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My Diary/Blog For the Month of June 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday 29th
June 2014 |
| 13:36 BST Yesterday was a lot drier than I believe it was supposed to be. That's not to say it was all day. It rained for a couple of hours in the early afternoon, and although the rain was never very heavy, there was one single earth shattering boom of thunder. It happened as the rain was just ending. I don't recall any sunshine from the afternoon onwards until just as the sun was setting - and I didn't see it first hand. What I did see was all the road signs glowing bright orange as the bus I was on went up the hill to Bromley. If I had been able to turn around and look out the back of the bus I would probably have seen the great glowing disk of the sun setting. It feels a little cool compared to yesterday, and yesterday was not that warm (although I have no idea what the temperature was). The temperature right now is just over 20° C, and it is probably as high as it is going to get. So far we have had some sunny periods, but there have probably been more dull periods. There are some very dark grey looking clouds up in the sky right now. The forecast predicts rain from about 6pm, and if that is wrong it may be because the rain starts before then. On the other hand, just like yesterday, it may not rain in the evening at all ! I'm not sure how to describe yesterday. I guess I was having a very lazy time - but it may have been therapuetic. The one thing I definitely wanted to do was to go out in the evening. It was a bit touch and go, but I managed that OK. It was because of that, that I tried to moderate the quantity of food I ate (but not be too particular about the quality of what I ate). For instance breakfast was cold pizza ! The last thing I ate before going out, as a very late lunch, was a bit different !  I found these in the Turkish supermarket. 
I
have to admit those stuffed cabbage leaves don't
look too appetising when on a plate alongside some
bright red baby plum tomatoes. It is not terribly
obvious from the picture that they are stuffed
with what should be, but wasn't, spicy rice. Well
it was rice, but it wasn't exactly spicy, and
wasn't all that flavourful either. Much of the
taste of this lunch came from the peppery tasting
Turkish sausage that I had with it.
After this strange lunch I practically went to bed. I lay on my bed, partly covered with the duvet, and before long my eyelids started to droop. I ended up laying there drifting in and out of sleep for over two hours. In theory that set me up to go out in the evening, but in practice it just made going out harder. Having a warm shower made it harder still ! I was feeling very relaxed, as well as uncomfortable in the most subtle ways. Nothing actually hurt, but it felt like it was about to hurt in all sorts of places. Someone described it as like feeling old, and I guess that is sort of right. It is also probably very wrong, and the true condition is that I am just very unfit and very unhealthy. It is strange to consider that prior to my operation last September I was feeling very fit and healthy apart from the unpleasant angina pains that would start anytime I tried to do the lightest exercise. The thing is though, I never had any feeling that I couldn't start that exercise. It was purely that I had to stop just after starting. Now it feels like I can't even start....and yet when I do it is rarely as bad as I imagine it will be. My body urged me to stay in last night, but my mind definitely wanted me to go and see Night Owl playing in The Chatterton Arms pub just the other side of Bromley. It took an awful lot of effort to get me out the front door, but once I was moving I felt fairly OK, and I didn't feel that bad in the pub. I'm not sure why I felt a strong urge to leave there early, but I did. I guess it was just gone 11pm when I left, and the gig probably still had almost an hour to run. Once I was out of the pub in the fresh air I began to feel even better. It wasn't so much the fresh air, but the feeling I was moving in the right direction - towards home - that felt best of all. Maybe my decision to leave when I did was not such a bad idea because I was yawning almost nonstop towards the end of the bus ride. Once I was back in Catford I bought some chicken and chips to take home for a very late dinner. Maybe dinner revived me a bit because I stayed up eating dinner, and watching quite a bit of Bryan Ferry's Glastonbury performance on BBC4, and once that finished I found the energy to check through some of the photos I took at the gig before jumping in bed and falling almost instantly asleep.  This picture was taken was taken without flash, and in quite low lighting. In theory it is a crap photo. It's all noise, but it has some sort of strange merit about it. Maybe it is good, and maybe it is bad, but I sort of like it.  Shooting without flash can be very hit and miss. This one, using just the coloured stage lighting seems to have come out OK, but it is a pity about the yellow glare coming from the doorway to the toilets. That doorway spoiled many of my pictures.  My camera likes red and blues, but hates green for some reason.  This picture should not have worked. Shooting straight into the stage lights should have messed everything up, but somehow it came out quite pleasing - to my jaundiced eye ! So far today I have done a fair amount of photo editing, and I've also been shopping to Aldi. I'm not sure what I am doing for the rest of today. I was thinking I might do a bit of laundry, but there is nothing terribly important to do. I have plenty of shirts and stuff for work, and the weather is too precarious to do anything that needs drying outside such as bed linen. Maybe I'll just do some reading, and perhaps have a snooze this afternoon. |
| Thursday 26th
June 2014 |
| 11:56 BST It stayed cooler than I expected it to be yesterday. The forecast said 20° C, I optimistically hoped for 23° C, but I don't think the temperature topped 19° C in many places. Despite that it was fairly bright outside, stayed dry, and it didn't feel too bad. Today is forecast to be slightly cooler, 18° C, and slightly duller. As soon as the sun sets, or maybe a little while after, it will probably rain. It seems that we are rushing towards winter ! Tomorrow will be another degree cooler, and there will be copious amounts of rain - including some thunder and lightning ! Saturday may be just as bad ! I didn't feel that wonderful at work yesterday. I had no specific symptoms. Maybe the only symptoms were in my head - at least during the middle of the working day - but by the time home time came by I was feeling unusually tired. Before I went to work I did have some fanciful idea that I might wash another duvet cover when I got home, and leave it to dry overnight, and through today, but I felt completely drained when I got home. I wondered why that might be, and considered the possibility that it might just be the travelling, or that it might just be all in the head, but this morning more physical things seem to have happened. I did very little last night, and I was in bed, and fast asleep reasonably early. I think I slept OK, but I woke up with a bad headache, and my throat felt sore. It wasn't a dry throat sort of soreness, but a sort of inflamed feeling. The sore throat has long gone now, but my head still feels sort of tight, although not actually sore. I probably could have taken some paracetamol to speed my recovery up, but I went back to bed after calling work, and although I didn't expect to sleep there was a big clue that I did end up sleeping - a weird dream ! Anyway, laying there with my eyes defocussed in the low level of light seeping through the curtains made me feel a lot better for a while. I felt good enough to finally wash that duvet cover, and it is now hanging on the line dripping dry. It is possible, if not probable that washing that duvet cover may not have been such a great idea because I am beginning to feel off colour again. It is a feeling akin to that feeling you sometimes get before a storm. A sort of heavy feeling where every movement or thought is an effort. I suppose, considering the direction the weather has been going in, that there actually is a possibility of a storm approaching despite the forecast saying today should be OK. I think I am going to have a little lie down now, but before I go I'll leave you with news from the concourse of Waterloo station. Yesterday it was the turn of Regain to promote their product. I really should check, but I think it's a hair loss product, but the promotional stand could be for selling brand new footballs for some bizarre reason !  |
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| 08:43 BST It was bloody good drying weather yesterday - until 7pm when it finally started to rain nearly 2 hours later than the forecast predicted. There wasn't always that much sunshine before the rain, but until the clouds started to thicken it was bright, and it was warm - around 26° C by my reckoning. I don't think the rain got very heavy, and it may not have fallen for very long, but perhaps we were lucky. I am sure I heard a distant, but quite prolonged peal of thunder. This morning started out dry and sunny. There was hardly a cloud in the sky, but it was rather cool. My thermometer said 11.8° C when I left to come to work, and that is fairly chilly. There is more cloud in the sky now, and the forecast says we will lose most of the sunshine by midday, but it will stay bright and dry all day. The top temperature was forecast to be quite low, but I would be surprised if we didn't see 23° C by sometime this afternoon. Even if I didn't go out exploring/walking as I intended to do during my 6 days away from work, it was still a successful 6 days, and no more so than yesterday. I had a few boozing session, an evening out at a gig, and got a little laundry done, but yesterday I got a lot of laundry done, as well as a shopping trip to Aldi. In theory it was all quite exhausting, and doing the laundry did raise quite a bit of sweat, but I am seriously considering the outlandish idea that it may actually be good exercise ! Yesterday morning I hand washed, and hand wrung out (although not terribly effectively) a duvet cover, a sheet and some pillow cases, and hung it all outside to drip and dry in the sunshine. I guess it's early onset Altzheimers, or maybe just not bothering to remember trivia syndrome, but I am now not so sure if that list of bedclothes is strictly accurate. In reality accuracy does not matter here. All I know is that it was both hard work and very satisfying to make a dent in a backlog of difficult to hand wash stuff. One reason for my confusion is that I didn't stop there. It dried so quickly on the line that I did some more. This time it was just a duvet cover and a sheet. Even they dried very quickly, but 5pm was approaching, and the weatherman said that rain was expected at any moment. He was wrong, it was 7pm, or just after when the rain actually started, and initially it was light that it was almost ignorable. I was feeling rather good about the amount of laundry I had done, and hatched a cunning planning to do even more. So I washed two more sheets, and hung them on the line just before the rain was supposed to fall. By the time the rain really arrived my sheets were 90% dry, and rather than leave them out overnight, and bring them in, hopefully sunbaked, when I got home from work today, I decided to bring them in to finish drying over the banister rail (always a handy place to dry stuff). I didn't check, but I am sure they would have been bone dry when I woke up this morning. It is possible that I might wash a rather heavy duty, winter duvet cover tonight if I feel in the right mood.  The last two sheets on the line about an hour
after being washed, and nearly half dry !
Apart from those three shortish, but rather intensive bursts of energy doing laundry, and also my shopping trip to Aldi, I spent the remainder of the day being lazy - deservedly lazy in my own selfish opinion. All three things, being lazy, going to Aldi, and short periods of hard work, could have conspired together to make me eat rather more than I should have, and they both did, and they didn't. In total physical amount I didn't eat all that much, but one item on it's own was enough to kill a whole town of people by all manner of modern diseases. I ate a large tub of ice cream - or basically frozen sugar and lard. The only thing that saved my life was that it probably didn't have much salt in it ! Mind you, it was rather tasty :-) There was an advert on TV last night extolling the virtues of new season fresh British strawberries - all deliciously red, ripe, plump and sweet. The advert said that Tesco, and the other big supermarkets were selling them for £2 a punnet, but Asda were selling the same punnets for just £1.50. That's a good saving...almost. It just so happens that one of the things I bought from Aldi was a big punnet of really rather delicious, wonderfully ripe, plump, red strawberries. The punnet was so big that I had to force the last couple of strawberries down, and the price of that punnet was........just £1.39 WINNER !!!! I was fast asleep in good time last night - sometime around 9pm as far as I can remember. Last night I really did sleep well. I only woke once in the night (that I am aware of), and I had to be woken by my alarm going off. The latter probably means that another hour or two of sleep might have been a good idea, but I feel unusually good when I first woke. It's a shame that didn't mean that I would continue to feel good. Most of me is actually in fair working order. I can feel my arm muscles were well used yesterday, but they are not stiff or particularly painful - much to my great surprise. My legs are a bit stiff, but I think that's now just a fact of life. What I was not expecting was the explosive results when I went to the toilet for the first time. I didn't have any warning aches or pains, but boy did I explode ! Of course from then on I had to visit the toilet many times before I felt fit to leave for my train to work. In point of fact I was not fit to leave for my usual train but had to get the one afterwards. Since than I have been OK. I wonder if it was the ice cream or something else that triggered it ? Spotted a couple of hundred yards from work........  I have no idea where the nearest official parking spaces for "Boris Bike's" are, but I know they are not by car parking signs here http://goo.gl/maps/2nX2v If you are looking for a lost bike Boris, you need look no further. It is possible that I ought
to do some work while at work today. This is a shame
because I was just getting used to not doing much, but
I guess I ought to earn my wages - meagre as they are.
It will be quite nice when the end of the month comes
and I get more wages in my bank account. It is
possible that I am allowing myself to get a bit
paranoid about the state of my bank account. I've been
careful, and the chances are I'll get to the end of
the month without having to get anywhere near using my
overdraft. It would break my heart to actually use my
overdraft because that would mean paying bank charges,
and I would feel marginally easier selling my soul to
the devil than paying charges to my bank !
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| Tuesday 24th
June 2014 |
| 10:35 BST There was little direct sunshine yesterday, but it was mostly bright until late afternoon. The temperature rose higher than expected - 26° C instead of the forecasted 24° C - but it started to feel sticky by mid afternoon. With rain forecast for the evening it had all the makings of a storm brewing up. There was no storm, but there was some moderately heavy rain after 8pm (an hour later than forecast). I think the rain only lasted an hour or so, but I ceased to pay attention to the outside world once the rain started. I think to day may well be a rerun of yesterday - with a few changes to the timing. The rain may come earlier today, and maybe the temperature may be nearer the forecast of 23° C, but in essence it will still be very similar. The current forecast says tomorrow will be cooler, occasionally brighter, but sometime duller, and more importantly, it should stay dry all day. Yesterday did not work out quite like I expected it to. The big change was that I did not see Patricia. She had three lucrative interpreter jobs that she had to do. Maybe I'll see her today, or if not today, and she still wants to grab some winter clothes from here, she will have to pop in after work on Wednesday or Friday (I'll probably be boozing after work on Thursday). 
Instead of seeing Patricia I had to come
up with other stuff to do. After paying my TV Licence
I was technically broke.....but not actually destitute
! So I went for a quick walk to the cash machines and
topped up my wallet, and on my way back, before
spending a little of my freshly topped up wallet on a
couple of bottles of diet cola, I took a look in
Peacocks on the high street.
I am still suffering, in varying degrees, with swollen feet, ankles and lower legs since my operation last September. I am beginning to think that the surgeons botched the operation, and I rather wish I had stayed awake to supervise what they were doing ! Anyhow, my swollen feet means that my shoe size has effectively gone up by one size. Some of my current shoes still fit well, and are mostly comfortable, but others are almost unwearable. So I wondered what cheap and nasty trainers Peacocks might have in my new occasional size. They had a fair selection, and it included some turquoise, almost plimsol like, trainers that I had hoped to buy some time ago. I ended up buying two new pairs, one turquoise, and the other light blue in similat, but not identical styles. There was no hint about it that I could see in the shop, but when I got to the till I found they were both subject to a "temporary price change", and were only £8.40 each instead of £12 each. That rather fitted in with my impecunious state ! Going out to the cash machines, Peacocks, and finally to the corner shop, was the last thing of note that I did yesterday. I was more than happy to laze around snoozing, reading and watching a bit of TV. It sounds as if it could have been boring, but the time seemed to fly by. Before I knew it, it was time for bed, but once in bed (or technically on it because it was too warm in it) I carried on reading until midnight - which was rather late for me. I'm tempted to say that I slept well once I had fallen asleep sometime after midnight, but I had some peculiar dreams, and for the first time that I was aware of, a mild case of sleep paralysis. I was having a dream that that was very close to reality. In the dream I was in my bed, and my bed was in a bedroom that was almost identical to my real bedroom, but I think it was slightly bigger, and there was something else odd about it that I can't put my finger on. It was all so close to reality that I was unsure if it was a dream, or if it was reality. I woke up in the dream because something touched my foot, and I kicked it off. I'm sure I heard it drop to the floor. I obviously wanted to see what I had kicked, but I couldn't move. I had to sort of count to three before I could move, and during that count I woke up for real. It was all a bit disturbing for a minute or two. I guess that dream happened at around 4am. I managed to fall asleep again until 5am when I will have to get up for work tomorrow, but this morning I went back to sleep again after a while, and finally woke up for good (or at least for this morning - the afternoon comes with no guarantees) a litttle before 8am. I guess I felt OK, but I didn't rush into anything for an hour or two. I spent a little while researching the idea of a trip to Deal on the Kent coast. I thought it might be nice to visit the pier there, and take a walk along the beach. The only trouble is that it would take 3 hours to get there by train, and cost £37 ! I could walk there in less than three I think I worked out my anger by washing a double duvet cover, and a couple of pillowcases. They are now hanging out on the line to dry, and if they dry as quickly as I have after sweating after a warmish shower to wash the sweat off after doing that laundry, then they might be half dry even now. With rain due anytime after mid aftenoon they will have to come this afternoon in even if still slightly damp. It is possible that I might do another duvet cover, and maybe a sheet before the day is out. There won't be time for them to dry today, but if I leave them out they should be dry when I get home from work tomorrow. I guess I am sort of waiting to see if Patricia contacts me before deciding on doing anything epic today, but I don't think I'll wait before going to get some shopping. I think I'll pop down the road to Aldi to get a few things in while I can (Aldi is not on my way home from work, and would be a very annoying detour - hence why I sometimes use Tesco on my way home from work). The only really important thing I ought to try and do today is to make sure I am fast asleep in bed in time for getting up at 5am not being too big a shock to my system ! |
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| 08:31 BST While yesterday may have been like an early summers day, today will not be quite so good. It is currently 20° C, which is pretty good for a morning, but the temperature will only rise by about three degrees - possibly ! There has been some weak and hazy sunshine this morning, and if the weather follows the forecast we will soon lose the sunshine for 3 or 4 hours, and then it will be back, and maybe even better until some big black clouds pass by around 7pm, and dump their contents on our heads ! It seems like an approximation to this weather pattern will continue through to the end of the week when, if the forecasters have read their seaweed correctly, it will be cold, dark and wet all day on Friday. Lovely ! I had a nice lazy evening last night. After my food frenzy when I got home from the pub, I didn't eat that much more - which is odd because I had a dinner part 2 planned or imagined. It wasn't that long after about 8.30pm that I decided to do some reading in bed. I managed to read for perhaps 40 minutes before I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. Unfortunately I hadn't brushed my teeth by then, and it rather spoiled things to have to get up and brush them. The deed was done, and 5 or 10 minutes later I was back in bed, and falling asleep. If it hadn't been for some quite unpleasant dreams I would have said that I had a good nights sleep. Maybe it was those dreams that woke me up at 4.50am, or maybe it was just habit. If I had to go to work today I would have had to get up permanently, but this morning I had the luxury of reading a couple of tech news items on www.theregister.co.uk before getting back in bed. I didn't get to sleep properly...or did I ? On reflection, it seems like almost 2 hours passed by very quickly ! Maybe I was asleep after all. Once I got up again it took a little while to get the creases out of my bones and brain, and then I felt just about well enough to tackle some laundry. When that was done, and the washing hung out on the line, I then did almost the remainder of the washing up that I failed to complete yesterday morning. There is still one bowl that needs a bit of soaking before being attacked with sponge backed scourer and washing up liquid. I'll do that later, but the next thing that needs cleaning is me !  There was one other thing I did this morning, and it was agonisingly painful to do, and will give me nightmares for months to come. I paid my £145 yearly TV License. It nearly broke my heart and testicles to do it, but it is done, and I am now almost destitute until the end of the month (although I think I can find money for food, transport and booze until then, but no extravagances or other impulsive buying - boo hoo !). My plans for today are constrained by the belief that Patricia will be dropping by to pick out some winter clothes that she dumped here ages ago. She will be needing them when she flies back to Argentina at the end of the week. Maybe once she has done that we might go for a drink, and maybe lunch or something. If booze is involved I will probably spend the rest of the afternoon, and into the evening, intensely relaxing. Possibly watching a bit of TV and/or reading my book. If no booze is involved, or just a little bit of it, I will probably do the same things, but with less of a hangover ! Maybe tomorrow, my last day off work, will be the day when I finally get to go out exploring somewhere. |
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| 18:43 BST It turned out nice yesterday. Perhaps it was just a thing unique to me when I thought it was getting a bit humid as if a storm might have been approaching. Much of the afternoon, and into the evening was partly sunny. The temperature ranged from slightly warm to delighfully fresh - the latter was when I was walking home at 11.30pm last night ! Today has often been sunny, and pleasantly warm (but some way short of being hot - except when standing in the sunshine wearing a black shirt !). The current temperature is just over 24° C, and while there are many clouds in the sky, they are all small fluffy ones. Tomorrow is forecast to start sunny, but by the afternoon it will be cloudy, although the top temperature will be similar to today. Yesterday was quite a busy day. After my household chores in the morning I went to meet both Patricia and Kevin in the local Wetherspoons pub for a drink. We were partly celebrating my birthday (actually tomorrow) and Patricia's birthday. It was inevitable that with Kevin being there we would stay drinking longer than we should have, and it was on my way to being drunk when we left the pub, and I saw Patricia onto her bus home.  It's not the sharpest picture I've ever
taken (!!!!!), but here's Patricia in the London &
Rye pub yesterday.
One of the reasons why I was hovering on the edge of being drunk was that I had eaten very little before going to the pub. To compound the problem I wanted to go out in the evening, and so didn't want to eat much in the late afternoon either. I had a couple of snacks, and I think I had a short snooze before going out. By that time I also had a hangover, and felt rather rough. It took a fair amount of will power to walk down the road to the bus stop. For a while I felt OK, and I enjoyed myself at the gig. There were two bands playing - Night Owl and Contraband - one was good and the other played "country" songs........  Here's Night Owl - Jo Corteen with guitar
on the left, and Dave Griffiths at his electric piano
on the right.
 Contraband with Geoff Paice on the far left playing bass guitar. Patsi Spike O'Shea at the microphone, and Dylan Tidman on drums (and I am unsure of the others names). The rather odd thing about Contraband is that "country" music is a bit of a departure from their usual styles. Geoff and Patsi both play in the punk band The Bromley Bastards, as well as other rock and hard rock bands. Dylan is a very versatile drummer, but the band he usually plays for is definitely a hard rock band ! I must confess that I was far more intolerant of "country" music than I thought I might be. It probably was not help by the mild I was drinking that seemed to be sitting poorly on my earlier abused gut. I was beginning to think I might throw up if I drank any more. So I said my good byes and left after three or four songs. Once I was out in the fresh air I began to feel OK, and I felt pretty good as I walked from the bus stop to home in the refreshing night air. It was only five minutes, but it was probably the most enjoyable bit of walking I've done in ages ! It was approximately 11.30pm when I got home, and the first thing I did was to cook (or to be more accurate - warm up) some dinner. It went down a treat as I watched some stuff on TV. Mostly I watched some Have I Got News For You, and then some QI on Dave, but while the interminable advert breaks came on I switched to BBC2 and watched a fair bit of the film Buster. It seemed to be quite a good film, and I must look out for it being shown again. A consequence of watching al that TV was that I didn't get to bed until around 1am. It didn't take me long to get to sleep, and I slept quite well for the first 4 hours, but that took me up to 5am when my body is programmed to get up for work. From then onwards I slept quite intermittently until I just had to get up and prepare for a visit from Aleemah. Fortunately I maned to get the more important bits of the house relatively tidy and clean before she got here (including the toilet which was in a state I would not have been proud of !). So once again I was in the pub for another pint of beer while Aleemah had her breakfast in there (not that I am complaining about more beer !). When we came back here afterwards, having gone via the 99p shop where I bought all sorts of stuff that I shouldn't have, we watched a few more episodes of Sea Of Souls - a TV series that was shown by the BBC, and is not quite to my taste, but fairly watchable. Aleemah left at 2.30pm, and after that I sort of collapsed, or I wanted to. I did get a small snooze in, but I've been editing photos and I have had a sort of lunch using stuff I bought from the 99p shop. What I had were Rustlers microwaveable burgers. They are pretty horrible, and I am not sure if they are even worth 99p - I believe they are considerably more in supermarkets that are mad enough to stock them. (Tesco currently list a slightly superior burger to the ones I had. They are on special half price offer for a couple of days, but the usual price is £2.20 !). I could go to another gig tonight. Kimera, who are rather good, are playing in The William IV pub in Elmers End. It is easy to get to, and easy to get home from. I probably should force myself to go, and I should probably force myself not to do what I really have in mind for tonight. It's my birthday tomorrow, and I feel like treating myself to a naughty Chinese takeway tonight. I have probably eaten quite enough crap as it is today, but I feel the urge for a Chinese gnawing away at my will power with ever increasing power...... |
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| 09:07 BST By yesterday afternoon it was feeling acceptably warm - just over 21° C - but the morning was unpleasantly chilly. So chilly that I had the heater on here at work for the first few hours. While it may have warmed up by mid to late afternoon, it was still very dull outside. It just wasn't a nice day at all...and neither is today ! It started a little less cold, almost 15° C, but it also rained - a bit. When I walked to the station I could feel a sort of mistiness on my face, and there was a fresh damp earth smell. In central London there was some fine drizzle, and exposed surfaces were very wet looking. As I walked from the station to work it was wet underfoot, but the rain had all but stopped. Much of the sky is littered with dirty grey clouds, but there are some lighter coloured clouds too. On rare occasions a little chink of blue can be seen, but the forecast is just for more grey clouds, and maybe some more light drizzle. The temperature should reach, and may exceed 20° C by later afternoon. Going home from work did not bring any joy, no matter how small, like it did yesterday. I didn't do any interesting financial transactions, and I didn't see any policemen with guns, but I did see this -  There was one other thing I did on the way home (and on the way to work this morning), and that was to practice my breathing. It feels sort of weird to consciously take the occasional deep breath while walking. It's not too dissimilar to letting out a big sigh, but it does seem to work. It reduces the need to take rapid shallow breaths. At the moment it is difficult to do, but I can only assume that if I persevere I will eventually recover my proper lung capacity, and the usual automatic control of breathing will take over. It's any bodies guess how long that will take. It feels like it could take months or even years, but it could be as little as a couple of weeks. I think it will be one of those things where it feels like nothing is changing, and then you suddenly realise it has ! I'm hoping for another example of that soon. I had planned a semi healthy dinner for last night. It was going to be grilled steak and salad, but the salad was a bowl of ready mixed salad, and it looked well past it's use before date. I don't know if it actually was past any set date, but it was very obvious that it was starting to wilt badly with lots of liquid swilling about in the bottom of the bowl. I still had the steak, but I had to improvise a faux salad, which wasn't really a salad at all, to go with it. On top of that I had far, far too many sugary biscuits as a sort of dessert. I expected to suffer the consequences this morning, but although I felt terrible, I don't think I can blame it on last night's dinner. Maybe I slept too well, but that seems unlikely. I was in bed soon after 8pm, and while I didn't think it would ever happen, I was fast asleep very soon after. For most of the night I slept under my duvet. Maybe that overheated me or something. I was having some vivid dreams about robots, cats, and my late mum during the night. They seemed to go on forever, but probably didn't. I finally gave up sleeping, or trying to sleep at 4.30am. As I lay in bed I felt fine, but as soon as I tried to move I felt horrible, really horrible. I wondered how I would ever get to work, or even if I should try, but as time passed I began to feel better. It is hard to describe just how and what "really horrible means". It was as if everything gently ached from my toes up to my brain. It didn't just hurt up and down, but sideways and forward and back too ! By the time I had to leave to get my train it had all settled down to just stiff legs and one other thing. That other thing was actually quite painful, but a source of hope. For completely unknown reasons it seems I might be having a development to the numbness that has plagued half my left hand since awakening after my operation. Suddenly, out of the blue, with no obvious trigger that I could discern, my left ring finger, and the little finger next to it, felt like they had been brushed with a nettle. Similar, although rather less drastic sensations have heralded some sort of change for the better in the type or range of the numbness of my left hand - at least I think they have. I assume, rightly or wrongly, that as the damaged nerves regenerate they start sending out spurious signals. The acuteness of the sensation had died down a little now, and I think that there is a just detectable change in the sensation of feeling in those two fingers. I probably won't really know if it is a good improvement until some time has passed. The changes now seem so gradual that I have to think of changes over months rather than days or hours. It was only very recently that I realised that I now have just about full motor control of all the fingers on my left hand. It must have been a good couple of months ago that I realised that I had partial control back, and then nothing seemed to happen. Now I can almost do the Vulcan "live long and prosper" salute without any trouble (but not as well as I can do with my right hand). I had almost given up hoping that the nerve damage affecting my left hand would ever heal without surgical intervention, but maybe something is happening again (fingers crossed !) Today sees my last day at work until next Wednesday. I've booked four days off work, and there is the weekend in the middle of those 4 days - giving me 6 days away from work in all. It is a shame that my finances are a bit limited at the moment (unless I am stupid and/or dip into my saving), and so I can't get up to anything too wild for the next 6 days. This has been made worse by the always forgotten bloody TV licence. I had the reminder about it yesterday, and that's another £145 I have to shell out before the end of the month. Maybe it is fortunate that the weather for the next 3 or 4 days looks pretty awful. I can spend all those days in bed - that will be cheap enough - although I think I am going to have to get very drunk on at least one occasion before the weekend is out !! |
| Tuesday 17th
June 2014 |
| 08:32 BST I think the best way to sum up yesterday's weather is just to use the word "horrible". Well, maybe it wasn't a cold, dark, slushy winters day type of horrible, but it was not that bright, and it was not that warm ! Today is supposed to be quite sunny, and there are tantalising patches of blue in the sky where the clouds are quite well broken up. It is also expected to be warmer, but only 20° C, and that barely feels warm enough to bother getting out of bed for ! At least it should stay dry, but I'm not sure if I trust that prediction any more than any of the others. I felt horrible and sleepy at work yesterday, but I felt much better while going home. In fact there were occasions when I felt quite good. One of them was just the simple fact that I topped up my Oystercard using my credit card. I usually use my debit card, but with the prospect of my current account getting a little thin by the end of the month, and the possibility that I might want to do a bit of travelling by train in the near future, I thought I would try my credit card. The real significance of it was that it was the first time I've used the card when I have needed to enter my pin number. Since I got my current card, perhaps 3 or 4 years ago, I have only used it for ordering stuff on the internet. So it was quite pleasing to finally test that I had remembered my pin number correctly. Other stuff that made me feel good (or some semblance to it) was a bit of photography - not grand portraits, but simple images snatched while on the run (figuratively speaking).    Once I sat down at home I began to feel quite cool. I am unsure what the outside temperature was, but I think it was 20° C, and while that may be fine for walking around it, it starts to feel a bit chilly when just sitting still. That inspired me to put the duvet back in the duvet cover on my bed, and I am rather glad I did. I was in bed not too long after 8pm last night. It took longer to get to sleep than I imagined it would, and that main reason for that was that my brain would not shut up. It is possible that may have been a good thing. The other reason was the usual one of trying to find a good compromise between feeling too cool with the duvet half off, and too warm with the duvet fully on. It may have been like that initially, but for most of the night I was most definitely fully under the duvet. It felt really cool, or cold as we usually call it, when I got up this morning, and despite it being "flaming" June, I had to put the heater on to stop myself shivering ! So much for global warming ! The quicker we start building more coal fired power stations the better ! One of the ideas that was buzzing around my head as I lay in bed last night was about my breathing. There is usually nothing worse than being aware of your own breathing while trying to sleep, but in this case I was actually bringing together some stray thoughts from earlier on. One of my ongoing annoyances since my operation last year is that I still have difficulty trying to find any enjoyment in walking. It always feels like hard work, and one indicator of this is that I don't have to walk far before I am short of breath. It's a very special sort of shortness of breath. I am not actually gasping for air, and it doesn't slow me down (not that I seem to be able to walk as fast as I think I ought to be able these days). It occurred to me last night that the reason why it is different to normal breathlessness is that I am just taking very shallow breathes very rapidly. I think I have forgotten how to take deep breathes. In the first months after my operation it could actually be painful to take a deep breath because my chest muscles were all bruised and "mutilated" after the operation. For the first month or two I spent much of my time laying on my bed recuperating, and I didn't need to take any deep breaths. I suspect that I allowed all my chest muscles to atrophy in those early months, and I've done nothing to try and reverse the effect. It explain why all the wonderous affects that I had been promised (I think) from not smoking failed to materialised. It would explain why I seem more breathless now than when I was a very heavy smoker (and I wasn't all that breathless even then). There are occasions, such as when I do take a slightly deeper breath, and then force it out to blow my nose, when it does cause some pain in my chest. So I guess I've got to take it a bit easy, but I have done some experiments to breath deeper and less often when walking, and despite it feeling bloody weird, it does seem to work. I have no idea how long it will take to relearn how to breath, and to do it without thinking about it, but maybe I have found one of the missing pieces of the jigsaw as I try to put my life and body back together after that operation. The strange thing is that no one ever warned me about it before, and I had to invent my own cure - if indeed my theory is correct, and it is a cure. Time will tell ! |
| Monday 16th
June 2014 |
| 08:21 BST The only trouble with yesterday's weather is that it looked more like autumn than summer, and sometimes felt like autumn too. Maybe I am just too optimistic about how the weather should be for mid June. The weather forecasters tell me that it's all about average for this time of year, but it seems too cool, and too overcast to me. Today is supposed to be similar to yesterday. There may be very little sunshine, or maybe non at all, and the temperature is going to feel quite fresh rather than warm. I've known better days in April ! Yesterday afternoon I lay on my bed, and I think I slept for a while, but I've no idea if it was 5 minutes or several hours. At least some of the time I was very awake as I listened to a recording of a radio play called "Rules Of Asylum" by James Follett. The curious thing I have just learned about this radio play is that The BBC originally wiped it, but James Follett, the author, kept a copy of it that he had recorded of it's original FM broadcast. BBC Radio 7 rebroadcast it on DAB from that copy in 2004, and I recorded that. It has been rebroadcast again more recently on BBC 4 Extra, but it seems it is unavailable for playback on demand here. It's almost as if someone, somewhere does not want to remind people that dictatorships often cite mental problems for people who oppose their ideology, and lock them away in asylums. Don't tell me we have started doing that again ! I have already mentioned my own insanity regarding chocolate yesterday, and how it felt really strange that after eating some it felt like I had eaten all I needed....and that was a thing I didn't really mention yesterday. It did seem like my body needed some chocolate, but not much, for some unexplainable reason. I tend not to question my body when it comes to things like this. There are many occasions when I get a strong desire for something purely out of the blue - or so it seems to me. Sometimes it can be something healthy like a particular fruit, and sometimes something much more perplexing. I usually end up buying and consuming what ever it is my body seems to desire, and on the whole it seems to work. I may have needed a bit of heart re-plumbing last year, and I may feel fairly ill quite frequently these days, but there seems to be more and more people dying at a younger age then me now. Quite whether I'll make it to the estimate on the price tag, the famous three score and ten, is debatable, but I suppose it might be possible. It's only a year and a couple of days until I've made the three score part, and I do seem to heal quite well still. After a lousy night of tossing and turning I felt 97.68% dead when I woke up, and now, due to my rapid healing, I only feel like 43.77% dead. I managed to make it all the way here to work, and more than that, I managed to breathe all the way here. I may stop breathing to have a rest once I've finished writing this, but I'll try and remember to start again when I go home tonight. I feel a terrible sense of impending depression. I have booked Thursday and Friday off work this week. It was based upon an earlier assumption that it would be bright and warm, and that I would be feeling ridiculously healthy. It is very hard to imagine that either case will be true when Thursday arrives. I was hoping that I would go and visit the seaside again, and perhaps spend a little longer there. Maybe I might make it, but if either of those two days is like today, I will just be spending the morning under the duvet - and last night there were times when it felt cool enough to redeploy the duvet on my bed. I spent last night just under the duvet cover again, and although I felt too hot under it at the beginning of the night, I did feel rather cool this morning. Center Parcs seemed to have their stands on Waterloo station concourse set up all week. This morning there are new occupants on the concourse. I think they are the foot care people Compeed (and apparently nothing to do with peeing !). Maybe I will be able to get a more meaningful photograph on my way home, but for now all I can offer is this blurry masterpiece of them setting up.....  |
| Sunday 15th
June 2014 |
| 14:46 BST On the whole, the weather yesterday was not that good. It wasn't actually offensive, but it gave absolutely zero inspiration. It's a shame than that today's weather is even worse !  I felt very tired yesterday, and yet somehow that didn't seem to stop me watching TV until midnight last night. Maybe I was suffering more from ennui rather than real tiredness. I suppose once you have it it is difficult to tell one from the other. Maybe the test is to experience something that stimulates you, and see if the feeling goes away. If that is correct then it was just indulgent listlessness. Maybe. Having got to bed at just gone midnight I hoped I would sleep like a log. For some of the night I did, but it was hard to find a balance between feeling too hot or too cold. Several times I woke up with my pillow damp from sweat, and yet I didn't think it should have felt that hot with only a duvet less duvet cover over me. Maybe it was a sort of fever or something. I could even believe it was imminent organ failure, and premature death. Anything is possible in an infinite universe. I guess it was around 8am when I gave up trying to sleep more, and I slowly started to get up. I felt amazingly creaky for the first 49 seconds after I got out of bed, but by the time I had gone to the toilet I just felt as crap as I do most mornings. I presume it is one of the signs of old age because I am sure I can remember days when I would leap out of bed ready to take on the whole world in a matter of seconds after first opening my eyes. It never seems to happen these days. I did wonder how I would ever find the energy, and the muscular dexterity to do some laundry this morning. It was not all that long after I had got out of bed, and when I was trying to find the muscular dexterity to walk in the right direction to the toilet using the floor instead of the walls or ceiling. Somehow some sort of muscular memory came into play, and I was able to wash 5 shirts with little difficulty, and without too much pain. Perhaps that inspired me, or maybe I had just forgotten to slump in the corner like a spent corpse, but I decided to go for a quick walk to the 99p shop before I collapsed in continued ennui. Going to the 99p shop is always dangerous, and on this occasion it was intended to be dangerous. I had a yearning for some chocolate, and I was determined I was going to get some. What was ultimately interesting is that having bought some (plus some far more innocent items like shower gel) I found I really only wanted a bit of it. That has never happened before. It was a bit of a shock on par with suddenly suffering from erectile dysfunction (or some other fancy name for brewers droop or similar male tragedies). This is all a bit weird. Another weird thing that I can't remember if I've already mentioned, is that I don't seem to be getting that urge to have a fag for dessert after eating dinner recently, or at least not such a strong urge. I think there have been a couple of dinners recently where I've stopped eating what I would have considered prematurely without a cigarette. It almost feels like I am be being primed for some heavy dieting, and yet as my desire for chocolate today would suggest, I don't feel like dieting at the moment despite desperately needing to. This afternoon I feel very tired again......but maybe not actually sleepy. I feel sort of, but maybe not actually weak, and I have a feeling of pressure that is almost like a headache above the bridge of my nose. That makes me want to lay down with my eyes closed, and it won't be long now until I do just that. Once I am doing it I may as well go to sleep, because there is nothing else to do.  Yesterday I made mention of fathers day. I am still unsure if it is today or next Sunday. Fortunately it doesn't matter because my dad snuffed it in 1968. On the left is the only picture I have of him. Rather than a Star Wars Onesie, which I feel sure he would hate with all the venom with which I hate it, his preferred attire was a white lab coat/shop coat, and a fag. Curiously it looks like a ready made fag in this picture instead of the Old Holborn roll up I always remember him smoking. The picture on the left was taken in his shop which used to be situated at 199 Perry Vale, Forest Hill. It started out as a bicycle shop, but quickly added, and then changed to accumulator charging, radio repair, and ultimately TV repair. It was, of course, during working hours in the shop that he would wear the white shop coat. Outside of working hours I probably remember him more in a boiler suit when doing maintenance on the family/business van. Along with a boiler suit he would also wear a beret (or titfer, as he usually called it). After all these years I have no way of ever finding out the truth, but I wonder if the beret originated from his years with the RAF as a technical expert on radar, and radio mechanic (and possibly plane mechanic too). |
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| 18:30 BST The weather forecaster for yesterday was needlessly pessimistic. It was brighter, sunnier, and warmer than expected. I forgot to make a note of the temperature when I got home from work, but a few hours later it was still nearly 25° C, and I would not be surprised if it wasn't a degree or two higher mid afternoon. I think the weather forecast for today was probably quite close to being correct. There have only been a few short periods when the sun has shined, and several much longer periods when it has looked as if it might rain at any moment. Nevertheless it has stayed dry, and the temperature has stayed high enough to be comfortable. The current temperature is almost 22° C, and it's probably been that for much of the day. The most up to date forecast for tomorrow is that it will be very similar to today - except that the top temperature is going to be a very disappointing 19° C ! I'm very glad I had no plans to go out last night because I felt totally drained when I got home from work. I don't recall feeling particularly tired at work, and I didn't seem to call on any special reserves of energy when I made my way home from work, but once I got indoors I sort of collapsed. Not literally collapsed, but it did seem hard work to do anything apart from breathing, and I wondered if even that was necessary ! In theory I was in a prime state to go to bed extra early, and sleep like a log, but it didn't happen like that. There were two things that interfered with my sleep. The first think is that it was very muggy last night. So I felt very sticky and horrible in bed. The second thing was that there was a full moon last night, and I wanted to try and take a photograph of it. So I set up my camera on my tripod so I could try and get an extra sharp image, and with that set up ready I went to bed. It was still broad daylight when I went to bed, and the plan was that I would go straight to sleep. Th next part of plan was the assumption that after a few hours, perhaps around midnight, I would wake up for a pee, have that pee, pull on a few clothes, and then go outside to get that snapshot. It never worked out like that. Not at all ! I felt so sweaty that it was dark before I fell asleep. I did wake up about an hour later, but not because I wanted a pee. I took a look out the window just in time to see some cloud drift across the face of the moon. The cloud was very patchy, and there was an excellent chance that I could get a clear shot if I waited a bit, but there was another problem. The moon was so low in the sky that it would be hidden behind the rooftops when viewed from ground level. I decided I might have a better chance at 3 or 4am when the moon had moved into a more favourable position. Eventually I got back to sleep, but my sleep was very poor, and it felt like I was waking up at least once an hour. Maybe that could have been useful for moon spotting, but the cloud had thickened up, and I saw no sign at all of the moon in the early hours. My sleep continued to be on and off until at 6.30am I decided I might as well try and get up to do a bit of tidying up in preparation for a visit from Aleemah today. It was nice to have a quick beer (two half pints) while Aleemah had her breakfast, and it was handy to get some shopping in when we passed Aldi on the way back from the pub, but it wasn't quite so nice to watch the DVD that Aleemah had brought to watch. It is the first series of Sea Of Souls, originally shown on one of the BBC channels before being released on DVD. I guess I have nothing against the series, but I don't find it very gripping. For instance I can barely remember anything about the two episode story we watched a fortnight ago. Maybe the two episode story we watched today was a bit more interesting, but.... It's been several hours since Aleemah went home now. I've had some dinner, and now my useless sleep last night seems to be catching up on me very fast. Once again I can say I am fortunate that I had no plans to go out tonight. I'm not sure if I will actually be attempting to go to sleep while it is still broad daylight, but I definitely won't be doing one of the things I thought I might do today - laundry ! I have no idea when it is, and to be honest I don't really care, but looming up on us is Fathers Day, and all the shops are pathetically falling over themselves in an attempt to see fathers day gift. I always thought was that fathers day was the day when kids were let out of their cages, and allowed to see their fathers for a few minutes provided they kept quiet, but apparently that is not the case. One particular advert caught my eye because of the sheer hellishness of it. If I was unfortunate enough to be a father, and some snotty nosed little brat, perhaps in collusion with it's mother, had bought me anything from this advert I would have to kill someone. If it was the item from the top left of the picture I feel it would have to be a particularly sadistic killing !  |
| Thursday 12th
June 2014 |
| 08:07 BST The temperature did not get as high as expected yesterday. The highest I saw was just 21° C, but it is possible that in some places it was a degree warmer. The reason was because there was less direct sunshine than there should have been. It was a nice bright day, but frequent incursions of thin cloud in the sky meant that the sunshine was often very hazy. Despite those shortfalls I would say that yesterday was still rather nice, and there is hope that today will be even nicer. It doesn't seem to be in the printed forecast, but the forecaster on TV last night did suggest that London could see the temperature hit 27° C if the sun can shine bright and long enough. The printed estimation puts today's high temperature at 24° C. It's Thursday morning, the traditional morning where I am at my lowest ebb after working three consecutive days of the week, and yet this morning I feel rather good when compared with the average. I would hope to feel at least 5 times better than this, but for a Thursday morning it is quite good. I have some of the usual aches and pains that make coming to work feel like a punishment from a particularly sadistic judge, but maybe I'll only have to put up with that for another year now. I don't recall feeling any great feelings when I went home from work yesterday, but I also didn't feel any great negative feelings. I guess that meant I felt comfortable to go home via Tesco. On reflection, maybe I did have a few positive feelings because I did seem fairly selective about what I bought, and that subsequently meant that I almost ate healthily last night. If it hadn't been for the chicken buffalo wings, warmed up in the microwave, I could almost stretch the definition of healthy to encompass what I did eat. I was a bit worried by one particular thing - watercress ! I ate a whole bag of it. I know it contains much that is good for you, and has no fat and practically no calories, but I had this funny feeling that it might have diuretic qualities, and I would spend half the night peeing. That never came to pass, and so far I have had no negative effects from it. Last night was cool enough that I had no trouble sleeping, and I think I may have almost slept quite well. The one thing that threatened to spoil it was that at some time in the early hours I woke up with the beginnings of cramp in my right calve muscle. I managed to hop out of bed and put some weight on my leg before the muscle completely seized, and so avoided the agony of full cramp. It didn't take long to get to sleep after that, but I could still feel some stiffness from that calve muscle as I walked to the station.  I seemed to have become obsessed with timing how long it takes me to walk to various places. This is mostly to prove to myself that I am barely able to walk anywhere since my operation. The only trouble is that I keep proving otherwise ! This morning it was the walk from home to the station. For a long time (many years) I have always worked on the assumption that it takes 6 minutes to walk to or from the station. This morning I walked as fast as I could continually walk. I could have put on short bursts of extra speed, but I did the fastest steady pace I could, and it still felt like hard work. I wasn't panting when I got to the station, but I was breathing quite heavily. It felt hopelessly slow, and yet the time on the stop watch on my phone said I had done it in 5 minutes and 36 seconds ! That was the time from my my first step away from my front door until I arrived on platform 2 of the station. It included touching in with my oyster card (which probably accounts for the 23/100ths of a second). I still had to pick up my copy of The Metro newspaper, walk down the platform to the footbridge, and then cross over to platform 1 for a London bound train - that is extra time that I subconsciously factor in when timing my exit from home, but doesn't count as part of the basic home to station timing. I usually allow a good 15 minutes between leaving home and getting on the train. It is becoming increasingly obvious that I am walking just as fast as I used to, but I have no idea why it should feel so bloody slow, and seem to take such a huge effort. Presumably, if I was to work out some way of actually walking slowly, and overcome the raging feeling of impatience of not getting to my destination faster and faster, I could possibly enjoy walking again, but that may just be too many hurdles to overcome. Coming up in the near future is this world cup thing that is slowly taking over the news in a way that made the news coverage of WW2 seem rather peripheral and unnewsworthy. I don't really know much about it, but we are having a sweepstake at work about it. I'm no gambler, but it seems the chance to win £18 for an investment of £2 seems reasonable. So I put my hand in the two hats and picked out two teams. There were two hats because the teams were split into those with a chance of winning, and those that have little chance of winning. Everyone got one of each. I got Ghana as my no hope team, and Chile as a team that has a chance of winning - although some people here suggest otherwise !  |
| Wednesday 11th
June 2014 |
| 08:08 BST Yesterday only reached 21° C (maybe if I was feeling generous I could stretch to 22° C), but it was still a nice day. From time to time the sun was hidden behind some very light cloud, but overall it was bright and shiny ! Today should be a slightly warmer, and sunnier version of yesterday. It felt slightly cool when I walked to the station, but it wasn't bad. The sky is almost pure blue with just a few bits of wispy white clouds drifting across the sky. It definitely looks set for a pleasant summers day, and (fingers crossed) this is just the start of a good run of days. Tomorrow is forecast to actually get hot - 26° C ! I moaned about it a lot in the morning, but I guess I didn't feel all that terrible yesterday. That's not to say that I felt good or wonderful at any time. I didn't, and there were times when I definitely felt under par. It was definitely nice to be heading home after work, and yet the actual heading home was not so good. I was OK provided I took it easy, but I didn't seem to have any reserves left. I think that was what was (and is) most annoying. I much prefer to push myself, to walk a little faster, etc, but I was only comfortable at what seemed like merely plodding along. There is a possible flaw in the argument that I shall explain later, and I shall also attempt to find a better word than flaw, because I don't think that is what I mean - although it is in roughly the same area ! I did debate whether to get in a bit of shopping last night, but decided against it. I still have a fair selection of food at home, although I did have to dig into stuff from the freezer for my dinner yesterday. I had some well grilled garlic flavoured beefburgers as the core of my dinner. After a good long time in the electric grill they seemed to give up a lot of their fat without shrivelling to nothing. I originally planned to have them with some steamed vegetables, but an error of judgement meant the burgers were cooked long before the vegetables had steamed sufficiently. So I had the burgers with some sun dried tomatoes. The tomatoes were in oil, and that meant part one of my dinner was a long way from fat free, but at least there may have been some salvation in that it was plant oil rather than animal fat - much better for the arteries (maybe), but sadly just as many calories. Part two of my dinner was the steamed mixed vegetables, and I zapped them up a bit by pouring chilli oil on them. The chilli oil I used was of a type I haven't seen in the shops for ages until recently. It is a Chinese recipe (sort of), and it consists of ground up dried chillies and ground up dried prawns, plus maybe some other stuff, in (in this case) rapeseed oil. It provides some mild heat, and a sort of grilled flavour, and made those plain mixed vegetable taste really rather good. Shame about all that extra oil I consumed ! To make matters worse I had a snack of some dry bread and cheese a little while after after my dinner, and shortly before I went to bed. I was in bed by 8pm, but it was to do some reading than feeling knackered (although I definitely felt like laying down). I was coming to the end of my book and decided to read on until I had finished it. That happened conveniently at about 10pm. I put the book down, turned out the lights, and I think I was asleep in minutes. I slept well too, although I did end up getting up half an hour before I needed to. I guess it was handy having a bit of extra time in the morning because I wanted to wash my hair. In these warm days it doesn't take long for my hair to start feeling sweaty and greasy, but this morning it is clean and fluffy ! A nice shower and clean hair normally makes me feel pretty good. This morning the act of shampooing and showering left me feeling knackered, and I would much have preferred to have gone back to bed, but I had to come to work. Although I would love to feel an awful lot better, I guess I don't feel too terrible this morning. One measure of how well I am, although I haven't discovered the correlation to how I feel, is how much my feet, ankles, and calves are swollen, and this morning they are swollen a good bit less than the worst. That may have influenced me in my choice of shoe this morning....  Out of curiosity I decided to time how long it took to walk from the mini supermarket that is about 150ft from the station to work. It's been ages since I last timed it - probably the year before last when I was possibly in rather good health - and I think I probably did it in the other direction. If I remember it correctly, it used to take between 9 and 10 minutes from work to the station, and the 10 minutes probably included the time it took to get up to the platform. So I reckoned it would probably take me at least 10 minutes to walk from the mini supermarket in shoes that aren't good for walking, and feeling like I have no energy or lung power since my operation. It actually took 8 minutes, 11 seconds, and 78 hundredths of a second. I think we can safely ignore the 78/100ths, but 8 minutes and 11 seconds comes as a bit of a shock to me. That is a good minute faster than my wildest imagination would ever have come up with. Maybe I am not as crocked as I like to think I am.....but I still wish I could do it even faster ! I think that tonight I will probably get some shopping in. I have to do it at some time, and there is a fair chance I'll be boozing tomorrow night. So I might as well try and get it done tonight. Maybe, just maybe, if the shock of realising I am walking faster than I thought can keep reverberating through me until I am actually in the supermarket (probably Tesco), I might be inspired to be just a little more selective, in a sort of healthy direction, about what I buy in there. Shame really, because I'd love some ice cream - any flavour would do, but a re-occuring thought suggests that what I really want is raspberry ripple ! |
| Tuesday 10th
June 2014 |
| 08:11 BST On the whole, the weather forecast for yesterday was completely wrong ! The morning was far sunnier than it was supposed to be, and the sunshine, apart from a few brief cloudy spells, continued into the afternoon. The rain that was forecast did eventually happen at about 6pm - about 5 hours late ! It was not very heavy rain for the most part, and I'm guess it probably slowly faded away as early as 10pm. The other bit of the forecast that was wrong was the temperature. It probably hit around 26° C, or three degrees higher than the best anticipated temperature. This morning started off at about 16° C, but felt nice and fresh in the early morning sunshine. With a bit of luck it will be mostly bright and sunny today, and the temperature may rise to as high as yesterday. I felt pretty dreadful at work yesterday. It's hard to pinpoint any single bit of me that was worse than any other bit, and none of these bits were specifically painful. The closest analogy is like when you have 'flu - unless you're wrapped up nice and warm, and resting, bits ache - mostly muscles. Yesterday it wasn't just muscular aches, and I'm not even sure that ache is the right word. I need a word to describe pain that isn't pain (as stupid as that sounds) and ache seems to be the closest I can arrive at. I remember having various aches and pains before my operation, but I am sure they were more specific, and they were more sporadic. Since that operation, and let's not forget the blood pressure drugs I am on that could be having a negative effect on me, I have never felt more ill in all my life. Most often it is just a general feeling of fatigue accompanying stiff legs, arms and back (with the latter two being far more intermittent). Everything I have tried to describe there is almost indescribable (if I could successfully describe it I might possibly be able to get my doctor to cure it), but there is at least one thing that is perfectly describable, and also completely inexplainable. It concerns my bladder, and associated plumbing. During the operation I was catheterised to stop my relaxed muscle allowing wee to spray everywhere (maybe). This meant they somehow shoved this ruddy great hosepipe up my willy ! You would not believe how big the bloody thing was. I didn't see it until after the operation, and once I did see it, and had recovered from the shock, I could see why one of the risks I had to agree with on the consent form was the possibility of incontinence. Fortunately the damage that shoving a huge tube through passages far too small for it actually did was not to make me incontinent. At least not in the conventional sense. I am sure some sort of damage was done, but in some ways it is strangely beneficial. Since my operation I feel sure I get up more often in the night to have a wee. What makes that a bit more annoying is that very often it is a very small wee. It might seem obvious that I would also be rushing to the toilet every five minutes when drinking many pints of beer, and both you and I would be wrong. That used to happen before the operation, but no longer happens. I am still rather shy of long bus and train rides after a boozing session, but where I have dared to do so, I haven't arrived home absolutely busting ! It's rather handy really ! So my capacity for drinking beer has increased, and I no longer suffer from really rather unpleasant angina pains when walking, but the downsides to my operation are still annoying. It would help if all the agonies of not smoking for almost 10 months now had shown any positive benefits to anything except to my wallet. My lungs feel in far worse shape now. I sometimes feel I am now running on just one lung, or even less. It wasn't so long ago, perhaps a few xmas's ago that I could almost fill a toy balloon with one lungful of air. I don't feel like I could even half fill one today with my smoke free lungs. The recent news that Rik Mayall has died at the age of 56 is rather sad. I guess you could say he was one of my heroes, although when playing alongside Ade Edmundson it was the latter who I liked the most. I'm not sure how I feel about outliving one of my heroes by 3 years. If it didn't sound so sinister I would say it felt like a good thing - almost something to celebrate. 30 years ago the warnings about smoking and obesity were a lot less loud, but they were still there, and I did pay attention to them. Considering how overweight I was, and how much I smoked, I thought it inconceivable that I would live much longer than 30 years. It gave me a pretty relaxed view about death. The feelings ebb and flow, but generally speaking life is pretty boring, and that philosophy also gives me a pretty relaxed view about death. It's why, much to many people's surprise, I didn't make a big deal about going into hospital, and having open heart surgery. It didn't matter to me if I died, and yet the great paradox was that it was an interesting enough experience to make life worth living for a while. So here I am, still alive for almost double the time I expected to be alive, three years more life that Rik Mayall achieved, and all the while treating my body with reckless abandon. Meanwhile, back in the cheap seats, it seems everyone has forgotten one of Rik Mayall's TV series. The newspapers haven't mentioned it, nor has the TV, and neither has any of my (virtual internet) friends. It was the series that came after "Bottom", which was the follow up to "The Young Ones", and it was called "Filthy, Rich and Catflap". It may not have been as good as the others, but it was still worth a laugh - several of them ! Watch this - http://youtu.be/vFjaUaP0Vg4 and when you've finished with that, take a look at The Dangerous Brothers ! - http://youtu.be/dzlhUKJ5KvQ. |
| Monday 9th June
2014 |
| 08:28 BST Yesterday was like a classic summers day. Just a few white fluffy clouds drifted across a pure blue sky, and it was almost hot at a pleasant 26° C. It was a hot night too ! The temperature in my bedroom was still a sweaty 25° C when I woke up this morning. Today's weather is going to be slightly more complex !  Yesterday was a successful sort of day. I was rather happy with the amount of laundry I managed to do, and it was nice that it dried so quickly in the sunshine (and the shirts I dried indoors also dried quickly too). I was also quite pleased that my decision to not go out shopping resulted in me eating far less than I might otherwise have done. I still ate more cheese than is probably good for me, but in some ways I think there is a possibility that I ate less than on a typical weekday when I am at work. For a day spent on my own at home that is rare. I thought I got a good night's sleep on Saturday night, but maybe it was not as good as I thought. Yesterday afternoon, after doing the final bit of laundry, and after having a bite to eat, I lay on my bed to read, but promptly fell asleep. I can't be sure, but I think I slept for nearly three hours ! It wasn't continuous sleep. On a couple of occasions I woke up and managed to read half a page before my eyelids would start drooping again. It may have been very useful to get that extra sleep because I had trouble sleeping in the heat last night. I lay on my bed at 8.30pm trying to get to sleep, but I felt too uncomfortable. So I got out of bed and had a couple of large whiskies while reading some stuff on the internet. At 10pm I tried for sleep again, and with the aid of a fan I just managed to get to sleep after a while. I woke a few times in the night, and even when I was asleep it was often not deep sleep judging by the amount of dreams I was having. I woke up this morning feeling lightly cooked, and with a sore neck, upper back, middle back, and lower back where the fan had chilled me. Most of those aches have gone now, and I guess I don't feel too bad now I am at work and resting. One area that is still occasionally sore is the left half of my chest. It could be something terribly serious, or it could be a few more nerves re-growing. The latter is very likely. I do believe I might have more sensation from my left nipple now - which has little practical value, but is far better than it feeling like a bit of dead meat ! When passing through Waterloo station this morning I noticed the latest company to use the concourse for a promotion was Center Parcs. They must be desperate because they set up two stands....and I took 5 pictures !      |
| Sunday 8th June
2014 |
| 10:00 BST The weather forecast for yesterday was terribly pessimistic. Yes, we did have some horrible looking skies in the morning, and a couple of heavy downpours, but the afternoon was generally bright and sunny. It was also warm with the temperature around 24° C for much of the afternoon. My memory is a bit hazy, but I think I saw fairly clear sky before darkness fell last night. Usually that would make for a cold morning, but this morning was rather pleasant. Initially the sky was a little milky looking, but the sun soon burnt through that, and now the sky looks blue from horizon to horizon (or at least the bits of it I can see from here are blue). The temperature has already hit 21° C, and I feel sure it will exceed yesterday's 24° C. This is what summer is made of ! It seems that tomorrow will be almost as warm, but there will be less sunshine, with a shower in the morning, and more showers in the evening. Shame ! My ultimate aim for yesterday was to be very lazy, and on the whole I achieved that, but there were a few serious departures from it. For instance I hand washed not one, but two bath towels - the type that are blooody heavy when dripping with water ! I hung them on the line in the garden to dry, and they were half dry this morning - literally. The top halves were bone dry, but the bottom half was still very damp. They won't stay that way for long in this nice sunshine - I hope ! I decided against going to any supermarkets to get any shopping yesterday. I have quite a good selection to eat here already, and buying extra stuff would only tempt me to eat more than I would like to eat. It was a fine theory, but I did go to the cornet shop where I bought more than a couple of bottles of pop...some very naughty stuff, but at least I now know what a 50th anniversary (was it 50th ? - that seems far too long !) "champagne" Magnum ice cream bar tastes like ! They are nice but not wonderful enough to cross the road for. I spent a fair amount of time laying on my bed reading, but during the early evening I decided to order some food to be delivered - this was despite having perfectly good food here. I ordered grilled meat with salad - aka shish kebab. While I ate that I watched some TV. BBC 2 was showing an old episode of "Yes Prime Minister" as part of some celebration. It is amazing just how relevant the series is to today's politics when today's politics is viewed with a jaundiced eye (or maybe from a third person perspective). Not only that, but it remains incredibly funny after all these years. I stayed up a little later than most nights last night. I guess I was in bed around 10pm, and it didn't seem to take long to fall into quite a pleasant sleep. I woke up a couple of times in the night, but I think I had a rather good night's sleep, but I can't say for definite how much sleep I got. Ignoring the couple of times I just got up for a pee, I first woke up at first light, and I was almost tempted to actually get up then, but after a short while I turned over and went back to sleep. That happened a few more times with the amount of time I was awake getting longer and longer. I think it was about 8am when I finaly decided that I couldn't be bothered to try and go back to sleep. I feel almost good this morning. It seems that the prolonged stomach upset I had seems to have passed, although I do feel acutely aware that I ate too much yesterday. I think it is actually more guilt than any physical effect, and I am trying to eat as little as possible today. So far I have eaten nothing, but after some quite energetic hand washing I am feeling very peckish right now. Earlier on I washed another 4 shirts. Three of them were short sleeved shirts that I haven't worn for well over 12 months, and probably a lot longer than that. The reason I haven't worn them was because they are white, and white shirts remind me too much of school. Well that's one reason. Maybe the bigger reason is that they show up stains too easily, and after hanging up in a smoky room for ages they all had yellow looking collars. So I've given them a good scrub, and I think they will be OK for work when dry. I also washed a couple of t-shirts, a pair of lounge pants, and a pair of underpants. I have nothing else to wash except the clothes I am wearing right now, and some bed linen. The bed linen is going to need all the washing line in the garden, and that is going to have to wait until next weekend maybe. I now have nothing else to do for the rest of the day - nothing else of a physical nature. I do have a book and a magazine to finish that could take up the rest of the day if I wanted, but what I ought to do is to go out. Maybe I will once I've had a shower and washed my hair. On the other hand, I am never keen on going out on Sundays. Transport is often crap, and on a warm sunny day like today the parks will be full of screaming kids - probably. Maybe I should do some hoovering instead.......... |
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| 09:07 BST I feel forced to admit that the forecast for yesterday was about right. I was bright with some extended spells of sunshine, but the temperature did get a degree or two higher than forecast - I noted 20° C on my thermometer at home, although the display on the "Banham Burglary Prevention" building, visible from the train near Vauxhall station, said it was 18° C on my way home, and that was precisely as forecast. Today has started out bright and sunny, but once again it was a rather cools start - around 11° C. There are some patches of fairly thin looking cloud in the sky, but much of today is forecast to be bright and sunny. Today it should reach as high as 24° C ! It is possible that even warmer air is heading our way, but at the same time much cooler air is also heading this way from another direction. The two meet somewhere, sometime tomorrow, and where they clash all hell will be let loose. If we are lucky it will all happen well to the west of London, but even then London will not completely escape. The forecast for tomorrow is probably still being refined, but the estimates are for wet and windy at best to raging torrential downpours with copious amounts of thunder and lightning at worst ! I think my new found energy is on the wane. I didn't feel nearly as sprightly as the previous day when going home from work yesterday. It probably didn't help that the trainers I was wearing were feeling rather uncomfortable by the end of the day. They were fine when I went to work, but it felt like I was walking on cobble stones on the way home. Maybe the confirmation that the magic is over for a while is that I didn't feel much like dancing and skipping my way to work this morning...but then again, that is not my preferred way of coming to work anyway ! Some of how I feel today can probably be blamed on what I ate last night. I was very curious to try the chorizo burgers I bought from Tesco the day before. I can't believe how much fat came out of them when I grilled them on my electric grill. It makes me realise just how lean my preferred Aldi Aberdeen Angus burgers are. The sad fact is that the chorizo burgers were definitely not wonderful, and I am unsure if I would even use the fairly bland word "nice" about them. All I can really say is that they were not horrible, but I have no desire to buy any more of them. Those burgers formed just part of my dinner last night. The rest of it was made up of an assortment of other stuff. None of it was particularly bad by itself, but added together, it was certainly far from healthy, and it seems to have left me feeling a bit bloated this morning. I did very little else apart from eating last night. I spent a little time reading a fairly amusing online comic I somehow found by following a link on another page I was reading a few days ago. It is about an American guy who goes to Japan to teach (American, rather than The Queen's) English. It is quite amusing despite both cultures being totally alien to me. You can find it here - http://friedchickenandsushi.com/comics/2010/4/12/fcs001-welcome.html. One of the things about last night is that I felt a bit chilly despite it being on it's way to being warm outside. It was 22° C in my bedroom, and if I had been walking about it would have felt perfectly comfortable, if not actually warm. For some reason it felt really quite chilly to just laze around in. So I decided to stop reading on the PC, and to get into bed and read a book there. That was at about 8.15pm. Once I was in bed I decided not to bother reading, but to go straight to sleep. It took a little longer than that, but I guess I was fast asleep 15 or 20 minutes later. I slept very soundly until about 2.30am when I woke up for the first time. I thought I felt wide awake, and wouldn't get back to sleep again - 10 minutes later I was probably fast asleep again. The same thing happened approximately an hour later, but this time I was awake a little longer, and then when the same thing happened again at about 4.30am I gave up trying to get back to sleep again after about 10 minutes. Well I almost gave up then, but I did try some reverse psychology first. I tried laying there for another 5 minutes trying not to go to sleep. Unfortunately that worked, and I didn't go to sleep, and so I got up earlier than needed. I am very happy it is Friday because I have come to the conclusion that I am exhausted after working a 5 day week. Perhaps "run down" is more accurate than exhausted, but I guess it all means the same in the long run. I am hoping that I will get my second wind after I get home. There is a gig on at The Catford Ram tonight, and I definitely want to go to it. The only problem is that unlike when Chain play there, it is a late evening gig that is not due to start until 8.30pm - and I am quite good at falling asleep in bed at that time. Still, it's only a short walk away. So there should be no good reasons why I can't go, but I'll very much be looking forward to tomorrow when I can be as lazy as I want...although that will probably only translate to an extra couple of hours in bed before I start a few chores like shopping and laundry - and then I can be the laziest bastard on Earth ! |
| Thursday 5th
June 2014 |
| 08:05 BST There was some very heavy rain yesterday, but fortunately for me it all fell at times when I wasn't bothered about it. At other times it was almost a nice day. There were a few bright periods during the morning, and for most of the time as I made my way home from work it was brilliantly sunny with over half the sky a brilliant blue. It rained half an hour or so after I arrived home, and by "rained" I mean there was a torrential downpour that lasted quite a long time. There may have been some rain in the night, but I wasn't really aware of that. This is the (alleged) professionals prediction for today's weather in detail, and a vague summary of the next few days. 
 It is almost as if I have been cured of something, and that may be the case, but for yet another day I found that I had more energy than what seemed usual on my way home from work. Maybe "energy" is not quite the right word - what I actually noticed was that I was able to walk faster with less effort than I could something over a week ago. Since I stopped taking the statins that my doctor wants me to take, I think I have been slowly building up to this - and it has been very slowly. I guess I stopped taking those nasty little pills two months ago now. It does seem rather incredible that they could take this long to clear from my system, but maybe it has taken this long to repair the damage they did. It is possible that they did no damage at all, and it is just that it has taken this long for the effects of my open heart surgery to almost go away. I guess I'll never really know, but while it feels good, I don't really care. I went home via Tesco yesterday, and amongst loads of other stuff I bought a couple of fish ready meals. One was a Tesco own brand that was just chilled, and one was a frozen one by Findus (I think). I had had a yearning for a nice fish dinner, but those two were really disappointing. I don't know whether it was the fish they were using - which could have been that nasty basa that is sold as a cod substitute - or whether it was stuff they now leave out to make the meal allegedly healthier. Both seemed rather dry, and if the Findus one had not had a very strong taste of parsley, I think they would both have been rather tasteless (which would be about right for basa). By the way, when I say basa I might actually mean pollock - another rather bland pointless fish. It is so easy to buy stuff in Tesco that I really should not be buying. As a "for instance" I bought a packet of chorizo flavoured beef burgers. I expect they will taste very nice indeed when grilled, but why I failed to notice that I was buying a pack of 4 instead of 2 is a mystery. It is also a mystery why I allowed myself to be suckered in to take advantage, if indeed it is an advantage, to get a packet of garlic flavoured beef burgers, also a 4 pack, in a "buy two for £7" offer. I now have a whole heap of burgers that I will have to use fairly quickly because I've no room in my freezer. It is going to be a lovely experience, but it may not do my health any good. As well as spending too much money on stuff that I should not have been buying in Tesco, I did some other important stuff yesterday. I took two gorilla strength anti-depressants, and a large dose of morphine, and paid my credit card bill. It was only just over £60, but I find it breaks my heart to pay any bill (although phone bills are worse). While I was in a financial sort of mood I transferred some money out of my current account into my savings account. It was not a large amount, and yet it was possibly enough to make me broke by the end of the month - unless I am very careful. My last great heroic act of the evening was to wash my hair. As soon as my hair was dry enough I went to bed, and last night I think I managed to get to sleep before 9pm. In some ways that was surprising, and in some ways entirely predictable. I had a rotten sleep the night before, and in theory I was tired, but maybe that theory was wrong. I didn't seem to be excessively sleepy at work, and I only dozed off a few times in front of the PC here. When I got into bed last night I didn't feel like I was on my last legs as I expected I would, but I probably went to sleep faster than it felt like I would. I don't really know if I slept well last night. I only remember waking up a couple of times, but I do seem to recall dreaming a lot. One dream almost felt like it went on all night. I'm sure there is supposed to be something disturbing about dreaming that you are going on a long journey, and you don't really know your destination, nor what changes to make, and what railway station platforms to use to get there. I don't think I feel disturbed after such a dream. Maybe I just like mystery tours by train ! Thursdays are one of my favourite days to call in sick to work. I think three days of work is enough to wear me out these days, or maybe it is something else entirely, but as much as I would like not to be at work, it seems I'm here. Maybe I just couldn't dream up enough symptoms to call in sick. My right knee, and my left ankle were sometimes a bit stiff and/or sore this morning, and I guess I would have preferred to have finished passing wind before I left home, but mostly I felt terribly OK this morning. This is bad news. If this gets any worse I may have to stop hating Fridays ! In theory I will be knackered when I get home, and then I should be all set for a long nights sleep. In yet another, or perhaps continuing theory, I will get my second wind, or something like that, and feel fit and chopper to go out to a gig tomorrow night. Hardtail are performing at The Catford Ram. Getting there, just a 5 or 6 minute walk should be no problem, but unlike when Chain play there, it is a late (8.30pm) start. So I might have trouble staying awake that late. This morning at Waterloo station - I don't know what it's all about, but the easels and stuff makes me think that it is something to do with artists. Maybe it is promoting some art exhibition somewhere or something. I'll probably find out on my way home after work.  |
| Wednesday 4th
June 2014 |
| 08:38 BST There were good points and bad points about yesterday's weather. The good was that there was some bright sunshine. It didn't last that long, but at least it happened. The bad was probably that there was a shower while I was on my way home from work. For a short while it teamed down while I was waiting for my train at Waterloo East station. Fortunately it was dry when I arrived in Catford. The other bad point was that at just 17° C it was starting to feel a bit cool (although not cold). Maybe 17° C was not quite so bad when you consider that today may struggle to even reach 15° C ! There has been some light drizzly rain already today, and the forecast suggests more could fall at any time from the grey, leaden skies we will have to endure today. I don't know if it was what I had eaten, or whether it was the changing weather, or maybe just the shoes I was wearing, but I seemed to have an unusual amount of energy on my way home from work yesterday. That is, of course, an unusual amount by comparison with recent times, but it could have been as high as 56% of my all time high - ever ! I found myself rushing around in a way that I haven't experienced since last time (whenever that was). Of course I was completely burned out by the time I was halfway between the station and home, but it was sort of fun while it lasted. I came close to going home via Tesco, but decided to avoid all the temptations that can bring by going straight home. I'm not sure if that was the wisest decision in light of what I eventually ate. Once again it was not terribly excessive, but I could have made better choices, or just been slightly more disciplined. For instance I didn't really need all the Red Leicester cheese on the pasta with meatballs...or maybe I did because I used Red Leicester instead of a cheese with a much stronger flavour. However the deed is done, and tonight I will go home via Tesco. I could get much of what I need from the Turkish supermarket, and that could reduce the temptations a bit, but one thing they don't have is any ready made fish meals (like fisherman's pie), and I feel that is what I want for dinner tonight. I did consider that some of my earlier energy may have been the result of getting some good sleep the night before, and maybe that was an important part of it. So last night I thought I would try and get a good lot of sleep again. So I got myself in bed before 8.30pm, and I laid there trying to get to sleep. I failed miserably. I thought I felt tired when I first got in bed, but that feeling totally evaporated. It was one of those nights where it felt too hot under the duvet, and too cool without it. Plus it was one of those nights where all the lumps in the pillows swell up in a mysterious way - probably for the same evil reason that the sheets ruck up, lumps that were never there in the mattress suddenly appear - and then the street light outside seems brighter than usual - all the planes seem to be diverted to fly straight across the house - the trains add extra "clack" to their wheels - the foxes mating reaches fever pitch - and the local cats are just trying to sing me to sleep ! It is probably better to say that I had a totally crap night rather than try to describe it blow by blow. After what seemed like just a few hours of sleep, most of which seemed to be filled with unpleasant dreams, or even nightmares, I don't actually feel too bad this morning. I had a bit of mild stomach trouble, but not enough to stop me getting to the station 10 minutes earlier than I needed to. I didn't seem to have anything like the energy I had, albeit briefly, last night, but enough to walk comfortably at an easy stroll when needed. Quite what I will be like later is anyone's guess, but I am thinking I may feel a bit drained by the time I get home tonight. Perhaps tonight I will sleep properly - even if it needs a couple of large whiskies to help me on my way. A couple of days ago I showed a picture taken at Waterloo station of a promotional event by Cadbury's. I thought it was just a one day event because another company were giving away bottles of water yesterday. I did see some of the Cadbury's stuff still stacked up as I walked through the station yesterday morning, but I assumed it was just waiting collection. It seems I was wrong. If you search the entire internet there is a video of what was going on at Waterloo yesterday. There was a camera relaying pictures of the crowd onto the gigantic mega widescreen display. Superimposed on the picture were things that people could try and (virtually) catch, and those that did won a prize. At least I think it was something like that. So there were all these loonies jumping and stretching in front of a load of bemused commuters. Let's hope they enjoyed their chocolate prize as a reward for their complete public humiliation !  |
| Tuesday 3rd
June 2014 |
| 08:33 BST In some respects yesterday wasn't a bad day. It could have done with more bright sunshine, but there was some sunshine, and even with no direct sunshine it was still fairly bright. The surprising thing was how warm it got. I measured 24° C when I got home from work, but it was a slightly sticky heat, and I think we only just escaped a storm brewing up. Today has started off mild(ish), but I did detect some very fine rain blowing in the wind as I walked from the station to work. A brief shower is forecast for about now. There are some dark looking clouds in the sky. So it could happen soon. From then on, according to the forecast, it was be dry with light grey clouds until another shower around 6pm, and further showers much later in the evening. The top temperature may, or may not be 19° C today, but hopefully it may be a degree or two higher, and if we are very, very lucky we could see some sunshine despite what is predicted in the forecast. I didn't feel that bad at work yesterday. That was partly helped by yesterday being only a mildly horrible working day. Nevertheless, I was still keen to get home. I can't go as far as saying that it was a pleasant journey home, but there was nothing unpleasant about it. I decided to walk everywhere just a tiny bit slower most of the time. When I am feeling tolerably healthy I usually try and walk at about 3.2mph. On my way home from work I found that 3.1mph was more comfortable, although it did make my walk from the station to home last 6 minutes and 27 seconds instead of the usual 6 minutes and 2 seconds. That annoyed me a bit, but I'll get over it. One of the things I wanted to more than anything yesterday was to get back to bed, but that had to wait until I had done other stuff - like preparing and eating dinner. My dinner was, yet again, not one of the healthiest meals I've eaten, but I could easily have done far worse.The principle components of diner were a bowl of salad with extra tomato and an olive oil and vinegar dressing, and a couple of venison grills. The grills were, as you would expect venison to be, fairly lean. They were tasty, but maybe not enough to go out of my way to get more of them. Of course it was some of the other bits, including hula hoops, that spoiled what could otherwise have been some moderately healthy eating.  The other important thing on my list of stuff that had to be done last night was to review and edit some of the photos I took on Sunday afternoon of Night Owl performing. I'm not sure why, but many of the photos I took did not come out all that well. Well maybe I do know why some of the photos were crap. I was trying not to use the flash on my camera too much. There was some multi-coloured stage lighting, and that can make for colourful photos, but it does carry a penalty. It is not very bright, and that makes the exposure time on the camera long enough to get bad motion smearing. A few came out OK, but many were a complete disaster. On the left of the picture on the left is Dave Griffiths - keyboard maestro of Night Owl, and on the right of the picture is Jo Corteen - singer and guitar player.  I finished with my photo editing at 8pm, and I was in bed minutes later. I intended to read for a bit, and I did, but it was a much smaller bit than I had imagined. I had barely read a page before my eyelids started drooping. So I put the book down and turned off the lights. I'm not sure if I remember much after that until I got up to go for a wee sometime after 2am. I slept pretty solidly until about 15 minutes before my alarm was due to wake me at 5am. This morning I have almost convinced myself that I feel nice and refreshed. I'm not sure I was so successful trying to convince myself of my own sanity. It seemed like someone was playing tricks with time this morning. Time seemed to flow so slowly when I first got up. I read several things on the internet from one of my favourite tech web sites (http://www.theregister.co.uk/) and the minutes ticked past ever so slowly. Then I went and had a shower, and unbeknown to me, the minutes started flashing by. When I got back to me bedroom I found that it was much later than it should have been, and that I could either rush around like a mad thing, or I could get the later train. I opted for a later train even though it would make me notionally late for work, and far more tragically, force me to pay peak fares on the trains !  I don't think I have any plans for tonight. Maybe I might attempt to eat a bit healthier, or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll be having another early night - that seems quite likely ! |
| Monday 2nd June
2014 |
| 08:20 BST Yesterday was definitely a little taste of summer...maybe a dilute summer, but definitely summer. Today is a bit different, but maybe it won't be quite as awful as I originally thought. It was unusually mild this morning - about 16° C - but it was also rather damp. It was only a light spray of rain, but it was raining a I walked to the station. It just about stopped before I boarded my train, and I haven't felt more than an isolated drop or two since then. Most of today is forecast to be grey, but maybe it won't be as grey as I feared. It seems slightly duller now, but as I walked from the station the sky was more a milky white rather than grey, and there were a few thin patches with a hint of blue behind. Maybe we might be lucky and get some weak sunshine from time to time. A shower is forecast for mid afternoon, possibly just as I am going home, but it will almost be warm today with 19° C forecast. Yesterday was a very pleasant day, but I seemed to be paying for it first thing this morning. Several factors were involved in the first instance of feeling horrible. I seemed to drink a fair amount of Guinness, which raises my blood glucose level quite high. Then I had a fairly substantial dinner when I got in, and that dinner had a very generous sprinkling of hot chilli sauce. Finally, it was a warm night, and I had my bedroom windows closed. I woke up when my alarm sounded at 5am feeling like I had been cooked. I felt dreadfully hot, and it was a great relief to throw the duvet off. That chilli sauce also seemed to give me some problems in the bottom area (ring sting !!). On top of everything else, I seemed to have a hangover...except it wasn't a classic hangover, but a sort of mutated version. It's hard to explain really, but I felt bloody awful on the train from Catford to Waterloo, but curiously enough I started to feel far better very quickly after I arrived at Waterloo. Now I am at work I still wish I was in bed. That is a very strong feeling, and I have been yawning an awful lot since getting up, but otherwise I seem to feel tolerably well now. This morning I think they were getting ready to give away free samples of chocolate at Waterloo station.   |
| Sunday 1st June
2014 |
| 20:40 BST I think that yesterday's weather was better than expected. Maybe there was less sunshine than I would have preferred, but there was some, and it remained dry and mild. Today, against all odds,, or at least against what was originally forecast, was a far superior day. It was bright and sunny for long periods of time, and when it wasn't sunny, it was only not sunny for very brief periods of time. Not only that, but it felt quite warm. With the sun now fairly low on the horizon, the temperature has just dropped below 19° C. Earlier on, perhaps mid afternoon, it could have been as high as 23° C. The rather pessimistic weather forecast says tomorrow is going to be cooler, greyer, and possibly even wetter - maybe summer is now over ! Today has been a fun packed day. This morning I met Aleemah for breakfast. As we walked from the station to the pub e went past The Catford Ram, and I was happy to see the posters up outside the place - or at least the poster on the left !   So while tonight a dreadful racket will be coming from The Catford Ram, there is the prospect of something rather better there next Friday night....very, extremely, considerably much better !!!  
Now I have to admit that I very rarely use WH Smiths these days, but it is nice to know it's there when needed. The closure could be part of a longer term plan. The whole Catford Centre is due for demolition in as little as a few years time, and I have been told that most of the shops are on short term leases now (although I can't vouch for the authenticity of that information). Maybe the shop will just stand derelict until it is demolished, or maybe some "dodgy" pop up business will get a short term lease on it. Time will tell, but it is just another little bit of Catford that slowly, slowly changes until I no longer recognise it as the place I was brought up in. Well, work tomorrow, and I have to get to bed very soon now. There's no time to review all the pictures, and three video clips I took this afternoon, but before the week is out, maybe on Tuesday morning, I'll have a few pictures of the gig to show, but now I'm yawning. Goodnight ! |