Wednesday 31st January
2007
08:14 GMT |
This
morning the sky is clear. Had it been a few degrees warmer it could
have been the start of a perfect day (at least as far as the weather is
concerned). Unforftunately it is only a few degrees above freezing.
When I left home there was already a nice glow from the eastern sky,
but it was not until I reached Waterloo East that I would say it was
definitely daylight. By Wandsworth it was quite reasonably bright, but
with the sun still below the visible horizon there was still a "not
quite day" feel about the light. Even now the sunshine can only be seen
on the tops of the highest buildings, but soon I am hoping for some
direct sunshine on my face when I next go outside for a fag.
It might be coincidence, but the clear sky seems to have
coincided with an improvement in my lower back pain. Waiting for a bus
outside Wandsworth Town station was merely uncomfortable this morning.
Yesterday, and the day before, I would say it was actually painful.
Today is pay day, and it would seem that I have had a pay rise
(or it was a mistake on my pay slip). I am now up to 50% of the alleged
average income in London. In practice this means little more than being
able to afford 20 extra pints of beer a month (should I wish it). Of
more significance is that I have (or presume I have - I haven't
actually checked) been paid. So today I can go on the rampage and
splash out as much as £4.05 on a new keyboard (although I may opt
for one, or more, of the £1.85 keyboards). I think it may be
prudent to buy a new hard disk for my server as well. The current one,
although less than a couple of months old, appears to be faulty. My
overnight backups fail every night because there is a sector (or
something) of the hard disk that cannot be read (or written to), and
the last time I dared shut the server down it was a monumental task to
get it to reboot.
Not much else has been going on recently. Last night I went to
bed very early, soon after 20:00, but I stayed awake reading until just
after 21:00. I have been sleeping fairly well lately. So I was
surprised that after I turned out the light last night I fell asleep
very quickly. I did wake once in the night, but I can't remember why. I
don't think I got up for a pee so it was most likely Nelly jumping up
on the bed that woke me.
Tonight I am looking forward to a pint or two with Kevin and
Iain. I must phone Iain and remind him to bring the manual for Asic that he printed for me. If I get that then I may start experimenting with some programming again. |
Tuesday 30th January
2007
08:11 GMT |
It's
another grey start to the day, but once again it is fairly mild,
although by no means warm. One of the good things about today is that
it is the day before pay day. This is obviously not as good as pay day
itself, but it's not bad.
One of the few things to say about yesterday is that I left work
15 - 20 minutes late. This is no big deal in some respects. If I don't
manage to leave slightly before time I miss my early train, and just
have to hang around waiting for the next one. I'd prefer not too hang
around at work, but at least it is in the warm and dry. One positive
advantage of leaving late last night (or more correctly, late
afternoon) was that I got to Clapham Junction at the right time to
sample yet another type of train by to Waterloo (main line). This was a
class 159 diesel electric multiple unit (pictures here).
I can't with all honesty say anything that positive about them, but it
made for a nice change. I arrived at Waterloo with sufficient time for
an unhurried walk across the link to Waterloo East in time to catch the
16:55 train. This is invariably the train I catch if I just miss the
earlier 16:31 train and have to wait around on a draughty platform for
24 minutes.
Does anyone know the significance of the 28th May ? While on the
bus between Wandsworth Town station and work my mind was just drifting
and suddenly this date popped into my head. There are three
possibilities. First it is someone's birthday. Second it is the day
before 29th May, and thirdly it is the day the world ends. Personally,
I reckon it is the third ! |
Monday 29th January
2007
08:30 GMT |
It is a
shame it is so overcast this morning. As I left home it was obvious
that the eastern sky was beginning to get light. Had there been clear
skies the day would have lit up in time for most of my commute into
work to be in daylight. Instead most of my commute was in a sort of
twilight. It is still not very bright even now, although the quality of
the light could not be described as gloomy. The sky itself is mottled
with some bright areas, and some fairly grey areas. Just a bit of
sunshine would tip the balance to make today a rather good day. One
positive aspect of the cloudy skies is that it is remarkably mild,
particularly when compared to last week.
I feel sort of good today. Some sunshine would definitely enhance
that, but I am not totally sure what else there is that is contributing
to my feeling quite happy. It is certainly not the pain I am in. My
lower back, and deep into the pelvic region has been giving some
trouble this morning, and waiting for a bus outside Wandsworth Town
station was very uncomfortable indeed. I suspect there is rather more
too this pain than mere back ache, and several maladies do come to
mind, but for now I'll just let it ride and see what happens. It is
possible that recovery is possible by itself. On the assumption that it
is a direct result of both the 'flu and colds I have had over the last
month or two, then there is still hope. I noticed this morning
that there is a pattern emerging that indicates that I am on the
way to a full recovery of my recent colds. Last week there were a
couple of times when I became aware that there were some smelly people
on the train with me (one in particular was trying to cover up a real
stench of B.O. by semi drowning himself in some nasty gay/sporty type
after shave/underarm deodorant). This morning I noticed far more subtle
aromas on the train (mostly unpleasant on SouthEastern trains). The
fact that I have become more aware of the odours suggests that my nose
is becoming increasingly clear. My chest will follow that soon, and
that may improve my sleeping posture (or something) and then these
nasty aches and pains will start to disappear. By the time that comes
the days should be getting warmer, and that in itself ought to bring on
a greater improvement. Right now though I am wondering if I am going to
take any painkillers. Sitting down has relieved the pain, and I should
not have to do too much standing up today (which makes the pain worse).
Incidently, walking does provide some relief to the pain.
So far I have not been inundated with rude, risqué,
or even innocent photos to publish here (or not). This is not
surprising, and I wasn't expecting any anyway, but it is still a
disappointment ! I think I will just have to see if I can have some
sort of holiday this year and take my own holiday snaps. I think that
this year it feels like there is more chance of some sort of holiday
happening than there has been in the last seven years. Admittedly it is
not a big chance, and the chances of some sort of holiday involving
exotic/erotic swimwear still seems very remote. |
Sunday 28th January
2007
08:22 GMT |
It is
just slightly too early to tell if the sun is coming out today, but it
is dry and bright, and maybe not too cold. Yesterday was a glorious
morning, although it became in creasingly overcast during the afternoon.
I had a most lazy day yesterday. I can't say that I really
achieved anything apart from one load of washing. I spent quite a long
time laying down on the settee where I had several snoozes, and read a
quarter of another Robert Heinlein book. This one was the book "Friday".
As a consequence of so much inactivity yesterday, and in
particular lying down in not the most comfortable way, I woke up this
morning feeling stiff as a board. It is now at least an hour since I
woke up, and maybe as many as two hours, and I am feeling slightly more
agile and most of the stiffness has evaporated. Today I must try and be
slightly more active or I will be going to work tomorrow feeling
terrible. Another consequence of my inactivity is that I ate to much
yesterday. I went to bed feeling rather full, and that may have
contributed to sleeping badly, and the subsequent stiffness, aches and
pains that I experienced upon waking up.
One curious consequence of the way I slept, or maybe not, was a
rather unusual dream, or at least I think it was unusual for me. I
cannot remember the dream in detail, nor can I recall any detail of
what lead up to the broad scenario that I can remember. In this dream I
think I was trying to set myself up as an amateur pornographer by
inviting any women reading these pages to send me pictures of their
knickers for display here. At least I presume that it was for
displaying on these diary pages. Maybe I was going to set up a separate
web pages. I am not even sure if I wanted pictures of knickers being
worn, or just the knickers themselves, but with the benefit of being
awake (I think) I would probably prefer to see them being worn. Of
course in the real world I would never solicit such pictures, or worse
(better !!) for display here, but if any of you ladies would like to
send me any pictures I am too much of a gentleman to refuse, but I will
not be publishing them here unless you are weird and twisted (or an
exhibitionist) and want to show them to the world. For some reason the
Monty Python "Nudge, Nudge"
sketch comes to mind here - holiday snaps, wink, wink, say no more ! I
could display some "holiday snaps" here without lowering the tone too
much ! As I haven't been on holiday since I was a kid I have no holiday
snaps of my own to display. So I'll display yours !
On a more serious (but far less interesting) note, I have been experimenting with keyboards and this devilish KVM switch.
I tried another pefectly working keyboard and the same thing happens.
When Windows boots the keyboard gets disconnected (as well as the
mouse) and alll I can do is turn off the power to reboot the computer.
Maybe it doesn't happen when I have two computers connected to the KVM
switch, but I am not sure. What I do know is that it doesn't happen
with the keyboard I am using to type this now. This is a shame because
it is the most crappiest keyboard ever ! |
Saturday 27th January
2007
10:00 GMT |
It seems to be a bright sunny morning. I think it may be a little warmer too, but even a little warmer is still very cold.
Yesterday was better than the day before. I have still been doing
some more research orientated stuff at work. Sometimes that can be
frustrating, as it was on Thursday, but yesterday it was more
interesting, and by the end of the day I was beginning to get some
useful results. However I still can't quite come to terms with the
feeling that I not actually producing any physical results as I would
be if I were doing repairs, or at least something with a physicl end
product. I suppose it comes from a lifetime of work where I had
previouly always having some tangible output. Being paid to just think,
where even negative conclusions add to the pool of knowledge, is
wonderful in theory, and perhaps something I have wanted to do for a
long time, but it is just so far removed from what has gone before that
I sort of feel uncomfortable with it.
Last night Patricia came round after she had been Swimming. We
had a chat and some food together. I tried opening up the tin of Dulce De Batata that I got with my Argentinian Xmas food assorment. It is very nice, quite unusual, but worryingly sweet for me.
I am not sure what I am doing today. I think I might be doing
some tidying up, or I may just end up being very lazy. What I am sure
of is that next week, after pay day on Tuesday, I will be placing an
order for some computer bits. Top of the list will be a new keyboard
for this PC. Many of the keys need an extra thump to make them work,
and is probably past it's best and due for retirement. It is actually
an ancient spare keyboard that I started (re-)using just a few days
ago. The keyboard I was using before that was working well, but for
some strange reason it kept disconnecting itself when connected via a
KVM switch box (that I uses to share this keyboard, mouse, and monitor
wit h any other PC that I am playing with at the time). This crappy
keyboard seems to be behaving itself on that score, but I can never be
sure that anything I think I have typed has actually appeared on the
screen. |
Friday 26th January
2007
08:13 GMT |
This
morning it is just cold. There is no snow, no rain, nor sleet, but it
is very cloudy, and that means it is still very grey outside. Without
clouds I would have been seeing the sunrise as I approached Waterloo
East, but even by the time I reached Clapham Junction the brightness of
the sky could still be taken as night.
Yesterday was a funny sort of day. I seemed to lose touch with
reality. At one point during the afternoon I thought I had broken a
piece of equipment because it would not respond to the joystick
control. It took a full five minutes for me to realise that I had it
connected to another joystick, and that one worked OK. In the evening I
wanted to visit the toilet before leaving the pub and went outside
wondering where the toilet was. This latter detachment from reality is
more understandable if you are familiar with the Wetherspoons pub on
the concourse of Victoria station. The inside is only separate from the
outside by a glass partition, and the outside is, in effect, in it's
own area separate from the milling crowds of the station proper.
My inability to distinguish inside from outside happened when I
met up with Aleemah after work. We went to book tickets for a Sunday
Brunch on the Orient Express train.
Previously unbeknown to us, the Orient Express booking office is not
actually a booking office, but is in fact just a luxury departure
lounge (waiting room in old railway parlance). So we had to make the
booking by phone. With that successfully done I needed a drink. So it
was off round the corner to the Wetherspoons pub for a pint of Stella
Artois. We would most likely have eaten in there, but an electrical
supply problem, courtesy of Network Rail,
who own and run the station, meant that the pub had no kitchen working.
The alternative was to go up the escalators to the top floor of the
food hall. Aleemah had a jacket potato, while I had a bagel. My bagel,
although fairly pleasant, was not quite what I expected. I asked for cumberland sausage
as the filling, but what I got was straight, and not curved as a
cumberland sausage should be, and did not even taste like cumberland
sausage. It just tasted like an ordinary cheap pork sausage.
Aleemah, who was still recovering from a cold,was feeling tired
after our meal, so we hugged good bye and went our own ways. With only
a short wait I managed to catch an Ashford bound train that stopped at
Peckham Rye . Sometime ago I made the discovery that the Ashford train
called at Peckham Rye just five minutes before a Sevenoaks bound train
that stops at Catford station. This makes for a nice quick connection,
and indeed that is how it worked out last night.
I got home in time to watch an episode of The Avengers on BBC4.
After watching that I did a bit of internet surfing before going to bed
and reading until shortly after 9pm. I fell asleep very quickly after I
turned out the light. With a full nights sleep, and couple of
paracetamols to tame my lower back pain/hip joint pain/or whatever, I
feel mostly good this morning. If my brain can keep touch with reality
it could be a fairly reasonable day. (Although reading back what I have
just written revealed many incorrect words and weird grammar. I have
corrected all I could see, but I am pretty certain there will be other
weeeeeiiiiiiiirdnezzzzzzzzzzzzzz in wot I have written). |
Thursday 25th January
2007
08:11 GMT |
No snow
this morning, and the trains were running normally. It is quite cold
outside, and the sky is very overcast. Even now there is still no real
daylight outside. More snow is forecast for today, but apparently only
to the south and east of here. From the look of the sky I am not so
sure about that.
It was sort of nice taking yesterday off work. I am not sure I
took best advantage of it though. I seemed to do very little, or that
is how it felt at the time. Looking back I recall that I did do some
shopping and some laundry. I finished putting the last programs on my
spare Windows ME computer, and that is now back in the cupboard
awaiting the day it is needed for something. I also learned a bit about
using Macromedia Flash, but most of what I learned over several hours
of experimenting was that I really don't have a clue as to what I am
doing with it !! I am wondering if there is an easier to use open
source alternative, perhaps stripped down to the bare essentials, that
may be a better choice for me.
I had a strange thing happen in the early evening/late afternoon.
I had someone knock at my door begging. Normally I discourage such
behavior, but this time I was convinced it really was a good cause. It
was a man in white overalls who said he was doing some decorating a few
doors away, and could I please spare some toilet paper. It was such an
original request that I could not say no to it.
Last night I had just two pints of Winter Warmer in the pub with
Kevin and Iain. It was a most pleasant end to the day. I got home just
after 9pm, and thirty minutes later I was in bed, and possibly even
asleep.
Tonight, after work, I am meeting up with Aleemah. Following my
uncomfortable, but successful, experiment with nicotine replacement
therapy last Sunday, we will be booking our tickets for the "Sunday
Brunch" trip on the Orient Express train. |
Wednesday 24th January
2007
10:21 GMT |
So
here's
the timeline of my morning so far.......(Videos are in mp4 format and
may need to be downloaded before they will play)
- Get to the station for the 06:56. It is cancelled,
and the next expected train is at 07:43
- Go back home again.
- Get to the station in time for the 07:43 and find it
is delayed.
- Wait, wait, and wait. Meanwhile I am cold and my
lower back is killing me.
- 07:20 and an announcement is made - " The next train
will
be for Cannon Street, and is now at Clockhouse, It will be here
shortly, but is only six carriages long"
- A train approaches...........and goes through non
stop !!! Video
here.
(note: this flash file is an experiment. So far I cannot work out how
to incorporate playback controls, or to stop it looping. Right click
the video to select no loop and stop)
- Wait another 5 minutes.
- Cannon Street train arrives packed like a sardine can
!! Video
here.
- Wait another 5 minutes and another Cannon Street
train arrives. More
video here.
- Cannon Street trains would be useful if only we could
get on them.
- Another 5 minutes passes and a Charing Cross train
arrives.
It's a more useful destination, but by now my back is really giving me
a lot of pain, and although I could possibly have barged my way on
board I cannot face standing in crush conditions while my back is so
painful.
- Many other people elect to stay on the platform in
the hope
that the next train will not be too long, and that they will be able to
physically get on it.
- I elect to phone work and take a days unscheduled
holiday.
- I am now back in the warm with a couple of
paracetamols inside me and not feeling too bad.
|
Wednesday 24th January
2007
07:08 GMT |
Global
warming ? Waking up on a January morning to three quarters of an inch
if snow, and the trains coming to a grinding halt, seems pretty normal
to me. Once again I am writing from home. I would normally get the
06:56 train from Catford Bridge, but having been to the station I note
that the first expected
train
will be the 07:43 - if indeed that runs. There are alternative ways I
could attempt to get into work, but for now I am happy to sit in the
warm and wait until I have heard that first train go by. The one after
that should, hopefully, be less crowded.
It is still snowing now, but increasingly it will be turning
to
sleet (I think). With less wind outside it actually feels "warmer" than
yesterday, and the snow is very pretty, but if I had an easy choice in
the matter I would prefer to stay home today.
Last night I made it to Clapham Junction station with
microseconds to spare to find that the train I had been rushing for had
actually been cancelled (signalling problem in the Clapham area -
allegedly). So once again I would get to Waterloo too late to catch my
early train from Waterloo East. I did not fancy hanging around on a
cold draughty platform, and it did feel bitter last night, so I thought
I would see what happened if I caught the Jubilee from Waterloo to
London Bridge. It worked out quite well. Initially it seemed as if I
would never get to London Bridge in time for the 16:50, ex-Cannon
Street, train back to Catford Bridge, but in fact I got there earlier
enough to smoke a fag and have a pee too. So that is another
alternative route to my repertoire.
Once home again I cooked myself up a pile of brown rice,
lamb,
and peas seasoned with some extra mint and hot pepper sauce. It was
very nice and warmed me up a treat. Later on I still felt peckish so I
had something very unhealthy. It was a tin of Tesco "value" ready made
custard with a very generous spoonful of Dulce De Leche (spreadable
milk toffee) in it. That would send my blood sugar level soaring, but I
haven't noticed any ill effects from it.
I couldn't stand looking at the non-working PC that I was
working
on, on Sunday, sitting there still not working. So I opened it up again
and took out a small stick of memory (32MB), and reseated the large
stick (256MB) in there. This time when I installed Windows ME it all
seemed to go OK. I added many other applications, and although I
haven't tried them yet, they all seemed to install OK. So with luck, or
was it skill, I seem to have a spare working PC again. If I were not
(probably) drinking tonight I would do just a little more tidying up on
it before stashing it away in a cupboard until such time as it has a
use. |
Tuesday 23rd January
2007
08:39 GMT |
I
am now at work and give a more accurate description of the weather -
It's bloody freezing !!!!
As I left the house the pavements and roads were very wet,
but it
wasn't actually raining. The sky, although very dark, looked very heavy
with clouds. As I walked to the station I noticed something white out
of the corner of my eye. It was a snowflake. Before I reached the
station I saw two more snowflakes, and one of them was quite big.
After that gloomy walk to the station it was quite a surprise
to
realise that in Wandsworth the sky was blue, and the sun was shining.
It's still bloody cold though !!! |
| 06:52 GMT |
This
morning seems just as foul as yesterday morning. Not that I have been
outside yet to really evaluate what's out there. It is certainly cold,
and when I opened the back door for Smudge to refuse to go out, it
looked damp, and it sounded as if very light rain was falling.
Obviously I am still at home now, and haven't left for work
yet,
but I will be soon once I am convinced that my raging guts have settled
down this morning. I ate a lot of spicy stuff last night, and I blame
that for a certain level of discomfort this morning. I was going to
have a semi bland meal of lamb, rice and peas last night, but I came
home via Tesco where I needed to buy some toilet paper (which has
proved most useful this morning). While in Tesco I bought some other
odds and sods including some pot noodles and hot pepper sauce. So my
meal last night was a ready made egg salad with extra scotch eggs, and
a couple of pots of pot noodles. Also one "rustic" roll and four small
pots of pro-biotic yoghurt. Quite a mixture really, and maybe, on
reflection, not such a good idea.
I left work just one minute past 4pm last night, and that one
minute late was quite sufficient to add over thirty minutes to my
overall journey. The bus got to Clapham Junction just a few minutes too
late for a suitable train, and at Waterloo East the 16:44 train was
running too late to make the dashed connection to a Hayes train at
London Bridge. So I had to wait for the slightly delayed 16:55 train
instead of my more normal 16:31 train. The 16:55 train was just a few
minutes late, and accumulated as much as ten minutes late by the time
it got back to Catford. It was pretty chilly waiting on Waterloo East
last night, and a relief to get on a warm train. Now I am going to be
late for work this morning I ought to stay late to make up for it. So
it looks as if I will be late home tonight as well.
I do not seem to have had any more visits from the American
Government to this website. Hopefully all that rubbish I wrote
yesterday has put them off. So now the real truth can be revealed. We
are going to overthrow the government of Iceland and install a pro Jedi
dictatorship. Or something ! |
Monday 22nd January
2007
08:10 GMT |
It's
a
foul morning. It's overcast, raining, and very cold. The rain is not
heavy, but feel very cold on the face, and is enough to soak right
through to the skin. Fortunately I was not exposed to it long enough to
get seriously soaked.
My mind is definitely going. I was sure I had written
something
yesterday, but it appears not. Saturday was a fairly bright day, and
the forecast rain did not materialize. I am not sure what I did on
Saturday. I know I did the usual - shopping, laundry, and Nelly's
litter tray - but beyond that it is a sort of blur. I think I probably
divided my time between reading, playing with computers, and snoozing.
Now I mention computers I know exactly how I passed a lot of
time. I was playing with some bits that I was hoping to use in my next
server. I wanted to use a couple of 2GB SCSI hard disks I had laying
around to install the operating system on (actual server storage would
be on parallel ATA hard disks) . I knew the motherboard I was intending
to use had an option from booting from SCSI disks, but I was over
optimistic that it could provide the BIOS settings to enable booting on
an ordinary SCSI interface card. In fact it couldn't, and I needed a
SCSI interface card with it's own BIOS on it. That posed an interesting
dilemma. The only spare SCSI card I have that does have it's own BIOS
is an ancient 8 bit ISA card. As a very long winded experiment I used a
PCI SCSI card to install Windows 2000 onto one of the hard disks. With
that SCSI card the machine would not attempt to boot. When I replaced
that card with the ancient one it did try to boot, but Windows just
threw it's hands up in horror at the old hardware and crashed instantly
- but it did boot (sort of). It might be possible to get a SCSI
interface card that has a BIOS on it, but it is certainly not
economical to buy one. So it looks as if I will have to find a new role
for those old hard disks.
Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. I didn't go out at
all on
Sunday. So I am not sure if it was as cold as forecast, but the
forecast for a sunny day was certainly correct.
Sunday morning was the big nicotine replacement therapy
experiment. Using a nicotine patch, and one bit of nicotine gum, I
managed to not smoke for just about three and a half hours. It was not
pleasant. The patches and gum may have fed the nicotine craving, but
the mechanical habit of smoking was just as strong. Nevertheless I
managed it, and included in that time was eating breakfast, and a smoke
after a meal is a very strongly ingrained habit. With the added bonus
of Aleemah for company I now think I can endure a three hour train
journey without a fag, and maybe even enjoy it too.
A large portion of my Sunday was a waste of time, or to put
it
another way, did not achieve anything. I was trying to Install Windows
ME onto an old PC that previously was running Windows 2000. I thought
that Windows ME would run faster on the old hardware, and I didn't need
anything sophisticated on a spare knockabout PC. Every attempt at
installation, failed even though Windows 2000 had previously run on it
with no problems. I had tried an alternative graphics card, but I don't
think that was the problem. In the end I concluded that I must have
dislodged one of the memory sticks while rummaging about inside the
box. That was in the early evening when I concluded that, but by that
time I had had enough, and gave up until another time.
I notice that this website has had six visits from some one
(or
persons) with an American government domain name. Without reading
through the raw logs I don't know exactly where my visitor(s) came
from, but the simple statistics say :-
| # |
Hits |
Files |
KBytes |
Country |
| 8
|
6 |
0.17% |
5 |
0.31% |
313 |
.56% |
US Government |
I guess that someone has been scanning the internet looking
for
mentions of plutonium or other terrorist activity. I believe it is part
of project Echelon, but they probably just use Google like any other
person. I was going to say any other sane person, but sanity is a
matter of conjecture.
Well I am going to continue to write about dubious subjects,
and
the CIA can do little about it. I am wearing my tin foil helmet. So
their mind control probes cannot touch me, and in time we will
overthrow the American government and put the rightful ruler in place -
King Charles. We'll soon have all you yanks hugging trees and eating
organic yoghurt.
Meanwhile I have almost generated enough Bolonium 305 in my back yard
reactor to make my F bomb that will blow the whole of Washington into
the ninth dimension and let the grey men pass judgement over their new
world order. Bacterial experiments have been going well too. There is
something very potent growing behind the waste bin in my kitchen with
which I will soon be able to hold the world to ransom with ! If that
doesn't work I will be unleashing Aardvark 'flu on the ex-colonies. If
you thought bird 'flu was sinister you ain't seen nothing yet !
Megalomania ? Never heard of it !
|
Saturday 20th January
2007
07:30 GMT |
The
day
started rather windy, but seems to have settled down now. So far it is
dry, but the sky looks very overcast. Until the day gets a little
brighter it will be hard to really see what the sky really looks like,
but the weather forecast suggests there will be a lot more rain today.
Yesterday was a good day. The wind remained calm, and there
were
many sunny intervals. Perhaps the est bit was that the sky stayed
fairly clear as I made my way home from work, and with a bit of
imagination I could say that it was still just barely light when I got
home. By next week it should be daylight when I get home no matter how
cloudy the sky is (except perhaps for thick black storm clouds that can
make any day feel like night). The next major treat will be when I can
leave home for work in daylight.
After my short relapse a few days ago, my cough continues to
be
on the mend. For much of the time it has now gone, but there are still
occasions when a good clear out is required. Overall I am feeling
pretty good. Even my aching back seems to be a lot better today,
although that comes and goes depending on my posture, or the type of
seat I am in.
Last night I had a rare treat. Patricia phoned me up on her
way
home from work and asked if it was all right for her to finally return
my iron. With nothing else planned I readily agreed. She turned up an
hour later without the iron ! We had some dinner together and chatted
for a couple of hours before she left at about 9pm with the promise
that she would eventually return my iron next time she visits.
I went to bed soon after Patricia left, but taking advantage
of
no work today, I stayed reading in bed until 11pm. After that I fell
asleep quite quickly, and had a fairly uninterupted sleep until I woke
up again sometime after 6am. I feel much better for all the sleep I
have managed to get over the last couple of days, but I wouldn't rule
out going back to bed once I have finished writing here.
Today I have the usual things to do - laundry, shopping,
emptying
Nelly's litter tray etc. I expect I'll be buying the latest New
Scientist while I am out shopping, so I will probably spend a fair
amount of time reading that. Other plans include fitting a WiFi card in
the upstairs front room PC, and seeing what signal I get in that side
of the house. I should also start to transfer all my data from my
current dual boot Linux/Windows PC, here in the back room, onto the
fresh installations I made on a spare hard disk last weekend. I can
then fit that in the PC and enjoy the freshness of new operating
systems.
One difficult task ahead of me this weekend is to try some
nicotine replacement therapy. During the week I had a call from Aleemah
to say that she had acquired some vouchers for £100 off the
price
of trips on the Orient Express train. I had always
considered that train to be outside my price range, and even the cheapest trip
using Aleemah's voucher pushes the boundaries. We both would like to
sample the delights of luxury train travel, but Aleemah more so than
me. Apart from the price, the other major disincentive for me is that
the train is 100% no smoking ! Under some circumstances I can manage to
go for three hours without a fag, but on the train the odds are stacked
against it. For a start there is the added stress of knowing once you
are on the train there is no chance of having a smoke until the trip
has ended. If it were, say, a theatre I could always walk out if the
urge for a fag became too much. So there is always that safety valve
even if it meant not being able to get back into the venue. The other
problem is that on the train there will be food and drink. A fag with
booze is as natural to me as sex, and a post meal fag is almost a
neccesity. So while I am shopping today I am going to buy some nicotine
patches, and some nicotine gum, and see if it does work as an
alternative way of getting my fix of nicotine for 3 or 4 hours. If it
does work, and nicotine is only one part of smoking addiction, it could
open up new vistas for me. It could take away my fear of flying,
although not my fear of customs and excise/immigration/secret policemen/the Spanish inquisition/CIA/FBI/
and other terrors of boarding a plane. Did I mention the threat of
terrorists ? Actually terrorists on a plane do not worry me (although
drunken Scotsman do). Statistically less people are blown up by
terrorists on a plane than those who disappear forever in Guantanomo
Bay. Having written that, my fear of ever going to America, by any
means of travel, has just gone up one notch ! |
Friday 19th January
2007
08:14 GMT |
This
morning has started out wonderfully bright and dry. Even when I left
home there was light visible in the clear eastern sky. The only fly in
the ointment is that as the sky lit up even more it was obvious that
the small fluffy clouds were strongly tinged with red, heralding more
bad weather to come later. This is as forecast in my morning paper. As
my train pulled into Clapham Junction the sky was already bright enough
to comfortably read by (and may have been even earlier). By Wandsworth
Town station I think I would be tempted to say it was full daylight.
Yesterday was very, very,
VERY
windy. News reports say that several people were killed as a direct
result of the wind blowing things down. It caused some havoc on the
railways too, but I must have had a charmed existence on my way home
from work. At Clapham Junction there were announcements about delays
from fallen trees on the line and speed restrictions in place, but my
train, the 16:16, was on time. It was unusually crowded, and when we
arrived at Waterloo the platform was crowded 5 deep. Obviously my train
was one the first to arrive there for some time. Over at Waterloo East
the platform was also very crowded, but once again my train turned up
on time, and was not unusually crowded. We did move to London Bridge
unusually slowly, with many signal stops, and the same was true for the
first mile as we left London Bridge. From then on the journey was quite
normal, but behind time by about 10 minutes. At London Bridge I heard
over the P.A. that there were serious delays on the lines via Greenwich
and Woolwich.
Apart from some irritating lower back pain I feel pretty good
this morning. My cough has almost gone (although being a smoker it will
never quite go), and I think I slept pretty well last night. There is
some doubt about this though. I am sure that I woke up at around 03:00,
and for a little while I did not seem to be able to get back to sleep.
How long that little while was is a mystery. I was woken by my alarm
this morning from a dream where I was dreaming that I was in bed trying
to get to sleep ! |
Thursday 18th January
2007
08:07 GMT |
I
wonder
how many days it will be before I can stop writing "it's wet again this
morning". It was between home and Catford Bridge that I was rained upon
most, although even that was not that bad. In Wandsworth there was some
patchy fine drizzle, but not enough to stop me walking from the station
to work. By the time I got into work I was probably damper from sweat
than rain, or maybe it was after getting into work that I became damp
from sweat. It is fairly mild outdoors, but it is really hot here in
work, and it feels far worse after having walked fairly fast for ten
minutes. Incidently, I only walked from the station to work because I
bumped into Anna, my boss/supervisor/???? while I waited at the bus
stop.
This morning I feel better than I have done for a fair few
days.
It's mostly because I got a full nights sleep for the first time in
ages. After a couple of pints of Winter Warmer in the pub with Kevin
and Iain last night, I was home by 21:00. I had a quick snack, and was
in bed 15 - 20 minutes later. I did not go straight to sleep, but read
for another 10 or 15 minutes. Very soon after I was fast asleep, and
only woke once, at midnight, to empty my bladder. Five minutes later I
was fast asleep again, and slept right through until my alarm woke me
at 05:30. Despite getting a good nights sleep, it feels rather strange
that this morning was the one morning where I really did feel like
turning over and going back to sleep again. Perhaps on previous
mornings I made a concious effort that I had to fight the sleepiness,
and did not even allow myself to consider the possibility of going back
to sleep again.
While I have had a good nights sleep, and my coughing has
recovered back to more manageable proportions, I did wake up feeling
like I had a hangover. Not one of the very painful hangovers, but just
one where you feel urghhhhhhhhhhh all over. After a mere two pints of
beer this is, of course, impossible, but I felt it just the same. Like
a hangover I am feeling better as the morning wears on.
Prior to going to the pub last night I had a play with my
newly
delivered high gain WiFi aerial. It has allowed me to find three more
Wifi signals, all of which are (sadly) protected. The unprotected one
that I could just get on the old aerial (but only with the PC in an
outlandish position) seems to have gone. It used to advertise itself as
"Belkin54G". This was obviously on the default settings. In all
probability it's owner has now gone into the set up menu and
reconfigured it to be one of the other signals I can see. Two of the
signals are identified with well known ISP's (BT and Wannado), and the
third has a strange name (gumbass, or something). I suspect it is this
third one that used to be Belkin54G.
One dream I vaguely remember from last night concerned an
antique
radio. It was all wood and bakelite knobs, but seemed to gain more
features as the dream progressed. I can only remember the dream in
snapshots rather than continuous details. First I was cleaning the
radio up for my boss (I think). Then I said we should plug it in and
try it. It all lit up, but there were no signals on it. So I clipped a
pair of forceps onto the aerial connector and the tuning dial, which
turned out to be motorised, started turning until it found a station to
lock on to. Curiously the radio station it found seemed to be playing
light classical stuff appropriate to the age of the radio. The next bit
was when I noticed that the tuning indicator was actually a small tv
tube and could display pictures. I became worried at that point because
I knew that several of the channels preset into it were porn channels,
and there were people with me (who ???) who I did not want to see these
channels, or know of their existence. Eventually I found an old episode
of Dr Who on one channel and we were amused to see that on this tiny
(postage stamp sized ?) TV screen. Next I discovered that there was a
magnifying device that would project the picture onto a bigger screen
on the front of the set (I think the original picture was seen on the
top of the set). The projected picture was in wide screen 16:9 format,
and in a sort of dim distorted colour format as well. The colour did
look more like chromatic aberration
from the lens system, but the pictures were definitely squashed as an
old 4:3 aspect ratio TV picture looks on a wide screen TV. The dream
was marvelously inventive, and anachronistic too. Quite, quite
enjoyable. |
Wednesday 17th January
2007
08:23 GMT |
It
is wet
again this morning ! So wet that I got wet ! It was evident that there
had been a fair amount of rain when I left home this morning, and I
caught up with it in Wandsworth. I was not exactly soaked when I got
into work, but it would have only taken a few more minutes out in that
fine, but very persistent drizzle, for me to be soaked through.
Last night I seemed to have more energy than I thought,
considering my recent lack of sleep. 16:00 came last night and I felt
good enough to stay on at work trying to fix a bar code reader. I
managed it in the end and left work quite close to 17:00 - a whole hour
late.
Back at home I ate some dried fruit mix and some chestnuts as
a
snack before cooking up a very healthy meal of salmon and salad. The
salmon was flavoured with pepper and lemon, and bought as part of a
Tesco "buy one get one free" offer (or were they just half price ?).
Those flavourings were very subtle and contrary to my expectations did
not over power the delicate salmon flavour. I'm going home via Tesco
tonight and will buy some more if they are still in the freezer on
special offer.
I remembered to have a couple of large glasses of scotch
before
bed last night. The scotch certainly worked and I fell asleep very
easily and very quickly. Unfortunately, in the early hours of the
morning, I had a relapse into coughing. Prior to that I was convinced I
was on the mend. Since the afternoon, on the trains home, and back at
home before I went to bed, I had coughed quite infrequently, and not
severely at all. Early this morning it started all over again and kept
me awake until around 04:45 (as near as I can guess). So once again I
have more sleep to catch up on.
Tonight I will be trying an alternative sleep and cough
remedy
(prior to 10 minutes ago, I had not taken any form of cough medicine
for 24 hours or more). Tonight it is the turn of Youngs Winter Warmer.
That usually guarantees me a good nights sleep even if the morning
after is a bit foggy ! |
Tuesday 16th January
2007
08:04 GMT |
It is
wet this morning. In my travels to work I saw lots of wet, often very
wet, roads and pavements, but I seem to have been lucky enough to not
feel anything worse than a few bits of occasional, almost mist like,
rain. It is still very dark and overcast outside, but my paper suggests
there will be some sunshine today. On the other hand, my paper also
suggests that the strong winds and stormy weather that were forecast
for tomorrow night will happen the day after. So I am not sure what to
believe.
I do not feel as tired as yesterday, and I have improved in
other
ways. My cough gets more and more manageable every hour, but still gave
me some bother overnight. The one way in which I feel worse is that all
the cough remedies I have taken recently seem to have left me a bit
constipated. It made me journey into work slightly uncomfortable, and
even now it sometimes feels like I have a broomstick inserted where no
broomstick should be inserted !
I fell asleep sometime around 9pm last night, and then slept
solidly until 2am when I woke up feeling like my tongue had been glued
to the roof of my mouth. It made a change from coughing though ! A few
swigs of water sorted that out, but I found it impossible to get back
to sleep. It was the usual sort of things - unable to find a
comfortable position, pillow just the wrong position, rucks in the
sheets, and one degree too hot under the duvet, and five degrees too
cold outside the duvet. So I got up and went to check to see if my
internet connection was still working. It was, and I answered one
e-mail, and checked a few web sites out. I went back to bed at 3am, and
after a brief struggle with attempting to get back to sleep, I read for
the next hour. I think I fell asleep at around 4am, and managed about
ninety minutes more sleep before it was time to get up again.
All that sleeping problem may have been solved if I were a
more
dedicated drinker. On my way home from work I went via Tesco where,
amongst other items, I bought a litre bottle of scotch. I planned to
have several stiff glasses of that before I went to bed, and trust in
its benign properties to give me a good nights sleep. I don't know if I
was just too tired, but I totally forgot about the scotch, and the
bottle remains unopened even this morning. Maybe I'll try again tonight.
In other news, I have ordered another WiFi card to go into
another PC (not sure which one yet), and also two external aerials.
(Actually, the reason for buying the new WiFi card was just insurance
against the aerial connector on my current card being incompatible with
the external aerial's connector). I am hoping that the external aerial
will give me simple usage (without balancing the PC on the edge of the
bed, or somewhere ridiculous) of one or more unsecured wireless
connections I know to exist around the neighbourhood. It is not my
intention to use these on a regular basis, but more as a sort of
insurance against NTL's unreliable service. If any of my neighbours are
reading this and want swap services on a more formal, less piratical
basis, then get in touch and I'll let you have the keys to my WiFi
transmitter). I have arranged to get the bits sent to work so I don't
have to worry about chasing courier companies all over London when they
can't deliver to home. It is even possible they will turn up
today. In which case I will have some experimenting to do tonight
instead of drinking huge quantities of scotch, and going straight to
bed (although the WiFi experiments should only delay me by half an hour
or so). |
Monday 15th January
2007
18:42 GMT |
I
am
very, very tired tonight. I did not sleep well last night, and my lack
of internet access contributed to it. I spent so long rebooting the set
top box, and my firewall, that I got to bed a lot later than I wanted.
Once in bed I found that I could not get to sleep partly because my
brain would not switch off, and partly because of my cough. In fact one
reinforced the other. I actually got up again sometime close to
midnight and had another go at restoring my internet connection.
The day started off with me feeling pretty dreadful. So
dreadful
that I could not even be bothered to rush for my usual train. Instead I
caught the next one 34 minutes later. As the morning progressed I began
to feel a fair bit better, and I even felt the strength to try and
phone NTL's fault reception number (a tiresome task at the best of
times). After listening to the pre-speech, and then the different
selections possible, I finally came to the bit where you are supposed
to be able to report a fault. I wasn't actually ready to report a
fault, but I wanted to know if there was any known ongoing problem.
First I had to listen to a long and tedious explanation about rebooting
the set top box and the PC, and was assured that this would cure most
problems (as it usually does). Having heard all that guff I eventually
heard that there was "a local fault" affecting my area plus, it seemed,
most of South East London - so local to what, or whom ??????
I have no idea what time service was restored but I had to do
the
rebooting kerfuffle when I got in from work before my connection was up
and running again.
During the afternoon I gradually ran out of energy, and it
was a
joy when 16:00 approached and it was time to go home. My journey home
was none too pleasing. I waited too long for a bus and arrived at
Clapham Junction too late for my best choice of trains. In consequence
I missed the early train home from Waterloo East. I thought I was in
with a chance to get the 16:34 Barnehurst train that get to London
Bridge in plenty of time for a slow stroll across to Platform One to
catch a train coming from Cannon Street !6:34 came and passed and the
train did not arrive. There was no indication that it would be late,
nor that it might be cancelled. It eventually arrived at 16:53 which is
a mere two minutes away from my next available train to Catford Bridge,
the 16:55. So I took the 16:55 and endured crowded conditions back to
Catford Bridge. Fortunately I had a seat all the way back and felt a
bit rested by the time I got off again. It made an essential visit to
Tesco rather more bearable than I had thought it would be.
Today has been fairly mild with some spells of sunshine. It
was
fairly bright when I left work despite it being overcast at the time.
Despite running very late, the daylight persisted until I got to
Waterloo. Had I been on the earlier train, and had the sky been clear,
I am sure that I would have made it all the way home before the light
level had fallen enough for it to be called night time. Tomorrow is
forecast to be overcast all day. That will be depressing, but worse
still is heavy wind and rain forecast for the day after.
It has now just passed 19:07 and I reckon I could easily be
in
bed in about an hours time. I doubt if I will be going to sleep that
early, but if I start reading I am sure to start to doze well before
21:00. |
Sunday 14th January
2007
20:30 GMT |
As
I
write this I find I have no internet connection. It seems NTL has
fallen over once again. Maybe they are doing "load balancing" again, or
maybe they are just incompetent !
I am not sure what time my internet connection went down. All
afternoon, and into the evening, I have been installing both Windows
and Suse Linux 10.2 onto a spare 160GB hard disk (left spare when I
upgraded my server to 320GB disks). It seemed to take an age to install
Windows XP plus some software and a gigantic pile of online updates.
Suse Linux would have installed in a fraction of the time had I not
opted to install a similar gigantic pile of updates.
I did seem to be able to download all the Suse updates. So I
had
internet connectivity up until at least 18:00, but sometime after that,
while setting up Samba, I did notice that Suse asked for the
installation DVD instead of downloading the files from Suse's server.
My guess is that I have been without internet connectivity for about 2
hours now. Hopefully the connection will come up again by the time I
get up, and definitely before I go to work in case I have to reboot my
firewall, or the NTL set top box to restore full connectivity. |
Sunday 14th January
2007
09:36 GMT |
I
was
either too tired or too busy to write anything yesterday - and I am not
sure which it was. I guess it was a mixture of the two.
Yesterday started out dull, and it remained that way the
whole
day. By contrast it seems to be bright and sunny at the moment. It
would be nice if the sun could stay out the whole day, but there are a
few clouds around, and it may well cloud over later, or even rain. All
I can really say is that for January it is remarkably mild.
Like most nights recently I had a strange sleep pattern
brought
about by my ongoing cough. On Friday night I went to bed fairly early
and managed to get to sleep after some reading. I woke up several
times, but on the whole I managed a bare minimum of sleep. I got up
reasonably early for a Saturday morning, and after showering and
shampooing my hair I went to Tesco. I had neglected to take any cough
medicine because at that point my cough seemed to be on the mend and
manageable. Unfortunately the warm air inside Tesco triggered off a
major coughing fit just as I started to go through the checkout. And by
major, I do mean MAJOR. I was could not stop coughing and spluttering.
My eyes were streaming, snot was almost bubbling out my nose,
and
my forehead was dripping with sweat. I must have looked a right state !
Once I was out in the fresh air I got things back under control fairly
quickly, and by the time I had walked the 5 or 6 minute walk back home
I was feeling OK again. Once inside I immediately took a huge swig of
cough medicine.
I had a few hours spare and took the opportunity to try the
alarm
function on my mobile phone, and to lie down and have a snooze. It was
lucky I did try that alarm function, and even luckier that it worked.
When it went off I was in quite a deep sleep. When
I woke up I had just 30 minutes to get to Catford Bridge station to
catch the 12:44 train to London Bridge where I was meeting Aleemah for
an afternoon out in Greenwich. I made the train in good time and found
Aleemah waiting for me where we had arranged to meet. Five minutes
later we were on a train heading to Greenwich.
It was never planned to be a long meeting. I was (and still
am)
not feeling too fit after my recent cold, and we both decided that we
would go home as the sun set. That still gave us plenty of time to have
some lunch, do some shopping, wander around Greenwich market, take a
look at the river, and grab a beer in a pub before heading home.
I took the Docklands Light Railway to Lewisham where I caught a bus
home, and Aleemah took the Docklands Light Railway to Stratford where
the poor woman had to do an almost end to end journey on The Jubilee
Line to get to her home.
Once I got home I had a snack before cooking a large enhanced
pizza. It was a ready made frozen, but thawed out, pizza with
pepperoni. I enhanced it with some hot pepper sauce, and an extra
sprinkling of grated cheddar cheese. I have to say it was absolutely
delicious (if rather unhealthy). I have another, but red onion and four
cheese flavour, that is also sitting thawed out in the bottom of the
fridge (no room in my freezer) that I may well eat today (and probably
ought to). I originally bought two in case I had a visitor yesterday,
but that didn't happen.
Television last night seemed very unexciting. So I went to
bed to
do some reading. It was only 20:30 , or maybe even slightly earlier,
and I read very little. By 21:00 I was fast asleep, and slept well
until 03:00 this morning. I woke up, predictably, coughing, but also
feeling wide awake and alert. Rather than attempt to fight it I came
downstairs and surfed the internet for an hour or so. I almost started
to write this, but the enthusiasm did not seem to be there, and I
thought that enough time had passed and I could try and get back to
sleep. I was partially successful in getting back to sleep, but it was
patchy and disturbed until as late as 06:00. From then on I think I
slept fairly for the next couple of hours. I woke up feeling far worse
than I did at 03:00. My whole body seemed stiff and uncooperative. A
good hot shower helped a bit, and right now I don't feel too bad.
Today will be a lazy day. One of the few temptations to do
anything other than emulate a vegetable is that I have just finished
downloading (and as I write this, burning) an image of the latest Open Suse Linux distribution - 10.2.
I may be tempted to use the DVD, once it has finished burning, to
upgrade my PC currently running Suse 10.1. It is slightly dangerous,
but should not take long. The main danger is losing my e-mails going
back over the last 3 or 4 years - and that only because Suse, for some
unexplained reason, does not automatically come with Thunderbird as
part of it's standard packages. So I would have to install that
separately and migrate the old emails across to it. In theory that is
simple, but it is always a bit of a fight, but I have succeeded in the
past, even to Windows and Mac computers, and there should be no reason
why I can't do it one more time.
Well, I might "play computers" today, or I might not. I think
I
may well go to Tesco this morning, but not before taking a huge gulp of
cough medicine first. Mostly though, vegetable land - here I come ! |
| Friday 12th January
2007 |
| 08:10 GMT |
My
apologies if you kept checking here yesterday and found nothing new.
Following the installation of a new modem/router/firewall here at work,
works i.p. address changed and my firewall rejected any incoming data
as being from an alien address. So I was unable to connect to write
anything at work, and I got home far too late last night to write
anything then.
This morning it is very overcast, and there has been a very
light
sprinkle of rain. It is still not light outside, although somewhere
above those clouds the sun must have been up for over thirty minutes. I
think it will probably remain gloomy for much of the day. yesterday did
see some briefs spells of sunshine, but on my way from work there was
one very heavy burst of rain. Fortunately I was under cover at the
time. One of the main features of the weather yesterday was the wind.
It was obviously very strong and gusty, but this mornings papers
reports a fair amount of wind damage in places not too far from here.
Last night there was also displays at Clapham Junction warning
of
delays caused by trees on the line (although there was no indication of
where these trees had fallen, nor any noticeable delays while I was
there).
Yesterday was my return to work after a day and a half off
sick.
I was by no means recovered, but I was feeling much better than the
previous couple of days. Provided I did not try and over do things I
felt reasonably comfortable, and I was able to be more productive than
if I had stayed at home. My principle ailments yesterday were my bad
cough, assorted aches, and general tiredness. Most of these evaporated
in the evening.
After work I met up with Aleemah at Victoria station where we
had
a drink together. It was really wonderful seeing her again for the
first time since the short meeting I had with her before Xmas (and that
the first for a couple of months). We got on so well together again
that I virtually forgot that I was ill. Had it not been for my
intrusive cough butting in now and then, I would have insisted I was
100% fit ! (but only while sitting in a warm pub with a beer and
excellent company). We have arranged to meet up again on Saturday for a
day, or at least an afternoon, out together. I hope I am feeling a lot
fitter by then.
After seeing Aleemah I did not get home until just gone
21:00.
The house was cold, the cats were hungry, and Nelly's litter tray was
stinking almost as much as some scrap fish bones left in the kitchen
waste bin from my previous days dinner. I put some heating on, fed the
cats, and emptied the kitchen litter bin, but I could do little for the
litter tray, and that will remain stinky until I buy some fresh cat
litter on my way home tonight.
I guess it was partly the medication that I was taking, and
partly the exhilaration of having a good time with Aleemah, and maybe
just because it was late, but rather unusually I did not feel very
hungry when I got home last night. I had only eaten some fruit during
the day so I thought I probably ought to eat something. I didn't want
to cook. So I made up three Tesco quick snacks. One was a very healthy
eating couscous with Moroccan vegetables, another was a tomato and herb
pasta, and the third was cheese and chive mashed potato. All three were
small portions (for me !), and if I hadn't supplemented them with a
sprinkle of gated cheddar, they would only have been a couple of
hundred calories apiece. So it is quite feasible that if you discount
the alleged
calories in beer, I may have consumed less than 1000 calories yesterday.
Having eaten my snack pots, checked my email, and locked up I
went straight up to bed looking forward to a good nights sleep. It
didn't happen. As soon as I laid down my cough caught up with me with
an avengance. It was not a dry cough, but the type brought on when you
can hear, and feel, the phlegm bubbling away just below the neck, and
you have the insatiable desire to clear it. T add misery to the whole
proceeding I had neglected to seal the end of my duvet cover when I
changed it recently. With all the tossing and turning going on the
duvet was gradually working it's way out the bottom of the cover. When
I eventually did get to sleep I seemed to have ended up with little
duvet over me, the pillows twisted into the most lumpy shape possible,
the duvet cover wrapped round bits of me like a tourniquet, and every
ruck, lump, or bump of the bottom sheet, mattress protector,
or
the mattress itself, poking into every tender part of my body. I woke
up at 04:00 cold, and incredibly uncomfortable. My head, neck,
shoulders, back and buttocks all had their own particular type of ache
or pain ! I got out of bed, put some heating on and remade the bed
before getting back in it. I fell asleep quickly after that and slept
soundly until my alarm went off at 05:30.
This morning I could describe myself as better and worse. I
feel
like I have more energy, but my chest is still too wheezy to put it to
good use. My stiff neck appears to be improving, and some lower
back/hip joint pain that was troubling me earlier on seems almost gone.
My nose seems to be clear most of the time, but does need a good blow
more often than I would desire. It is really only my chest that is a
problem now. It still feels congested, and of course all the excess
coughing has left the muscles aching a bit. The cough is slowly turning
to dry cough, and this was most apparent on my train into work this
morning. Prior to getting on the train I had a few good coughs to clear
my throat, and on the whole these were productive, but on the train
between Catford Bridge and Waterloo East, as the air got hotter and
stuffier, I was reduced to a lot of eye watering dry coughing. Since
coming into work, sitting quietly in a warm, but not stuffy,
atmosphere, I have only been subject to occasional outbreaks of
coughing. All that will change in a moment as I am now going out onto
the fire eascape for a fag ! |
| Wednesday 10th January
2007 |
| 16:55 GMT |
It
would
be about now that I would be arriving home had I been to work today
(and managed to catch the early train). I thought I would write a
little more today because I have some good news.
I am feeling quite exhilarated at the moment. For one thing I
am
sure that I have broken the back of this awful cold. I am feeling far
better now. My nose is still prone to getting blocked every now and
then, but has ceased to pour, or for much of the time, even run. Many
aches and pains have subsided. The major lingering ailment now is my
cough. Even that is progressively getting better, but each fag
obviously irritates it. Although even fags are having less affect now.
I have reduced my fag intake as much as I can stand, but reduction to
zero has never been an option. Liberal doses of Pavacol D should be
helping the cough as well, and I intend to take the bottle into work
with me tomorrow.
Two more things have raised my spirits. One is that I
remembered
where half a bar of plain chocolate was hidden. I originally gave it to
Patricia to keep it out of temptation, but she didn't eat it herself,
and didn't take it with her when she moved out. I have now eaten it,
and it was very nice even if it was more calories than I ought to eat
in a whole day !
The real cream on top of my exhilaration is that today has
been
mostly fine with plenty of sunshine and semi clear skies. At 16:45 I
realised that it was still light, and there was still light in the sky
at 17:00. That is late enough for me to complete my journey home from
work in daylight - something I have been looking forward to since the
winter solstice. Tomorrow I will be late home after meeting up with
Aleemah at Victoria, but on Friday, if the skies remain fairly clear, I
am really looking forward to travelling home from work in daylight. As
the days continue to get longer I am looking forward to arriving home
in full daylight soon. By the end of next week, even on overcast days,
there should still be a smidgin of light left to brighten my journey
home.
Despite feeling quite good now, I am not sure if I will enjoy
going to work tomorrow, but I am looking forward to meeting up with
Aleemah. |
| Wednesday 10th January
2007 |
| 05:58 GMT |
I
think I
feel better then yesterday in some respects, but I am by no means well
yet. My nasal mucus production has dropped to a tenth of yesterday, but
my head still feels like it is stuffed with wet newspaper and
sawdust.My cough is being held almost manageable by liberal use of pholcodine
linctus. One good sign is that when I woke up at around 04:00 this
morning, my pillow was soaked in sweat. I assume that it was the result
of fever, and a fever usually indicates that the cold has finally
broken. I believed that I had experienced several fevers previously,
but none produced copious amounts of sweat.
I left work early at 11:00 yesterday. Not only did I feel
awful,
but I realised that my efforts to repair stuff was possibly causing
more damage than it was curing. As soon as I left work I called into Boots to buy the "Pavacol D" pholcodine based cough
linctus, plus some Sudafed
nasal spray. My journey home was actually fairly speedy with most
connections only requiring a very short wait. The connection at
Waterloo East was very tight and I had to walk quite fast to make it.
That left me short of breath, but also feeling quite good that I was
able to speed up despite feeling so rough.
Once back in Catford I came home via Tesco where I bought
some
sandwiches and a couple of bottles of diet cola. The sandwiches were
because I felt peckish, but did not want to go to the bother of
preparing anything. I ate the sandwiches while watching the midday news
on TV, and went to bed once I was finished. Initially I was just going
to lay on my bed and do some reading, but it was cold up there and I
decided I may as well get into bed properly. I started out reading but
soon became drowsy, and fell asleep. That set the pattern for the last
18 hours.
I slept for over an hour before waking up, and stayed awake
for
another hour before going back to sleep. The exact timing of the cycles
is hard to say, but an hour asleep, and an hour awake is a close enough
approximation, and that continued for the rest of the day, and
overnight. I have a feeling that I will be going back to sleep again in
the not too distant future.
As an indicator of just how ill I have been I had a strange
sensation last night. I almost (but not quite) lost my appetite ! At
around 6 or 7pm (I can't remember when) I had this notion that I should
be eating, but I did not feel hungry as such. I think I just wanted
some extra tasty comfort food rather than actually feeling hungry. In
the end I compromised and made up a simple sandwich, and that seemed to
satisfy the conflicting feelings.
Today I will not go into work so I have to stay awake for a
bit
longer now so I can phone in the "good news" to work. As soon as that
is done I will go back to bed for as long as seems appropriate. After
that I am looking forward to a good hot shower and shampoo. They should
set me up to feel good enough to do a few simple chores (emptying
Nelly's litter tray being an important one). Mostly though, I am going
to take it easy and try and get myself fit enough for work tomorrow. |
| Tuesday 9th January
2007 |
| 08:13 GMT |
This
morning I feel dreadful. It seems I have another cold. The first hint
of it was Sunday when I had a mild sore throat. Yesterday my nose
started pouring, and by the time I got home from work I was feeling
very rough. To make matters worse I got home to find that Nelly had
been sick in my bedroom. Most of it was on the floor, but there were
splashes on my duvet. So despite feeling "close to death" I had to
clean up and change all my bedding.
I went to bed very early at just after 20:00, and then read
in
bed until 21:00. Despite being really bunged up I went to sleep very
quickly, but woke up again around midnight with a fever. I was warm and
snug in bed, but needed to go for a pee. As soon as I got out of bed I
felt absolutely freezing. I could feel the skin tighten all over my
body, and the cold penetrating right down to the roots of my teeth. By
the time I got to the toilet I was shivering so badly that I could
hardly aim straight ! It was a huge relief to get back into my nice
warm bed after that, and I was soon asleep again. I awoke again after a
couple of hours and did not feel so shivery, and then then again an
hour or so after that. That time I did have the shivers again, but not
nearly as bad as the first time.
The fever I had should have been a good sign, and usually
signifies that one of my colds is on the mend. Hopefully it did this
time, but I feel very weak and achey this morning. Since sitting down
in this very hot workshop I think I may be feeling better. I'll give it
a few more hours, but if I have not made a major improvement
I
may well go home and back to bed.
The days are getting longer - just. It was most definitely
still
daylight when I caught the 16:16 train from Clapham Junction last
night, and there was still enough light left to see in colour by the
time we reached Vauxhall station. As I walked from Catford Bridge
station to home it took
little imagination to detect that there was still a very feint glow
from the western horizon. It will still be many weeks yet before I can
do the walk in any definition of daylight, but the signs are there.
This morning it is very overcast with some intermittent light
showery rain. The clouds have killed any chance of seeing any sunshine,
and at no time did I see the feintest glimmer of light appearing on the
eastern horizon this morning. |
| Monday 8th January
2007 |
| 08:09 GMT |
It
took
until I reached Clapham Junction station before I could realy appraise
the morning sky. The eastern horizon was getting reasonably bright, but
the clouds were streaked with red suggesting a really awful day
approaching. There was rain overnight, but it has stayed dry so far.
Sooner, or later, I am expecting a downpour.
Yesterday was mostly good. In the morning, after an extra 90
minutes in bed, I went to Tesco and bought some nice rainbow trout for
my dinner. I do like fish, and a nice oily fish like trout is allegedly
very healthy eating. I also bought New Scientist and read that for much
of the remainder of the morning.
At about 14:30 Kevin came round with an ancient Philips N1700 video cassette recorder
for me to look at. To renew my aquaintance with this old model, and to
get some practice in, I dug out one of my old N1702's and had a play
with it before Kevin arrived. One problem with these old machines is
the rubber drive belts fail in their old age. Some fail quite
spectacularly into a black sticky goo ! Others just stretch and lose
grip. I managed to replace the drive belts in my machine using random
belts from a collection left over from my time as a TV engineer. None
of the belts I used was very close to the original, but they seemed to work.
I had been playing for sometime when Kevin arrived, but had
not
managed to get a picture out of the machine. We persevered for another
hour, or maybe even two, before I gave up and had a go at Kevin's
machine. I am pretty sure that my machines problem was one of the
replacement drive belts I fitted. It should have been a flat belt, but
all I had was a square section belt that was too short. I am not sure
if this belt was slipping, or the extra tension from being too short
was causing too much drag. If it was too tight then if I try the
machine in another 3 or 4 years time, it should have stretched by
enough for the machine to work :-)
The problem with Kevin's machine was that the tape mechanism
often failed to lace up. Kevin suspected a mechanical problem, but I
was sure it was an electrical problem. A test of the voltage on the
loading motor showed that it was indeed an electrical problem.
Fortunately I have the full manual for the N1700 and after many wrong
assumptions we finally traced the problem to a high resistance switch
contact. A quick clean and tweak seemed to provide a complete cure.
By the time we had finished there were bits of VCR all over
the
living room, and it was getting quite late. After clearing up it was
too late to do the preparation for my rainbow trout dinner, so I shoved
a couple of fish cakes in the oven, and had those for my Sunday dinner
half an hour before I went to bed. I hope the rainbow trout is still
fresh enough to enjoy tonight. |
| Sunday 7th January
2007 |
| 06:46 GMT |
It's
a shame
that cats, my bladder, and my bowel do not really understand Sundays.
It could have been nice to have a long lie in this morning, but the
first two conspired to get me up early, and I think the third will not
be too far behind. Of course I do have the option of going back to bed
now the first two are satisfied - and I may well do so soon.
It appears dry this morning, and not too cold. While I had
the
back door open for Smudge to go out, I did not get an icy blast of air
- just a cold blast of air. After getting out of a very warm bed the
house seemed to be cool, but comfortable. Since sitting down to write
this I cooled off very fast and have now put the heater on.
Yesterday was very dull and gloomy with copious rain in the
afternoon. I hope today will not be as bad. One thing that did light up
my life yesterday was that, amazingly, Patricia did come round with my
fags. She was here for a couple of ours as we exchanged news, and tried
out one of her Xmas presents from me. It was a Mate kit (pronounced mat-ay or
mat-tee). (More about mate here and here)
One of the problems of buying Patricia the bits needed to make mate is
that mate is a social drink similar in some ways to English tea
drinking, but perhaps more so. Although Patricia knows that I hate tea,
and only once allowed her to even have some the house when she was ill,
she hoped I might drink some mate with her. Unlike tea, which I try to
keep at least an arms length away from, and preferably two, I was bold
enough to smell the mate. It has an almost wet grassy type of smell,
maybe not too
unpleasant, but
my "fear" of hot drinks overruled my sense of duty (or something), and
I declined to taste it. Maybe if Patricia and I had a more intimate
relationship I could force myself to attempt to taste some, but under
the present, and foreseeable future, circumstances this is highly
unlikely.
The rest of yesterday I either watched TV, played on the PC,
or
read a book. The book, which consumed a fair proportion of the time,
was "The Number Of The Beast"
by Robert Heinlein. Despite the title it is actually a science fiction
book. It is a fairly big book, and unless I devote the whole of today
to reading it, I think it should keep me in reading material for
several days now. The one other thing I did a little of yesterday was
to continue clearing up this back room. I only devoted 30 minutes to
it, but I have uncovered bits of the floor that have not been seen for
ages. I might have done more, but my wheelie bin is too full already,
and it will not be emptied until Thursday.
Today I will do some more laundry, visit Tesco, and do some
more
reading. I might do a little more clearing up in this back room, but
with no space to throw anything out I will have to see if I can make
improvements just by re-arranging things. The rest of my day will
probably be spent watching TV or playing on the computer. With luck I
will keep myself amused enough to avoid over eating. I managed it
passably well yesterday, and in fact I think I did quite well. For
breakfast I just had two dry finger rolls of bread with some tinned
mackerel, and in the evening I managed to persuade myself not to order
a large takeaway. I really wanted that takeaway, but decided that I
ought to cook something slightly more healthy. This I managed to some
degree. I had chargrilled mediteranean vegetables (fairly healthy) with
some fairly lean bacon (fairly healthy if only I had cooked and eaten
about a third of the quantity I actually did !). It was early afternoon
when I did have some very naughty stuff with Patricia. They were very
sweet and highly calorific Havannets Mixtos. Very, very nice,
but very, very naughty ! |
| Saturday 6th January
2007 |
| 07:00 GMT |
|
The day
has started dry, but the weather forecast is for a dull, wet and rainy
day. It is still fairly mild though.
I got
home from work on
my early train last night and immediately tucked into a snack of dry
bread with some tinned mackerel in spicy tomato sauce. With a gaping
hole in my appetite filed I was able to relax a bit more. As much as I
had been looking forward to getting back to work after the long Xmas
break, I was equally looking forward to this weekend. I was also
looking forward to getting my duty free fags from Patricia. That hasn't
happened yet, and I doubt I will see her over this weekend, but you
never know.
Later on in the evening, around 18:30, I cooked my main meal
of
the day. Now this was healthy eating ! It was Tesco "Healthy Eating"
cod in breadcrumbs. I served that with some broccoli. Of course I did
ruin the effect a bit by dribbling on some olive oil while the fish was
cooking in the oven, and I did smother the fish in tartare sauce when I
ate it. On top of that I stuffed down all four portions of the fish. My
excuse for the latter was that I still had hopes that Patricia might
drop my fags in, and I could offer her some dinner if she hadn't eaten
at that point. Having cooked the fish it seemed a pity to waste it !
I haven't got any major plans for this weekend. One of my
first
"jobs" is to wash my hair. I seem to have neglected it since Monday and
it is pretty horrible this morning. Next on the agenda is to do some
laundry, and after that I have to decide if I want to go to Tesco this
morning. My cupboard is looking a little sparse right now, but when I
am trying to avoid excess eating that is not such a bad thing. Of
course, sooner or later I will need more cat food, and that means a
trip to Tesco is inevitable.
Once the household chores are out of the way, and that
includes
emptying Nelly's smelly litter tray, I am not sure what I will do.
Maybe I will do a little more of attempting to tidy, and rearrange,
this back room as I was attempting to do over the Xmas holidays, or
maybe I will make a start on building up the new server that I also
mentioned over the Xmas holidays. Perhaps something will come along
that provides a better distraction. The important thing is that I try
and avoid eating six meals today !
|
| Friday 5th January
2007 |
| 08:07 GMT |
The
day
has started overcast, and it seems to be actually getting darker
outside now than how it was when I first arrived in Wandsworth. It is
fairly mild though, but that still does not make up for the lack of
sunshine. Yesterday saw several periods of sunshine.
 Pictured
on the left is me enjoying one such sunny spell while having a
fag break on the fire escape outside the workshop. I was lucky to catch
the picture when I did because the sun went back in moments later.
I guess work was OK yesterday. I had the chance to be creative and
design a very simple hand held tester for the hall
effect magnetic sensor on one of our small interface
pcb's. The actual circuitry I
designed was very simple. It merely consisted of a single LED
and a single resistor,
but it was the method of mounting, and connecting, the tester that
provided the design pleasure. Despite that I was keen to leave early,
and left in such a rush that I left behind some fags
I had here.
One advantage of leaving work so quickly was that I managed to get to
Clapham Junction in time to catch the 16:13 Waterloo train from
platform 7. Currently this has always been a very nice class 422 "Wessex Electric".
Sometime soon these are sadly going to be withdrawn from service by Southwest Trains.
So it was nice to get the chance to travel on one again for at least
one more time. I did attempt to take a couple of pictures on my mobile
phone camera, but it was dark and they will need some processing to be
possibly usable.
I had a quiet night in last night. I didn't do much, but I
did
attempt to eat healthily. As usual I failed in terms of quantity, but
the ingredients were all fine stuff. My main meal was a couple of tuna
steaks (over)cooked in the oven with a sprinkling of olive oil and some
garlic. I had that with some cabbage and carrot (OK, I'll admit it. It
was coleslaw in a probably unhealthy creamy sauce). Had I just had
that, and a bit of fruit, I could really claim to have eaten healthily,
but I also had a slice of quiche as a snack, and some other junk as
well. One item I did eat a lot of was something I had seen in Tesco and
was curious about. It, or should I say, they were pickled pears. I had
never heard of pickled pears before, and neither had my friend Kevin.
Curiosity got the better of him first and he tried some. He declared
they were delicious, and as Tesco was forever reducing the price of
them to clear them from the shelves, he bought some spares and gave a
jar to me on Wednesday night. Last night I noticed that Tesco had
reduced the price to just 25p from an initial price of something in
excess of £1.75. So I bought 4 jars just relying on Kevin's
recommendation. He was quite right. They are delicious. The main
flavour is really malt vinegar, but there are undertones of sweetness
and pear combined with a wonderful crunchy texture. I wonder if I go
again tonight I will find the last 5 or 6 jars reduced to 10p ??
I didn't see Patricia last night, and I am wondering if I
will
see her tonight to finally get my fags from her. It will be nice to
hear all her news as well. Apart from a few brief emails about the
flights to and from Spain I have heard very little from her. This
probably means she has a new boyfriend and has little time for me. |
| Thursday 4th January
2007 |
| 08:14 GMT |
After
a
wet and windy night the day has started fairly clear. The cloud seems
to be thickening again though, and as yet there is no sunshine visible
despite plenty of bits of blue sky visible.
Last night I joined Kevin for a drink in The Ram.
Unfortunately I
let myself be talked into staying about 40 minutes longer than I
intended. It was quite probably the second double scotch that has left
me feeling a little hung over this morning. The total damage for the
night was two pints of Winter Warmer, and two double scotch-with-ices.
I was intending to have a quick snack when I got home from the pub
(despite eating more than I intended before going there), but as it was
late I went straight to bed.
It is possible that I was asleep by 22:00 - which is not too
bad for a weekday night, although I think I would have preferred to be
asleep a little sooner after my poor sleep on Monday night. Out of all
the dreams I had one stands out as being unusual. I was walking down a
road and stopped to pet a squirrel which may have initially appeared as
a cat. It certainly acted like a cat in a playful mood as it tried to
bite me. I must digress from the dream to explain about playful biting.
Some cats will attempt to bite the hand of someone stroking it. Smudge
is one example. She does not so much "bite" as attempt to chew a finger
or thumb. Unless she gets carried away there is no attempt to bite hard
enough to break the skin. It is a sort of symbolic warning that she
could if she wanted to. Anyway, back to the dream, and the cat like
squirrel, or squirrel like cat. As I was tickling it under the chin it
grabbed my hand in it's front paws and I knew it wanted to bite me. If
it were a cat I would have let it, but I knew that it had rodent like
teeth that could easily bite my whole finger off. As I attempted to
pull my hand away it wrapped the end of its, now rat like, tail around
one of my fingers. No matter what I did I could not get it to let go. I
think at one point I had the thing dangling by it's tail, but still it
would not let go. As I was having thoughts about getting my cigarette
lighter out to burn it's tail I woke up. I cannot ever recall dreaming
about a squirrel before, and certainly not one as strange as this. What
I am trying to remember is whether at any time I saw the complete
creature, or whether bits of it metamorphacised as each feature came
into view. To reconstruct the complete creature from the parts I
remember it would have a squirrels head, a cats body and paws, and the
tail of a rat.
I am hoping that I may see Patricia tonight to get my duty
free's
from her. She has given no indication that it will be tonight, but I
could do with some fags now. If it is not tonight I guess it will
tomorrow, Friday, night as she is very often away at the weekends. If
she does come round I very much doubt that she will stay too long, and
so I can look forward to an early night - and listen to the final part
of Journey Into Space before turning off the light and submerging into
the land of Morpheus. |
| Wednesday 3rd January
2007 |
| 08:11 GMT |
This
morning it is damp and overcast, but not actualy raining. There is no
sign of the sun this morning, but the forecast is for some sunshine for
this afternoon. I hope that I can leave work in the last dying rays of
the sun later this afternoon.
I didn't eat as healthily as I intended to last night, nor
did I
get to sleep as early as intended either. despite that I do feel maybe
50% less crap than yesterday morning. Initially I did wake up at 04:00
this morning with my back aching a lot, but a combination of a little
more sleep, a hot shower, and a bit of walking seems to have provided a
lot of relief. I also feel far less bloated than yesterday (or any of
the last 7 or 8 days). Wearing some more comfortable jeans may be
helping that.
It is good to see that all the news sources, papers, radio.
TV
etc, are continuing the general moan about the price of fares that I
moaned about yesterday. I wish there was some way to step up the
protest without resorting to the usual semtex, anthrax, and plutonium.
Well I suppose there is always the new kid on the block, Polonium 210,
but Tesco's have run out of it again !
Tonight, being a Wednesday night, I think I will be calling
into
The Ram for a couple of pints of Winter Warmer with Kevin. Maybe Iain
will be there as well. |
Tuesday 2nd January
2007
17:53 GMT
|
I'm
back
home cold, tired and hungry. The day went reasonably well, and there
was a fair bit of sunshine from mid morning onwards. By 15:00 I was
feeling the strain, and yawning a lot.
My journey home was "interesting". I just missed a bus in
Wandsworth, and did not get to Clapham Junction until 16:22. This was 6
minutes too late for the last train to connect with my early train from
Waterloo East. By way of compensation I only had to wait just two
minutes for the next train. It was a curious journey. About half way
between Vauxhall and Waterloo all the lights went out inside the train.
I have no idea why, but it made the approach into Waterloo far more
interesting than the usual approach. At Waterloo East I had to wait an
annoying twenty minutes for the next Hayes train to Catford Bridge.
When it did come it was only a four car train, and from London Bridge
it was packed fairly solidly.
I have no idea why this train has been reduced to just four
carriages (it was the same in the last week before Xmas), but after a
£1.40 increase in my weekly season I found it intensely
irritating. On the same subject as fare rises I find it unbelievable
that a single bus fare is now a wallet busting £2 !
I have heard from Patricia. She experienced some delays on
her
journey back to the UK, but still managed to get the last "Stanstead
Express" back to Liverpool Street station. I don't know what route she
took from there, but she says she was home in bed by 03:00. As yet she
cannot predict when she will be dropping off my duty fee fags, but I
hope it is not too long to wait.
I was going to try and eat a very low calorie dinner tonight,
but
I felt so cold and hungry when I came in that I am compromising on some
roast potatoes and a load of green vegetables in chicken gravy. Just
eating nothing but fruit so far today, and all the exercise of working
and commuting, has made me feel a little better in some ways. I am
still a little wheezy, but my main complaint at the moment is my back
feels very stiff. If I manage a good comfortable nights sleep tonight I
hope my back will be fine in the morning. A few more days of (semi)
eating healthily should get me feeling fairly OK for the weekend -
although I will probably be bored stiff and undo all the good work of
(hopefully) the next few days. |
| 08:12 GMT |
Once
again I am back at work. The day has started dry, but very dark despite
fairly clear skies. I was greeted by a big full moon low in the western
sky when I first left home. By Clapham Junction the eastern sky was
getting fairly light, but since then the clouds seemed to have
thickened and it still seems to be semi dark outside. We are now well
past the winter solstice and I look forward to the day breaking earlier
and earlier now. Things will be good when it is full daylight by the
time I get to Waterloo East, and it will be excellent when the day
comes that I can leave the house in daylight. Finally, things will be
excellently superb when I can finally wake up to daylight.
I think I am a little tired this morning. I went to bed as
early
as 19:00, but did not attempt to get to sleep until closer to 21:00. I
think I did manage to get to sleep by, or soon after, 21:00, but it was
a troubled sleep. I was expecting to be woken up by Patricia coming in
during the early hours of the morning. Evidently her flight must have
arrived in time for her to get a train back to Liverpool Street
station, and from there straight to her new home. Until 03:00 I slept
with the hall light on, and my bedroom door open, and I awoke many
times whenever I heard anything that suggested Patricia was coming in.
Most times I think it was the cats making that noise. I woke up at
03:00, and after going for a pee I turned out all the lights and
managed to get back to sleep again. It still seemed a poor sleep with
occasional lapses into conciousness, but it did need my clock-radio
alarm to wake me up.
In some ways it was disappointing that Patricia did not turn
up.
Virtually anything I did over the entire holiday that could be called
constructive was to do with getting the spare room, and much of the
house, ready for a visitor. I assumed that visitor would be Patricia,
but it could have been someone else. In some ways I might have
preferred someone else, but Patricia would have one big plus point - I
hope she has brought me 400 duty free fags. There was some other stuff
I did over the holidays for other people, but it was one of the PC's
that did the hard work. So it is difficult to claim any credit for it.
One person in particular will be surprised what I have done for her.
Today I am obviously at work. So I don't need to make
(usually
wrong) predictions about what I may do today. There is still the
evening to consider though. I hope that I will get my duty free fags
delivered, but if not I will just slouch in front of the TV, and then
try and get to bed early tonight. |
Monday 1st January
2007
06:58 GMT
|
The
day has started in a most soggy fashion. It doesn't seem to be raining
at this very moment, but earlier on this morning the rain was beating
against my bedroom window, and some of it sounded like sleet, or maybe
even hail.
Last night I did not go up to bed as early as I thought I
might.
I noticed that a program called "Grumpy New Year" was on BBC2 . This
was a seasonal special of the series Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old
Women. It provoked a mixed reaction from me. One one hand it reminded
me of some past dreams, but on the other hand it reminded me of the
reality of New Years Eve and why it is best to try and ignore it. I
came away feeling almost OK about being grumpy myself.
After the programme finished, at 21:00, I did go up to bed
where
I listened to three episodes of Journey Into Space. By 22:30 I finished
listening and tried for some sleep. It was already getting noisy
outside, with a lot of fireworks going off, but I did manage to fall
asleep for about an hour. I was woken up by the sound of an incoming
text message on my mobile phone. It is a little tune that I have come
to associate with Aleemah because until recently over 50% of the text
messages on my new mobile phone had come from her. So with a little
excitement I checked the message. It was from Kevin, but would not
open. The phone displayed "Unsupported Message" (or format). I have no
idea what it was, and have now deleted it. After deleting it I realised
that may have been a mistake, and that maybe I could have opened it by
connecting the phone to the PC and using the "O2 PC Suite" to see what
it was. Prior to deleting it, and the main reason why I did delete it,
was that I found that on going back into the message menu the senders
name had changed from Kevin to Aleemah, although clicking on the reply
button brought up Kevin's name in the recipient box. This was most
spooky, and I feared that it could have been some sort of virus at
work. Maybe it was some sort of omen, and the significance of it will
become apparent later on.
Having been woken up by the phone, curiosity got the better
of me
and I booted up the PC to see if I had any e-mail. I hadn't, but while
the PC was on I thought I may as well download, and install, the new
version of AVG anti virus (free edition).
I was quite surprised how quickly it downloaded. I was expecting the
internet, or at least NTL's portion of it, to grind to a halt so close
to midnight, but the file came down at record speed.
It was just a few minutes to midnight when AVG had installed,
and
I was going to try for some sleep again, but outside was a cacophony of
fireworks going off. So I left the PC with Thunderbird,
my e-mail client, checking for mail every ten minutes. At two minutes
to midnight Jodie phoned. She was bored and feeling low about the whole
evening. So we chatted for a little while until her other phone rang
and she went to answer it.By now the fireworks outside had gone from
minor skirmish to full on battle of The Somme. This is sort of
surprising. Generally this is a quiet neighbourhood, and with the
railway and park to the west and north of me, the housing density is
fairly low. So who had all the fireworks is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps
some of the fireworks were from official displays using "industrial
strength" fireworks. Although the 15, or so, minute train journey to
London Bridge makes the distance seem a lot longer, it is only about 4
or 5 miles from here to where all the celebrations were
taking
place along The Thames etc.
I don't know what time I finally got to sleep, and I don't
know
how much sleep I lost when the pounding rain woke me up in the night,
but I do know that I could do with more sleep. This is quite important,
and I will be back in bed again soon. There is every chance that
Patricia will wake me up at something like 01:00 tomorrow morning if
she wants to stay here on her way back from Spain, and then I have to
be up at 05:30 for work.
So very soon I will be back in bed where I hope I can sleep
for a
couple more hours. During the day I will finish the hoovering, and if
the shops, and in particular Aldi, are open, I may well do just a
little more shopping. After that I may well end up doing nothing at
all. I think I will attempt to get to bed, and try for sleep, very
early this evening - maybe as early as 20:00.
|
