I had another pint, and after that a surprising amount of hugs took place and I set off home. Even if I still had a slightly faulty body, I still felt very good walking home. Even the damp grey park didn't seem so bad, and in some ways it was quite pleasant walking near the river in the soft light.

 When I got home I felt ravenous, and I ate some fruit to tide me over until it would be time to have dinner a few hours later. After another 30 minutes had passed by I got up from the settee to go and get a drink. It felt very weird when I did that, although once again the weirdness went away with a second or two. After I had sat down again for 10 or 15 minutes I became curious about my blood pressure. Anomalous blood pressure is one thing that doctors blame dizzy spells on, particularly when getting up or sitting down (or something). When I measured my blood pressure I found it was definitely anomalous - it was very much in the region that my doctor always wanted it to be. So obviously, by the doctors criteria I was fit and healthy, but by my recent standards it was on the low side.  Discounting that as a reason for my weird spells I assumed that maybe my blood sugar level was on the point of me being hypoglyceamic. That seemed unlikely considering the high reading I had taken earlier, but  in case it was possible I decided that it was a good excuse to eat something lass bland than I had been eating.

  I had measured my blood sugar level in the morning before going out, and although it was only 75% of the reading I had taken the previous day, it was still 2 points higher than I would like. To enter into the realms of hypoglyceamia it would have to drop a good four points, and that did seem unlikely just from doing a bit over two miles of walking, and even less likely considering I had drunk two pints of fairly strong ale in the middle of that walk. Nevertheless, after stuffing myself with a whole packet of (8) fishfingers, cooked in the oven, and smothered with garlic mayonaisse, I did feel a whole lot better. I am wishing now that I had measured my blood sugar level prior to eating to see if it was exceptionally low, or if fish fingers have some hitherto unknown magical restorative powers.

 I ate those fishfingers as a sort of snack, and they didn't detract me from cooking my main meal of the day. The previous day I had eaten a very low calorie vegetable stew, and that is what I may have had last night were it not for the fact that I had a packet of (fortunately) reduced fat pork sausages in the bottom of the fridge that were almost certainly on or after their use by date. I didn't want to let them go to waste, and so I cooked them, with some leeks, in a curry sauce. I don't think I would like to speculate as to the amount of calories and or sugar in such a meal, nor for the earlier fish fingers, but it couldn't have been all bad. This morning I seem to have lost a pound in weight, and my blood sugar level is a tiny bit lower than it was yesterday morning. So I guess I am winning.

 This morning I am not sure how I feel. I think I feel a tiny bit better than how I would usually feel before setting off to work., but I am not sure if I would get the same big improvement I get after that long journey commuting into work. Even though I don't feel like it, maybe I ought to force myself into a walk around the park and see how I feel afterwards. It could take my mind of the fact that I feel starving right now. Do I feel starving though, or do I just feel like eating something nice because I can't think of anything better to do right now ? It's probably a bit of both.

 It's the last day of the year today (and with a bit of luck, payday). I can't be bothered with such tedium as new year resolutions, but there is one similar thing I ought to do. That is to get back in practice for getting up early in the morning, or more precisely, staying up early in the morning. On most days over this long holiday period I have been up in time to go to work, but after an hour os so I have gone back to bed for several hours. The first thing I have to do is to get back in the habit of getting to bed early, and I ought to start that tonight. It is unlikely anything will happen that will need my attention tonight. So it is just a matter of turning off the my phones so that new year greetings don't wake me up, and then doing my best to get to sleep a lot earlier than I have become accustomed to over the last week.

 The picture shows a broken tree, but fails to show the scale of things. I guess this tree must have come down in a storm several years ago. It was a very mature tree, and the diameter of the trunk was somewhere in the order of  2 - 3 feet, and yet it has splintered like matchwood. (I did take a close up, but it was too out of focus, or otherwise blurred, to show here). For comparison I should have taken a picture of a nearby tree of the same type, and probably the same size. That tree was slanted over at an alarming angle, and I can foresee that coming to the same end in some future storm.

 All the wildlife in the surrounding area must love that broken tree. It is probably swarming with bugs in the warmer months, and still provides shelter even in the winter months. I was surprised just how much shelter it does provide.

 It was while waiting to take this picture, and a few others, that I took my gloves off and allowed my hands to get frozen. One other picture I took is worth showing here. For years there have been wild parrots living in the park, but they are usually difficult to see, and even harder to photograph. Prior to yesterday the best views of the parrots were more often as streaks of green as seemed to fly from tree to tree at high speed. With leaves on the trees they are practically camouflaged when roosting in the trees, and seem to sit high up in the tallest trees. Yesterday I had an almost clear line of sight to one parrot almost above my head, and despite the risk of getting an eyeful of something unpleasant I managed to get this one not good, but recognisable, picture of one of the Ladywell parrots.

 You might get the impression from the picture above that everybody was having a miserable time, but I think it is just my knack of taking a picture at the wrong time, plus everybody is concentrating on eating. I have to say the food was rather good, and if I could have felt comfortable about the idea of my long journey home with a full gut I could easily have eaten far more than I did.

 Some booze was provided by the company, but it was not that wonderful. The champagne was not bad considering that I don't really like champagne. There were two types of bottled ale available. One was ok in the blandest sort of way, and the other I didn't really care for. Two of the guys contributed their own booze to the occasion. From our storeman came a bottle of stuff from his native Hungary. I think the closest description of it would be Apricot Schnapps, and it was very nice.

 The other booze was a Vodka from one of our Polish workers. This vodka was falvoured with Bison Grass (or was it buffaloe grass ?). It gave it a sort of grassy taste, and was rather pleasant. Apparently it was recommended to drink it with apple juice. I tried that and it was revolting !  Although it made the tongue tingle, I still think it was best taken neat, although some ice would have been a good addition.

 I am not sure what time I left the party. It was not early as I thought might happen, but it was not that late. Maybe it was around 5 pm, just an hour after I would normally leave work. By the time I arrived back in Catford I was feeling cold and hungry, and being slightly drunk I just had to buy some fried chicken and chips. I eventually went to bed feeling quite stuffed, and maybe ever so slightly queasy.

 On Saturday morning I awoke with a hangover. It wasn't the serious "hammers in the head" hangover, but more of the sort where it feels like your brain is wearing a sock. I am not sure if having something important to do clears the head a lot quicker, but I had nothing to do, and the feeling stayed with me until at least lunchtime. About the only thing I did during the morning was to do two shopping trips. One was to Tesco, and the other was to the 99p shop. In the latter I bought enough calories to keep an army on it's feet until sometime in mid January. Hopefully I will have some of those goodies left to tide me over the xmas period. My shopping in Tesco was a bit more utilitarian. With a rather large bag of baking potatoes, and 4 two litre bottles of Diet Coke, I had little spare capacity to carry more than a small assortment of smaller items.

 I did very little else for the rest of Saturday. In fact I am not sure exactly how all the time passed. What I do know is that a vague plan I had to clear up the living room came to nothing. There was also stuff I meant to do with my computers, and in particular moving my new computer into it's proper place. That too came to nothing.

 Yesterday morning I was slightly more active. I was due a visit from Aleemah, and I managed to do some tidying up in advance of her visit. It was a little odd disorientating seeing Aleemah on a Sunday, and more so knowing that I had the next day (today) off work. It was like a Saturday, but many shops were closed, and the TV programmes were all different !

 Today time seems to be flying by. I got up at my usual time for a weekday, as if I was going to work, but after an hour I went back to bed again. I did think I could do with a little more sleep, but I wasn't expecting to get over two hours extra. Than again I made no special effort to get to bed on time last night, and it may have gone 10 pm before I was in bed.

 Since getting up for the second time I have washed my hair, shaved and showered, and answered an email. Answering the email took a lot of time because I had to do a lot of web searching to find some answers first. With that done I sat down to start writing this, and now it is getting on for midday.

 The next thing I must do is some more shopping. Today I will have to lug home a load of catfood, and even more Diet Coke as well as whatever I feel I can carry home. From now on the shops get increasingly unfriendly, or useable (or something) as more and more people try to crowd into them for their xmas provisions. In previous years I have left it too late to do any shopping, and have had to rely on whatever is in the freezer, and a gigantic Indian takeaway to feed myself, and Smudge, over the xmas shutdown, but maybe this year will be different. If I can get enough today I should not have to go to the shops again until after xmas when I will be able to have a good rummage through all the stuff that Tesco will (hopefully) be selling at knockdown prices. Usually they have special xmas packaged booze at very reduced prices, and special xmas cheese boards are usually a good bargain too (as well as being very fattening !).

 The picture above shows some of the snow on an old log on the river bank of the River Wandle as it flows through the park behind where I work. It may not be much snow, but the worst is yet to come.

 The snow stopped falling by approximately 3pm yesterday, and after that there was just some sporadic cold drizzle. That drizzle did it's best to eliminate all signs of the snow, but in Catford there may have been more snow, and on the way between the station and home there were several places where there was a very slippery sheen of slush on the pavement.

 The shoes I was wearing yesterday have very little tread (assuming you can describe the sole of a shoe in the same way as you can describe a car tyre). They are not worn out, like an old tyre, but were designed that way - which seems odd for a so called sports shoe where lots of grip would surely be useful. On a wet floor they can sometimes lose a bit of traction, but on the slippery slush it felt like I could go apex over base at any moment. Today I have put my hiking shoes on. They have soles like a good car tyre, and should provide plenty of traction in the event of more slippery surfaces happening.

 It seems there is a very good chance of more slippery surfaces. At about the time the snow left off yesterday, it may resume today. There is the potential that I will be going home from work in driving snow, but it could happen a lot later. The time it starts is of less significance than the forecast that there will be a lot of snow on the ground tomorrow morning. Of course the railway companies have had plenty of warning about this, and Southeastern Trains in particular, will presumably be taking precautionery measures to make sure that the trains are running perfectly by the middle of next month ! I am wondering if I will ever be able to get to our works xmas party tomorrow.

 It was rather cold yesterday evening, and it seemed to take ages to get my living room warm. The back room was particularly chilly, and made worse by leaving the back door open for Smudge to decide to go out, and then to decide to come back in again. By 7.30 pm it seemed that I had seen all I wanted to see on TV and went into the back room to play with my new computer. It felt too cold to do too much, and I ended up in my nice warm bed just before 8 pm. I deliberately left the heater on low in the back room when I went to bed, and it was not too bad in there this morning.

 Once I was in bed I fell asleep a lot quicker than I thought I would, and I probably slept for eight and half hours before I got up. I guess I must have been needing that sleep. I did dream a lot, but only one bit of dream is worth mentioning for it's (possible) amusement value.

 Once upon a time there was a Monty Python sketch where everytime a customer in a department store said the word mattress the salesman had to sing a verse of "Jerusalem". My dream had some similarities. It was based on the real fact that many of our production staff here at work are devout christians, and in fact many of them go to the same happy, clappy church. Now to get to the dream itself ! In it, I somehow discovered that if you recited the first line of the lords prayer (Our father, who art in heaven etc.) in a loud voice, the production staff would immeadiately stop working and continue to recite the rest of the prayer. Great fun ensued with me, and maybe some others, rushing into the production area at random times and starting them off.

  I must have one more dig at the new version of Thunderbird, the email client. One of the few things I did on the computer last night was to dig a bit further into the configuration files and get it to look, and behave more like the Thunderbird I know and love. I still can find and explanation, or cure, for it wanting to display one of my email accounts twice, but I guess I can live with that. My final conclusion yesterday was to make some sort of dubious comparison between Thunderbird and a pencil. I have now come up with a better one.

 Imagine Thunderbird was a supermarket trolley. In version three of the trolley they have added sat nav, turn indicators, air con, and a stereo system when all anybody wanted then to do was to make it steer straight. Thunderbird is just a tool, and tools do not need bells and whistles, they just need to work !