07:57 BST

  The first half of yesterday was nice. There were many sunny spells, and from a mild start it ended up feeling quite warm - around 18° C. The only trouble was that as 4pm approached the sky was getting darker, and it was starting to feel almost muggy. It seemed to have all the hallmarks of an approaching thunderstorm. A check of the weather forecast, to see the latest revision, did show heavy rain for 4pm, and light rain for 5pm. It was at approximately 3.30pm when the rain started, and it was very light rain. It only lasted 15 minutes, and then the clouds thinned, and there were a few more sunny spells. The temperature started to drop, but it was still 12° C at 11pm.

  

  The sun is still a bit low in the sky at the moment, and the sunshine seems a bit hazy, but it has been bright outside for the last hour. The latest revision to the forecast says that 11am will now feature dark clouds, and there will be rain at midday, and 1pm. After that it should brighten up a bit, and there could be a sunny spell or two at 3pm. There is a big chance that reality may turn out very different to this, but the temperature will probably turn out right. It is 11° C, and it should peak at 17° C this afternoon. After another very mild night tomorrow could start misty - I never expected that as I checked the forecast ! There could be three hours of sunny spells around midday, and the temperature is expected to peak at 18° C.

  Yesterday ended up as quite a busy day. It started with more hand powered laundry. I washed a small bath towel, and a hand towel. The bath towel was not actually dirty after only being used twice, but it had a different sort of stinkiness. The last time it had been washed I used a really nasty fabric conditioner. It didn't smell nice, and left a sort of chalky sensation on anything I used it one. I eventually poured the rest down the drain.

  After using that bath towel twice I decided it just had to washed again to get rid of that horrible fabric conditioner. At the same time I washed a hand towel that I had been using in the bathroom for a week or so. My main complaint about the hand towel was that it was very new, and still shedding some fluff. Hopefully yesterday's wash will reduce or eliminate that. I hung both towels on the line to dry, and apart from the bottom end of the bigger bath towel, they were dry when I decided to bring them in just before the first, and only light sprinkle of rain.

  The big event yesterday was that I finally managed to make it to Dartford to tick off another station on my quest to visit the stations at the limits of my Freedom Pass that I could travel to for free. It all went smoothly, and I also visited Peckham Rye station. That was well inside the Freedom Pass area, but when I saw there was a train from Dartford that would take me there, I had reasons to take that train, and go there.
  Of course it was also a train spotting event too ! This was the train I caught from Catford Bridge to Lewisham where I changed to a train to Dartford. A class 465 train is as common as muck around these parts, but a class 465/9, with first class accommodation used to be a rarity through Catford Bridge. I'm guessing that Southeastern have got a lot of them out of long term storage so that they can run 10 car, allegedly covid proof (sort of) trains even at quiet times. Many of them look rather grubby after standing in some outside siding for ages.
  I was surprised to see the outside of Dartford station when I got there. What was probably a nice looking building in traditional solid railway architectural style has been replaced by the very modern, probably award winning design. The awards were possibly along the lines of the most illegal drugs inspired architecture of the year...or something. I guess it is functional, but it looks more like a supermarket than a railway station.
  I knew it was there, but I completely forgot to look for this plaque commemorating the meeting of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that would be the first step in the making of The Rolling Stones. Fortunately it is very obvious when you come up the stairs, and out onto platforms 1 & 2, and having seen it, I had to take a snap of it.

 
  I also noticed these plaques on the perimeter fence and viewed across the tracks of platform 1. I thought they were rather nice. When looking through other pictures I had taken I think I saw some other plaques like these that I didn't see at the time. I think I will need to visit Dartford again, and do a better exploration of it. One thing of note is that the plaque in the worst condition is of the Networker Express. They were a bit uncared for in their life around the south east. After a few years they were all sent to work northbound services from Euston station (and other northern routes).
  As I said in the preamble above, I noticed a train that would take me directly from Dartford to Peckham Rye station (it's final destination would be Victoria). I particularly wanted to visit Peckham Rye to see if Southern were still running class 455 trains through there. I was not disappointed. I was there at just the right time to see two of them - one going in each direction. I never used to like these trains, but quite a few years ago (10 or more, maybe) they were refreshed, and high back seats fitted, and they took pains to line them up with the windows. I quite like them now. With just one or two exceptions over the course of about 8 years, they were the trains I would get to and from Waterloo when commuting to Earlsfield.

  I had a stroke of luck when I had finished at Peckham Rye. I didn't know, and felt I didn't have time to check, the time of the next train from there back to Catford. Transferring from platforms 1 & 2 to platform 4 means going up and down stairs, and I did my best to rush, but I couldn't achieve any special speed. All that going up and down was making my knees ache a bit, but I did manage to put on a small tiny spurt of speed as I neared the top of the stairs up to platform 4. I had heard a train pull in, and I was able to get to the top of the stairs, take two paces, and get straight onto the train through the already open doors. That saved a half hour wait !
  Once I got back to Catford I walked back home via Catford Bridge station, and once again my timing, purely by luck, was perfect to take a couple more snaps of trains including 376023 in the picture above. It is not a great train, and in fact I don't care much for class 376 trains - they are very spartan inside with very hard seats - but 376023 was not in my great spreadsheet catalogue of all the trains I have photographed. Just a minute or two before this train arrived there had been an arrival on the other platform, but that train was already recorded in my great spreadsheet !

  If I made one mistake on this outing it was to go home via the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. I didn't buy much there - it was mostly more Polish instant noodles - but I did buy a few things it was unwise to buy. One thing was a pot of aubergine "salad". It was "interesting" but I don't think I'll be buying another, and I have suspicions about it's sugar content. I definitely know that the little pot of coleslaw I bought had a high sugar content.

  I also bought two small tins of Romanian smoked bacon and big beans. I really like those, and as far as I can see they have very little sugar in them, and most definitely far, far less than the really sort of nasty Heinz equivalent. I had one of the two tins for a late lunch. My whole outing had only taken about 2 and half hours, but I felt very hungry when I got home. It would lead me to eating all sorts of stuff that would have bad consequences.

  One pleasant, but sad diversion I had late in the afternoon was a message from Angela saying that she would taking today off sick, and we wouldn't be able to meet for lunch. Last Wednesday Angela was complaining about what she thought was a pinched nerve in her neck. I saw her wince quite a few times. After we had exchanged a few text messages I decided to phone Angela and see if I could cheer her up a bit. She told me of a 3 hour wait to see a doctor at The Beckenham Beacon walk in clinic, and how the diagnosis was that it was not a trapped nerve. All he could offer was some strong painkillers. We talked for about 10 or 15 minutes, and Angela thanked me for calling her, and it seems she did feel less miserable about the pain.

  The most guilty thing I ate during, and beyond the afternoon would have been the big bag of baked foam potato shapes flavoured with cream cheese and chives (or so the packet claimed).  Over the course of the rest of the afternoon, and beyond dinner time I would use those to scoop up a small pack of Boursin herb and garlic cream cheese, and the little pot of coleslaw. I finally had a late dinner of jumbo fish fingers liberally doused with salt and vinegar plus low sugar tomato ketchup.

  There were two episodes of QI I could have watched on Dave last night, but one of them was a repeat of (I think) Sunday night. I didn't watch the repeat, but I did watch a repeat of a documentary about Mission Control during the Apollo moon launches. The documentary rightly made out the people there as heroes as much as the astronauts were. I can't remember what time it finished, but it seemed to feel quite late, but not so late that I couldn't spend maybe half an hour reading in bed before turning the light out.

  As far as I can remember, I fell asleep really easily, and I slept quite well, although I do remember some fragments of a very complex dream. It was another dream about being at work. I think some new change to working had left me feeling happy that I was about to retire, but before I did I wanted to take a folder of information to a friend upstairs. I have no idea what that information was, but upstairs was actually to be a long tour around a big building that was full of small workshops. There was a lot of up and down stairs, and also walking through other companies workshops. The latter seemed to be a very normal thing. I can barely remember what I saw on the long walk, and I think the dream faded out before any actual ending.

  This morning I was not surprised to see how high my blood glucose was. It was 9.2mmol/l. It was still on the safe side of the red line at 10.0mmol/l, but still very disappointing. Mostly because I knew it was definitely my fault, and a bit less so that it seemed like a waste of the exercise I had done yesterday. I may have sat on trains a lot, but I still did a lot of walking, and I shunned any lifts in favour or walking up and down quite a few flights of stairs.

  I wonder what I am going to do today ? On the assumption that it was going to be dry and sunny, I did have a plan that I would see if Angela would like to meet in the park nearest her for a bit of fresh air, and a bit of sunshine. That was what I was thinking yesterday, but the weather forecast has crashed that big time. The latest revision t the forecast says the clouds will be almost black by midday, and there is a 70% chance of heavy rain, and while it will get a lighter, it will still be raining at 1pm. It may be brighter by 2pm, but the park could be very muddy by then. It doesn't seem likely I will be seeing Angela today.

  One possibility for today would be to visit another station or two at the end of the Freedom Pass limits. I could go to Peckham Rye from Catford station, and catch a train to Caterham. While in the area I could also do Coulsdon South, Tattenham Corner, and maybe even Upper Wallingham. The trouble is that I don't feel all that enthusiastic about it today. Oh well, I will reveal how I spent today when I write tomorrow morning - assuming there is anything to write about !