Once again the forecast didn't match
reality. There was far less rain than forecast.
There was some light rain early in the afternoon,
but it faded away after an hour or two. That rain
was not predicted to stop until 7pm, but by then
the clouds were breaking up, and there was some
nice evening sunshine, and later still a big round
moon. Occasionally some clouds would drift across
the face of the moon, but it was visible far more
than not. I'm guessing there was some high
altitude dust that gave the moon a slightly orange
tint. The afternoon temperature was only forecast
to be 19° C, and it didn't seem to feel much
cooler by almost midnight.
Just after
midnight both the Met Office and BBC
weather forecasts were threatening
thunderstorms in the early hours of
the morning. At 3am, when I woke up to
go for a wee, it still looked
perfectly dry outside. It did finally
rain at 6 or 7am, but the rain was too
fine to see when indoors, and it was
barely wetting the road. Over a space
of a couple of hours it probably was a
bare minimum to water the garden. At
the moment the cloud cover is
complete, but the clouds are very
variable, and sometimes a thin bit
passes over and it almost seems the
sun is coming out. This might continue
all day until 7pm when the last couple
of hours of daylight might feature
sunny spells. It may be a tiny bit
warmer today. 21° C is forecast.
Tomorrow may reach 23° C, and there
may be sunny spells through a lot of
the day.
Yesterday was a day that
started sort of slowly, but gradually
built up to a grand climax in the
evening. I think it was midday before
I even bothered to have a wash, but it
was a full on bit of of a job. I
shaved, showered, and shampooed !
After that I resumed resting. I did
have an idea that I might go to
Poundland, but I just could not be
bothered. I wasn't really feeling that
good, although it was almost all in
the mind. I felt even worse when Jodie
confirmed that she definitely wanted
to go with me to Chain's gig in The
Pelton Arms (in Greenwich).
I had already decided I wanted
to get the 19:04 train to Canon Street
from Catford Bridge, and Jodie said
she would meet me on the train. I had
some doubts about this because Jodie
had been out buying beer in Brixton,
or all places, and it seemed doubtful
she would get home in time to drop off
her cans of beer, and then get the
train from Elmers End that would call
at Catford Bridge at 19:04.
Fortunately (for her) she made
it, but my worst fears were confirmed.
She had already drunk several strong
beers while in the Brixton shop, and
had decanted a can into a 500ml soft
drink bottle to drink on the train. It
was one of those often nasty fruit
sours which probably don't deserve to
be called beers. They are certainly
not ales ! It was orange in colour,
and so looked like orange juice, but
was 8.5%, and Jodie seemed to be drunk
before she started guzzling it on the
train.
When we got to Cannon Street
station we changed trains, and 10
minutes later we were heading to Maze
Hill station. There then followed one
of those very tedious walks where
Jodie wanted to stop every few minutes
to photograph building, cars, flowers
and cats. Fortunately there were no
cats because the stop would be even
longer because they would need
petting. We finally arrived at the pub
at about 10 past 8pm. It was then that
the usual confusion took place. One
source of information said the gig
started at 8pm, and another said
8.30pm. Chris, from the band, said
9pm. At that rate we would only have
time to watch the band for an hour
before heading back to the station.
I took a large selection of
pictures last night, and some video. I
have "processed" one video, and just
the one picture above. This picture,
like another dozen or so were taken
with the wrong white balance. I think
it was set to fluorescent light
instead of flash, and it looked very
cold until I tweaked it. It still
doesn't look quite right. To make
matters worse, this might have been on
of the few pictures I took using just
the stage lightning with no flash. I
decided the view was just too dim for
that, but I probably could have
managed it if pushed.
If it
will play in your web
browser, and I know it
doesn't in some, here's
Chain covering Stevie Nick's
"Edge Of Seventeen" with Jo
Corteen on vocals, Chris
Mayer on electric guitar,
Steve Pitt on bass, and John
Sutcliffe on drums.
It was a little before 10pm
when I sent Jodie for a wee before
we headed back to the station. One
thing about The Pelton Arms is
that it is a great pub in all ways
except one, and that one thing it
fails with five black stars - the
state of it's toilets. Jodie says
the ladies is pretty grim. I know
that the Gents is both OK-ish and
really disgusting. The latter is
the one single cubicle. I wanted
to use it, but the floor was
swimming in water, or other
unpleasant liquids, and it looked
as if the one toilet roll had
fallen into it. I had only drunk
two pints of Guinness, and decided
I could wait until I got home.
Meanwhile, Jodie had drunk
two double Jack and Diet Cokes,
and was really pissed. I expected
a lot of trouble getting her to
the station, but we actually made
in less time than it took to walk
to the pub. Jodie admitted that
she was concentrating so hard at
looking at where he feet was going
she was not aware of any
distractions. We got to the
station with 4 or 5 minutes to
spare to catch a Thameslink train.
The train we were to get was still
10 minutes away, and so we got on
the Thameslink train to London
Bridge.
Once on the Thameslink
train I did a quick check of the
train times, and as I was hoping,
it was the same 3 minute
connection that I had used last
Wednesday when I checked the route
out. I then had to convince Jodie
that we could easily change from
platform 5 to platform 2 to catch
the next Hayes train. She was very
dubious, but somehow she found the
energy, or whatever, to follow me,
and we arrived on platform 2 just
as our train was pulling in. We
even had 30 seconds spare to walk
to the front half on the train.
From London Bridge Jodie
was on auto-pilot. She assured me
she had never fallen asleep on the
train, and missed getting off at
Elmers End where she lives no
matter how "bladdered" she was -
and she was very "bladdered" ! I
left her on the train when I got
off at Catford Bridge, and I
assume she got home safely.
Somehow I seemed to have a fair
bit of energy last night. I was
probably just showing off when I
ran up the escalator again at
London Bridge, but I wasn't
showing off when I seemed to be
able to keep a good speed going as
I walked home.
I took one more picture
before I went indoors. It was of
the moon. It looked like a full
moon, but maybe that was still a
few hours away, or passed. The
moon definitely had a pale orange
colour. This was probably dust in
the upper atmosphere. Once indoors
I started to cook my supper. It
was probably not really needed,
and maybe I wouldn't have had
supper if it hadn't featured in my
planning/fantasies much earlier in
the day. It was to be a couple of
southern fried flavour square fish
burger patties (ie no buns or
other stuff involved). I drowned
them in mayonnaise. It seemed like
a good idea at the time, but it
spoiled them.
While the fish was cooking
in the mini oven/grill I
downloaded the video on my phone,
and the pictures from my camera to
my PC, and started the simple
editing on the video. I didn't do
any photo editing, apart from the
one photo of Jo above, I will be
doing the photo selection and
editing sometime today. The
last thing I did was to check the
weather forecast. At that point it
was gone midnight, and it was
interesting to see that both the
Met Office and BBC were predicting
thunderstorms in the early hours.
As I wrote above, I am pretty
certain it didn't even rain until
maybe around 6am, and that was
little more than some drizzle.
My sleep was yet another
case of good and bad. The good was
good, and the bad was that having
gone to bed, and fallen asleep 2
to 4 hours later than usual, my
stupid brain insisted that I
should get up at the usual time.
It felt, and still feel like
another hour or three of sleep
would be really good. After having
a very late supper instead of
dinner at dinner time, my blood
glucose reading is distorted
compared to my regular schedule.
It is no wonder it is a rather
high 9.2mmol/l, although on
reflection that is not far off
many readings in the last week.
Maybe I am not doing so bad after
all.
Despite that late supper I
felt like I was very hungry this
morning, but as usual I was
misreading the signals. I cooked
myself a pile of bacon for a
special Sunday morning breakfast,
and it was very nice. The trouble
is that I was probably not hungry,
and those rumblings and other
feelings in my gut were actually
more like a mild stomach upset.
When I first got up it was almost
like I was constipated, but half
an hour later everything seemed
normal. Soon after eating the
bacon I became aware another visit
to the toilet was needed, and I
made a surprisingly large deposit.
Ten minutes later I was back for
what I think was the grand
finalé. At least I hope it
was. I feel rather better for it,
but I still look forward to an
enhanced snooze before the morning
is over.
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