Monday 26th May 2025

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Monday 26th May 2025

08:03 BST

Yesterday was quite a pleasant day weather-wise. Most of the day featured sunny spells, but 9am did feature a passing shower. The other negative thing was the wind. It did feel cool at times, but otherwise the afternoon temperature of 21° C felt nice.

This morning has started with some nice sunshine, but most of the day may be quite dull. It may, or may not feature a lot of light rain. The Met Office forecast says no rain but very dark grey skies. The BBC forecast (as shown above) says it will not be that dark, but there will be 8 hours of light rain this afternoon. The highest temperature may be a single hour, 1pm, at 17° C. Tomorrow is currently looking slightly more grim than today. There may be a couple of hours of only sunny spells to start tomorrow, but it will quickly cloud over. The temperature may rise to 16° C for a couple of hours, but from 1pm until the end of the day it will be back down to just 15° C, and there will probably be light rain until midnight.

Yesterday was both and bad. The headline things are that I did get to The Catford Beer Festival in The Catford Bridge Tavern, but as expected, very few of the beers were actually nice, and the four pints I had, had a disastrous effect on my health !

It seemed like I had loads of time yesterday morning, and there was no need to rush. This was not completely correct. I seemed to take a long time to write yesterday's 2,178 words, and then I had a longer lie down than was ideal. I then went and washed my hair and had a shower. I thought I had ages before I would need to go out. That should have been handy for two reasons. One was that I seemed to need to go to the toilet a lot.

The other thing I thought I could do was to spend half an hour or more taking pictures of trains whizzing through Catford Bridge station. Engineering works meant that Charing Cross to Sevenoaks, and Hastings services, and the return journeys were all routed, non stop, through Catford Bridge. It meant there was a train about every 5 minutes, and the possibility of getting loads of pictures of the types of trains I don't often see unless I go further afield.

Any hopes of that were dashed when Jodie replied to my message asking if we were still definitely going to the beer festival, and what time to meet her. She replied yesterday, and because she also wanted to go to the Catford Food Market (on the last Sunday of every month) she would get to the pub at 2.30pm. That was an hour earlier than expected. I thought I would still be able to spend 20 minutes at Catford Bridge station getting a few train pictures, but I didn't even manage that.

The great delay was that I found I needed to go for another poo at the last minute. It did seem that I was going for a poo quite often yesterday morning, and I am not sure why. I was not even convinced when I had to walk to the pub that I was finished. Fortunately I was, but only until late last night, and 4am this morning. I could partly understand this if I had "the runs" but each visit to the toilet was fairly normal. I have no idea where it was all coming from !

I only just made it to the pub at 2.30pm, and I found Jodie at the bar halfway through making her first order. I was pleased, or thought I was, to see the usual casks of beer on a stand at the end of the bar. In theory, beer served directly "from the wood" is the best, but two of the casks actually had cider in them, and I am not convinced the staff knew how to manage these casks.

Each cask has a hole in the top called the spile hole, and there is a hard spile firmly hammered in for transport from the brewery. When beer is being served from the cask that "hard" spile is changed to a soft spile. That allows the cask to breath. Some air can filter in to stop a vacuum forming when beer is drawn off. At the same time it help some of the natural CO2 stay in the cask so the beer stays lively. I couldn't see any spiles in use, and I think the hole was probably left open. The beer would soon spoil like that, but more significant is that after a day it would seem very flat, and indeed that was the big problem for beer from those casks.


My first half pint. This 3.4% (weak) beer was served direct from the cask, and it still seemed fairly fresh. Not exactly nice, but good enough.	This collaboration beer, made at the Vocation Brewery with the head brewer from the Amity Brewery (or something like that) was not very nice. It was served direct fom the barrel, and was as flat as a pancake.

I wondered if this would remind me of the very much liked Fuller's ESB, and it did have hints of if. Unfortunately it also had more than hints of an extra, and rather nasty taste. Maybe it would have become nicer after a couple of pints. This beer was served from a hand pump.	Another beer served using a traditional hand pump. It was probably a bit stronger than a traditional mild. I think it slipped down OK, but like every beer I tried, I could not give it more than 4 out of 5.

This brown ale was served straight from the cask. I don't recall it being nasty, nor that nice.	This was the final half pint served direct from the cask. Apart from being a bit flat, and like everything from the casks, rather warm, it was possibly the best ale, and despite being called "Hoppy" I did not find it very hoppy.

This keg beer was not on the beer festival list, and was probably part of the pubs usual range. It was cold, but not icy cold, and fairly nice.	Another beer served as keg beer - from a pressurised barrel in the cellar. Some Rye beers can be mildly unpleasant, but this was fairly nice.

It was handy that Jodie wanted to go earlier than her first estimate. I think she enjoyed the beer less than I did ! She left most of her last two half pints, but I drank all 8 half pints, and a four pint (late) lunchtime seemed quite enough. I must admit I was drinking fairly fast because, as usual, Jodie was less than entertaining, and it was so noisy in the pub that I had to strain to hear anything she did say.
Bees Cum Loud

We left the pub just after 4pm, but before doing so I went for a pee. I was amused to see the graffiti on the left, written on the toilet wall. It was very brief, and almost meaningless. I think I part know what the writer was alluding to, but it still makes no sense at all. I find silly things like this amusing.

Jodie went to the right when we left the pub. She was going to get a train to London Bridge, and then a train back to Croydon where there was a pub she had to visit because she had just found out they had a particular beer on as a guest beer. I turned left out of the pub, and could not seem to resist going to the fried chicken shop where I bought 2 pieces of chicken and a portion of "fries".

I was far from roaring, or even wobbly drunk, but I was drunk enough that if I hadn't bought that very unhealthy rare treat of a meal at the chicken shop, I probably would have cooked something equally bad when I got home. I have to admit that I had a very unhealthy snack sometime later after eating the chicken and chips.

After eating the chicken and chips I transferred the picture of the beers from my phone to my PC. I really should have done the transfer via a USB lead, but because my head was a bit fuzzy, I opted to do the transfer via Bluetooth, and that was rather slow. I was partly watching TV while editing the pictures to show here. It felt like a lot of hard work after all that booze, and I was most happy when I had done it all.

I may have done everything by around 6pm, and then I had nothing to do. I would have liked to have gone to bed, but I thought it was too early for that, and that I would probably awake around midnight with a hangover, and unable to get to sleep again. I watched a lot of TV to pass the time, and it was another block of episodes of The Simpsons. Every episode shown was one I had seen recently.

The last thing I watched was an edition of Have I Got News For You. That finished at 10pm, and I was more than keen to go to bed by then, but...... By then my hangover was probably peaking, and to make matters worse I had a stomach ache. It was the worst type where you don't know what end it all wants to come out of. Fortunately, at least it seemed fortunate at the time, I didn't throw up, although I thought it might happen. It would, or course been quite unpleasant, but with hindsight it might have been the better option for reasons I'll come to soon.

A mix of antacid tablets and Paracetamol managed to get me to sleep, but it must have been very close to midnight when it happened. I may have woken up almost hourly for a pee, although sometime it was only an trickle, but each time I woke I my stomach still felt bad. I ended up doing a poo at 4am, and I really prefer not to do that in the middle of the night, although I have to admit it was actually getting light outside.

I am very sure I had some dreams in the night, but I guess they were too unpleasant to remember. Somehow I got up just before 7am, and of course I needed a pee. I also needed a poo - where is it all coming from ? Less than half an hour later I had another pee and poo. Even all that only reduced my weight down to a whole kilogram more than yesterday morning ! That is an impressive, and bloody annoying weight gain !

The news about my blood glucose level is also very bad news. Two readings are well into the danger zone, and one comes close to it. The Contour meter, and the Sinocare meter both gave a terrible reading of 10.3mmol/l. That is way past the red line at 10.0mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter reading was very high, but at least it was just below the red line. It was 9.6mmol/l. Only my blood pressure gave an OK reading this morning. It was 107/47.

I thought that my blood glucose was so dangerously high that I had to take drastic action. The first thing that meant was skipping breakfast. That had the knock on effect of not taking my Cod Liver Oil capsule. That Cod Liver Oil can repeat on me without some breakfast to hold it down, and it tastes awful ! My ideal intention is to skip lunch as well, but I will monitor the situation, and if my blood glucose has dropped enough I might have something light for lunch. By dinner time I should be able to eat normally, but still carefully.

The bigger problem is what to do today. One possibility is to meet Kevin for a drink - possibly even at The Catford Bridge Tavern for more festival beer, although I could see us going to The Blythe Hill Tavern for better beer after a short while. Kevin said he is probably busy today, and that would suit me better. I really should avoid more beer today. Many beers have a lot of sugar in them, and besides, getting drunk removes all the inhibitions about eating - on a day when I want to avoid eating for as long as possible.

If the weather turns out to be more like the Met Office forecast, very dull but probably dry, I may go out for a walk, and also spend half an hour or more at Catford Bridge station (or Ladywell station if I have walked through the park), and take pictures of all the passing and stopping trains. On the other hand, if the weather looks too grim, I guess I will stay in quietly reading all day long - maybe a bit boring, but I could also have lots of snoozes too !

2210 words today