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My Diary/Blog For the Month of March 2014

Monday 31st March 2014

08:10 BST  The weather forecast said yesterday would be bright and sunny. This morning's newspaper carried stories about how sunny it had been, and yet the sun never seemed to break through in Catford. At it's peak it was almost warm, maybe just over 18° C, but the whole day was grey, a very light grey with no hint of golden sunshine. I feel cheated ! I'm certain that there was no rain during the night in Catford, but here in Earlsfield a few small puddles, and damp patches here and there, suggest there was a shower here earlier. It is a very grey morning. Really rather dull, but the air seems very clear with no hint of mist, and it was a respectable 11° C when I walked to the station (although the forecast said it ought to be 13° C). I have a theory that today will be very much like yesterday with two differences - one minor and the other major - if it happens. It will probably be a couple of degrees cooler, and there is a chance of a shower this afternoon.  I didn't really get up to anything apart from some photo editing yesterday. Had it been sunny I might have tried to go out for a walk somewhere. I am rather glad I didn't because in the early afternoon I suffered a major diarrhea attack. It may have lasted for nearly an hour, and required 5 or 6 quick visits to the toilet - not an easy thing to do in the middle of a country lane ! I was left wondering what had caused it. It may have been a dirty glass in the pub on Saturday night, or it may have been from the chicken and chips I had on Saturday night after the gig.  There is one other possibility. On Saturday, in an almost failed attempt at reducing my sugar/fat/salt/calorie intake I ate rather substantial quantities of fruit and salad. So my fibre intake was possibly mega high ! I expect normal people can tell a stomach upset from hunger pains, but unfortunately I can't. So I ended up eating quite a lot yesterday, and only about half of it was fruit and salad. The rest almost certainly contained too much of all I was trying to avoid, but I couldn't be bothered to check. It's probably a consequence of that, that this morning I suffered from diarrhea again - although thankfully not as bad as yesterday.  This morning I don't feel too wonderful. My guts feel rather hollow, and so far I've only filled them with a small apple and a small pear. I have more fruit here, and maybe I'll have something else later....or maybe not. I'll see how I feel. I think I feel a little tired, and it's not completely to do with the clocks changing. I didn't get to sleep until gone 9pm - and that is late for me - and I woke up at 4am (or 3am in "old money" GMT time) feeling rather uncomfortable. After a trip to the toilet where I released more wind than I thought the human body was capable of holding, and then another trip to the toilet where more unpleasantness in large quantities occured, I tried to get back to sleep again, but it never happened. So in effect I got up an extra hour early on a day when I had to get up an hour early - making it 2 hours early !  My guts settled down in time to walk to the station for my usual train. I had predicted that I would be walking in darkness after the clock change, but it was more like twilight, and the sun rose 6 minutes after my train left the station. By the end of the week it will probably be sunrise when I walk to the station, but it won't be until the end of next month before I'll be waking up to daylight - and then only by the merest whisker if my guess is correct.  Well I never got to see Patricia at the weekend, and maybe that is just as well - at least it was on Sunday afternoon - the house was definitely unpleasantly smelly for a while ! As much as I would like to see her as soon as possible, I hope she doesn't turn up tonight. I have a feeling that it might still be daylight when I get into bed tonight. I feel a strong need for beauty sleep ! Looking towards the future...I'm wondering if I want to take Friday off work. It is the Chinese holiday of Qinming, or tomb sweeping day. Now that sounds like an excellent day to have off. Not only that, but the Thursday gang are drinking in Beckenham on Thursday night. On top of that there is an open mic session that features several people I know in the pub up the road. Maybe I'll make a night of it, and recover at home on Friday. We'll see !  Here's a couple of pictures I took on Saturday night.... Rob Todd nursing his broken hand. He broke it earlier in the day playing rugby, but that didn't stop him going out in the evening. The Bromley Bastards - Geoff Paice, Patsi Spike O'Shea, Sidney Tiberious Bones, and (out of shot on the right) Vince Pross. As above, but taken at a more "punk" angle, and Patsi wearing cheap punk sunglasses !!

Sunday 30th March 2014

10:13 BST   The weather was rather fine yesterday. It would have been nicer still if it had been a little warmer, but it didn't feel that bad, and a day of sunshine is always to be welcomed. Very late in the evening, maybe 11pm, or thereabouts, it became quite misty, and this morning the mist has risen as thin cloud that is almost blocking the sunshine. The forecast does say that today should see a lot of sunshine, but up to this time, and for at least a little while into the future, that forecast is very wrong. Yesterday hit 17° C, and today was supposed to be the same or better.  So far the temperature has risen from about 7° C to just over 12° C. So I guess there is hope that we will eventually see 17° C or more. Tomorrow might, or might not, be a similar temperature, but will probably be even cloudier. There might even be a shower !  I got unusually busy yesterday. I went to the pharmacy to pick up my repeat presecription, and then I went to Aldi where I bought a whole heap of healthy stuff, fruit and salad etc, as well as a few other items which were not quite so healthy. One of the least healthy things was an extending clothes line. So another fairly brief bit of busyness was to install the extending clothes line in the garden. A longer bit of busyness was to do two small loads of laundry to hang on the new clothes line to dry. I think I washed 7 shirts plus a t-shirt and some socks.  Most of that took place in the morning. I took it mostly easy in the afternoon as I tried to ready myself for what could have been a very taxing evening. I was determined to get out last night after spending so many Saturday evenings indoors by myself. There were three possible gigs I could have gone to, and I  worked out that in theory I could make a short visit to each one because they were all linked by reasonable bus journeys. It would have been utter madness to attempt it, but fortunately I came to me senses, and just chose one gig.  For the last 6 months (plus or minus a year or two) I've been wanting to see The Bromley Bastards, and last night they were playing in The William IV pub in Elmers End. It is fairly easy to get to, and easy to get home from even after midnight - if you take the right route !  The screenshot above shows what would happen if you followed Network Rail's suggestion for getting home to Catford from Elmers End after midnight. It is possible to reduce that journey time by five and a half hours by taking the 54 bus - Elmers End to Catford in little more than 15 minutes that late at night (and very considerably longer in the rush hour !). I've just noticed one other stupid anomaly in the picture above. It says take the rail replacement bus service (this was for last night, and presumably engineering works are taking place somewhere today) from Beckenham Junction (where the 54 also stops) to Catford, and then walk for 6 minutes to Catford Bridge station. Even when my angina was at it's very worst it was still only about a 3 minute walk between stations, but worse than that is that I am fairly certain that the rail replacement bus stop is almost outside Catford Bridge station !  I can't remember the last time I went out on a Saturday night. So going out well after dark to get a train last night was a bit of an adventure. Prior to going out you wonder how it will feel, and to my surprise it felt quite close to normal. I arrived at The William IV pub early enough to say a few hellos before the first band started. There were loads of people I recognised there, but I think there were only two people there who I really know to speak to to, and even then I don't know them very well. So my hellos were rather brief.  There were two bands on last night. The Bromley Bastards were the headline act, and Ferdinands Northern Ferrrets were the support act. To be brutally honest, I thought Ferdinands Northern Ferrrets were better than The Bastards. If the video above plays in your browser you'll be watching Ferdinands Northern Ferrets covering the Sham 69 song "Hurry Up Harry", and covering it rather well in my humble opinion.    By the time The Bromley Bastards came on I was beginning to feel a little tired. So I watched them for about 40 minutes, and then bowed out. I could have got the train home, and if I had timed it right I would have done, but I realised I only had about 4 minutes to walk an 8 minute walk, and there was no way I could get to the station in time. So I went to the bus stop where I only had to wait a literal 2 minutes for the bus back to Catford. I yawned all the way home, but once I got home I got my second wind.   Although I arrived home by 11pm, or thereabouts, it was 1.30am before I was in bed with the lights out. Of course there could be some confusion with the time. The clocks changed from GMT to BST around that time, and I'm not sure if my last glance at the time was GMT or BST. What I do know is that I slept quite soundly, and didn't wake up until around 6am (BST). It appears that I didn't get that much sleep last night, and maybe I'll try and have a long snooze this afternoon.  I don't think I have any particular plans for today beyond having that snooze, and selecting some pictures I took last night for editing. Maybe it is possible that Patricia might visit today, but I've not heard anything from her yet. I hope she gives me plenty of advance warning if she is coming. As yet I haven't had a shower, and if I am not seeing anyone today then I might not bother to have one.

Saturday 29th March 2014

08:13 GMT   Yesterday's weather showed a small improvement of the preceeding couple of days.....but not by much ! The morning fog lifted, but the sky didn't really clear. So what sunshine there was, and there wasn't much, tended to be weak and hazy. I'm unsure of the afternoon temperature, but it was probably in the region of a chilly feeling 12° C. Today has started off sunny and bright. With luck it will stay sunny for most of the day, and the temperature should rise to a more pleasant 17° C - if the forecast is correct ! Tomorrow may be even better than today. There was talk of the temperature hitting 20° C - almost comfortable !  I felt quite tired at work yesterday. Maybe it was because I didn't have that much interesting work on, and so I passed a lot of time reading stuff off the internet. I fell asleep, only for a few seconds, several times while doing that. In other ways I felt quite good - perhaps better than I dared imagine. Once again I was able to walk faster than of late. Maybe it was not a lot faster, but at least it didn't feel like a slow hard slog.  Perhaps the biggest change was that for the first time in absolute ages I didn't feel content to just let the escalator at Waterloo station carry me to the top, and I just started walking up it for no better reason that I thought I could. I don't think I would have liked to walk up a longer one, but maybe I could have done because it hardly slowed me down when I continued to walk across the link to the platforms of Waterloo East station.  It's still going to take some time, but I am beginning to think that there is a chance that I will get my stamina back one day.  I had to stand all the way from Waterloo East to Catford Bridge station because of another half length train ! Fortunately there were no prams or screaming kids in my carriage, and it was only lightly packed. It's only a journey of 17 minutes, but standing in a confined space seems to make me feel a bit foot and leg sore when I get off the train. Nevertheless, I was able to walk home from the station at a quite reasonable pace.  The first thing I did when I got home was to do the washing up, and take out the rubbish bin in the kitchen. Strangely enough, it didn't smell bad when I came in out of the fresh air. I'm not sure what changed between the morning when it seemed a bit smelly in the kitchen, and when I got home. There is one possibility that the smell was not from inside but from outside. I have a suspicion that some local tom cat can still detect that several cats once lived here, and he is in the habit of leaving his calling card near the back door.  Once I had cleaned up the kitchen I sorted out my dinner. I started with bangers and vegetable mash.....  Dinner, part 1, was as the picture above. It had far too much salt in it, too much sugar, and too much fat, but it was only 320 calories, and didn't taste that bad. Of course the only reason it was only 320 calories is because it was so small. I do know people, or maybe one person, who would regard it as a whole meal, but to me it was like a little in between snacks snackette ! To bulk things up a bit I had two ready mix salad bowls with extra baby plum tomatoes. I guess that with the added dressing they might have added up to 200 calories if I wanted to be extra pessimistic about it.  In theory that was my entire dinner described, but I couldn't stop eating for long. As the BBC news droned on I demolished a small packet of raw almonds (probably several hundered thousand calories), and before I could pull myself away and go upstairs I demolished a cold smoked and spicy sausage (probably several million calories). For all that, I didn't really feel stuffed when I went up to my bedroom, and could easily have eaten more.  Once in my bedroom I pottered around on the internet until 8pm, and then I felt bored and went to bed. Maybe another change for the better is that I didn't feel sleepy at all. I tried to go to sleep but after half an hour I got up again and plugged my TV dongle into my PC to see what was on. There was surprisingly little worth watching. In the end I started watching the movie version of The Addams Family. I don't think I've seen the whole film before, and once again I didn't this time. After watching it for something like half an hour I noticed there was a documentary about Robert Plant (from Led Zepplin) on BBC3. I watched that until it finished at 10pm, and I rather enjoyed it.  Once it had finished I tried going back to bed, and this time I did sleep, and sleep well until gone 5am (the usual time I get up). Since then I haven't done that much beyond having a shower, and getting half dressed. Once I've finished writing here I'll get fully dressed, and then go out. First stop is the pharmacy to pick up a fresh truckload of blood pressure drugs, and then it will be round the corner to Aldi.  After that my plans get a bit thin. I've got some laundry to do, and if I truly do feel better than recently I might hoover the living room and downstairs hall. My plans get even thinner still after that. I think I'll mostly be just hanging around hoping that I get a visit from Patricia sometime this weekend.  One other thing. At 2am (or maybe 1am) tomorrow morning, the clocks change from GMT to BST. I think this means we have to get up an hour early to go to work on Monday - or at least that is how it will feel. That will be no problem, but it is sad that once again I'll probably be walking to the station in darkness again for the next few weeks. On the plus side, there will be more light in the evenings, and maybe, hopefully, that will inspire me to get out to some of the gigs I've been missing because I've just wanted to go to bed as soon as darkness falls.

Friday 28th March 2014

08:15 GMT   My main impression of yesterday was that it was cold ! After the misty start to the day there were some rather hazy sunny spells, but there was also a splash or two of rain in the early afternoon. Fortunately it was dry when I left work, and as I neared Catford the sun made a valiant effort to shine again (but mostly failed). This morning is far mistier than yesterday. I don't recall seeing any more than a bit of haze yesterday, but this morning it might have been thick enough to say that it was foggy in places.  The thickest fog was probably in central London near the river. I took the picture above from London Bridge station. The top of the Guys Hospital tower on the left is almost obscured, and the top of The Shard is completely hidden (and quite possibly in sunlight above the clouds/mist/fog). The sun is supposed to break through later this morning, and we could have a nice sunny afternoon. By early afternoon the temperature may have risen to 13° C - which isn't exactly warm, but should be a big improvement over this morning's chilly air as well as anytime yesterday.  My plans for after work worked out rather well yesterday. Once again I felt like I had a small amount of extra energy compared to what has become normal over the last few months, and the walk to the station wasn't the horrible slog that it has been on some occasions. I was starting to run out of steam when I got back to Catford, but I was far from knackered. Before going to the pub I got some shopping in from Tesco.  Somehow I managed to be quite particular about what I bought in Tesco, and almost everything I bought could be considered to have some sort of vague health benefits when used properly, but probably tastes horrible ! I am curious to see how the "Healthy Eating" (their words, not mine) bangers and vegetable mash ready meals work out. I didn't study the label too deeply last night, but I think it claims to be less than 400 calories (302 sticks in my mind for some unlikely reason). Of  course to be that low in calories the sausages are tiny, and made from old brown paper, and the vegetable mash probably contains something revolting like turnip, but tonight I will be brave and try it.  Having got my shopping I went to the pub to meet with the other guys. It was my intention to be anti-social and only have two pints, and somehow I managed to do just that. It was either that or 24 pints and a gigantic dinner afterwards. Two pints almost allowed enough control to eat wisely when I got home. I actually ate quite a small dinner, but it wasn't long before I got the munchies. I ended up eating a packet of mixed fruit and nuts (although it was the nuts that were mixed). It did spoil things a bit, but maybe not too drastically.  This morning I feel fairly good...although I am not sure how much of that to attribute to it being Friday, and how much for other reasons. I'm fairly sure I got a full 8 hours sleep last night, and maybe a little extra spare.  According to my train from Waterloo I was up and about incredibly early this morning ! Back in the real world, I woke up at about 4.40am, and it didn't seem worth fighting to go back to sleep for 20 minutes. The train I was on when I took the picture above was actually the 07:16 train from Waterloo, and it hadn't even departed when I took the picture of the passenger information display showing 01:49 in the early morning.  I hope I get home from work with a little spare energy left because there are a few things I need to do. I noticed the kitchen is a little smelly this morning, and I know why it's like that - the remains of some smoked mackerel I had the other day. Some is in the rubbish bin, and I haven't washed up the plate I ate it from. Last night I didn't do any cooking, and so didn't spend any time in the kitchen..and that's my poor excuse for not emptying the bin and washing the plate up.  Doing all the washing up, and emptying the bin, plus some other stuff could be quite important for this weekend. My friend Patricia is back in London after spending the winter south of the equator, and there is a chance that she might drop by sometime over the weekend for an all too brief visit. The last time I saw her was back in September last year, just after I came out of hospital, and I very much look forward to seeing her again soon.

Thursday 27th March 2014

08:03 GMT   Yesterday was a horrible day - it rained on me as I went home from work ! Not only that, but it was bloody chilly. I didn't see it personally, and in fact it is possible that only one person did see it, but they did shoot a few seconds of poor quality video that was shown on the news last night - way up in the sky, near the top of some huge skyscraper, it snowed - snowed in London - in March ! Actually snow in March is not that rare, but it happening yesterday, even if it was half a mile up in the sky, shows what a disgusting day yesterday really was.  This morning started a bit misty in places, and with a frost. The sky was rather hazy, but occasionally there was some weak sunshine as I came to work. If actually looks sort of nice in an early morning sort of way, and it would be if the temperature wasn't still close to zero. There could be weak sunshine at almost any time today, including the afternoon when it is almost certain to rain too. The best temperature we can expect today will be a shivery 9° C. The good news is that early indications are that the weekend could be reasonably warm - maybe even as high as 20° C on Sunday.  Just eating one and a half apples until I got home from work seemed to do some good - as I hoped it might. I felt like I had more energy as I walked from work to the station. It is possible it was one of my fastest walks in some time now. It still wasn't fast enough though, and I feel sure I can go much faster when my legs, ankles, knees, and feet don't ache. It is possible there is a reason for those, and other aches and problems, and it was not one that I had considered before.  I was inspired to do some research on statins, and in particular the statin I have been prescribed - Atorvastatin. There is lots of anecdotal evidence that it can be a bit poisonous for some people. Even the NHS's own website suggests that I probably should not be taking Atorvastatin ! Then there are all the horror stories and good advice. Until yesterday I put the blame for some of my problems on another drug, Amlodipine. Maybe that is more harmless than I previously thought.  Last night I didn't take my Atorvastatin, and I will stop taking it for 2 to 3 weeks to see what difference it takes. It is far to early for my body to have rid itself of the last dose I took, and far, far too early for any damage it might have done to have healed itself, and yet this morning I do feel sort of different in a positive way. That is doubly surprising considering I ate terribly when I got home last night. I started off OK with a moderately healthy steamed ready meal, but as soon as I ate that I got the munchies big time ! I ended up eating a pile of grilled bacon, and even cheese sandwiches - two ingredients guaranteed to give a heart attack (in popular myth).  This morning I forced down nearly three quarters of one of those hideous Granny Smith green and acrid apples. I followed that with a delicious crisp conference pear. Later on I may have a nicer apple, and/or another pear. That will all I'll be eating before going for a drink after work. Tonights venue is The Catford Ram, and there are two reasons I had better try and not drink that much tonight. Firstly it will be all too easy to get drunk with on the remains of an apple in my stomach (I know this from ample previous experience). Secondly, too much drink will inspire me to eat far too much when I get home (I also know this from previous experience in industrial quantities).  On second thoughts, I might be a bit confused about reason two. There have been times when I have just eaten cod and chips, and nothing else after staggering home ! I am sure there was one occasion, I think it might have been after a gig, when I somehow persuaded myself to go straight to bed without eating. It may not be healthy in some respects, but I would like to be able to do that a lot more often ! There is a possibly a third reason for not drinking too much tonight - the beer in The Ram is not well looked after these days, and can occasionally be dreadful !  There were bees on Waterloo station concourse last night - Friends Of The Earth bees....

Wednesday 26th March 2014

08:05 GMT   There was a bit of sunshine yesterday afternoon, but it was a pretty poor show. I think the afternoon was dry, but I wasn't paying all that much attention to the outside world. The ground certainly seemed bone dry this morning, but it was very cold, and it was a bit misty in a few places. The cloud seems fairly thin and patchy this morning - thin enough for a few bursts of hazy sunshine on my way to work. The official forecast suggests that it will be like this all morning, but after midday the clouds will thicken, and we can expect rain. The highest temperature predicted for today is a very wintry 7° C ! We seem to be heading back into winter instead of charging through to summer !  I just did not feel like doing a thing yesterday. I considered washing a shirt or two, but with plenty of clean shirts spare there seemed no need for it. About the only positive action I took was to have a relatively light dinner to make up for all sorts of bad food during the day. I had two cans of soup. One can was tomato soup, and I had some dry bread with that. the other may not have been a wise choice for someone who started the day with dodgy guts. It was Tuscan bean soup, but I seem to have got away with it this time.  Despite resting all day, plus having the extra 2 hours sleep in the morning, I had no trouble getting to sleep last night. I did stay up reading a little later than usual, but I turned out the light at 9pm, and I was asleep not that long after. More incredibly, I almost stayed asleep through the whole night. I got up once or twice for a pee, but fell asleep the instant I got back in bed. It wasn't until 4am that I started to sleep more lightly, and I did end up getting up about 15 minutes early.  After getting all that rest and sleep I should have felt quite refreshed this morning, and in a way I did. I wasn't exactly bursting with energy, but the walk to the station seemed easier somehow, or maybe it was faster or something. I'm not really sure. Maybe the walk between Waterloo East and Waterloo main line station seemed fractionally easier too, but the walk from the station to work didn't seem to be any easier than usual. On the other hand, I have known it to be much harder.  After my excesses yesterday, and maybe some earlier ones, I thought I should try extra hard to eat a bit more carefully this morning, and maybe even tonight, but tonight is another battle to be fought when the time comes. I am now in work with no possibility of getting anything more to eat than what I bought on my way in to work.....  The are two problems with these packs of apples. Firstly you can't put chilli sauce on apples, and secondly the green apples are bloody horrible ! There is a theory that like medicine, the nasty taste is the stuff that does you good. The green acid in the green apple is thought to be able to cure anything from hair loss to death encompassing ingrowing toenails, and phantom pregnancy along the way. It is highly likely that the people who believe this have eaten enough acrid green apples to cure their brains of sanity !  I have already eaten one of the red/yellow apples, and it was very tasty. I managed to eat half of one of the nasty green apples, but had to throw the rest away. Along with all the other loony theories about green apples is that they are somehow filling, or supress hunger in other ways. That is so completely wrong. After eating just half of one green apple I crave a huge chocolate cake to take the taste away !

Tuesday 25th March 2014

11:45 GMT  The thing I don't understand is how the weather forecast for yesterday could have changed so drastically between the middle of Sunday to early Monday morning. I was originally expecting dark gloomy clouds, and copious rain, and yet when yesterday morning arrived the forecast had changed to a suny morning, and slightly overcast afternoon. In reality the afternoon was almost as sunny as the morning, and even the rain forecast for the night seemed to be no more than a very light shower or two (or at least that is all I was aware of). Despite all that sunshine it was still a rather cool feeling day, but maybe not as bad as the forecast suggested.  This morning started off damp and dull, but I am sure it was not as cold as expected - which I thought was only 3 or 4° C. It may have actually been closer to 5 or 6° C, but I confess I am only guessing. What I do know for sure is that my outside thermometer is now reading 11.6° C, and that is almost 5° C higher than the forecast for right now predicted. The forecast is right in one respect - it is rather grey and rather damp outside. The damp is the result of intermittent light drizzle.  The sun might breakthrough to some extent at some time this afternoon, but I am not totally convinced that will be so. Even if it does I would not expect it to get any warmer, and in any case the temperature could plummet low enough for a frost overnight !  I don't know why, but I felt sort of edgy when I came home from work yesterday. In fact I can't even explain what I mean by edgy, or maybe I can't explain what the significance of the feeling was because I really didn't know.  I think it was probably some sort of early warning about how I feel this morning - more of which later. I stopped off at the Turkish supermarket on the way back home, and bought several assorted items. Amongst those items were the core of my dinner - a time of giant Greek beans, and a tin of "Mediteranean meatballs".  I poured the beans and meatballs on to three slices of bread, and covered them with a generous amount of sliced cheese before zapping it all in the microwave. That was a very unhealthy dinner, but it was what I seemed to crave at the time. I don't know what was so special about it that made me crave it. It wasn't even very nice. That's not to say it was horrible in some way, but just that it wasn't terribly exciting. I had some other junk food as well before I went up to my bedroom, and slowly prepared for bed even earlier than usual.  My memory is quite hazy, but I think I might have fallen asleep by 8pm last night. I sort of slept OK, but I had quite a few strange dreams. One such dream was that I was on some sort of space station. You might think that dream was inspired by some sort of floating sensation brought about by who knows what sort of medical condition/brain siezure/paralysis/etc, but this space station had gravity ! If anything, I was wondering why I wasn't floating !  After so much sleep it was probably inevitable that I would wake up early. It was only half an hour or so early, but I had little chance to get back to sleep because it turned out I was full of wind, and other digestive disorders. I visited the toilet enough times to think that I would never be stable for long enough to even get to the station, let alone survive a train journey ! It turns out I was wrong, and I made the decision to go sick from work a bit prematurely. At worst I might have had to turn up a bit late.  On the other hand it might have been the right decision, but for a slightly different reason. Once I had called work to tell them the good news I got back into bed. I fell asleep almost instantly, and slept solidly for one hour and 55 minutes. For the next 5 minutes I didn't sleep solidly, but had a partly very nice, and partly very confusing dream. I dreamed I was on a training course from work, and on a half hour lunch break. A lot happened in that half hour lunch break...  Once I got out of the classroom I went to find a toilet. It was two floors up in what seemed to be a hospital ward. Having found the toilet there was a sort of movie style cut to me walking down the high street. It had some similarities to Bromley high street, and like Bromley on a Saturday night it seemed to have it's fair share of drunks and tramps. As I crossed the road a drunken tramp was vomitting on himself as he stood on the central reservation, and he started stripping off his clothes to rub himself down with newspaper.  At the same time an attractive young woman was also trying to cross the road, and I somehow did my best to shield her from the unpleasant sight. Evidently she appreciated this because she held my hand as we negotiated the traffic on the other side of the crossing. She contined to hold my hand as we walked down to the bottom of the high street. As we passed a pub I suggested we pop in for a very quick drink (I was still aware that I was on a half hour lunch break, and only had about 15 minutes left before I had to be back in the classroom). She said yes, but she had to get her keys from her brother first.  At the bottom of the high street there was a very strange housing estate - very strange indeed ! It was like it was in another country, or another time. The few cars there were all strange and old looking, and the housing was like thin narrow tennaments. We climbed up an iron staircase to a very cramped little flat. At first there was no one there, but then her brother appeared. He looked foreign, perhaps Italian with a hint of mobster about him. He offered to drive us back to the pub. His car was more modern than the others I had seen, but still like a classic car. It was quite wide, and the roads we were going down at speed seemed very narrow. The last I remember of the dream was going down a road that was so narrow that the door handles of the car were passing under the window ledges on either side. There was no more than about a quarter of an inch to spare on either side and yet we were going incredibly fast - or so it felt. I woke up at that point.  I'm not sure what I'll be doing for the rest of today. I can't say I feel perfectly OK now, but I also can't say that anything in particular feels wrong. I just feel like being lazy, and that may well be what I do. Should I feel anything different I do have a couple of shirts that need washing, and should I feel very different I could pop out and do a little shopping. I think the latter is unlikely, and even the former might be a minor miracle.  Last night it was The Friends Of The Earth who were cluttering up the concourse at Waterloo station. I am surprised that Network Rain, who run/own the station and tracks allowed them to bring in leaf dropping items. It is now well known that a single leaf on the line can cause a cascade effect that stops all trains in a 1000 mile radius from running.

Monday 24th March 2014

08:16 GMT   It might have appeared to get very cloudy yesterday afternoon, but that cloud did not survive. Instead of the rain that was predicted to fall during the night, the clouds dissipated to give a bright and clear morning...and sub zero temperatures. As I walked to the station this morning the sky was blue, and the great golden orb of the sun hung just above the horizon. Meanwhile, all the cars glittered with frost. The sun is forecast to continue shining all morning, and maybe a little way into the afternoon. It should raise the temperature to an improved, but still chilly 9° C. By mid afternoon the sky will cloud over, the temperature will drop, but maybe only as low as 6° C because after midnight it is forecast to start raining. If the forecast is correct then tomorrow is going to be horribly wet and dreafully cold !  The only thing I did late yesterday afternoon, and then into the evening, was to eat stuff that I really should not have eaten. Cheese and salami sandwiches, even without using any spreadable fat (butter, margerine etc) are pretty lethal, and I ate two of them ! Maybe it even shows this morning. My walk from the station to work seemed like really hard work...although there could be an alternative explanation for that. This morning I am wearing some extremely comfortable shoes, and I most definitely wanted to walk faster than I am capable of doing so now. Maybe that felt more like hard work than it really was.  Actually there may be more to it than that. I woke up feeling none too good. I slept well for most of the night - apart from a very unsatisfactory dream - but after about 4am I started waking up feeling all creaky and stiff. I wasn't sure if my legs would actually work at first, and my back felt so sore I wondered if I would even be able to stand up. It's odd how these extreme feelings 99% evaporated within seconds of getting out of bed. Now I can feel where the pain was in my back, but not the actual pain itself, and it is a similar story for my legs.  Oh well, there's less than 8 hours to go now before I start heading home again, and there is only a week to go before I am paid again. It would be great if Friday was pay day, but I think it is going to be next Monday. That means I'll have to pay for any fun and frivolities next weekend out of this months pay packet. That will be no problem, no problem at all, except that it does rather spoil my plans to make a very generous deposit into my savings account to finance early retirement, or cushion actual retirement. Shame really, because I was almost getting excited about the prospect of making another large deposit like last month.  Maybe I'll have to plot and scheme to become an even tighter miserable tightwad miser next month. It is, of course, at this point that I should be making a typical miser type laugh, but I can't remember how misers laugh. I know several villain type laughs, but not miser laughs. Even if I did there is no telling if I could actually spell that laugh properly. The thought does occur to me that maybe misers don't laugh when fondling their money. Maybe Disney lied, or maybe I am confused. Do I have a very faint memory of someone counting coins, and maybe they might have been cackling ? Cackle, cackle, there, does that sound like a miser counting his money ? Sounds a bit weak to me !

Sunday 23rd March 2014

15:18 GMT   I think the temperature may have hit 12° C, but it still felt quite cool. I believe there was some rain after sunset, and I am sure i heard a clap of thunder, but it wasn't raining hear when it happened. Today has turned out to be far better than expected. There have been a couple of brief showers - one of them quite heavy, but most of the day has been bright and sunny - until now. The last of the blue patches of sky seem to be filling in now, and maybe we will get some more persistent rain.......or maybe not ! The sun has warmed up the front of my house rather well, but the air temperature outside is still very chilly - currently about 11° C. Hopefully tomorrow will be better than the forecast - a 2° C start and almost black clouds all day !  My enthusiasm for doing housework quickly ran down yesterday. After I had rested for a bit after my earlier hoovering and stuff, I hoovered my bedroom floor, or the easy to get at bits of it, and called it a day. I spent the rest of the day taking it nice and easy. I did quite a lot of reading. A little bit of TV watching, and some eating. For some reason I can't remember what time I turned out the light, but I reckon it was before 10pm, and I'm sure I fell asleep quite quickly.  I probably should try and convince myself to stay up a bit later because, once again, I was awake well before I needed to be. It would have been rather less fun if I had to go to work today, but it being the weekend I didn't have to fight being awake, and I got up for a while before going back to bed for another hour of poor quality sleep. I felt reasonably OK when I woke up, nit as good as on Friday, but quite good enough to meet my friend Aleemah at the station, and then to walk to the pub for (her) breakfast.  After Aleemah had eaten her breakfast, and I had drunk my breakfast (!) we wandered over to the 99p shop where I bought all sorts of stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time, but that I really should not have bought. I now have quite a lot of stuff in the cupboard that I really ought to make last several months, but will probably be gone by the end of the week, and any attempt at eating more healthy stuff will just have flown out the window !  If I was really enthusiastic there is probably stuff I could do this afternoon, but I think I am just going to be really lazy. Maybe I'll find something on TV worth watching, or I'll do some more reading, and then I'll be off to bed to prepare for another gruelling week of commuting to and from work.

Saturday 22nd March 2014

13:13 GMT  Yesterday's weather followed the forecast fairly well. The morning was sunny, but the sunshine fizzled out during the afternoon. Sometime after dark there were some showers. I think the temperature was a little higher than forecast - perhaps as high as 13° C instead of a mere 11° C. I'm sure that the earlier forecasts for today made it out to be a far worse day than it actually is. There have been a couple of very light showers, but mostly it has been sunny - I'm sure the forecast only mentioned occasional sunny spells. There is supposed to be some heavier showers this afternoon, but it doesn't look like they will be starting that soon. I think the day started at a fairly cool 5 or 6° C, but it is now almost 11° C, and if the sun can stay out a bit longer it might manage 12° C. Tomorrow is forecast to be slightly cooler, and wetter. Hopefully that is wrong !  While I may have been feeling crap by universal standards, I was actually feeling rather good by recent standards. Going home from work only felt about 80% of the dreadful slog that it usually is. This may have been reflected in my blood pressure being higher than usual. I'm sure my body works better with higher blood pressure even if it is life shortening. On this occasion there could be another reason for high blood pressure. I was attempting to get a couple of reading just before going to see my doctor. Before I could get the first reading the batteries went flat on my meter. I had to rush around like a mad thing to find new batteries.....and time was running out on me.  My doctor accepted my explanation for last nights high readings, and just concentrated on the three others I had take during the week. As far as he was concerned my blood pressure was being satisfactorily controlled by my current drug dosage, and he was happy to leave that alone. The results of my echo cardiogram showed nothing that wasn't expected - presumably what was expected after heart surgery. My doctor will now be passing those results, plus his own observations on to a cardiologist to see if anything needs to be done, or just to let my body heal itself.  There was an option to go to a gig last night. It wasn't one I was desperate to see, and that's just as well because even as I was seeing my doctor I could feel my energy drain away. By the time I was home I felt as tired as any other night. It was nice to have the extra energy earlier on, and it would have been nice if it had lasted a bit longer, but at least it was a step in the right direction - assuming it was part of a tend and not just a flash in the pan.  I don't know how I got the "bee in my bonnet", maybe it was something I had smelled while I was out, but I had a strong yearning for some Chinese food last night. In particular I wanted some spare ribs. I didn't want the sweet and sour type because of the sugar involved, but I was prepared to accept the grease of plain ones. When it came down to it I ordered two types because I couldn't remember which was the best type.  When my rather extravagant order turned up I found that one type was what I expected, but the other, which I was sure was described as salt and pepper flavour, turned out to be like nothing I had tried before. If it had been less fatty and greasy it could almost have been healthy. It was little chunks of rib cooked with onion and diced chillies - and those little chillies were fiercely hot ! I had those ribs with some noodles (unfortunately fried and rather greasy). The other stuff I ordered made for quite a nice meal for todday once zapped in the microwave - and I still have a container of egg fried rice I could do something with - maybe.  There was no reason, apart from tiredness, for me to go to bed early last night. So I stayed up a bit later than usual, but not much. I guess I was still fast asleep in bed by 10pm, but I wasn't really paying much attention to the exact time. Initially I slept well, but at 4am I seemed to be rather more awake than I should have been at that time. Rather than fight it like I would on a work day, I got up and pottered around for an hour or so before trying for sleep again. I did manage a bit more sleep, but I was probably up again in under two hours.  By my lazy standards I've been quite busy this morning. I started off doing some laundry. That laundry included a bath towel - which are real heavy buggers to manipulate. I didn't even try and wring it out fully, but hung it in the garden where it could drip away to it's heart's content. Sadly I brought it in again after little more than an hour when we had a very brief shower. I expected more, but with hind sight I could have left it out until the real rain starts this afternoon - if it does.  Doing that laundry was one thing, but I did far more than that ! It may not have been a very thorough job, but I've cleaned up the bathroom. I even hoovered the floor, and the cobwebs off the ceiling and walls (including the short passage that leads to the bathroom at the top of the stairs). I even changed the mats using some spares left from when I had a working washing machine, and could clean them (and then spend ages unclogging the fluff filter). I threw away the old mats. It's not exactly sparkling in the bathroom now, and unless you knew how bad it was before you might never realise how much work I put into it, but I know !  The next thing I do, after writing this, is probably to have a snooze, but I have this itchy feeling that I might do some more housework later. I know I've said stuff like this before, and ended up doing nothing, but maybe the sunshine has given me a sort of spring fever.......it's a shame that as I write these words the sun has just gone in and it is looking all drab outside. Maybe it will be shining after I wake up from a snooze, and the spring fever will continue. If not, it doesn't matter. I've already done more than I ever dreamed of !

Friday 21st March 2014

08:00 GMT   Yesterday's weather was almost bland. I think there might have been some sunshine, but it was so insignificant that it didn't really register with me. One thing that did register was the strong breeze/medium wind that made it feel really chilly as I walked to the station after work. Oddly enough, I didn't seem to notice it when I was back in Catford. Sometime not too long after it got dark we had the first rain fall for a couple of weeks. It looks as if it rained for some time during the night but had stopped by this morning. Today is not going to be quite as bad as was forecast a couple of days ago. There should be a fair bit of sunshine today (it's sunny right now), but it will rain after sunset (and probably for lots of tomorrow). The major annoyance is that after the temperature starting at about 8° C, which seems a reasonable start for this time of year, it's hardly going to get any higher despite the sunshine. The forecast reckons 11° C is the best we can hope for, and that's just pathetic !  I feel extremely variable recently. Last night the walk from work to the station seemed a tiny bit easier than recently, but once I was on the train I began to feel quite weary. That continued all the way back to Catford, and it felt like I could barely put one foot in front of the other as I walked from the station to the Turkish supermarket. Once I had bought some bread and stuff from there it felt unusually easy to walk from there to home. Explain that, because I can't !  I didn't go for my usual Thursday night drink for two reasons yesterday. The first, and maybe more important reason was that I am seeing my doctor after work. The other reason is that I didn't think that anybody would be drinking in what is now the usual haunt - The Catford Constitutional Club. I was wrong, but for a reason that I could never have guessed, and which I shall explain soon. I went straight home with my tasty Turkish seeded bread, plus some other stuff.  That other stuff included some Turkish Succuk sausage, and that probably formed the core of my unusual dinner last night. I started off with some bread and cheese, and then had grilled sausage with tomato soup (with some extra bread). I actually ate the sausage and soup as one course, but not mixed together. I had a few mouthfuls of soup followed by a bit of sausage followed by a bit moe soup etc. I am unsure why I ate it like that. It was just one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. I followed all that by a plate of fruit.  Another slightly odd thing is that I now classify tomatoes and even peppers as fruit. They might even be so technically, but are rarely thought of like that. I only think of them like that when I eat them raw. If I cook tomatoes or peppers then they are vegetables ! I once would have thought that peppers and plums, for instance, don't mix, but they seem to work together on the same plate for me quite well.  I'm not sure if my strange dinner could be classified as healthy in any way that is relevant to me, but this morning I could swear my waist has shrunk a little bit. Obviously one meal last night could not effect me this morning, but maybe some of the care I have taken to avoid the very worst offenders recently might have worked to my advantage. Of course it is such a small change that it is not really statisticly significant. On the other hand, I might possibly even feel a little better this morning.  For various reasons, mostly the same ones as ever, I went to bed extra early last night. It saves a bit on heating, and more importantly it saves me from getting bored and eating more. Plus it is the most comfortable way to read a paperback ! I think I might have been in bed by 7pm, but it might have been a little later. At about 7.30pm I received a phone call from someone with a very Canadian sounding voice !  I didn't get any advance warning, but my friend Mike had come to the UK from Canada to visit his parents and brother. At the time of the call they were in Catford, and in particular, they were in The Catford Constitutional Club asking me if I fancied a beer ! If I had been pre-warned I would have dropped my decision about drinking last night, and I wouldn't have been undressed in bed while there was drinking going on. It was hard to say no, but I had to turn down the very tempting offer.  Thirty or forty minutes after getting off the phone I had turned out the light, and I was fast asleep. I've always liked a lot of sleep, and while I seem to be still healing after my operation, even though it seems ages ago now, I seem to be able to use all I can get. I'm sure I woke up more frequently than usual last night, and yet it feels like I got a good nights sleep. I certainly seem to feel better for it this morning. I seemed to ache less, and had a tiny bit of extra energy this morning......although there was one exception.  I'm not sure what it was that caused it, or even what exactly it was that I was feeling, but I felt most peculiar when I got off the train at Earlsfield this morning. It has echoes of when I got off the train in Catford last night, but the symptoms were completely different. This morning I felt slightly nauseus, very slightly light headed, and almost, but not quite, very weak. Those feelings, which I feel sure I have inadequately described, persisted until I had bought some stuff in the little Londis supermarket by the station, and then disappeared entirely. The walk from there to work then felt a lot easier than usual !  After having sat at my desk for over half an hour, and having eaten some breakfast, I now feel like a lie down would suit me well. That is impossible until tonight. So I'll plod my way through work before I haul myself home and prepare to go out to the doctor an hour later. In the meantime I have had a bit of a smile. Sometimes I am easily amused, and one thing that amuses me a lot is to see a Windows error message on a very big, very public display - such as a huge display on the forecourt of Waterloo station !  This display is supposed to be showing how well the London Underground is running this morning, but much of that info is obscured by the error message. This picture was not really sharp enough to display it clearly, but here's a fuzzy blow-up view of the message.  It says "To help protect your computer Windows Firewall has blocked some features of this program".

Thursday 20th March 2014

08:10 GMT   One plus point about yesterday was that it stayed dry. Another was that it warmed up in the afternoon......but only just. The wildly optimistic forecast was for the temperature to reach 18° C, but the reality was closer to 16° C, and the breeze made it feel closer to 14° C - in my possibly distorted opinion. This morning started off at a mere 6° C. It seemed as if it was going to be a very dull grey morning, but at London Bridge there was a few seconds of sunshine, and there have been a few short sunny spells since then. This is a little better than the forecast, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will be more sunshine, and that the temperature will rise to at least 14° C - which is only a tiny bit higher than forecast. So it might be possible. 18° C would be nicer still ! The forecasts for the weekend seem to be improving. It's now looking like it will be merely horrible instead of bloody horrible !  I didn't have my boring appraisal at work yesterday. Maybe I'll have it today - it would be very nice to get it out of the way so that life can return to the usual boring humdrum existence. I don't think that the appraisal, or the thought of it, had any bearing on how I felt on the way home, and once I was at home yesterday. I think I felt a bit tired when I started going home, but I can't really remember because all my circuits were engaged on spitting bile after my train from Waterloo East was only 5 coaches instead of 10 - AGAIN !!!!  My venom level was raised to new heights when no prior warning of it being a short train was given - and the train driver remembered he was driving a short train this time. That meant having to (almost) run down the platform in an attempt to get on the second to last coach. I didn't quite make that, but I was almost far enough down the train that it should have thinned out at London Bridge. Unfortunately that was not the case, but at least there wasn't three urine soaked prams crammed into the doorway. No, there was only one plus an unfolded folding bicycle.  I arrived home feeling totally drained, but thirsty for blood, guts and gore ! I thought I would calm down fairly soon after arriving home, and maybe I did and it was something else, but I felt incredibly hungry all evening. I could have killed for peanuts, crisps, and cake. Fortunately I didn't have any or I would have eaten them - in great quantities. I did have fags available, but I resisted that temptation despite strong cravings all evening. I actually ate more than I should have done, but far less than I actually wanted, and most, but not all, of what I ate was moderately healthy sort of stuff (vegetables and fruit). So maybe there is some sort of hope after all.  With the way I was feeling I didn't dare stay downstairs watching TV after I had eaten dinner. Sooner or later I would have found something else that I wanted to eat. So having watched the national news I went up to my bedroom at 6.30pm. I could almost have got straight into bed and read for a while, but I spent a little while on the internet, and wrote an email before getting into bed to read. It was getting close to 9pm before I turned the light out and went to sleep fairly quickly.  I think I probably slept better than usual last night, and just for a change I was woken up by my alarm (although I had been awake several times before it went off). I think I would have been very happy if I had been able to turn over and go back to sleep, but work beckoned. I didn't have any booze at all last night, and yet this morning it does feel more like I have a hangover than yesterday when I had every reason to have a hangover ! This morning I have a mild intermittent headache, and a rather vague ache in the guts. Other muscles and joints ache too - particularly my ankles.  Strangely enough, my ankles didn't seem as swollen as they have been most mornings for the last few months or more. In fact I think there is a trend of them getting less swollen now. Maybe my weak heart muscle, if indeed that is the cause, is getting stronger all by itself. It would be nice if other bits of me could continue to get better since my operation. As I mentioned recently, my left hand has half, or three quarters recovered, but seems to have stopped improving now. The same is so for my chest. The outside has healed, but my left man boob is still slightly numb and odd feeling. It also feels like there are loose bits under the skin. I can't really describe what that feel like, but it doesn't feel right.  Maybe I'll hear some of the answers tomorrow when I see my doctor. I don't think there is any drinking going on tonight, but even if there was I would try and not do any so I am theoretically in better condition when I see the doctor. After the doctors I'l be going straight to a Chain gig in The Catford Ram, and I can get drunk as a skunk there if I so wish - and I might do :-) I might do some laundry tonight, but my only real aim is to try and eat as healthily as I can manage, and get to sleep nice and early.

Wednesday 19th March 2014

08:00 GMT   Yesterday was as bad as forecast - with extra rain ! I may be wrong, but I can't recall a single glimpse of any sunshine, but I don't think any was forecast. Around midday there were a couple of showers, and I felt a few drops of rain on my face a few minutes after leaving work to go home - that wasn't in the plan, although fortunately it was just literally a few drops. Overall, I would have to describe yesterday as cold.  This morning has started out very grey, and with the temperature a rather bracing 6° C. All the forecasts for today, from various sources, have been consistent for the last 36 hours, and tell us that all this grey cloud will break up around midday, and we'll have a bright sunny afternoon with temperature as high as 16° C -  the more optimistic suggest 18° C ! Today is likely to be the high point of the week. Friday is still forecast as close to the end of the world - dark skies, copious rain, and a high of 9° C !  Before I leave work I usually check the trains to see if there is likely to be any trouble getting home. Generally it works well, but like the other day, they can't foresee a train breaking down before it happens. Sometimes the information just doesn't make sense..... " This train will now be formed of the usual number of coaches. This is due to a train fault". It makes you wonder how many coaches they would add, or subtract if the train didn't have a fault on it !  I arranged to meet Jodie for a quick drink on my way home last night. At least it should have been a quick drink, but there were a lot of beers to test. Perhaps more importantly was that Jodie had arranged for her friend Mark to meet her in the pub, and give her a lift home. So it was only polite to wait until Mark arrived, and have a drink with him. It was just about dark when I left the pub, and I guess that made it a little after 7pm.  Any attempt to eat healthily last night was drowned under a torrent of beer, and I ended up having cod and chips for dinner. The only hint of any attempt to make them slightly less unhealthy was to use white pepper instead of salt on the meal. I don't know why chip shops don't offer white pepper as a condiment because it seems to me to go with both fish and chips rather well. As soon as I finished my dinner I headed up to bed, and was actually in bed by 8pm if I recall correctly (which may not be the case).  I seemed to do my increasingly normal, and yet a bit annoying, half and half sleep - sleep really well for half the night, and various shades of badly for the second half (or quarter) of the night. This morning I think I feel better than usual. I was expecting a far bigger hangover, and just having a mild one is such a positive thing that it even outweighs my usual moans about assorted aches and pains. There was one point while I was walking from the station to work where it almost felt good. It didn't last long, but for that brief instant I must have got my stride length and speed perfectly correct, and it didn't feel like I needed much effort to move. Prior to my operation it was usually like that (except when crippled by angina pain).  I had a not completely unexpected surprise when I turned on my work PC this morning...  I knew these pop up message were planned, but I didn't know what they would look like, nor when I would see my first one. Now I know. In theory I should be badgering the company for either a new PC, or for my PC to be upgraded to Windows 7, but I rather like my PC and the way I've set it up. So I will rely on my anti virus software, and the companies firewall to keep my PC safe once the final Windows XP update is installed. I will also rely on common sense - not opening dodgy email attachments from unsolicited and/or unknown sources - not visiting some of the dodgy sites that I would if at home using my linux PC - and probably other stuff that I can't think of right now, but will when the time comes - if it comes.  I didn't have my appraisal yesterday as planned. My line manager was too busy attending to some panic or another. So I've got it to look forward to today....and what a bloody bore it is going to be ! Hopefully it will not be too late in the day when I have it so I can cool down before I go home. I intend to have a lazy evening, and if I am in a good mood, a fairly healthy dinner. Then a nice early night - even if I don't actually need one.

Tuesday 18th March 2014

08:04 GMT   The last weather forecast for yesterday turned out to be rather over optimistic. The earlier ones that suggested it would be a mainly overcast day turned out to be correct after all. There was some some sunshine, but not enough to raise the spirits or raise the temperature to more than 13° C. With a bit of a breeze it felt close to chilly, but at least it stayed dry. Today is forecast to be worse then yesterday. There is no sunshine and it feels rather chilly now, and that's the way it will stay today - although the temperature will rise a bit, it may not even hit 12° C ! The very worst thing is that there is a definite chance of a shower today - possibly just after midday. Tomorrow may see a brief blip in this run of poor weather. It might be sunnier, and it might reach 16° C - if we are lucky !  Going home in the dull was not that wonderful, and having my train cancelled was very annoying.....and yet I didn't feel that bad about it. In some ways I felt good in a smug sort of way. I realised the train had been cancelled early enough to catch a train to London Bridge. From there I can also catch the slightly slower train that comes out of Cannon Street station. It departs London Bridge just 5 minutes after the train that comes from Charing Cross (and Waterloo East where I normally catch it).  So you have to catch a train from Waterloo East before the time of the cancelled train to get to London Bridge in time. I caught the very convenient 16:18 train that currently goes to Robertsbridge until the landslips on the way to Hastings, it's normal destination, have been repaired. I had a brief wait at London Bridge, and then I was on my way home feeling quite smug on a suprisingly not packed train - evidently very few other people realised the best course of action to take upon hearing about the cancellation.  I wanted to eat as healthily as I could last night, and I almost did, but I had to use up the liver and bacon ready meal that had been sitting in my fridge (not freezer) since last Friday night. I am unsure just how much fat, sugar and other empty calories and stuff it had, but I knew it was quite flavoursome.  I had it with some more petit pois. For "pudding" I went a bit overboard with the fruit - far exceeding my "5 a day". I had two kiwi fruit, two tangerines, two plums, and two nectarines. That makes 8 pieces of fruit, and the petit pois makes it 9 (because the "5 a day" idea includes both fruit and vegetables).  It is possible that my recent eating strategy is making a measurable amount of positive difference. If I could just avoid some of the stuff I've eaten but not mentioned, it would be greater still. It could, and probably should be due to just natural variation, maybe the pull of the moon (!), but wild optimism is probably closer to the mark, and it makes me want to believe that my trousers are anything up to one thirty second of an inch looser than they were last week. By suspending all belief in reality entirely, I could even imagine that I feel slightly better this morning.  I thought I might feel bad because of what I believe to have been a bad sleep. I was in bed before it was dark last night, but only because that was the most comfortable place to read. However, I did turn out the light around 8pm, and it wasn't long before I was fast asleep. Just like the other night, I was wide awake again at roughly 11.30pm. The problem last night was that I stayed awake for nearly an hour before getting back to a very poor sleep. Maybe I'll be yawning soon, but so far I feel wide awake.....although the more I think about it.......  I can't have a drink on Thursday night partly because I am seeing my doctor on Friday, but mostly because I don't think there will be any drinking going on. Chain are playing in The Catford Ram on Friday, and Chris doesn't normally drink on a Thursday night if he is playing in Catford on a Friday night. So instead of a Thursday night drink I may go for a drink tonight if I can raise a drinking partner. The only problem with that is that I really would prefer it to be a quick drink, and no more than 2 pints. That does make the choice of drinking partner tricky, but we shall see what, if anything happens after it has happened.

Monday 17th March 2014

08:19 GMT   Yesterday was a very pleasant day. There was loads of sunshine, and I think the temperature hit 17° C. Some reports in this morning's paper had the temperature as high as 20° C in unnamed parts of London - evidently not Catford ! The weather is supposed to be on a long slide downhill now...although the forecast for today is now more optimistic than it was earlier. Today started off cold at just 6 or 7° C. It could have been a sunny start, but a large wodge of cloud to the east was shading the sun. The rest of the sky was actually clear, and it is now clear enough in the east for the sun to shine. There may be a few light grey intervals, but the sun should stay out most of the day, and the temperature should reach, and hopefully exceed 14° C - a degree higher than the earlier forecast. By the end of the week temperatures could be as low as 11° C, and the sky could be all murky and wet - that is unless the weather forecasters have another burst of optimism like they appear to have done for today.  I did little of note yesterday afternoon. Perhaps my finest achievement was managing to eat rather more healthily than many recent Sundays. My dinner was a rather nice grilled steak that carried very little fat. I had that with nothing else than petit pois (or little peas as they say in France). In an ideal world I would also have had a plate of chips with it, plus a tub of ice cream afterwards, but this is not an ideal world, and I stopped eating after I had consumed the last little pea. For supper I had a plate of fruit, and only spoiled it by nibbling at some stilton cheese to take away the flavour of the fruit (although the tangerines were unusually tasty). It is a shame that I had eaten a couple of tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches for (very late) breakfast. They rather spoiled what could have been a very succesful day. Tonight's liver and bacon ready meal, bought from Tesco on Friday, and getting very close to it's use by date (if not on it) will spoil a just about passable start to today. Shame really.  I had a bit of a strange night last night. I went to bed early to read, but turned the light out before 8.30pm in an attempt to get to sleep before 9pm. It didn't feel like it would happen, but it did. Three hours later I woke up convinced it was time to get up. I started at the clock unable to believe it was only just after midnight. After a quick wee I got back in bed convinced I would never get back to sleep again, but I did, and I'm now convinced it was incredibly quickly. I don't think I slept that deeply though, and I have a dreamlike memory of waking a few more times, even as late as 4.30am before my alarm woke me properly at 5am.  I thought I felt quite good this morning, and attributed this to me careful eating. If it was not so cold I might have felt even better. Even my legs seemed to feel better than they have done recently (which is still really crappy compared to 12 months ago), but it was all change after getting to Earlsfield. For unknown reasons I feel really weak and tired, and it was like wading through treacle as I walked from the station to work. I feel perfectly OK now I am sitting at my desk, and with a bit of luck I'll feel OK for the rest of the day, although I would feel a lot happier if I could lay down, have a snooze, and generally be a totally lazy bastard.  If you like con men, tricksters, bankers, and their bonuses, there is a man waiting for you on Waterloo station this morning.

Sunday 16th March 2014

13:54 GMT   I'm fairly certain that the temperature hit at least 16° C yesterday, and that puts it firmly in the tepid region ! It may have even hit 17° C, but no higher.  This morning started off bright and sunny, but it was a lot cooler than yesterday morning -  maybe as low as 6° C, but the sunshine is certainly working it's magic today, and it is already 16° C, and I am fairly sure it could manage a couple more degrees before the sun starts to sink towards the west. Tomorrow is likely to be cloudy, perhaps quite light cloud, and with little chance of any rain, but the temperature will suffer because of it. It may struggle to even reach 12° C....On the other hand, the forecast has just changed. Maybe there will be some sunshine in the afternoon, and maybe the temperature will hit 13° C.  I really must find new stuff to moan and grumble about. Although it is not yet light when I wake up, all my commuting is now done in daylight, and there it stays light for over an hour after I get home. It's almost civilised ! Of course the clocks change from GMT to BST at the end of the month, and I am sure that will give me ammunition to moand, groan, and grumble about until the days get longer still.  Yesterday was an unexpectedly longer day.  Instead of an early night I had an exceedingly late night.  I'm not sure what it was I ate, or even when I might have eaten it, but something had a violent disagreement with my digestive tract. I say violent, but that's not really true - it was persistent, but sort of passive. At no time was I in any great discomfort, and the first clue that something was wrong was when I started belching eggy flavoured burps - without having eaten anything eggy. Then at about 9pm I started having to make trips to the toilet every 10 - 15 minutes (occasionally more frequently). Rather unusually there was no great urgency to get to the toilet, although I dread to think of the outcome if I had tarried for too long. I kept this up until I was obviously very empty at about 1am !  It was strange how there was no particular pain associated with all the unpleasantness, and also strange that I didn't feel ravenously hungry this morning. Since getting up I've had a couple of sandwiches, and I am sort of wondering if they are travelling through me at an unusually fast rate. Maybe I'll find out later. The good thing is that no matter what else they are doing, there is no hint that they are travelling in the wrong direction. I got surprisingly little sleep last night. Ideally I would have slept through to at least 8am, and preferably later than 9am, but I don't think I slept much after 5am. By 8am I washing another double fitted sheet, and hanging it outside to dry. After that I lay on my bed reading. I had hoped to doze off, but I don't think that happened. I have a vague recollection of closing my eyes for a minute or two, but maybe it might have been a lot longer. Who knows....  I could have gone shopping in Aldi a lot earlier than I did, but I held back to allow the first mad rush after opening to die down. I should have waited even longer because I came up against another major delay. When I got there the place was full of those types who go to their "happy clappy" churches in all their Sunday finery. You would have thought that all that happy clappy stuff would gee them up, but no. They were too busy contemplating "his wonders" or something, and moved at the speed of glaciers wearing ill fitting shoes. It was incredibly frustrating !  Just like I was going to do some hoovering yesterday, but didn't, I had some stupid idea that I might go out for a country walk today. In some respects it was an ideal day for it. I was pretty certain that I was empty, and so toilets would not have been a problem, and it is gloriously sunny out, but there was a certain conflict of interest bewteen going out or just doing some shopping and some laundry. Obviously the laundry and the shopping won out, and now it is a bit late to start out walking anywhere.  I feel I shall be spending much of this afternoon, and maybe this evening, just reading and eating healthily - maybe. Today I was very ruthless about what I bought in Aldi. I bought lots of fruit, some vegetables, and no cheese. Also no crisps, biscuits, ice cream, cakes or yoghurt.  In theory I could lose an ounce or two this week if I am careful. That is a very big if, but I'll see what I can do. It would be handy if it did happen because I'm seeing my doctor next Friday. It's then that I'll learn if my insides are falling apart, or if I am just too overweight.