had
that bugged me yesterday was the cough. It was
very intermittent, and quite frequently I would go
an hour or more without coughing, and then
suddenly something, probably a little fleck of
mucus or whatever, would catch in my throat, and I
would start coughing fit to bust. A few serial
sessions of coughing in the morning left my chest
feeling quite sore (although only in certain
postures). My nose wasn't (and still isn't)
perfectly clear, but on reflection I think it not
far of perfectly normal for me.
I think the general report is that I felt
mostly OK yesterday, and I definitely felt good if
I only concentrate on a limited set of parameters
as I left work, and headed for home. Maybe I might
have felt a little tired, and that was definitely
the case later in the evening, and didn't feel
like rushing around, but by not rushing I was
perfectly comfortable going home. I mentioned that
I was considering going into Tesco on the way
home, but I was also considering getting some
stuff from the Turkish supermarket as an
alternative. When I arrived back in Catford I
decided I couldn't be bothered to go to Tesco. So
I went in the Turkish supermarket where I was
disappointed they only had small mushrooms instead
of the big mushrooms I wanted, but in recompense
they did have some interesting looking yellow
courgettes.
I hadn't pre-prepared any dinner for last
night, but some of my dinner was pre-prepared in
the form of bean and chick pea salads. I'm not
sure what they should do to my blood glucose
level, but I know they are fairly low in calories,
and I was eating them when I was losing a lot of
weight prior to my stay in hospital in 2013. I
also cooked a small heap of small mushrooms with
some olive oil and harrisa paste. Just before they
were ready to serve I added some chunks of cheddar
cheese and gave then a couple more minutes in the
oven.
I deference to seeing Aleemah this morning,
I didn't smother those mushrooms in garlic, and
maybe that is why they were not as delicious as
the big garlicky mushrooms I cooked the previous
night. After eating the little pots of bean salad,
and the mushrooms, I came across feeling really
tired. So I lay on my bed and listened to an old
recording off the radio. It was a one hour
recording, and I can only remember hearing the
first two songs. I fell asleep, and it seems I
slept for almost an hour.
When I woke up I seemed to have a small
amount of discomfort in my lower tummy area. I
thought it was just wind, and tried not to pay too
much attention to it. That didn't last long ! Ten
minutes later I was just about to pass wind when
some sixth sense said it might be safer to to do
it while sitting on the toilet. I barely made it
before I exploded ! I then spent the next two
hours, or maybe more, more sitting on the toilet
than off it. I can't say it was uncomfortable in
any way, but it sure was boring. The good news is
that this morning my weight was almost back to
what it was before over a week of being ill, and
comfort eating had piled a few pounds back on.
Also, my blood glucose level, which was already
looking very acceptable when I got home from work,
was looking really rather good at about 9pm last
night.
I finally felt so empty that I could afford
to relax my guard, and I was able to get into bed
and go to sleep. I think I slept quite well last
night, and I woke up bright and early feeling
better than I have done for some time now. That
lead me to being quite busy today. At 6.30am I had
washed 4 shirts, some underwear, and a pair of
lounge pants. Initially I hung the shirts indoors
to dry, but I hung the lounge pants on the washing
line in the garden. Later on I hung the shirts out
there too.
Next on the agenda was to get washed and
dressed properly so I could go to Aldi and get
some shopping. I didn't have much time to get my
breath back after shopping before I had to go out
again to meet Aleemah at the station. As usual,
while Aleemah had her cooked veggie breakfast, I
indulged in a couple of halves of beer. The beer
on the right of this picture, "Old Leg Over" was
rather nice, and the beer to the left wasn't bad
either, but not as good as the other.
After breakfast we went shopping in
Poundland, and I came home with some smelly stuff
- mostly room odourisers - but also some
strawberry flavour moisturising cream. I am not
sure what I am going to do with it, but curiosity
got the better of me. Maybe I'll use it to
moisturise my feet or something. When we finally
got back home we watched a DVD. This week Aleemah
brought Flash Gordon - the modern version
featuring the soundtrack written and played by
Queen. I'm not sure if I enjoyed it or not. I
guess I felt a bit neutral about it.
After Aleemah had gone home again I did yet
more washing, and this time I went for it big time
! I washed a medium large bath towel plus a bed
sheet, and two pillow cases. I have to admit it
left me feeling rather knackered, and most of the
blame can be laid on the towel. It was damn heavy
when saturated with either hot soapy water, or
multiple changes of rinsing water, but it's all on
the line drying now.
I feel quite tired now, and the next thing I
am going to do, once this is finished and
uploaded, is to lay on my bed and read for a
while. I expect I'll probably end up snoozing
after a little while, but that's OK. I don't think
I'm going out tonight, but I could do if the
moment grabbed me. What should come before
anything else, except for eating and sleeping, is
to get on with editing the pictures of Led Z I
took last Monday, and get them uploaded for all to
see. It's annoying it is taking so long, but none
of us have unlimited time. Hopefully I can get it
all done today somehow because I think I want to
spend some of tomorrow in the sunshine - maybe at
the seaside, but I am not expecting there to be
any useful trains for that tomorrow !
Friday
6th May 2016
08:07
BST
Yesterday was nice. It was dry, bright, and
mostly sunny. The temperature was at least the 19°
C promised to us. Once the morning chill had gone
it was definitely shirt sleeve weather. Today was
supposed to start at 10° C, but I only saw 8° C on
my thermometer. That wasn't quite high enough for
shirtsleeves, but it wasn't far off. Today is
forecast to be dry and bright, but there will be
much less direct sunshine that yesterday. Thin
high clouds will make for hazy sunshine for a lot
of today, but the temperature is forecast to be
higher than yesterday - maybe only a degree or so,
but every degree is welcome. It gets better
tomorrow. Apparently there is a small chance of a
shower after dark, but most of the day should
feature a mix of hazy and bright sunshine, and the
temperature could hit 23° C. Sunday could hit 25
or even 26° C !
I continue to mend. I coughed less, and had
to blow my nose less yesterday. By the afternoon,
and then into the evening, there were long periods
of time when I felt almost normal - for my current
state of fitness. I expect the beer helped a lot,
but I did feel less unfit than recently last
night. I felt creaky and stiff when I first left
work, but I seemed to slowly improve as I made my
way to the pub, and then, after three and a half
pints of beer, going home seemed almost
effortless.
I got to the pub by taking my normal train
from Earlsfield station, but I changed at Clapham
Junction to a Victoria bound train. At Victoria
station I caught an Orpington bound train that
took me, after 5 or 6 other stations, to
Shortlands station - which is adjacent to The
Shortlands Tavern. I think it was a better route
than the one I have used in the past - London
Overground service from Clapham Junction to
Denmark Hill, and then the Sevenoaks service as
far as Shortlands. That route may be ever so
slightly quicker, but the trains are crowded. The
train to Victoria was almost empty last night, and
the train from Victoria still had a few seats free
with no one standing.
This beer seemed so nice that I ended up
drinking three pints of it. I finished the evening
with a half pint of Maple Mild, and that was very
nice too, although I suspect it was probably a bit
too sugary for me (particularly while I am trying
to reduce my blood glucose). I left the pub in
time to catch the 7:02 train back to Catford. It
seemed like a pleasant journey with it being
bright and warm, and being slightly drunk.
I didn't dare check my blood glucose level
when I got home last night. After the beer it was
most likely higher than I care to know about. I
concentrated on getting my dinner ready. I 90%
pre-cooked it the night before so both dishes just
needed 10 minute each in my mini oven. Part one
was assorted grilled vegetables, and it was nice,
and probably sort of healthy. Part two was
something a little extra special - grilled
mushrooms with garlic and cheddar. It was three
big mushrooms, each about three inches wide before
cooking, smeared with garlic paste, lightly
drizzled with olive oil, and cooked until almost
ready. Then, if mushrooms have any healthy
attributes, I ruined them all by putting some
large chunks of mature cheddar into the upturned
cups before giving them another 5 minutes in the
oven. They turned out to be really delicious, and
I must make them more often, but I ought to be
careful about that cheese !
I felt too tired and drunk (or hungover) to
start any photo editing last night. So I went to
bed early, and slept wonderfully until 2am. I woke
up primarily to have a pee, but it seemed like my
cold was going to have some revenge on me for
almost killing it off. My throat was tickly, and I
kept coughing. Worse than that was that everytime
I laid down one nostril or the other would
instantly fill with mucus that was draining out of
somewhere (the 5th dimension maybe ?). My nose
would feel perfectly clear until I laid down, and
then suddenly I am almost blowing bubbles - yuck
! It took a good hour, and maybe even 90
minutes before I could get back to sleep, and even
then I didn't manage to stay deeply asleep for an
hour or so. It was only about 15 minutes before my
alarm woke me up that I seemed to have got the
hang of sleeping properly again.
Once I got up I felt quite good - not to be
confused with really good ! Certainly good enough
to do something I haven't done for ages - washing
my hair before going to work. Although it was more
because of the mild(er) morning. I didn't
seem to notice any particular positive aspects
about how I felt as I came to work, but at the
same time I didn't feel any discomforts either. I
guess I was feeling fairly neutral, and that's
probably all I can hope for most of the time.
Maybe if I am lucky I will feel extra good
in some mysterious way on my way home after work.
I took two pictures on my way into work this
morning. The top one is easier to explain. These
two elephants, with castles on their backs, adorn
a building next to Vauxhall station. They
sometimes confuse people into thinking that the
station is named after them - Elephant And Castle
- but that is several miles away. There is a good
and logical explanation about what they represent,
and why they are there. I think the building they
were on was once a pub, and that might be the
reason why they are there, but I haven't done my
research - I'll leave that to you.
It is a lot harder to explain this picture -
partly because it is not very good - it was taken
through a moving train window - and partly because
it is framed badly. It is supposed to show the
aftermath of the fire at Vauxhall station
yesterday morning. At the back of the photo, to
the left, is a brick wall that is part of the
viaduct that the trains run on. Just before
halfway across the picture that brick wall gives
way to grey panels. They are on the edge of a
bridge that goes under the railway at a very acute
angle. In front of those and the wall is platform
1 and 2. The part of the platform that is above
the bridge is supported by timber. The same should
be true of the ends of platforms 3 and 4, but all
that is left this morning is some charred timbers,
and although it is hard to see on the far right of
the picture, platforms 3 and 4 end on a sharp
diagonal. One curious thing that is even hard to
see on the full sized version of this picture, is
what seems to be a thin trickle of smoke rising
from some charred wood. Hopefully it is just some
sort of illusion or they will be closing the
railway again until they are sure the very last
spark of the fire is out.
There are two things I want to do tonight,
but I am not sure how important they are. I think
I'd like to wash some shirts and get them drying
so I can wash some bedding tomorrow. Washing those
shirts won't take up much time, but it would still
cut into the time available to edit the photos of
Led Z that I took on Monday. I was hoping to get
them all done by tonight, and maybe even posted on
Flickr. Maybe I'll do one thing or the other, or
both ! The latter seems the best idea, but
ultimately it will be governed on just how I feel.
Thursday
5th May 2016
08:27
BST
The best part of spring has arrived - the
bit that feels like a rehearsal for summer instead
on an encore of winter ! Yesterday was dry, bright
and warm. Loads of sunshine, plus no more than the
lightest of breezes took the temperature up to 18°
C by my reckoning. For the first time it actually
felt slightly warm when I left work to go home.
Today is forecast to be almost identical to
yesterday, but with a few less periods of only
hazy sunshine. The temperature is actually
forecast to hit 19° C, and maybe it will go a
little higher like it did yesterday. Tomorrow
could see 21° C, but it will be mostly overcast.
Saturday should see a bit more sunshine, and
Sunday is currently forecast to be very sunny with
a rather glorious top temperature of 24° C.
Suddenly life becomes a bit more interesting !
My weird cold got worse and better
yesterday. I mostly felt better, but I seemed to
have a very tickly cough in the morning. It was
still there, but much less bothersome in the
afternoon, and then hardly bothersome at all until
I lay down in bed at bedtime. My nose was still
stuffy in the morning, but at least I seemed not
to blow out thick green slime every five minutes.
At some point in the afternoon, and from then
onwards, it seemed much better. I still had a very
mild sore throat through much of yesterday, and I
can still just detect it this morning.
On my way home from work I went into Tesco
to buy some olive oil plus some courgettes and
herbs. While I was there I also bought a couple of
bottles of Diet Coke. It was probably the smallest
shop I've done in there in ages. My dinner didn't
feature anything I bought yesterday, but it will
tonight. Last night's dinner was another three
part dinner. I started off with salad with a few
chunks of cheddar cheese in it, and no dressing at
all. Parts 2 and 3 were very similar to each
other. Bother were grilled mixed vegetables, but
with a few small variations in the choice of
vegetables. Both were nice, but I might have
overdone the rosemary in one of them.
I still wonder about this grilled vegetable
experiment. I'm not sure if I am losing any weight
by eating it, but it does seem to be good for my
blood glucose level. Last night it started out
lower than the night before, but still above the
maximum recommended level. It is of course
impossible, but a couple of hours after eating the
level had dropped into the "safety zone" (although
still towards the top end of it). It seems to be
taking a while to throw off the excesses I managed
while feeling particularly ill last week -
particularly on days when I wasn't at work and all
discipline had failed !
After eating I settled down to do some photo
editing. I have now completed a set of photos of
Vince Lightning And The Thunderboltz, as taken at
Petts Wood on the May Day bank holiday. I think
what I ought to do is to upload each set of
pictures as a separate album to Flickr, and then
group the albums together, but at the moment I
have mingled the two sets of pictures into what
may well turn out to be just one big album. I can
unmingle them if I decide to do it properly later,
but as yet I haven't uploaded anything. I'll add a
link when I do.
I ended up in bed a little late at
9.30pm....although I do wonder if I still do need
to go to bed at 9pm now there is much more
daylight to modulate my circadian rhythms (or
something like that). When I first got into bed I
was coughing a lot, and my nose felt stuffy again.
It seemed like I would never fall asleep, but I
did, and I think I did it really quite quickly
without realising it. I seemed to sleep well until
almost 1am when I woke up needing to go to the
toilet. I was probably awake for at least 30
minutes, but once I fell asleep again I think I
slept solidly until just before my alarm was due
to sound.
This morning it only took about 5 minutes to
get my nose clear of unpleasantness, and since
then it has been reasonably well behaved. The
tickly cough that spoiled yesterday morning now
seems to be back since getting to work, but
doesn't seem quite as bad as yesterday. The rest
of me seems mostly OK, except for my chest. I
don't seem to be experiencing any specific pain
from my misaligned ribs, shredded ligaments, and
strained muscles, but I am still getting a good
selection of internal pops and clicks, grates and
groans from it when making certain moves. Whether
that is the underlying cause of a mild muscular
ache that makes me feel slightly asthmatic, or
whether some mild asthmaticism is making my chest
feel like I've been breathing too hard is a
mystery. It doesn't feel dangerous, and it only
takes the edge off my top speed, but it is still
an annoyance. I guess it is lucky that overall I
didn't feel too bad this morning because I had an
extended journey into work.
I arrived at Waterloo in time to
get on the 06:57 train even though it was slightly
past 06:57. I sat on the train and waited and
waited. It was obvious that something had
happened, and it turned out that the end of
platforms 3 and 4 at Vauxhall station had caught
fire during the night. From what I saw when I
eventually went through Vauxhall station, there
wasn't a great deal of damage, but they had to
turn off the power, and keep trains off the
adjacent tracks while the fire brigade sprayed
water everywhere, and caused general mayhem.
Meanwhile I waited patiently on the 06:57
train and watched the 07:03 train pull out of the
station almost on time. While this was happening
one of the platform staff boarded the train to use
the P.A. to say that the train had no
driver, and no guard, and was going nowhere. So it
seemed pointless sitting on the train.
At that time most of the other platforms
were empty, and the one other train standing at a
platform had no destination shown for it. After a
very long wait it was announced that the 07:09
train would depart from platform 1. It hadn't
actually arrived at that point, but we all went
and waited for it. I guess it arrived at about
07:25. Having boarded it, and been assured it
would be the first service to leave, we watched
the 07:12 train depart from platform 3 first - at
about 07:30. Eventually we did depart some 27
minutes late, and nearly 40 minutes after I
arrived at the station. It was definitely annoying
to not be on the 07:03 train when it departed
almost on time, and the long wait after that was
annoying too, but it was probably a good thing
that I wasn't on the train that left before us
when we eventually departed. That train that
sneaked in ahead of us was probably packed solid.
The train I got was almost full, but still had a
few seats left, and was far more comfortable to
travel in.
It's Thursday, and boozing night again.
Tonight's boozer is The Shortlands Tavern by
Shortlands Station. On previous visits there I
have gone via Denmark Hill by using the London
Overground from Clapham Junction, and then a
Thameslink train that stops at every single bloody
station all the way to Shortlands. Today I am
going to investigate an alternative route via
Victoria station. It may be that I will end up
getting a fast train to Bromley South station, and
then doubling back on a slow train to Shortlands,
but at least it is only one stop. I could end up
in the pub rather early, and that means I'll end
up drinking more than I would prefer, but at least
it seems that my blood glucose level recovers very
quickly from beer.
Wednesday
4th May 2016
08:01 BST
It was a lovely sunny day yesterday,
although it did become slightly overcast around
5pm. I'm not sure what that raised the temperature
to, but I don't think it was any higher than the
forecast 15° C...although on reflection it might
have been a little higher. It didn't feel warm,
but it was certainly comfortable in just
shirtsleeves. The sky was a beautiful clear blue,
and the temperature had fallen to 6 or 7° C this
morning. (Curiously it was the lower thermometer
that gave the higher reading - it's usually
the other way round). The last forecast I saw said
that unlike yesterday, the sky should stay clear,
and the sun will shine right up to sun set.
Unfortunately the forecast still sells us short
regarding the temperature - maybe just 16° C. We
seem to have some very settled weather for the
moment, and the trend is for more dry sunny days
with the temperature slowly rising. The optimists
are talking about 25° C this coming weekend !
I could always wish to feel a lot better,
but I felt almost normal at work yesterday. I
still had to clear out my nose every now and then,
and occasionally I would have a good cough, but
the significant thing was that I didn't actually
feel ill. I even found enough energy to run up the
escalator at Waterloo station - and when I say run
I really mean walk fairly fast - which is still a
lot faster than standing still and letting the
escalator do all the work.
When I got home I dared to check my blood
glucose level, and after a week of feeling ill, and
after the long bank holiday weekend with all the
eating opportunities they provided, my blood
glucose level was predictably high. That probably
strengthened my resolve to not get tempted when I
went to Aldi to get some shopping in. I was still
tempted to buy one product that I probably should
not have bought. It was a soft cheese that had
somehow been rolled like a Swiss roll with a
paprika filling, and then the whole thing rolled
in herbs. It was very nice, but maybe not nice
enough to form an addiction. I doubt I'll be
buying any more of it.
Nearly everything else I bought was
vegetables. I am taking a bit of a gamble because
they were not leafy vegetables which tend to be
low in everthing except fibre. The vegetable I
bought are for my latest fad - grilled vegetables
- very tasty, and easy to prepare and cook. I
bought leeks, an aubergine, tomatoes, peppers,
chillies, mushrooms, onion and some fresh rosemary
for added flavour. The only thing I forgot to buy,
mainly because I didn't realise I was about to run
out of it, was olive oil.
I also bought three ready made "Mediteranean
style" salads, and two of them formed two thirds
of my dinner. The first with a small tin of pink
salmon, and the second with a couple of pickled
eggs. The latter was a mistake when I opened a jar
of bottled eggs instead of pickled onions (I was
distracted by watching a cat outside the kitchen
window). Having opened the pickled eggs I thought
I may as well use a couple. The third and final
part of my dinner was some grilled vegetables with
a few bits of mature cheddar sprinkled on them.
That sounds like a big dinner, and it
probably was, but the majority of it was fairly
innocent, high fibre stuff. This all promotes good
health, or so we are told. If it is true it is a
bonus, and if not it is still a tasty way of
eating. I guess I must have made a few correct
choices because a couple of hours (maybe almost
three) my blood glucose level had actually fallen
a whole point. It was still above the magical 7,
but only just, and maybe not too terrible after
eating.
One very peculiar thing is that it wasn't
long after eating that I developed a very sore
throat - so sore it made swallowing painful. The
most obvious thing is that it was another facet of
the cold I've had, but it came on so fast that it
did cross my mind that it could have been some
sort of allergic reaction, although I can't
imagine what it was I was exposed to to bring on
such a reaction. I tried gargling with whisky, and
that might have made a very small improvement, but
it was still very sore when I went to sleep.
I didn't seem to feel the need to go to bad
that early last night, and it was about 9.30pm
when I turned out the light. Whatever had flared
up in my throat also seemed to make me feel too
warm in bed. I spent the first couple of hours of
sleep uncovered. I woke from that feeling cooler.
That was not surprising because it seems I must
have been sweating profusely prior to waking up.
My pillow and other bits of the bed were quite
damp. After re-arranging myself, and the bedding,
so I could lie in the dry areas, I fell asleep
again quite quickly. I seemed to sleep well after
that.
This morning my throat is just detectably
sore, but it is generally ignorable. It only took
half as long to deflate my head by blowing out
less bucket loads of nasal mucus than yesterday,
or the days before. That is an improvement ! By
the time I left to come to work I was feeling
fairly OK. Even my walking seemed to be almost
back to normal. It was all looking very positive
until about half an hour ago when my nose seemed
to start running again, my throat became
very tickly, and I started coughing again. In the
last 5 minutes this seems to have stopped again !
I need some more olive oil, and I'll have to
get it on my way home from work. During the day,
or more likely on the spur of the moment, I will
decide whether to get it from Tesco, or from the
Turkish supermarket near to Catford Bridge
station. Both places have their pros and cons, and
all things being equal, it would be most logical
to go to the closest place. That would be the
Turkish supermarket. I don't actually need the
olive oil for tonight because I prepared, and half
cooked two trays of grilled vegetables last night,
but it would be handy to pre-prepare some more for
tomorrow night, and for that I will need the oil.
Apart from eating and cooking, I have no
definite plans for tonight, but I rather expect
I'll end up editing photos that I took at Petts
Wood on Monday. I prepared one album ready for
upload to Flickr last night, and tonight I expect
I'll be doing the same. Last night's selection was
of people and general views around the place. My
next selection will be of Vince Lightning And The
Thunderboltz. The one after that will be Led Z,
and then finally, if I can be bothered, a few
other musicians on the big stage.
Are we suffering a plague of magpies in Catford
? I don't think I have ever seen so many in one
place before. There are 13 of them perched up on
the edge of one of the new "Catford Green"
buildings. A few seconds after taking this snap
they started dispersing into a couple of nearby
trees.
Tuesday
3rd May 2016
07:59
BST
It seems incredible, and maybe it is too
good to be true, but the picture on the left shows
what my outdoor thermometer was saying just before
1pm yesterday. (It's the bottom figure ringed in
red). Perhaps it was just me, but it didn't feel
like it was 21° C when I went out, and yet I can't
account for any source of heat that might have
skewed the reading. While it didn't feel warm, it
also didn't feel cold. If anything it felt sort of
neutral, and maybe that is what 21° C feels like,
and it's been such a long time since it was last
that high that I have forgotten what it felt like.
There is one logical explanation, and that
is that it was rather overcast for a lot of the
time, and that made it feel cooler than it was.
Then again there were some sunny intervals, and
there was also some rain too ! It was a mostly
mild night, but the temperature had fallen to 6° C
by day break this morning. The sun rose on a clear
sky, and the sky is forecast to stay clear until
later this afternoon. All that sunshine should
warm things up a bit, but only up to a
disappointing 15° C. To make matters worse, the
forecast has changed again and the sunshine is now
only forecast to last until midday. From then on
it will be a bit overcast, but it is supposed to
stay dry. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be
sunny all day long, but even that is not supposed
to lift the temperature any higher than 16° C -
which is a bit disappointing. At the moment it is
looking like we may have to wait until Saturday
for the temperature to go up beyond 20° C,
and apparently it will manage that without the aid
of much, if any, sunshine !
I started yesterday not feeling that
wonderful, and I did have doubts about going out
in the afternoon, but as has happened many times
in the past, I felt much better once I got out.
Sometimes I wonder if I ever really know how I
feel. It seemed like it is was almost a struggle
to walk to Catford station (not Catford Bridge
station), and I arrived there feeling rather
shagged out, but I also arrived there nearly 8
minutes early. With hindsight it seems obvious
that I was walking far faster than I thought I
was, or could. I thought at the speed I seemed to
be going I would miss the train - not be 8 minutes
early !
My destination was the Petts Wood May Fayre
- but only the music stage ! The musical
entertainment ranged from terrible to wonderful.
The "terrible" was only on account of the type of
music being performed. The wonderful were the
final band on the big stage. They were called Led
Z, and as their name rather strongly suggests,
they are a Led Zepplin tribute band - and they do
it really well. That is not to say they didn't
have their faults, and the biggest fault was the
beard that the singer wore. It reminded me more of
a black or hispanic gang style beard than anything
Robert
Plant ever wore. In fact I can't seem to
picture Robert Plant with a beard. The tragedy of
the beard is that the singer had gone to great
lengths to dress like Robert Plant (in the heyday
of Led Zepplin). He had the long hair (but not
permed) and even the slim physique of Robert
Plant.
One other criticism of the singer is that
his voice sounded a bit "thin", but I think a fair
amount of the blame for that can be laid on the
man driving the stage mixer. A little bit of
bottom end lift might have turned that meow into a
growl (or something like that). One final
criticism is that the guitarist could have done
with a guitar tuner so he wouldn't have had to
tune up his second guitar "live" on stage (most
modern guitar tuners listen to the strings as they
vibrate the machine head rather than needing an
electronic feed from the pickups). I think all
these criticisms are fair, but shouldn't be taken
as any reason to think it wasn't a cracking
experience ! I really enjoyed it - even when it
rained !
I took loads of pictures of Led Z, Vince And
The Thunderboltz, and a few others, on my big
Canon DSLR camera, but I put it away when the rain
started. I took the snap above with my little
pocket sized Nikon snapper, and to be honest, that
was probably all I really needed while the stage
was lit by normal daylight. However, I think I
managed to take a few really good pictures in
amongst many mediocre pictures, but it might take
another evening or two until I've been through
them, and prepared them for upload. I think that
on this occasion I will try to go for quality
instead of quantity. It is about time I stopped
uploading just any old picture just because it is
mostly in focus. Sooner or later I will link to an
album (or two) of photos from yesterday on my
Flickr pages.
Petts Wood is cursed in a very specific way.
It's usually easy to get to, but not easy to come
home from. Now I will admit there is a fairly
frequent bus service that goes to Catford, but it
goes hatefully slow, and I will do anything to
avoid it. To get to Petts Wood I caught a train
from Catford to Bromley South station where, after
an acceptable 9 minute wait, I changed to a train
to Petts Wood. To get home I had three choices of
destination from Petts Wood station. I could have
retraced my journey and gone back to Bromley South
and wait a totally unnaceptable 25 minutes for a
train back to Catford. I could have taken a
slightly fast train to Waterloo East where I could
wait 25 minutes for a fast train back to Catford
Bridge. I could have taken a train to Lewisham
where it would only be a 20 minute wait for a
train to Catford Bridge. There was also the
possibility of a fairly short wait for a bus back
to Catford from Lewisham. What I actually did was
to take the train as far as Grove Park station
where by pure luck I had a zero second wait for a
bus to Catford. I think that route got me home
faster than any other.
I didn't do any shopping over the long bank
holiday weekend, and I didn't have any food at
home that tickled my fancy (I had plenty of stuff
that didn't), so I went to the chip shop and
bought some fish - but no chips ! It was about the
closest I could get to a meal with the merest hint
of healthiness about it - and it was very nice !
Having eaten, I went up to my PC and started
copying all the photos I had taken to my PC. I had
a quick look at a few samples, and I think there
are some good ones amongst them. If I hadn't been
still suffering the after effects (or maybe direct
effects) of the rather long lasting common cold
that I had, I might have started some photo
editing, but I was feeling too drained for that. I
don't know what time I went to bed, but I think it
was a bit earlier than usual.
I woke up several times in the night, but I
think I probably had a reasonable night's sleep. I
still woke up feeling pretty crappy though. It
seemed to take a good half hour before I had
cleared my nose of sticky mucus, and even then it
wasn't completely cleared. Maybe there was one
positive thing, and that was that I didn't seem to
be coughing so much this morning. I think it is
possible that I am almost over that bloody cold
that started over a week ago now (maybe 9 days
ago). Despite some evidence to the contrary I do
feel sort of good this morning. Maybe it is just
the weather. I would be a lot happier if my legs
regained their stamina. They seemed to tire quite
quickly as I walked from the station to work this
morning. With some good weather apparently on the
horizon, I am going to need those legs for some
serious walking soon - I hope.
I am also hoping that my legs will be in
good working order tonight because I want to go
straight out again after getting home so I can get
some shopping in from Aldi. Apart from shopping,
and eating, my only task for tonight will be photo
editing followed by an early night (probably).
I'm not sure if the video below will play
correctly because I didn't optimise it for my low
upload bandwidth, but fingers crossed........It is
Led Z playing "Ramble On" at the Petts Wood May
Fayre yesterday.
Monday
2nd May 2016
08:32 BST
I'm sure yesterday turned out better than
I was expecting. It was predominantly sunny, and
at one point I am sure my thermometer said it
was 17° C. It seemed like it should have been
for a May day. Today will not be quite as good.
It will still be very mild, but the forecast
doesn't seem to show any sunshine at all today.
Sorry, I lied. I've just rechecked and the sun
might peep out from behind the clouds at 2pm,
and then again at 8pm, just as it is setting.
Prior to that last hoorah of sunshine (if it
happens) there will be a few hours of rain
starting with a light shower at 4pm, and getting
progressively heavier. It is currently supposed
to be just 11° C, but I reckon it is at least
13° C going on 14° C. The forecast reckons the
best we can hope for is 15° C, but it seems like
that will be exceeded. The weather seems to be
improving as the week progresses. Look at
Thursday !
Of course this is how the think it will be.
The reality could be completely different.
I felt both good
and bad yesterday. My nose wasn't dripping,
and I could go long periods without having
to clear it, but it was still slowly filling
with the nastiest thick gooey pale
yellow/green mucus. I guess that when I am
asleep some of that is slipping down my
windpipe and has to be coughed up later
because I still had an intermittent throaty
cough. Sometimes I had a bit of a headache,
and sometimes my neck felt stiff and
painful. The latter was mostly after laying
down, and can be blamed on the pillows on my
bed. They are a good height and softness for
sleeping (at least I think they are), but
seem uncomfortable when just laying down
reading.
Finally, my chest has been hurting. It
was mostly on account of the strain of a
good powerful cough, or the effort needed
for a really long powerful nose blow, but
being busy in the way that I was being busy
wouldn't have helped ! I was quite
productive yesterday, and my biggest
achievement was hand washing an entire set
of bed clothes. First thing in the morning I
washed some shirts and pants. Then a bit
later I hand washed an undersheet and two
pillows. I dried the shirts indoors, but I
hung the sheets and pillowcases in the
garden to dry. They dried so quickly that in
the afternoon I brought them in dry, and
then washed a duvet cover. I hung the duvet
cover on the line, and although I missed the
best part of the dry, I was able to bring it
in a little before sunset, and it was 90%
dry. I hung it over the banister rail to
finish drying overnight.
I think I had plans to do some other
housework, but apart from doing all the
washing up, and dragging a damp cloth over
bits of the kitchen, I did nothing else on
that vaguest of plans - whatever they were !
I'm sure they didn't include sweeping the
path around the back of the house, and
cleaning the rear kitchen windows ! I was
tempted to do something else outside because
it was rather nice in the afternoon, but I
couldn't think of anything that wasn't hard
work, and all that hand laundry had left me
with a few aches here and there.
While I achieved more than I expected
yesterday, there were still large portions
of the day when I was just pure lazy - or at
least I assume I was because I can't account
for the time. Of course it is debatable as
to whether reading is being lazy. Many
people may say it isn't, and I think I agree
with them, although they may make it a
condition that it is study rather than
pleasure. In which case I don't think I can
agree with them. I did a fair bit of
reading, but at one point I did go out into
the wild open world beyond my front door. I
wasn't sure if the main shops would be open
on a bank holiday Sunday, but I knew the
corner shop would be. So I went there for a
bottle of Diet Coke, and I also bought not
one, but two Magnum ice cream bars. They
were delicious, but in a couple of minutes I
had ruined the last couple of weeks of
trying to lose weight, and reduce my blood
glucose.
During the evening I was deliberately
lazy. There was a gig I could have gone to
in Bromley, but I just didn't feel up to it.
I was feeling tired in sense of sleepy as
well as fatigued. So I ended up watching
some TV. I started watching when I ate my
home constructed, and almost healthy dinner.
It was grilled vegetables with nearly every
clove of a garlic bulb in with the
vegetables. I gave the whole lot a light
sprinkle of olive oil, plus some sage, but
no rosemary because I can't seem to find
any. Towards the end of the cooking I
sparingly added a sprinkle of cheese just to
add a bit extra flavour. It turned out to be
rather tasty.
If I ignore waking up far earlier than
I would have wished, I probably slept quite
well last night. I don't remember waking up
more than once or twice in the night, and in
theory I should have been feeling good this
morning, but I didn't. I felt quite rough in
several ways. My throat seemed sore at
first. That seemed the first thing to go
away, but my cough, as good as, and as
throaty as a smokers, seemed to last for a
couple of hours. It is only now, several
hours later still, that my nose is not
filling up with nasty, sticky mucus every 10
minutes. It does seem like I have some sort
of underlying infection that is not overtly
obvious, but is feeding my incredibly slow
recovery. Unfortunately I have a nasty
suspicion it something to do with my teeth
even though I have no obvious toothache,
although sometimes I do detect a little
tenderness.
Well I have showered, and washed my
hair, and I have almost finished writing. I
should now be raring to go, but I feel like
going back to bed instead. It is the
depressing effect of a very overcast sky. It
feels like the sun is going down, and bed
time approaches. Somehow I will overcome
this "fear" of an overcast sky, and overcome
how creaky and knackered I feel, and get
myself out the front door, and heading
towards Petts Wood. It is their May Fayre,
and several bands will be playing. The big
problem is that I only know the names of two
bands who will be playing, and I am unsure
when they are on. Of those two bands I only
know one - Vince Lighning And The
Thunderbolts. They are very good if you
happen to like 1950s style rockabilly.
Unfortunately I hate it ! Despite that it
could still be worth taking a few snaps of
them. The other band are called Led Z, and I
assume they are a Led Zepplin covers band. I
think I could enjoy what they do. There
should be other bands too, but I have no
idea who or when. It makes planning things a
bit tricky !
A couple of pictures taken while waiting
for my train home on Saturday night.
This was my train home. The 21:53 from
West Wickham to Charing Cross.
Sunday
1st May 2016
10:21
BST
The last couple of days tried to be like
late springs days, and maybe apart from the
temperature being a bit low, they sort of
achieved it. Both Friday and Saturday had a good
scattering of sunny periods, and on both days
the temperature probably hit 12° C - although
maybe only for a few minutes ! Yesterday showed
one big improvement over the preceding days - it
was at least 5° C at daybreak ! This morning
probably started at a similar temperature. The
latest forecast holds out some hope that the
temperature will hit 15° C after a sunny morning
and part afternoon. It seems that that the day
will become overcast after about 3pm, but it
will stay dry - unlike tomorrow ! Tomorrow is
May bank holiday, and being a typical English
bank holiday it will be cool and wet ! Things
look up later next week. 18° C, with sunshine,
is forecast for next Thursday, but of course the
forecast could be, and probably will be, totally
different come the day.
My filthy cold has been quite annoying -
mainly in how long it has lasted. The worst
aspect of it changes day by day, and on Friday
my main complaint was just how sore my nose was
getting with constant blowing ! I think there
was a big annoyance factor involved too - I was
very annoyed that I didn't seem to be making
much progress in throwing off the cold. Apart
from that I was mostly comfortable at work.
I think it was probably on my way home
from work that I came up with a devilish plan to
make myself feel good for a short while. I
decided that I would order an Indian takeaway
when I got home...and I did ! It was very nice,
and I had sufficient leftovers for a meal
yesterday. I went to bed on Friday night with a
warm glow inside - almost literally, although it
wasn't a very hot curry.
I don't recall sleeping that well even
with that warm glow in me, but maybe bits of my
sleep were better - maybe some longer intervals
between waking up coughing and spluttering. One
thing that helped was going for a short walk to
meet Aleemah at the station, and then down to
the pub for breakfast. I had warned Aleemah that
I was possibly unpleasant, and infectious
company, but she was brave enough to meet up.
It was a little later in the morning that
I realised that my nose was drying up. In fact
before Aleemah left to go home I was hardly
blowing my nose at all. Even the accompanying
cough seemed to have reduced a lot. In the
afternoon it really did feel like I was almost
over the cold. The only problem is that fighting
those filthy bacteria had left me feeling a bit
weak. I was in two minds about whether to go out
in the evening. I think it might have been
better to stay in and nurture my recovery more,
but I had made a commitment to go and take a few
snaps.
The occasion was a Chain gig with a small
difference. It was a public birthday party, with
the band, for Phaedra - Jo Corteen's newly 18
year old daughter. Unfortunately the venue was
The Swan in West Wickham. I really don't like
that pub for several reasons. For one thing it
is a shrine to Crystal Palace Football Club. I
have nothing against Crystal Palace in
particular, and my deep loathing and hatred
would be the same if it were Sheffield
Wednesday, Manchester United, Lothian
Wanderers, Tottenham Hotspurs, or indeed
any football club !
So not only is the ceiling covered in
sweaty football shirts, but you get people in
there in football type clothing. It is obvious
they are thugs and lowlifes - aren't all
football supporters ? Some of them even stink of
sporty types of deodorants and aftershaves !
Maybe I am letting my prejudices show to much
here because there are other reasons why I
dislike the pub. The layout of the pub, in
relation to where the band play, is such that it
quickly becomes crowded with all that many
people being there. That makes photography
awkward, and on the subject of photography, it
is one of those dark pubs where it is a struggle
to find enough light to take a decent picture.
One final annoyance is the times of the trains.
In theory it should be a good pub to get to by
train. There are trains going from Catford
Bridge to West Wickham station (a good 5 to 10
minutes walk from the pub) until well after the
pub has closed, but in the other direction the
trains stop a little after 11pm. At least this
is an improvement to a year or two ago when the
last train was 10:47pm. (note, gigs often go on
until midnight at The Swan).
I did manage to get a few good(ish) shots
while I was there, but I needed my biggest lens
(f1.4) and the equivalent ISO rating turned
right up to 6400. So this snap of Steve and
Chris is rather grainy (when the original image
is viewed), and with an exposure time of 1/100th
second there is still a bit of motion blur to be
seen in the original image. Even when cleaned
up, and shrunk to fit on this page it still
looks "gritty".
I arrived at the pub quite sweaty, and
that was after taking the unprecedented step of
stopping to get a bus to go the one stop up the
hill. I'm not really sure why I seemed so
sweaty, but I have a suspicion it was the bug
that gave me the cold having one last fling. It
made me feel quite unpleasant in many ways. I
ended up going home again less than an hour
after arriving. I just had time to drink a pint
of Guinness, and take a few photos of the band.
I probably should have made some effort to take
a picture or two of the birthday girl, but she
was in the middle of a crowd, and I didn't want
to try and barge my way into it.
It was sort of nice going back out into
the fresh air, but I still felt very far from
good. On my way home I bought a few pieces of
fried chicken to cheer me up. Sitting in the
warm, and eating it did make me feel a bit
better - better enough to go through the photos
I had taken, and to select about 7 that seemed
to be passable quality. Then, at some unknown
time after midnight I went to bed. I think I
must have fallen asleep very quickly because I
can't really remember anything about it.
I probably woke up coughing rather than
for any other reason last night - and towards
the morning it was quite frequent - at least it
seemed to be, but on reflection I think that in
some cases I slept for a good hour between
waking up. This morning I am still coughing a
lot more than I should be, and my nose has
reverted back to being stuff again - although it
is not actually running. I can still go for
fairly long periods before having to blow out
all sorts of unpleasant stickiness !
By one interpretation I must be feeling
well enough to have washed some shirts and pants
and stuff, but I did find it a little more
taxing than usual. As I write this I have a
sheet and a couple of pillow cases soaking, and
if I can find the energy I will be washing them
and hanging them on the line to dry in the
sunshine. It is not, and won't be particularly
warm out in the garden, but there is a light
breeze that will probably dry everything quite
quickly.
If I survive doing that laundry then I may
go on to do a bit more housework. I seem to have
a fair few bits and pieces in the sink that need
washing, and that shouldn't be too taxing. The
more I think about it the less likely is seems
to become, but I have been contemplating getting
the hoover out today ! I am also contemplating
getting some shopping today, but it might just
be a couple of bottles of Diet Coke from the
corner shop.
Of course if I were to suddenly feel an
awful lot better than I do now, or maybe how I
anticipate I'll be feeling later, I could go to
a nice early starting gig in Bromley today.
Being a Sunday, and in the middle of a bank
holiday weekend, it may not be too crowded in a
pub that is notorious for overcrowding - The
Partridge in Bromley. Apart from the tedium of a
20 minute bus ride, it is very easy to get to.
It's free entry, and with my 60+ Oyster Card it
is free transport. Apart from a bit of time
wasted travelling, I could pop in for just 5
minutes if that is all I felt like.
I arrived at Waterloo in time to
get on the 06:57 train even though it was slightly
past 06:57. I sat on the train and waited and
waited. It was obvious that something had
happened, and it turned out that the end of
platforms 3 and 4 at Vauxhall station had caught
fire during the night. From what I saw when I
eventually went through Vauxhall station, there
wasn't a great deal of damage, but they had to
turn off the power, and keep trains off the
adjacent tracks while the fire brigade sprayed
water everywhere, and caused general mayhem.
