There should only be a light breeze today, and that is just as well because it is going to be a very grey day, with the morning being (and is) very, very grey ! The only positive thing about today is that the temperature should reach 17° C (the BBC say 18° C), but under a dull and murky sky it isn't going to be that wonderful. The BBC predict tomorrow will be a very sunny day with sunny spells in the first half, and full sunshine for the rest of daylight hours. They also say it could reach 19° C. The Met Office are more caution says up to half the day could be cloudy, but there will be sunny spells popping up now and then. They agree that it will reach 19° C by 2pm.

   Yesterday was a good day, but with the evening being caught between being good and not so good. I wrote 2,235 words yesterday, but I started early, and seemed to finish writing those words early too (and with probably hundred of uncorrected misspellings or grammar errors). That made for a quite relaxed morning. I had washed my hair and had a shave the previous day, and so even my morning shower was fairly quick.

  I allowed myself extra time to get to the station where I would pick up two copies of The Metro, and then get the train to Ladywell before walking to the pub. Although I allowed extra time, I didn't really slow down that much when walking to the station, but evidently it was enough because I didn't suffer any breathlessness or chest pains. I waited for the Hayes train had arrived before crossing the footbridge, and that small wait was another reason for no chest pains or similar.
   As usual, I took photos of the backs and fronts of every train I encountered on the very brief journey from Catford Bridge to Ladywell. At Ladywell the next Hayes train arrived before I had left the station, and to my late delight it turned out to be a new photo for my collection. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_376 there were only 36 class 376 trains made, and as of yesterday I have pictures of 35 of them. Just 376005 to go !

  It was while at Ladywell station that I got a message from Kevin. He had just left the hospital after another appointment, and wondered if I would be going to the Jolly Farmers. I said yes, and that I would meet him there in 5 minutes. I then had to walk fairly fast to get to the pub, and maybe when I got there I could feel the start of some possible chest pain/angina, but I was then resting so nothing developed.

  I arrived at the pub at about 12:40pm, and Ideally it would have been better if Kevin had turned up 20 minutes later so I would have longer to chat with Ayse. All I learned was that her hospital appointment, the reason why she was off work the previous Wednesday, had gone OK, but she will still waiting for the results to come through. At the moment it remains a hopefully small possibility that what she thought were polyps up her nose might be cancerous.

  Having Kevin to chat to in the pub meant that I never did get a chance to do much of the crosswords, but chatting about mostly interesting stuff was a good diversion. The only annoyance was Kevin's irritating habit of being triggered by a word or something, and suddenly remembering something else he wanted to say in the middle of another topic. He calls it "going off at a Tangent", and announces it as such.

  There was certainly enough to say, even if some topics never reached a conclusion, for us to drink 3 pints of Guinness (now gone up to £4.90 a pint, and still cheaper then most places). It is possible that we might have ended up drinking even more, including a few shorts, but I was saved from a drunken walk home by Kevin needing to go back to the hospital to pick up a prescription that his consultant forgot to write before he left, but promised he would have it ready for collection after lunch.

   Kevin and I parted company at the hospital, and I then walked home. It was a pretty grim experience. Despite having my coat done up, I was feeling cold, and it was not made better by walking face first into almost light, but copious icy cold rain. I was quite surprised that the cold air didn't trigger off any aches from the scar tissue in my chest, and I guess I was surprised that it didn't even trigger any angina - it was a long enough walk for it. That was good, but my legs felt like lead, and my ankles and knees felt very stiff.

  I was very, very happy to arrive home. My original plan was just to have some fruit and a small amount of mixed nuts for a post drinking lunch. However, I felt so cold that I wanted something hot to help me warm up. I opted for my third portion of instant noodles for the day.  I think I enjoyed those noodles more than I would in the morning for breakfast. I then went back to my plan, and had two very small apples, and a blood orange with a palmful of mixed nuts.

  After eating I managed to finish the quick crossword in The Metro, but once again I only managed 2 or 3 of the cryptic clues. I had the heater on full as soon as I had arrived home, and it was feeling very comfortably warm when I laid on my bed, read a few pages, and then tried to snooze. I am not sure if I snoozed or not. I might have just laid there with my eyes closed, but maybe I did fall asleep, but something on my mind kept nagging me.

  As I mentioned yesterday, I had a small boil on my inner thigh burst in a most messy way. After my shower I put the flannel I had used to mop up most of the mess, plus the underpants I had been wearing which also caught some of it, and also a few other things, in to soak in bio detergent. I really didn't feel like it, and had to force myself to do it, but I got back to that washing, and finished it. I then hung it all on the big clothes horse to dry. Thanks to forcing myself to do it yesterday, I won't have to do it this morning before I can have a shower.
  Last night might have been yet another very boring night on TV, but with an hour to spare I noticed the above. All the facts in it were true, but I didn't like the very tabloid style presentation of it. I guess it is now expected to dumb everything down for mass audiences. I actually watched and recorded it three times. One recording was done on my big TV downstairs. I also recorded it on my PC, but the dongle that receives the Freeview signal is only connected to a small aerial. Some channels, such as Channel 5 are prone to occasional interference that causes picture break up. Fortunately Channel 5+1 is not affected by that interference, and so I also recorded that.

  I hadn't prepared any dinner for last night, and it was probably because I had been pondering the idea of ordering a couple of shish kebabs. I almost did, but I noticed a place called Eugreeka! that was a Greek restaurant, and I got curious. I ordered two main dishes from them to get a feel of what they offered. They looked like they might have been big enough to have one for dinner last night, and maybe the other for dinner tonight.

   They were smaller than imagined, and I ended up eating both last night. Now I must admit thatw as about one and a half times as much as I might have wanted to eat, but it all slipped down quite easily, and I didn't feel stuff at the end of it. I barely felt it a bit later when I went to bed. I am not sure what time that was, but the second showing of The Great British Train Scandal finished at 10pm, and it must have been very soon after that.

  I had no trouble getting to sleep, and I seemed to sleep like a log. I remember waking up once, or maybe twice in the night for a pee, but no more than that. I think I remember waking up once to pull the duvet around me a bit better because I was feeling cold. I think I only remember that because I was awake for 5 or 10 minutes thinking about a dream I had just had......unless it was all part of the dream !

  Two dreams seemed to leave a very short, but notable memory. The first seemed to be set in a very big tent on Blackheath. I think I was at some sort of music festival, but I don't recall any music except a friend playing some notes on a piano. The real bit that stuck in my mind was watching several huge great pantechnicons being unloaded of musical and stage equipment. What stuck out a mile, and was very frightening, were two large garden shed sized bass speakers painted bright purple. They were obviously for a reggae band, and I predicted that if I held my ear to the ground I would still hear that bass booming out even 3 miles away in Catford - which was the closest I intended to be once they started.

  The other notable bit of dream was set in a school classroom. We were all adults, and many were dressed in formal suits, including my late friend Nigel who I think I only ever saw wearing black jeans and a heavy metal band t-shirt. Even the teacher was dressed in a posh suit. It seemed like it might have been the last day of term or something. I seemed to know nothing about what was going on, and the dream may have been no more than looking around the room to see who was there, and how they were dressed.

  One odd thing this morning was that when I woke up, just after 6am, I only had a very mild need for a pee, and I could do a few things, like check my temperature, and take screenshots of the weather forecast before going for a pee, and scrubbing my hands prior to checking my blood glucose. The fact that I didn't remember peeing much in the night, and even not peeing much when I got up, suggested that maybe my blood glucose readings would not be too bad.

  When I checked my blood glucose readings they were good, but still not as low as I would have liked. The Contour meter read 8.0mmol/l, and that was the lowest for the previous 6 days, but not as low as the days before that. The GlucoRX meter read similar at 8.1mmol/l, and that was the lowest for the last 5 days, but once again not as low as before that. Even the Sinocare meter gave a not too dissimilar reading of 8.5mmol/l, but that was only the lowest for 2 days. Overall it was all satisfactory, but evidently I didn't try hard enough to score lower. One good thing is that it validated those Greek dishes as being fairly safe - although sald they are too expensive to make a habit of.

  All being well, there are two things happening today. Before the morning is over I want to get some shopping from Tesco. On such a gloomy morning it will not make for a nice stroll, and I will be tempted to walk as fast as possible to get it over and done with. Of course my speed will be tempered by any discomfort I might feel. I am going to do my best not to be tempted by some offers....but you never know.  This after should be a beer drinking session with Jodie.
      







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