Yesterday was certainly rather cold, but I
am unsure if the temperature did dip down to 2° C
during the afternoon, as the forecasters thought
it might. Most of the middle of the day was sunny
- not non-stop, but the sunny spells were frequent
enough to make it seem nice - when seen from
inside a heated room ! It was very sunny when I
left work yesterday, and in a brief moment of joy
I could feel the heat of the sun on my face (until
another icy blast of wind blew the heat away
again). During the night it got cloudy again, and
it was cold enough for snow. I heard various
mentions of snow falling in different parts of
London. Here in Catford there was a thin covering
of slushy snow at daybreak, but only on one side
of the road. Half an hour later it had melted, and
all we got was intermittent drizzle from a very
leaden sky. It has been a most unpleasant sort of
day ! Tomorrow could be slightly worse. There
could be snow again in the morning, but mostly it
is just going to be cold and dull. Monday could be
even worse !
Yesterday was another busy day at work
(that's busy by my standards - a workaholic would
say I hardly lifted a finger !). So it was doubly
joyful to leave work in the sunshine, and the
knowledge that I didn't have to worry about going
to a gig last night should have made for a very
relaxing night - but I didn't ! I'm not sure why
exactly, but I felt a little restless last night.
It wasn't the sort of restlessness that might be a
sign of wanting to go out - I felt far too crap
for that - but the sort of restlessness that makes
finding a comfortable position for sleep
impossible. I was in bed, feeling tired, at about
9pm, but it was a couple of hours later before I
fell asleep.
Once I got to sleep I slept tolerably well.
I didn't get up until 2 hours later than I would
on a workday, but the last few hours of sleep were
not that deep, and I would have liked to have
slept for longer still if I could have. I think
that if I had needed to go to work this morning I
would have felt pretty rough, but while I took it
fairly easy and slow, I felt quite OK. It was a
different story when I went to the station to met
Aleemah. My legs felt really stiff, and although I
was probably not walking much slower than usual,
it felt like slow progress.
The first stop after meeting Aleemah was my
bank where instead of depositing a very small
value cheque which I had forgotten to take with
me, I withdrew some money. I was happy to confirm
that my wages for February were in my account, and
ready to be drawn on. Unlike normal people, I
didn't spend much over Xmas, and I was able to
transfer some money into my savings account this
month. It is possible that my savings account will
be the only thing that comes between me and
debtors prison when I try and live on the small,
very small, pension that I'll be getting in June.
So it is sort of important that I try to keep
topping it up when I can.
While Aleemah had her veggie breakfast in
the pub, I sampled a couple of beers. I had a half
pint of beer from the Cronx brewery in Croydon. It
was one that I have been curious about for a year
or two now. It is a porter flavoured with chilli
sauce. The chilli sauce is (or was) made by one of
my musician friends. The company he founded to
make chilli sauces, Mad-Ass, has now folded, but
he still makes the odd batch of sauces for
friends, and maybe he still makes it for the
brewery. The other beer was a very pleasant ale
made to an Italian (if I remember correctly)
recipe by an Italian brewer in a "borrowed"
English brewery specially for Wetherspoons.
Outside the pub strange things were happening....
These are artificial wooden trees being
built from scrap wood found in Catford. It is some
sort of crazy art project, and at this point in
time it looks pretty crappy. Maybe the finished
thing will make some sort of sense, but these
sorry looking excuses for a bonfire have already
taken 2 or 3 weeks to build.
Sometimes Aleemah brings around a DVD that
doesn't really do much for me, but today she
brought around a really turkey ! I can't remember
when the film was called, but it was set in
something like an Amish community in America, and
concerned some sort of religious prophecy that the
devil would be brought into the community when 6
girls, all born on the same day, reached the age
of 18. Basically, everyone runs around like
headless chickens spouting warped and twisted
religious stuff. The only good thing about it is
it appears the devil won in the end.
Aleemah was meeting up with some people
early this evening, and it was more convenient for
her to stay here a lot longer than usual rather
than go via her own home. That was a minor
inconvenience for me because I would have liked a
snooze this afternoon. Instead of that we watched
some TV. The "True Entertainment" channel was
showing some episodes of Sherlock Holmes. Both
Aleemah, and myself quite like Sherlock Holmes,
but we much prefer the series made by Granada/ITV
with Jeremy
Brett playing Holmes - it seemed to capture
the essence of the books very well (and they are a
good read !). The two part movie we watched today,
The
Incident At Victoria Falls, lasted 4
hours in total (including interminable
commercials)(!) and starred Christopher Lee as
Holmes, and Patrick Mcnee as Dr Watson. To be
honest, it wasn't very good.
Once Aleemah had left I managed to prove
that you can't cook spring rolls in a microwave
oven. They looked as if they were just about ready
cooked, and only needed heating up, but when I
eventually read it, the label on the packet said
differently. They weren't actually horrible after
being zapped in the microwave, but I don't think
I'll be buying any more of them from Aldi. If I
hadn't stuffed myself with rather more than those
spring rolls it could have been tempting to order
a Chinese takeaway tonight, and have some real
spring rolls.
The only thing left to decide about tonight
is what time to go to bed, and what time to turn
the light off and try to get to sleep. I am
thinking of going to bed to do some reading very
soon, and I will see what happens then !
Friday 30th January
2015
07:57 GMT
It probably depends on where you were, or
what you were doing at different times yesterday.
In some cases the weather might have been
described as terrible, and in other cases, not too
bad. in my case it was not too bad. I was indoors,
and in the warm when it rained yesterday. So the
rain didn't bother me. It would have been nice to
be in place that still gave shelter from the wind,
but which exposed me to a lot more of the hour, or
so of sunshine we had. Viewing it through a small
window took away it's magic ! It was dry again
after a short shower just before I went home from
work, and it stayed dry until I was back
indoors.....then it sleeted ! (Can you say sleeted
? Or is "sleet fell" better ?). I was actually
indoors in The Catford Constitutional Club when
that sleep fell. It had stopped when I walked home
90 minutes later, but I did see a few cars parked
up near home that had snow on them. Apparently it
snowed a couple of miles south of Catford.
This morning there was no sign of snow. It
was 4° C when I got up, and the last of the rain
was falling as ordinary wet rain. It had dwindled
to almost nothing as I walked to the station. Here
in Earlsfield there was no sign of any snow, but
there were plenty of big puddles - mostly thanks
to the abysmal state of the pavements around here.
At the moment the brightening sky looks rather
clear, and there is hope that we may catch a
glimpse of sunshine this morning, but the forecast
still reckons the temperature could fall to as low
as 2° C by mid morning. Then it is suppose to rise
a couple of degrees before falling again after
dark. I think there is another chance of snow
tomorrow, but even if there is no snow it is going
to be a cold, dull and miserable sort of day -
unless the forecasters change their minds - which
is not without precedent !
It was another busy day at work yesterday.
Why do so many people want to call on my time when
I would prefer to be sleeping ? I was looking
forward to going home when it started raining at
the same time it was forecast to stop raining (it
had been sunny while it was forecast to rain), but
fortunately the rain stopped at least 10 minutes
before I actually left work. it was rather cold
and soggy outside, but at least I wasn't being
rained on (I was really dressed for heavy rain).
After another hour of my life was wasted
travelling between work and Catford, I arrived at
Catford Bridge station, and walked straight down
to The Catford Constitutional Club.
It was already busy in there. Yet another
Lewisham Council staff leaving do was taking
place. I am amazed that the Council has got enough
staff left to operate, but presumably they have. I
didn't notice her at first, but after a few
minutes I found Jodie lurking in a corner. A while
later the others appeared and joined us. It was a
bit of a subdued drink - mainly because the
leaving party was making a bit of a racket
(although in fairness, the acoustics in that place
make it quite easy to raise a racket in there).
The good thing was that they had a very nice beer
on. It was from the Oakhams brewery, and called Mompessons
Gold. I was only going to have two pints,
and go home by 6pm last night, but I couldn't
resist having one more pint of it, and didn't
leave until about 6.30pm.
That beer was slightly stronger than many
- 5.2%, and three pints was just enough to
make me give in to the temptation of buying some
nice hot saveloy and chips on the way home. The
fact that it was feeling very cold outside was
another big temptation. I may not have walked as
fast as I possibly could have, but it was not far
from it, and while it still felt like a long five
minutes, it only took that time to get home (or
maybe it was six minutes, but who's counting
anyway ?). It was nice to get indoors, in the
warm, and tuck into my dinner. I stayed downstairs
watching two old episodes of M*A*S*H before going
up to my rather chilly bedroom.
I was going to spend a bit of time on the
internet, but it was so cold up there that I
almost went straight to bed. I didn't even bother
to read, and just turned over and went to sleep
(or at least that's how I think I remember it).
That must have been before 8.30pm, and I seemed to
sleep solidly until 1.30am. From then onwards I
slept really badly. I woke up to pee, and I woke
up at least once, but I think it may have been
twice with cramps in my legs. It seemed impossible
to find a comfy position to sleep in, and it felt
like I was hardly asleep at all for much of the
early hours - although I must have been asleep
more than I thought I was.
I should feel crap this morning, and yet I
don't feel all that bad. I guess I feel similar to
yesterday. Some of the usual bits ache a little
bit, but nowhere nearly bad enough to inhibit me
in any way. My guts feel/felt a bit windy, but I
managed to avoid gassing anyone on the trains into
work. One source of mild discomfort is the new
t-shirt I am wearing. Unlike t-shirts of old, this
one is nice and long. So even though it may be
very slightly tight across my belly, there is no
chance of it riding up and exposing my belly - a
failing of some t-shirts I own. The more annoying
thing is that it feels tight across my chest. It's
not tight enough to restrict my breathing by more
than 0.004%, but it is tight enough to sometimes
feel a bit odd to my numb nipple, and nearby parts
of my chest that have never regained normal
sensitivity since my operation.
I was under the impression that there was a
Chain gig on in Greenwich tonight, but I was
wrong. It is next Friday night. There probably is
a gig on somewhere tonight that I could go to, but
missing it would not be as bad as missing a Chain
gig, and that's rather good because I think my
plans for tonight revolve around staying out of
the cold and (possible) wet, and staying cosy and
comfortable in my nice warm room ! I can't quite
think of any specific plans beyond staying warm
and dry. Maybe I'll think of something on the spur
of the moment
Thursday 29th January
2015
07:45 GMT
Yesterday morning was very unpleasant - a
combination of strong winds, and some heavy
showers. It may not come as a big surprise that I
didn't go out in all that to see if it really was
11° C as the forecast said it would be. I guess it
was around midday that it all cleared up, and the
afternoon was quite pleasant, although the
temperature dropped down to 7° C, or less, quite
quickly. It was still a bit windy, and that made
it feel colder than it actually was, but I
did feel a little bit of warmth on my face from
the bright sun. It's a shame that the sun is only
visible for a few seconds as I walk to the station
after work.
Today's weather might be nothing special, or
it might be very special ! Currently the sky is
fairly clear, and the temperature when I left home
was just 2° C. The forecast says it will only warm
up by a couple of degrees, and that later this
morning, and perhaps for the start of the
afternoon, it will cloud over, and it will
rain.........(dramatic drumroll).....or it might snow
! It's more likely to be sleet than snow, but we
are almost in February, and that's a popular month
for snow around these parts. It should all have
cleared up by the time I go home from work, and
with luck it will be sunny, but the temperature
could be back down to just a couple of degrees by
then.
Something a bit strange has happened at
Earlsfield station. Platform two is blessed with
three departure displays on it, and two of them,
the newest ones, were quite temperamental. Quite
often they would say no information was available,
but at the beginning of this week they fixed them
- sort of. The first one you get to when arriving
on the platform, has always worked OK. The next
one was dodgy, but now seems to work OK. The last
one, towards the end of the platform, is now
displaying valid information, but it is for
platform 3. Now that could be useful assuming you
don't mind sprinting almost the whole length of a
platform. Then sprinting down the three flights of
stairs, out through the ticket barriers, in
through the other ticket barriers, and then up
three flights of stairs to platform 3. A good
Olympic runner could probably do it in time to see
the train they wanted disappearing round the bend
on it's way to Wimbledon. I had to photoshop
the next picture because the displays flicker when
the shutter speed on the camera is too short, but
I promise this is a true representation of what
the display was telling me - the next train was
going to Hampton Court despite that being in the
opposite direction !
I was tempted to go looking for some cans of
Special Brew on my way home from work yesterday,
but there were more important things to do. In the
early hours of yesterday morning the demolition
people had cut up even more of the old bridge that
used to go to the Greyhound Stadium. The sky was
mostly clear, and it was quite bright when I
arrived in Catford, and I assumed that I could
take some better pictures of the remains of the
bridge than I had taken the previous evening.
Unfortunately I hadn't considered that I would be
taking pictures into the bright western sky. So
many of the pictures came out looking like
silhouettes, but a little tweak here and there
produced one picture that showed as much as was
needed to show.
This morning the
large piece in the centre of the picture, plus
the last of the steps to the left had been cut
away. Tonight they will probably remove the
remains of the steps to the right of the
bridge. Apparently they will need to stop the
trains running for some, or all of a Saturday
or Sunday to remove the support and steps on
the west side of the railway lines. That
structure also has bricks in the base of it.
Quite why that needs the trains to stop
running is anyone's guess, but that is what
the latest letter to local residents says will
happen.
Even while sitting in front of a nice
warm heater I could feel it getting colder
outside. That put me off doing anything
constructive last night, although I somehow
managed to make a small effort to be a bit
more careful about what I ate for dinner. The
first course of my dinner was a lamb hotpot
ready meal. It was quite nice, but quite
small, and what there was of it was mostly
potato. I could have been tempted to heat
something else up after that, but I decided to
have a large bowl of oats with skimmed milk. I
also added some milled linseed with dried
berries in it. I'm sure even the most fascist
health food nuts would have grudgingly agreed
it was sort of healthy. They probably wouldn't
have approved of the tinned pears in (apple ?)
juice that I had with it. I felt very full
after that, and yet it should have been fairly
low in most things, and high in fibre. Maybe
it wasn't quite so low in calories as I would
like to think. After all, a horse could run
the Grand National on a bowl of oats !
With nothing much to do, and it being
not that warm in my bedroom, I decided to go
to bed at 8pm and read for an hour last night.
I expected that I would soon feel sleepy, and
would probably turn out the light, and fall
asleep before the hour was up. That didn't
happen, and I probably spent another hour
thrashing around trying to get to sleep. I'm
sure I didn't sleep too well last night, and
yet I don't seem to feel sleepy this morning.
In fact I have little to complain about, but a
little is enough ! All the usual aches are
there, but they are all very weak this
morning.
One ongoing malady that I haven't
mentioned for a long time is my left hand, and
the loss of sensation from two fingers since
my operation 16 or 17 months ago. Loss of
sensation is not an accurate description
because I have quite a lot of sensation from
those two fingers, and it is the wrong
sensation. Instead of normal sensation then I
touch them (or that touch something else) I
feel a sort of tingling, mild electric shock
sort of sensation. Sometimes it could be
described as painful, but unpleasant would
serve as a description most of the time. Some
days it is worse than others, but there has
been no sign of any improvement now for months
and months - probably in the last year, and
maybe even more than that. One thing has
improved though, and that is the strength in
my left hand. Just last night I realised I was
able to open a bottle by twisting the lid with
my left hand, and it was only a day or two ago
that I was able to operate a pair of nail
clippers using my left hand. Admittedly they
were a fairly new, and very sharp pair of nail
clippers, but it wasn't that long ago that I
had to get inventive to clip the nails on my
right hand.
So I guess things are looking up. Maybe
it is all to do with finding that maximum
acceptable dose of Bisoprolol - one of my
blood pressure tablets. Since taking half the
dose I was on before, I definitely feel better
in all sorts of ways, and even resuming the
statin tablets has not caused any problems.
There are now only a few things that to sort
out before I consider that I am firing on the
maximum amount of cylinders possible. Losing
some, if not a lot of weight would be
damn useful, and maybe once spring gets here I
might be able to do something positive about
it. It would probably help in all sorts of
ways with the other great problem I have now.
That being a total inability to go into the
cold and wet and dark nights to go to gigs and
stuff.
There is another easy to get to gig
tomorrow night, and I am almost at the point
of not even thinking about trying to get to
it. Maybe I'll be saved the annoyance of not
going to that one by absolutely foul weather
tomorrow night - bad enough to make anyone
sane stay indoors. That probably means I
should take full advantage of some boozing
tonight. The Thursday night gang are in The
Catford Constitutional Club tonight, and I
will be joining them for a few beers, but
maybe only a few. last week I only had two
pints, and although it felt almost rude to
walk out so early, it did feel about the right
amount of booze on that night. I suppose it
all depends on what types of beer they have on
tonight, but if there is nothing wonderful on,
I may only have two pints tonight. If worst
comes to worst, I still have 8 unopened cans
of super strength lager waiting for me at home
!
Wednesday 28th January
2015
07:52 GMT
As far as I can tell, yesterday turned out
to be very much as it was forecast to be (or at
least how interpreted the forecast). I think I
might have seen a drop of rain hit the window, but
it was essentially a dry day with a bit of
sunshine in the late morning. I'm not sure how to
describe the temperature - it was 6 - 7° C, and
that is not extremely chilly, but is a long way
from warm. The biggest annoyance was that it was
very cloudy as I made my way home from work - for
reasons that will soon become apparent. Today it
is forecast to be 11° C at 10am, and 10° C at 11am
! Whether it will actually be those temperature is
anyone's guess. It was 8° C when I walked to the
station, and the forecast says it could be half
that when I walk home again. The 11° C high in the
late morning is sounding like a fluke. There has
already been some light rain this morning, and
there will be more, but the afternoon could be
dry. The worst feature this morning, and maybe one
that will carry on all day, is a strong wind that
makes it feel a lot cooler than it actually is.
I was rushed off my feet at work (by
comparison to many days), and I put in at least 5
hours of solid work - which must be some sort or
record for me. I prefer no more than 2 or 3 hours
work in an 8 hour period ! So it was quite a
relief to head for home yesterday. As I suggested
yesterday, I called in at an off licence to see if
I could get a four pack of Special Brew. well they
didn't have that, but they did have Tennents Super
Lager, and they had Skol Super - which is also a
9% brew. I can't ever remember trying Skol "tramp
juice", but some day I will because I bought a
four pack of it !
There were two unfortunate things about going home
from work yesterday. The first was that it was
cloudy and very dull. The second was that I was
carrying a bag with 8 cans of super strength
lager. The latter made it difficult to hold my
mobile phone to use the camera. The former made it
difficult for that mobile phone camera to record a
decent image ! On Monday night the demolition
squad cut through the old bridge that used to
cross the railway lines to get into the old
Catford Greyhound Stadium. They used a humungous
looking crane to lift the bridge part away, just
leaving the supports either side of the railway
lines. Last night they started cutting those away
too.
This is the hulking great crane used to lift the
bridge section away.
View from the north (through the fence) showing
where the gap where the bridge crossed the
railway.
View from the south with huge crane in the
background.
These picture would have been so much better if
it had been less cloudy, and a lot brighter.
You might think that
I would have devoured at least one can of my
super strength lagers last night, maybe even
as soon as I got them home, but you would be
wrong. I actually celebrated getting them with
a large whisky a little while before I went to
bed. I had lemon squash with my dinner. I
don't know what is so good about it, but the
bottle of Tesco "everyday essentials"
double concentrated lemon squash that I bought
on Tuesday night is delicious ! I drink it at
approximately half the strength you are
supposed to make it, and I love it. It's a
shame that I can't imagine that it has any
special health benefits, although I am sure
some health nutter could imagine it cured
cancer, herpes, or the common cold, but if it
did do something useful it would be the
easiest health fad in the world to follow. The
truth is likely to be the opposite - it's
probably packed with the sorts of artificial
sweeteners and preservatives that the most
pessimistic health food nutters would say
shorten your life by 60 years. Oh well, that
me dead then !
My dinner was hardly healthy either. It
was two small ready meals. At least I thought
they were small, but sometimes recently it is
if I have been drugged and had a gastric band
fitted while out cold. Those two small looking
meals seemed to make me feel very full, and
what's more, they did their best to give me
acid reflux. I'm glad I got that under control
before I went to sleep. Perhaps the large
whisky helped in that respect.
It probably helped me sleep well too. At
least I think I slept well. I know I dreamed
about something last night, and I seem to
think it left me feeling puzzled when I woke
up for a pee in the night, but I can't even
remember what the puzzle was, let alone
wondering what the answer to the puzzle might
be. Probably the worst problem I had when I
woke up was that I was a bit farty, but that
settled down quite quickly, and I didn't have
the same problems I had yesterday morning
(having to use the toilets at Clapham Junction
station etc.).
The rest of my body is working tolerably
well...well sort of. I seemed to be aware of
my right knee as I got in the bath for my
morning shower this morning. There have been
mornings when it has been quite painful to
lift my leg over the rim of the bathtub, but I
haven't been bothered by it for a couple of
weeks now (maybe more). This morning I was
aware of a slight discomfort, but it didn't
seem to be noticeably worse than recent
mornings. So I am not sure why I became aware
of it like I did. Most other bits of me seem
to be freely working, and that is certainly
true of my floating rib syndrome. As I pulled
up my left shoe laces to do them up, my
sternum made quite a powerful
cracking/grating/popping sort of sound - a
sound that is more felt than heard. It wasn't
painful at the time, but the general area does
seem slightly sore a few hours later - but it
rather depends on what posture I use when
sitting down.
I'm trying to think if I have any plans
for tonight, or indeed if I can think of
anything I might want to do tonight, and my
mind only comes up with one idea. That idea,
and it is just an idea rather than a plan or
ambition, is try a different off licence to
see if I can get any cans of Carlsberg Special
Brew before the bastards water it down, and it
no longer becomes the source of instant
oblivion. That last bit is actually nonsense.
Once upon a time, in a summer far far away,
while I was doing my fourth year City And
Guilds Telecoms exams, I had a couple of cans
of Special Brew, and a spliff before taking
the electronics exam, and I achieved a
distinction for that. I took the maths exam
stone cold sober, and failed miserably !
Apparently you can't pass the electronics exam
without knowing the maths, but no one seemed
to tell my brain that !
Tuesday 27th January
2015
08:13 GMT
Maybe I could describe yesterday as OK, or
maybe a sort of "fairly OK in some
ways"........Well, it wasn't terribly cold, and
even though there was only a bit of proper
sunshine, it was a mostly bright-ish sort of day.
Today maybe a slightly cooler version of
yesterday. It was 5° C (a figure that both my
outside thermometers agreed on for a change) when
I got up, and that is a degree or two better than
the forecast said would be. It should get a couple
of degrees warmer through the day, and there could
be a couple of sunny periods during the morning if
we are lucky. It's looking like tomorrow could be
one of those weird days ! The temperature could
hit the magical 10° C, the point where it stops
feeling finger tingling chilly, and there could be
some sunshine, and there could be some rain,
although the current forecast is suggesting there
will be sunshine and rain at the same time ! Maybe
it will be a good day for rainbows ?
Although there had been some sunshine
earlier, it was quite dull when I left work to go
home, and the temperature had fallen to 7° C.
Despite that I felt tolerably good, and as I made
my way to Catford I contemplated the idea of doing
all sorts of exciting things. One idea was to go
home via Tesco, and but a mere few items. I wanted
some sandwiches to bring to work today - I got
tuna and cucumber, and they were very nice. I
thought I would get a couple of bowls of ready mix
salad, and see if I could use one to substitute
for a less healthy part of my dinner, but I
somehow forgot that idea when I was in the store.
the next bit made me angry - very angry indeed !
I remember reading or hearing about an idea
where a bunch of low life do-gooders decided it
would be a good idea to stop supermarkets selling
high strength lager, but I was not aware that any
legislation, or other rule had been brought into
being yet. It only happens a couple of times a
year, but I had a yearning for a tin of Special
Brew, or failing that, a tin of Tennents
Super Lager, but there was none to be found
on the shelves, and that really pissed me off. All
I managed to buy was a bottle of Lemon squash.
Some would argue that lemon squash is better for
me than strong booze, but the people who say that
are foolish bigots (and probably religious). A few
people throwing up in the high street, or
inconveniently dying of alcoholic poisoning in
A&E are minor problems in this increasingly
complicated world. The real problem come from
those who don't drink, and I'm talking about those
who go around beheading people, or blowing
themselves up. That is caused purely and simply by
a lack of alcohol. Those guys from IS (or ISIL, or
whatever they call themselves today) would
probably be great guys to know if only they necked
a couple of cans of Special Brew now and then.
Just think of it. World peace is just around the
corner, and some miserable bastards want to
perpetuate a war because they don't like people
enjoying themselves. I think the minister of
health needs his brains tested, or should be
proscribed as a terrorist !
I arrived home seething, and all my plans to
try and do something useful went completely out of
the window. In fact it was worse than that. I
decided to sulk ! I had been really looking
forward to a can of very strong lager, and nothing
else would do. I had plenty of Scotch, and bottles
of other beers if it was just alcohol I wanted,
but I didn't just want alcohol. I wanted high
strength lager, and all I drank was lemon squash -
which was quite nice, but didn't destroy any brain
cells !
As part of my sulk I went to bed at 7.30pm,
and I read for an hour before turning the light
off, and falling asleep remarkably quickly. Even
sleep would not cheer up my brain. I had the most
frustrating dream you can ever imagine. My
enjoyment of one dream rested on remembering an
earlier one, and I couldn't ! The earlier dream
was evidently about not taking the opportunity to
photograph something. The later dream was
mostly about trying to remember what the thing was
that I should have photographed. Whatever
that something was, it would have been most useful
in some unknown way for photoshopping beards onto
beardless photos in a way that I cannot even begin
to imagine (or why anyone would want to do
anything like it) !
Apart from a slight hangover of the
frustration of the lack of super strength lager,
and the frustration of the dream, I felt tolerably
good when I woke up, and tolerably good when I set
off for work - tolerably good apart from one small
annoyance. I had one of those stomach aches where,
against all good sense, I felt it would be safer
to visit the abominable toilets at Clapham
Junction station.....although I may have done them
a disservice today. When I went in them today a
cleaner was just finishing his cleaning session,
and there was (unusually) no queue. Even though
freshly cleaned they are still rather nasty, but
they did the job, and the remainder of my journey
into work was more comfortable.
Today I may go home via an off licence, and
see what the super strength lager situation is
like there. I don't think I want any strong lager
tonight, but if I can buy some cans, I will almost
certainly drink one, but I will definitely try and
save one so in the unlikely (impossible !) event
that I live for another 60 years, I can show
someone's grand children what it was like to live
in a free country ! I don't think I have any more
plans or ideas for tonight, but something may
materialise out of the ether to amuse me...maybe.
Monday 26th January
2015
08:01 GMT
It seems a bit strange when the evening
ends up warmer than the day, but that is what
happened yesterday. It was just about 9° C when I
went to bed last night. Earlier in the day it was
only about 7° C. Even stranger was waking up to
find it was 10° C - which, happily enough, is
about the temperature when I begin to feel
comfortable. Maybe not comfortable for standing
around in a t-shirt, or even commuting in a
t-shirt, but comfortable enough when moving
around. This short lived departure from
"bloody cold" does come with a downside -
rain.....but maybe less of it than expected.
Yesterday the forecast said it would rain
for much of the morning, and that some of it would
be heavy. By this morning that had been downgraded
to just light rain for a couple of hours. The
actual truth of it is still revealing itself.
There was some very light, almost ignorable rain
as I walked to the station, and it had stopped by
the time I got there, although I passed plenty of
evidence of heavier rain during the night - big
puddles ! That was the last rain I saw, but it is
still very cloudy. So cloudy that it was like
night when I arrived at Earlsfield, and it is
still very overcast now - about 40 minutes later.
During the day it will get colder, but there is
hope for some sunshine in the early afternoon,
perhaps as soon as midday, but it will be cloudy,
but dry, when I go home from work. I think the
forecast said that tomorrow morning would start
off below zero, but with luck that will turn out
to be wrong !
There is some evidence of how wet it was
last night in this poky little, crappy quality,
still image from a crappy quality traffic camera
situated near the end of my road. It seems there
is a gigantic puddle that needs a "keep right"
sign by it to stop inconsiderate motorists
drenching pedestrians as they drive through it at
top speed. (Assuming anyone behind the wheel of a
car is a raving pychopath is a good road safety
measure - many forget this, and many die because
they forget).
(Note to whoever added the caption to this
camera - Rushey Green has an E in
Rushey).
I nearly forgot to do one of the few things
I thought I probably ought to do yesterday.
Earlier in the day I planned to wash my hair
before I had my evening meal, but somehow it just
seemed to slip my memory. So it wasn't until after
I ate that I had to bend over the side of the bath
tub with full stomach as I washed and conditioned
my hair. All I can say was that it was less
uncomfortable than I thought it would be, but I
really wish I had done it before eating !
I did one other thing last night, and it was
something I meant to start over the winter
holiday. It was to repair the camcorder cassette
that my friend had given me, and then attempt to
copy the tape. Repairing that cassette was a
really frustrating job, but the most annoying
thing was that the tape appeared to be blank when
I finally came to try and play it. There could be
several reasons for that. Maybe I assembled the
cassette incorrectly, but I don't think that
likely. Another possibility is that the tape has
become contaminated, and that contamination
clogged up the already starting to fail head drum
in my camcorder. That may actually be more
probability than possibility. When I tried one of
my own cassettes that I wanted to transfer to a
digital file, it hardly played back at all. I
managed to see a few seconds of clear playback
here and there, but it was completely unusable.
Cleaning those delicate video heads is going to be
a tricky, and possibly dangerous operation.
(Dangerous to the tape heads, not to me !).
Last night was another night when I didn't
feel all that tired when I went to bed, but I
still dropped off to sleep quite quickly. I
probably slept quite well last night as a result
of leaving the heater off all night. On nights
when the temperature has dropped to below 6° C (or
something in that vicinity) I leave the heater on
low all night, but last night I could feel it
wasn't terribly cold outside. Quite how I can tell
that on the inside of double glazed windows with
the heater on I just do not know, but last night I
just knew that it would be quite warm enough with
the heater off - and I was right !
At 3am, when I woke up for a pee, it was
feeling rather cool, but not really any worse than
that, and I put the heater on before getting back
in bed. When I woke up at 5am it was nice and
warm, and I felt refreshed enough that I only half
wanted to go back to bed for the rest of the
morning. This morning I don't feel "good", well
not "very good" but I don't feel that bad. I am in
no particular pain, and the walk to the station
seemed easy enough, although I didn't seem to feel
like walking as fast as I would have liked to.
Walking from the station to work seemed less
satisfactory. It was like walking up a very gentle
slope - it was fairly easy going, and I could
easily have kept walking for double, triple,
quadruple, or even quintuple the distance, but I
would still prefer it if it felt like walking down
a gentle slope instead of up !
I am now looking forward to some sunshine at
some time today, and I might even pop outside for
a "virtual cigarette break" if it seems nice and
bright, and hopefully carrying a little heat with
it. Other than that, I am looking forward to going
home again. I don't think I have any plans for
when I get home (except eating dinner !), but
maybe if the clouds are thin enough, and it seems
bright enough when I get home, I may do some more
laundry.....or maybe I'll just crash down on my
bed and read a book. I suppose I could also waste
a few more hours watching TV - there must
be something on tonight after two days of nothing
but complete sludge over the weekend.
Sunday 25th January
2015
15:42 GMT
I didn't notice a frost this morning, but I
did notice it was only 1.7° C outside at about
9am. It was probably colder than that at sunrise,
but that is only a guess. What isn't a guess is
that it is currently 9.5° C, and somehow I can
feel that in my bones despite being in a heated
room. Maybe there is potential for the
temperature to rise a bit further before sunset,
although the weather forecast says the temperature
should be almost 2° C lower, and falling. The
other thing the forecast got wrong was that there
was a little bit of sunshine this afternoon, and
that the day was generally brighter than how I
interpreted their little dull cloud symbols. It
would be nice if the forecast for tomorrow morning
was wrong. It may be 9° C, and I am happy about
that, but I am not happy that it may well rain
from sun rise to midday !
I guess yesterday has to be written off as a
very lazy day. Of course there were reasons for it
even if they were not good reasons. The main
reason being that I felt pretty lousy. The various
aches and pains I had were insignificant by
themselves, but a day of then does wear you down a
bit. Plus I just seemed to need a long rest to get
over a week at work (even if I was off sick for
one day in the middle of that week). A days
rest certainly seemed to do some good, and this
morning I felt doing stuff.
Perhaps the moderately large dose of Scotch
I had last night helped, and maybe it was because
I did not have any expectations of doing anything
that I actually did stuff this morning. One thing
I did was to have a good shower. Now I have to
confess that on some Sundays, when I am sure I
won't be seeing anybody, and when I know I will
probably not even be leaving the house, I will
make do with a quick rub with a damp flannel - or
less !
Once I was clean and dressed I tackled a few
little jobs. The first thing was to waterproof a
couple of pairs of shoes with ScotchGard, and then
I took out the rubbish from the kitchen. While I
was out near the wheelie bin I also cut out
(because I couldn't pull it out) a large weed that
was threatening to take over the garden path. The
next little job was to do the washing up. There
wasn't much of that to do as such, but I also
wanted to clean my electric grill - and that
needed a lot of elbow grease ! Once the washing
up, and the grill was clean, I made it grubby
again by cooking some breakfast in it !
I had breakfast, and then took it easy
again, but it wasn't long before I became active
again, and washed three shirts, some t-shirts, and
some underwear. I wondered how doing that would
affect my floating rib syndrome. I am happy to say
that while it might have felt a bit sore while I
was actually wringing stuff out, it didn't seem to
leave any nasty legacy, and I almost wonder if it
has made things less sore somehow. What is for
sure is that the exertion of doing that washing
made me feel quite warm, and quite tired. So I lay
down and did some reading....and promptly fell
asleep !
I have got one definite plan for sometime
soon, and that is to wash my hair, but beyond that
I will be free wheeling through the rest of today.
It is possible I may transfer another bit of
camcorder footage onto my computer, but I may end
up just vegetating in front of the TV - assuming
that unlike last night, there is actually
something on worth watching.
I did do one other little thing today, but
it required so little effort that it is hardly
worth mentioning, but the result did produce a
little picture to break up the narrative - even if
it is a very boring picture ! I was curious about
how cold my bathroom got overnight, and by using
my temperature logger, I now know.
At just gone 9.30am I put the logger (with
a fresh battery in it) in the bathroom, and the
temperature almost instantly dropped from 22° C
down to under 17° C, and then went back up to just
over 17° C - and I'm not sure why ! Through the
day the temperature slowly rose and then fell
slightly. At 1am this morning I was awake, and
curious about what the logger was recording. So I
brought it back in my bedroom, and the temperature
immediately shot up to 21° C. When I put it back
in the bathroom the temperature slowly fell until
it hit the lowest at 8am. That was a rather cool
16.2° C. If there hadn't been some warmth drifting
up the stairs from the living room heater it could
have been a lot colder in there. Brrrrrrrr !
Saturday 24th January
2015
21:04 GMT
There were a few sunny spells yesterday,
but much of the day was a bit dull. The main thing
was that it was, or at least felt like it was a
cold day. It did warm up a degree or two late in
the evening when it started to rain. It started a
little later than expected, but it did seem to
falling quite hard once it got going (although I
didn't go out, and I had the curtains closed, so I
didn't follow it's progress once I saw it was
raining heavily). It stopped raining sometime in
the early hours of this morning (or possibly
earlier), and by sunrise most of the pavement and
road seemed to be relatively dry. Today was most
definitely the sunniest day we have had in ages.
The sun was shining from sunrise to sunset - at
least I think it was. The only trouble was that it
still seemed unpleasantly cold....although I was
sure that 6° C should have felt that cold.
Tomorrow could start with a frost, but even though
there is no sunshine forecast, the temperature
will slowly rise through the day. Monday morning
could start off as "warm" as 9° C.
I think I knew that I wouldn't be able to
raise the enthusiasm to go out last night. It was
partly the typical tiredness I feel after work -
enhanced by it being at the end of the working
week - and the knowledge that it was almost
certainly going to rain last night. On top of that
I made things worse for myself by getting in some
shopping, and eating too much too early in the
evening. By the time Chain would have started
their gig I was in bed, and it didn't take me long
to fall asleep. I feel slightly, mildly perhaps,
annoyed that I don't feel annoyed about missing
the gig - particularly at a venue that is only
about 15 - 20 minutes away on a fairly frequent
bus service. I think that just as I am forced to
accept that Winter will always follow Autumn, and
that Winter days will always be short and dark, I
am now forced to accept that I am crap at going
out on winter evenings.
Today I should have done great things, but I
didn't ! I've felt very strange today. It's as if
I have been waiting for something to happen. I
have no idea what I expected to happen, but
whatever it was didn't happen, and it could be
said that I have wasted the whole day - but that
is not an adequate description. In fact several
things have conspired together to result in my day
not being quite how I expected it to be.
I was hoping that I would go out and enjoy
the sunshine today, but I didn't feel like walking
today. One big reason for that was that it was too
cold. I did go for a short walk to the shops just
to prove to myself one more time that I don't like
walking when it's cold. To make matters worse, my
"floating rib syndrome" has been playing up today,
and certain movements have been uncomfortable.
Sometimes walking is a cure for it, and sometimes
it can make it worse - although I thinking it was
twisting and bending to pick something off a low
shelf that aggravated it more than just walking.
Today has been a bit of a painful day
overall. As well as the pain from my floating rib,
I have had a more regular pain from the socket of
one of my missing teeth. I had a slight accident
when chewing something hard, and I pranged it.
It's not a strong pain, and I haven't even
considered taking any painkillers, but it is a bit
persistent, and that is annoying. Maybe I should
pour some whisky on it. Maybe I'll have some
whisky anyway. I haven't touched my bottle for
three weeks now, and it might be getting lonely !
[Walks to the other side of the room.
Pours a large measure in a small glass. Walks
back to the PC again] Mmmm that's
nice !
My grand plan for a bit of exercise today
was to walk to the Ladywell end of the park. If
that felt OK I was going to continue walking to
the other end of Lewisham, and then if that felt
OK I was going to continue to Greenwich, and see
if anything was moving on the river, and take a
few snapshots along the way. Those three stages
are very approximately equal - very
roughly about one mile each, and once upon a time
I could walk three miles as if it was a mere walk
to the shops. I'm not so sure about it now though.
I am in really bad condition these days, and if
today had been warmer, or preferably hot, it could
have been the start of the practice I so
desperately need.
My little walk was to the 99p shop where I
particularly wanted to buy a pack of lithium coin
cells. They are not usually terribly good quality
cells, but at 99p for 6 of them, they are
incredibly cheap. I also bought all sorts of crap
- including a can of Coca Cola "life" - the stuff
that comes in a green can, and uses some
incredible herb that is a hundred times sweeter
than sugar (or some such nonsense) to sweeten it.
Having now tried it, I can say that it doesn't
taste very pleasant, and at home I will stick to
Aldi own brand diet cola when I want a drink of
cola.
For that 10 minute walk I tried out my old
"Karrimor" walking boots. They felt very spongy
compared with the Converse (or cheap Converse
like) trainers that I usually wear now, but I am
not convinced they were more comfortable. However
they weren't uncomfortable, and they would
probably be better suited for longer
walks....probably.
Only two other activities took up
significant chunks of today. I spent an hour or
two reading, and I spent at least 2.5 hours on the
phone ! One mate phoned me up and talked away for
what must have been a good hour, or probably more.
The only problem with that was the timing. That
call came through just as I was trying to convince
myself to go out for the walk that never happened.
I was already teetering on the brink, and the time
spent yacking on the phone finally, and with no
effort at all, pushed me over the brink, and I
gave up even considering going out. Later on in
the afternoon another mate phoned me up, and kept
me talking until my right elbow was beginning to
ache from holding my mobile phone to my ear. Just
in the middle of writing this, the first mate
phoned me again, but I managed to get him off the
phone after about half an hour !.
It's been a strange day today. It has passed
very quickly, and that's fortunate after the way I
have been feeling - sort of a bit like ill or
tired, or imperceptibly dying, with a few pains
thrown in here and there - but even more a sort of
day where I feel relaxed and agitated in equal
quantities. A lot of time has passed, and I have
little to show for it, and yet somehow I don't
seem to care, and yet I feel I probably should
care, and in a way I do, and in a way I don't.
Sometimes life can be very confusing ! It
has to be said that some of this angst is all to
do with a so far unfulfilled ambition to try and
feel fit enough to do some useful stuff this year
- a year when it is almost certain that I will
throw off the shackles of work even if it makes me
a pauper, and a year when doing cheap stuff like
walking (assuming I don't pay huge fares to get to
my starting point) will be one of my main sources
of entertainment.
Friday 23rd January
2015
07:45 GMT
It was definitely cold yesterday, although
I can't put a figure on it. I could guess that it
was getting close to zero only an hour or so after
the sun set. To make up for it, there was a fair
amount of weak winter sunshine. It was almost
sunny as I made my way home from work, but the sun
was partly hidden behind a thin veil cloud - so
thin that it was easy to see it as a large yellow
ball - albeit still bright enough to give floating
green spots in the road if looked at for more than
an instant.
This is how the weather has been forecast
for today, and it is already wrong. There was
plenty of frost on the cars, but I don't think the
temperature was as low as -3° C - except maybe in
the Waterloo area, but this forecast was for
Catford, and the lowest temperature on my two
outside thermometers was only -0.8° C. Meanwhile
it is clear as a bell outside. There was not even
any atmospheric looking mist rising from the
cemetery by Earlsfield station as there
sometimes is when it wants to convey a spooky
image. I don't think we will get the bright
sunshine forecast for 11am unless the thin clouds
disperse a bit more. It is already starting to
look bright, but I don't think it will be
brilliant - except maybe in small doses if the sun
finds some gaps in the clouds. What worries me
most is the rain forecast for this evening. That
has been a feature of forecasts for tonight for
several days, and I have a horrible feeling it
will be correct. It will be a grand annoyance if
it is raining when I want to go out tonight !
It was mildly chilly when I left work
yesterday, but it was nice being dazzled by the
sun in the very small stretch of road where the
late winter sun peeps over a low gap in the
buildings. Being a Thursday night, there was the
opportunity for some boozing to be had. My first
thoughts on the matter was that I would skip
drinking last night in preference to having a
booze up tonight, but maybe the rain that has been
forecast for tonight for the last couple of days
conspired to make me change my mind. It only half
changed it, and I had a mere two pints last night,
and was on my way home before 6pm.
Normally a bit of booze make you feel the
cold less, but it felt damn chilly as I walked
home, and I was glad that I had left the heater on
low in the living room all day. It wasn't exactly
warm in there, but at least it kept the chill off.
To help me warm up I had two dinners last night.
the first was a roast beef ready meal. I bought it
in Aldi as an experiment - one I don't think I
will repeat. It was tasty enough, but there was
only about five spoonfulls of it. Maybe it was a
childs meal, or even a babies meal or something,
but it certainly wasn't more than a small snack
for a gluttonous bastard like me ! Dinner number
two was also a ready meal - a lamb curry, and that
hit the spot nicely !
I might have had a good sleep last night if
I had managed to keep the duvet on me correctly
all through the night. I woke up one time feeling
freezing because half of me was uncovered. I think
I was having some exciting dreams at one point,
but I can't seem to remember anything of them
apart from one snapshot like picture. I was
sitting at a table with my two brothers (even if
they didn't look like my brothers), and with two
other people who I can't put names to. I think one
of them was a woman, but this vision is getting
very hazy now. The other person in the room was my
younger sister, and she did resemble my younger
sister in some ways. I think all we were doing was
talking, but I can't remember what it was about.
I don't feel that good this morning. It's
nothing that can't be explained away by old age
and the cold. The cold has seeped into my bones,
and I feel both cold and stiff legged. It seemed
quite a chore to put one foot in front of the
other as I walked to the station. It was as if I
had walked five miles, and still had five miles to
go. It was a bit easier walking when I got off the
warm (but not very warm) train at Waterloo East
station. Maybe it was because it felt really cold
at Waterloo, and hurrying along would (or should
have) warmed me up a bit (but didn't seem to). It
didn't feel quite so cold in Earlsfield. It seemed
similar to Catford, and oddly enough it seemed
just as creaky walking from the station to work as
it did walking from home to the station.
It will be nice when the working day is
over. At the moment it feels like home time is in
some never to be reached future. My main reason
for wishing for home time to get here is so I can
get home and put my feet up. This is the incorrect
attitude for one who wants to go out tonight....at
least I think it is. Here's hoping that I get my
second wind after I get home, and that it is not
pouring with rain at about 8pm when I would be
leaving to walk to the bus stop. The idea of
walking in cold pouring rain, and then getting on
a cold, damp, and misted up bus is unpleasant
enough to over ride any desire to go and see Chain
playing in Forest Hill tonight !
Thursday 22nd January
2015
08:23 GMT
There were a couple of times when it seemed
like it was brightening up, but every time it came
to nought.Yesterday remained as a mostly heavily
overcast, and rather cold day. During the night
the temperature fell low enough to deposit a thin
layer of frost on some, but not all car roofs.
When I left to come to work the temperature had
risen to just over 3° C, and according to the
forecast, that is how it will stay (plus or minus
one degree) until sunset. During tonight the
temperature is forecast to fall to -1° C ! It
seems it won't do anything for the cold, but the
forecasters hope that there could be a few sunny
spells today, and after a rather grey start I can
see what looks like a large patch of sky with only
a few thin wisps of cloud in it.
The cold grey overcast sky did little to
inspire me yesterday, and although I had stopped
running to the toilet soon after the last train to
work had gone, I still had a dull ache in my
stomach area that persisted until I went to bed.
It was not a strong pain, and quite frequently I
would forget it was there until some movement or
other brought it to my attention. It was
definitely a day for staying in the warm, and
relaxing, and yet through all that I was able to
do some useful stuff.
Probably the most useful, in fact it is
essential, and should be done more often, was to
make a backup of my /home directory on my Linux
PC. (That is approximately equivalent to "My
Documents" plus other stuff on a Windows PC). I
also made an extra backup on a different external
hard disk of my photos. Losing most of my home
directory to a crashed/corrupt/dead hard disk
would be a great annoyance, but liveable with.
Losing my photo collection would be a great
tragedy because once a photo is gone it can never
be replaced.
One other little chore was PC related, and
in a way it was something I have pondered doing
for ages. I have 5 external 3.5" hard drives in
enclosures, and they all use similar looking power
supplies which use identical power plugs - but
wired differently. Using the wrong power adapter
could be fatal (to the hard disk or control
circuit). So I sat down with my Dymo labelling
gun, and marked each external hard disk, and each
power supply with "Connections type A" or
"Connections type B" in two different coloured
tapes. With luck I will never have to panic about
trying to remember which power supply goes with
which external hard disk.
Early in the afternoon I washed my hair.
Bending over the bath as I shampooed and
conditioned it was tough on my back, but didn't
seem to make the dull ache in my stomach area any
worse (or any better), and fortunately it was a
very mild ache at that time (or I would not have
done it). It was while I was waiting for my hair
to dry that I did all the labelling I described
above. When my hair was just about dry I
laid down on my bed to either read or snooze. That
was nice except for one thing. My lower back
seemed very sore after a while, and I decided the
only thing I could do about it was to go for a
walk.
It was about, or just after sunset when I
went out, and maybe the falling darkness hid the
appalling looking sky. So going out didn't seem
quite so traumatic as it could have been. In fact
on my way home it was fully dark, and being out
seemed OK apart from the cold, but of course
travelling towards home usually feels pretty good
under any circumstances. The destination of my
walk was Aldi. There was nothing I desperately
needed, but I thought it would be a good idea to
buy a couple of sandwiches to take to work. Of
course I ended up buying far more than that, but I
don't expect it to last that long !
That walk, including lugging home 6 litres
of assorted fizzy drinks in my ruck sack, sorted
out my sore back, and may even have helped with
the stomach pain. Maybe it was the satisfaction of
a job well done, or something like that, but I did
feel quite good when I got home. It's curious that
I generally don't like going out after dark,
mainly because of it's association with bed time,
but sometimes it is a sort of thrill to be
travelling after dark - although maybe only when
the direction is towards home.
I don't think I snoozed that much yesterday,
so it was a bit of a surprise that I didn't feel
sleepy at all during the evening, and I felt no
need to go to bed early. While I didn't feel
sleepy, I did feel something like guilt (or
stress) that I didn't get to sleep until 11pm (at
a guess). I actually got into bed a little after
10pm, and just started reading until I felt sleep
- but I didn't seem to feel sleepy. In the end I
turned the light out, turned over on my side, and
as I was thinking that I would never get to sleep
I did fall asleep ! I think I might have slept
quite well. The first time I remember waking up
was 4am, and then when I was re-awoken by my alarm
at 5am, I felt almost refreshed.
This morning I thought I was going to have a
re-run of yesterday morning, but my guts settled
down OK, but not before missing my usual
train. I had to get the next train 31 minutes
later, but that train misses out Lewisham station,
and takes less time to get to Waterloo East
station. I felt relatively good walking to the
station, and I don't think I yawned once on the
train. There was a delay on services leaving
Waterloo due to a broken down train at Earlsfield
(again !!), and after a very short wait I got the
first train out of Waterloo once things started
moving again. I don't know if I had got the
earlier train from Catford Bridge if I would have
arrived at Waterloo before the trains stopped
moving, or even if I would have been on the broken
down train sitting down bored stiff stuck between
two stations. What I do know is that the train I
did get was packed solid, and I had to use some
ungentlemanly moves to get off the train when it
arrived at Earlsfield. For a few desperate moments
I wondered if I would only ever be able to get off
the train when it arrived at it's final
destination - Guildford !
It will be nice when today is over. I have
the opportunity to go boozing tonight. The
Thursday night lads are drinking in The Catford
Constitutional Club tonight, but I am thinking of
giving it a miss tonight, and doing my boozing on
Friday night when Chain are playing at The Hob in
Forest Hill. On the other hand, it is possible I
will feel thirsty when I get off the train in
Catford on my way home............
Wednesday 21st January
2015
10:31 GMT
The forecast for yesterday was just about
completely wrong ! There was no fog and mist in
the morning - it was actually quite sunny. The
rain and/or sleet didn't start to fall early in
the afternoon - it was still sunny ! By 3pm it did
start to get very cloudy, and as I made my way
home from work it did look like it might rain, or
sleet, or snow, but it didn't (if you exclude the
two small raindrops I felt hit my face). I did see
a few slightly damp patches here and there. So
presumably it did rain, but just not while I was
watching ! I think the temperature forecast was
probably about right - it certainly felt very
cold. The temperature stayed very low during the
night, but not low enough for frost this morning.
The forecast for today still says that the
temperature will be an almost constant 3° C, and
that there will be thick dark clouds overhead. I
currently measure the temperature at 5.3° C, and
in the last few minutes it seems to have got a lot
brighter - almost as if the sun might come out,
but maybe not that bright because I can't even see
where the sun should be in the sky right now.
I suppose it was the dense clouds above my
head, and the threat of rain or sleet, that
dampened my feelings as I made my way home. I
should have felt quite excited because earlier in
the afternoon I received a text message asking if
I fancied a quick beer in The Catford
Constitutional Club on my way home from work. This
time I did, and so I met up with Jodie and Mark
for just two and a half pints of some ales. One of
the ales was fairly nice, and the other was
slightly nasty - it was a strong brown ale with a
complex taste - complex as in I couldn't make head
nor tail of it !
I almost got home in time to see the start
of the national news on TV, but even when I got
home there was the slight delay as I re-heated my
chicken, potato, and green bean casserole. (On
reflection, I think casserole is more correct than
stew as I described it yesterday). It was quite a
nice dinner to come home to, but with hindsight I
think I should have added some tomato purée to
thicken the gravy up a bit. I ate it while
watching the local news on TV - or some of the
local news. When it got too boring I would flick
over to another channel. Maybe I did that a lot
because I can hardly remember any of the news I
saw.
I then made the fateful mistake of watching
some more TV in the living room - fateful because
it gave me the munchies. The casserole should
easily have been a big enough meal, and on the
whole it would have been low fat, and moderately
low in calories and stuff. Any advantage of that
was nullified by my choice of nibble as I
continued to watch TV - salted peanuts. Initially
I just poured a small amount in a shot glass, and
intended to keep the rest of the packet for
another day, but like any addict, I just couldn't
leave it there. It wasn't a very big packet of
peanuts, but before too long I had eaten the whole
lot !
I don't know if it was the peanuts, the
casserole, or the beer, but I woke up this morning
an hour early with a rotten stomach ache. Until
then I believe I had slept fairly well, but from
then on I felt rotten. Many visits to the toilet
helped, but didn't fully stop the dull hollow pain
in my stomach. I didn't actually think I was ever
going to stop going to the toilet, and so I
decided it would be safer not to go to work. As so
often has been the case in the past, I could have
made it all the way to work, with a good hour to
spare before I needed to go again.
I still feel rotten though, and in lots of
different ways. My stomach is still sore, and I
seem to be feeling the cold a lot this morning.
That is making many of my joints feel stiff and
aching. It is without doubt a duvet day. According
to my thermometer it is 23° C in here right now,
and I still feel cold. Not actual shivery cold,
but I do feel like getting back into bed again. I
was having a half hour snooze just before writing
this, and before that I had an omelette for
breakfast (I figured that a few eggs might do
something useful for my digestive tract). Perhaps
I'll do some reading with the duvet pulled over me
and see what happens.......
Tuesday 20th January
2015
07:53 GMT
Yesterday managed to stay cold and dry, as
forecasted, but it was less overcast, and more
sunny than the forecast suggested it would be. It
was trying to get cloudy as I made my way home
from work, but it seemed nice enough to take a
couple of pictures while I was waiting for my
train on the platform at Waterloo East station.
The view to the north. The camera doesn't really
show it unfortunately, but most of that sky was
bright blue.
It was looking rather cloudy to the east.
Looking west and more (mostly) clear sky that
should be blue.
When I say north, east or west when
describing those pictures I should have added
"roughly" or "approximately", but it's close
enough to make no real difference to the
greater meanings of life, the Universe, and
everything. What did make a difference was
that the sky was still fairly clear when I
arrived home, and that meant that it was still
light when I went indoors. It wasn't brilliant
daylight, but it was still daylight ! Of
course that clear-ish sky meant the
temperature tumbled overnight from about 4° C
when I got home to around zero this morning.
In fact on one of my outdoor thermometers it
was exactly zero point zero ! (The upstairs
thermometer was saying -0.3° C !)
This is a snapshot of the radio linked
thermometer in my living room. Inside the room
it is a comfortable 20.5° C, and outside it is
0.0° C. The two lower figures are humidity,
and I don't really understand them unless they
read the opposite to how I think they would
read. 81% humidity sounds very wet, but any
moisture in the air would have frozen out. So
It must be 81% dry outside. Drying a
couple of towels in the living room must make
the air quite humid, and so it is only 39% dry
in there.
The forecast says this morning would be
misty or even foggy, and it could continue
into the afternoon. My first glimpse out of
the window at 5am suggested there could be a
slight haze, but no worse, and that might just
have been a dirty window pane ! At the moment
it is very clear with a thin scattering of
clouds. The next event, if no mist of fog
forms, is for some sleet to fall in the
afternoon, and rather annoyingly, just as I am
going home. Let's hope they got that as wrong
as the mist and fog !
I can't understand it, but it seems that
I was feeling quite good when I went home from
work yesterday. The sunshine would have helped
a bit, but it doesn't count for more than 25%
of feeling good. It can't be because I've lost
weight because I haven't - my trouser belt is
still on the same notch it's been on for
months now. I reckon that maybe I did have
some sort of mild 'flu like virus at the
beginning of the month. I just assumed that
many of the aches and pains were old age and
general decrepidness. If it was some sort of
bug, it seems to be over now. That doesn't
mean I am completely free of aches and pains,
but they can be safely accoounted for by old
age and decripedness !
When I got home (in fading, but still
real daylight !) I first tackled a few small
jobs like doing all the washing up. There
wasn't a lot of it, but I needed extra bits
because as well as preparing dinner for last
night, I also prepared, and 90% cooked dinner
for tonight too. Tonights dinner is almost a
healthy meal, and it would have been if I had
added more green vegetable, and less potatoes.
It's basically a sort of stew of potatoes,
green beans, skinless diced chicken, and some
stock and herbs. With luck it will be
delicious. last nights dinner was very tasty
too. It was a ready made lamb curry with rice
bought from Aldi. It comes in different
packaging (round instead of square), but
tastes identical to the more expensive version
that Tesco sells.
Before eating dinner, although I did
have snack first, I decided I felt good enough
to tackle washing not one, but two medium
sized bath towels. It was quite hard work, and
I didn't have the energy or patience to keep
rinsing them until the water ran clear, but I
think it should have been good enough. Rather
than attempt to wring them out completely (or
as close as...) I used my recently discovered
trick of putting a clothes horse in the bath,
and leave them on it until they had stopped
dripping before taking them down in front of
the heater in the living room. (Although they
had stopped dripping, I was still able to
wring out quite a bit extra water that had
accumulated in the bottom part of the towels
as the hung on the clothes horse).
After all that effort I looked forward
to eating my dinner. As well as the curry I
also had some fruit - quite a lot of it. I ate
a whole bunch of very sweet grapes - so that
would have pushed up my blood sugar level a
lot. To make things even worse I had a large
chunk of cheese with those grapes. Cheese
really does go well with fruit ! As all that
lot began to settle in my stomach I started to
feel very weary. I watched as much of the news
as I could stand (approx 75% of it - all the
main, and half the local news), and then I
turned off the TV, and went up to my bedroom.
I did some stuff on my PC until 8pm when I
decided it would be more cosy, and more
comfortable in my bed.
I assumed that I would read in bed for a
while, but I turned out the light without
really thinking about it, and while I was
laying there wondering why I was in bed so
early, and thinking I would never get to sleep
so early, I fell asleep ! I believe that if I
can remember dreaming a lot then I probably
was not sleeping too well, and I do remember
two dreams. Both dreams seemed quite long
dreams, and both dreams were almost repeats of
previous dreams - at least the setting were
the same even if the plot was slightly
different.
The first dream is now so hazy that I
can't recall anything more than the setting
for it, and it was a avery familiar setting
that occurs in many of my dreams. I was at a
railway station going home, and this railway
station is always like a mainline station with
a small branch line that terminates there. The
train I wanted was from the branch line, and
to get there usually means crossing a
footbridge that sometimes can be quite long.
On this occasion it actually meant crossing
the tracks themselves. That was no bother
except that I seemed to be wearing flip-flops,
and I was worried about stubbing my toes on
the live rail !
The other dream, that happened closer to
when I woke up, concerened being in a large
sprawling building that seems to often be a
university (or at least my concept of what a
university could be like)......although when I
consider it further, in the cold light of day,
it could well be based on the inside of Kings
College Hospital where I had my heart surgery
nearly 18 months ago. I seem to be having
similar dreams fairly frequently recently. In
this morning's dream I was in something like a
classroom looking out of the window. I could
see across a large river, probably The River
Thames somewhere near Docklands, and the sky
was full of very solid looking very dark grey
clouds with a merest hint of green in them. It
looked as if it would either snow or pour with
rain. It rained - very heavily, and the middle
part of the dream was to do with getting from
one side of the building(s) to the other
without getting too wet.
One very large room (like a school
assembly hall) had water pouring in the roof,
and was flooded to a depth of a few inches or
more. The last bit of the dream was following
someone who seemed to know a better route
across the buildings. He turned out to be a
professor of chemistry and/or physics, and he
decided to give an impromptu lecture on the
way - which was fascinating even if it was
meaningless !
This morning I feel fairly good again,
but not perfect, and I feel like I would like
to go back to bed again. Perhaps my doubts
about sleeping well were correct. Assuming I
continue to feel fairly good all day, and
rather crucially, it doesn't rain, sleet or
snow on me as I make my way home, then I
should be able to look forward to a fully
productive evening - hah ! Fully productive
may mean no more than washing my hair tonight,
but maybe I'll wash a shirt or two, or maybe
not.
Monday 19th January
2015
07:52 GMT
Yesterday afternoons weather wasn't bad, but
it wasn't terribly good either. It was brighter
than the morning, and I seem to recall that the
sun came out for a few minutes, but it was still
very cold. The last temperature I noted was
sometime mid-evening, and it was just 1.9° C. I
don't think it was a clear night, but the
temperature continued to fall, and there was a
thick frost on all the cars this morning.
The frosty scene that
greeted me on my way to work this morning.
Incidently, what may look like a couple of red
stars just to the right of the top of this
picture are actually red lights at the top of a
pair of cranes.
Today is going to be a cold day - a very
cold day. It is possible that there are going to
be a few sunny spells around lunchtime, but much
of the day is forecast to be lightly overcast, and
the temperature will not rise above 3 or 4° C. At
least that was the forecast for Catford at 5am
this morning. It could be different here in
Earlsfield. For instance there doesn't seem to be
any frost here, and I did notice that I could
still feel my fingers while walking from the
station to work. Mind you, it's bloody cold in my
office at the moment. It's going to be several
hours before I want to pick up any cold steel
tools !
I mentioned yesterday that one of the things
I wanted to do, but didn't, was to experience the
novelty of a train from Catford Bridge to
Victoria. Maybe I'll be able to do that on another
Sunday in the future, and there is one other thing
that will have to wait for the future that I
wanted to do yesterday. That was to wash a towel
or two. Hand washing medium sized towels requires
a lot of effort, and I think I deliberately forgot
to remember to do them yesterday. Maybe, and it's
a premium, family sized maybe, I might do one
tonight. It would certainly be a good way of
warming myself up after getting home after work
today.
Yesterday afternoon I didn't do anything too
exciting, but I did do something that must have
lasted quite a few hours. I transferred, and
edited, some more old camcorder footage on my PC.
The clip I showed yesterday, and which seems to
play just about passably on the highly variable
internet connection here at work, was a fairly
simple job. Apart from clipping out the boring
bits, it is pretty much the same as it came out
the camera. To do this video editing I have been
using a really cranky bit of software called
Kdenlive. It's a Linux application that is part of
the KDE desktop (hence it's name), but can be used
without having the full desktop installed. Maybe
it is because I don't have the full KDE desktop
installed that it is so cranky. For instance there
seems no way of switching from capture mode to
edit mode without the whole thing crashing !
It is quite a learning experience getting
the best out of Kdenlive. Now that I have found it
is possible to capture footage from my digital
camcorder via the IEE1394 connection, and control
the capture using Kdenlive, I no longer have to
reboot to Windows to do the job. Maybe the most
important lesson I have learned is to just assume
that Kdenlive is going to crash after capturing
the required video, and I might just as well close
the program, and re-start it ! That's one type of
learning. The other is how to get the best out of
all the options available, and slowly, slowly I am
experimenting with some of the transitions and
effects. I think I am beginning to get the hang of
Kdenlive now, but there are still many things to
experiment with.
Yesterday's experimental editing was of some
footage shot on my analogue Hi8 camcorder in 1997.
The exact date was the 17th August 1997, and on
that day the preserved tube train owned by Cravens
Heritage Trains was being used in normal public
service on the Chalfont And Latimer to Chesham
shuttle service at the top of The Metropolitan
Line. Back in 1997 London Underground was still
run by professionals, and engineers who rather
liked their heritage. So such things were possible
- unlike now when London Underground is run by
Health and Safety, HR, and politicians ! I've
reduced the video bit rate on this video so it
should play with less buffering on slower
connections - particularly the pathetic upload
speed from my server on my Virgin Media internet
connection !
I didn't really do anything after I had
finished my video editing/Kdenlive lesson. There
didn't seem to be anything on TV at the times I
wanted to watch it, and so I did a bit of reading,
and spent rather a long time on the internet. At
least I think I did. Somehow time seemed to fly by
- which is odd when you are really not doing much.
I went to bed at my normal time for when it's work
in the morning - 9pm - and I think I must have
fallen asleep quite quickly because I can't
remember thrashing around doing my best at trying
to get into that one mythical comfortable position
where sleep comes instantly.
I guess that I must have slept quite well,
although I was definitely annoyed when my alarm
woke me up at 5am. I am sure I could have slept
from 5 to 500 minutes longer if left undisturbed.
Considering the debilitating effects of the cold,
I guess I feel reasonably OK this morning - again
! I'm not sure what is going on, but I seem to be
waking up and feeling relatively good a lot
lately. I have to admit it is nice when it
happens, although as I say it is a relatively
good, and I could easily wish to feel far
better....something like not a single ache or
pain, and the feeling of tremendous energy and
invincibility ! I guess I would have to be in
love, and it would have to be during warm weather
for that to be true. The warm weather will come,
but I think I am past the idea of being in love at
this stage in my life.
Tonight I may, or I may not wash a towel or
two. I will definitely cook dinner, and I may cook
another one ready to be re-heated tomorrow night.
Apart from that I will just be a slob and slouch
around doing nothing until I go to bed. And what
could be finer than that ?
Sunday 18th January
2015
12:41 GMT
As the sun set it unsurprisingly got colder
last night, but it didn't get that cold.
There was no frost, for instance, but it was still
very, exceedingly perhaps, chilly. Worse than
that, it was very dull. It looked and felt like it
would snow, but in reality it was not cold enough
for that, although the wet ground showed something
fell from the sky last night. Occasionally it
brightens up a bit for a short while, but overall
it is a damp and gloomy sort of day. It is
currently 6° C, but it feels colder than that
because of a draught. I say draught because the
wind is not strong enough to say anthing worse,
and I think I reserve the use of the word breeze
as a pleasant cooling feeling on a hot day. The
word draught (or draft if you prefer to spell it
that way) seems like it implies a shivery feeling.
The weather forecast (as observed at midday)
says it should really be 3° C right now, and not
6° C. In another hour it will rise by one degree,
and then start to plummet down to just 1° C by 5am
tomorrow morning. It seems tomorrow is going to
start at a most unpleasant temperature, and at its
peak the temperature will only rise to 3° C before
going into negative figures during the night. We
really are in the grip of winter even if there is
no snow - yet !
I have to confess that I didn't do much at
all yesterday evening, and some of what I did do
was rather naughty ! That naughty thing was to
order a large takeaway, and make a bit of a pig of
myself as I gorged on grilled meat and salad (it
was a kebab). I ate that while watching TV. It was
a bit of a struggle to find something worth
watching last night, and I quickly turned the TV
off after I had finished eating (which did
coincide with the end of the programme).
I did do one innocent thing last night, and
that was to convert some old camcorder footage
into digital video. If your browser can show it,
here's some video shot on the 10th November 1993.
If I recall
correctly, I had read that there was a special
train, probably a railtour, that was going to
go down what was then The East London Line. It
is now no longer part of London Underground. A
few years ago it was converted from fourth
rail operation to third rail, and became part
of London Overground. I have no idea if I got
the wrong hour, day, month, or even year, but
I never saw that special train. Instead I took
some video of A60/62 stock Underground trains
in their London Docklands livery calling at
Wapping station. That type of train is no
more, the fourth rail is no more, the London
Underground roundels have gone, and (I think)
the station has been
redecorated/refurbish.....tarted up !
After a good eight hours sleep, plus a
spare hour or two, I got up this morning
feeling fairly OK, and I had great plans to do
stuff - until I opened the curtains and looked
out on a miserable looking day. I know there
are people that like to wrap up in 78 layers
of
waterproof/heatproof/weatherproof/wildebeast
proof clothing, and go out walking or
exploring, but I am not one of them. I double
checked that when I went out to post the
paperwork for my pension this morning. Even if
I were in an air conditioned bubble with warm
air and cold beer on tap, it would still have
looked bloody horrible out there.
I tried to convince myself that it would
be interesting to get the train from Catford
Bridge to Victoria, but although I would like
to do that sometime, today was not going to be
the day. I console myself that this unusual
diversion could continue every Sunday while
all the work is going on at London Bridge
(consulting the timetable would confirm this -
I must do that sometime). The best I could
manage today was to go to Aldi to get some
shopping.
I still don't understand why I am not
drinking cola at home, and haven't done so for
a fortnight now (or is it longer than that ?).
It doesn't seem to have any useful
differences, or indeed any measurable
differences as far as I can see - although I
may belch and fart a bit less, but it is hard
to measure such a variable intermittent sort
of thing. The one thing I miss about not
drinking cola is the fizziness (the very thing
that could invoke "wind" from either end !),
and so I bought a couple of bottles of
lemonade in Aldi today. One bottle is from
their "Everyday Essentials" range, and it
contains no lemon at all, and yet it tastes of
"lemonade", and is quite pleasant to drink.
The other bottle does contain real lemon
juice, but only a mere 2%, and is described on
the till receipt at "Premium". I haven't
tasted it yet, but something described as
Premium must surely taste wonderful - as you
would expect for 39p a bottle ! The "Everyday
Essentials" lemonade I am drinking at the
moment costs 17p a bottle !
I think it is now time for lunch. Of
course because it is a Sunday, lunch will
actually be dinner, and today it is a sort of
meatball stew. I'm using up some potatoes that
are starting to go green, a red onion that
seems to have lasted ages without any
noticeable deterioration, some beef stock, and
newly bought beef meatballs. After dinner I
will probably have a snooze, or maybe just do
some reading. After that I have no idea at all
what I will do !
Saturday 17th January
2015
15:45 GMT
Once again, apart from the cold, it was a
fairly pleasant sort of mid January day. It was
definitely sunny from time to time, and it should
have been dry all day - but it wasn't ! It was dry
and sunny when I walked from work to the station,
and it seemed nice enough to take a picture while
I my train was entering the platform. Over to the
west, towards the left of the picture, there is a
golden glow from the setting sun behind the trees,
and the sky looks relatively clear with some blue
showing. Everything looked fine.....
15 minutes later I was at Waterloo station,
and it seemed strangely dark outside. Another 7 or
8 minutes later I was waiting for my train from
Waterloo East station, and it started raining on
me ! It was also raining moderately hard when I
got off the train at Catford Bridge station. The
only good news is that it had more or less stopped
when I had walked half to two thirds of the way
home. I'm not sure if there was any more rain
after that, but I do know that the temperature
dropped to 3° C by 10pm, and was -0.1° C when I
got up this morning. By 11am it had warmed up
enough to stop a shower falling as snow ! Much of
today has actually been sunny, and the temperature
has now risen to 4.5° C. The sun will start
to set in half an hour, and the temperature will
probably fall low enough for another thick frost
in the morning. Tomorrow might be like today but
colder !
Getting wet as I made my way home from work
did not amuse me, but somehow I managed to feel
like I had some sort of energy left again. It
wasn't much, but it seemed to be enough to hand
wash 4 shirts and some underwear. As well as that
little task, I also "ScotchGarded"
(waterproofed) a couple of new pairs of cheap
trainers. I've not tried spraying cheap canvas
trainers with ScotchGard before, but I am told it
helps to make them waterproof, and to a lesser
extent, stain proof. Unfortunately it doesn't make
them proof against crap spelling ! I had
considered doing a bit of tidying up/housework
last night, but after 5 minutes of it I sort of
gave up. Between all that I had what I thought was
a moderate sized dinner that seemed to fill me far
more than expected, and I watched some TV.
By 9pm I was ready for bed. I have no idea
what time I went to sleep. Being a Friday night,
and no work in the morning, I didn't put a lot of
effort into going to sleep, and just sort of laid
there with my brain still active. After a time,
and I suspect it wasn't very long, I was fast
asleep. It was nice, as it is every week, not to
have to get up at 5am, and although I may not have
slept all that well for the last few hours, it was
gone 7am when I decided to get up.
I seem to recall that I felt sort of good
when I got up. Everything seemed to be working at
a useful efficiency, although when I walked to the
station it did seem like my ankles hadn't been
oiled, and were a bit stiff. I was going to meet
Aleemah at the station, and as usual, we walked
down to The London And Rye pub for some breakfast.
While Aleemah had her usual filter coffee and
veggie fried breakfast, I had a full pint of just
one beer instead of two halves of two different
beers. There were several beers I would have liked
to try, but they were all "available soon". The
beer I did have was Adnams American IPA, and it
was quite nice (very nice for a rotten old Adnams
beer !).
I don't know what this is, but it's being
built on the green almost outside the pub. One
suggestion was that there is going to be a witch
burning in Catford tonight, but I reckon it is
some sort of (crap) artistic "installation".
Presumably, all will be revealed once it is
finished.
This afternoon I did something very
important. I have filled in the paperwork
concerning my pension that will be paid in June.
It is only a very small pension - sort of half
sized reflecting the half a life time of work I
did with Post Office Telecommunications Ltd (as it
was when I first started work). In June, for the
first time in my life, I will have an independent
income. I think, or I hope, that somehow I am
going to be able to live off rather less than than
half of what I earn now. It is actually closer to
a third pre-tax, but it is well under the tax
limit, and so will be closer to a half - I hope
!!!! In theory I should be able to quit work
and retire, but it is probably going to need an
awful lot of discipline living on so little money.
Not have to pay fares to and from work will help
it stretch a little further, and I should be able
to get an TFL
60+ Oystercard that will give me free, off
peak, London travel for other journeys. I'm not
sure I am going to pay for beer though......
Friday 16th January
2015
08:25 GMT
The wind calmed down after sunrise
yesterday, but seemed to pick up a bit in the
afternoon. It's main feature then was not how
strong it was, because it wasn't particularly
strong, but how cold it felt ! It rather spoiled
an otherwise acceptable day. We got the promised
sunshine, and even when the sun wasn't actually
shining, it was still fairly bright outside. I
think the temperature when I got home from work
was around 6° C, but it felt a lot colder. It was
actually a mild (for mid winter) night, and the
temperature when I got up was nearly 5° C. It's
not going to get much better than that all day,
but it should be a mostly bright day with the
possibility of a sunny spell here and there. Then,
when night falls, it is going to get very cold. We
will probably wake up to a thick frost, but it
won't be until Sunday that the temperature goes
into negative figures, and there is a chance of
some sleet or snow then !
The effort of coming to work for five
consecutive days is beginning to show. I felt I
had almost run out of energy as I made my way home
from work yesterday, and this morning the walk
from the station to work seemed a lot like hard
work. It was bad timing that last night I had to
go home, drop my bag off, and then go to the
pharmacy for my drugs. There was no problem
getting my drugs last night, although for some
reason no one understands, the surgery prescribed
me 3 months supply of one drug, instead of the two
month supply of the other drugs. Having got my
drugs I dropped them off at home, and then
proceeded to The Catford Constitutional Club for
some beers.
All that rushing around was not quite as
joyful as it was the night before, or at least it
didn't seem so easy, and yet it felt like a good
accomplishment once I got to the pub. It also felt
like a good accomplishment to not stay too long in
there. I was helped in that respect by not
drinking beer. Instead of beer I had just two
pints of a rather strong, 6%, toffee apple flavour
cider. Initially it was a very pleasant taste, but
after a while I found I could only smell the
toffee rather than taste it. I am not a great
cider drinker, and as I approached the bottom of
my second pint I decided it was getting too
acid/tart for me. I didn't want to mix the cider
with beer, and so it seemed a good time to go home
again.
It's not the social thing to do, but I think
I prefer a short drink when I have work in the
morning. Plus I didn't feel quite so ravenously
hungry as I walked home avoiding various takeaways
! That's not to say that I didn't eat more than I
needed, or should have had when I got home. I
didn't think it was all that much, but I ended up
feeling quite stuffed after dinner. It's not the
first time I've felt like that lately. I'm
wondering if someone has secretly fitted a gastric
band one night while I was asleep !
There was one annoying thing about last
night - and that was TV. In particular, TV between
8pm and 9pm. They show hours and hours of rubbish,
and then between those hours there were episodes
from two different generations of Star Trek, and
an episode of the original BRITISH
Avengers (nothing to do with those usurpers at
crap American Marvell comics). I did my best to
watch all three shows, but ended up watching more
of The Avengers. Than at 9pm I went to bed. I
probably had a good night's sleep, but it's hard
to tell. All I know is that when my alarm woke me
at 5am I was feeling all hot and sweaty for some
unknown reason. (I felt perfectly OK when I woke
up an hour earlier).
Compared with many mornings, I felt passably
OK this morning. Nothing was notably sore or
painful, and even my floating rib syndrome seems
to have calmed down a bit in the last day or two.
While it may have stopped generating any pain
lasting for more than a minute or two, there was
still the traditional crunching and grating sounds
(or feeling) as I pulled my shoe laces up tight
after putting my shoes on this morning. While it
is nice not to have any annoying aches or pains
this morning, it didn't mean that I felt like I
was in tip top condition ! This morning my legs
feel underpowered, and I found it hard going
trying to raise any speed as I travelled to work.
It felt like quite a strain to keep up with, and
occasionally overtake the other commuters as we
trundled from Waterloo east station to Waterloo
Mainline station.
Well once the working day is over I can
crawl painfully home (!) and then put my feet up.
I don't think I wanted to go out tonight. So there
should be no conflict of conscience if, as I think
will be the case, that I don't actually want to go
out. I look forward to being thoroughly lazy
tonight - at least I think that is how it will be,
but maybe I might do a bit of tidying up in
advance of Aleemah visiting tomorrow morning....or
I might leave it until the last minute like usual
!
There was some "action" at Waterloo this
morning.....
There is a possibility that this was a
recruitment drive for the Territorial Army being
set up.
Thursday 15th January
2015
07:58 GMT
The weather wasn't too bad, except for the
low temperature yesterday. If the temperature had
been around 15° C instead of 8° C (or thereabouts)
it might have felt like a nice spring day. There
was a lot of blue sky and sunshine.....until after
dark ! Once night got underway there was a lot of
rain, and according to the weather forecast, some
very strong winds. I didn't notice the wind being
particularly strong last night, but I did see a
scattering of twigs from some of the trees here in
Earlsfield this morning. In theory, the very light
rain that fell for a few minutes as I walked to
the station, should have been the last of the rain
for today. It still looks very dull
outside, but there is supposed to be a few hours
of sunshine just after midday today. Then it
will cloud over againCorrection:
The forecast has changed in the last couple of
hours. It doesn't look likely, but in less than an
hours time there will be bright sunshine for 2
hours, and then there will be sunshine and showers
until 4pm. Then it will dry up and the temperature
will start to fall. The average temperature for
the middle of the day is supposed to be 8° C, and
it will drop to 5 or 6° C by the end of the night.
Tomorrow could be a lot colder !
I felt fairly good when I left work
yesterday, and it was a mixture of no significant
pains, looking forward to a micro-adventure (maybe
nano might be a better prefix !), and because the
mostly clear sky made it nice and bright (and if
the sun had been a bit higher in the sky it would
have been sunny). The nano-adventure was to go out
again almost as soon as I got home. Picking up my
repeat prescription from the pharmacy was not
exactly exciting, and the reality was that it was
a small disaster, but going to Aldi, which is just
around the corner is usually enjoyable -
particularly so when the walk there and back was
for "free" (i.e. I was there anyway).
What spoiled it all was that you are
supposed to allow 48 hours from ordering a repeat
prescription, and I only allowed 36 hours. So they
didn't have it there, and I've got to go there
again tonight - which is more than annoying
because I should be going direct to The Catford
Constitutional Club for some booze tonight. I
still feel I was justified in trying to get my
prescription last night for two reasons. The first
is that collecting the repeat prescription at the
end of the second day after ordering it online at
5am has always worked in the past, but there is a
better reason. The people in the pharmacy told me
that I had to allow two working days before
attempting to collect it. As far as I was
concerned I had been to work, and come home again
twice since ordering the prescription, and that
seemed like two working days to me. When I go
there tonight I will tell them in my most
convincing way that I have worked
three days since ordering my drugs, and I can't
help it if they work 28 hour days (or something
like that !).
Oh well, it was still worth it to get some
stuff from Aldi. I bought three more bottles of
squash to add to my multicoloured, multiflavoured
selection of squashes, and I bought some
sandwiches to bring to work for breakfast this
morning. The rest of it was just general odds and
sods. I was hoping they might have something,
probably non food, that was exciting in some way,
but their latest "Specials" all seem to be either
stuff for babies, or stuff for the kitchen. It
felt rather strange to walk home from there
without three 2l bottles of diet cola weighing
down my rucksack, but for reasons I don't
understand, I am still not drinking cola at home.
Maybe not drinking it makes me belch and fart
less, but I'm not so sure...
Wednesday 14th January
2015
07:48 GMT
It was quite a mixed bag of weather
yesterday. The only thing it wasn't was warm !
Around lunchtime there were some showers, and a
for a while the rain seemed quite heavy, but
sometime between 2 and 3pm the clouds broke up,
and almost disappeared. From then on until sunset
the sky stayed mostly clear, and the sun
shone...until it was too low in the sky to be seen
from the ground - which didn't take that long to
happen. It was about 6° C when I arrived home last
night, and after a clear night the temperature had
dropped to a tad under 4° C. There are weather
warnings for snow today, but I don't think we will
see anything in London today. Much of today is
supposed to be bright, and often sunny, but after
dark it is forecast to get quite cloudy again, and
if there is any snow, that is when it is more
likely to fall (fingers crossed). In an ideal
world there would be a very heavy fall of snow
during the night, and transport would grind to a
halt in the morning. I would call in for an
emergency day off work, and watch it all from the
comfort of home. Unfortunately I think tomorrow is
just going to be cold, dark and wet, but we'll
see.
It is so much nicer having a name to explain
the pain I have been getting intermittently for
some time now. It is, as I mentioned yesterday,
floating rib syndrome. Having read up about it, it
all makes sense now. How certain, but frequently
essential movements can cause/aggravate the pain,
and how doing up my slightly tight fitting coat
can alleviate the pain. I suspect it is probably
ligament damage in my case rather than a
dislocated rib, and it is almost certainly a
legacy of not following the surgeon advice about
carrying heavy weights so soon after my quad heart
bypass operation. Very occasionally the pain can
be more than moderate, but not actually severe,
and usually it is no more than an dull ache with
brief twinges if I make a wrong move. It seems
there is no real treatment for this condition
except time and painkillers, although if it was a
dislocated rib it could be manipulated back in
it's socket, but I don't think that applies to me.
I'll see what my doctor thinks the next time I see
her (or him) sometime next month.
Despite the occasional pain from my (not
actually) floating rib, I still felt reasonably OK
yesterday - which is quite surprising considering
what I found when I got home. Yesterday morning I
cut my toenails, and I knew that I drawn blood
from my right big toe. It was only a small wound,
and I thought nothing of it. During the day I
noticed a very small amount of discomfort around
the big toe, but it didn't seem out of the
ordinary, and I paid it little attention. When I
got home and took my shoes off I found the the
whole of the end of that big toe was caked in
dried blood. It looked awful, but it didn't feel
awful, or even slightly sore, and when I washed
the blood off there was hardly a wound to be seen.
This morning it is like had happened.
I am slightly worried about feeling quite
good when going home for yet another day,
yesterday. If it is too good to be true then it
probably is ! It is probably an early warning of
deadly disease or something.....I did develop a
bit of a sore throat yesterday, and it is still
slightly sore this morning. It could be the start
of yet another cold, or it could be the start of
throat cancer, or it could just be a sore throat.
Apart from the sore throat, floating rib pain, and
the blood caked big toe, I felt OK going home, and
when I got home. I probably could have done a lot
more than I did.
The only thing of note that I actually did
last night was to wash my hair. Once my hair was
dry enough I went to bed early. That might have
been a mistake. Like the night before, I was in
bed before I felt sleepy, and it took what seemed
like, but probably wasn't, a long time to get
comfy, and fall asleep. I don't know why I woke up
feeling like I had slept badly because I can only
recall waking up briefly twice in the night. Maybe
it was because I think I was enjoying a dream when
my alarm woke me up, and I wanted the dream to
continue. I have no idea what the dream was about,
but evidently it was good enough that I was peeved
to be woken from it.
It is possible that I could feel really good
today - even while I am at work - if the sun
continues to shine. It would be nice to be outside
to soak up a few rays...at least it would be nice
if it wasn't so damn cold out there. It is rather
far from t-shirt and shorts weather ! Oh well,
I'll just have to appreciate the sunshine from
indoors, but even that will give a boost, and I'll
need a boost to do a little extra walking on my
way home from work. I'll need to walk right past
my house to get to the pharmacy where I hope to
pick up a repeat prescription of all my blood
pressure furtling drugs. It more than doubles my
walk from the station to home, but that is not the
real conflict. The problem is, is there anything I
need from Aldi, which is just round the corner, to
justify going in there, and risk buying food that
I probably want to be avoiding ? The only
justification I can think of right now it to buy
some "no added sugar" blackcurrant squash, but
even if I get that it doesn't solve the problem of
having accidently bought a bottle of gigantically
sugary blackcurrant squash from Tesco. Should I
throw the pure syrup version down the drain, or
should I continue to drink it diluted so much it
hardly tastes ? Decisions, decisions....
Tuesday 13th January
2015
08:32 GMT
I guess it wouldn't be that wrong to
describe yesterday's weather as terrible, although
mildly terrible might be more appropriate. There
were very few times when it was bright outside,
and I don't recall any time when I could even
imagine the sun behind the clouds. It didn't rain
all the time, but it did for much of the time. The
only saving grace was that it wasn't very cold,
although the wind made if feel rather chilly from
time to time. This morning started with a
continuation of yesterday. It was about 10° C, and
there were puddles everywhere. No rain fell on me
until I was walking from the station to work, and
I will grudgingly admit that it was fairly light
rain. It may brighten up a bit this morning, but
the temperature is going to drop down to 4° C this
evening, and the rain will return sometime later
this afternoon or evening. To the north and south
of London that rain could fall as sleet or even
snow, but last night's weather forecast showed
London to be clear of it. Tomorrow could be very
windy, very wet, and very cold !
I have to get this off my chest first.....I
really, really, really hate the incompetent idiots
who Wandsworth Council employ to lay pavements
here in Earlsfield. Every morning and evening when
I come to work, or go home again, I take my life
in my hands dodging cracked or broken flag stones,
wonky manhole covers, great big puddles deeper
than Loch ness, and bigger than Lake Erie, as well
as other unnatural hazards. This morning I managed
to dodge all the bottomless, lake sized puddles,
but I didn't manage to dodge a loose paving stone.
As I stepped on it with my right foot it tilted
down, and out came a huge jet of disgustingly
filthy water that soaked my left leg from just
above the knee down to my ankle. It was cold, wet
(obviously), and now I'll probably die from
syphilis or something !
I can't understand why, but even after a day
at work that was not enjoyable in any way, and
then having to walk to the station in some light
drizzle, and almost in the dark, I felt sort of
good. Even an occasional pain below, and a bit to
the right of my right man breast didn't seem to be
any particular bother. Even the fact that the sky
was so overcast that it seemed night had arrived
early, and I couldn't really see all the work
taking place at London Bridge station, which was
something I was rather looking forward to,
couldn't seem to dampen a feeling of feeling a lot
more OK than the average OK. I seemed to
have 3.2714% more energy than is typical when
going home from work, and some sort of chemical
imbalance made me feel an absence of pissed off.
I didn't go straight home, although I did
turn down the offer of a couple of beers - mainly
because I knew it would be very hard work to make
sure it was just a couple of beers and not 5 pints
! Sometimes 5 pints would be nice, but it didn't
feel appropriate for last night. I wanted to get
some stuff from Tesco, and go straight home to dry
myself out. Several things I bought in Tesco were
not exactly designed for healthy living, but I
still bought them because they were cheap - a
BOGOF* offer on what was probably intended to be a
Xmas flavour of Kettle chips (or crisps as we know
them in this country where we use the Queens
English), also large packets of peanuts at less
than half price (and cheaper than from the
99p shop !).
*BOGOF - Buy One, Get One
Free.
What I actually wanted in Tesco was some
more bottles of squash. I am still not drinking
cola at home (although I can't think of a valid
reason why not - I did buy a 500ml bottle to drink
at work today, so I do still drink it), and I
wanted some more flavours of squash to try. One
flavour I bought was done as a sort of dare to
myself. It was cranberry and lemon flavour. Lemon
is usually quite tart, and cranberries are pretty
disgusting as fruit, and I'm sure that their juice
can dissolve a tooth in under 36 hours. Oddly
enough, when drunk very dilute, perhaps just one
part in ten to water, lemon and cranberry (or was
it cranberry and lemon) makes for a nice drink. I
only made one tragic mistake. The bottle of
blackcurrant squash is the full sugar version, and
I am going to have to really limit my intake of
that.
My good feeling survived shopping, cranberry
and lemon, so I wonder where it went to ? In
theory I could have washed a few t-shirts, or more
importantly, I could have washed my hair, but I
did neither. I did trim my beard, and with that
weight of my mind chin I just
sort of gave up for the evening. I was in bed by
8.30pm, but it must have been at least half an
hour, and maybe longer before I fell asleep. I
woke up at around 3am feeling quite good except
for a strong desire for a pee, and I woke up at
4am in a similar way. Then I woke up at 4.45am and
decided it wasn't worth trying to get back to
sleep for 15 minutes.
I still feel fairly good, but it is
beginning to tarnish. I'm still getting occasional
pains on my right side near my breast, although
once or twice it seemed to swap sides briefly.
This pain seems to be closely related to my
medically impossible loose sub-chassis (floating
rib cage !). That is the pops, clicks and jerky
scraping sounds I appear to get from my chest when
doing certain movements - pulling up my shoelaces
is one movement, and wiping a cleaning cloth from
side to side at arms length is another good
movement for generating all sorts of strange
internal audible effects from my chest ( I say
audible, but it is felt more than actually heard).
The actual cause of the pain is likely to be
something close to a pulled muscle or ligament
that was weakened by surgery, but I would be quite
amused to learn that it was some sort of foreign
body left in my chest after surgery (the surgeons
wrist watch would earn the ultimate accolade !).
I've just discovered that there is such a
thing as floating rib syndrome - http://www.soreribs.net/floating-rib/
and my idea that I hear grinding and crunching
inside my chest is also something that is
described - http://www.soreribs.net/rib-injury-symptoms/
The latter web page also makes mention of the
effects of open heart surgery, but doesn't mention
the effects of carrying ten times the recommended
weight of shopping so soon after surgery - which
is what I did. Oh well, you live and learn !
Something rather remarkable has happened.
What with researching, and reading up on several
explanations of floating ribs and pains and stuff,
plus the time it takes to type all these words, I
hadn't noticed that the sky, as sen through my
small office window, is now (09:40) looking blue
instead of dark grey, and the top of the building
to the right of my view is brightly lit from the
sun that is still hidden from my view to the left.
If the sky stays blue, and the sun continues to
shine for a while, it might even cure me of a
slight feeling of loss of energy, and stiffness of
legs that I blame on the cold and damp this
morning.
Monday 12th January
2015
07:53 GMT
I suppose it is like it every winter, but I
don't think I had made the connection between
sunny days being cold, and cloudy days being
warmer in winter before. I was very aware that
clear nights mean cold mornings, but I always
thought that the warmth of the sun in the sky
would always outweigh the heat escaping on a clear
day - even in winter. Maybe it always did, but
perhaps the sun is going out.......Yesterday
seemed like an exception to that idea, but it was
actually the wind blowing in air that had been
warmed elsewhere in the world that raised the
temperature a few degrees yesterday, and
continued to do so during the night. It became
very cloudy as daylight ended yesterday, and at
some time in the night it began to rain. The rain
is, and probably will be, intermittent - it wasn't
raining when I walked to the station, but there
was a shower when I walked from the station to
work. Today will most probably be very grey, and
frequently quite wet, but the day started at an
almost reasonable 10° C, and it is not forecast to
change much more than a degree from that during
the day. Meanwhile, the wind continues to blow -
occasionally quite lively !
I think I am having some success in
limiting the amount I eat over the weekends. It is
often easier to eat less when I am out at work, or
anywhere else for that matter, but weekends at
home are tricky. Saturday is turning out to be the
worst day, and that is probably because I
frequently get shopping in on a Saturday.
Yesterday I was quite restrained in terms of a
moderate breakfast, and possibly an even more
restrained dinner, but a few snack were involved,
and for the life of me I can't think what I may
have snacked on besides a bag of peanuts and
raisins. Dinner was interesting...sort of. I
finally managed to make my sprout surprise to my
own satisfaction. It was sprouts, chestnuts, and
for some added flavour, some lean bacon cooked in
a little chicken stock. It was nice, but I still
can't seem to capture the taste of the frozen,
ready to cook, sprouts with chestnuts that Tesco
were selling a few xmases ago. They were very
nice.
I wasn't sure if I would do it in the end,
but I gritted my teeth, salted my toes, and
peppered my elbows (or something like that), and
washed three shirts, a pile of socks, and some
underwear last night. It all went smoothly, and
painlessly, but it is a pain in the derrière to
carefully pick and pull of lint from the inside of
my sock one by one. Some time ago, probably well
over a year ago, I discovered that in some types
of socks there would be a build up of lint that
would almost harden like felt right in the places
where my feet would suffer discomfort when
walking. The really annoying thing is that it
happens most to my favourite type of sock - a
particular style of Tesco trainer sock.
Doing that laundry seemed to have the
opposite effect on me that I predicted. I became
more awake and alert instead of feeling tired and
knackered. So when I went to bed it was hard to
get to sleep. That probably wasn't helped by
having a snooze of unknown length sometime in the
afternoon, and also getting up relatively late in
the morning. Once I got to sleep, maybe close to
10pm, it was a typical nights sleep. I slept well
until a couple of hours before I was due to get
up, and from then on it was difficult to stay
asleep. In theory that should mean I had adequate
sleep, but it didn't stop me almost falling asleep
on the train this morning.
I could list all the aches and pains I
had/have this morning, but they do seem to be
unusually mild for a change, and so are probably
not worth mentioning. Maybe the reason I started
falling asleep on the train was because I was
generally comfortable, although the sleepiness
didn't last long this morning because there were
things to be seen - or would have been had it been
daylight. This morning was the start of the BIG
disruption caused by the rebuilding of London
Bridge station. Until August next year no trains
to Charing Cross station will stop at London
Bridge (or St Johns and New Cross in the case of
my morning train). It was annoying that it was so
dark as the train approached London Bridge that I
couldn't really see what was happening, and it was
also annoying that I was sitting on the wrong side
of the train to see if there was any physical
reason the train couldn't have stopped at London
Bridge. As far as I could see, platform 6 was
still there, and perfectly accessible....but maybe
not for long ! Despite it probably being wet,
windy and overcast, there should be enough light
to see what's going on when I go home late this
afternoon. Maybe I'll see if it's possible to take
a couple of snaps of what's happening as I pass
through.
Sunday 11th January
2015
16:12 GMT
After a sometimes wet, and sometimes sunny,
but mostly fairly mild day yesterday, it started
to cool right down. During the night it was almost
cold enough for a frost, and maybe in the early
hours of the morning there might have been one,
but there was no frost to be seen when I finally
opened the curtains this morning. It was just
under 5° C this morning, and after a morning that
was quite frequently sunny, it is now just over 8°
C. This afternoon is began to get cloudy, and now,
when we should be seeing the last of the daylight,
it seems to be prematurely dark. The forecast for
tomorrow keeps changing, but only in small
details. The underlying theme is that it could be
very dull, very wet, and rather chilly !
I had a gloriously lazy evening last night.
I had wanted to go out to a gig, but I don't seem
to be bothered about missing it, and even if I had
of gone, I might have gone to the wrong venue...I
thought it was in The H.G. Wells Centre, but I
have seen mention of it being at The Swan And
Mitre (also in Bromley). Maybe the band, The Big
Red Bus, played in the latter venue on a previous
occasion, and the person who mentioned that didn't
make it very clear. Anyway, I didn't feel like
going out, and so the confusion didn't actually
effect me.
I am desperately trying to remember what
time I went to bed last night, and I can't
remember. I didn't have any booze last night so I
can't blame that. Maybe I had a brain aneurysm or
some sort of mental hiccup, or maybe I just went
to bed when I felt tired and didn't consult a
clock about it. The latter sounds a reasonable
explanation. The only thing I do remember is how
my spare duvet smelled. I couldn't remember if it
was a thinner one that I had shoved in a sealed
box one winter while waiting for summer to arrive,
or if it was a thicker one that I was waiting
until winter to use. It turns out it was
marginally thinner, but still adequate for keeping
me nice and warm. The more significant thing is
that it had been sealed in it's box for over two
years - before the days when I keep forgetting
have many, or any cigarettes a day. It gave it a
rather unique aroma.
Despite that aroma, or maybe because of it,
it felt like I slept quite well last night. I
don't know how many hours of sleep I got, but it
could easily have been a good eight hours. That
should have left me raring to go - particularly in
the bright sunshine - and in a way, I did - but
not for long. At the end of my road is an old
footbridge that used to take punters over the road
and into the old Catford Greyhound Stadium. It
won't be there much longer because it is being
demolished. It is a slow process because it is
over working railway lines. The demolition company
only has a few hours each night when Network Rail
will let them work on the bridge, and so far they
have only done some preparation for the big day
when it will be sliced up, and craned away. This
morning I went out and took some pictures while it
was mostly intact.
This is the south side of the bridge (the
railway runs approx north-south).
The north side.
Moving back to the south side, here's the
stairs. There used to be a ticket booth and
turnstiles between the road and the bottom of
the stairs.
Makers of fine bridges since 1932, and probably
well before that !
Advance warning of timetable of works to be
carried out.
It was nice to go out
in the early morning sunshine to take some
pictures....at least in one sense it was. In
another sense it was bloody cold to be
handling a camera with bare hands ! That, and
a bit of a mild stomach ache, put me off doing
anything else for what was supposed to be for
an hour or two, but somehow an awful lot of
time seems to have passed since than, and I'm
not entirely sure where it has all gone. In a
while I might wash a couple more shirts -
something I was going to do this morning - but
now it is dark I can't go on a joy ride/photo
expedition riding the train from Catford
Bridge over the unusual route to Victoria
station. That's a bit of a shame, but it
doesn't mean I'll lose out seeing anything I
haven't seen before. In fact there was a time
5 or 6 years ago when some sort of problem
meant my train to work was diverted to
Victoria. So I have done the route before.
Apart from washing some more shirts, I
don't propose to do anything else this evening
apart from eating, reading, maybe watching a
bit of TV, and going to bed ! Although the
weather forecast for tomorrow makes it hard to
look forward to tomorrow !
Saturday 10th January
2015
18:46 GMT
The dip in the temperature that was
forecast for the middle of yesterday failed to
happen...or if it happened, it wasn't terribly
obvious. Maybe the sunshine we had prevented the
temperature from falling. I'm fairly sure it was
about 13° C when I got home from work. Later in
the evening it did rise to about 15° C as was
forecast. The other bit of the forecast was also
correct - the wind was pretty lively in the
evening ! The wind has also been a feature today.
It seems to have calmed down now, but earlier on
it was rather gusty. There have been a few brief
but heavy showers today, and a few longer but
lighter showers. However, there was probably more
sunshine that showers, and on the whole it has
been quite mild...although the temperature seems
to be falling quite fast now. The morning started
at about 13° C, and by mid afternoon it had
dropped to 11° C. It is now under 6° C. It looks
tomorrow will start off very cool, and end quite
cool under a mostly grey sky, but there could be
some sunshine in the morning.
It was a great relief to be heading home
from work yesterday. There was nothing
particularly bad about work, and I wasn't feeling
bad in any way different to the last 100,000 days,
but, as I am sure I have mentioned many times in
the past, I've tried working for most of the last
40 years, and I am completely and utterly
convinced I don't like it ! So I was more than
happy to have completed the boring walk from work
to the station, and got on the first train towards
home. Even the fact that it was rather overcast,
and night fell when I was only halfway home,
couldn't completely depress me.
One thing that sort of elevated my mood, at
least I think it may have, was a successful
shopping trip to Tesco on the way home. I mostly,
but not entirely, bought sensible stuff. That
included a couple of bottles of squash. I've
forgotten why I started it, but I seem to be
experimenting with not drinking sugar free cola at
the moment. After a whole week of it I feel no
different, although I think it has taken some of
the strain off my wallet. Squash, particularly
when drunk a little more dilute than recommended,
seems rather cheaper than real Diet Coke, and
possibly cheaper than Aldi own brand.
Another indicator that I was evidently
feeling reasonably good was because I managed to
convince myself to do some of the laundry I had
put off doing for over a week. I only washed 4
shirts and some underwear, but it was a start. I
am trying to decide whether to say I felt tired,
smug, or tired and smug after doing that laundry.
It probably was the mix of the two plus something
else that is on the tip of the tongue, but I can't
seem to describe now. I shall just have to say
that I felt good when I went to bed, and very much
looked forward to some refreshing sleep.
It is quite possible that I got that
refreshing sleep. I went to bed late, perhaps
after 10pm, but I think it may have been a little
before, and I got up late (by work day standards).
I don't recall waking up before 5am, but I am sure
I must have, and even at 5am it was easy to go
back to sleep again. At 7am I became more
restless, and I didn't really manage to sleep
until my target of 8am. As far as I can remember,
I didn't really have much to complain about when I
got up. I'm sure I wasn't ready to run a marathon,
but I think I was ready to walk to the station
without complaining too much.
Of course I had no reason to walk to the
station...or maybe if I had the spare time I did
have a reason. Engineering work on the railways
has completely closed London Bridge station this
weekend, and today all London bound trains from
Catford Bridge have been going to Victoria station
(and coming from there too). It's a very rare
route for the trains to take, and if I had the
time it could have been sort of fun just to get a
train to Victoria and back. I think I could do it
tomorrow if I felt like it.
My friend Aleemah visited today, and because
on the train situation she caught the bus to
Catford. It is a slow way to go, but she enjoys
the sightseeing (I think). I met her in the pub on
this occasion, and because I got there first I had
time for an extra half of beer - making a pint and
a half in total. After the pub we had a quick look
in Peacocks where they were having a sale. I
bought a cheap and cheerful pair of plimsoll like
trainers for a mere £6. This particular style of
shoe from Peacocks come in two varieties, and you
never know which they are until you've worn them
all day at work. One type is very comfortable, the
other very uncomfortable, and yet it seems
impossible to tell why. Oh well, even the
uncomfortable types are still comfortable enough
for a quick visit to the shops or local pub.
Aleemah stayed here longer than I had hoped
for. It was often sunny this afternoon, and if she
had left earlier the sunshine could have inspired
me to do stuff like more laundry. Unfortunately
she left so late there was little more than 30 -
45 minutes of daylight left, and I wanted some
lunch before I tackled anything else. That was
sort of my downfall because I felt rather full
after lunch (although it was almost late enough to
call it dinner). To let it all settle I lay on my
bed where I promptly fell asleep for at least 10
minutes, but I think it may have been an hour. I
wasn't watching the time because I didn't really
intend to close my eyes as I lay there.
I am not the fastest typist, and quite a bit
of time has elapsed since starting this, and by
now I should have been on the bus heading to
Bromley. The Big Red Bus are playing in The H. G.
Wells Centre tonight. It's easy to get to. I know
several people in the band, and I know a few
people who are going. I ought to be there, and yet
I feel a bit too relaxed now. In another hour, or
maybe two, I'll have something approximating to
supper, and it is possible I'll be in bed not too
long after that. There's no gigs tomorrow, but I
might take a joy ride to Victoria, and hopefully
I'll also feel in the mood to do some more
laundry.
Friday 9th January 2015
08:31 GMT
After the terrible start to yesterday, the
clouds thinned out, and then by midday they opened
up to let in some glorious sunshine. That sunshine
lasted a lot longer than the forecast suggested,
and instead of more rain, I started out towards
home in sunshine. Of course the sun was so low in
the sky that it wasn't always possible to see it,
but it was still daylight as I waited for my train
at Waterloo East. It was probably about then that
the clouds started to thicken again. I didn't see
any rain last night, but the way everything looked
wet as I walked to the station this morning
suggested there had been some rain during the
night. It is currently overcast, but the forecast
suggests that some of the morning, and the start
of the afternoon could be very sunny. Curiously
enough, while the sun is shining the temperature
is forecast to fall from 10° C to just 8° C, but
then it will start to climb again as some strong
winds push air in that is almost warm at 15° C !
The forecast for tomorrow says there could be some
showers late in the morning, but then it will stay
dry with the temperature dropping down to 4° C by
late evening.
Yesterday was moderately OK except for the
last hour (as I will explain soon). Sometimes I
was quite busy at work, and at other times I
relaxed a lot. The only problem with the relaxing
part is that it doesn't feel like the day is
passing quickly enough, but eventually home time
came around, and I was on my way....not to home
but to The Catford Constitutional Club for some
beers - initially with Jodie, and then the rest of
the Thursday night gang.
I am unsure why, but I didn't really enjoy
drinking last night. That was a bit of a tragedy
because they had a beer on that I particularly
liked. I felt quite subdued last night, as did
everyone else except for Jodie who wanted to show
me lots of crap pictures and tweets on her mobile
phone. Eventually I left early to go home feeling
annoyingly sober - or so I thought. I think I only
had three pints last night, although I wouldn't
contradict anyone who said it was four pints.
That's not that much beer, and the beer that I
liked was not a very strong beer at all.
As I walked home I hardly noticed any
effects from the beer at all, but it was like it
had cannabis in it - I got an extreme case of the
munchies once I started eating. It didn't help
that I decided to stay downstairs in front of the
TV watching an old episode of The Avengers (the
original British TV series, and not a poor
substitute American comic rip off). Initially I
ate a Shepherds Pie ready meal for one, and then
when that didn't fully satisfy I ate a small pack
of sweet and spicy premium baby beetroots. I
realise that was an unusual choice for a snack,
but it has worked once before. Unfortunately it
didn't work last night, and I went on to eat a
packet of cocktail sausages - which was remarkably
excessive !
The odd thing is that I can't seem to recall
going to bed feeling bloated in any way, and in
theory I should have been. I think I was probably
asleep by 9.30pm, and if not then, then not too
long afterwards. I hardly remember waking more
than twice, and even then only for a few minutes.
If I remember correctly, I finally woke up just 10
minutes before 5am when my alarm was set to wake
me up, and I woke from a dream where I was looking
for a toilet. Strange as it may seem, I didn't
seem to be in any rush to find a toilet when I
woke up.
This morning my guts were playing up enough
for me to miss my usual train, and I had to get
the later train - which sadly means I was no
longer travelling on off-peak fares. The rest of
me didn't feel as good as the day before. My right
knee was sometimes slightly sore, and rather
unusually, my left leg felt noticeably stiff. Oh,
and just for fun, I seem to have a bit of an
intermittent headache - which suggests hangover.
Did someone spike my drink, or is it all
completely unrelated ? Maybe I am so out of
practice that three pints is enough to get me
drunk and suffering now !
I'm not exactly sure what kind of day it is
going to be at work today. It's a Friday, and so I
am in a more lazy than usual mood, but there are
many here who don't seem to wind down at all for
the weekend. I should feel sorry for them, but I
don't because they have the power to annoy me at
times ! Nevertheless, the weekend beckons
regardless. I have no plans for tonight, although
maybe I might see if I can motivate myself enough
to wash some shirts. I've still got plenty of
clean shirts, but sooner or later I am going to
have to wash some dirty ones. Maybe I'll do some
tonight, and maybe I'll do some tomorrow, but time
could be tight tomorrow. I'll be seeing Aleemah in
the morning, and in the evening I would like to go
to a gig if I can raise the enthusiasm. That only
leaves a few hours in the afternoon for laundry,
and I might not be in the mood in those few hours
!
Thursday 8th January
2015
07:53 GMT
I can't remember if there were any sunny
periods yesterday, and that makes me think that if
there were any, they were too brief, or too weak
to register on my memory. The only facts I can
remember are that it did warm up a bit, and it
stayed dry until well after dark. The temperature
continued to rise through the night, and this
morning it was a relatively harmless 11° C.
Unfortunately the rain that started sometime in
the night persisted, and it is pouring down as I
write this. It's only a few minutes away from
sunrise, and at this time yesterday the sky was
looking quite bright, but today it is still like
night. I think it will stay dark for sometime yet,
but it is supposed to brighten up for a bit this
afternoon, and then it is forecast to rain again
just as I am going home. Tomorrow should be
brighter than today, and if the temperature does
rise to 14° C just after sunset, as the latest
forecast predicts, it will almost feel warm.
Unfortunately, it could well be raining again by
then.
All the aches and pains I had at the
beginning of the week had mostly decreased to the
point where I was far more concerned with how
uncomfortable my shoes were. I'm not totally sure
why they should have been uncomfortable - except
on one point. They were a pair of oversized cheap
trainers bought for when my feet were very
frequently swollen. Since reducing the dosage of
Bisoprolol, one of my blood pressure drugs, it is
now quite rare for my feet to swell, and that was
the case yesterday. So my feet had plenty of room,
and nothing was pinched. Yet my feet were still
uncomfortable. One part of that discomfort was
that the soles on those shoes were very thin, and
the sensitive soles of my feet could feel every
lump and bump as I walked along, but that doesn't
really explain why my heels and toes seemed quite
uncomfortable.
So it was with great joy that I arrived
home, and could take those shoes off. Maybe it was
the effect of the pain, or maybe it was the
weather changing (or maybe it was the alignments
of the planets.......), but I didn't feel like I
had as much energy as I did the previous night. So
my grand plans to wash a couple of shirts came to
nothing, and I had a quiet and peaceful evening -
and I ate too much. I am still attempting, and for
the most part achieving the ideal of avoiding the
worst excesses, but it doesn't come easy.
Occasionally subterfuge partly works, and it sort
of did last night. I had eaten quite sufficient,
but still wanted to keep eating - still an ongoing
consequence of not smoking ! It was perhaps
fortunate that it was easiest to wash and eat an
apple and two nectarines.
The funny thing about fruit is that once you
get started it can be rather nice, but initially
it seems so unappealing. It is definitely not the
first thing I think of when I fancy a snack. Then
there is the undisputed fact that it is easier to
open a packet of crisps than it is to peel an
orange - plus crisps come in far more exciting
flavours !
I was asleep at about the same time as the
night before, and had an uneventful sleep last
night. I think, or maybe I hope, that uneventful
equates to a good nights sleep. I didn't wake up
feeling tired, and I don't feel tired now, but
give it another hour....Oh dear, the very thought
of it has started me yawning ! Apart from one
annoyance, I felt unusually good this morning, and
even getting soaked on the way to work has yet to
trigger off any new aches or pains. The one
annoyance concerns my chest. There are times when
it feels like my whole rib cage is loose on it's
mountings, and this morning was one of the
occasions. It is physically and medically
impossible, but one of those impossible things
before breakfast could be traced back to when I
staggered back from the supermarket carrying at
least 10kg of shopping - this was soon after
coming home from my operation with a strong
warning not to carry more than one single kg !
Something, but I don't know what, happened
on that occasion, and it was very soon after that
that weird clicks and pops seemed to come from my
chest when I did certain things. This morning,
like most mornings, when I pulled on my shoe laces
when doing my shoes up, I could feel something
move inside of me accompanied by a dull pop from
somewhere inside my chest. Many other things can
cause similar effects, and this morning was a
morning when my chest seemed quite easy to
"wobble" (for want of a better word). Generally
speaking the effect is completely painless, but
some sort of mild soreness can start to build up
when it happens too often. I guess it is something
I will have to mention to my doctor again when I
see her (him) next.
While the filthy dark sky, and the rain is
deeply depressing, there is hope for the future !
Tonight is boozing time ! I'll be meeting Jodie in
The Catford Constitutional Club on my way home
from work. After a short while we will be joined
by the rest of the Thursday night gang - maybe
including Kevin as well. I haven't had any booze
since last Saturday, and I think I am rather
looking forward to a few pints of fine ale -
although whether the CCC has any good ales on at
the moment is a mystery that I'll have to be
patient for quite a few hours before I can solve
it !
Wednesday 7th January
2015
08:01 GMT
I think that yesterday's weather was a bit
better than I was expecting. It was similar to the
forecast, but with more sunshine ! Just after
midday there was some heavy rain. That was
expected, but I didn't expect the clouds would
completely break up. They did though, and quite
often the sun would come through some of the large
gaps between the clouds. The temperature was
probably as expected - 8 to 10° C. It seems the
clouds must have got very thin and broken during
the night. The temperature was forecast to only
fall to 4° C, but it was 2.7° C when I woke up at
5am, and most of the cars had a thick frost on
them. I think the temperature has risen a degree
or two since 5am, but it is still damn chilly
outside ! Today might see the odd sunny interval
later on, but tonight rain is forecast, and some
of it could be heavy. By tonight the temperature
should be back up to at least 8° C. Tomorrow
morning could start off as high as 11° C. The
cloud will come in fifty shades of grey, and there
could be sunny periods lasting a whole hour in
between either light or heavy showers. It's going
to be a real mixed bag tomorrow if the forecast is
any better than just a guess.
A big bright blurred moon over my workplace as I
walked to it this morning.
Once again my mobile phone camera has somehow
made the sky look much brighter, and much bluer
than how it registered on my own eyeballs. To my
eye the sky still looked semi dark.
I didn't feel too bad
yesterday. A lot of the time I felt no worse
than usual. That even extended to when I was
going home from work. That would have been a
slightly nice experience if I had been wearing
more comfortable shoes. The shoes I had on had
very thin soles, and any lumps in the road
would be uncomfortable, and that bumpy surface
that warns blind people of kerb edges and
suchlike was positively agony to walk over !
While my sore feet made the experience worse,
the sunshine made it a much better experience.
The sun was so low when I left work that it
wasn't always directly visible, but it was
shining right at me as I waited for my train
at Earlsfield station. It wasn't long after I
got my train that the sun finally dipped below
the horizon, but the clear sky continued to
glow brightly at Waterloo, and even when I
arrived home there was still enough light from
the sky to read by - just !
It seems that sunrise has hardly changed
since the winter equinox. This morning it was
08:04. It does seem that sunset is getting
later every day though. I can't remember what
the earliest it was at the equinox, but today
it is at 16:09. By Sunday sunrise will still
be 08:02, but sunset will be 16:14. It's going
to be quite some time yet before I can be
assured of getting home after work in full
daylight, but the process will be helped along
by changes to my train times when the
timetable changes at the weekend. From next
Monday there will no trains to or from Charing
Cross (and Waterloo East) stopping at London
Bridge station. This is due to the rebuilding
of London Bridge. As far as I am concerned the
main difference this will make to me is that
on the way home my train departs from Waterloo
East station three minutes earlier, and
arrives at Catford Bridge a whole four minutes
earlier !
Had I come home four minutes earlier,
and in bright sunshine, I have little doubt
that I would be feeling rather wonderful, but
even with things as they are, I still felt
slightly good yesterday. I was certainly good
enough to have the patience to prepare my own
special recipe of chicken a la sprouts ! The
preparation doesn't actually take lone because
only four ingredients are involved (plus
water). In a microwave proof bowl of water,
toss in a couple of chicken stock cubes, throw
in a small bag of ready prepared sprouts,
chuck in a couple of skinless, boneless chick
breasts, and finally cover with sliced potato
(with the skins still on). Shove it in the
microwave for 20 minutes while washing hair.
Washing and conditioning my hair was a
complete success, but dinner wasn't ! Those
sprouts looked fresh, but they had been in a
sealed bag in the fridge for about a week,
possibly a week and a half, and they tasted
revolting. Fortunately they didn't taint the
chicken or potatoes to any great degree, and I
was able to eat them with no trouble. Apart
from three or four sprouts that I forced
myself to eat in case I was imagining how bad
they tasted, I threw the rest away. If that
was all I had eaten, it would have been a very
light and healthy dinner, but I did have a
large snack before I washed my hair, and after
not eating the sprouts I had some microwave
heated "bean and cheese pouches". The latter
are ***NEW*** from Tesco, and of course they
had to be tried. They are sort of like a small
square variant of a Cornish pasty. I think I
would have to describe them as being very
bland. There was nothing bad about them (taste
wise) and nothing good either. I didn't even
dare to look at the ingredients and
nutritional advice, but I would imagine they
are probably terrible for you in any aspect
you care to think of.
I think I managed to get to sleep soon
after 9pm last night. Earlier might have been
better considering how tired I felt from time
to time yesterday. I was OK when working, but
if I stopped to read anything off the internet
it didn't take long for my eyes to start
drooping. Once or twice I actually fell asleep
for a few seconds ! I think I probably slept
well last night. It wasn't until 4am that I
started waking up for long-ish periods. With
10 minutes still to go before my alarm was due
to go off, I gave up trying to get back to
sleep, and got up. This morning was a bit like
yesterday, but not quite as bad. I woke up
feeling quite good, and then went down hill
from there.
I left home feeling mostly OK, but not
wonderful, and then proceeded to chill myself
to the bone as I walked past the frosty cars
on the way to the station. I then thawed out
on the train. The walk from Waterloo East to
Waterloo station is loosely enclosed, and so I
didn't fully freeze while doing that. On the
train from Earlsfield I was lightly broiled.
Those class 455 trains seem to have powerful
heaters, and no obvious thermostats. Having
got hot enough to sweat it was then out into
the freezing cold until I got to my slightly
warm office. While the air in here is tepid or
better, my tools, and in fact anything I touch
feels freezing cold still. By lunchtime it
will finally be quite pleasant.
Tuesday 6th January
2015
08:03 GMT
Yesterday was not terribly bad, but it
wasn't exactly good either. The sky ranged from
dark grey to light grey, but it was never black
(except after dark obviously), and it was never
white or blue. Fortunately it was not desperately
cold, and it did not rain. The highest temperature
was supposed to be 10° C, although I would have
guessed it was a couple of degrees less. Today
will see a couple of small changes. Looking at the
sky right now it seems hard to imagine that the
sun might peep through the clouds later on, but
that's what the forecast predicts. It also
predicts that there could be a shower right now,
but it remains dry, and that there will be more
rain this afternoon. The bit of the forecast I
want to believe most of all is that the afternoon
rain, assuming it happens, will have stopped by,
or before 4pm when I am on my way home from work.
Today's temperature should be similar to yesterday
- 8 to 10° C.
I felt pretty rough yesterday morning, and
for a bit of the afternoon. Some experiments I did
seemed to suggest there were two reasons for it.
Taking a dose of Milk Of Magnesia seemed to cure
my heartburn. Either that or the foul taste of
Milk Of Magnesia distracted me from the pain that
I thought was a sign of imminent death. A couple
of Ibuprofen tablets seemed to cure some other
aches and pains, and proved my limbs were not
about to fall off. What finally brought it all
together was the walk from work to the station. By
the time I reached the station I was feeling no
worse than any other time I've done that long and
boring 9 - 10 minute walk.
I was feeling good enough when I arrived at
Catford to go home via Tesco. I was mostly very
careful about what I bought in Tesco. I bought a
white fish pie on the assumption it would be
fairly kind to what may be something like a
stomach ulcer (or whatever it was that the Milk Of
Magnesia calmed down). I bought a couple of
bottles of squash for similar reasons. Other bits
and pieces included some indigestion tablets, and
some even fouler tasting Tesco own brand
indigestion and heartburn liquid (allegedly
aniseed flavoured).
The squash I bought was rather
interesting...well, interesting to me. It's not
something I am an expert about. Both bottles
suggest diluting it to one part squash to four
parts water. I found that one in five, or even six
seemed to be quite nice. There's not much I can
say about the orange squash apart from it seems to
be nicer than some I have tried in the past, but
probably not the best. It is the other bottle that
seems to be a bit of a novelty. It is lime and
coconut flavour. It is rather nice in a strange
way. It doesn't taste very strongly of coconut,
but it smells quite strongly of it. It may be that
I am making it far more dilute than intended, and
that is losing the coconut taste. I certainly
throttles back the taste of the lime, and yet it
still tastes rather nice.
I was determined to get to sleep nice and
early last night. One of the reasons I felt so bad
during the day was that I would often feel
dreadfully tired. I didn't really get to sleep as
early as I hoped, but I think it was still
sometime before 9pm...but not that much before. I
probably slept well for the first 6 hours, but
after that I kept waking up for what felt like
long periods, but was possibly only 10 minutes at
a time. To my great annoyance it felt like I had
finally got back into deep sleep just as my alarm
went off !
After waking up I was astonished to realise
that I actually felt quite good. If I could have
frozen that feeling, and kept it going all day it
would be wonderful, but these things rarely last.
It usually happens the other way round, but this
morning I found I felt a bit creaky after a hot
shower. It spoiled things a bit, but on the other
hand I still felt far better than I did yesterday
morning. Now I'm at work I am unsure how I feel. I
am getting lots of little twinges, but no
sustained aches or pains. Maybe when the room
warms up I'll feel better, or maybe not. Who can
tell.
Last night I did nothing of note, but
tonight I feel I ought to try and do something. I
doubt I'll feel like doing any laundry, although
anything is possible in an infinite universe, but
I feel I ought to make some sort of effort to wash
my hair. I haven't washed it since Saturday, and
it is now looking and feeling horrible. All I have
to do is to keep convincing myself of that and
I'll be sure to wash and condition my hair
tonight.
Monday 5th January 2015
07:50 GMT
Yesterday was a horrible day, and it looks
like today will only be very slightly better. The
problem with yesterday was that it was very grey,
and rather cold. Only rain could have made it
worse, and only snow or sunshine could have made
it better. Yes, even snow would have made it
better by brightening up the world a bit. Today's
temperature seemed to start where yesterday left
off - about 6° C. Later today it could reach 9° C.
Much of today is going to be grimly dull again,
but there is a chance it might get brighter for a
few minutes here and there, but it will almost be
a miracle if there is any sign of the sun.
Tomorrow might be one degree warmer, and there is
a better chance of the sun breaking through for a
few minutes here and there, but, and it is a very
big but, like a fist to the face, it is almost
certain to rain for a lot of the early afternoon !
There is no doubt about it - I felt lousy
yesterday. Despite being in a warm room, the cold
seemed to seep into my very bones, and at some
time or another, every bit of me ached. The silly
thing was that there was an obvious cure staring
me in the face, and last night I took that cure.
It worked well, and later on I slept non stop to
close on 6 hours, and that must be some sort of
record for me in recent, and maybe not so recent
times. This simple cure was a couple of Ibuprofen
tablets. Maybe in the past I didn't have aches and
pains like I get now, and I never knew how
effective the stuff could be.
It took getting on for an hour after taking
those tablets before all my pains seemed to just
melt away. That included the stiffness and pain in
bits of my chest, and most unlikely of all, even a
sort of hunger like pain in my stomach. It still
makes me wonder just what sort of ailment I had
yesterday. Something that could be both really
bad, and yet apparently so easily cured. As I
mentioned yesterday, it had some parallels with
'flu, but I've never known 'flu to be so easily
cured. Then again it was not exactly a cure, but
more a palliative to hold me together while
underneath my body was probably still trying to
fix the problem.
This morning I definitely feel a lot further
from death than I did yesterday, and yet I am not
out of the woods yet. It is possible things
could get worse before they get better. The
ultimate cure will be warm sunshine, but it's
going to be a long wait for that, and in the
meantime it feel bloody freezing in my office this
morning ! One of my co-workers was kind enough to
turn the heating on when he came in this morning,
but unfortunately he only left it on half power.
It is going to take some time to warm the big room
up with my small fan heater !
Meanwhile, as I wait for the room to warm
up, I continue to suffer. It seemed like I had a
good sleep last night, and yet I feel very weary
still. It's a sort of tiredness that includes a
headache, and it really feels like it would be
nice to lie down, but that is the opposite of what
makes me feel better. The very best I felt this
morning was while I was walking. From the waist
down, and maybe higher up too, it felt
extraordinarily effortless to walk to the
station.....no, that is a bit of an exaggeration.
It wasn't completely effortless, but it was
definitely painless. I'm not sure what conclusion
to draw from that. Let's hope it is a good one.
There is one thing I should do tonight, but
I can't imagine I am going to feel very keen to do
it when I get home. I really ought to wash a
towel, or preferably two towels soon. I was going
to wash one or both over the weekend, but I didn't
feel very keen to do it on Saturday, and I felt
incapable of doing it yesterday. Just thinking
about the effort involved gives me a pain in my
arm (well it wasn't there 30 seconds ago !). I
think it is far more likely that I will be in bed
rather early tonight. Maybe I'll just be reading,
but maybe I'll be snoring by 8pm....maybe 7pm !
Sunday 4th January 2015
16:53 GMT
It was horrible wet and grey yesterday. It
was also rather cool. Since then there has only
been one big change and one smaller change. Today
has been dry even while the sky has been a dully
steely grey. That is the big change. The smaller
change is that the temperature has dropped by a
degree or two, although fortunately not as low as
the forecast predicted. It is currently just under
5° C, but combined with that dull grey sky it is a
creeping cold. It creeps through any crack or gap
in the house or psych. It is currently 22° C in my
room at the moment, and yet it feels cold. Of
course it is possible that I am suffering from
some sort of ailment, although I'm not sure
exactly what.
I don't recall feeling particularly bad last
night, but I also don't recall feeling all that
enthusiastic about doing anything much at all.
Oddly enough that included going to bed early. I
was up playing with stuff on my computer until
gone midnight last night, and even when I went to
bed I didn't fall asleep until 1am, or was it 2am
? It seemed quite hard to find comfortable
positions to lay in last night, and that seemed to
be a precursor of how I feel now.
This morning I felt very creaky. At one pint
I had a very stiff and sore lower back, and then
that seemed to go away to be replaced with a sore
and creaky chest. This morning I was in my kitchen
cooking breakfast and doing some washing up. There
is no heating in my kitchen, and I could feel the
cold seeping into my bones. After finishing the
washing up, which obviously meant extending my
arms out over the sink, it was almost painful to
put my arms down by my side again - and the pain
was mostly on one side of my chest between the
breast and arm pit. I assume that means something
deadly, but I didn't have time to do much about it
because my breakfast was cooked, and it was time
to eat it.
Sitting down to eat breakfast brought some
pain back to my lower back. It wasn't strong pain,
but enough to be annoying - particularly when
thinking about how it might be in the future. It
is very rare that I suffer from bad back pain. In
fact I can only remember a couple of times, and on
those occasions it only lasted for a couple of
days at worst, but it was enough to appreciate how
bad it could be.
Since breakfast I have not done what would
probably have been best for me - walking, even if
only to the shops and back - but have lounged
around - sometimes at my PC, and worse still,
laying down on my bed. I feel pretty awful now. It
feels as if that cold has seeped into my bones,
and is making many joints ache to some degree or
another. It would probably only be worse if I had
'flu because then all those aches would probably
ache at the same time.
It does occur to me that there could
easily be a more sinister reason for some of these
aches and pains - more sinister than the side
effects of statins. At the beginning of the winter
holiday I decided to experiment with resuming
taking Atorvastatin - one of the statin drugs for
controlling cholesterol levels. Prior to that I
seemed to be eating rather too much cheese, and I
was concerned about my cholesterol levels. It
would have been easier to cut down on cheese, and
in fact that is exactly what I did, but I thought
I would give the Atorvastatin another chance. I'm
not sure if that was a wise decision or not.
I am not sure I am looking forward to work
tomorrow. If I feel like I do right now it could
be an unpleasant experience. On the other hand, if
I sleep well tonight I might cure one potential
problem, and if I survive getting my blood
circulating as I walk to the station, I might end
up feeling no worse than any average day at work
in the winter.
Saturday 3rd January
2015
15:51 GMT
Yesterday afternoon was nice and sunny, and
even after the sun had set the sky stayed clear.
The nice thing about that was that there was still
a pale glow from the sky even as late as when I
arrived home. After the solstice on the 21st
December the days started getting longer, but the
mornings have seemed just as dark so far, but
yesterday was the first real and believable show
that the sun is setting later. It's a shame than
that today is so horrible ! It is very dull, and
there is shower after shower. In fact the only
thing between showers is usually drizzle ! To add
to the misery it is also rather cool. Most of
today has been around 6° C. Tomorrow is going to
be much drier - which is just as well if we don't
want snow (although maybe it would be nice).
Tomorrow could be just as overcast, but the
temperature is going to be close to freezing for
most of the day.
It was good and bad being back at work
yesterday. Getting back in the routine, and seeing
a bit more of the world than Catford was sort of
good, and on the whole I didn't feel too bad at
work - although it was a busier day than I
imagined it would be, and that distracted me from
all those annoying little discomforts. One thing
work could not distract me from was having to go
to the toilet around the middle of the day (and
I'm not just talking about having a wee). I was
under the impression that I must have been really
quite empty after all I had passed in the previous
36 hours or more. Each visit to the toilet
was a perfectly normal visit. No unpleasantness
happened, it was all within normal parameters, and
that includes the middle of the day visit, but
where was it all coming from. It is physically
impossible to excrete more than I have eaten, but
that is what seemed to be happening !
I was perfectly comfortable on my way home,
and when I got home. After a day at work I was a
lot less enthusiastic about going out in the
evening, but I still intended to try and go for
it. So I decided to eat a moderately light dinner.
I decided that something with lots of liquid in
it, such as soup, would both warm me up, and fill
a cavernous hole in my stomach. That is almost
what I did, but the soup I chose was more like
mushy peas, and was rather too filling. I felt a
bit bloated after dinner, and that put me off
going out a bit more. The final straw was when I
had to make yet another trip to the toilet ! I
just did not feel like going out last night. The
worst thing is that I really didn't mind missing
those gigs. It seems I have acclimatised to being
back at work far, far too quickly.
I did something I haven't done for a long time
yesterday. I went out in the sunshine at
lunchtime, and took some pictures of ducks on
The River Wandle.
The River Wandle flowing alongside King Georges
Park in Earlsfield.
View towards Wandsworth across King Georges Park
under a bright blue sky !
This morning, after a
pretty fair, but, as ever, too short sleep, I
met Aleemah at the station, and we did the
normal of breakfast in the local Wetherspoons
pub, and then back here to watch a DVD. We are
currently watching, a couple of episodes at a
time, the DVD of a TV series called DaVinci's
Demons. It is good in some ways, and not
so good in other ways. The biggest problem is
trying to follow a convoluted plot. I could
hardly remember what happened in the first two
episodes that we watched the last time I saw
Aleemah a week or so before Xmas.
This afternoon, after Aleemah had gone
home, I put together what was supposed to be a
simple lunch. It was almost a salad consisting
of some tomatoes, some pickled beetroot,
pickled onions, ham and apple sauce. It was
not as nice as I hoped - maybe because hot
food is more satisfying in the middle of
winter. It has also given me a mild, but
annoying stomach ache. I may even need to rush
to the toilet soon. I fear that I definitely
have something wrong with my digestive tract,
and I fear even more that the best way to cure
it is to fast for at least 24 hours. I am not
exactly keen on that idea. Before resorting to
such drastic measures I think I'll try and
keep my food as simple as possible. Some food
without fiercely hot West Indian pepper sauce
is going to be intolerably bland, but I guess
I am going to have to try and endure it for at
least one meal (but when ? Next year maybe !).
I have nothing planned for tonight, and
maybe that is just as well. I don't think I
really fancy going out tonight. One visit to
the pub this morning, where I drank just one
pint of beer, seems enough for some crazy
reason. Maybe it is time to find a new book to
read.
Friday 2nd January 2015
08:51 GMT
The puddles in the road this morning were a
testament to how much it rained last night -
although it was not heavy enough for me to notice
it from behind the closed curtains. After a dull
but mild day it was 11° C when I woke up this
morning, and that's not bad, but it's not going to
stay like that. The forecast says the temperature
will drop to 8° C, or less, by the time I leave
work, and that is a bit surprising when it is also
forecast to be a sunny morning and afternoon. At
the moment the sky is far from clear, but the
cloud is white and whispy, and rather high. I can
see blue sky through it in places, and it does
look to have the potential to let a lot of
sunshine through once the sun is higher in the
sky. We need as much sunshine as possible today
because tomorrow is forecast to be exceptionally
dull and wet !
When I look back I can't seem to understand
how I did it, but somehow I got myself in the
right state (state of mind ?) to achieve my wish
that I would be in bed, and asleep between 9 and
10pm. It all seems a bit hazy now, but I think I
was asleep quite soon after 9pm, and somehow I
slept rather well. For a while it seemed I had
slept my best sleep for ages. I woke up feeling
rather good. It's a shame that feeling didn't
last. I suppose that the change was all in my head
- some sort of natural reaction to not wanting to
go to work like a schoolboy not wanting to go to
school. I can accept that theory for a few aches,
pains, creaks and groans that developed as I got
myself ready for work, and I can accept that
theory for why, after supposedly having a good
nights sleep, I found myself falling asleep on the
train to work. What didn't seem to be a mental
issue was how many times I had to go to the toilet
before I thought it safe to go and get the train.
I have often hoped that I might have
supernatural mental powers like you see in comics
and such like, but no matter how much I have
concentrated, I have never managed to kill someone
with an excessively loud Walkman, playing dreadful
music on the top deck of a bus, by imagining that
their brain was turning to cheese. Actually I have
tried turning brains to cheese, evaporating them
out of the victims ears, stopping their heart, or
summoning a meteor strike on them. None of these
things seem to work, and from that I deduce it was
impossible for my brain to somehow generate as
much poo as I passed this morning out of thin air
(or wherever/whatever).
It now seems evident that I have been
deluding myself about how much I have been eating
recently. I knew that spending so much time by
myself, indoors, would inevitably mean eating more
than on days when I am at work, and yet I believed
that I was overeating very moderately. I think I
still do believe that up to a point. Yesterday I
only had two meals, and few, if any snacks. One
meal, a sort of brunch, was a bit extravagant to
use up a few items that had been in the fridge for
a while. It was steak, eggs and tomatoes. My other
meal was far healthier. It was a large bowl of
oats with cold skimmed milk on them. That was
followed by a large pear and 4 small kiwi fruits.
All that fibre will definitely clear me out, but
it was too soon for it to be effective this
morning !
Initially it was rather annoying that the
train I wanted this morning, the 06:26, was
cancelled. It was fortunate that I knew it was
cancelled before I left home, and I could wait for
the next one, the 06:56, indoors, in the warm. It
turned out that there was an upside to being
delayed. It was only a small upside - just a bit
of novelty to brighten the morning. In all the
years I have been travelling from Waterloo to
Earlsfield to get to work, and I guess it is over
five years now, on all except the very rarest of
occasions it has been the same class of train that
I catch - a class
455 train. This morning, for the first time
ever*, I travelled on a class
450 train.
* Before we moved from Wandsworth to Earlsfield,
the most common train on the branch from Waterloo
to Wandsworth Town station (and beyond) was a
class 450, but class 455 trains rule the roost on
the branches that serve Earlsfield.
Here's a nice sharp
picture of the doors of the carriage that I
travelled from Waterloo to Earlsfield in.....
....and here's a blurry image of the train
leaving Earlsfield station on it's way to
Shepperton.
I am feeling like I would like a snooze,
and that does not give me a great deal of hope
that I'll be doing what I would like to do
tonight. There are two gigs on tonight that I
would like to go to. First there is Chain playing
in The Swan in West Wickham. I don't really like
the pub, and it often gets too crowded for my
liking (although others would argue it wasn't
crowded at all). It is the best chance I have of
seeing Chain for a while because many of their
upcoming gigs are too far out in the countryside
for me to get to. So I want to grit my teeth and
see their first set, and then......
.....The Bromley Bastards are playing in The
William IV pub in Elmers End. I'd rather like to
see some of their gig too. It could be quite a
spectacle. It is the final gig to take place in
The William IV pub - possibly for ever. The pub is
changing hands, and will be closing for a deep
refurbishment before re-opening as a carvery. The
handy thing about tonight is that the only way
home from The Swan in West Wickham, after the last
train has gone, is to get the bus down to Elmers
End, just a couple of hundred yards, if indeed it
is that far, from The William IV, and get the 54
bus from there. (The last 54 bus is well after
midnight !). So it is a well practiced route home,
and if I leave Chain halfway through their gig I
should be able to catch the tumultous (probably)
end of The Bromley Bastards gig ! - If
I can find the energy to go out at all tonight
!
Thursday 1st January
2015
13:07 GMT
So a new year has begun, and statistically
it will be no different to past years. Take that
whichever way you like. On the subject of global
warming it is a whole 9° C today, and rather
overcast. It will warm up a few degrees during the
rest of the afternoon, and then we can look
forward to a wet evening. Tomorrow might be a
little cooler, but a lot sunnier. With any luck
the global warming idea that spring comes earlier
and earlier each year now may be correct, but I
can't say I've noticed any change beyond random
changes in either direction in the last 30 years.
Yesterday I made what turned out to be a
stupid suggestion. It would have made very good
sense to try and get to bed last night, and to
make an attempt to resynchronise myself to getting
up for work at 5am, but it didn't happen. It
didn't happen in spadefuls ! At the time I should
have been getting into bed, and somehow forcing
myself to relax, I started watching the first
episode of series 5, the last ever series, of Warehouse
13. Unfortunately I also had the other 5
episodes on my computer, and I sort of got carried
away.
At 3am this morning, rather later than
intended, I finally got to bed ! It took longer
than expected to fall asleep, but I guess it was
probably not much longer than 5 or 10 minutes. I
then slept rather well. There was a little hiccup
when I woke at about 7am, and didn't think I would
get back to sleep again, but after a visit to the
toilet I got back into bed. After a couple of
false starts at getting back to sleep, the next
thing I knew was that it was almost 11am, and that
I had managed to come as close to getting 8 hours
sleep as I manage on most days.
I knew it was not worth fighting for more
sleep just then, and so I got up and showered. Got
dressed, and was ready to face the world - almost
! I guess I probably felt well enough that I could
have gone to work. At least I probably felt no
worse than many, many days when I have gone to
work, but I guess it would be nicer to feel a lot
better. In fact the only significant ailment was
the pain in, or maybe just above my right knee.
Since winter set in, it has sometimes been very
painful when making certain moves.
Until last night, at least I think it was
last night, I had assumed that the pain was due to
a crumbling kneecap, or whatever it is that
requires a kneecap replacement. Maybe it is that,
or maybe it is arthritis or rheumatism. Of course
it could be all those things, but I remembered one
episode in my life when I dropped an incredibly
heavy TV on my leg just a few inches above the
knee, and that is where the worst pain radiates
from.
On the day of that accident it felt like my
knee was broken, and that if I wasn't very careful
my knee would bend the wrong way, and I would go
sprawling across the road. It was a rather
uncomfortable time ! The next day it was rather
sore, but it just seemed like bruising. I have no
idea what internal damage it might have done, but
I seem to be reaping the rewards for it now -
maybe 15 years after the original accident. The
only time it is painful, sometime rather strongly
painful, is when I try and lift my leg over
something. Ibuprofen helps the pain a lot. On a
good day it just about completely eliminates it,
but there is no need for that on most days. It is
not painful when I walk at all, although going up
stairs can trigger a few twinges.
One of the things I was going to do today
was to copy an analogue camcorder tape to my
digital camcorder, and from there onto my PC.
After that I might have done some simple editing,
and eventually burned the completed thing onto a
DVD disk to watch on TV. The tape is not mine.
It's from my friend Lee, and I'm not even sure if
he knows what is on it. What he definitely didn't
know, at least I hope he didn't, was that the tape
has broken, and it's going to need a very tricky
repair job. I don't feel in the mood for that
right now, although while I have the two
camcorders set up I might transfer one or more of
my own tapes to digital, and then onto my PC.
That is about all I really intended to do
today. Tonight I really must try and get to sleep
between 9 and 10pm so I don't feel like a zombie
when I go into work tomorrow. Going in just for a
Friday seems ridiculous, but I guess it has to be
done. Oh well, with luck, and a fair wind, I
should be able to quit my job this year, and live
the rest of my life as a real pauper. Sometimes I
wish I had more money now, but once I quite work I
will have to survive on about a third of what work
pays me. It will be tricky, very tricky, but maybe
the rewards will outweigh the penalties.
