There is a reason why yesterday might be
described as better than expected, but that reason
is that it wasn't raining when I left work, and
didn't rain for the rest of the evening. Other
than that it was pretty much as expected. During
the morning the temperature dropped from 11° C to
a chillier 7 or 8° C. The rain started earlier
than expected, and for a time it was heavier than
I thought it might be. So it was a relief when it
also stopped earlier than expected, and I could
travel towards home, via the pub, in the dry.
During the night the cloud that had brought all
that rain, and then made for a rather dull and
gloomy journey back from work, dissipated, and
this morning the sky was perfectly clear. The
penalty for that was a light frost this morning,
but it also meant that the eastern sky was looking
very bright when I left home to come to work. The
sky is forecast to stay bright and clear until mid
afternoon, and maybe later. Meanwhile the sunshine
will slowly warm things up, but only to about 8° C
at best. Sometimes it feels that spring is on it's
way, but maybe not today, and tomorrow could even
be a retrograde step. It may be a similar
temperature, but the forecast is saying it will be
a dreadfully dull and gloomy day !
It was a great relief when the rain stopped
yesterday. The idea of turning up in The
Ravensbourne Arms all wet and soggy was not very
appealing - and walking through the park in the
rain would be more annoying than walking along the
road, although I don't know why I should feel that
way. It was a shame that it was still rather dull
as I walked across the park from Ladywell station.
It made the photos I took look rather insipid, and
that is a shame because they could have looked
quite good otherwise.
I've done my best to make this photo look a bit
brighter. It's looking south towards my house
from the end of Ladywell Fields. My house is the
one behind the other house behind the trees that
are behind more trees that are behind yet more
trees, and is probably under the curvature of
the Earth in the far distance !
It is a sign that spring really is on the way
despite what the weather suggests - a whole
bunch of crocuses - mostly white, but with a few
other colours here and there. Shame that the
camera can't quite capture how it looked to the
naked eye.
Catford and Lewisham, if not the whole of
London, is changing so fast these days as they
try and fit more and more people into it, that I
wonder how long this signpost will be accurate,
and how long it will take until it is built over
!
I had never been in
The Ravensbourne Arms before - at least not
while it was called the Ravensbourne Arms. In
it's previous life it was called The Coach And
Horses, and I did venture in there once or
twice. In those days, and we are probably
talking 30 or more years ago (!) it was a
rather Jack-The-Lad sort of pub, and I didn't
like it. As The Ravensbourne Arms it seemed to
be rather pleasant, and I was in pleasant
company last night. So pleasant that I stayed
for 4 pints of beer, and left feeling a little
tipsy !
I've already passed this picture on to some
of my musician friends. Hopefully someone I
know will play a gig in The Ravensbourne
Arms sooner or later. With it being little
more (or less) than a 15 minute walk away
from home I should be able to rouse myself
to get to it without too much trouble.
I certainly wasn't staggering drunk, but
drunk enough to lose any will power concerning
not buying a takeaway for my dinner on the way
home. It was a strangely pleasant walk back
home from the pub. I guess it took about 20
minutes, but maybe it was less. As soon as I
git home I feasted on the excessive amount of
fried chicken and chips I had bought while I
watched some TV. By 9pm I was in bed trying to
get comfortable with a bulging belly, and
trying to get to sleep. It seemed like I had a
lousy nights sleep, but I wonder if I dreamed
a few of the times I woke up in the early
hours of the morning.
One dream was an obvious dream. I
dreamed that I wanted to catch a bus to Forest
Hill. I have no idea why I wanted to go to
Forest Hill - I just did. In this dream all
the local buses were diverted down my road,
but there were no bus stops, and all the buses
travelled in the same direction no matter
which end of their route they were going to. I
was indoors with my friend Kevin when I saw a
bus coming, and I rushed outside, and managed
to flag it down, but then I saw it was going
to Mottingham - the wrong direction. Several
more buses passed by, but they were the wrong
route. I can't remember if I managed to get
the bus I wanted or not. The dream just sort
of faded away.
I expected to feel pretty lousy this
morning. I had eaten too much, and drunk a
reasonable amount of bee. Either could have
affected me in a bad way, but to my surprise I
probably felt better than yesterday morning.
My legs still feel rather stiff, and I didn't
care to rush about this morning, although they
felt like they were working quite well while
lubricated with beer last night. Most
everything else seems to be working fairly
well with no more than the usual mild aches,
creaks, and other symptoms of the age ravaged
body. I don't even seem to have a headache
this morning, although maybe my brain does
feel very slightly spongy this morning. Maybe
I should have had more beer to make sure I had
a proper hangover this morning, but for some
reason 4 pints felt exactly right last night.
I have no grand plans for tonight, and I
don't think I ever had any intentions of going
out tonight - or none that I remember - but I
probably ought to try and eat lightly if I can
tonight. Other than that, I will attempt to
get an early night so I can get up nice and
refreshed to do some minor housework in the
morning before going out to meet Aleemah for a
beer breakfast and a DVD to watch.
Thursday 26th February
2015
08:06 GMT
It wasn't in the forecast, but as I
suspected, there was some sunshine yesterday - not
much, but some is better than nothing. It was
another of those days when it was supposed to be
warmer (or strictly speaking, less cold) than it
actually felt. I can't recall what the temperature
was when I got home, but I think it was around 7°
C again. By the look of the puddles, and general
dampness of the roads and pavements, it must have
rained during the night, but I haven't seen any
rain - yet ! It is certainly very cloudy though,
and that cloud, plus some air blown in from the
west, means that this morning is unusually mild.
It was 11° C when I left to come to work. Sadly it
won't stay that high for more than the next 3 or 4
hours. By mid-afternoon it will be closer to 7° C,
and it will be raining - at least that is
what the forecast says ! If I am lucky it will
stop raining when I go home, and if I am luckier
still it will not be so cold, and if I am
incredibly lucky there might be some sunshine.
Tomorrow looks as if it will be cooler, wetter,
and duller. Hopefully that is wrong too !
I was going to do some exercise yesterday -
even if, as was mostly likely, it was just going
up and down the stairs here at work. For some
reason I just didn't get around to doing it. One
excuse is that I was not wearing particularly
comfy shoes, but that only meant there was less
chance of going out for a walk, and it should have
meant a better chance of going up and down the
stairs. I guess I was just feeling lazy, or
unmotivated, or something. I did give some thought
to walking through the park on my way home from
work, but once again I didn't fancy walking in
uncomfortable shoes. Those shoes were a long way
from agonising, and in the normal course of events
would not have been that uncomfortable.
Unfortunately I wore a very uncomfortable pair of
trainers on Tuesday. I should have worn socks with
them because I only walked around Catford once and
they ground away at the skin on a couple of toes
leaving them very, very sore !
When I got home last night I had a bee in my
bonnet about having another go at getting Linux
installed on an ancient laptop. So rather than
preparing dinner almost as soon as I arrived home,
I took out the 10GB hard disk with Windows 2000 on
it, and put a spare 20GB hard disk in the laptop.
To speed things up a bit I had prepared the
partions on the hard disk with it connected to my
desktop PC. The first Linux distribution I tried
refused to boot - at least I think it did, but it
could have just been very slow to do anything, and
I may have given up too early. I next tried Antix-M
Linux. It is a modern distribution that is
specially configured for older computers. I boot
from it, and it seemed to crash.
At that point I decided to get some dinner
ready. It was a fairly simple smoked mackerel
salad dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar,
and didn't take that long to prepare. When I took
it back into the living room I found that my
ancient laptop was displaying a full desktop
! It had booted OK, and I decided to go ahead and
actually install it to the hard disk (it was
initially running in live mode - running straight
from the CD - which on an older machine is
painfully slow ! As I ate my dinner it slowly
ground through the process of installing. Once it
had installed I gave it a quick spin. It didn't
want to recognise the PCMCIA WiFi card, which I
thought was supported by Linux, and so I couldn't
connect to the internet, but it was a start.
I then tried to boot an old version of
PCLinuxOS, and that seemed to crash halfway
through, but with a little bit of extra patience I
was finally rewarded with a nicer looking desktop.
So I scrubbed Antix from the hard disk, and
installed PCLinuxOS instead. That didn't recognise
my WiFi card either, and so I tried a different
one, and that one worked OK. I had full resolution
graphics, sound, and internet plus a reasonable
selection of software, but the one thing I
couldn't do when using an old distribution was to
update it, and add new software*. I think
that I have further experimentation to do to get
something more up to date on that old laptop.
Maybe it will mean going back to Antix, and doing
some modifications to the basic install.
* This isn't strictly true - there are ways of
doing these things, but it's a lot more
complicated than just ticking a box in the
software manager, and letting it do all the work.
Playing with that laptop took up quite a lot
of time last night, and some of the slow boring
bits were very boring indeed ! So boring that I
either wanted to smoke a dozen cigarettes, or to
eat some comfort food. To avoid being moaned at by
countless people I continued to not smoke, as I
have done for 18 months now, and settled for
comfort food. In this case it was far too many
biscuits. So my blood sugar level will be up again
(at a guess), and I definitely feel sort of
lumpier this morning.
I stayed up a little later than I probably
should have done last night. I was in bed soon
after 9pm, but instead of going straight to sleep
(or trying to) I read for a while, and didn't turn
out the light until 10pm. I was asleep very soon
after that, and I probably slept quite well. At
3am I had a strange dream - strange in that I am
unsure if there wasn't a touch of reality in it. I
thought I woke up around 3am, and maybe I did, but
the next thing didn't happen in reality. I didn't
feel sleepy so I lit up a cigarette. That felt
immensely good. The next thing I knew I was waking
up again, and this time it was for real...at least
I think it was for real this time. It was probably
around 4am. I checked the time, blew my nose, and
then I turned over and went back to sleep again. I
next woke up at 2 minutes to 5am, and that time I
knew it was definitely for real - unless I am
still dreaming now !
I don't feel that good this morning. There
is nothing specifically wrong, but I feel sort of
tired, and only working at 50% efficiency. Like
yesterday, only worse, I was mostly OK walking to
the station, and mostly OK rushing from Waterloo
East to Waterloo station, although that latter
walk did seem more taxing as of late. It was the
walk from the station to work that seemed like
hard work. It was OK yesterday at a moderate rate,
but I couldn't find the energy to go as fast as I
would have liked to walk. This morning it seemed
like hard work just to walk at a moderate rate. My
legs just felt very stiff and uncooperative.
It seems unlikely that I will be doing any
exercise while I am at work, although never say
never ! However I will sort of do a little extra
exercise after work. I will be partly walking home
through the park. The reason is a lot less to do
with keeping fit, and totally to do with boozing.
The Thursday night drinking takes place in The
Ravensbourne pub (previously known as The Coach
And Horses) this week. The pub is on the road from
Catford to Lewisham just after Lewisham hospital,
and the obvious way to get there is to get off my
train at Ladywell, and then walk across the park,
and then through St Mary's church. The pub is
almost, but not quite opposite the church. After
boozing there will be more exercise when I walk
home from there. It would be nice to walk back
through the park on a warm summers evening, but it
will probably be dark when I leave the pub, and
I'll stay on the main road to head back towards
Catford.
Here's a completely gratuitous picture of The
Wandle pub that I took while walking from the
station to work this morning.
It used to be called The Sailor Prince before it
was modernised (and maybe not for the better).
Wednesday 25th
February 2015
08:07 GMT
If it wasn't for all the black clouds,
yesterday might have been a nice day. It was quite
strange when I think about it. The morning was
rather cool at just 4° C, and the clouds then were
quite light in colour. Later on, as it started to
warm up, and with a mid afternoon peak of 11° C it
was actually getting close to a poor imitation of
warm, the clouds became darker and darker, and
there was more and more sunshine pouring through
the gaps in those clouds. Sometimes, looking in
certain directions, it did look rather nice, but
in other directions it looked like it would pour
with rain at any moment. I think we got through
the day without any rain, but we didn't escape it
this morning. The temperature dropped to around 5°
C, and from sometime before I woke up it has been
raining. If the forecast has some connection to
reality it should stop raining in another hour or
two, and then stay dry until sometime after dark -
perhaps sometime around 10pm. The middle of the
day will still be rather cloudy, and no sunshine
is forecast, although I have a suspicion there
will be some. The best bit is that it should be
around 11° C when I go home from work today. The
latest forecasts for tomorrow suggest a cooler,
and even wetter day, but there is hope it might
not be quite as bad as that.
My timing was rather good yesterday morning. The
official start time for the "vampires in the
attic" (I must try and get some sort of picture of
that place someday), the clinicians who take blood
samples on the top floor of the group practice
building, is 8.30am, but they usually start a bit
earlier than that. I got there at 8.20am. There
were just 4 people in front of me, and by 8.34am I
had given the samples as listed in the out of
focus hastily photographed test sheet on the left,
and I had left the building.
In one small respect it was annoying that it
had been so quick. I was hoping to pay a very
small check into my bank on the way home, but by
the time I had walked down the high street it was
still only 8.45am, and I didn't fancy waiting
outside in the cold for a quarter of an hour (plus
there were already about 5 people queuing
outside). So I carried on walking to Tesco.
I bought more than I intended in Tesco, and
some of it was not that good for me, but having
given my blood samples it felt like a big spring
in me had unwound, or it felt like I had been let
out of jail, or that school had broken up for the
summer.....or whatever. In other words I felt very
relieved, and went on a bit of a spree !
Actually, most of what I bought was "low"
most things. Stuff like salad, herbs, and
cucumber. Even the lemon squash was "no added
sugar", but the sandwiches I bought did not come
in the same category. When I got my shopping home
I had one pack of sandwiches, and then I had
another, and then I had yet one more ! I did save
the last pack to bring to work for breakfast this
morning. Three packs of sandwiches was rather
filling, but I didn't feel particularly stuffed. I
let those sandwiches go down for little more than
half an hour, and I started some laundry. Apart
from a few duvet covers, which I would really
prefer to do on a warm sunny day so I can dry them
outside, my laundry is 100% done - until I get
home and take my work clothes off !
It seemed nice and bright and sunny after I
had done that laundry, but every time I looked out
the front windows I could only see black clouds.
Sometimes I wondered how the sun managed to find
gaps in those clouds to shine through. The
sunshine made me want to go out, and the black
clouds warned me to stay in ! It was a tricky
situation, and the only solution was to stay in
and do other stuff. Some of that other stuff was
reading, and I did quite a lot of that. I also had
a snooze (or was it two ?), but I also started
some clearing up in the back room.
That back room used to be my dining room
until it became too cluttered with mainly computer
and technology stuff, but also a good smattering
of other "junk" too. Maybe it will become a dining
room again in the future, but first of all I have
to clear out thirty years of crap from it ! Well
maybe not thirty years worth, but twenty might
start to approach the truth. It is going to take
some time to do it. I filled two dustbin liners of
assorted crap, and I have hardly touched the
surface - although I have uncovered a load of
backup CDs and DVDs from my earlier computers, and
I have uncovered a load of paperwork that needs
sorting.
When I had used up all the spare space in
the wheelie bin with rubbish I had to stop my
tidying up, but I was able to do a different sort
of tidying up - one that is even more long winded.
I made a start of going through the old back up
disks, and I've found missing pictures from 2002
and 2003, plus some missing videos and documents.
I think it was, and will be well worth going
through those disks, and transferring the wanted
files to hard disk. The trouble is that there are
so many duplicated files that it is a long winded
process whittling them down to just the wanted
stuff. My current collection of files - music,
video, documents, etc - is so large that I have no
option back to back them up on a secondary hard
disk, and in the case of my own photos, on a third
hard disk as well.
I don't know how long I snoozed for
yesterday, nor how many times I did it, but what I
do know is that it was almost 11pm before I
managed to get to sleep last night. On a normal
night that would be a disaster, but this morning I
don't feel particularly deprived of sleep. I
actually feel quite good this morning - or I did.
I ate far more than my sandwich overdose
yesterday, and I expected to feel all nasty and
bloated and sluggish this morning, but it seems
not. I didn't seem to have any bothersome aches or
pains this morning, and for a while I felt quite
lively. Maybe there was stuff in something I ate
yesterday that my body needed.
My walk to the station seemed unusually easy
this morning, and the same could be said for the
mad dash from Waterloo East to Waterloo mainline
stations. Unfortunately I seemed to run out of
steam when I walked from Earlsfield station to
work. That latter walk wasn't hard to do. On the
contrary, it was easy enough at a moderate rate,
but I just couldn't seem to find the energy to
walk as fast as I would have liked to. I hope I
can find the energy and enthusiasm to do some more
of my "up and down the stairs twice" exercises
that I did on Monday. Maybe I might even get out
for a lunchtime walk, but that rather depends on
the weather, and it isn't looking good at the
moment.
Tuesday 24th February
2015
07:00 GMT
Yesterday was good and bad. There was some
nice bright sunshine, and there were a few
showers, but the worst thing was the wind that
made it feel a lot colder than it was. There were
some sunny spells as I made my way home from work,
and it was about 7° C, but it felt much colder.
Today is probably going to be similar to
yesterday. It's about 4° C now, and it looks as if
it is going to be sunny for a while, but later on
there could be a shower or two. A very optimistic
forecast on TV last night said that the
temperature could rise to 11° C, but the BBC's
website is more pessimistic, and suggests no more
than 8° C.
It felt almost like a joke when I mentioned
that I ought to start going up and down the stairs
at work as a sort of exercise, but in some sort of
delerium I actually did it. I think it was four
times that I went down and up the stairs twice.
That would be the equivalent to going down, and
back up again for 8 smoke breaks a day. That is
what I used to do over 18 months ago, and it
seemed to keep me fit and healthy - sometimes !
Going out for a walk in the warm sunshine
would be preferable to going up and down stairs,
but until we get some brighter, and warmer days,
maybe the stairs might be a good option. I wonder
how long it will be until I feel comfortable going
up and down (or down and up - I work upstairs)
three times non stop ? Two times seems enough for
now.
I had an interesting journey home from work
! My usual train from Waterloo East was cancelled
because "a member of the train staff was
unavailable" - in other words they had lost the
driver somewhere - the driver being the only
member of staff on a SouthEastern suburban train.
The next train comes 19 minutes later, and so I
had a bit of time to kill on my way home. So it
was a bit silly that I ended up getting the 15:47
train from Earlsfield. I usually just miss that
one, and mostly commonly I get the 15:50.
To kill a bit of time I got off the train at
Clapham Junction, and wandered over to platform 7
where some long distance trains stop on their way
to Waterloo. I had hoped a nice noisy class 157
diesel electric train might arrive, but after a
wait of maybe 5 minutes, the first train to arrive
was a slightly boring class 450 train. I jumped on
that, and it went non stop to Waterloo. I arrived
there only about a minute later than I arrive most
days. So I still had a very long wait for the
16:39 train to Catford Bridge. Before the
rebuilding work at London Bridge altered
everything I would have got the first train to
London Bridge, and caught a train to Catford
Bridge that had started at Cannon St station. That
is no longer an option until August 2018 or
something.
There was another option, and by sheer luck
it worked out rather well. The train before mine
goes out deep into the heart of Kent, but it does
stop at Lewisham where the trains from Cannon St
also stop. There is also quite a large choice of
buses from Lewisham that go to Catford. So I
jumped on that train. I was slightly dismayed to
see that I would just miss the train from Cannon
St to Catford Bridge, but somehow the train I was
on managed to get in front of it. Once we got to
Lewisham I had a mad dash through the subway to
get to the right platform for the Catford train.
I made that dash with a whole minute to
spare somehow, and had enough time to make my way
up the platform towards the front of the train -
which was a complete mistake ! It seemed quite
sunny around this time, and as the train
approached Ladywell I had the sudden mad urge to
walk through the park. So I got off the train, and
walked all the way to the back of it to where the
exit from the station is. It felt quite chilly in
the park - mostly on account of the wind. So I
didn't really enjoy myself, but at least it was a
bit more exercise.
All that exercise dropped my blood glucose
level a little bit compared to how it was on
Saturday morning, but it was still annoyingly
high. It is going to take a lot of work to reduce
it back to more normal levels. What I ate last
night would have been partly good for it, and
partly bad. My first course was nothing but salad
with oil and vinegar with a bunch of anchovy
stuffed olives for extra flavouring. That should
have been mostly harmless. Part two was 5 pieces
of fruit. That should have been good for
everything except my blood sugar level. It
included two very sweet plums !
I've taken a days holiday from work so I can
go and give some blood samples this morning. These
samples need to be taken after 11 to 16 hours of
fasting. So last night I had to avoid any snacks,
but I probably would have done anyway. The last
food I had was about 6.30pm, and from 9pm I have
drunk nothing but plain water. That ought to
satisfy them !
Once I have given those blood samples, and I
am hoping that will be soon after 8.30am, I am
free to do whatever I want for the rest of the
day. I think the first thing will be to have a
light breakfast, and after that I might go out if
it has warmed up a bit, and is sunny, or I might
stay in and do some housework, or...........I
don't really know.
I seem to show more pictures of the River Wandle
than of my local river.
Here's the River Ravensbourne running through
Ladywell Fields yesterday.
Monday 23rd February
2015
07:58 GMT
I don't know if the temperature did hit the
10° C that was forecast for midnight, but it
certainly carried on raining through at least the
start of the night - some of the big puddles are
evidence of that. This morning it was 5° C, and it
may rise to 6° C a few times until early afternoon
when it will gradually sink down to 4° C (or maybe
lower). Unfortunately it was not until I
approached Earlsfield station that the few clouds
that were in the sky shifted out of the way of the
sun. Now I am at work I can only see blue sky from
my office window, and it does look wonderfully
bright outside, whereas it was disappointingly
dull for most of the way here. The most recent
forecast says that this sunshine will soon be
over, and that in an hour or two we will have some
showers until mid afternoon, and from then until
the end of the day it was be rather dull and grey.
It's looking like tomorrow is going to be a
slightly nicer day - maybe 8° C, and more sunny
spells.
I sort of felt OK last night...well OK
except for one thing. At about 7pm I felt really
hungry. It probably wasn't hunger as such, and may
have been just a sort of acid feeling from the
fruit I had eaten. There were two possible
solutions, and one was not really available to me.
So I had a snack. It wasn't a big one, but it did
spoil a day of eating more carefully than I have
achieved for some time - and all for want of a
cigarette !
I couldn't feel that extra food inside of me
when I got into bed, but something seemed to stop
me getting comfortable, and going to sleep. I
thought that after seeming not to get as much
sleep as I thought I needed on Saturday night, I
would fall asleep quite fast last night, but
apparently not. I guess I was asleep by, or quite
soon after 10pm, and until the last hours before I
was due to get up I slept well. My sleep was quite
intermittent for the last couple of hours.
At some point during the night I had a dream
about a blob. It was not a sci-fi horror sort of
blob, but some sort of useful sticky ball. As far
as I can recall it was useful to prop up a ladder,
but there seemed to be some difficulty in how it
was coated. It seemed it couldn't be painted, and
I concluded it had to be wrapped up in something
remarkably like pastry if my recollection is
anywhere near correct. Of course that hardly
describes anything of that dream, and to be
truthful I hardly seem to remember anything from
it, but I do remember quite vividly waking up and
thinking I should really try and remember that
interesting dream. Between then an now it seems
most of that memory has evaporated !
I woke up feeling not to bad this morning. I
think I was hoping to feel better, but I have no
real idea what sort of better I was hoping to
feel, or maybe I do. Perhaps I was hoping to feel
thinner in some way. Perhaps I was hoping I would
feel brave enough to wear the old jeans that I
managed to squeeze into yesterday afternoon, but I
don't think I am quite ready for that just yet.
There was one thing that did hint that I had
managed to eat less this weekend, and that was how
little seemed to pass through me this morning.
In theory I could possibly go out for a walk
this lunchtime. It would do me good, but there are
several reasons why I probably won't go out. The
first two are really just different aspects of the
weather - it won't be warm enough, and it will
probably be quite overcast by lunchtime. Another
reason is that I don't seem to feel like walking
fast today. That could be because of the shoes I
am wearing, or maybe it is just something else.
One idea crossed my mind while I was on the toilet
this morning (always the best place for the best
ideas), and that was that I ought to rush up and
down the stairs here at work once an hour - just
like I did when I was a healthy smoker. It would
probably be quite good exercise, and if I felt
really masochistic I could try and go up and down
twice every time...and maybe build up to three or
four or more times until I manage to kill myself
(like athletes tend to do).
This morning the usual spot on the concourse of
Waterloo station was taken over by the SyFy
channel.
This appallingly spelled TV channel (which isn't
available on Freeview so I can't see it) seems
to be promoting a series called #12 Monkeys -
what ever that is - it'll never replace Blake's
7, that's for sure !
Sunday 22nd February
2015
16:57 GMT
After the sun went down the temperature
slowly got lower and lower last night, and this
morning started with a frost. It was also a
gloriously sunny morning, and that sun seemed to
quickly raise the temperature from freezing to 10°
C, although by that time the sun was mostly hidden
by clouds. By 2pm, or thereabouts, it had started
to rain, and the temperature started falling
again. It is currently just 6° C, but a curious
thing is forecast to happen. By midnight it will
be back up to 10° C, and the rain will stop. Then
the temperature will drop back towards 6° C
by the morning. If the rest of the forecast can be
believed, the temperature will continue to fall
very, very slowly until tomorrow ends at just 3°
C. During the day there will be a mixture of sun
and showers....or some completely different thing
will happen !
Last night was one of those curious nights
where I didn't feel like expending much energy,
but didn't feel tired. In fact it seemed to take
no effort to stay awake until after midnight, and
it was getting close to 1am when I put my book
down and fell asleep this morning. If I had slept
longer I might have described it as a good sleep,
but I was awake far too early, and with no more
than 5 hours sleep behind me, I got up and started
pottering around.
By 9am I was ready for action, and I washed
quite a heap of stuff. Once that lot was hanging
up to dry I had a little time to waste before
going to Aldi to get some shopping. Before I had
thought up a way of wasting that time I had a
phone call from a friend, and he started gabbling
away about exciting things like mobile phone
coverage, masts, and other stuff that fascinates
him for almost an hour. So instead of queuing up
outside waiting for Aldi to open, I arrived there
at about the most busy time possible - which was a
bit frustrating.
It was probably frustrating being very, very
careful about what I was buying, but I succeeded
in my aims. Everything I bought was fairly healthy
stuff like fruit and vegetables....well nearly
everything. The three sandwiches I bought were not
exactly perfect, but they did sort of come close
to my ideals for one special reason. Instead of
taking two sandwiches in to work for breakfast
tomorrow, and the same the day after, I only
bought enough to take one in tomorrow, and one in
the day after....and I had one for a snack when I
came back from the supermarket.
When I got back from Aldi I was feeling sort
of OK. That's OK in terms of not feeling
excessively knackered, and not aching, but more
significantly I was feeling like my trousers were
unusually loose - and evidently they were. I tried
on a pair of trousers that I have not been able to
wear since last summer - or possibly earlier - but
definitely before I bloated out as soon as the
first hint of winter hit. Those trousers were a
little tight, but they were wearable. If I can eat
the way I intend to try to eat for the next week
or two, and maybe take a few lunchtime walks, I
reckon I'll be able to wear those smelly old
trousers easily, and maybe some others too. Of
course it really depends on the weather being
favourable to me, and sadly the next few days
could be a bit of a challenge to do anything but
pay lip service to my aims.
This afternoon I've gone into relaxed mode
again. I've spent sometime on my bed reading, and
I fell asleep for at least 5 minutes, and it could
have been much longer - maybe as long as an hour,
but definitely no more....I think ! By 4.30pm I
could wait no longer for my dinner. I had an
experiment to try, and it was as much curiosity
that drove me on as it was hunger. The main course
of my dinner was salmon with poached eggs and
salad. It wasn't quite as good as I hoped, and I
don't think I'll repeat the experiment, but it
wasn't bad. In theory it should have been sort of
healthy, but I have no idea how good or bad it
really was. After that I had a "classic fruit
salad", or that's what the label said. It had a
few orange segments, some melon, and some nasty
bitter strawberries. I won't be repeating that
experiment either !
I think my only aim for tonight is to get to
sleep fairly early so I can be up and ready to
start another week at work on time. It will only
be a four day week because I have to take a day
off to give some blood samples, and that will
probably be on Tuesday. I don't know how, but I
have not had to take any days off sick this month
(and I'll take Tuesday off as holiday). So I can
look forward to a nice big pay packet for a
change, and it's only a week away now ! With luck
I will be able to transfer a useful amount of
money into my saving account this month, although
with interest rates now close to zero, it wouldn't
really make any difference if I hid it under the
mattress. Unfortunately I can't do that with my
other savings - it would make the mattress far too
lumpy. I had a count up of my loose change
collection today, and it is worth a fair bit of
money. It is easily enough to get blind drunk on -
twice ! One of these days I must visit the machine
in Tesco that you pour loose coins into, and it
prints out a voucher to exchange for bank notes at
the tills - at least I think that's how it works.
Saturday 21st February
2015
19:15 GMT
The sun managed to come out a couple of
times yesterday, but only briefly. Although it
couldn't be said to be gloomy, it was overcast for
the majority of the time. It would have improved
things if it was a little warmer, but the
temperature turned out to be quite close to the 6°
C that was forecast, and just as forecast, it was
pretty much constantly that temperature all day
until some time after the sun set. The forecast
warned about a possible frost this morning, but it
was around 4° C at sunrise. The temperature slowly
rose, perhaps helped along by many long sunny
periods that started mid morning, and I saw 8° C
on my thermometer for a while. It's dropped again
now to 5° C, and will probably continue to fall
low enough for a frost tomorrow. Tomorrow may
start bright, and possibly sunny, but it is
forecast to be raining by sunset.
I could have gone to a gig last night, but I
couldn't face the idea of being in a pub without
drinking, or at least drinking a lot. It didn't
help that I didn't really fancy going out anyway,
and I ended up going to bed at about the time I
should have been going to get the bus. I wasn't
feeling that tired, but I was suffering from end
of week fatigue. It was definitely joyous to
finish work for the week, and to make my way home.
I did have an intention to try my very best
to eat as little as possible last night. I had in
mind the idea of having just a pile of salad
dressed with oil and vinegar followed by a couple
of bits of fruit. Unfortunately, for some reason,
I felt rather chilly when I got home, and I
couldn't face such a cold bland dinner. The best
compromise was to have some warmed up smoked
mackerel with (tinned) peas and tomatoes. For a
while that seemed like it might be enough, but
then I got the munchies - badly ! I started
nibbling on some cheese, and ended up eating far
too much of it.
I suspect the tinned processed peas may have
had a fair amount of sugar in them - even though I
drained the can well before serving them. Nothing
else would have had any significant amounts of
sugar in it (as far as I am aware), and that was a
pity because this morning my blood sugar level was
really quite high. I could have lived with that if
I had drunk 4 or 5 pints of Guinness last night,
but I didn't - and that is worrying.
I slept quite innocently, and as far as I
recall, quite well last night, and I had a nice
lie in. At 7am I decided to get up, and start
preparing for two events. The first of which was
to go to see the nurse at my GPs surgery. The
second was to tidy the place up in preparation for
a visit from Aleemah. My appointment at the
surgery was for 9.15am. I was there almost 10
minutes early, and I was seen 5 or 10 minutes
late. The nurse I saw was not the nice, but stern
one who specialises in diabetic check ups, but one
of the nurses who seemed incapable of dressing the
would on my leg where the surgeons removed the
vein for my heart bypass operation 18 months ago.
A few inches of that thigh to foot wound/incision
refused to heal properly for a long time, and it
was only my intervention into it's care that got
it to heal. The nurse just didn't know what to do.
It was quite a shock to see who my nurse
was, and it was quite a shock to realise that she
didn't seem to know what to do. She didn't check
my blood sugar level - which was good because it
was so high - and wasn't really interested in it
when I volunteered that I was shocked at how high
it was. She did take my blood pressure, and she
was surprised at how high it was - I wasn't
because I was feeling quite wound up, and did
nothing to relax myself. However I did persuade
her to record a measurement I had taken here at
home almost an hour earlier, and I had taken a
photo of the meter to prove it.
One thing I expected did happen. I have to
give some blood samples soon. I may have been
expecting it but it is still bloody annoying
because I will have to take a day off work because
the vampires in the attic only work on weekdays.
Once the results are in from those blood tests the
shit will really hit the fan. Unless my blood
glucose level this morning was a glitch, I am
getting perilously close to having to inject
insulin - which in itself is no problem, but all
the rigmarole that goes with it, multiple hospital
and or doctor visits, will be a major pain in the
arse.
There was some good news about this morning.
Despite what my memory may believe, and also
Aleemah remembering me describing it happening,
the doctors computer system said I have never had
a pneumonia vaccination, and so today I had a
second vaccination. That is slightly dubious good
news, but the real good news is that to my
astonishment the nurse managed a completely
painless job in the arm (assuming that the needle
actually went in - I was looking away at the
time). So that nurse is good for something after
all ! One other bit of good news is that it seems
I am 2kg lighter than I was the last time I was
weighed there - and unlike last time (if my memory
is correct) I kept my shoes on, and I had a big
handful of loose change in my back pocket. That
was most surprising !
I imagine that my blood pressure dropped
considerably when I left the surgery to go home. I
certainly felt very different compared to when I
went in. I had that lightness of step that you get
when you know you have walked through the valley
of evil (or something), and come out the other
side unscathed (until next time - which will be in
about a fortnight). So I strode home, and when I
got there I waited for Aleemah to call me to say
when she would be arriving at the station. From
then on it was the usual - station - pub - 99p
shop - and then home to watch a DVD (although the
usual would probably be Aldi rather than the 99p
shop).
Once Aleemah had gone home again I cooked
some lunch, and put my feet up. I didn't put any
effort into making lunch low in anything, and
indeed it did have a few things that I really need
to avoid except on special occasions - and today
was a sort of special occasion - the last meal of
a condemned man - sort of. Weekends are a bit
tricky, but if the weather can be a bit kind to me
I want to try and see if I can knock off another
kilogram or two when I see the nurse again in a
fortnight. She is a miserable old cow, who seems
totally disinterested in how I became this way, or
how I can do anything about it, but it would make
me feel even more morally superior if I could
demonstrate I can change things without her help,
and losing belly fat will improve my sensitivity
to my own home grown insulin - I wonder if she
knows that ? She surely must do, but........
Tonight, in fact right now as I write this,
I should be at a gig. It's one that is easy to get
to, and it wouldn't matter if I had many pints of
Guinness tonight, but I can't be bothered to get
off my arse and go out. Sometimes I find it a bit
annoying that I can't be bothered to go out, and
also that I now tend not to be bothered about it.
For too many months now it has been easy, and
enjoyable to stay in by myself, but why stop
something that is enjoyable ?
Friday 20th February
2015
08:32 GMT
They said it would rain yesterday, and it
did ! I think I remember a brief flash of
sunlight, but grey clouds filled the sky most of
the time, and it rained, and it rained as I walked
to the station to go home !!!!! The only positive
than can be said was that it was not freezing cold
- it was merely very cool, or about 7° C. It was
supposed to rain today, but the forecasters
decided that the rainy part of the clouds would
pass to the south of us. Occasionally it looks
like even more of that cloud will miss us. The
cloud is very broken at the moment, and the sun
almost came out just now. It looks like most of
the cloud will be white cloud rather than grey
cloud today, which is less unpleasant than it
could be, but sadly it is going to be a slightly
cooler day. The chart I saw at 5am this morning
said the temperature would remain very constant at
around 6° C from dawn to dusk, and maybe a bit
longer than that. The temperature will drop
overnight, and it's looking as if tomorrow may
start with a frost.
It rained during my lunch break yesterday,
and so I wasn't tempted to go outside, let alone
go for a walk. I wasn't wearing very comfortable
shoes for walking, and I possibly wouldn't have
gone for a walk even if the sun was blazing down,
and it was 20° C or more outside. It was still
raining when I left work, and that should have
been very bothersome, but for some unknown reason
I wasn't that bothered about it. Maybe it was
because I had plans and ambitions, or something.
The grand plan was to get some shopping in
Tesco before going around the corner to The
Catford Constitutional Club for a drink with the
Thursday gang. I was very careful in Tesco to only
buy relatively healthy-ish foods. The two packs of
sandwiches I bought for this mornings breakfast
may have been an exception to that general idea,
but they don't really count in the grand scheme of
things. (Well they do, but let's not talk about
them again !). The general bulk of what I bought
was a couple of bowls of ready-mix salads, and
several different types of fruit. It was enough to
fill two carrier bags, but neither bag was very
heavy.
I was going to say I lugged that lot to the
pub, but lugged implies that they were heavier
than they were. So I carried those bags to the
pub, and selected something to drink. Normally I
would have ale, but yesterday I settled on a pint
of cider. I chose it because it had the same name
as a Pink Floyd
song - Cirrus Minor. It was a shame that the
Pink Floyd song is infinitely better than that
cider ! Even Chris, who is a regular cider
drinker, said it was a bit rough, and he couldn't
even finish his pint. It actually worked out quite
well for me because it made for an easy decision
not to drink any more booze.
I possibly made that cider last an hour
before I made my excuses, and said my goodbyes. I
had to endure another walk in the rain to get
home, and I was feeling quite chilly when I got
there. That could have been an excellent excuse to
cook up something huge, dreadful, and very tasty,
but I somehow stuck to my master plan, and had a
rather simple, and almost small dinner. Part one
of dinner was a pair of salmon and cucumber
sandwiches. In theory they should have been mostly
innocent, and even if they were not as innocent as
I hoped, the fish should still have been good for
me. I followed those sandwiches by some fruit - 3
small and very tart kiwi fruit, and 2 apples. Just
to ruin all my intentions, I also had two small
"individual" cheese and pickle quiches that I had
found on the reduced price shelf for something
like 50p each. I don't know why I bought them, or
ate them, because they were not terribly nice.
Like the night before, I quickly went up to
my bedroom after eating to avoid further
temptation, and where I had a massive desire for a
cigarette - which I didn't have, and nor did I
have my favourite cigarette substitute of an
evening - a very large whisky. What I did was to
watch a bit of TV on my PC before going to bed
extra early. I was fast asleep well before 9pm
again, but I didn't sleep as well as the night
before (if indeed I actually slept well that
night). One thing I noticed last night was that
every time I woke up before midnight (or perhaps a
little after) there was a new message on my mobile
phone. The phone bleeps when that happens, but I
never consciously hear it. All I see is a tiny
little white light flashing in the phone when I
wake up, but I am thinking that it is the bleep
that wakes me up.
I suppose it was inevitable after getting in
so much sleeping time recently that I woke up well
before my alarm was due to wake me, and it wasn't
worth going back to sleep for just 15 minutes. So
I was up earlier than needed this morning. I felt
fairly good, but, as ever, not as refreshed as I
sometime dream I should be. (I don't think I've
woken up feeling really refreshed since I was in
my twenties, or thereabouts). That "fairly good"
seemed to crumble as I approached work. The mad
dash from Waterloo East to Waterloo stations
seemed a little harder than recently, and during
the walk from the station to work I couldn't help
but think that I was so glad it was Friday because
I was starting to feel completely burnt out.
It would be nice to completely unwind
tonight. To somehow find the energy to go out to a
gig, and have gallons of booze, but even though
there is a microscopically small possibility that
I might go out tonight, I definitely won't be
necking back pint after pint of Guinness - not
with my appointment with the nurse looming
tomorrow morning. (Unfortunately Mike, the nurse
I'll be seeing does not look like either of the
two in the picture you sent me. P.S. I think I
have seen the full sequence of pictures that your
one is part of !!!). I think I've taken care of
myself enough to just scrape through a blood sugar
test without mucking about with changing
prescriptions, or having to start giving blood and
wee samples again. I wouldn't mind that so much if
I had spare time on my hands, but when work, plus
commuting takes up nearly my whole day, I have
little time to spare (and taking time off work
either deprives me of money or of holiday time).
I wonder if I should take up a new hobby like
manhole spotting ? This magnificent specimen,
that would be a good start to any collection, is
at the end of the road leading to the business
estate where I am working.
This morning the concourse at Waterloo station
was occupied by Gillette.
They have invented an even
more outlandish way of doing something simple
like shaving.For just a couple of months worth
of wages, they will sell you something that
looks awful, and will slice through your beard
almost as well as the old and original safety
razor when backed with a decent shaving foam.
Only a blowlamp can give a closer shave !
Thursday 19th February
2015
08:12 GMT
The weather forecast for yesterday was
typically wrong ! It said that the afternoon would
be grey and overcast. The reality was that the
whole day was just as sunny as the previous day.
On TV last night they said that somewhere in the
London Region the temperature went up to 11° C. I
have no idea where that was. I reckon that
yesterday was cooler than the day before, not
hotter. My thermometers said it was a mere 7° C
when I got home from work. It probably got a
little cloudy during the night - enough to keep
the temperature just above the level where a frost
could form, but they seem to have gone away again
this morning. One nice thing about the lack of
cloud last night is that it extended the hours of
daylight. I have to admit it was only fading
twilight, but it was almost light at 6pm ! Today
has started off at 4° C with clear blue skies, but
the forecast says it will be raining by about 3pm.
That will also be when the temperature peaks at a
forecast 8° C. Apparently on Saturday will be a
slightly good day in the foreseeable future, and
even Saturday is not looking very attractive !
I didn't think the weather would be good enough
for it, and even if it was, I didn't think I
wanted to go out for another walk yesterday
lunchtime, but I seemed to have forced myself to
do it. Yesterday was an even longer walk than the
day before, but not by much. Only by breaking a
habit of a lifetime, and bringing on my next heart
attack even quicker, and more importantly by doing
the impossible and running, could I have fitted
more miles into a short lunchbreak. On rare
occasions I will run 30ft to catch a bus, but
there is now way I am going to become a jogger
running round and round, and round, and round the
park with a bottle of warm insipid water in one
hand, and a walkman in the other. No, a pleasant
walk clutching a camera is what I am best at - or
used to be, and maybe will be again.
Like the day before, I did this walk without
a coat on, and this time in a short sleeve shirt.
It definitely didn't feel as mild as it did the
day before, and if I had slowed down or stopped I
am sure I would have felt damn chilly ! Despite
that, it was good to feel some sun on my arms and
face. Once or twice that sun did feel slightly
warm. Maybe the time will come when I can do walks
like this, and when not at work, longer walks
wearing shorts for even more sun exposure. That
assumes I will be able to get into any of my pairs
of shorts. I reckon the most generous pair would
be rather unpleasantly tight right now, but I
guess I have got a couple of months to do
something about that, and the weather changes in
my favour.
I think I've wrecked a cheap pair of
trainers by adding the load of this extra walking
on top of the wear and tear of my normal
commuting. My feet were definitely a bit sore on
my way home from work yesterday, and I didn't
fancy walking through the park like I did the
night before - even though it was still sunny in
direct contradiction to what the weather forecast
predicted. When I got home and examined those
trainers I found that the right hand heel padding
was starting to break up, and that would account
for a lot of the discomfort I was feeling. They
would probably be OK for short trips such as local
shopping, or a session in a local pub, but I
decided I would just throw them away.
I felt really starving hungry yesterday
afternoon, and I was ready to eat a whole horse a
little while before I started out for home. On the
way home I started to feel less hungry, but I
still felt like I wanted a huge filling dinner
when I got in. Somehow I managed to resist that,
and I actually had a far more moderate dinner
compared to most evenings. The only way I could do
it was to turn off the TV as soon as I had
finished my second course of fruit and a bit of
cheese, and go up to my bedroom where food
temptation is less.
I watched the end of the news on my PC, and
that was just to see the weather forecast, and
then I washed my hair. I let my hair almost get
dry while watching one half hour programme on TV
(an old episode of M*A*S*H), and then at 7.30pm I
turned off my PC and went to bed. I thought I
might read for a bit, but in the end I turned off
the light, and I think I was fast asleep before
8pm. I didn't seem to sleep as well as I think I
slept the night before, but it wasn't that bad. I
only have a vague recollection of waking up a few
times, and if my alarm had not woken me at 5am I
might have slept on for anywhere between a few
minutes and a few hours.
So do I feel wonderful this morning ? Well,
not really ! I guess I don't feel particularly
sleepy, but I still feel the effects of my excess
walking. I guess I am very slowly getting back
into practice because the aches this morning are
mostly definitely different to the ones I had
yesterday morning. This morning there is less
stiffness in my thigh muscles, but my knees feel
slightly stiffer. My main complaint is probably my
feet. I've learnt the lesson so many times that
trainers are not good for walking in, that I don't
know why I still keep doing it. Of course the
problem is that I don't like to wear my hulking
great walking boots to work. Other bits of me feel
tolerably OK, although I did have to get the later
train because I thought my guts felt a bit
unstable (they were actually more stable than I
thought they were !).
It was nice getting the later train because
my whole journey to work was done in daylight
(even if that daylight wasn't full strength
daylight for the first 10 minutes). I go home in
daylight, and now I come to work in daylight (even
if it was because I was half an hour late). The
next big milestone will be when I can wake up to
daylight. I guess that won't really be long now -
every morning dawns a little bit earlier, and
although it doesn't seem to change much on a day
by day basis, it soon adds up. That's my positive
thing done for today ! - No it's not. It's a very
positive thing to look forward to a beer after
work tonight, although it's also a very negative
thing to realise that I have to try to drink as
little as possible if I am to achieve my aims of a
just passable blood sugar level when I see the
nurse on Saturday. I am having some very negative
thoughts about that still ! Quite why I should be
so terrified about a severe ticking off by a nurse
is something I can't explain, but there are nurses
and then there are nurses !
Wednesday 18th
February 2015
07:48 GMT
It was so sunny yesterday that it was hard
to believe that it was still rather cool, and even
cold outside. For just about every hour of
daylight the sky was blue, and the sun was
shining. The official word was that the
temperature went up to 9° C, but it was only 7° C
by my reckoning when I arrived home (with the sun
still above the horizon, and shining). The sky
stayed clear during the night, and this morning
started with a frost, but also with a warning of
it clouding over later. That warning was a
glorious pink and orange sunrise. The temperature
this afternoon may be similar to yesterday, but if
the forecast is correct, and I hope it's not, the
sky will be grey by midday instead of blue. At
least it should stay dry today, but tomorrow it is
probably going to rain, and every day after that
for the next week - maybe.
It was so beautiful and sunny yesterday
afternoon that I just had to go outside to
experience it during my lunch break. I only
intended to go out for something like 5 minutes.
So I went out without my coat, and with my shirt
sleeves rolled up. It should have felt quite
chilly like that, but with no wind to cause extra
chill, it actually felt fairly comfortable. I
wonder if the temperature was higher than the
official estimate of 9° C. I felt so comfortable,
and so cheered by the sunshine that I started
walking, and the further I went, the further I
wanted to go....up to a limit. I ended up walking
1.1miles (1.79km) - which isn't bad for a half
hour lunchbreak.
That's 1.1miles according to Google maps !
The River Wandle flowing towards Wandsworth and
The River Thames.
This is by the nearest entrance of the park to
work, and as far as I was going to go.
I started walking down the path, and couldn't
seem to stop myself.
I've never seen this before. It's by the
entrance from Kimber Road.
It is rare to see anyone fishing during my
lunchbreak, but I have seen a few people.
It's not the best riverside property, but I
expect it is still worth a packet !
The business estate in the distance sitting
under that lovely blue sky
Foster's Way - explanatory slate tablet set on a
small plinth.
At the end of my walk my feet were
starting to feel uncomfortable, and I could
feel a few muscles very gently complaining. It
could easily have walked further, but it was
just about the right distance to remind me
just how out of condition I am...and yet I
seem to recall that similar lunchtime walks
would seem a bit like hard work even when I
going out for 5 or more mile walks for fun at
the weekend (or days off). So maybe I am less
out of practice than I thought, although it
turns that I probably do need to do an awful
lot of practice before I can go walking up and
down cliff paths and the like. Just to make
sure I was suitably knackered for the day I
carried out my threat (to myself I guess) to
get off the train, and walk through the park
on my way home from work.
These pair of seats used to sit in front of
a nice looking pool, but it seems the pool
has been drained. Maybe it's part of winter
maintenance or something, and it will be
cleaned, and reconnected to the river
sometime in spring.
The north end of Ladywell Fields. Ladywell
station is to the left of this picture.
The route I took
through the park to home was about 0.72
miles long, and that is about twice the
distance from Catford Bridge station to
home. When I arrived home I could
definitely feel a few muscles starting to
complain. Rather strangely it was my thigh
muscles that seemed to be most noticeable,
although it was my feet that were
complaing most of all. I have much better
shoes/boots for long walks, but the
trainers I was wearing seemed to be better
than some. Obviously I was quite glad to
get home, but I was also quite glad to
have done all that walking in sunshine
under a nice blue sky.
I only burned off an extra couple of
hundred calories yesterday, and yet my gut
was telling me it wanted an extra 500 or
more calories. It made having a controlled
dinner rather tricky, and the only option
was a sort of compromise. Like the day
before, I had a baked potato with cheese,
tomatoes, and some black eyed peas. If I
had just had fruit after that, as
originally intended, I would have been
quite happy, but I gave in to having a
bowl of what is usually thought of as
breakfast cereal. It was more of the
Harvest Crunch sawdust
oatycrunchystuff, maple syrup and pecans.
It is fairly low in most stuff (including
pecan nuts) except sugar. It has far too
much of that to have any mention of
healthy on the box. Later on, while a bit
bored watching some TV, I had a small
portion of evil peanuts.
I don't think I am going to achieve
much in the way of deceiving the nurse
that I am healthier than I really am when
I see her on Saturday. I guess I am going
to have to prepare myself for a torrent of
abuse (said in the most gentle and sweet
[laced with cyanide] way !). Last night I
went back to feeling like I had eaten too
much when I went to bed. Some of it may
have been liquid. I've probably mentioned
before that I am half addicted to very
dilute squash made with freezing cold
water. That stuff goes down like beer with
me ! So I got into bed, and couldn't find
a nice comfortable position, but
eventually I got to sleep, and I estimate
it was at about 9.30pm.
I slept fairly well, and woke up
feeling tolerably well, and slightly
refreshed. My feet and legs had mostly
recovered, although my legs did feel a bit
stiff as I walked to the station.
Curiously enough, it felt unusually easy
to walk between Waterloo East and Waterloo
mainline stations, and it almost felt like
I was just gliding across the concourse to
platform 2 where I caught the 07:06
Hampton Court service. When I aarrived at
Earsfield my legs became stiff again, and
it seemed less than fun to walk to work !
There is a lovely blue sky right
now, but if the forecast is right it will
be replaced by grey cloud before my
lunchbreak starts. It seems unlikely that
I will be enticed out into the park at
lunchtime, but you never know. Maybe I
might walk home from Ladywell again. I
think the main plan for tonight is to wash
my hair, but if I feel unusually
enthusiastic I might wash a couple of
shirts as well. Then I will look forward
to getting to bed and dream my troubles
away - whatever they are.
Tuesday
17th February 2015
08:21 GMT
It was horrible yesterday - except for a
few minutes when the sun tried to shine in the
middle of the morning. The rest of the day was
overcast, and just as the forecast predicted, it
rained on me as I made my way home. One other very
slightly, almost ignorable, mitigating actor was
that it was nearly 8° C when I got home. On
reflection, it was not a mitigating factor at all
- 8° C rain is still cold rain !This morning
started with a clear sky, and that allowed the
temperature to fall almost low enough for a frost.
I measured 2.3° C on one thermometer, and 3° C on
the other. The tingling in my hands agreed with
the accuracy of my measurements, and they were
very similar to the forecast.
The clear sky also
meant that the eastern sky began to get light
some time before sunrise. I took the picture
above as I walked to the station, and although
it is less obvious in the picture than in real
life, there is a definite yellow glow in the
distance. By the time my train arrived at the
station, 06:33, it was getting light enough to
call it daylight. That was rather cheering.
Maybe my estimate for walking to the station
in daylight that I made yesterday was a little
too pessimistic, and it is going to happen by
the end of this month and not the next. There
is further reason to be cheerful. Today is
forecast to be bright and sunny all day. It's
a bit of a shame that it is not forecast to
get less cold than about 8° C, but maybe the
sunshine will warm things more than the
forecasters think. Tomorrow could be a bit
like today, but more rain is on it's way
apparently.
I felt strangely good as I made my way
home from work yesterday. I shouldn't have
done because it was pouring with rain, but
somehow it just felt like I was closer to
healthy than I have been for quite some time.
Maybe I mean in less pain than more healthy,
but who cares about health provided it doesn't
ache too much ! If it hadn't been raining I
would have got off at Ladywell station, the
station before Catford Bridge, and walked home
through the park. Somehow it didn't seem such
a great idea in the pouring rain.
I almost felt good enough to get some
way towards achieving the silly idea of eating
less, or more healthy, last night. I started
off with a baked potato with some tomatoes and
a small portion of black eyed peas covered in
a fairly light sprinkling of grated cheddar.
The cheese would have added rather a lot of
calories (and so would the butter that I
didn't mention), but overall it was probably
not too drastic. I followed that with 6 pieces
of fruit - an apple, two kiwi fruit, and three
very ripe, juicy, and sweet plums. If I had
left it there I would probably have been quite
happy, but I wanted more, and I had more. I
then had a bowl of maple and pecan Harvest
Crunch with milk. It was mostly harmless
sawdust, but for a product that is sold as
being healthy, it has an alarming amount of
sugar in it.
Whether my selection and quantity of
food had anything to do with it, and I have a
suspicion that it might have, I seemed to
sleep exceptionally well last night. It was
10pm when I turned out the light, and I don't
remember much more until gone 3am. If it was,
as it seems it might have been, 5 hours of
uninterrupted sleep, then it was a bit of a
record compared to the last month, two months,
6 months, maybe more ! I had every reason to
think that I should have felt rather good this
morning, and in some respects I do, but in two
important areas I felt lousy.
Although I didn't feel particularly cold
as I came to work, either the cold, or the
rain that is coming in a day or so was
affecting my legs. They felt sort of stiff and
underpowered. I could push them to keep up
with everyone else, and do a limited amount of
overtaking, on the mad dash between Waterloo
East and Waterloo mainline stations, but it
felt like unnecessary hard work. With no one
to compete with I couldn't raise the
enthusiasm to walk any faster than a very
moderate stroll from Earlsfield station to
work.
The other thing that bothered me this
morning was another twinge of my floating rib
syndrome. I think it was when I twisted
awkwardly as the train came into Catford
Bridge station this morning. When I sat down
after getting on board I had a nasty pain in
my side for much of the journey to Waterloo
East. Fortunately, as usually happens, once I
started walking it went away, and it hasn't
returned, but it was a less than gentle
reminder that there is a muscular-skeletal
problem in my chest area still. Ah well, at
least the sunshine is nice.
Here's a bit of video showing the sun just
poking it's head above the houses as my
train pulled into Earlsfield station at
approx 07:20 this morning. It was taken
through a "less than optically clear" (!!!)
train window.....
...here's a still picture taken when I got
off the train.
A little earlier at Waterloo station - Fry
Light (whatever that is) setting up a stand
on the concourse.
Another view of Fry Light
I think I am rather looking forward
to going home in the sunshine after work.
I suspect that I will need to force myself
to do it tonight, but I am going to try
and get off the train at Ladywell, and
walk home from there. Walking in the
sunshine will be more more pleasant than
in the pouring rain. I have no idea why I
wanted to do it last night ! I don't know
if I am going to do, or try to do anything
else particularly positive tonight. I
guess I'll try and bend my diet in the
direction of what I should be doing prior
to my checkup at the doctors on Saturday,
but by how much I bend it is anyone's
guess. Maybe I might also try to get to
bed a little earlier tonight (a thought
that just came to me as I made a face
splitting yawn just now !).
Monday 16th February
2015
08:07 GMT
There was no doubt about it, yesterday was
a pretty good day for this time of year. The
sunshine was delicious, and even if it started to
fall sharply once it hit close to 12° C, it was
rather nice - maybe not "warm" but comfortable.
The temperature dropped a lot during the night. It
was between 4 and 5° C when I left home to come to
work. It could almost have been misty. Maybe it
was in some places, but in Catford all I noticed
was a slight haze around street lights. It is a
shame that the day started off, and will probably
continue to be cloudy. Despite the cloud I noticed
that the eastern horizon was just slightly
brighter than black when I started to walk to the
station.
By the time my train was going through
London Bridge station there was a pale imitation
of daylight. Had the sky been clear it would have
been bright enough to call it daylight. It must be
months since I've seen London Bridge in daylight
in the morning. Maybe by the end of next month
I'll actually be walking to the station in
daylight. I'll enjoy that ! Meanwhile, today is
forecast to remain cloudy, and by this afternoon
those clouds will start leaking. There is a fair
chance that it will be raining quite heavily when
I leave work, and I don't know why I didn't bring
a rain coat ! Or maybe I do. My most waterproof
coats are not that warm when the temperature is
under 5° C. So I chose a coat that would be
slightly warm to come to work in, and that I can
do up on the way home. It is also waterproofed
with ScotchGard. My head is going to get wet, but
my body should stay dry. Tomorrow may be a dry
version of today - similar temperatures (peaking
at about 6 or 7° C), and just as cloudy.
Yesterday afternoon I was very lazy, and
that was either the cause or the effect of feeling
very fatigued. For about half an hour, or maybe
longer, all I wanted to do was to lay on my bed
with my eyes closed listening to music. It felt
too much like hard work to open my eyes, and yet
it seemed that I was not feeling sleepy. It was as
if I had zero energy left. I guess it was all in
the mind because I had no trouble going
downstairs, and then coming back up the stairs
with a fresh glass of cold squash. Then I lay down
again unable to move again - until I wanted to.
I made a deliberate point of not trying to
go to sleep too early last night. My ploy seemed
to work. Although I still didn't feel sleepy tired
(as opposed to bone weary), it didn't take long to
get to sleep when I turned out the light at 10pm.
I think I slept quite well last night, and I only
woke up 10 minutes before my alarm was set to
rouse me because the dream I was dreaming took a
turn towards the ridiculous. Being in a lift that
would not stop at the floor I wanted was
frustrating, but no reason to wake up. This lift
would stop at all the residential floors in what
was a huge old warehouse, but would not stop at
the floor where production work too place because
a cable was not terminated with the correct
connector. What or where the cable was, was not of
any great concern, but trying to find out if I
should crimp on a JST R* series connector, or a P
series connector was just too annoying, and I woke
up.
*Note; we use both these types of connector made
by JST at work, plus a few other types, and it
seems that I am considered the expert at crimping
the tiny little metal crimps onto the wires that
go into the connector shells.
It has taken some time to realise it, but it
seems I don't feel too bad this morning. Nothing
aches to any great extent, or at least nothing
that stands out from the usual background of mild
aches and pains. Even my legs and ankles seem
unusually lithe, or fluid, or whatever the best
description of the lack of stiffness is. If it was
just a bit warmer in my office I reckon I would be
quite comfortable to fall asleep in from of my PC
monitor. I'll probably do that later despite
seeming to get a reasonable nights sleep. I guess
it's just the soporific effect of being at work.
Tonight I have only one plan, and it is a
plan that is already beginning to crumble even as
I think about it. If it was bright and sunny went
I got home I might be inclined to try and just
have a bowl of oats in milk for half my dinner,
and just some fruit for the other half. Doing that
every night this week would go some way to making
it seem like I am healthy enough to live when I
see the nurse on Saturday, but if I get home in
the rain I might be more inclined to have a huge,
hot, calories packed dinner. Oh well, I just have
to do the best I can when the time comes.
Sunday 15th February
2015
15:27 GMT
It was a shame that yesterday was spoiled
by so much drizzle. If it wasn't for that it could
have gone down as a nice day - for the time of
year. Today sees a grand improvement over
yesterday. The biggest change is that today is
dry. It's also more sunny, and it has been a
little bit warmer. The sun was a bit intermittent
this morning because the sky was still very
cloudy, but a couple of hours ago the clouds went
away to leave a lovely blue sky, and non stop
sunshine. It's a bit of a shame that since that
happened the temperature has started falling. My
upstairs, outdoor thermometer almost made it to
12° C at around midday, and the downstairs one
said 10.5° C. Unfortunately the temperature will
continue to fall, and tomorrow morning could start
off as low as 3° C, and it may only rise as high
as 6° C. That will be accompanied by grey skies,
and in the afternoon, rain.
This is how lovely the sky is looking right now
(looking north from my bathroom window).
It felt good to do
some useful stuff yesterday. Later on in the
afternoon I did a few more bits of add tidying
up. I didn't have a specific plan, or any
particular aim. I would just notice something
and tidy it, or throw it away, or put it
somewhere else. It was relatively painless to
do it, and if I carried on like I did
yesterday the place would like like a show
home in.....let's see now........maybe about
173 years and 7 months.
What was slightly painful was doing the
second lot of laundry. I had left some things
soaking in some bio detergent in the morning -
quite a lot of things as it turned out. The
main item was a tea towel that had some nasty
stains, and I added a couple of t-shirts with
dried gravy down the front, and then I thought
"what the hell" and added all the other stuff
too. Pounding that lot up and down, and side
to side, and then wringing it out left me
feeling like I had definitely done some hard
work by the time it was all hanging up to dry.
I sometimes feel I have too many
clothes, but I can't bear to throw away
perfectly serviceable clothes. It seems I have
accumulated enough long sleeved shirts for a
fortnight or more, and the the same for short
sleeved shirts and even more for t-shirts. At
the moment, every single shirt I own, except
for the one I am wearing right now, is washed,
dry, and hung up ready to wear. It was quite a
lot of effort to get it that way, but worth
it. Worth it in the sense that it made me feel
smugly satisfied of a job well done.
I should have fallen asleep easily last
night, but I didn't. Maybe rising so late in
the morning made me like normal people, and I
wasn't ready to fall asleep until after
midnight instead of at 9 or 10pm. I think I
probably slept tolerably well once I got to
sleep, but I can't really remember much about
the night now. Once again I woke up at around
5am this morning, but managed to get back to
sleep. It wasn't exactly great sleep from then
on, but like yesterday I managed to force
myself to sleep more until I gave up at about
8am.
I haven't done any grand things today,
but I have done a little bit more tidying of
this and that. The closest thing to doing
anything grand was to go to Aldi to do some
shopping. Actually there were a few grand
gestures involved in that. The grandest of
them all was that it felt comfortable to not
wear a coat. It did feel a bit cool on the
way, but it wasn't bad, and the joy and
freedom of it made up for any small
discomfort. Being extra careful not to buy
"naughty food" was a bit of a downer, or was
it ? Maybe succeeding was actually a positive
thing. There was a very good reason to take
extra care today, and I'll explain it in a
minute.
It was possibly a small grand gesture,
in the most insignificant way, that I tested
two things on the way to and from Aldi. The
first was a pair of very cheap (£3 or
thereabouts) plimsoles that I found on Amazon.
They stink of tar - which I guess is what they
used to colour them in China - but they were
really quite comfortable. The same cannot be
said about the pair of underpants I wore. I
found them at the back of my drawer, and they
seemed quite comfortable when I put them on.
Unfortunately, by the time I got to Aldi they
had slipped down my waist, and were
threatening to throttle me where I didn't want
to be throttled. It was no wonder they were in
the back of my drawer. Now they are somewhere
else ! I may be reluctant to throw away
serviceable clothes, but I didn't hesitate to
throw out those underpants !
Yesterday morning I got a call from the
doctors surgery. They asked if I could attend
a proposed appointment next Saturday morning
for a diabetic check up. I can, and I will go,
but that gives me a week to lose about three
or five stone, and convert my blood from
treacle into non sweet red stuff. That is why
it was so important to avoid buying anything
too naughty today. I'm never going to restrain
my eating eating in time to more than scratch
the surface of the problem, but after the
trials of tomorrow's weather, there could be a
bit more sunshine later in the week, and it
may not be quite so unpleasantly cold
(although not a patch on today). The more
sunshine the easier it will be to restrict my
eating, but a cigarette could do it twenty
times better !
Saturday 14th February
2015
12:58 GMT
I'm trying to think if I can say anything
good about yesterdays' weather. Well I suppose it
could have been colder, but 5 or 6° C is hardly
comfortable. It would have been worse if it
rained, but under a filthy grey sky is would
hardly have been worse if it did rain. Suddenly I
remember that there was a good bit of yesterday -
while I waited for my train at Waterloo East
station the sun came out. It was quite low on the
horizon, but it still managed to cheer things up a
bit. Today could be better, a lot better, but it's
9° C, and that is getting close to nearly
comfortable for short periods of exposure. There
have also been a few short sunny periods this
morning. The thing that spoils it all is that it
keeps on drizzling. There are periods when it
stops, but you never know when it will start
again. At the moment the forecast for tomorrow is
looking like a small improvement over today. It
could get up to 10° C, and there could be more
sunshine.
At the end of work yesterday I was in a sort
of ambivalent mood. I didn't feel any great
positives apart from leaving work, but I didn't
really feel any negatives apart from my right heel
still being a bit sore. I'm almost forgetting one
of yesterday's positive things. In the morning I
had all the symptoms of a head cold - wet eyes,
and a running and itchy nose. Maybe it was an
allergy to something, but I have no idea what. By
11am it was almost over. At 1 or 2pm it flared up
again for 20 minutes, but everything was back to
normal after that, and remains so even now.
I felt I deserved a treat when I got home,
and that treat was to be a Chinese takeaway. It
was very nice, but maybe I needed treating less
than I realised because I will soon be having a
fairly substantial lunch of leftover Chinese food
! Of course because I had a takeaway last night, I
still haven't had the baked potato with lashings
of melted cheese that I was going to have several
nights ago. Maybe I'll have that for dinner
tonight, and maybe I'll finally get around to
breaking open one of the cans of 9% super lager I
bought some time ago.
It is strange how I sometimes get a bee in
my bonnet about something or another, and if I
can't satisfy that desire straight away I lose
interest in it. Generally that only happens when
it is something that ought to be available
"instantly" (like a can of booze). When it is
something that is not instantly available, maybe
something that has to be saved for, different
rules apply.
I could have stayed up late last night. I
didn't have to get up early this morning, and I
didn't have to get up at all if I didn't want to,
but I still went to bed fairly early. I think I
was probably asleep by 10pm. I didn't sleep that
well, or that bad except for the last few hours.
Those last few hours took me right through to 8am
- which represents a three hour lie in ! It
certainly wasn't obvious that I felt good this
morning, but it seems that I must have.
I've been quite busy so far, but I'll be
taking a break now for a couple of hours, or maybe
until tomorrow ! This morning I hand washed quite
a pile of stuff, and I have another bowl of stuff
that is soaking in some bio washing detergent to
help get out those stubborn understains (as the
advert used to say). After hanging the washing up
to dry I did all the washing up in the kitchen,
and I did some tidying up in the kitchen too. The
last thing I did was some tidying up in the living
room. In theory that is only half done. I've
thrown some rubbish away (including an ancient VCR
that I know I am never going to fix), and there
are now a few areas that definitely need
hoovering, but it's a little tricky to do that
with a clothes horse full of damp washing sitting
in the middle of the room. Maybe the hoovering is
a job that I'll do later if I raise the
enthusiasm, or possibly tomorrow instead, but now
it's lunchtime !
Friday 13th February
2015
07:54 GMT
There was no escaping it, yesterday was a
very cold, dull and miserable day. I have no idea
what the actual top temperature was, but I doubt
it was any higher than the pessimistic forecast of
4° C. Today sees a change for the better,
and for the worse. The top temperature today,
occurring in the early afternoon as it usually
does, could be 8 or even 9° C. The penalty for
this is rain. It could rain at almost any time
today, and the most pessimistic reading of the
forecast means that any time actually translates
to most of the time. It seems there is close to
zero chance of seeing any hint that the sun is
still shining away 93 million miles away in space
today. maybe it has gone out, and we would never
even know about it (until the oceans and
atmosphere freeze !). The forecast for tomorrow
keeps changing, but it's not looking good. It
might be 8° C, it might rain, and there might be a
brief glimpse of sunshine, but if you blink you'll
miss it.....
I was not happy when I went home from work
yesterday. The most obvious reason was a pain in
my right heel. I didn't mention it yesterday
because I thought it was just one of those passing
annoyances that has no lasting effects. I was just
a hundred yards or so from work when I trod on
something sharp. For a brief instant it was very
painful, but the pain faded to no more than an
itch as I walked that last 100 yards. I checked my
shoe when I got into work, and there was no
obvious puncture in the heel, and there was no
obvious puncture in my skin either. So I forgot
about it until I left work to go home.
I hadn't even left the building when I
became aware that my right heel felt quite sore.
It was like it was deeply bruised, and that may
well be what it was. It made for an uncomfortable
walk to the station, and every other place I
walked to. The discomfort made me feel very
irritated, and I was irritated further when some
little shit and piss bag baby decided to start
wailing at full volume a few seats behind me on
the train to Catford. If it was a band it would be
banned from the venue for playing too loud ! To
avoid any unpleasantness (like mass murder) I got
up from my seat and moved to the next carriage
where I had to stand for the rest of the way to
Catford.
I was not happy, not happy at all when I got
home. With the lads drinking in Beckenham instead
of Catford, I couldn't even drown my sorrows with
a few beers. I could have gone to Beckenham
myself, but had decided I just didn't want to go
there on a cold gloomy evening - and that was
before my right heel became quite painful to walk
on. So I went straight home feeling quite sorry
for myself. I even forgot that I was going to cook
baked potatoes, and smother them with cheese. I
ended up having a small large dinner last night,
and that was partly due to being pissed off
watching the news on TV, and going up to my
bedroom by about 6.30am.
There is some good news in all this - sort
of. I was preparing to get under the duvet to
escape from reality into the pages of a book when
an email came through that surprised me. It was
from my friend Patricia in Argentina. She is
having a fairly good time over there, and I
assumed she would have forgotten all about me by
now, but apparently not. So instead of retreating
from reality I sat down and wrote a long email
back to her. While doing so I consumed a couple of
very large whiskys, and I guess I was probably a
bit drunk when I went to bed at 9pm.
I slept well until about 4.30am when I woke
feeling something was wrong. I tried to go back to
sleep, but only had partial success, and I gave up
trying to sleep at 10 minutes to 5am. Soon after
that I found out what was wrong - I was suffering
badly from hay fever - or I had a head cold. My
nose was itching like mad, and my eyes were runny.
It was a lot like hay fever - except there is a
distinct lack of hay at this time of year. It
could be an allergy to rain perhaps. I felt a
little better once I was out in the fresh air, but
even if my nose was running slower, it was still
running !
While being out in the fresh air might have
been better for my nose, it was not good for my
right heel. It is still quite sore this morning,
and it seemed just as painful coming to work this
morning as it was going home last night. Now I am
at work I can keep the weight of that heel a lot
of the time, but I still can't stop my nose
itching and running. I evidently have a head cold,
but I am not good at diagnosing these things while
I am not smoking. I normally associate a head cold
with a hacking cough, and near, if not actual
pneumonia.As I probably remarked last time I had a
cold, it feels odd that I can feel so bad without
that hacking cough etc. I shall definitely be
looking forward to going home at the end of work,
and unless I have some miraculous recovery, I
shall be quite happy to dive under the duvet, and
not come up until Monday morning !
Thursday 12th February
2015
09:04 GMT
It seems the pictograms won on the BBC's
weather website page. The accompanying text said
there was hope that there could be some brighter
periods, but it was the relentless pictures of
black clouds that turned out to be true. Sadly,
today is probably going to be just as dull and
miserable. To make matters worse, it will be a
couple of degrees cooler today. I reckon that the
day started off at almost 6° C. The forecast said
it was only 4° C, and in the first couple of hours
after sun rise, or about now, it would actually
drop to 3° C. A couple of hours later it will, or
should, rise back up to 4° C, and then it will
stick like that through the day, and into the
night. The latest forecast now say that it will
rain all day tomorrow, but the temperature might
be as high as 8° C.
Just for a change I had an almost good day
at work yesterday. I was still a completely lazy
bastard, but I did do some of what I like doing -
and that is repairing nice easy faults on circuit
boards. Maybe the faults would not be easy for
anyone unfamiliar with the circuitry and all it's
little foibles, but I've been working on these
circuit boards for years now, and I know them like
the back of my hand. I took a couple of pictures
of the faults on two circuit boards in case our
quality department wanted to bash the
manufacturers of the circuit boards, but
apparently they don't want to do that on this
occasion.
This is actually a rather rare fault. During
manufacture no solder paste was put on the pad
at one end of Capacitor C40. When the board was
heated up to melt the solder paste, the molten
solder pulled on one end of C40 and it tried to
stand it on end. It was at a 45 degree angle
when it cooled, and that is how I found it.
After a quick resoldering job, and the circuit
board worked perfectly.
This picture is not so obvious as the last, but
the solder in the middle of the picture should
be in two discrete blobs. The component that is
actually fitted on the other side of the circuit
board is one of the few that is hand soldered in
after all the other parts are machine fitted.
Whoever soldered it used too much solder, and
has "blobbed" the two pins together.
I probably should
have felt better when I went home from work,
but the grey sulllen skies had sapped all my
energy, enthusiasm, and happiness from me.
Even buying some shopping on the way home
didn't really lift my spirits. Now that it has
been decreed that dairy products such as
butter and cheese are no longer instant
killers, and might even be good for you (in
limited quantities), I decided to celebrate by
having a big baked potato stuffed with butter
and cheese for my dinner last night.
Unfortunately it didn't work out quite how it
should have done.
My first mistake was to buy a small bag
of stupidly small baking potatoes instead of
selecting a couple of the larger loose one
that were available just 3 feet away. My next
mistake was not realising that the sausage and
mash ready meals (there were two of them in my
fridge for some reason) were not on their use
by date - which was actually today. So
although I could still have had my baked
potato stuff full of (no longer artery
clogging) butter and cheese, I actually had an
artery busting double dose of rather mediocre
sausages and mash. Ah well, I can have the
baked potato tonight - although I don't feel
quite so enthusiastic about it this morning.
In some respects it was frustrating
going around Tescos trying not to buy foods
that are bad for me. Paradoxically that
included the butter and cheese I bought. They
may no longer clog arteries, but they are
still incredibly high in calories, and I am
acutely aware of it when I have them.
Fortunately I did purchase two items that
turned out to have a lot less calories in them
than I expected. They were two more bottles of
"No Added Sugar" squash to add to my
collection. They were both barley waters, and
one was peach flavour, and the other was
"tropical" flavour. The tropical was not
nasty, but I don't think I'll be buying any
more of it. The peach flavour was actually
nice, and I will be buying more of it in the
future.
Despite being rather full of sausages
and mash (plus some other bits and pieces) I
still felt rather cool yesterday evening. So I
decided to read my book in bed at 7.30pm. It
was nice and warm under the duvet, and by
8.30pm I decided to turn out the light and go
to sleep. I fell asleep remarkably quickly,
and then had a rather strange night. Usually I
sleep very well until 2 or 3am, and then sleep
more intermittently until I get up at 5am.
Last night it was the other way round. I was
first woken up at 10pm by my phone ringing. I
was most surprised when I checked the time. I
thought I had been asleep for a long time, and
that it must be past midnight. Seeing it was
only 10pm came as a bit of a shock. I was soon
asleep again, but only slept for about an hour
before I woke up needing a pee. Once again I
fell asleep again fairly quickly before waking
up again a little before 1am. I think I
probably needed a pee again, but I can't
really remember what I did apart from look at
the clock (and I can't quite remember the
exact time I saw). From then on I slept
soundly until I woke up about 20 minutes
before 5am. I think I had just got back to
sleep before my alarm went off at 5am.
I probably feel OK this morning. I don't
seem to feel particularly sleep at the moment,
and nothing really hurts this morning. Of
course the little and ring fingers on my left
hand are still as numb as they have been since
my operation, and my floating rib syndrome is
still creaking when I do stuff like pulling up
my shoelaces, or other stuff with my arms.
Even my feet aren't particularly uncomfortable
this morning.
Yesterday I tried out my new Puma brand
trainer socks, and I think I am now beginning
to conclude they are as good as the Tesco
trainer socks that I originally wanted to buy.
I tried them with a pair of cheap Converse
like trainers that I usually wear without
socks. They were initially comfortable, but
became uncomfortable during the day. I found
that loosening the laces helped a lot, and by
the time I came to take them off when I got
home, they were only slightly uncomfortable. I
am wearing them again today with another pair
of trainers that I always wear sock with (they
have a few rough seams inside). So far they
seem just as comfortable as when I am wearing
Tesco socks.
Tonight I could go for a drink, and it
is 50 -50 whether I do or don't. The
difficulty, if difficulty is the right word,
is that the lads are drinking in Beckenham
tonight. On a mild spring evening, or on a hot
summer night, it might even be nice to stay on
the train until it gets to Clock House
station, and then wander down the hill into
Beckenham and the pub. On a cold, grey winters
evening I find it hard to raise the enthusiasm
to do that, and I feel the idea of being under
my duvet with a book to be a possibly stronger
lure than some beer. It is possible I'll
finally make a decision about it on the train
home, or it is also possible that another
possibility may arise. I would not be
surprised if Jodie contacts me to see if I am
going to The Catford Constitutional Club
tonight - I wasn't, but I could do....but only
for a quick one before I go home and bake a
potato !
Wednesday 11th
February 2015
07:58 GMT
Yesterday wasn't as dull as the forecast
said it would be, but it wasn't that wrong ! For
much of the day the cloud that covered the entire
sky was mostly white instead of black, and there
was a short period where the sun was almost
visible. It was 7° C when I got home from work,
and that a degree or two higher than the forecast.
The forecast for today continues to be mysterious.
The pictograms show black clouds all day, but the
written description says it will brighten up
during the day. At the moment the sky is looking a
very nasty sort of dark grey colour, and that
agrees with the pictograms nicely. What doesn't
agree is the temperature. The pictograms say it
should be as low as 3° C this morning, but both my
outside thermometers agreed that it was over 6° C,
and close to 7° C when I left home to walk to the
station. My hands also think that the temperature
is over 3° C - they were cold and tingling a bit,
but not going numb.
Last night was another night where I didn't
feel terribly good, or terribly bad. I probably
felt terribly bland instead. I managed to raise
myself above the ennui twice - once to wash and
condition my hair, and once to indulge in some
creative cooking. Well, sort of creative cooking.
Instead of just microwaving a ready meal, I baked
a couple of small potatoes, and a small sweet
potato. I was going to use some olive spread on
them, but I opened up the tub and found it was
going mouldy. That tub is not that old, and has
been kept in the fridge. I don't know why it
should have grown mould on it when it's
predecessor seemed to last several years or more
in the same conditions, and appeared to be in good
condition when I used the last of it.
So I threw away the tub of spread, and used
butter instead. Maybe that was for the best. After
years of being told that butter was bad for you,
and stuff like olive spread was not bad for you,
the tables have turned, and now butter (and
cheese) is not bad for you, and spreads is
terrible ! It's lucky that I used to eat hardly
any spread, or other man made fats, or I could
have had a heart attack because of it.....oh wait,
I did have a heart attack in 2013. I
wonder what caused that then ? Maybe it was
chicken....oh dear, I also had reheated ready
cooked chicken thighs as well last night. I wonder
if the two apples, and the handful of almonds I
also had last night are considered good or bad for
you this morning.
I can't make up my mind if I slept well or
not last night. I was asleep by 9pm, plus or minus
15 minutes, and the next thing I knew was waking
up covered in sweat - and I have no idea why -
unless it was a very delayed reaction to
some hot beetroot chutney I had eaten with my
dinner. I had turned the heater off before going
to bed. So it was quite cool in my bedroom during
the night, and I can't recall having any dreams or
nightmares that might have induced some sort of
panic sweat. Maybe it was my
malaria/ebola/syphilis/beri beri/body
cancer/erectile dysfunction/lymes
disease/psychowatsis/blue tongue/lung and
earworms/old age playing up again.
The next time I woke up I was feeling rather
chilly because I had gone back to sleep partly
uncovered. That was about 3am, and I decided to
turn the heating back on. It was nice and warm
when my alarm woke me at 5am. I am most reluctant
to say I felt reasonably OK when I got up, but I
guess I was. It didn't last long. My legs felt
exceptionally stiff, and I felt fairly exhausted
when I walked from the station to work. I guess I
was just feeling large and sluggish.
The other strange thing I experienced in the
early hours of the morning was a really annoying
itch above my left man boob. It was over a part of
a slightly larger area that is partly numb since
my chest was opened up for my heart surgery in
September 2013. It is a really strange sensation
to scratch that area. It feels like the numbness
is in layers, and I guess it is possible that it
really is in layers. I can't really recall if it
felt like the itch was on the surface, or below
the surface. Nor can I recall at what depth my
(light) scratching was not felt, and at what depth
it felt quite unpleasant (almost like a sort of
tingling sensation). In the spirit of eternal
misguided optimism, I think I'll assume the itch
was the first sign of some of those damaged nerves
recovering, and I will continue to believe that
until I have forgotten all about it because
nothing has happened !
It will be nice when today, by which I mean
the working day, is over, and I am on my way home
again. I have nothing to look forward to when I
get home apart from something to eat, and the
facility to slouch around, lay down, snooze,
sleep, and other good things in life ! I can't
even begin to try and imagine that it could be the
merest hint of warm, and bright and sunny this
afternoon, and so I can't imagine that I will want
to do anything useful like washing some shirts.
Instead it's just going to be a meaningless night
when I'll eat some dinner (probably too much),
watch an hour of TV, read in bed for a while, and
then go to sleep in the hope I'll enjoy some
thrilling dreams. Ah well, winter can't last for
ever...can it ?
Tuesday 10th February
2015
07:55 GMT
The BBC actually confessed on TV last night
that they had got the weather forecast wrong
yesterday morning......of course it wasn't
actually worded as an confession, or an apology,
but it was there alright. Early yesterday morning
the BBC's website said the world would be covered
in thick black cloud. The reality was that it was
a bright sunny day that was less cool than the
pessimistic forecast said it would be. It was said
on TV last night that some parts of London hit 10°
C, but the best I saw was only 7° C - which was
still 2 or 3 degrees higher than the forecast.
Here's hoping today's forecast is wrong as well.
The forecast for today is a familiar sounding
thick black clouds, and a maximum temperature of
only 5 or 6° C. Maybe today will actually be
like that, but there is a chink in the weather's
armour already. The forecast says it should be
just 3° C for the first few hours of today, but
when I left home, nearly two hours ago, one of my
outside thermometers said 5.5° C, and the other
said 6° C - almost double what the forecast
predicted. It is certainly rather cloudy right
now, but my impression as I walked from the
station to work, was that it was brighter that the
forecast made me think it would be. There is some
slim hope that those clouds could break up later,
and let some daylight/sunshine in.
All the bright sunshine we had yesterday
should have made me feel rather good -
particularly so considering that it was an
unexpected bonus - but maybe I had already decided
I was going to be miserable before the sun came
out, and stuck to my guns, or maybe I was just
tired. Whichever it was, I didn't feel terribly
wonderful when I got home last night. I didn't
feel wonderful in any shape or form, and maybe my
shoes, which had started out very comfortable in
the morning, but quite uncomfortable as I walked
from the station to home, didn't help to enthuse
me. Instead of getting busy doing stuff, I just
ate too much !
I did have a semi-healthy dinner planned for
last night. One course was going to be just tomato
salad, and it was possible that I might have
dressed it in some oil and vinegar instead of
drowning it in mayonnaise. The problem was that I
noticed a ready meal in the fridge which had
passed it's best before date by two days - and I
noticed it while another meal was cooking in the
microwave oven. If I had been feeling less
unexcited, less bored, less bleurgh, less moody,
less "so what", I might have made a different
decision, but I was in the mood where I didn't
care that much, and ate both meals.
I probably paid for eating too much when I
tried to go to sleep. I went to bed a a bit early
because I had felt very tired at work, and when I
went to bed it seemed that my extra meal had
settled down nicely as much as an hour earlier,
but I felt quite uncomfortable as I thrashed
around trying to get to sleep. Eventually I did
get to sleep, and it may have been that I left the
heating off, and allowed my bedroom to get quite
chilly, that I seemed to sleep well. At least I
think I slept well, but I seem to recall dreaming
a lot, and one of the dreams was rather
unpleasant. It's not often that I dream about
Dracula. In fact I am sure last night was the
first time ever. I can't remember too much about
the dream, but I do remember that my dream Dracula
was a lot older than the usual centuries old
Dracula. My Dracula was so old that most of his
teeth had come out, and he could no longer bite !
Ignoring the once or twice I woke up to take
a pee in the night, I woke up 10 minutes before my
alarm was due to wake me, and I felt pretty rough.
Bits of me ached in strange ways. Most annoyingly
was that my left elbow ached. I say elbow, but the
area was actually rather undefined. It was only a
mild ache, but it's persistence made it annoying.
In an ideal and fair world it would actually be
indicating that some change for the better was
happening in my elbow. I once used to believe that
changes in that area would indicate that the
crushed/damaged nerves that make my two small
fingers on my left hand numb were getting better,
but not any more. The pain could still be
something to do with the nerves as they pass the
elbow in the region of the "funny bone", but it
could equally be from a blood clot or something
else that will eventually kill me.
Curiously enough, as the ache in my left
elbow area starts to wane, I seem to be getting a
pain in my right wrist. I feel the only cure for
these aches and pains is a lot of sunshine, and
plenty of whisky - both to be consumed a long way
from work ! I guess I'll survive work, and
maybe if I am very lucky I will be cheered up by
some sunshine on the way home from work. I must
admit that doesn't seem likely as I look out the
window, but if miracles do happen I might be
inclined to do something useful when I get home.
Maybe I'll do something that can't really be
described as useful, but is just as important -
washing my hair. Oh well, just 12 hours to go, and
I'll know the truth of it.
Skoda were still at Waterloo station this
morning. Here's the view looking down from the
balcony onto the blue car.
Monday 9th February
2015
07:59 GMT
I doubt there will be any comparison
between yesterday's weather and today's !
Yesterday's weather was rather glorious (for this
time of year). It was bright and sunny, and looked
warm even if it wasn't really. Although the sun
pouring through the windows kept the front of the
house warm enough without any additional heating.
The forecast for today, that I hope is very wrong,
says it will be a degree or two cooler, and that
it will seem like the whole world is capped with a
thick daark blanket of cloud ! The only chink in
the armour is that the forecast said it would only
be 3° C, and my two outside thermometers both
agreed that it was 5° C. So maybe the temperature
might rise to 7° C today. That is far from warm,
but at least it makes your fingers and nose tingle
less. There are still in hints that it could
actually feel mild-ish at the end of this week. So
that's something to look forward to.
I don't know why, but since yesterday I seem
to be feeling the temperature differently.
Yesterday's sun did warm my bedroom up a fair bit,
but I am sure it wasn't really as comfortable as I
felt it to be. Then last night I felt too hot
under the duvet, and spent a crap night leaving
assorted limbs, or other bits of me uncovered.
This morning, as I walked to the station, it
didn't feel as cold as 5° C should have done, and
my train, a South Easern Trains train, which are
not noted for the efficiencyof their heaters, felt
extremely warm. Maybe the magic was wearing off
when I got on the train at Waterloo. SouthWest
trains are frequently very warm, but this mornings
train only felt very comfortable. The magic just
about wore out by the time I had walked here. I
entered work with my fingers aalmost numb !
I forgot to mention that I made another
interesting purchase while I was in Aldi
yesterday. One of their never to be repeated
offers (until next time) was some Converse-alike
looking trainers, and to my surprise they almost
had them in my size. Well, they had them in my old
size, and now that I am on a more appropriate dose
of Bisoprolol ( one of my blood pressure control
drugs) , and my feet rarely swell up, I can
usually comfortably wear my old size again. So I
bought a pair to see what they are like. I haven't
tried them yet, but I have a feeling that they may
be more durable than the ones that both Tesco and
Peacocks sell - and that's despite them being even
cheaper. Tesco and Peacocks tend to sell their
very similar, if not almost identical versions for
around £12 per pair. Aldi were selling their
slightly better quality looking type for £8 (or
£7.99 to be precise). In an ideal world Aldi would
get another batch in just as my new pair wear out,
but I doubt that will ever happen.
Last night I made one more feet related
purchase. Last week I tried to buy some of my
favourite trainer socks from Tesco, but it seems
like they don't stock them in winter. So I had a
look on Amazon's web site, and found what may be a
suitable replacement. The only trouble is they are
made by, and carry the logo of Nike. Nike are far
too sporty for my liking, and I feel morally
repulsed to wear something with their logo on it,
but at least that logo should be hidden from
public view, and covered in sweat and rotting feet
while I wear one of the pairs I bought. Apart from
the waste of £13 for the six pairs I ordered (3
black, and 3 white), it would be sort of
satisfying if they turned out to be rubbish, and
fell apart after a single use. Then I go back to
Tesco trainers socks safe in the knowledge that
Tesco is better known for obesity than kicking
muddy balls around.
After another long break, there was some
action on the concourse of Waterloo station this
morning.
The view from the balcony of "The New Skoda
Fabia" (or so it says on the sign).
The yellow car was on a spot that is rarely used
for displays - opposite patforms 15 to 17 (at a
guess).
On the spot where most of these displays take
place was a blue Skoda Fabia.
After quite a
disastrous nights sleep I expect I will feel
rather tired at some point today, but at the
moment I don't feel too bad. Maybe it is a
hangover from yesterday's sunshine, but I
might actually feel quite good this morning -
provided I overlook a few minor niggles like
starting out very farty when I got up. My
floating rib seems very floating this morning.
It sometimes seemed that half my chest was
swinging to and fro as I walked to work this
morning, but the good thing is that it was
painless. It seems unlikely if the sky stays
the same dreary colour all day, but if I
continue to feel mostly good when I get home,
I may do something constructive instead of
just vegetating.
Sunday 8th February
2015
18:10 GMT
The weather today was supposed to be a lot
like yesterday - rather cold feeling, a light
shower or two, and some occasional sunshine - and
it was and it wasn't ! It was definitely 7° C like
it was for a short time yesterday, but today it
was 7° C for a quite a few hours, and there was
hardly any wind to spoil things. The other change
was that it was bright and sunny almost all day.
That sunshine pouring through the front windows of
the house meant that I hardly needed any heating
on today. The very best thing is that it was still
light outside at 5.30pm - not full light, but the
sort of light I could only wish for when getting
home from work at about 4.45pm a month ago.
It's been one of those days where it is fairly
easy to believe that spring is on it's way at last
!
I said I would probably just vegetate last
night, and that is pretty much what I did......and
it was glorious ! Maybe I was feeling a bit of
guilt about it this morning because I had a burst
of activity once I got up. In theory I got up at
7am this morning. A two hour lie in should have
been marvellous, but it took another couple of
hours before I felt capable of doing anything more
demanding than blinking, or breathing. Maybe it
was more than a couple of hours because Aldi
doesn't open until 11am, and that was the first
major thing I did. I did have a good shower, and I
washed my hair before going out to Aldi, but I
can't think where the other hours went.
Just for a change I bought very little in
Aldi. I mainly wanted some bottles of pop, and
some sandwiches to take to work tomorrow, but I
also bought a 2 person Indian meal - and found I
couldn't fit it in my fridge. So I had it for
Sunday lunch. It wasn't bad, but the portions
seemed very small - although I did leave quite a
lot of the rice. Just in case it was bigger than I
thought, I had a nearly healthy evening meal. It
was luncheon meat salad with far too much
mayonnaise followed by a remarkably small punnet
of cherries, and a couple of small apples. Those
cherries are obviously now out of season - a few
months back the punnets contained maybe twice as
many cherries.
Before doing all that eating I did the
second major task of the day - laundry. I
only did four items, but they were all lounge
pants, and they need a fair amount of manhandling
to wash and wring out. After the shopping trip,
the laundry, and curry for Sunday lunch, it was
nice to have a snooze this afternoon - except I
didn't really. I lay on my bed, and I read for a
while before putting the book down and closing my
eyes. I think I may have fallen asleep, but if I
did it wasn't for long. I don't know why I
couldn't have a nice afternoon snooze. Maybe the
idea that extra sleep would be nice was just a
figment of my imagination. I bet I can fall asleep
in front of my PC at work tomorrow without even
trying !
I did do a little bit of tidying up today,
but it was only a little bit, and mostly consisted
of putting stuff on top of other stuff. Oh well,
at least it reveals a bit more of the floor in the
spare bedroom. Maybe all the sunshine today
tricked my brain into having spring like faults.
The result was that I threw a few things away that
I should have done a long time ago. One item was
an old tuner-amplifier. In theory, in these modern
days, electrical items like that are supposed to
be taken to a recycling centre, and I would have
done if there was one less than 2 minutes walk
from my front door, but there isn't ! If some
ecomentalist insists on it going to a recycling
centre they can jolly well carry it themselves -
it's at the bottom of my wheelie bin under a pile
of crap if you want to fish it out.
I've been playing with some "toys" that I
bought from the 99p shop on Saturday. They are
electronic tea candles, and they are remarkably
life like. They give off a nice warm yellow glow,
and flicker as if they were caught in a draught. I
spent some time trying to capture the effect on
video, but without manual control of the exposure
and focus it doesn't really work. I ended up using
two of them to make it bright enough so that the
camera wasn't too over-exposed, but of course they
don't flicker in a synchronised way like real
flames would in the same wind. You'll just have to
take my word for it that they look much, much more
realistic than they do in this video clip.
Saturday 7th February
2015
17:09 GMT
I have to confess that I was being insanely
optimistic to believe that yesterday would be
sunnier than the day before. There was some
sunshine, but at best it was only an equal amount
to the day before. As nice as it was, it didn't do
much for the fact that yesterday was another very
cold day with an evil wind blowing. There was less
wind today, and the temperature did hit 7° C, but
it was still unpleasantly cold outside, and it is
taking a lot of energy to keep my rooms warm. It's
looking like tomorrow is going to be similar to
today. A few bright spells, maybe even a little
bit of sunshine, and the temperature peaking at 7°
C again.
I felt dreadfully tired at work yesterday.
Part of the reason was that I hard did anything,
and I hardly did anything because I was too tired
to start to do anything. It was a vicious circle
that was only partly broken by going home. I went
home via Tesco because I was hoping to buy some
new trainer socks, but of course they are a summer
item, and they didn't have any in the middle of
winter ! So I bought a few odds and sods, and went
home.
There was probably lots of things I could
have done when I got home, but the only thing I
could think of was to have some dinner. Dinner
would have been a lot healthier if I had omitted
the one third price chocolate doughnuts. The sad
thing is that they were not that nice. They
certainly weren't horrible, but they didn't fire
off any orgasmic neurons in my brain, gut, knees,
or earlobes. Maybe they did provide a little extra
energy, or something similar, because I did do a
little light tidying up before I went to bed.
I was in bed quite early for several
reasons. The most obvious is that I was tired, but
that was probably less important than feeling
bored, and cold. The boredom was cured by reading
the book I had started a few days earlier (Robert
Heinlein - Space Cadet), and of course it
was nice and warm in bed. I think it was probably
about 8.30pm when I got in bed, but I was barely
keeping track of time. I may not have read much
past 9pm, and I can't seem to remember being awake
very long after I turned the light out.
I slept fairly well until nearly 5am, only
waking up a couple of times, but for the next two
hours I woke up fairly frequently. At about 7am I
gave up trying to sleep, and very slowly started
getting up. I think I felt fairly good, but I
didn't feel inclined to wash my hair in the cold
bathroom even though I had company this morning.
Like many Saturday's, my friend Aleemah popped
over for a few hours. Although I couldn't bring
myself to wash my hair, I did find the enrgy, or
enthusiasm, to tidy the place up a bit....just a
tiny little bit !
I noticed an abandoned guitar on the way to the
station to meet Aleemah.
(the picture doesn't really give a sense of
scale - it's really a small guitar for kiddies)
While Aleemah had her usual vegetarian breakfast
with a mug of coffee, I had a half pint of each
of these beers. Neither were very nice, but the
left hand one was quite strong (6%) - not
exactly a breakfast beer, but it did help keep
me a little warmer.
Aleemah brought
another DVD with her for us to watch, and it
wasn't very entertaining. It was a BBC
production, and I think it was called Crooked
House, or something like that. It was a load
of supernatural twaddle. Aleemah went home at
about 2.30pm, and since then I've read another
chapter of my book, and done very little else.
I think there is a gig I could go to tonight,
but to be honest I just can't be bothered to
even think about it. I shall just remain in
the warm, and vegetate !
Friday 6th February
2015
07:51 GMT
The worst thing about yesterday was the
cold. The mercury may not have dropped that low,
but there was a very icy wind that seemed to get
into every crevice. Apart from the wind, the other
feature of yesterday's weather was how the clouds
gathered up into huge black lumps with blue sky
all around them. Those black clouds looked very
threatening - almost as if they were full of snow
ready to be dumped on us, but they usually passed
harmlessly overhead - although it seems I just
missed a light fall of sleety rain in Catford on
my way home from work. I took a picture of those
clouds and the blue sky.
This the view where Garrat Lane goes through
a Z bend in Earlsfield. On a good day I get
dazzled by the setting sun just above the roofs of
the shops (at this time of year). Yesterday the
sun was behind the bank of almost black cloud, but
was still able to make the top of the cloud
dazzling white.
It was probably 4 or 5° C when I left work
to go home via The Catford Constitutional Club.
When I left there the temperature had dropped to
3° C, and I reckon the wind had got stronger
because I felt devastatingly cold as I walked home
(even with three pints of beer in me!). By 9pm, as
I turned out the light to go to sleep, the
temperature was approaching zero. I expected a
thick frost, or even snow this morning, but there
was neither, and the temperature had recovered a
bit. It was just below 2° C. Today is set to be
another very cold day, with that icy wind still
blowing, but it should be a brighter day than
yesterday with even more sunny spells.
I began to feel very tired yesterday
afternoon. It was partly because I had run out of
work that I wanted to do, and I was being lazy.
That allowed a night or two of poor sleep to catch
up with me, but it was more than sleepiness. It's
probably all in the mind, but it sometimes seems
that more than 3 days of work wears me out, and I
must admit that I would have given anything to go
back to bed this morning rather than face working
a fifth day ! I perked up a bit once I got moving
in the direction of home, and felt 93.877% OK when
I ordered my first pint of beer.
Apart from the obvious disadvantage of it
not being that warm in The Catford Constitutional
Club, I felt quite relaxed once I sat down with my
beer. It was one of those nights when I wished I
didn't have to come to work today, and I wasn't
trying to moderate my beer intake for health
reasons. I could quite happily stayed in there
getting drunk, but I stuck to my guns and left
after drinking three pints. I couldn't believe how
cold it felt outside, and if I had any resolve
left it completely crumbled in that cold - I
treated myself to fish and chips so I had
something hot to eat as soon as I got home - any
they were delicious.
I was home about an hour and a half after I
would normally get there, and in theory I
could have done some constructive or creative, but
I just couldn't be bothered. I watched the remains
of the news on TV, and then watched a couple of
half hour programmes before going up to me
bedroom. It was not very warm in there, and after
20 - 30 minutes on my PC I decided it would be
warmer reading in bed. So I read for a while, and
at just gone 8.30pm I thought I would turn the
lights out and try and get to sleep. There is a
strong possibility that Chris, Andy and Kevin were
still drinking at that time. It would have been
nice to be with them, but obviously I needed my
sleep because I fell asleep quite quickly.
I awoke again at 2am, and it could have been
any of three things that woke me up. There was a
message on my phone that would have caused it to
bleep once whenever it arrived, and it could have
arrived just before I woke up. I needed a pee, but
it didn't seem urgent. The third cause may have
been the noise of the final demolition of the old
footbridge that used to go into the Greyhound
Stadium. I don't know if they did something that
made an exceptional noise. I had mostly been
unaware of the demolition team working at night
when the railway was closed. On odd occasions I
heard a few dull thumps in the night, but they
were barely louder than the sound of my brain
working, and that is all I heard while awake last
night. Maybe it was a case of all three possible
reasons occurring at the same time.
It took a little while to get back to sleep
again after waking up at 2am, but I probably slept
reasonably well from then on until my alarm woke
me up at 5am. That was a peculiar sensation - I
was having a dream at the time, and all I can
remember of that dream was a noise. I have no idea
what that noise was supposed to be from or about,
but what I do remember was the exact split second
that I woke up. It was like an abrupt edit in a
film. I was acutely aware of the noise in the
dream changing to the noise of my alarm clock.
Maybe the realisation that I had observed the
abrupt change in noise as I woke up startled me so
much that I completely forgot what else was
happening in my dream.
Maybe I need to practice my drinking more,
or maybe it is not a hangover after a mere three
pints that makes me feel rough this morning. It
doesn't feel like a hangover. There is no pain in
my head, and no mouth like the bottom of a parrots
cage, but I do feel weak, tired, aching, and
completely disenchanted...or something like that.
As I said earlier, I would have loved to go back
to bed instead of coming to work. I feel that
coming to work was enough energy expenditure for a
day, and that I should be magicked home in an
instant (like a Star Trek transporter) right now.
Sadly I have to do a days work, or appear to do a
days work before I can go home. Once I get home I
can, and probably will be a total lazy slob - and
enjoy doing it ! Unless I get some sort of crazy
urge to get some housework done tonight so I don't
have to do it in the morning prior to my friend
Aleemah visiting for a few hours. I think the idea
of doing it tonight is just pure fantasy, but we
all have to dream sometimes !
Thursday 5th February
2015
07:50 GMT
Some of yesterday, mainly around midday,
was nice-ish. It was still unpleasantly cold, but
it was bright, and sometimes sunny. It all went
downhill just before I was due to go home. It
became quite overcast, and it was trying to rain
(or sleet, or even snow) as I walked to the
station. That rain went away, but it was still
very overcast, and it stayed that way through the
night. All that cloud kept what little heat there
was in, and it was around 3° C when I walked to
the station this morning. According to the BBC's
weather forecast web page at 5am this morning it
was supposed to start off cold and overcast this
morning. Then around 9am it would start to rain
lightly, and that rain would continue on and off
until early afternoon when it would brighten up a
bit.
My free morning newspaper, The
Metro, has a different slant on today's
weather. It predicts that London will get an inch
of snow today ! The truth may lay somewhere
between the BBC and The Metro. I did feel some
very fine rain or sleet on my face when I walked
to the station, and here in Earlsfield I saw a few
wet looking snow flakes drifting down. Since
arriving at work it seems to have got darker
outside, and maybe something drastic is about to
happen, but there is probably an equal chance that
the clouds will be blown away by the chilly air
that is blowing in from Scandinavia. That wind is
adding quite a wind chill factor, and the plus 3°
C is feeling more like minus 3° C at times !
It may have tried to rain on me when I left
work yesterday, and it might have been very
overcast and dull as I made my way home, but I
still managed to retain a thin rind of feeling
fairly OK when I got home - although it was a
close run thing, and one of my mates managed to
push me close to the edge. He phoned me on the
train home, and because I don't like speaking on a
busy train, I suggested he phone back later. We
agreed that just after 5pm would be a good time.
Unfortunately this particular mate has useless
timekeeping, and finally phoned me back just after
6pm, and hour late ! As usual, he had a technical
question for me, but on this occasion I had
absolutely no answer for him. It may have helped
if he were able to give me a clear and concise
explanation of what was going on, but he always
seems incapable of that.....Anyway, I took a
couple of pictures on the way home !
Last night was the third time I saw a Thameslink
train going through Waterloo East station
towards Charing Cross station.
I have no idea why this train should go there,
but it is beginning to look as if it is a
regular occurrence at approx 16:10.
Last night this was all that was left standing
of the old bridge that was part of one of the
entrances to Catford Greyhound Stadium.
Demolition work can only be done when the
railway is not running. No work appeared to be
done last night, but before the upcoming weekend
is over, I expect this last fragment will be
removed, and then no sign will be left that
there ever was a greyhound stadium in Catford.
Shame really.
I might have been
feeling fairly good when I got home from work
yesterday, but I didn't feel like doing much
more than playing with the ancient Toshiba
laptop that I have been rejuvenating. Last
night I installed Windows 2000 service pack 4,
and then set about trying to get it online. I
had a working ethernet card plugged into it,
but I didn't have a convenient ethernet lead
where I working, and so I decided to connect
it via WiFi. I managed it OK, but the aggro
involved reminded me why I wanted to get Linux
running on it. Linux is usually fantastic when
it comes to finding drivers for all sorts of
peripherals, but Windows makes it a pain in
the bottom ! Eventually I found one WiFi
adapter card in my collection of junk that
worked with Windows 2000. Once I was online I
was able to download some useful software, and
although the laptop still lacks any anti-virus
software, it is essentially ready for use.
According to the battery charge indicator,
those old batteries still have 2 hours of life
in them. I expect that is a gross
exaggeration, but I suppose it could be true.
Maybe I'll test it soon.
There was one thing I did last night
that did need a lot of self discipline to do -
washing my hair in a cold bathroom, and doing
it after I had eaten dinner. I'm not exactly
sure what I had for dinner last night.....well
I know I had a Tesco chicken curry ready meal,
but I'm not sure what else I had. I was eating
while on the phone to my mate, and while I was
playing with the laptop, and I was too
distracted to think too much about what I was
eating, and how much of it I was eating. That
was a bit of a shame, but at least I am still
able to wear my new jeans this morning, and
after a day to break them in, they are feeling
a bit less new, and more ordinary (or
something like that).
I treated myself to a glass of whisky
last night, and maybe that helped me get to
sleep a little earlier than the night before,
and maybe I also slept a bit better too....and
yet this morning, I don't feel terribly
wonderful. After I had my shower I had a very
strong desire to go back to bed. If I didn't
have to dress to go to work I would have given
in to that desire in a flash. Nothing actually
hurts this morning, well not in any
significant way, and I am sure so little
whisky couldn't possibly give me a hangover,
yet I do feel rough this morning. It wasn't
just after my shower that I wanted to go back
to bed, but also after I exited Earlsfield
station. I came through the ticket barriers
and out into the lightly falling sleety snow,
and I had a strong desire to lay down, or curl
up in bed. I don't think that sleep was my
ultimate aim, although it would have been
wonderful, but I just wanted to lay down in
the warm, and relax.
There is no chance of relaxing after
work today. It's Thursday, and it is drinking
day ! Thanks to the bus strike that is going
on today, the lads have decided to drink in
The Catford Constitutional Club again, and
that is just fine by me. When the weather is
better, and the buses are running, they like
to rotate between a few pubs, and that can be
awkward for me if the pub is not on my train
line. So I am happy that tonight is another
Thursday night when I can get off the train
home, and divert just a few hundred yards away
from my direct walk home to enjoy a pint, or
two, and maybe even three ! I've warned the
lads that I will probably be unsocial again
and leave after just 2 or 3 pints. It may be a
lack of beer that has helped me get into my
new jeans, and at this cold time of year I
need to take every chance I can to try and
make these jeans even looser. Anything might
help, less food, less beer, or longer walks.
It's just a case of grabbing an opportunity
when it arises.
Wednesday 4th February
2015
08:02 GMT
Yesterday morning's snow did not last that
long. I wasn't outside to see it melt away, but
I'm guessing it had all melted by 9 to 10am. From
then on it was a cold, but frequently sunny day.
By mid afternoon the temperature was supposed to
have risen to 4 or 5° C, but after that it slowly
started going down again. There was a possibility
of another dusting of snow this morning, and maybe
somewhere there was, but nowwhere that I went. The
temperature today is going to be similar to
yesterday, but no sunshine, none at all, is
forecast for today. It is apparently going to
carry on as it is now - rather grey and
unpleasant. Tomorrow could be just as bad,
although there is another slim chance for a light
dusting of snow to brighten things up in the
morning.
Yesterday was another day when I felt better
than I have recently. So I went home feeling quite
good, although maybe not as good as the day
before. One curious thing is that I found
myself breathing a bit hard after rushing from the
train at Waterloo to the escalators to Waterloo
East. It is only a short distance, and I didn't
think it should have affected me like that. Just
to make sure there was something wrong I walked
almost as fast as I could across the link to
Waterloo East. It's a far longer walk than from
the train to the escalators, and yet I was not
breathing any harder. Perhaps I just like the
smell of railway stations or something. It will be
nice when it is very hot and sunny, and I can see
what happens when I push myself far harder - maybe
even running up the escalators (although the
thought of it right now me want to start panting
!).
I went home via Tesco where I spent a lot of
money ! Some of that money went on stuff like a
litre bottle of whisky, and two packs of
underpants, and some of the money went on buying
stuff I shouldn't have bought - but I can't resist
a reduced price bargain (even if it is not
actually a bargain compared to Aldi or Lidl
prices). Amongst the more innocent stuff was some
salad, some extra tomatoes, and some ready made
sandwiches - the tuna and cucumber for breakfast
here at work today, and the cheese and onion for
breakfast at work tomorrow.
I was going to wash my hair before doing
anything else once I got my shopping home, but
while the living room was tepid, it felt
positively freezing in the bathroom, and I decided
I would do something else. That something else was
to continue experimenting with the ancient Toshiba
laptop that I was playing with the previous
evening. It was all a bit frustrating, and should
have provided a great excuse for cracking open my
new bottle of whisky, but that remains unopened.
The problem with the laptop is that it can only
take a small amount of memory, and I have fitted
with as much as I can make reliably work in it. It
still leaves little room to install Linux on it,
and to make matters worse, I think it has a
chipset that is not well supported by Linux.
I have tried half a dozen different Linux
distributions on it with varying degrees of
success (or mostly failure). It is quite annoying
that I can't install Linux when it is so easy to
install Windows 2000 on it (which is what was
originally on it). In the long term it doesn't
matter what operating system is on it because I
can't foresee it getting much use. At the moment
it has a fresh installation of Windows 2000 on it,
and everything works on it except the graphics -
although it is displaying a 800x600 16 colour
window OK. It didn't take long to find the correct
drivers for the graphics (and all the other chips
in it) from Toshiba's archive site, and I will
probably install them tonight together with some
software. Once it is all running satisfactorily I
will take out the hard drive, and replace it with
another one so I can do some more experiments in
an attempt to get Linux working on it. If that
ultimately fails I can put the original hard drive
back in it, and just use it as a Windows 2000
laptop (if I ever use it for anything).
Last night was another night where I seemed
to get to sleep a lot later than I would have
hoped for, and woke up earlier than I hoped for.
Despite that, I don't seem to feel excessively
tired or anything. I was yawning a lot until I had
a shower, and maybe for a bit after that, but I
didn't feel my eyelids drooping while I was on the
train. Maybe this is all because of extra exposure
to sunshine (even if a lot of it is through a
small office window), or it is more evidence that
I was suffering from some strange sort of disease,
probably viral, until recently. The big test will
come on Friday night. There is a gig on in
Greenwich, and if I can find the enthusiasm to go
out, it is easy to get to and from.
One thing that will have contributed to me
feeling better is a tiny little amount of weight
loss - at least I think I have lost a few grammes.
I can't remember when they were delivered, maybe
it was early January, but I bought two new pairs
of black jeans using the same ordering code as
another pair that seemed to be a quite loose fit.
For some reason the new ones seemed too tight to
do up. Just recently I mentioned I had retried
them, and although tight, I could do them up -
just. This morning I am wearing a pair of them.
The definitely need breaking in, and they are
still a little snug, but it is no strain to do
them up. They seem to go well with one of the new
underpants I bought last night - everything seems
very comfortable in the underpants area this
morning :-)
Yesterday afternoon was the second time I've
seen an "alien" train go through Waterloo East
station towards Charing Cross station. As far as
I am aware there is no reason why a Thameslink
train should ever need to go to Charing Cross,
but it has happened twice (to my knowledge) and
at the same time. So something is going on.
There are some sort of weird boxing machines on
the concourse of Waterloo station this morning.
I can only guess it is something to do with a
charity, although it could be something to do
with politics (I think there are faces on the
punchbags).
Tuesday 3rd February
2015
08:47 GMT
Yesterday wasn't bad...although it could
still have been a lot better if it were warmer - a
lot warmer ! The good thing was that it was
bright, and occasionally sunny. That didn't help
the temperature much. It probably didn't get much
"warmer" that 4° C, and it may well have been a
degree cooler than that as I made my way home from
work. During the evening the temperature continued
to drop, and it wasn't too much of a shock to find
this in the morning.......
In case you can't play
the video, here's a few pictures.
Looking north from the footbridge at Catford
Bridge station at approx 6.30am.
Snow swirling past a lamp on the down platform.
About 70 - 75 minutes later, and the sun has
risen (although it's not visible), and the
daylight reveals that the snow is slightly
thicker in Earlsfield as I walk towards work.
There is no sign of the sun yet, but the
forecast says the rest of today should be
quite similar to yesterday. Sometime soon
there will be some sunny periods, and the
temperature will soar upwards by a whole
degree or two ! The high is forecast to be 4°
C. It might not (but probably will) be not
quite as cold tomorrow morning, but only by a
degree or two. It seems we are now truly in
the grip of winter until the end of the week,
and maybe for longer than that !
I felt quite good when I went home from
work yesterday. I shouldn't have done because
I was suffering a small medical calamity.
Every now and then a "crater", left over from
a carbuncle I had 15 or more years ago, fills
up with blood, and then bursts. It may be when
I let my blood sugar rise a little too far, or
fot may be for some reason I can't even guess
at. It is very clean blood, and there is no
unpleasant pus, but it does leave my
underpants rather unpleasantly damp (for the
"crater" is on my inner thigh). It's not
exactly nice walking like that, but strangely
enough, it didn't impede my walking.
Not only was able to walk briskly with
no trouble, but I could do it without my
"floating rib syndrome" causing any
discomfort, and my stomach ulcer, or whatever
it is/was seemed to be barely perceptible. I
arrived home feeling slightly soggy in the
undercarriage area, but strangely good. So
good that I decided I would do some laundry.
There was one obvious item that needed
washing, but I did a couple of shirts and a
couple of pillow cases too. Then I had some
dinner.
Now I must confess that I had a snack
before doing the laundry, and it was a big
greasy packet of crisps. Dinner itself
consisted of three courses. First on the menu
was a plate of salad leaves with some beetroot
and tomatoes. I think that satisfied the need
for green and vegetable stuff. Then I had an
alleged "hot and spicy" chicken tikka curry
with rice. I didn't think it was hot at all,
and not very spicy. So I didn't eat that much
of the rice because I didn't want to dilute
the flavour of the curry sauce too much. The
final course was a little punnet of
blueberries.
As I ate I watched TV, and I continued
to watch TV after I had eaten, but I used a
secret weapon to stop me eating more as I sat
there watching the goggle box. This secret
weapon was not a cigarette, even though that
would have worked perfectly, but an old,
perhaps ancient, laptop. I can't remember how
I got hold of this laptop. I may have been
given it, or I may have fished it out of the
skip. It's been hanging around at work for
ages, and I thought I would take it home to
add to my other ancient laptops. This one, in
one small respect, is better than the others -
the battery in it still retains some charge -
even if it is only 5 minutes worth !
The problem with the laptop is that it
does not have much memory in it, and what it
does have is about all it is able to support.
It makes installing Linux on it a bit tricky.
I had several attempts to install Linux Mint
on it, but it just chokes on the installer. I
think it may also have a tricky chip set in it
which adds another dimension to the problem. I
may have to bite the bullet and find the
patience to use a Linux distribution that is
installed from the command line - something
like Slackware
maybe.
Maybe I'll spend more time on that laptop
tonight, and maybe I'll do some more laundry, or
maybe I'll do nothing. It all depends on how I
feel when I get home. So far this morning I feel
quite well. I felt slightly hungry on my way to
work, but it was extremely mild compared to the
gnawing pain I had yesterday morning. I don't seem
to have too many aches and pains at all this
morning - which is rather strange considering the
weather. Sometime I wonder if I have a weird viral
infection that pops up every now and then, and
then goes dormant, but it could be something to do
with my blood pressure, or blood circulation,
or....????? Whatever it is, sometimes it makes me
feel crap for days, if not weeks, and sometimes I
feel a lot better, and on even rarer occasions I
feel pretty good. it's all terribly complicated.
All I can do is to keep taking the pills, and hope
for the best (or something like that).
Anyway, one bit of good news - I seem to be
able to get into the new jeans that I couldn't
seem to get into when they arrived some time ago
(was it before or after Xmas ?). I find that quite
incredible because while I have occasionally tried
to be a bit careful about what, or how much I eat,
I didn't seem to take any positive steps to get
into those jeans. It's been too cold to take
positive steps, or at least I thought it was, but
maybe I have been more positive than I thought. It
will be nice when it's warm enough to walk without
wearing a coat, and I can try and get serious
about getting a bit fitter !
Monday 2nd February
2015
08:10 GMT
At a different time of year it could have
been the start of a nice day....
....well maybe not when you take into account that
old weather lore - "red sky in the morning,
shepherds warning". I took this horribly blurred
picture through the train window as my train
passed Earlsfield Cemetery just before it pulled
into Earlsfield station. Maybe I should have taken
a short video clip instead, but at least you can
see some of the glorious colours visible behind
the blurry trees. In real life it looked much more
impressive.
The reason for the colourful sunrise was
that the sky almost cleared again during the
night. It was quite overcast as the sun set last
night, but at some time in the night the clouds
cleared, and the temperature dropped to -1° C by
5am...and then it continued to fall. It is
probably about at it's lowest around now, and the
forecast said that would be -2° C. The air must
have been fairly dry because there wasn't much
frost this morning, but all the puddles are frozen
solid. The forecast says there will be lots of
sunshine today, but it won't do much for the
temperature. The forecast reckons the highest
temperature today will be mid afternoon when it
will be a finger tingling 3° C ! Tomorrow may not
be quite as cold as today, but maybe only by a
degree or so, and it may well be overcast for much
of the day.
Doing that hand laundry yesterday really
made a difference to how bad I was feeling. For
the rest of the evening I felt passably OK. I took
some care not to eat anything that I thought might
inflame my sore stomach, and what I ate might have
been slightly low in other things that are not
good for me. My evening meal was extremely simple.
I had two very small baked potatoes, and a small
baked sweet potato. I only know that the potatoes
were baking potatoes because they said they were
on the bag they came in, but somehow the idea that
a potato about the size of an average peach is a
baking potato seems a bit wrong to me. There was
one other ingredient besides the potatoes, and
there is a great deal if dissent about whether it
is good for you, or completely lethal. I am
talking about butter, and maybe the quantity I
used was lethal !
I read in bed until about 9.30pm if I
remember correctly, and then I put my book down,
turned out the light, and I fell asleep very
quickly. As far as I am aware, I slept solidly
until 4am. From then on I hardly slept at all -
which was annoying - particularly because there
seemed no reason for it. Maybe I just didn't need
any more sleep. I felt mostly OK this morning. The
walk to the station in the sub zero air was easy
enough, as was the walk from Waterloo East to
Waterloo station. The only thing troubling me is
the dull ache in my belly. It is mild, and yet
still annoying. One reason for it being annoying
is that it feels like being hungry, and I don't
like feeling hungry when it is cold. I've had a
couple of sandwiches, and that has reduced the
ache a bit, but I guess I'll have to just live
with the rest of it. One good thing is that it
doesn't feel quite as bad as it did yesterday at
times. Maybe the fault is clearing itself up.
Sunday 1st February
2015
14:57 GMT
I didn't like the weather yesterday. Of
course it could have been far, far worse, but
cold, grey, and wet seemed quite bad enough for
me. The temperature didn't really dip much
overnight - maybe it went from 3 or 4° C down to
2° C, but it wasn't cold enough for snow or frost.
I haven't been out at all today, so I can't really
comment on how it feels, but I know that there
were some strong winds this morning,and they would
have paradoxically stopped the temperature dipping
too low, while making it feel as if it was sub
zero ! The wind has dropped a bit now, and after a
few hours of brightness, including a fair bit of
sunshine, it is now cold and grey again. Luckily
it is dry, and it should stay dry for a couple of
days. It is currently 6° C (the forecast reckons
it should be 5° C), but the temperature will
soon start to drop away, and the forecast says it
will be -2° C when I get up, and the highest
temperature tomorrow, allegedly a sunny day, will
be a bone freezing 3° C !
As I suggested I probably would, I did
actually go to bed quite early for a Saturday
night, but I did spend about an hour reading. I
think I got to sleep a little after 10pm. I'm sure
I didn't sleep that well, but I can't seem to
remember why now. Maybe it was because I woke up
at 5am, and never really got back to sleep after
that.....well not deep sleep. I think I snoozed
for what might have been mere minutes, but could
have been longer, a couple of times before I gave
up trying to sleep.
One significant reason why I couldn't sleep
properly after 5am was because I felt really
rough. My floating rib syndrome seemed to be
generating some spurious pains, and I had a
horrible belly ache. It was a very empty, hungry
sort of feeling that at a different time I would
incorrectly interpret as actually being hungry. In
varying degrees it has been going on for some time
now, and there could be many reasons for it -
ulcer, cancer, more heart trouble, or something
completely different. I'll mention it to my doctor
the next time I see her (or him) if I remember.
I did try "treating" the discomfort with
some food, but as I thought likely, it didn't make
any difference. Initially I had a bowl of oats
with cold milk. That should have been neutral
enough to not make things worse if it was
something like an ulcer. The only trouble was that
it was rather cold for a cold morning, and I
followed it shortly after with a bowl of hot beef
goulash soup. That too didn't make any difference
(beyond de-chilling me).
I have now found a partial cure for that
pain, and for the various chest area pains from my
(supposed) floating rib(s). It was a bit kill or
cure, but after hand washing a long sleeve shirt,
a short sleeve shirt, two t-shirts, some
underwear, and a medium size bath towel, I
actually feel a lot better (sweaty, but better !).
It was as if I was suffering from anti (or
reverse) angina. The more I relaxed the worse I
felt. Once I stirred the blood up by doing some
hard manual labour I felt better. That could
be a good clue to perplex my doctor :-)
There is still a long time to go before
bedtime, and I have run out of things to do now.
I'll probably almost certainly
start relaxing again soon - which might not be
sensible, but what the hell ! In the meantime I
will think positive thoughts......It's the start
of the month, and I've been paid. With that pay
I've settled my credit card (actually a bit early,
and I could easily spend something on it before
the end of it's own special month). Unfortunately
they are the only positive thoughts I have, and
now I've used them up. Oh well, back to the
drawing board !
