Friday 31st July
2015
|
07:55 BST
It could almost have been a nice day
yesterday. The temperature, although poor for
July, was comfortable, and it was dry all day, but
there were too many clouds around - particularly
so in the afternoon when I was hoping the weather
forecast would be wrong. Unusually it was right !
The afternoon temperature was probably only a bit
over 20° C. This morning has started bright and
clear, but look at the bottom figure on the
picture on the left. That 9.7° C is the outside
temperature at 05:53 this morning. That is pretty
low ! Some say that it isn't exceptional for a
July morning, and I would say it is not that
exceptional for a January morning !
The weather today seems like it will be
similar to yesterday, but there seems more hope
that the clouds that are due to form soon will be
more patchy, and we'll have more sunny spells than
yesterday. The current forecast says the
temperature much of this afternoon will only be
20° C, but there could be a brief peak of 21, or
even 22° C at 5pm. A lot of tomorrow is looking
like it might be overcast, but it could brighten
up in the afternoon. Once again, the temperature
will be little better than 20° C. So that's August
off to a very non-summery start then ! Back to
this morning when it was cold enough for a heavy
dew !
The top of my wheelie bin
spotted with dew drops at 06:18 this morning.
There were many ways
I could have got to The Railway Telegraph pub
in Forest Hill after work yesterday. All of
them meant travelling to Forest Hill station
and walking from there, but depending on my
choice the train could approach the station
from the south or the north. I opted for the
latter direction because it would give me a
chance to see the newly rebuilt platforms and
infrastructure of London Bridge station. There
is still plenty of building work to do yet,
and the through platforms haven't even been
started on yet, but the terminal platforms are
probably complete.
My journey to London Bridge was a bit
convoluted, and I got there later than I hoped
- which meant a 20 minute wait for the next
train towards Forest Hill. After leaving work,
and walking to the main road, I spotted a 44
bus just pulling up to the bus stop. So I
jumped on that to go to Wandsworth Town
station. That was probably the first mistake.
It only added a few, maybe 5 minutes to my
journey, but the small delays all added up.
From Wandsworth Town station I took a train to
Waterloo. It was probably no more than a
minute or two, but that train had to wait
outside Waterloo station until it's platform
became free. Another couple of minutes lost !
At Waterloo I went down into the tube
station, and took the Jubilee line to London
Bridge. I can't complain about any delays on
that part of the journey - there was even a
train in the platform when I got down there,
and the doors closed a few seconds after I got
on, and we were on our way. I do find it
curious how being underground can sometimes
distort the impression of speed and distance.
The next stop after Waterloo is Southwark
station, and that seems to be almost
underneath Waterloo East station. Trains from
Waterloo East never seem to go very fast to
London Bridge, but the tube from Southwark
really rattles along to London Bridge, and yet
the travelling time seems longer for what
seems like should be a similar distance.
All those little delays, including the
time it takes to get into and out of the tube
stations, meant that I missed the 16:10 and
16:22 trains that I thought I might have been
able to get, and I missed the 16:37 train too.
I had about a 20 minute wait before I git the
16:53 train. Nice train thought - it was a
class 377 - the same type that Southern Trains
use for services to the south coast from
London. It seemed a bit extravagant for a
simple inner suburban journey between London
Bridge and Victoria stations, but I wasn't
complaining. 10 or 15 minutes later I was at
Forest Hill, and in another 10 minutes I was
at The Railway Telegraph pub.
It made a change that I was the last to
arrive instead of the first. It's a Shepherd
Neme pub, and I am not keen on their ales,
although I was assured by the others that the
Spitfire was rather excellent. I opted for a
pint of Whitstable Bay premium lager. I had
never heard of it before, although I have
enjoyed several fine ales from that brewery,
but the lager did not impress me. So for my
next two pints I had Hurliman, sometimes known
as hooligan, lager, and that was much nicer.
After three pints I decided I ought to leave.
It's only a few minutes walk from the
pub to the bus stop, and I was lucky in that I
only had to wait a few minutes for a bus. I
was even luckier that the South Circular road
was flowing freely, and I was back in Catford
in little more than 10 to 15 minutes. Along
the way, and even when inside the pub, I was
assaulted by lovely cooking smells, and I was
feeling hungry enough to allow the small
amount of booze I had drunk to slightly dull
my good sense - but only just. I went into the
fried chicken shop and bought the smallest
order I have probably ever made there - just
three bits of chicken and nothing else at all.
It was nice to sit down to some hot food
as soon as I got home, but I had planned to
have more. In particular I was looking forward
to trying out the goat cheese and sweet potato
pie I had bought from Tesco the day before.
The cooking instructions didn't mention using
a microwave, but I assumed that was because I
microwave couldn't give the nice brown crusty
top that a normal oven could. To cook in a
normal over they recommended 25 to 30 minutes.
I thought I would take a chance on 15 minutes
in my microwave oven. That was a big
mistake ! I heard the timer go ping !
from the living room, and when I went to the
kitchen there was smoke pouring from the
microwave. The pie had almost caught fire, and
maybe it had. There was no damage to the
microwave except for some smoke stain, but as
soon as I opened the oven door the kitchen
filled with horrible brown smoke. I opened the
windows and door to let it dissipate, but I
think that smell is going to linger for some
time. I'm sure I can smell it on the
sandwiches I brought to work this morning, and
they were safely shut in the fridge until I
took them out this morning. I am still curious
as to what a goats cheese and sweet potato pie
tastes like, but I think I am going to have to
be a lot more careful cooking it if I do buy
another.
I slept better last night, although
still not as well as I would like. I didn't
seem to have any extended weird dreams, and in
fact I can only recall having one short dream.
In that dream I was examining a few spots on
my left foot. I was trying to work out if they
were zits, blisters, warts, or something
terrible. The only weird thing is that for me
to see my foot in the way I was in the dream I
would have to be a contortionist. Eventually I
woke up, and then got up 15 minutes early. I
don't feel too bad this morning - although I
do still feel some bad. My chest seems to have
returned to a persistent mild ache rather than
the jarring pains I felt a few times
yesterday. My stomach feels a bit tender again
this morning, although "tender" may not be an
appropriate word. It feels a little like
hunger pains. It could be my daily dose of
aspirin is upsetting my stomach again because
I am not taking it with food as recommended.
On top of all that I feel like I would now
like to go back to bed for another hour or
two. Oh well, it's Friday, and the working
week is almost over, and it is also payday. So
life must be wonderful....musn't it ?
|
Thursday 30th July
2015
|
07:52 BST
I think that yesterday turned out to be
pretty close to how the weather forecast predicted
it - or at least my intepretation of that weather
forecast. It became quite cloudy during the
morning, and then the cloud thinned out in the
afternoon. The only thing I am unclear about is to
whether we had any significant sunny spells, or
whether the cloud just became thin enough for the
occasional ray of sunshine, and an overall lighter
ambience. I think it was around 21 - 22° C when I
got home from work, although there was a bit of a
breeze that made it feel a little cooler than
that. Today, which started off at 13° C, was
forecast to be sunnier than yesterday, but now it
seems that may only be the case in the morning,
and the afternoon will be cloudy. The top
temperature today will be similar to yesterday,
but it's reckoned that the breeze will be lighter,
and that will make it feel a little warmer than
yesterday. Tomorrow may be a lot more sunny, but
the temperature won't be significantly different
to today or yesterday.
I remember having some discomfort on my way
home from work yesterday, and thinking that pain
is a constant companion these days. The trouble is
that I can't think what sort of pain it was, or
where it was coming from to make me think that.
The most obvious pain was from my feet. One day I
will learn to throw away cheap shoes that become
uncomfortable as the insole, and maybe other bits,
deform or break up. Of course the only trouble is
that yesterday's shoes colour matched the shirt I
was wearing, and I have no seen any replacements
in that colour. So I am reluctant to throw those
shoes away until they are displaying more wear on
the outside, but I think I ought to make a point
of not attempting to wear them (and several
others) to work, or for other long periods of
time. They are still OK for short trips to the
shops or pub.
Despite my feet aching I went home via
Tesco. I fancied something nice for dinner, and I
couldn't think of anything I had at home, and I
couldn't think of anything in particular I wanted
from Tesco, but I thought I would spot something
while going round the store. I ended up buying
rather a lot, and having to lug three carrier bags
home. One bag, which I doubled up for safety, had
three 2 litre bottles of Tesco own label, sugar
free, fizzy drinks. One of them intrigued me. It
was called "Dr Fizz", and I wondered if it was
based on a Dr Peppers - a drink I am none too keen
on. In a way it was, but it was more a marzipan
taste than cherry. It is almost pleasant in small
quantities, and I think that 2 litre bottle is
probably going to last a long while. Luckily it is
fairly cheap. Tesco are selling three 2 litre
bottles of own brand fizzy drinks for £1.50 (or
55p each). I don't think my wallet will bleed too
much even if I end up pouring some of the Dr Fizz
down the drain.
The variability of my broken chest never
ceases to amaze me. Yesterday I had practically no
background pain from it, and it seemed to be
clicking, popping and grinding a lot less. What it
was doing instead was to give very brief, but very
sharp pains when I performed certain actions. For
example, when I stood up after putting a couple of
my newly bought bottles of drink in the bottom of
the fridge, I had a really sharp stabbing pain as
I stood up. Within 5 seconds, or even less, it had
gone away again leaving no trace behind.
One entirely predictable result of visiting
Tesco (or any other supermarket), and particularly
on my way home from work, was that I ate rather
too well last night. The straw that broke the
camels back was actually a salad. One of the
things I had noticed on the reduced price shelves
was a little pot of anchovies - the light
coloured, non-salted type - originally from the
delicatessen counter. They come in oil, and are
rather delicious - and four, or more times cheaper
than the little tins or bottles of anchovies you
can buy. I had rather a lot of then on a
ready made bowl of salad just dressed with vinegar
- and I still have half a pot left to do something
with tonight.
Yesterday evening was not pleasant in one
respect. I had eaten more than enough for the
evening, and yet after I washed my hair I wanted
to eat even more. That's not actually correct.
Eating would have been one answer to how I felt.
What I really wanted to do was to sit down and
relax with a cigarette. I feel sure this was no
delayed nicotine addiction reaction, but it was
just what felt like an answer to this really
powerful feeling I had that I wanted some sort of
stimulation. It felt like my head would explode as
I craved something unknown. Maybe it was an
extreme form of boredom, or frustration, or
something else. I ended up having a couple of
glasses of whisky, and that helped, but it wasn't
a cure.
That whisky probably helped me get to sleep
a bit easier, and I ended up sleeping tolerably
well, but I could have wished for a lot more, and
more satisfying sleep. At some time in the night I
had a long series of dreams, and some bits of
those dreams stickm in my memory. The most
interesting one was probably a deep condemnation
of the current weather. In this dream I was
walking back home from a pub that was where Aldi
is in real life. The sky was dark, and it started
snowing. In a very short time enough snow had
fallen to make the pavements completely white. To
my annoyance, I couldn't seem to make the camera
work in my mobile phone so I could post some
pictures of it in the dream version of this blog.
Two curious facts emerge from the dream. The first
was that it was definitely still July in that
dream, and secondly was the interesting fact that
I didn't seem to feel cold as the snow was
falling. It was almost as if I was viewing it
remotely - although I could look down and see my
footprints in the snow.
I got up 10 or 15 minute early again this
morning. I would have liked to get up for half an
hour, or maybe an hour before going back to bed
again in the hope of getting a good few more hours
of sleep. I definitely felt quite rough this
morning, and I still do now. My chest had gone
back to a persistent gentle ache, and that was
joined by a gentle persistent ache from my gut.
Maybe those anchovies are doing something
unpleasant to my digestive system ! A small
residue of dissolved soluble aspirin left a slight
tingle/taste in my mouth that seemed to make me
salivate more than usual (although to some extent
or other this is a frequent event when I take my
morning dose of aspirin). The aspirin make the
blood less sticky as it pumps through the blood
vessels of the body. It is unfortunate that if I
don't rinse it out of my mouth well enough it
makes me salivate a lot more, and that is like one
of the precursors to vomiting.
To add to my misery I also managed to make
myself gag as I brushed my teeth. I really did
feel that I was on the edge of throwing up. It may
have been some of the tightening of my stomach
muscles that has left my stomach feeling tender
and a bit sore this morning - either than or I am
due to explode during a visit to the toilet some
time today. It certainly feels bad enough that I
only ate one of the two sandwiches I brought to
work for breakfast this morning - and that means
it is pretty serious ! I'm not sure it was a wise
thing to even eat one of them.
I hope that if my gut is going to rebel it
gets it over with before I go home. Tonight, being
a Thursday, is booze night. We are drinking in The
Railway Telegraph in Forest Hill, and that is
going to make for an interesting journey. There
are several ways I can get there, although all
mean a stiff 8 - 10 minute walk from Forest Hill
station. I could walk to Wandsworth Common
station, like I used to do some years back when I
felt far fitter than I do now, and from there I
can get a direct train to Forest Hill, or change
at Crystal Palace. Direct trains are only every 30
minutes. So unless I was very lucky I would
probably end up changing at Crystal Place. I could
also get the train from Earlsfield to Clapham
Junction, and then change there to the same train
that would call at Wandsworth Common station.
Those methods would get me to Forest Hill rather
early. So I think I will take a longer route.
I'll get the train to Waterloo as usual,
and the take the Jubilee Line to London Bridge.
There are trains at almost random intervals from
London Bridge to Forest Hill. If I miss the first
it is a 10 minute wait, and if I miss the second
choice it is a 20 minute wait. The next one after
that is probably a 10 minute wait, but I think
there is every reason to believe I should be able
to get the first train mentioned (16:22 ?).
Getting home from the pub is easy - sort of. If I
leave too early the 185 bus back to Catford will
be stuck in traffic so long that I doubt I'll get
home this month (or that is what it might feel
like). I don't want to drink too much so I would
like to leave early, but if I stay for maybe 4
pints, the traffic will probably have died down a
lot, and the journey home will be far less
painful. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to see
what happens when I get there.
|
Wednesday 29th July
2015
|
08:04
BST
Well, here we are approaching the end of
October........no, sorry, it just feels like it.
It's actually nearly the end of July,
traditionally one of the hottest months of the
year, and this morning it was just 10 or 11° C
(depending on which thermometer is the most
accurate). Yesterday, after a slightly less cool
start, and with some periods when the clouds
seemed to get very thick, did finally reach 22° C.
There was even a bit of sunshine, although not
much. Today has started bright and sunny, and
although the sun was too low in the sky to be felt
except in certain places with a less obstructed
view to the east, it did feel nice and warm. Thin
clouds will come and go all day today (if I
understand the forecast correctly) and so the
sunshine could be rather intermittent, but the
clouds should usually be thin enough that most the
day will be bright. However, the forecast warns us
that there is a chance of the odd rogue cloud
turning up that will be thicker and darker and
wetter, and it could drop rain on us. If all goes
well the temperature should rise to 21° C today -
which is a degree less than yesterday. It could
have been higher but air will be chilled by a cold
wind from the north today. Tomorrow will probably
be similar to today.
It may look like a shadow of an amorphous
blob, but it is me casting this deep shadow as I
get near to work. It demonstrate how bright the
early morning sun was, and how low in the sky it
was to cast such a long shadow,
I didn't feel that bad at work yesterday. I
had no major aches and pains, but I did have a
couple of brief twinges that were quite painful
for a second or so. They happened as I made
certain moves, and felt like the sharp end of a
rib was poking into me. Of course it is always
possible that a surgical instrument was left
inside of me when I was operated on almost two
years ago now. That would explain quite a lot of
things, and rather than regard it with horror, I
find I quite like the idea of it for some strange
reason. Maybe it would be a novelty, and I like
novelties. It is a shame that it is hugely
unlikely, almost impossible, but even "almost
impossible" still leaves room for possible.
When I got home from work, after a textbook
journey home, I had a very unwise,
unhealthy, snack before hand washing four
shirts. I wasn't completely sure I should have
been doing that, but it warmed me up nicely, and I
don't think it caused any harm, although I must I
did it because I said that I might do it, and
didn't want to let myself down. The fact that I
was running out of my favourite shirts didn't
enter in it. I still had enough good shirts for
another 5 day work week, and enough second choice
shirts for another work week. I do seem to have a
lot of shirts these days, and all the shirts I've
just mentioned are short sleeved one. If necessary
I could start to wear the long sleeved shirts. In
fact this morning, with it being so cold, I was
tempted to put on a long sleeved shirt.
One thing that did bother me at work was
just how easy it was to start to fall asleep while
reading stuff on my computer. While I was busy
doing other stuff I didn't feel tired, but if I
relaxed I felt dreadfully tired. So it was obvious
that I should try and get plenty of sleep last
night. You might think that if I can start to fall
asleep, and on at least one occasion actually fall
asleep, albeit very briefly, while sitting at my
work desk reading from a computer, it would be
been easier to fall asleep while tucked up in bed.
Well I would have done, but apparently real life
got in the way. Within seconds of getting into bed
I was irritated by what seemed to be half a grain
of sand. I don't know what it actually was, but it
was this tiny grain of something hard that felt
like trying to sleep on the tip of a knife blade.
Sleeping should have been easy after
removing that tiny little irritant, but no. The
temperature in my bedroom seemed to be back in
that annoying spot where it's too cold without the
duvet, and too hot with it. So I had to leave one
leg and one arm outside the duvet to equalise the
temperature. With that done it was time for my
floating rib(s) to crunch and grind even just by
breathing in and out if I lay in my favourite
position. Much of that could be overcome by mind
over matter if only my stupid brain could shut up
and get on with the job in question.
It was my brain that was ultimate downfall.
It eventually let me get to sleep, and it was
probably not responsible for waking me up a couple
of times in the night, but it was responsible for
not letting me get straight back to sleep again.
It's ultimate sin was to instigate a horror dream
! This nightmare started about half an hour before
my alarm was set to go off at 5am. It started off
OK. I was at work - although I am not sure where.
It was a sort of hybrid of several places I've
worked at in the past. There was going to be a
union meeting, and I was urged to go to it. I
hadn't been in any union for 20 years, but if they
wanted me to go, then who was I to argue.
The meeting was in some sort of conference
centre - perhaps something like, and maybe
inspired by, the Excell centre in Docklands - but
there was one major difference in that this place
was on a high street, and there was a pub just up
the street from it. The significance of the pub
was that a band I knew, The Bromley Bastards, were
due to play a gig there right after the meeting.
Some of the members of the band were actually at
the meeting, and I think it might have been them
who urged me to go to it. The meeting started and
I was immediately thrown out because I was not a
member. So I went to one of the bars to kill a bit
of time. That is where the dream turned into a
nightmare. I was charged £6 for a pint of Guinness
(and it was a short measure) ! Faced with such a
horror I had to wake up.
I woke up 20 or 30 minutes earlier than I
needed to. In an ideal world I would have been
able to go back to sleep again, but I live in a
far from ideal world, and all I could do was to
get up feeling like another 3 hours sleep would be
desirable. Apart from that I feel tolerably well
this morning, although I will confess that I took
a couple of Ibuprofen tablets this morning to
reduce some hints of inflammation around my
floating ribs, and knackered ligaments. Maybe my
biggest complaint is that despite it being very
chilly this morning I was able to work up a sweaty
forehead far too easily as I walked the walking
bits of getting to work. That suggests my blood
glucose level is high again. I really must check
that the fizzy raspberry and mint drink I was
drinking last night was added sugar free, and
didn't contain too much natural sugar. Most of the
drinks in the same range from Aldi are very low,
extremely low, or almost no sugar, but maybe this
one was different in some way. I can't think of
anything else that I have eaten or drunk that
would contain significant amount of sugars in it.
My most significant plan for tonight is to
wash my hair. It is feeling quite yucky today, and
wasn't terribly pleasant yesterday. I was going to
do it this morning, but I was put off when I saw
the temperature outside. I didn't think it would
be very clever to walk to the station with wet
hair while it was so cold. The other thing I ought
to do is some washing up. I seem to have neglected
it since the weekend, and maybe including the
weekend. The only other thing to do is to have
another go at getting to sleep early tonight -
even if that means bludgeoning my brain to sleep
with an excess of whisky !
Monday afternoon at Waterloo station concourse.
They're giving away mini tins of Coca Cola
(choose from three different flavours).
All day yesterday at Waterloo station - Ego !
I have no idea who "Ego" are, or what they do,
but is seemed to be something to do with makeup.
|
Tuesday 28th July
2015
|
07:47 BST
Yesterday wasn't all bad. 19° C wasn't very good
for a July day, but it was comfortable enough, and
I didn't need to put on any heating at home. It
stayed dry, and the sun came out a few times.
Today started at 14° C, but the forecast says the
temperature should peak at around 21° C late this
afternoon. The best bit is shown in the picture of
my radio controlled thermometer - that nice
friendly sun symbol ! There may not be much
sunshine today, and the forecast warns of thick
black clouds, and possibly some rain just before
midday, but there will be some sunshine. I even
saw some on my way into work. I can see several
large blue patches of sky through my office
window, but I think a cloud is covering the sun
right now. If I am very lucky it will be bright
and sunny when I go home from work today.
It sort of saddened me, as I wrote the
previous sentence, that in little more than four
months time I will not be going home in sunshine,
but in night time darkness. The longest day of the
year was five or six weeks ago, and it's been
downhill ever since !
I felt pretty rough yesterday morning, but
by the afternoon I was feeling much better. Most
of my aches and pains had gone, and I was doing
some interesting stuff at work - although a lot of
it had nothing to do with work. A year ago, or
thereabouts, I acquired a surplus old laptop. It
was originally designed to run Windows 2000. It
had a small hard disk, not much memory, and a mere
800MHz processor. Occasionally I would get it out
and play with it. I managed to install Linux Mint
13 on it, and although slow, it worked reasonably
well.
Unfortunately the DVD/CD drive failed, and
the hard disk was getting even more sluggish as it
started to report the odd error here and there. So
I found a cheap, second hand DVD drive for it that
came with no bezel, but works fine, and I splashed
out on a brand new solid state hard drive for it.
The latter was a bit extravagant, but I chose a
fairly small drive, 64GB, and I think it was
around £40. The DVD drive and hard disk were
delivered yesterday, and I tried them out. They
worked well - which is more than I can say for the
installation of Debian Linux I installed on it.
That worked, but the display was strangely
flickery. I am sure that if I tried hard enough I
could reconfigure the parameters of the X server
to give a clean display, but there is an easier,
but probably much slower way of getting the
display correct, and that is to clone the old hard
disk contents onto the new hard disk, and that is
what I will attempt today (in between doing some
real work work !).
It wasn't sunny when I left work yesterday,
but it was fairly bright. That didn't inspire me
like nice sunshine would have, but I probably
didn't need it. I was feeling good in other ways -
and I was feeling a little bad in just one
specific area - my left foot. For some reason my
left foot started to feel uncomfortable. When I
got home I found that the shoe had started to
chafe one of my toes. This may be because my feet
are rarely swollen now, and the oversized shoes I
bought when they were swollen are now quite a
loose fit. The shoes I have on today are not
chafing, but they do feel a lot more uncomfortable
than they should.
My left foot may have been feeling a bit
uncomfortable (and my right foot was also very
slightly uncomfortable for a different reason),
but my legs still seemed to be working well like
they had in the morning. My chest was still
feeling delicate, and was still popping and
clicking when I made certain movements, which can
include walking, but it had mostly stopped
hurting. That gave me a bit of a boost, and none
more so when I was on the platform of Earlsfield
station. My train was pulling in while I was only
half way down the platform. So I ran ! Not very
far, about a carriage length, or 30ft, or
something like that, but I ran so I could get into
the front half of the train so I could walk to the
front to be nearest the ticket barriers at
Waterloo. In the morning I would have worried that
even a short run like that could have been a death
sentence, but in the afternoon it felt totally
unnatural, but not very taxing. I was already
breathing deeply, or as deeply as my ruined chest
allows me to these days, from the walk to the
station, but that little run seemed to make no
further distance. I sometimes wonder just how many
yards I could run if, for instance, I was chased
by a lion. I reckon that on a good day I could go
at least a hundred yards before becoming lion food
!
That good feeling continued when I got back
to Catford. Although my left foot was
uncomfortable, it was far from agony, and so I
decided I would possibly double my walk back home
by going via Poundland to buy some shopping. That
was quite successful - although it will be several
days before I can see if the 4 pack of toilet
paper I bought is good or rubbish. Other stuff
that went into my shopping basket were a couple of
liquid soaps for the bathroom, some spare
toothpaste, a big bag of raw mixed nuts, and
another £1 DVD.
I'm not sure about the DVD. It is half a
dozen episodes of a short lived (I think) ITV
series called Paul
Merton In Galton And Simpson's.......
Comedian Paul Merton re-enacts comedy scripts
originally written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson
for people like Tony Handcock, or TV series like
Steptoe And Son. I watched one episode last night,
and I think it was a script that was probably
originally written for Tony Handcock. It was well
acted, a bit funny, but somehow I didn't really
like it. I have vague memories of seeing an
episode or two when it was originally shown on TV,
and I can't recall being enthused enough to watch
more. That is quite strange because all the right
ingredients seemed to be there, but it just didn't
gel. Maybe it was something to do with it being
made for ITV instead of the BBC. Apart from a
commercial break in the middle, I can't see what
the difference could be. Maybe it is just my
prejudice against ITV or something equally weird.
I finally got to go to bed a little bit
early last night. I read in bed for a bit, but
soon after 9pm I was fast asleep, and I slept
solidly for 3 hours, and then I slept solidly for
another 3 hours, and then I slept badly for an
hour or a bit before giving up and getting up 20
minutes before I needed to. This morning my chest
is still delicate feeling, and it is still easy to
generate brief pains in the middle, or one one
side or another, high or low, by doing simple
things like reaching behind me for the toilet
paper, or tugging at my shoelaces. While not doing
those things it there is no more than the ghost of
a pain that is more of an imagined warning not to
strain it rather than a real pain.
So today I have real work to do at work, and
I have interesting non work stuff to distract me.
If after all that I still feel OK when I get home,
and perhaps particularly so if it is sunny, I may
take a chance on washing some shirts. Oddly
enough, like walking, hand washing shirts
(usually) makes my chest feel better - which is
strange because it seems likely to be one of the
other ways, besides carrying heavy shopping, that
I did the damage to my chest superstructure in the
first place. Still, you gotta have clean shirts !
At this point there should be a couple of pictures
of free samples of the different types of Coca
Cola being given away at Waterloo station last
night. I think I must have forgotten to upload
them to the server. Oh well, maybe I'll show them
tomorrow !
|
Monday 27th July
2015
|
07:56
BST
Yesterday was horrible right up to about
7pm when the sun came out for a few minutes, but
it was still cold and damp and horrible. Today is
supposed to be slightly better. The BBC have
updated their weather forecast web page, and it
now says it won't rain today - at least that's
what the icons show. The accompanying text says
there could be the odd scattered shower at any
time, and indeed there was some light rain while I
waited for my train at Catford Bridge station
earlier on, but there has been nothing since. The
clouds are currently covering the whole sky, and
probably will all day, but they are fairly light
in colour, and don't give the impression that rain
is imminent. However they are thick enough to make
the day look very dull and depressing. The idea
that the top temperature today will only be 19° C
hardly fills me with joy, but I guess it is better
than today's starting temperature - 14° C.
It was my intention to get to sleep really
early last night, but although I felt tired I also
felt too uncomfortable to sleep. So I had a couple
of very large whiskies, and fell into a
comfortable sleep at about 11pm. That was rather
late, but maybe managing to stay asleep for most
of the night, but not all, will partly compensate
for that. I don't know how much was just me
feeling ill, and how much was the autumnal like
weather, but I slept under a thick duvet without
feeling too hot most of the time. It is perhaps a
measure of how cool it was this morning that I
turned on the heater in my room when I woke up
almost an hour early. I then got back under the
duvet, and I guess I slept for another 30 - 40
minutes.
Once again I feel pretty rough. Some of the
initial roughness may have been hangover, but the
amount of whisky I had doesn't normally make me
feel that bad. Most of the aches and pains were in
various parts of my chest, and most of them can be
attributed to my damaged ribs, muscles, and
ligaments. They tend to go away when I'm standing
up straight, and more usefully, when I'm walking.
It's when I am slouched over my desk, like now, or
in a train seat, that much of the discomfort
happens. Certain movements can bring mild stabs of
pain from my chest. These include swinging my
rucksack over my arm, and a new one that I
discovered today, reaching deep into my trouser
pocket.
Despite all these theories about damaged
ribs and ligaments, I do feel that there could be
an element of some sort of heart trouble lurking
beneath that lot, and yet that doesn't seem
consistent with how walking, which used to bring
on sometimes quite severe angina pains before my
operation, seems to cure all my assorted chest
pains. It must be because I don't slouch when I am
walking - at least I don't think I do. I think I
try to keep my back straight, and shoulders level,
or whatever they do in the army.
After spending nearly all day either on my
computer, or laying on my bed feeling poorly
yesterday, it was nice to walk to the station this
morning. The odd thing was that it seemed far
easier than of late. The same was true on the mad
dash between Waterloo East and Waterloo stations
(although I have to confess I stayed in the middle
of the moderate pace walkers rather than racing to
the front). This morning, for the first time in
ages, it did feel that if I kept up the moderate,
and not rushed pace that I used between the
station and work, I could have kept walking for
miles.
Well I'm at work now, and I think it is
going to be a boring and unpleasant day. I am not
comfortable just sitting at my desk, but there is
little else to do, and nowhere else to go. I guess
I'll just have to grit my teeth and endure it
until I can go home. I have a funny feeling that
the best bit of not being at work will be the
journey home - while I am up and walking about.
Until then it will probably feel like I'm dying -
and maybe I am :-)
|
Sunday 26th July
2015
|
18:16 BST
It was frequently quite cloudy yesterday,
but there was also a fair bit of sunshine. This
picture sums it up quite well.
Yesterday's highlight was Chattfest - a 2
day festival of local bands playing for charity in
aid of St Christophers Hospice. I didn't get there
until a lot later than I intended - mostly due a
to mix up with the times of when a particular band
was due to play. I thought The Spiders (starring
Chris Mayer on one of two lead guitars) was on at
2pm on Saturday. At the last minute I found out
they were due on at 2pm today, and so I didn't
need to rush. In many way that was better because
I didn't want to hang around there all day waiting
for Chain to come on at 9pm. It turned that that
was wrong too ! There was a borough council curfew
on for 9pm, and Chain were actually on at 8pm, and
that suited me just fine. I got there in time to
see the last three bands before being able to get
home pleasantly early.
The first band I saw were called Triggers
Broom, and as far as I can recall they just did
Beatles covers. They were good and competent, but
didn't really do it for me. The next band were
called Long Way Down, and they were very good. Not
only good musicians, but playing some great covers
of popular (as opposed to hard core) 1970s punk
(stuff like A Town Called Malice). They had a good
stage presence as well - something that some
musicians don't always understand. I can think of
one musician who I am sure closes his eyes at a
gig and just listens to drum timings, or whatever.
The poor fool doesn't realise he misses out on a
lot of the pleasure of live music - mistakes and
all !
Here's Long Way Down on stage.
I don't think they were posing for the camera.
(This is picture demonstrates what I had hoped
to be able to take with my new DSLR camera)
It was nice to give my new Canon DSLR
camera a run under daylight, and although I am
still learning how to drive it, I started to
get some better pictures than my Canon bridge
camera* was capable of - mainly the greater
flexibility of focussing. One thing I may have
slightly wasted my money on was the f1.4 lens.
As I found last Friday night, it does give
extra sensitivity under low light, and such a
large aperture can give a very shallow depth
of field, but having tried it last Friday, and
also yesterday, I'm not sure if I really need
it.
* bridge camera - a camera that is halfway
between a handy snapper and a Digital Single
Lens Reflex Camera. It looks a lot like a
DSLR, but isn't. One principle difference is
that the lens is not replaceable.
After Long Way Down had finished their
set it was time for Chain to take the stage.
It was a pleasant surprise to see that Dave
Griffiths had been called in to add keyboards
to their special Fleetwood Mac covers set. It
all added to the sound, and the sound was LOUD
! It is no wonder there was a strict sound
curfew at 9pm.
I think this picture
should probably have a title something
like...The mad, the serene and the bemused
! Dave Griffiths swinging his hair around
as he plays the keyboards. Jo Corteen
looking very calm, and Chris Mayer looking
amazed ! Dave Etheridge is playing the
drums behind Chris, and Graham is out of
shot playing bass.
Jo and Chris looking very happy with how
the gig was going.
I guess I got home at around
10pm. It was not a happy bus ride home
! By tradition, the 320 bus always
gets to Catford faster than a 208.
When I got to the bus stop the
countdown timer said I had 9 minutes
to wait for a 320, and 11 minutes for
a 208. So my favourite bus would
arrive first, and rush me back to
Catford leaving the 208 choking in
it's dust. Except it didn't happen
that way ! We were 4 or 5 stops from
Catford and the 208 went sailing past
us, and we were left choking
in it's dust ! Evidently all is not
right in the world we live in this
weekend !
When I got home I had a special
treat waiting for me. Rather than
buying chicken and chips, which I
might have done if I had managed to
buy and drink more than 2 pints of
nasty Fosters lager all night (the bar
was stupidly busy !), I had bought
some "Southern flavoured",
breadcrumbed chick from Aldi, and I
had cooked it enough before I went out
so it would just need a quick reheat
when I got in. With hindsight it may
not have been the best treat I could
have had. It was unpleasantly greasy,
although most of the grease was mopped
up by the breadcrumbs that mostly fell
off as I ate the chicken. It still
gave me indigestion that interfered
with my sleep. At 3 am I woke up
feeling lousy.
I don't think I can blame the
chicken for all me feelings of
lousiness though. I've been feeling
pretty bad through the whole day
today. I think it is a combination of
many things. Some of it was probably
something to do with that greasy
chicken, but more of it was my
"floating rib syndrome", and all that
was enhanced by it being a miserable,
grey, wet and cold day. I must admit
that at one point I was wondering if I
was heading for an episode where it
might be useful to pack a bag of
useful stuff in case another hospital
visit was looming, but that has passed
now. One of the useful things was to
turn the heating on. It was getting
pretty cool in my bedroom, where I
have spent much of today, but it
didn't seem to have got cold enough
for the shivers I felt. I've felt a
lot better since getting the room nice
and warm.
I wonder if I picked up a chill
when I was out getting soaked in the
rain on Friday night. It seems likely
I am fighting some sort of infection.
It would explain some of the shivers
earlier, and the sweat as I type this.
Maybe not going to the second day of
Chattfest todaywas a good idea, or
maybe not. Some of the symptoms I've
had today, the creaking and groaning,
and clicking chest pains are usually
cured by walking, but I really didn't
feel like walking around today. A
better reason for not going to
Chattfest today was that because of
the rain it was all due to take place
inside the pub instead of in the
garden. I can imagine that it was
packed solid in there, and rather warm
and unpleasantly humid in the middle
of the crowd. The bar would be
impossible to get to by all except the
most determined and persistent, and
photography would be a nightmare. I
think I did far better to stay in the
warm (when I eventually gave in and
put the heater on), and concentrated
on editing photos - of which I had a
whole heap to choose from (163 to be
precise !).
Tomorrow I am back at work, and
I expect, or hope that I will be
feeling OK there, but to do that I
must try and get plenty of hours of
sleep, and I think I will be going to
bed extra early tonight - like very
soon now !
|
Saturday 25th July
2015
|
09:35 BST
It was wet, wet, wet, and eventually cold
yesterday ! It was also depressingly dull and grey
! It was the sort of day that needs lots of
exclamation marks !!! This morning the sky had
cleared up a lot, but at just 12° C it felt very
cold. At 4am I had to go and get my duvet because
I was shivering ! It is sunny now, and the
temperature is slowly rising. After a sunny
morning, but slightly dull afternoon, it may only
reach 19° C. That doesn't feel much like July, but
at least it is a big improvement over yesterday.
It's looking like tomorrow will be back to autumn
like cold and rain !
If I was determined to test out my new Canon
EOS 1200D DSLR camera, give Jo a very overdue
little house warming present, and to get to
another Chain gig, I wouldn't have gone out last
night. It was really chucking it down as I walked
to the bus stop, and while my raincoat kept my
chest dry, my trousers were soaked by the time I
got there. Thankfully that was the last of the
rain, and although very wet underfoot, it wasn't
raining when I walked the hundred yards from the
bus stop to the pub, and it wasn't raining when I
went home. I soon dried off in the pub. It was
warm in there, and as it filled up it became
rather hot and humid. When I left, just before
Chain started their second set, I was feeling damp
again from sweat.
The Mitre pub in Greenwich, where Chain's
gig was, is not a great place to practice
photography. The stage area is actually a narrow
strip along the side of the pub, and the band were
almost, as Jo herself remarked, line up like a
queue for a bus. That rather limited my view
point, but even worse than that was the mood
lighting in the pub. Many of the lamps near the
band were designed to look "cool" rather than
provide light. They had long tungsten filaments
that were running at such a low temperature they
just provided a weak orange light. Chain did have
a small lamp box, but it was on the floor, and
barely visible most of the time.
The lighting was definitely a good test for
my camera, and when it did work it worked
reasonably well. The "secret sauce" was the
ability to take RAW images. These have more
information packed in the files than a jpeg image,
and by using special software you can correct all
sorts of things like colour temperature, and
exposure level. You can also do a limited amount
of noise reduction too before the final result can
be packed into a conventional jpeg file for
display on a PC. Here's a half and half picture -
on the left is the jpeg version of a picture of
Jo, and the right hand side is of the RAW image
after colour correction. It is not a great
picture, but at least the corrected image shows Jo
has normal skin colour, and not an Essex tan !
I took 78 pictures last night, but only 10
or 12 were really usable - and then only just ! I
think I will still count it as a success for my
new camera. Using the Canon SX40 camera, that I
have used at gigs for the last year or more, I
would have had to resort to using the flash. That
usually gives nice sharp pictures in such low
light, but introduces other problems, and of
course it is annoying to the band and others
having a blinding flash keep going off.
After my half visit to the gig I hurried
home to see what my pictures came out like. I had
only drunk one single pint of Guinness, and was
quite sober. So I had no problem passing the fried
chicken shop on the way, but I did nibble on a
smoked pork sausage as I checked out my pictures -
and started to learn how to use Ufraw
to post-process a few of those pictures. At about
midnight I went to bed, and it didn't take long
until I was fast asleep. It also didn't take long,
about 4 hours, until I woke up almost shivering.
It seemed like a very cold morning, and I
had to get my duvet out of the spare room. At
about 4.30am (or was it 5am) I had some hot
breakfast - a tin of German meatballs heated in
the microwave - and then went back to bed. Despite
having a bit of hot food inside me I still felt
cold, and it was some time before I started to
feel warm, and then almost too warm under the
duvet. Eventually I managed to feel comfortable
enough to fall asleep, and I may have added almost
3 hours of sleep to the first 4 hours.
Two things are happening today. The first is
that I will shortly be going to get some shopping
from Aldi, and the second is that I will be going
to The Chatterton Arms pub, just the other side of
Bromley, to take some more practice pictures at
the "Chattfest" music festival being held in the
huge back garden. It's a 2 day event, and while
the weather should be OK for today, tomorrow is
looking like it will be a washout !
I have now processed and prepared some more
pictures of my day out on the "Ruislip ghost
train" last Thursday. Once again, to keep loading
times of the web page, particularly the page for
the whole month, which is getting huge this month,
down a bit, I'm just showing small images that can
be clicked for a large screen filling picture.
Click away !
Entrance to Marylebone station
|
Bakerloo line trains at Queen's Park
|
Platform 14 for West Ruislip
|
Class 360 train in platform 12
|
A very non crowded train !
|
My train at journeys end
|
A couple of the last working semaphore
signals in the London area.
|
Greenford exists in a time warp - even
British Rail still exists here !
|
Eastbound Central Line train at
Greenford station.
|
First Great Western train pulling into
Greenford station.
|
class 332 Heathrow Express train at
Paddington station
|
New Circle line stock leaving Baker
Street tube station.
|
|
Friday 24nd July
2015
|
16:44 BST
Yesterday's weather wasn't too bad. It was quite
cloudy, but it was usually still fairly bright,
and there were plenty of sunny intervals -
although most of them were probably in the first
half of the day. There was no rain, and it was
probably in the region of 22 - 24° C.
Today is rather different. The picture on
the left, taken, as the clock says, at 11:56
today, shows the outside temperature to be 18.7°
C, but that was the temperature outside the back
upstairs window. Outside the kitchen, just 3 or
4ft above the ground, it was closer to 17° C (the
official forecast says it should be just 14° C
right now).
The top of the display shows the icon for
rain, and that is actually what it has done for
almost the whole day so far, and probably all day.
Sometimes the rain has been quite light, and
sometimes quite heavy. There might have been
occasions when it stopped, but it has seemed non
stop.
Tomorrow should be warmer and drier. There
should even be some sunshine. Hopefully that will
turn out to be true, and that the 2 day
"Chattfest", in the huge garden behind the
Chatterton Arms pub, will not be a wash out !
I went on one of my little railway
adventures yesterday. I was hoping to go with my
friend Kevin, but he wasn't available, and I went
on my own. The object of yesterday's outing was to
travel on what some (incorrectly) call a ghost
train. It is a once a day service over a route
that would be used as an emergency diversion by
Chiltern Trains. The drivers have to keep their
route knowledge up to date so I presume they take
it in turns to run this service. The service
itself starts from South Ruislip station, from the
country bound platform, but actually runs to
Paddington station in London.
Paddington station is home to First Great
Western Trains, and also the Heathrow Express
service. So Chiltern Trains is a bit of an
intruder, and their train is banished to platform
14 in the dingiest part of the station away from
all the big "glamorous" trains. With very little
fanfare, and even fewer passengers, it leaves at
11:36 to take the scenic route to West Ruislip
station. It is taken out of passenger service
there and returns back to Wembley Depot.
My original itinerary was to travel from
Catford Bridge on a Cannon Street train as far as
London Bridge, and then use the underground to get
to Marylebone station where I could get a train to
South Ruislip station. The plan had some slack in
it, but not enough to overcome the delay cause by
signalling problems in the London Bridge area. We
were diverted to Charing Cross, and Charing Cross
services cannot call at London Bridge until
building works there are complete sometime late
next year. I did my best to get to Marylebone in
time for my train, but arrived just 2 minutes
late.
My only option was to not travel on the
incoming to Paddington service, but kill almost an
hour, and then get the 11:36 outgoing service. To
kill that hour I first walked down to Baker Street
station where I spotted one of my heroes -
Sherlock Holmes.
Unfortunately this statue is not modelled on
my favourite Sherlock Holmes - the one played by
Jeremy Brett in Granada
TV's TV series which is generally held to be
very faithful to the Sherlock Holmes books by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle.
From Baker Street I took the Bakerloo Line
to Queen's Park tube station. There was no
particular reason for that destination, but the
Bakerloo Line does serve Paddington station.
Queen's Park was the final destination for the
train I was on, and by noting the time it took to
travel to each station I found that the return
journey, assuming there were no unforeseen delays,
would get me back to Paddington in plenty of time
to get my train, but without too much hanging
around. 11:36 finally came around, and with just
one other passenger on the train, we set off for
West Ruislip.
After a pleasant journey, here's the train at
Journeys end - West Ruislip station.
Having got to West Ruislip I had to get
home again. I had several options, but I
thought I would revisit a rather different
station on the Central Line. Many Central Line
trains begin their journey all the way to
Epping, in Essex, from West Ruislip. So there
was no problem getting a train to Greenford.
The diversionary route I had taken to get to
Ruislip runs parallel to the Central Line
between Ruislip and Greenford. From there it
diverges away from the tube lines. It is also
joined by a line that starts from between the
tube platforms at Greenford, and that line is
run by First Great Western, and runs into
Paddington station.
The other interesting fact about the
National Rail lines around Greenford is that
they are alleged to be the last manually
signalled lines, with traditional semaphore
signals, in the Greater London area. I
have pictures to show of these things, but I
haven't prepared them yet. The First Great
Western Trains service to Paddington only runs
at half hourly intervals, and I had a bit of a
wait until I was on a train to Paddington -
travelling by a different route that
incorporates half a dozen stations ( there are
no stations on the 11:36 from Paddington until
South Ruislip - 3 or 4 stops after Greenford
on the Central Line). At Paddington I stopped
to take a few pictures of Brunel.
Here he is - Isambard Kingdon Brunel sitting
in the station he designed - Paddington.
From Paddington I
caught the Bakerloo Line one stop to Baker
Street, and from Baker Street I took the
Circle Line to St Pancras. I am not sure
if I took the most sensible route to do
it, but I made my way through the
underground warren of Kings Cross (St
Pancras) Circle Line station, and then
through the above ground, but almost
totally enclosed St Pancras station until
I reached the Thameslink platforms.
It was at St Pancras that I saw my
first class 387 train. They are brand new
trains for Thameslink services joining
Luton to Brighton. Maybe one day they will
also run through Catford to Sevenoaks too.
I took the first train from St Pancras to
Blackfriars station. I hadn't seen it
since it had been modernised, and the
platforms stretched right over the River
Thames - with entrances on both sides of
the river. I guess it was rather
impressive, but it also looked rather big
and brash. I caan't help but think that if
Network Rail actually wanted to reduce
their spending, and in consequence charge
less track access charges, which in turn
should lower ticket prices (in a sane and
rational world - not this one), they could
have just extended the perfectly
serviceable platforms of the original
station.
Another place where money could be
saved would be to not use the secret
military stealth technology that made both
the pictures I took of the new class 387
trains come out blurry. I took one at St
Pancras, and one at Blackfriars, and in
both cases the front or rear of the train
was blurred. Of course it could have been
low light forcing a long exposure time,
but I prefer the drama and mystique of
secret military technology.
It wasn't long, maybe 9 minutes,
before a Sevenoaks via Catford train
arrived, and I was on my way back home to
Catford and home. I was a bit thirsty, and
a bit hungry when I got in. Quenching my
thirst was no problem, but choosing, and
sticking to a light breakfast/dinner was
tricky. I ended up having some smoked
mackerel and tomatoes with lashings* of
chilli flavoured mayonnaise.
* Very restrained lashings, obviously !!
The reason for the light dinner was
because it was Thursday, and I only had
two hours before I was going out for the
Thursday night drinking club. It was very
handily in The Black Cat - the pub that
was called The Catford Ram for 30 odd
years until it went bad and had to be
closed down before it was reborn as The
Black Cat. It was both a good and bad
night. It was bad because Jodie was in a
right strop. She was trying to book
tickets, a flight, and a hotel for a gig
in Glasgow using her phone which had a
flat battery, and had run out of data
allowance. She was in a right old flap !
While Jodie wasn't distracting me it
was nice to have a few beers with the
guys, but it wasn't so nice being goaded
into more beer than I wanted. The first
time I put up little resistance, but I was
bought yet another after a very emphatic
no. So I left it untouched on the table
and went home. It wasn't the best ending,
but there was worse to come. I was still
feeling hungry, and the beer just made me
feel even hungrier. Worse than that was
that it killed what little will power I
had left. I went home with an excessive
amount of fried chicken and chips. I
managed to leave a lot of the chips, but I
stuffed myself with chicken before I went
to bed.
This morning I had a hangover, and I
felt bloated on top of it. Yesterday
contemplated going out again today, but
there was no chance of doing anything
early feeling like that, and on top of
that was the grey sky and rain. It is very
hard for me to fight those sorts of
negatives. So I stayed in, and somehow I
seem to have been very busy today. I am
not sure what I have done to keep myself
so busy though. I guess editing a huge
pile of yesterday.s photos took a long
time, as did the uploading and captioning
them on a well known social media site.
I've also ripped some more music to add to
the ever growing playlist on my USB stick
substitute for a radio station. I have
done a little reading, and I managed a
very short snooze, but I just can't
account for all the other hours of today.
Tonight I will be going out to see
Chain play in Greenwich. It will be the
first real test of my new DSLR camera.
Hopefully I'll get some good pictures, but
as this will be my first attempt at
"driving" the camera for real, I am not
expecting too many good pictures this
time. All I have to do now is to wash and
get dressed, and hope that the rain will
be kind to me as I walk to and from the
bus stop here and in Greenwich ! Hopefully
the pub won't be too hot and too crowded,
but I don't think I believe in miracles of
that nature !
|
Wednesday 22nd July
2015
|
07:50 BST
I have a feeling that this summer will not
be memorable for it's long hot sunny days, but
yesterday wasn't too bad. It was dry, often sunny,
and it was pleasantly warm. I think the
temperature may have hit 25° C, but a good breeze
made it feel cooler and fresher than that. This
morning started off nice and bright with a
temperature of 16° C. Unfortunately, if the
forecast is correct, for much of the day the sky
is going to be filled with thin cloud, and the
temperature will only reach a rather disappointing
21° C. The latest amendment to the forecast says
it may well pour with rain from about 5pm. With
luck I will be home before that starts ! Tomorrow
looks as if it will be fairly similar, but it
could be slightly brighter, and paradoxically a
degree cooler.
Here's the pictures I took yesterday morning
while chaos reigned at Waterloo station. When I
first arrived there it all looked normal.
Varidesk, whoever, or whatever they are, were
showing off something like an office on a sparsely
occupied concourse. That was just before 7am, and
probably about the time all the trains stopped
running. From then on the crowds got denser and
denser. Click on any little picture for a
screen filling hi resolution version.
|
|
|
|
Customer information screen showing the
bad news.
|
Commuters - fousands of 'em !
|
Hundreds of people going nowhere.
|
Loads more people waiting, and waiting
and......
|
The same people but from a different
angle.
|
|
It was not a very exciting day at work
yesterday. I had to scratch around for things to
do, and ended up doing very little - or at least
little of a useful nature. So it was very nice to
be heading home again, but that didn't go right
either. Something happened to my feet during the
day. Maybe they swelled up a bit, although it
wasn't visually obvious that they had, but my feet
were feeling sore when I left work. It was as if
the insoles of my shoes had lumps in them. That
made me feel lazy, and I didn't want to walk to
the station when I could travel for free. Prior it
getting my 60+ Oyster card I would just have
gritted my teeth and walked, and as I did my feet
would learn to ignore the lumps (or just go numb
or something), and by the time I had reached the
station they would probably be feeling mostly OK.
Rather than walk, I decided on a free bus
ride to the station....but I had a choice of two
stations. I couldn't see a bus coming up the hill
that would take me to Earslfield station, and so I
thought I would try and reprise my journey home
via Wandsworth Town station that I did the day
before. It was a much fresher day, and the bus and
train should have been, and were, less smelly, and
that should have made the journey more
enjoyable....or at least less unpleasant.
Yesterday it all went wrong. I waited far longer
for a bus than I did the evening before. That
meant I missed the train I got before. the
following train was not only a boring class 455,
the same as I get to and from Earlsfield, but it
didn't get me to Waterloo until exactly the same
time as my train was leaving from Waterloo East
towards Catford Bridge.
Obviously I had to get the next train back
to Catford, and that means a 19 minute wait. It's
not terribly long, but it is a bit of a
bore, and it upsets my internal clock (or
whatever). Prior to my journey home going all
wrong I had been thinking I might go out again to
Aldi when I got home, but that extra 19 minutes
put paid to that (somehow). Instead of shopping in
Aldi I went to Tesco. That did have it's plus
points. I had missed the best "reduced price"
bargains, but there were still a few cheap things
I picked up. A few of them, like the sweet chilli
noodle pots, did break my recent avoid avoidable
carbohydrates rule, but they were very tasty !
I was quite surprised how little I spent in
Tesco. For a brief time it did look like they were
getting serious about reducing their prices to try
and lure people back from Aldi and Lidl, but my
shopping bills still seem far cheaper when I shop
in Aldi. Part of the reason why my bill was so
cheap last night was because I took advantage of
Tesco's buy three 55p, sugar free, two litre,
fizzy drinks for £1 (at least I think it was £1,
but it might have been more). I bought a bottle of
cherryade, a bottle of limeade, and a bottle of
fiery ginger beer. Carrying six litres of drink
doesn't leave much room to carry much more, and so
I didn't buy that much.
Compared to how I might eat during the
colder months of the year, I didn't eat that much
yesterday, but it was more than I would have
preferred to. I felt what I can only describe as
"edgy" last night. It is hard to describe what
that means - it's sort of a melange of boredom,
positive and negative feelings, thinking
about good things and bad things, looking forward
to tomorrow, and looking back at wasted times, and
stuff.......... It could only be cured by cracking
open a couple of cans of extra strong lager.
Perhaps that is not a cure, but it did give me a
very pleasant night's sleep.
This morning I feel good and bad. Some bits
of me seem to be working really well, and other
bits are falling apart. My legs seem to be working
well, but my chest is playing up a lot. It's been
doing lots of clicking and popping as I make
various movements, and it is a bit sore in places.
The thing that is most annoying is how quickly I
can get short of breath these days. I don't know
if it is related to all the damage I have probably
done to the ligaments, muscles and ribs in my
chest, or if it is something completely different.
It is as if I have put on a lot more weight, and
yet my trousers are no tighter, and my gut seems
to be overhanging my belt a lot less since I have
partly tidied up my diet a bit. Maybe my lungs
need a good dose of nicotine to loosen them up
again :-)
|
Tuesday 21st July
2015
|
09:14 BST
There were a couple of things wrong with
yesterday. It was dull, grey and nasty, but it
didn't rain. It was also very horribly muggy. In
some circumstances that would be no more than a
mild annoyance, but it makes for a very smelly
experience when travelling on public transport.
Maybe I was smelly, or maybe I wasn't. I have no
easy way to tell, but I do know that many other
people were positively rank as I made way home
from work. It seemed to freshen up a bit later in
the evening- at least I think it did. I didn't
seem to feel sweaty in the evening, and I felt
comfortable when I went to bed. It seems quite
fresh this morning, and although clouds are
appearing in the sky now, and the afternoon maybe
lightly overcast, there was a clear blue sky when
I walked to the station.
Compare this picture to the one I took
yesterday, and marvel at how gorgeous that sky
looks ! The day started slightly cool at just 14°
C, but it should rise to a pleasant, but not very
exciting 23 or 24° C by the time I go home from
work at 4pm.
I felt mostly OK at work apart from a mild
feeling of constipation. It surprised me that in
that state I fancied doing something unusual after
work. I had mentioned that I was going to think of
something to do, but I was going to do it after
getting home. In the end I couldn't think of
anything I could, should, or wanted to do. So I
applied some lateral thinking, and came up with
something I could do before going home. Travel in
London is free for me in the afternoon thanks to
my 60+ Oyster card, and so I decided to take the
scenic route home - except that it wasn't terribly
scenic, and it was quite a smelly experience ! I
took the bus from the other bus stop near work,
the one on the same side of the main road, to
Wandsworth Town station. On the way I saw that
bits of the old Youngs brewery still stand, but
most of the site is a building site for yet more
high rise homes and/or offices. I took some
pictures at Wandsworth Town station. Click on
any of these small pictures for a screen filling
hi resolution picture.
Wandsworth Town station
|
450041 races through platform 3
|
Platforms 2 and 3
|
|
Wandsworth Town station still has lots
of heritage bits and pieces here and
there like this ornate iron work
bracket.
|
My train to Waterloo - a class 458 with
no air conditioning (or if it had it it
was faulty or not turned on !).
|
What surprised me about this little detour
to my journey home is that even after waiting for
a good few minutes at the bus stop, and then the
tedious bus ride, plus the extra station on the
way from Wandsworth Town to Waterloo station, I
still had time to catch my usual 16:20 train from
Waterloo East. I still had a 5 minute wait for it
instead of the usual 15 minute wait, but that was
OK. The only downside is that tedious bus ride,
but it does involve less walking than going via
Earlsfield. Unless I really want to keep walking
to a bare minimum for some reason, I think I'll
stick to going home via Earlsfield so I don't have
to get on the crowded and smelly bus.
I didn't do anything of significance when I
got home - although I did some time preparing the
photos above, and I guess that may be regarded as
significant, but going to bed at 9pm and having
another pleasant night's sleep is probably more
significant. After 15 - 20 minutes to acclimatise
myself to the waking world, I felt fairly good
this morning. My two days of constipation came to
a very undramatic end this morning - it was as if
I had not suffered any problems in the previous 4
days. Everything was back to normal, and that was
good because the train service from Waterloo
resulted in lots of hanging around doing nothing !
At 7am, or thereabouts, it seems a person
was hit by a train "near Raynes Park", and that
brought all the trains to a halt. Had it been
running I could have been on the 07:06 train at
Waterloo, but I didn't even get on a train until
08:20, and then it took 10 minutes to find a
driver for it ! I arrived at work very, very late
this morning, and in theory I will be making up
the time somehow, and maybe only in my
imagination. Tomorrow I will have a bunch of
picture taken during my long wait at Waterloo, but
I had better go and pretend to do some work now !
|
Monday 20th July
2015
|
08:02 BST
I still think that yesterday's weather was
far better than the forecast for it last Friday.
There were a few times when the cloud got thick
enough to make the day seemed dull, but each event
would only last between 10 and 30 minutes.
Overall, it was a nice bright, but maybe a little
cool, summers day. I think the top temperature was
only 24° C. Today sees a change.
This picture, that I took while walking to
the station this morning, gives the flavour of
today, but it does leave out one important thing.
It doesn't show how humid it is this morning - and
it's not just me who thinks it is very humid. Even
the forecast on TV last night mentioned that it
would be a humid start to the day. It was 17° C
when I took the picture. By the end of the
afternoon the temperature may only be as high as
22° C. The current forecast didn't seem to foresee
the little shower we just had, but it does say
that this morning will be dull and nasty. There
will be a partial respite around the time I am
going home from work, but only to the extent that
the clouds will be light grey. Then, hopefully at
least an hour after I get home, it will rain
again. It seems that this, to one degree or
another, sets the pattern for the whole week, but
if we are prepared to wait a week or two, warm,
and even hot sunny days will resume again, and the
whole of summer will not be wasted.
Soon after I finished writing yesterday I
had my lunch. I may have slipped once, and then
quite badly on Saturday, but yesterday I kept a
far better grip on avoiding avoidable
carbohydrates. Yesterday's lunch was cheap and
cheerful ham trimmings with salad. I drizzled the
salad with something I meant to mention the day
before. It was fig flavoured balsamic vinegar. I
didn't even know such a thing existed until I saw
bottles of it in Aldi last Friday. It probably
contains a lot of sugar from the figs, but you
only use vinegar in small quantities, and it is
very nice.
I am unsure just how much I ate yesterday. I
had several snacks during the day and two main
meals. It may not have added up to that much, and
all of it should have had very few carbohydrates
in it. In theory my blood sugar level should
be quite stable in the "normal" region now,
but I have to confess I haven't bothered to
measure it. The only argument against that is that
I don't seem to have lost any significant amount
of weight recently - although once again I have
not actually taken any measurements to prove or
disprove this idea. I certainly don't seem to feel
any lighter, and my trousers are no looser, but if
I put my imagination into overdrive I could kid
myself that the bulge above my waistline could be
smaller now.
I didn't do all that much yesterday, but I
felt quite satisfied with what I did do. Yesterday
I mentioned that I did a bit of laundry in the
morning, but I also did some more laundry in the
afternoon. It was just three short sleeved shirts,
but it still raised a bit of sweat. What raised
more sweat was a few minutes of gardening -
although gardening is a bit of a misnomer for what
I actually did. The first thing was to sweep up
the path along the back of the kitchen. I already
had a rubbish sack out there that I had half
filled weeks and weeks ago. I managed to fill it
with assorted debris, leaves, and a few weeds.
That was enough for the back garden.
It is extremely rare for me to do anything
to the front garden, but yesterday I trimmed back
the small tree that has been stripped bare, and
cut back to almost ground level many times in the
past, but it refuses to die. One of these days I
will have to try and dig it up, but yesterday I
just pruned it back to near ground level. I could
have gone further, but I could feel my back
beginning to complain, and left it once it was
sort of tidy-ish !
After my explosive dysentry-like illness on
Friday evening, and Saturday, I was unsure if I
had got over it or not yesterday. It turns out
that I had - and with bells on. I didn't go the
toilet at all yesterday, and I haven't been today
yet. I have to confess that I now have some very
mild discomfort, or at least I did have. I think a
lot of it was all in the mind while I was worrying
about how uncomfortable it would be on the train
if things started to move again. Now I am at work,
in easy reach of the toilets, it is no longer a
worry, but I do hope that something moves soon.
After my long lie in yesterday morning, I
had trouble getting to sleep last night, but once
I got to sleep, I slept well again until I woke up
at around 3am. On this morning I may have woken up
because I was feeling rather chilly. I had the
bedroom window open all night, and it is no
surprise to wake up feeling chilly when you have
been sleeping with no covering at all. After I
re-covered myself with the duvet cover I was able
to get back to sleep again for a while, but I was
still awake again before 5am when I got up. The
seasons keep on rolling on, and now I am back to
getting up before sunrise. I think it was actually
three or so days ago that sunrise moved up to
05:00. This morning it was 05:06, and it feels
depressingly close to when I'll be back to walking
to the station in darkness.
This morning, apart from the mild, and often
completely ignorable constipation feeling, I feel
mostly OK. I have no significant aches, and
walking to the station seemed easy enough, but it
still leaves me breathing very heavily (but still
well short of gasping). It may be that I made a
conscious decision not to even try to walk very
fast, but the walk from the station to work did
seem to feel like it was less effort than usual. I
still managed to walk fast enough to raise quite a
sweat in the high humidity.
I don't have any plans for tonight, but I
feel I ought to try and think of something to do.
I may not have it in abundance, but I do seem to
have a bit more energy recently, and I probably
ought to force myself to do something. Maybe I
might wash a couple of t-shirts, or maybe I could
go out again to get some shopping after getting
home. In an ideal world I would just have some
beers and a fag or ten, but sadly we live in a
very imperfect world.
I made mention that my broadband had died
yesterday. That meant this web site was off line
for a while, but it was for less time than I
feared. I got myself back on line by buying a days
worth of internet on my "3" mobile broadband
dongle for £2.99 - which is both cheap and
expensive considering I only used it for a couple
of hours. At least it allowed my to get onto
Virgin Media's status page. It acknowledged that a
fault had occurred at 11:47am, and that it was
estimated they might fix it by 07:50pm. In fact it
was fixed around three hours earlier than that,
and possibly four.
|
Sunday 19th July
2015
|
12:25 BST
Yesterday was bright and dry until about
6pm when it wasn't bright, and about 8pm when it
started to rain ! The forecast actually said the
rain wasn't supposed to happen until this morning,
but this morning is bright and sunny ! I am sure
the forecast I saw this morning for today was
completely different to the forecast for today I
saw yesterday morning. That would be fine except
that the BBC web page says the forecast was last
updated last Friday evening, and so I wouldn't
expect it to mysteriously change as if by magic !
Anyhow, yesterday was pleasantly warm, maybe
around 24° C, and today will most probably be
similar. It is currently 22° C, and although there
seems to be an increasing amount of cloud in the
sky, the sun is still shining, and may pour in the
extra couple of degrees of warmth. I can't comment
on tomorrow's weather because my internet
connection seems to be down at the moment -
although I could guess, and that would probably be
as accurate as the official forecast. I reckon
tomorrow will be much like today except that if it
does rain it will be at a different time to today
- probably !
Aleemah was here a little longer than I
expected yesterday, and that delayed me doing some
laundry. I was further delayed by another attack
of "dysentry" ! It seemed like every time I ate
anything it would go racing through my digestive
system at the speed of light ! Nothing seemed to
happen after my evening meal, and nothing has
happened this morning. If I am lucky I am over it,
but I won't be confident of that until the end of
the day, and maybe not until I'm ready for work in
the morning.
Eventually I tackled some laundry, and it
did need a lot of tackling. I washed, by hand
because I have still not bothered to repair (or
replace) my washing machine, three medium sized
towels. Manhandling wet soggy towels takes a lot
of energy, and I can end, and did end up very
sweaty by the time I had them hanging on the line.
It may sound masochistic, but I think this is the
reason why I continue to do laundry by hand. Some
people pay to go to a gym to get some exercise
instead of leading a completely sedentary life. I
do hand washing, and continue to go to work
everyday when, in theory, I could do neither, and
it all keeps me fit (where "fit" means warmer and
slightly more agile than a corpse !).
I managed to take the picture above while
the sun was still out yesterday. Soon after I took
the picture the sky was just grey with cloud, but
there was still a light breeze that tried to dry
the towels. After they were out for no more than a
couple of hours I decided to bring them in to dry
indoors because despite what the forecast said, it
looked like rain, and half an hour later it did
rain. They were still rather damp when I brought
them in, but they were bone dry this morning.
I can't recall feeling bad last night, so I
presume I must have been feeling OK. I did tempt
fate by having an evening meal, and that didn't
seem to spoil my evening, or my sleep. The only
slightly negative thing is that I felt quite tired
quite early in the evening....or at least it was a
bit early for a Saturday night. I think I was
probably asleep in bed by 10pm, and once
again I slept rather well. It's difficult to
assess these things properly because they are so
subjective, but I am tempted to believe that my
sleep, these last few nights, has been even better
than what I think as being normal for me in the
last couple of years. Does that mean something, or
is it just one of those things ?
I had no rush to get up this morning -
particularly so since forgetting what it was that
I thought I ought to go out and buy. I still got
up slightly early, maybe 6.30am (ish), and I
stayed up reading some technology news and stuff
on the internet (it was working then). After a
couple of hours of that I decided to go back to
bed. It felt like I was awake more than I was
asleep, but a lot of time seemed to pass without
me noticing it ! I didn't get up again until gone
11am - and that is amazingly late by my normal
standards !
The first, and so far only significant thing
that I've done is some more laundry. I washed a
small towel, a mini tablecloth, and a fitted
sheet. The tablecloth was rather stained, and the
little towel had some blood stains on it. So I had
soaked them in bio detergent overnight. This
morning I am happy to say that they are all fresh
and clean, and hanging on the line to dry. I might
find the energy to do some more washing later - I
have a few assorted shirts that need washing, but
they are far from urgent. If I could be sure of
the day staying nice for drying I would tackle one
of the big duvet covers, but I think I've left it
too late in the day for that.
I think the next thing I ought to do is to
fix myself some lunch. I don't know what I'll do
after that. If I remember what it was that I was
going to buy today I might go and buy it, but
otherwise I will just entertain myself in any way
I can - books, TV, but not the internet unless it
starts working again without me having to under go
the terrors of Virgin Media customer service ! Of
course one thing I could do while this web page is
not visible to the world is to do something I very
rarely do - and that is to proof read it and try
to find all the words I have missed out, and all
the mispellings and terrible grammar - but only if
I can be bothered, and I am not sure I am all that
bothered to do anything more than the most
superficial.
|
Saturday 18th July
2015
|
08:13 BST
It was hotter than forecast yesterday, but
a persistent light breeze made 26° C feel a lot
fresher than it might otherwise have been. It's
just a shame that the clouds never really cleared
yesterday, and although it was often bright, it
was never really sunny for maybe the odd minute
here and there. It didn't seem to last long, but
there was a glorious red sunset last night - maybe
I only noticed as it was ending. It foretold of a
bright clear morning, and that is exactly what we
have this morning. It's currently 17° C, and the
forecast says it will ultimately rise to a rather
unsatisfactory 22° C. The reason for that is
probably because cloud has already started to
bubble up, and late morning, and most the the
afternoon will be rather dull again. Oh well, at
least there was some sunshine to greet the day.
Tomorrow is looking like it will be worse still -
cloud and some rain. At least today should
be dry (and if it's not I want my money back !).
Yesterday was a curious day. I am unsure if
I was pushing myself to do things that I might not
have naturally done, and if I was kidding myself
that I was feeling fairly good. My chest continues
to be sore, but when I can avoid aggravating it by
making unneeded awkward movements, it is placid
enough......although it was doing a lot of
unwanted clicking and popping as I walked from
work to the station. I don't know when that
stopped, or even if it did stop, but I can't
remember it being very obvious by the time I had
walked to the station.
On my way home I had this cunning plan. The
first iteration of it was to buy some smoked pork
belly from the Turkish supermarket on the way
home, but I remembered that I had seen a comment
on the internet somewhere that said Aldi stocked
it too. It is incredibly unusual for me to go to
Aldi after work, it always has been regardless of
my health, but last night I felt up to, and after
a brief delay at home as I changed my shoes, and
got my shopping bags together, I set off again to
walk to Aldi.
It is only a 5 or 6 minute walk going there
(coming back with several bags of shopping slows
me down by a minute or two), and so I wasn't
bitterly disappointed that the Catford Aldi does
not stock any smoked pork belly. In fact they
don't seem to stock any smoked, or Polish, or
other tasty meats at all ! I was slightly
disappointed though, and more disappointed when I
saw how much sugar was used in their "barbecue
glazed" pork steaklets. I probably should have
washed off the glaze before cooking it so that I
could continue to avoid an easily avoidable
carbohydrates, but I didn't wash it off. That
spoiled a good run of very low carbohydrate
consumption, but not by a huge amount.
I don't think it is the way I have been
eating recently that was responsible to a rather
alarming thing that happened last night. It could
be something to do with some chilli sauce that
presumably had gone off that I had the night
before. (Although any bugs can live in super hot
chilli sauce is a mystery to me). This story works
better if an arbitrary, but close to reality, time
is added. So let's say at 7.30pm I was feeling
perfectly fine without a single hint that anything
was wrong. At 7.32pm I was sitting on the toilet
doing the main headline thing that dysentery is
famous for. From the first tiny twinge in my
bottom area to what seemed like the end of the
world took little more than 30 seconds.
I am rather glad I didn't go out to a gig or
to a pub last night. If I had done I may well have
been on a bus by then, and I can't conceive of any
way I could have held back the flow ! I had one
moderate after shock about 5 or 10 minutes later,
and another very minor one perhaps half an hour
later. It's weird how is was all done with almost
no discomfort before or after the fact. It's also
quite remarkable that everything was back to
normal when I went to the toilet this morning -
apart from the quantity being smaller.
I had another very good nights sleep last
night. I think I was asleep around 10pm, and I
only woke once or twice in the night for brief
periods. I even managed to sleep beyond 5am. I
think it was something like 5.40am when I woke up.
After a while I went back to sleep, and slept for
another hour or more. Once I decided to get up it
didn't seem to take as long as usual to switch my
body to day mode. Since then I've felt fairly
good. One day I might feel good again, but fairly
good is an acceptable feeling for now.
I am seeing Aleemah this morning so I have
had to get up properly this morning. I am not
fully dressed yet, but at least I've washed my
hair and had a shower - unlike last Saturday when
I managed to go through the whole day without
doing either ! Later on, when Aleemah has gone
home, I think I am going to wash a couple of
towels, and hopefully hang them in any available
sunshine to dry. If the breeze keeps blowing they
should dry OK without sunshine, but it is nice if
they feel baked. I don't think I have any more
plans beyond that for today. I thought there was a
gig on that I wanted to get to, but that turns out
to be next week. I guess I'll be making up most of
the day as it happens.
|
Friday 17th July
2015
|
07:51 BST
It certainly brightened up yesterday
afternoon, but the sky didn't exactly turn blue.
Bits of it were blue, and sometimes the sun shone
brightly, but it somehow didn't feel like a sunny
summer day. That might happen tomorrow
according to today's forecast for tomorrow. It
felt warm yesterday, as you would hope it would in
July, but I think the temperature was only in the
low twenties. It was 20° C when I woke up this
morning, but it was also extremely cloudy. I still
can't see any patch of blue in the sky bigger than
a 5p piece. At this point it is probably easier to
cut and paste direct from the forecast itself - It will be a dry but cloudy
start after overnight rain, cloud breaking
through the afternoon with sunny spells. The
brisk southwest winds will make it feel cool
in exposed locations. I haven't
seen any sign that there was overnight rain, and
it is hard to believe that the temperature will
only rise by two degrees today, but I will agree
that the breeze feels nice and fresh.
What is it that makes humans want to take
and show selfies ? Is it what humans do, or is it
an alien trait ? Who knows ? Perhaps I was feeling
particularly pleased with myself after a pleasant
visit to the toilet, or maybe it was just the way
the morning light was catching my face yesterday
morning, but I felt inspired to take a selfie - as
seen on the left. The only trouble is that I don't
seem to look as beautiful as I seemed to be while
narcisstically gazing in the mirror. Perhaps I
look better in reflected light - it probably makes
my vampire features invisible or something.
I guess I was feeling sort of well
yesterday. The sore throat that started the night
before, and was still just detectable yesterday
morning, faded away sometime during the morning,
and I can't say that I had any particular aches or
pains after that. I didn't even feel tired for a
lot of the time. Of course, while my physical
health gave me reason to think that I might live
for a few days yet, my mental health took a
bashing as the latest and greatest pile of old
bollocks was revealed at work during a one hour
lecture yesterday. To be truthful it wasn't a
complete revelation. We had been told about it,
and given the opportunity to investigate it
beforehand, but yesterday's lecture was the first
demonstration of how it will actually work.
"It" is a third party provided, cloud based,
interactive (plus other buzz words that give HR
people orgasms) web site thing where objectives,
results and all sorts of complete crap can be
uploaded, stored, analysed for "personal
development", work progress, and somehow give
clues to management as to whether any of us might,
or might not deserve a bonus or the sack. I think,
but it might just be pure prejudice, that it is
some sort of American thing. I see no point in it,
and will be doing the absolute bare minimum needed
to avoid the more major rows, but I can see a
battle of wills coming up. Basically, as far as I
am concerned, I am too old, and too jaded to have
any more objectives that to get up, come to work,
do some work sometimes, and go home again. I
really, really can't get excited about anything
more than that.
I don't know why I think that yesterday
afternoon was not particularly sunny because I do
remember being dazzled by the sun when standing on
Waterloo East station waiting for my train. Maybe
it was only sunny for a few minutes ! I didn't go
straight after getting back to Catford. I went to
Tesco where I bought stuff like corned beef and
some onions, but also some sugar free cola, and a
bottle of Tesco "Special Reserve" whisky - my
favourite whisky of all time, and it's a
supermarket own brand whisk - fancy that !
I didn't even go straight home from Tesco. I
went to The Catford Constitutional Club to meet up
with the Thursday night drinkers. Having my
shopping with me gave a good reason to not stay
for more than two pints because there was stuff I
had to get into the fridge. However it was jolly
nice to have those couple of pints, and exchange a
bit of gossip. The only downside was that I
allowed myself to relax, and that meant that
carrying my shopping home seemed like heard work.
I just could not bring myself to walk at a decent
pace. I doubt I walked at more the 2.5mph instead
of the 3mph I usually walk at - even for extended
periods of time - or at least I used to. I'm not
so sure about it now.
It is curious how I am feeling a lot better
in various way, and last night I could almost
describe my sleep as excellent - if judged against
the average of the previous couple of weeks - and
yet I can't seem to find the energy to raise my
output by even a single notch. The problem lies
in, or more likely around my lungs. All the anti
smoking propaganda suggested that after not
smoking you should be able to take in huge
lungfuls of air and run marathons with no effort,
but it doesn't seem like that. 2 years ago I never
used to get mildly breathless walking up the road,
but I do now. It feels like I am only running on
one lung !
The problem is most likely that I can't
inflate my lungs properly because the muscles that
work the diaphragm were damaged during my heart
surgery, and I haven't let them heal properly, or
the ribs, bones and ligaments they pull against
were damaged, and once again I didn't let them
heal properly. Whatever the truth actually is, I
am a very poor candidate to show the advantages of
not smoking. Two years ago I could draw in enough
air to almost fully inflate a toy balloon in one
breath. Since not smoking (and having an operation
that opened up my cheat like a frog being
dissected) I would probably need three breaths to
blow up a balloon, and it pisses me off a bit.
It's nice not having those angina pains, but I
sometimes wonder if it was all worth it.
Could this be my new headache, or is it
something benign ? This "target" appeared on the
road outside my house sometime yesterday - at
least I assume it did. I didn't notice it when I
got home from the pub with my shopping yesterday,
but I doubt it would have appeared during the
night. It could be where they are going to start
taking up my suggestion of fracking for gas
underneath Catford, or it could be any of the
utilities getting ready to dig up the road to fix,
replace or add underground services. Thames Water,
or their contractors, have been taking an interest
in the sewers near my house, but I am sure the
sewer runs under the middle of the road, but this
mysterious target is nearer the kerb than that. I
guess I'll find out soon enough what it is all
about.
|
Thursday 16th July
2015
|
08:32 BST
I can't remember if yesterday afternoon was
sunny or not. That probably means it wasn't, or
maybe it just wasn't very sunny, but there
was some sunshine. I do know it was warm
and dry, and I'm sure I saw 26° C on my
thermometer when I got home from work. Today has
started at 18° C again, but there is a chance that
it will get higher than 26° C by the end of the
afternoon, but it will only be as a result of warm
winds rather than sunshine. There was as much as a
whole minute of bright sunshine as I came to work,
but this morning has been generally very cloudy.
The clouds should start to thin out, and the
forecast reckons we might see clear sky, or clear
enough sky for the sun to shine at 4 or 5pm. Then
after a few hours of summer late this afternoon it
will be back to another dull, and potentially wet
day tomorrow - unless the forecast changes, as it
so often does over the space of a few hours,
again, and again, and again, and
again.........
I was feeling quite reasonably well for most
of yesterday, and that was very handy because I
spent nearly all day at work attending "technical
training". I put that in inverted commas because
it wasn't a training course as such, but a couple
of guys from a company we have just bought (I
think ?) telling us some info about the product
they used to make. Some of it was technical, and
some of it was about sales and export regulations
and stuff. The first guy was quite a quite good
speaker/lecturer, and even though a lot of what he
talked about was alien to me, he still made it sort
of interesting. The second guy, whose
presentation was supposed to include far more
technical information, and hence should have been
more interesting to me, was utterly and completely
hopeless. It made for an incredibly boring
afternoon. All he said, provided it was backed up
with some printed notes, could have been said in
10 minutes, and needn't have lasted a boring 2
hours !
There was supposed to be a question and
answer session at the end, but I walked out on
that because I had already stayed 20 minutes
beyond my normal home time. In consequence, I
didn't get to Waterloo East in time for my normal
train, and had to get the next one 19 minutes
later. I'm sure I was feeling pretty good at the
time, and apart from one bothersome thing, I felt
good all evening. So good that after eating my
smoked pork belly and fried egg dinner, and giving
it half an hour to settle, I felt up to doing some
laundry. I washed 3 work shirts, some underwear
and two pillowcase covers.
That smoked pork belly that I had for dinner
was delicious. I think I mentioned trying some
last week maybe, and now I have overcome my fear
of picking up meat from the Polish (and Bulgarian
?) meat counter that is mostly labelled in Polish
with a bare minimum of English on it, I must try
more from there. There are some sausages, or at
least they look like sausages, that intrigue me.
Maybe they are smoked too, I rather like smoked
meat and fish. Smoked pork belly is like bacon,
but much, much better - in ways that I cannot
describe.
The one thing that bothered me yesterday
evening is that at some point, and I can't
remember when it was, my throat became sore again.
The cold I have just got over started with a sore
throat. So I hope I am not going to go through a
cycle of that again ! This morning it is still
very slightly sore, but I have to deliberately
swallow to feel it. Last night, at it's worst, it
was very obvious. Even a quick gargle with whisky
didn't do anything for it - or did it ?
I had one of the best nights sleep than I
have had for ages last night. I still woke up at
the now traditional time of 3am, and I woke up at
just before 11pm as well. I think I may have
fallen asleep very soon after 9pm, and I seemed to
be sleeping so well that if it had not been for a
mad motorcyclist outside my house I might have
slept beyond 11pm - perhaps right through to 3am -
which would have been very nice ! I have no idea
what the motorcyclist was doing, or who he was
intent on annoying. From what I heard it sounded
like he was holding the brakes on the front wheel
while spinning the rear wheel as fast as possible.
Presumably he would shot off like a rocket,
probably doing a wheelie, when he let the front
brake go. There is a time and place for doing
stuff like that, and it's not outside my bedroom
while I am trying to sleep. Therefore I hope the
motorcyclist crashes and kills himself !
There is another boring lecture here at work
today, but this one is about some new procedure
for performance monitoring, or some old guff like
that. Fortunately the lecture should be for less
than an hour, and the thing it is about doesn't
really concern me because I don't care about it at
this end of my working life. All I do these days
is to come to work, (sometimes) do some work, and
then go home again. I have no goals or ambitions,
and hence appraisals, or computer generated graphs
of performance, or any crap like that are of no
interest to me. If that does not meet my employers
expectations they are free to let me go - provided
they give me a golden handshake !!!
This month seems to be flying by. It's
halfway through the month, and it's Thursday
again. So tonight, in some place I haven't been
informed about yet, I expect I'll be having a
drink. Hopefully it will be in Catford, and
hopefully I can resist staying at the pub for too
long, because I want to pop into Tesco before I
get home, but once home I shall put my feet up,
and then attempt to be fast asleep in bed by 9pm !
|
Wednesday 15th July
2015
|
07:43 BST
The forecast for yesterday said there would
be less rain that the day before, and apart from a
localised light shower here and there in the
morning, less rain did, as I speculated it might,
mean no rain at all.....although there were some
very worrying dark clouds hanging about overhead
as I left work to go home. It was still dull when
I got home, but at least it was a comfortable 22°
C when I got there. This morning the temperature
was still 18° C thanks to the thick clouds that
still dominate the sky. Those clouds are leaking
too, but only a fine mist that fogs your glasses,
and slowly soaks your shirt. If the forecast is
correct, those clouds should start to break up
this morning, and the afternoon should be a lot
brighter, drier, and possibly sunny too. It is
still only forecast to reach 24° C, but I guess
that's not bad, and I suppose I ought to make some
sort of effort to enjoy it in some unknown way,
because tomorrow is, or might be, slightly cooler,
and slightly more cloudy, but apparently still
dry.
I came to the conclusion that I wasn't
necessarily feeling better yesterday, but that the
periods of time when I was feeling better were
beginning to equal, or exceed the periods of time
when I was feeling bad. Eventually the periods of
feeling good, or at least OK, will get so long
that there will be no time left to feel bad. I
can't see that happening to it's ultimate degree
in my lifetime, but even today it could be as much
as 80% good to 20% bad. The change that has
allowed me to start feeling good is less coughing.
There was only one time when I had a serious cough
yesterday, and that was after not coughing for
several hours, but when I did cough it was a real
humdinger of an attempted clear our. After
coughing up my spleen and testicles, and turning
from pink to blue to purple, it all stopped, and I
hardly coughed at all after that. It was nice to
give my coughing muscles. ligaments, and assorted
chest bones a rest for a while, and that felt
good.
If it were not for one thing I would have
felt quite good when going home from work
yesterday, and that one thing was technically two
things because it was the pair of shoes I was
wearing. I remember now why I made a point of
leaving a pair of trainer socks in them the
previous time I used them. I don't know why it
should be considering that they are superficially
identical to other pairs that give no, or little
trouble, but the pair I wore yesterday went from
uncomfortable to agonising ! The agonising was
easy enough to cure - a sticking plaster over the
toe that was being worn away, layer of skin, but
layer of skin, where it was being rubbed by some
unidentifiable feature inside the shoe. Even with
that bit taken care of they were still just plain
uncomfortable to wear. They would be OK for a
quick visit to the shops or pub, but I must try to
remember to never wear them again to work !
I guess I must have been feeling pretty good
when I got home because I managed to eat almost
sensibly. I guess you could say it was a very
personally customised version of something you
might see in the Atkins diet - quite high in
protein, and very low in carbohydrates. It is a
formula that I know works well for me if I can
keep it up for several weeks - after which it
almost becomes second nature. The only change that
I know would work better would be to reduce the
fat content. The meat I had was processed, and
quite a lot of fat came off it when I cooked it.
It would have been better if it had started out a
bit leaner to begin with, but at least I managed
to release a lot of fat while cooking it.
I went home via the Turkish supermarket
again yesterday. I bought some Turkish spicy
sausage for dinner tonight, and some three bean
salad for breakfast this morning, but I also
bought something that is a little dangerous - but
also terribly wonderful ! It was a carton of apple
and rhubarb juice. It tastes wonderful, but it's
(natural) sugar content is a little high. It will
be fine if I drink it sparingly, and now I have to
juggle the conflicting demands of it's time to
expiry to how much I dare drink per day.
One other thing I did last night, and that
was a result of feeling better, was to wash my
hair. It would have been nice to do it the night
before, but I just couldn't be bothered to do it
then. Having to let my hair dry did delay me from
getting to bed as early as I felt I should do, but
I was in bed just before 9pm, and it wasn't all
that long before I was asleep - and for the first
time in a week I think I probably slept quite
well. It wasn't perfect, but it was noticeable
that I recovered from sleep a lot quicker this
morning.
There is probably always one thing that can
spoil what should be good, and this morning it was
my legs. They seemed heavier than usual as I came
to work, and I couldn't find the energy to walk
very fast. On a really good day I can walk to the
station from home in 6 minutes. This morning I
think it took closer to 7 minutes, and I was
breathing quite heavily when I got there. It was
also the start of some quite strong sweating - at
least I think it was sweat because it couldn't
rain on me while I was on the train, but outside
it was probably the rain that won the race !
I don't think I have any plans for tonight.
It will probably just be dinner, TV and then bed.
Hopefully I will sleep OK again with no, or little
coughing like last night (although I did need a
good clear out when I got up this morning). There
is one good bit of news to end on...at least I
hope it is good news. If you recall my rant about
how my application to buy some premium bonds was
being stymied by money laundering regulations, and
how I had to prove I wasn't a brother keeper, a
drug dealer, or the head of an international crime
syndicate who wanted to launder illegal
earnings.......Well it is possible I have managed
to prove it. One of the possible designated
persons who could countersign my two bits of
identity and address proof was a director of the
company I worked for. Fortunately, being a small
company, I managed to get access to one the
directors here at work, and he kindly did the
business for me. The only problem is that he
forgot to write the address of work and his
telephone number. I had to add that, and I hope
that will be acceptable. If not I will have to go
back to my plot of dropping an atomic bomb on the
government from a hydrogen filled Zeppelin !
|
Tuesday 14th July
2015
|
08:10 BST
The frequent showers forecast for yesterday
didn't happen. There was the drizzly rain first
thing in the morning while I was coming to work,
and than at around midday there were a few
intermittent light showers. As far as I am aware,
the rest of the afternoon, the evening, and
overnight, was dry. Once again I am unsure of the
top temperature, but I would estimate it was
around 23° C - which if I recall correctly, is
probably around a degree higher than the forecast.
This morning started at 17 - 18° C (depending on
whether I quote the upstairs or downstairs
thermometer), and there has been some rain. As I
walked to the station I thought I felt a drop or
two hit my face, but as my train passed through
London Bridge station it was obvious they had had
a decent shower there. It was dry in Earlsfield as
I walked to the station, and it doesn't look like
there was any rain earlier, nor has there been any
since. Rain is forecast for today, but rather less
than the forecast for yesterday. Less than
yesterday could mean hardly any at all, but it
might be that we get more rain instead. It is
almost certainly going to be very cloudy, and
although the day started on the edge of warm, it
is not supposed to get any warmer than yesterday.
I saw this poster on the wall on platform B
of Waterloo East station on my way home from work
yesterday. I am not sure I could agree with them
that £21.90 for a return ticket is great value!
Last Friday I went to Shenfield for free on
my 60+ Oyster Card. Now that is good value !
Shenfield is very roughly 28 miles from Central
London. Whitstable is roughly double that
distance. If I could use my 60+ Oyster Card for
half the distance, and pay a surcharge of £10.95
for the other half of the journey I might consider
it to be reasonable, rather than great value.
It's not only money, but time too that
bothers me. To get to Whitstable from central
London takes 2 hours by train, but half the
distance to Shenfield only takes 36 minutes
(although I have to confess that is by fast train,
and my 60+ Oyster Card is not valid on those
trains).
I do find it amazing that it should take so
long to get to Whitstable. There are many places
where the speed of the train is at least 70mph,
and in one or two places it can hit 90mph. In
other places the track twists and turns, and the
trains have to go slower there, and then they are
always slowing down to call at practically every
station on the way. For somewhere that in the
grand scheme of things is so close, it can be
really frustrating visiting the Kent coast.
I felt pretty lousy during the morning at
work. I felt incredibly tired, and bits of me
ached - particularly different bits of my chest
where I had been coughing a lot. It seems
blindingly obvious that I must have bird 'flu -
that being the newest plague !
From last night's Evening Standard newspaper.
I did start to feel better yesterday
afternoon, and there were times when I felt almost
back to normal as I made my way back to Catford. I
say Catford instead of home because just as my
train was leaving Waterloo East station I received
a text message from Kevin asking if I fancied a
pint. I did fancy a pint, but I was not sure if it
would be a good idea to have one. I felt like I
really should go straight home, have a light
dinner, and go straight to bed, but the lure of
beer was too much. Plus I hadn't seen Kevin for a
gossip for at least a few weeks - which inevitably
meant I had three pints instead of the single pint
I was going to allow myself.
It was 7pm when I got home, and I was
feeling pretty good - and I had only been drinking
quite a light beer (3.8%). I was certainly sober
enough to be unusually careful about what I ate. I
had some microwaved cod in batter. It could have
turned out quite nice if I had not half cremated
it. I didn't think I had given it a excessive
cooking time, but it cooked so much that it partly
shrivelled up, and was quite tough. I had that
fish with some chilli infused gerkins. Later on I
had more of those gherkins as a sort of light
snack. For my second course I had a punnet of
cherries with a chunk of cheese. I am unsure if
those cherries were good or bad for me. They did
not taste very sweet so their sugar content may
not have been too bad, and of course half the
fruit is an inedible stone so I ate less than it
appeared.
After eating comparatively lightly, and
after feeling so dreadfully tired in the morning,
I would have thought that I would fall asleep as
soon as my head hit the pillow last night. I was
wrong, and I just didn't feel sleep at all. It
must have been 10.30pm before I fell asleep, but
when I did sleep I think I may have slept better
than recently. I did wake up once at around 3am
with a great soggy frog in my throat that needed
quite a bit of work to clear. That was obviously
inconvenient, but I think the change from a very
persistent tickly throat cough to a much more
intermittent throaty cough is an improvement.
Now I have to confess that I took a couple
of Ibuprofen tablets when I got up to calm a few
aches down, but while they have proved very good
reducing inflammation to my ribs, ligaments and
muscles of my chest, I don't think they are good
enough to make my journey into work more
comfortable than the previous few days. There were
times when I felt entirely normal, and there were
times when I would do something stupid like
carelessly swinging my ruck sack on my back and
getting a twinge or two from my chest. If only I
had put on a comfortable pair of shoes, like
yesterday's pair, I could have reported that my
journey to work was approaching enjoyable - which
of course is total nonsense. Travelling to and
from work can never be enjoyable because I say it
can't ! Even if I didn't have an insane fixed
notion that travelling to and from Earlsfield can
never be enjoyable, there is also the fact that it
can never even approach enjoyable under a dull and
sullen sky. Of course going home on a brilliantly
hot day can sometimes feel slightly pleasant !
Tonight I am going to have another go at
moderating my eating pleasure, and I am going to
try to get that early night. If I don't get to
sleep early tonight, I may have to resort to going
home via Tesco tomorrow, and purchase a bottle of
the old Scottish sleeping remedy :-)
|
Monday 13th July
2015
|
08:23 BST
It was most definitely cloudy yesterday,
but as far as I am aware, it didn't rain, and it
was warmer than the forecast too. Unfortunately I
think it was rather humid - at least that is what
my disease ridden body tried to kid me was the
case. It could have been a recipe for a
thunderstorm, but it was a quiet, and seemingly
dry night. This morning the temperature had
dropped to a still warm feeling 18° C. It stayed
dry right up to one minute before I was due to
walk to the station to come to work. That raised a
dilemna.*
Should I, or shouldn't I put on a raincoat. The
rain was not that heavy, and I would only get a
bit wet, but then again I would also get wet from
sweat that would be trapped under the raincoat.
The answer was to put the rain coat on, but not to
do it up. I took it off once I was on the train,
and left it in my rucksack for the rest of the
journey to work - including the drizzly walk from
the station to work.
* If you think this word is mis-spelled then click
on the link to find that technically it is, but
maybe a tenth of the English speaking peoples,
including me, believe this spelling is what they
were taught in schools by very stern English
teachers.
Looking back towards the
station as I walk to work along a drizzly Garrat
Lane towards work.
The rest of today is
going to be very cloudy, and there will be
frequent showers - maybe ! Yesterday was
supposed to be wet, but turned out dry. Maybe
there will be less rain than threatened today.
Tomorrow could be a tiny bit better, but it
seems that we won't return to blazing summer
days until next week when temperature could
top 30° C again.....or it might snow !
There is not much to tell about
yesterday - apart from grim tales about the
weather. At 11am I went out and bought some
shopping from Aldi, and when I got back I
tested out a theory of mine. I reckoned that
it would be possible to cook fish fingers in
my microwave oven. Of course they would never
get that shiny glaze that fried fish fingers
get, but the breadcrumb coating came out crisp
(and gritty), and of course the fish inside
was cooked just as well as any other method.
On the whole I would say my theory was
correct.
Cooking fish fingers was the only
physical creative thing I did all day. Later
in the afternoon I ripped some more CD tracks
to mp3 to add to my memory stick that, on
random play, substitutes for a radio station
while I am at work, and also at home. The
actual ripping process is simple enough, but
editing the ID3 tags to remove incorrect
information, and to correct spelling mistakes,
is a slow laborious process. Never mind, it's
all worth it in the end. I now have a playlist
that lasts an estimated 120 hours - or 5 days
of non stop music !
I almost didn't want to go to bed last
night because I had a pretty good idea that I
would start to feel rough as soon as I laid
down.It was 10pm before I went to bed, or an
hour later than I should have, and I didn't
feel all that wonderful. I started to cough,
but less than I expected, and it was not an
annoying dry tickly cough. My main form of
discomfort was the apparent humidity. I felt
very hot and sticky almost everywhere on my
body except, for some weird reason, my
buttocks. As I lay there hardly covered at
all, my face, legs, arms, chest and back felt
slightly uncomfortably warm and damp, but my
buttocks were definitely feeling cold. I
expect that means something terribly
important, but I have no idea what.
I probably slept better than I expected
too, but I would loved to have gotten more
sleep before I had to come to work. I would
also have liked more time to acclimatise
myself to the upright waking world before
having to even have a morning shower. I don't
feel very wonderful today. I am sure I was
sweating far too heavily on the way to work
(although the rain did add quite a lot to my
feelings of dampness). My chest feels very
delicate still. Coughing makes it ache across
the middle. Reaching out with my left hand can
send a burning pain through my left breast,
and reaching behind me with my right hand can
send a sharp pain through my right hand side.
Most of these things are not new, but seem
worse than usual from time to time recently -
except the pain in my right hand side - when I
think about it, it must be a while since that
last happened.
I guess all these things feel worse when
you are generally under the weather, and being
under dull weather makes being under the
weather even more undesirable. At this very
moment my only complaint is that I feel like
having a snooze on a nice comfortable bed -
which probably rules my bed out (although of
course it is over an hour away by train right
now). Maybe if I find some terribly important
work to do today I will feel better.
I have no plans for tonight apart from a
desire to get to bed a bit earlier tonight,
and of course the everlasting attempts to
moderate my food intake. Tonight, after some
careful purchasing in Aldi yesterday, I might
stand a better chance of eating what I should
rather than what I want, but when, on most
days, your only reason for existence is to get
home from work for dinner, it is hard to shun
the only pleasure of the day.
|
Sunday 12th July
2015
|
09:07 BST
I think I can describe yesterday's
weather as warm, sunny, and rather sticky,
although the latter may have been because I stayed
indoors all day. I can't recall checking my
thermometer, but I reckon the top temperature was
close to the forecast, and I would guess it was
25° C. During the night it cooled down, and got
cloudy. It looks as if there might have been a
shower or two during the night, but it is
currently dry. It is also warmer than it is
supposed to be. My thermometer is showing 22° C
now, and that is a bit different to the forecast
for today.
It is most definitely
cloudy right now, but it is frequently
brighter than those dull looking little cloud
icons suggest. There have even been a few
short bursts of sunshine. The forecast for
tomorrow seems to have drastically changed
since the last time I looked at it. I'm sure
it forecast a return to warm sunshine after a
wet day today, but now the forecast says
tomorrow is going to be very wet - all day !
I spent so long arranging all the
photos, and writing yesterday, that it seemed
like the day was half over before it had
begun. Either that or I was just feeling
lazier than normal, because it could be said
that I didn't get up at all yesterday. There
was one time when I pulled enough clothes on
to take some rubbish out to the wheelie bin,
but for the rest of the day I slopped around
in usually no more than a pair of lounge
pants. Even worse than that was that I didn't
get around to showering or brushing my hair.
My plans to go out in the evening to try
out my new Canon DSLR camera on Chain, while
enjoying as much of the gig as I could before
having to leave early for the last train, came
to nought. The final nail in the coffin was
that I accidently got myself drunk late in the
afternoon. It all started when I decided that
I should try some of the "own brand" Aldi
Jaegermeister substitute that I bought a few
months ago. To reduce the price of it, as
befits a cheap supermarket, it is only 30%
alcohol (most booze is 40%), and that made it
seem a bit innocent.
In a way, it was innocent - in so much
that it produced a quite slow descent into
drunkenness. I stopped drinking it when I was
feeling quite mellow, and well before I became
wobbly drunk, but it did make me feel very
sleepy. That wasn't surprising in the warmth
of the late afternoon/early evening, and after
many nights of disrupted sleep. So I lay down
and fell asleep for about an hour. I wouldn't
have attempted to go to the gig after getting
drunk, and after waking up I felt too horrible
to even think about it.
After that early evening snooze I didn't
feel like going to bed early, and it was
getting on for midnight before I was asleep in
bed. During the day I had felt substantially
better than I had in previous days, and I was
coughing far less. Laying down in bed, resting
my head on the pillow without the suspect
towel on it was the big test to see if all my
coughing, and feeling ill, was some sort of
allergic reaction to the disinfectant that I
had rinsed the towel in (or the detergent I
washed it in). The results can never be
conclusive because I would be getting better
from a cold anyway, but the fact is that I
didn't cough all that much in the night last
night.
This morning I still haven't stopped
coughing completely. First thing in the
morning there were several occasions when I
needed a light cough or two to clear a small
amount of mucus from my throat. Several hours
later and I still get an occasional little
tickle in the throat that needs a quick cough.
Judging by my progress I should be fit again
when I am back at work tomorrow - which is
sort of annoying after wasting most of two
days of holiday plus the weekend being ill !
I think I am going to be bored today -
which is probably dangerous ! I need to go to
Aldi to get some shopping, but apart from that
I can't think of anything else to do. I guess
I could go out, but the forecast weather
doesn't make that idea terribly attractive. Oh
well, at least this morning I have showered
and washed my hair. So the world is my
Oyster....and maybe that's a clue that my 60+
Oyster Card, and free London travel could be
the answer.....or not.
|
Saturday 11th July
2015
|
09:34 BST
Repeating yesterday's opening paragraph with a few
minor corrections :-
Yesterday was a nice day. It was sunny and
dry, although at little more than 21° C
25° C it was not a particularly
warm day. That should be corrected today. The
forecast says it should be a very sunny day with
the temperature peaking at 25° C
24° C by late afternoon. The current temperature
is just under over 20° C, and
the sky is blue. So it's looking like the forecast
is about right.
I can't truthfully say I felt good
yesterday because there were times when I didn't
feel all that good, and there were a few times
when I felt a bit bad, but it was not enough to
stop me going out. It was also not bad enough to
stop me pushing the boundaries of what I thought I
should do. It would also be true to say that at a
few points I felt just bad enough to suspend my
enjoyment of what I was doing, although as a whole
it was very enjoyable, and of course pushing
yourself out of your comfort zone - and surviving
- feels very good afterwards....for a while.
What I ended up doing was exploring many,
many miles of railways run mostly by London
Overground or TFL rail. I have no idea how many
free miles I clocked up on my 60+ Oyster Card, but
for the 5, or more, hours I was out, I doubt I
spent much more than a total of one hour waiting
on various railway station platforms. My route is
best described in pictures. Click on any picture
for a big high resolution picture.
My first train approaching Catford
station. |
First stop (just around the corner from
where I had my heart operation) |
A 5 car class 378 London Overground
train bound for Highbury And Islington |
Next stop: Rotherhithe station. It may
be brighter and cleaner since London
Overground took it over, but it still
smells of sewage ! |
Rotherhithe was one place where I left
the railway for 10 minutes of exploring.
I now know where the Brunel Museum is,
and I must visit it one day. |
I think this passenger boat is called
"City Delta", and it is heading
downstream towards the Thames Barrier. |
River Police boats tied up at Wapping
police station. |
Rotherhithe station in all it's new
London Overground splendour. |
Wapping station platforms - also still
smelling like a sewer. |
Wapping station. The circular section at
the top is the same diameter as the
shaft down to track level. |
From Wapping I stayed on the train as
far as Canonbury, and did a fast change
to a train to Gospel Oak station. |
My next train - a class 172 diesel
electric - approaching Gospel Oak
station. |
Clean, bright and comfortable, but these
London Overground versions don't have a
toilet fitted like their cousins
elsewhere. |
At the other end of the Gospel Oak to
Barking line lies Barking. It's about a
30 minute trip over occasionally bumpy
rails ! |
At Barking my next train was a London
Underground D stock train to Upminster.
|
Interior of a D stock carriage. Note the
transverse seats in the middle of the
carriage. A luxury committed to the past
in modern Underground trains. |
Upminster station - they have rather
useful toilets on platform 1 ! |
Using max zoom, and showing some heat
haze in the background, my next train
approaches Upminster - a class 317. |
I have a strong suspicion that before
London Overground used them, class 317
trains were used on Stanstead (airport)
Express trains, and so were rather well
equipped. |
This is really rather luxurious (by
modern day standards) for a train that
just runs a quiet shuttle service
between Upminster and Romford with just
one intermediate station. |
The intermediate station on what is
still very like a quiet country branch
line. |
Romford station in TFL Rail livery. |
I really don't like class 315 trains.
They are uncomfortable, and the seats
don't line up with the windows, but this
was my next train for the long slow
journey to Shenfield. |
Shenfield station with it's slowly
decaying brake van in the distance. That
brake van has probably been there, on a
cut off siding, for over 10 years, and
maybe many more. |
The outside of Shenfield station is
rather boring, and so is Shenfield
itself from first looks. So it was back
on a slow, stopping at every station,
service back past Romford to Stratford.
|
I haven't been to Stratford since they
started building there for that thing
that happened in 2012. I swear I can
still smell sweaty jockstraps even now.
I would have avoided the place, but it
was the most direct way home. |
When I got to
Stratford I was able to change to the
Docklands Light Railway, and after one change
at Canary Wharf station I arrived at Lewisham
in time for a 15 minute wait (one of the
longest waits all day) for a train back to
Catford Bridge.
When I finally arrived home I was
surprised that I didn't feel all that bad. In
some ways I actually felt good. It was a huge
buzz to have achieved so much, and maybe that
off set some of the inevitable tiredness. One
of the curious things was that while I was out
I seemed to be mostly free of the cold I had.
I hardly coughed at all, and my legs felt
pretty good and working well. I still had a
few twinges from my chest where all the
earlier coughing had made some of my "floating
ribs" seem quite sore when stressed in certain
ways.
A little bit of the mild negative
feelings were most probably mild hunger, and
mild to middling dehydration. As per my usual
days of old, I went out before having any
breakfast, and I didn't drink anything while I
was out. I must admit that a pint of icy
orange squash went down very quickly, and
hardly touched the sides on the way down
! I think I probably over did a few
snacks while I reviewed and edited the
pictures I took because a bit later I was to
order a rather generous amount of Chinese
takeaway for a proper dinner.
I did eat quite generously, too
generously in fact, from that takeaway, but I
still have a part 2 left for lunch today. I
allowed not much more than an hour before
going to bed after that meal. It left me
feeling quite hot, but somehow I managed to
get to sleep fairly quickly. One difficulty,
apart from the steamy heat, was that as soon
as I lay down I started to cough again, and
after little more than an hour or two of sleep
I was awake coughing and spluttering.
It was then that I had a theory, and I
am thinking that my theory might have a grain
of truth in it. At something like 1.30am I
swapped the towel I had over my pillow to soak
up sweat on these hot nights. I swapped it for
one that had been machine washed ages ago, and
put in storage. The towel I've had on my
pillow since I started coughing at night was a
hand washed one with an extra added
ingredient. I really hate it when towels get
smelly in the summer, and so I put a little
Zoflora disinfectant in the final rinse of the
towel when I washed it - just to make sure all
the nasty little bugs were dead. It seems to
have worked on other towels OK, but maybe it
is not a good idea to sleep on them when
treated like that.
Changing the towel didn't make an
instant improvement, but I think it made a
change. The proof, if there is any proof,
could come tonight - assuming I am not just
getting better after something as simple as a
cold. There is a definite change in my cough
this morning. The longer I stay out of bed the
less frequent it becomes, but it is also more
"throaty" and less dry this morning. Overall,
I do feel strangely better this morning. Maybe
it was just a cold, and a mild, and at other
times almost ignorable allergy to something on
the pillow just made it a bit worse......or
maybe it's just a brief respite before the
full force of SARS,
TB,
or Ebola,
or whatever takes effect !
Sorting out all those pictures, and
quite a few interruptions, means that it is
almost midday now (lucky I wasn't doing this
at work !). It's probably time I did
something.....but what ? I suppose having a
shower and getting dressed would be a good
start. Then I could go and do some shopping,
and/or do some housework. Possibly the most
important thing might be to conserve some
energy so I can go out tonight. Chain are
playing at The Railway Tavern at Longfield.
It's fairly easy to get to - 3 or 4 minutes
downhill from Longfield station - assuming the
trains are running, and unlike last time I
won't be doing it on a cold, dark, winters
night. Getting home is less fun. The last but
one train (to allow for accidents) is quite
early, and I'll have to leave halway through
the gig. If the pub is not too packed I should
be able to test my new Canon DSLR camera
tonight.
|
Friday 10th July
2015
|
08:34 BST
Yesterday was a nice day. It was sunny and dry,
although at little more than 21° C it was not a
particularly warm day. That should be corrected
today. The forecast says it should be a very sunny
day with the temperature peaking at 25° C by late
afternoon. The current temperature is just under
20° C, and the sky is blue. So it's looking like
the forecast is about right.
There were times when I felt reasonably good
yesterday, and there were times when I felt a bit
rough, and then there was how I felt in the
night...... I think it is probably more annoying
that this cold (assuming it is a cold) is half and
half. Shivering in bed is not very nice, but at
least it is very definite, and when you stop it
can usually be taken as a good sign that you are
on the mend. Yesterday, and this morning, when I
feel half good and half bad it is frustrating not
knowing if I am mending or not.
Sometimes fresh air helps, and sometimes it
doesn't. Late yesterday afternoon it did feel good
to walk to the station to meet Jodie and escort
her to The Blythe Hill Tavern where the Thursday
night drinkers were drinking. The last time we
walked there Jodie complained that it was a bit
far, but it is only half a mile, and to be fair
she didn't start to moan about it until we were
practically outside the pub ! Last night even I
decided that I was not that enthusiastic about
walking there, and we caught a bus there instead.
I doubt I would have done so if I didn't have free
travel with my 60+ Oyster card, but it sort of
makes you lazy !
Here's the Thursday night drinkers sitting
around a table in the garden of the pub. From left
to right - Andy, Dave, Chris, Alan, Paul and Jodie
(I'm behind the camera !). I'm not sure if I
really was in a drinking mood last night, but I
ended up staying a bit later than I thought I
would, and I had about 4 pints of beer. Towards
the end I was starting to ache a bit, and I was
feeling tired. One of the useful things about
staying late (7pm, or a little later) is that the
traffic had died down on the main road, and that
made it worthwhile getting a bus back to Catford
Bridge station. There is a bus stop right outside
the pub, and although we missed one bus by 2
seconds, there was another 30 seconds behind it
(both different routes, but both going back to the
station).
I left Jodie to get here train back to
Elmers End, and I found myself drawn into the
fried chicken shop where I regained some will
power, and only ordered a moderate sized meal.
When I got home I stuffed myself with it while
watching some TV. There was an old episode of The
Avengers on that entertained me for a while. Note:
This was the real British Avengers, and
not the cheap plastic American version based up on
some scrappy comic from the Marvell publishing
house. It was thus enjoyable !
I went up to bed before it finished, but
watched the rest on my PC. At that time I felt
really tired - so tired that when the programme
ended, and I went to bed, I felt too tired to
relax - which I know sounds a contradiction, but
it was a fact. I had to rest before I could relax,
but eventually I fell asleep, and like recent
nights, I slept more or less OK for at least a few
hours, but at 3am I woke up feeling dreadful. My
mouth and throat were dry, and I couldn't go for
more than a few minutes without coughing. From 3am
I only slept in small chunks, sometimes as little
as 10 minutes, but others as long as 30 minutes,
until I just had to give up trying to sleep any
more.
Since then I have washed my hair, and had a
shower. That seemed like hard work, but now, as my
hair is half dry, I think I feel a little bit OK.
I'm now trying to decide what to do today. It's
going to be warm so the seaside might be nice, but
I'm not sure if I am up to that yet. I think what
I might do is go riding around on some trains
(maybe buses and/or tubes as well). I can do it
for free on my 60+ Oyster card, and there are
places I would like to see...or to be more
specific, there are some rail routes I would like
to explore. For instance the old East London Line
tube line has been part of London Overground for 5
(or more ?) years now, and I have never been on
the extension from Whitechapel to Highbury And
Islington.
Photo opportunities from modern railway
carriages with no big windows to open are few and
far between, but maybe I can grab a few snaps here
and there. All I have to do now is to try and
ignore the aches and pains that hold me back (my
chest is still quite sore from all the coughing
I've done in the last few days), grit my teeth,
and get out into the fresh air. It should be
easy...... |
Thursday 9th July
2015
|
13:13 BST
By my reckoning the temperature rose to at least
24° C yesterday, and that was 5° higher than the
forecast if my memory serves me well ! It was also
supposed to be quite a dull day, and for a lot of
the time it was, but occasionally the sun did
break through, and during the afternoon there were
quite a few sunny periods. I don't think the
temperature dropped as low as it was supposed to
last night, but it was rather cool when I woke up.
Since then there have been some dull periods, and
some extended sunny periods. The rest of the
afternoon is forecast to be non stop sunshine, and
that does seem very likely. With all the sunshine
I would have expected the temperature to be a
little higher than just 19° C, but that is all it
is, and that is pretty close to the forecast for
today. Apparently the temperature will peak at
about 6pm today, but it may only get up to 21 or
22° C. Tomorrow should be even sunnier, and even
warmer than today, but nothing exceptional.
I felt very much better yesterday afternoon.
So much better that I decided to wash a few shirts
and stuff, and I assumed that doing that would
probably make me feel even better going by past
experiences. Maybe it did, or maybe it didn't. I
don't know really. I seemed to feel superficially
OK, but I couldn't seem to shake off all the
symptoms of the cold I seemed to have. As the
evening approached I began to feel rough again.
I guess I felt a bit reluctant to go to bed
last night because I had a good idea how I would
feel in bed. In fact I probably underestimated how
bad I would feel - at least for a portion of the
night. The chief annoyance was the usually, but
not exclusively dry cough. It kept me awake in the
small hours, and made my chest hurt. There were
also times when my nose felt very blocked or
stuffy, although at no time has my nose actually
started to drip or run.
I have no idea how much sleep I got last
night, but on the first day of the two days I
booked off work as holiday, I got up feeling
pretty lousy. Once I was upright my nose began to
feel just stuffy rather than fully blocked, but I
still felt the need to blow it frequently even if
it didn't really need it. My cough also mostly
stopped once I had been upright for a while,
but it hasn't completely stopped even now - and of
course my chest still feels tender.
I'm not sure how the rest of me feels. I
feel as if I should be able to do stuff - even go
for a long walk - but I am reluctant to try
because the thought of it makes me feel tired. I
may be missing a dripping nose, but I think I may
be experiencing a non-smokers cold, and I don't
like it...or at least I don't like the ambiguity
of it. If I had this while I was still a heavy
smoker there would be no doubt that I would be
feeling unambiguously close to death, and in the
extreme, hoping for it ! Instead of that I am
teetering on the edge of feeling good enough that
I don't want to do nothing, and bad enough that I
am unsure if I want to do anything at all.
I had given much thought to going out
exploring today - until I came down with this
cold. I had previously mentioned that I was
contemplating going all the way to
Walton-On-The-Naze to walk back beside the
seashore to Frinton-On-Sea. Apart from not feeling
up to it today, I am unsure if I want to do it
anyway. I did some planning on the National
Rail website, and I didn't like the look of
what I found. Not only is it still a lousy once an
hour service, but the cost of the fares is
horrendous !
Paying £25.20 for the pleasure of a couple
of miles walk along the sea seems to be very
expensive - particularly considering the last
time I went, admittedly 5 years ago (doesn't
time fly when you are having fun !!) it cost me
just £14.20 - and I still have the tickets to
prove it !
Fortunately, if I do
eventually go to Walton-On-The-Naze, and maybe
if I am feeling a lot better it could even be
tomorrow, there is a cheaper option - although
it's still the medieval one train an hour
service - and that is to use my 60+ Oyster
card to travel for free to Shenfield, and buy
my tickets from there for a slightly more
reasonable £17.90 return. It is only recently,
since Transport For London, took over the rail
service to Shenfield that Oystercards have
been valid so far out of London into the
borders of Essex. It's probably the sort of
journey I should do more often to abuse
make good use of my 60+ Oyster Card !
My 60+ Oyster Card featuring my most
miserable passport type picture pose !
Although I feel
reluctant to do much today, I will be
making the effort to go for my regular
Thursday night drink. In theory I could
stay out late tonight, and maybe I will. I
have a strong suspicion that the half to
two thirds mile walk to The Blythe Hill
Tavern will make me feel better rather
than worse, and a good dose of beer will
loosen up stiff joints (which I don't
really have at the moment), and it will
probably help my sore chest in ways I
can't even begin to imagine. Not only
that, but getting a little, or a lot drunk
will distract me from aches, pains and
general feelings of not wellness.
|
Wednesday 8th July
2015
|
09:36 BST
The forecast for rain was perfectly correct
yesterday......although it was a bit of an
exaggeration. The rain was little more than a
couple of light splashes in the morning, and the
afternoon rain was replaced by sunshine. The
afternoon turned out to be quite pleasant in a
"not quite summer" sort of way - more sort of late
spring in feel. Having said that, the temperature
did creep up to about 24° C - which is sort of
summerish. This morning it is very cloudy,
although it has stayed dry so far, and the latest
forecast says it should stay dry all day. It also
says that it will be a very dull day, and that the
temperature will only rise to 19° C - which
strikes me as a bit cool for July ! It makes me
wonder whose thermometer is more accurate. My
thermometer, and my body say it is 21° C right now
- although my body's internal thermometer is
playing up a bit today. Tomorrow is still forecast
to be bright, sunny and warm, and Friday may be a
little better than that !
I felt rough at work on Monday, and I felt
rough yesterday, but it wasn't until yesterday
afternoon that all the threads started to come
together. I don't know precisely when it was, and
the first hints may have been in the morning
rather than that the afternoon, but by the
afternoon I was definitely suffering from a sore
throat, and I had started to cough. It was an
annoying cough because it felt a bit girly
compared to the full throated manly cough I used
to have when I was smoking 40 - 50 fags a day. On
the other hand it was also annoying because it was
still enough to make my chest feel sore.
It was a great relief to go home after work.
Getting out into the fresh air made me feel
better, and a bit of walking got some of the
creases out of here, there and everywhere. It
didn't actually stop my throat being sore, and
maybe it actually made it feel a bit more
constricted. Fortunately I didn't cough much (or
at all ?) on the trains home. All the while I was
travelling, and for probably most of the day, tiny
little microbes were working on me. Most
concentrated on my throat at first, but some
worked their way into my brain, and somehow
convinced me that I should eat some Turkish
sausage.
Instead of going straight home from the
station I went via the Turkish supermarket and
bought some sausages. I also bought a couple of
little pots of 3 bean salad, and chick pea salad
to have for breakfast at work today. One other
thing I bought, and I didn't know why, was a big
bottle of freshly pressed Cox apple juice. It
seemed like a good idea at the time, but I
completely forgot about it after putting it in the
fridge when I got home.
I could have cooked the Turkish sausages in
the electric grill, but I had a hunch that they
would cook OK in the microwave oven - and they
did. I probably almost over cooked them, but at
least that did "boil" off quite a lot of fat from
them. I ate them with some chunks of cucumber -
and they were very nice. I also had a second
course of cheese salad. I washed it down with
orange squash, but once I had finished eating I
decided I ought to try and sterilise my sore
throat with some hard liqueur ! I had one generous
glass of cinnamon flavour Jack Daniels, and that
didn't seem to help so I followed it with a couple
of generous glasses of whisky. That may or may not
have helped, but it all helped me to get to sleep
quite early in the evening.
I think it was not long after 8pm that I was
fast asleep in, or on my bed. As far as I can
recall I slept OK until gone midnight, but that
was probably just the result of exhaustion. From
then onwards I kept waking up with a dry mouth, or
coughing, or with my nose feeling blocked, and
sometimes sweating - or usually all of those
things at the same time. By 3 or 4 am I must
have been running a good fever because I couldn't
work out if I was hot or cold. If I covered more
than 10% of my body I would start to sweat, and if
I left it uncovered I would almost shiver....and
all the time I kept coughing.
The worrying thing about it was that the
coughing was making my chest quite sore in the
same way that it was sore when I had my first
heart attack (the one a week before I called an
ambulance back in 2013). The hot and cold business
was quite similar too so it brought back a few
unpleasant memories. Fortunately there were enough
differences to make me think I was unlikely to die
for a while. I didn't have a sore throat when I
had that heart attack, and my nose didn't feel
blocked either. On top of that, the strength of my
chest pain was constant and was not modulated by
the amount I was coughing.
At 5am this morning I got up as usual, but I
felt dreadful. At 5.30am, instead of having a
shower, and preparing for work, I went back to
bed. At first I felt too dreadful to go back to
sleep, but at some unknown time I did fall asleep,
and the next thing I knew was that it was 8am. The
first thing to do was to phone work and tell them
the "good news". I didn't really want to go sick
today because it looks like some sort of sham when
I have tomorrow and the day after already booked
as holiday, but at 5.30 this morning I didn't care
about that.
After an extra hour or two of sleep I feel a
lot better, and when I come to think about it, I
don't think I've done any serious coughing since
soon after I woke up at 8am. My throat is still
very slightly sore, but it is so mild as to be
hardly noticeable. I still feel a bit weak (which
I think is the best way to describe it), and a
couple of paragraphs ago I briefly broke out into
a sweat. So I am evidently not cured yet, but I do
feel a lot better than I did in the night. I think
I shall reserve this morning for a bit of quiet
relaxing, reading, or snoozing, and see how I feel
this afternoon. Maybe I'll do something
constructive this afternoon if I feel up to, but I
think it's now time to put my feet up for a while.
|
Tuesday 7th July
2015
|
08:22 BST
Yesterday was another of those peculiar days where
the weather forecast turned out to be quite close
to reality. It said it would be a bit dull in the
middle of the day, and it was. The rest of the day
was bright, although not always sunny. When it was
sunny it was very sunny - bright and hot rays of
sunshine. The temperature was possibly a degree or
two higher than the forecast according to my
measurements (that I seem to have forgotten). At
8.20pm it was starting to get dull outside, but
the sky still looked nice - in an artistic sort of
way - probably.....
.....the only trouble is my
picture doesn't seem to capture it too well.
Maybe you only get the right ambience when
standing in the bath, viewing the sky through
a 6 inch high aperture of a partly opened sash
window. After seeing that light cloud in
a clear expanse of sky, it was a bit of a
shock to find that this morning it is very
cloudy, and that rain is forecast to fall
quite soon this morning. There could be
intermittent showers any time this morning,
and more of them this afternoon. It is
possible that I could still catch one when I
go home after work. This evening should be dry
if reality continues to follow the forecast,
and tomorrow could be a gloriously sunny
day....could be !!!
I felt lousy at work yesterday. I felt
dreadfully tired, and my chest, sides, back,
top and bottom all ached in one way or
another. It wasn't until lunchtime that the
worst of it had worn off, but I was still
feeling delicate as I set off to go home after
work. Yesterday was a rare day - I actually
wanted to get a bus for a couple of reasons,
and as I got to the main road I spotted a bus
heading towards the bus stop. It was when
getting off the bus that I had my last
reminder of how delicate I was feeling. As I
got off the bus I had to step out a little
further than usual, and I landed slightly
heavily on my right foot. At any other time it
would hardly be noticeable, but on this
occasion the shock travelled straight up
through my body, and sent a burning pain
through my left breast. It may have been the
result of the shock re-aligning my ribs and
ligaments into a closer approximation of how
they should be. Since then I have had no
significant aches from my chest sub
chassis/underframe/superstructure/whatever.
It was not all terrible at work. One
thing followed by another thing brightened my
day up a lot. It almost made coming to work a
pleasure. First of all my new Canon DSLR
camera arrived, and then half an hour later
the extra lens for it arrived. I had a play
with it once the battery had charged. I came
to the conclusion that for many pictures it
would not be a great improvement over my Canon
"bridge" camera, but for certain shots it
would be a large improvement. The additional
lens I bought, with it's large aperture, looks
like it is going to handle low light
situations much better, and having manual
control of the focus could be very handy too.
Was it money well spent ? Well I hope it
was......although it could easily lead to the
slippery slope of buying all sorts of
accessories for it. An extra battery, and a
lens hood would be cheap, and important
accessories, but a nice big zoom lens could be
very desirable - and potentially very
expensive !
It's like time is running in reverse.
First there was baby Canon - an SX210 IS on
the left. Then there was mummy Canon - an SX40
HS in the middle, and yesterday daddy Canon -
an EOS 1200D arrived on the right ! The far
more worrying thing is that my new camera is
classified as a beginners DSLR camera, and
there are far bigger, better and hugely more
expensive ones out there, but before I start
drooling over that I ought to see if I can
refine my point and click photography to use
some of the new features of my new camera, and
see if I can take masterpieces like the
picture above isn't !
Maybe the pictures I took on my way home
are better looking, or better composed, or
just better than the photo above.....
They were still giving away Stella Artois
chalices (or glasses to most of us) on the
concourse of Waterloo station at 4pm
yesterday, and this morning they are still
set up to give away hundreds more.
Also spotted at Waterloo was this
photographer with this extra tall tripod. I
couldn't work out what he was taking
pictures of. His camera seemed to be pointed
at the super wide (50ft ?) TV screen type
advertising screen, but I am not convinced
it was pointing high enough for that. Oh
well, I suppose he knew what he was doing
even if I didn't.
I initially made
some effort to eat lightly last night, but
that didn't last long. I even made things
worse by drinking a can of super strength
lager a little while before going to
bed....although while it may have had the
equivalent of a lot of sugar in it, it
also probably was beneficial to my sleep.
I made sure I didn't attempt to stay up
much beyond 9pm, and I was asleep quite
soon after that. I'm not sure I slept
better in terms of quantity - only missing
out on work, and going back to bed would
solve that - but I think I thrashed about
a lot less last night, and I seem to ache
less this morning.
I still felt dreadfully tired as I
got myself ready for work, and I sometimes
wondered where I found the energy to stand
up. It felt like I wanted to lay down
again straight away, but it was mostly all
in the mind...at least I assume it was.
Coming to work didn't seem to be taxing,
and I forgot to faint or collapse as I
assumed I probably should do at some
point. The more I think about this, the
more I yawn ! What I ought to concentrate
on is trying to think up a way to describe
how I felt as I walked from the station to
work. Once I got into my stride it felt
like I could walk at that slightly
moderate pace for miles. It felt like
slightly hard work, and laying down would
have been a nice option, but it was like
that after 10 seconds of walking, and was
no worse by the time I got to work. I
guess nothing makes any sense these days.
The good news is that I booked
Thursday and Friday off work this morning.
That means I may go out exploring
somewhere on one or both days. I still
have a walk from Walton On The Naze (with
or without hyphens) to Frinton On sea
(also with or without hyphens) on my to do
list, and maybe I'll do one one of the
days. To that end I really ought to be
watching my diet from this very minute so
I am not bloated and farting on Thursday
morning. The bad news is that I have some
work to do at work today, and the worse
news is that I had probably get working on
it soon !
|
Monday 6th July
2015
|
08:07 BST
It came as a bit of a surprise as to how much it
cooled down during the night after a pleasantly
warm day yesterday. It was just 13° C when I woke
up this morning - which felt remarkably chilly. It
was also noticeable how the days are getting
shorter again now. At 4am it was still rather dull
because sun rise was not until 04:51 this morning.
Most of the morning has been sunny, but every so
often some expansive patches of thin cloud drift
over, and obscure the sun. That will probably be
the pattern for the rest of the day - although the
cloud may be a bit more persistent around the
middle of the day. It is not supposed to be a very
warm day today, although I hope it gets a bit
higher than the forecast for a mere 21° C.
Tomorrow should see a small improvement, but it
ain't going to be high summer weather !
Nothing much happened yesterday evening. My
"dinner" was freshly shelled peas followed by
fresh strawberries. This was as I said it would be
yesterday, but at the last moment I decided to
have some "Frank's diabetic vanilla ice cream"
with the strawberries. I'm not sure if they
complimented each other or not. I washed it all
down with some (mostly) sugar free fizzy Kiwi and
Raspberry (flavour) drink from Aldi's "Jive"
range.
It was a little weird yesterday night. I
thought I was feeling tired until I got into bed
early (and by into I really mean onto). While part
of my brain contemplated whether I was tired or
not, I used another part to read a book. With hind
sight I now realise that I should have tried
harder to feel sleepy because reading until gone
10pm, or getting on towards 11pm was not a great
idea - particularly when I woke up at 4am and
couldn't get back to sleep again. The reason I
woke at 4am was because I was sleeping uncovered
with the window open, and my room temperature had
dropped to the point that I was shivering with
cold !
I covered myself up, and maybe I did manage
to fall asleep for a few minutes, but to all
intents and purposes my sleep finished at 4am. The
only good thing was that it gave me a bit of extra
time to try and feel comfortable enough to come to
work. When I first woke up I had all but seized
up, and even now, 6 or 7 miles away (as the crow
flies), and 4 hours later, I don't feel very
wonderful. It's hard to describe just how I feel,
but it feels pretty awful, and it feels like I
should by laying down and not sitting at my desk.
I guess the feeling will eventually pass as it
usually does, but it will pass a lot quicker if my
new camera turns up this morning. That should be a
great distraction from everything !
As I painfully dragged myself to work I saw
new stuff at Waterloo station (although at
Waterloo I was really feeling the best I have all
morning). Once again it was Stella Artois who were
centre stage on the concourse. They really are
flogging their tie in/sponsorship with the
Wimbledon Tennis club where the championships are
taking place.
Looking quiet while the last bits of setting up
take place......
....then 5 minutes later all hell breaks loose
as people queue for their free Stella Artois,
limited edition, Wimbledon chalice. |
Sunday 5th July
2015
|
17:02 BST
After the Friday night storms, yesterday was a
very nice day. It was bright and sunny for most of
the time, and while it wasn't hot it was
certainly nice and warm. I think the temperature
peaked at around 25° C. After sunset it cooled
down quite quickly, and sleeping was a lot easier.
This morning was very dull, and for a few hours it
was wet from a succession of moderate showers. The
afternoon was much nicer. There was no rain, and
many sunny periods. It's currently 25° C, but a
moderate breeze is making it feel fresh. Tomorrow
is forecast to start, and probably finish sunny,
but the middle of the day will be a bit dull. As a
consequence the temperature may only rise to a
puny 21° C !
It is strange how I felt so rough first
thing yesterday, and yet after doing some
relatively hard, and if not exactly hard, some
very sweaty work - aka hand laundry - I felt so
good. The feeling persisted all day. I mentioned
that I did all the washing up, and emptied the
rubbish bins yesterday, but after that I did other
stuff. One thing was to fill a dustbin liner with
a load of old paperwork. Much of it was old
circuit diagrams/repair manual for audio visual
equipment. It seemed like a good idea to hoard
these when I was in the trade over 10 years ago,
but I have never used them, and I am unlikely to
use them ever. It is still a bit of a wrench to
throw away "knowledge" though.
I did take a rest after that lot, but not
for long. It was such great weather for drying
clothes that I did some more hand laundry in the
afternoon. It included some towels, and a I hung
most of it out in the garden to dry. It wasn't
bone dry when I brought it in 3 or 4 hours later,
but it was pretty close to it. That was the last
of the physical work that I did, but I still felt
very alert and had to find little jobs to do on
the PC, and stuff like that to stop me getting
bored.
There was only one problem with how I
arranged yesterday....or at least it was a sort of
problem the way the day unfolded...or something
like that. I had a succession of small snack
rather than proper meals, and mid evening I got
stuck between the notions that I had eaten enough,
and was not particularly hungry, and the notion
that I had not eaten dinner, and the day was
running. It was all a bit stupid, and I knew that
even as my stomach and brain argued about it. In
the end I ordered a takeaway that I could split
between a late dinner, and breakfast this morning
- quite a late breakfast as it turned out.
It was much easier to sleep again last
night, and I think I probably got two quite long
periods of sleep. After all the sleep I lost
during the hottest nights last week, I feel I
should have probably got at least 10 hours sleep
last night, and/or the night before. I'm not sure
if I even managed a full 8 hours in total last
night, but it was probably close enough, and I
woke up not feeling tired - just quite crappy -
and that's crappy in any sense except that
involving the toilet.
The cure was the same as yesterday. I did
some more hand laundry. This time it was just some
work shirts. Had it not been raining I would have
tackled one of the heavy duvet covers that I have
been saving for when I feel amazingly strong, and
when the sun is blazing down so I can hang it out
still dripping, and know it will dry by the end of
the day. Once again a bit of physical labour made
me feel a lot better, although maybe not as much
as yesterday. Tomorrow the cure will have to be
going to work - boo !
I did have some vague notion that I might go
out today - perhaps just a couple of visits to the
shops, but possibly to somewhere further afield.
Te rain put paid to any ideas like that, but once
it had stopped in the early afternoon I did
go to Aldi to pick up a few bits and pieces. I
don't know why I did it, but I foolishly bought a
pack of 4 cup cakes topped with some thick pink
goo (allegedly strawberry flavoured). It was a
folly to buy them, and an even bigger folly to eat
them.
The may have looked nice, but to my palate
they were just over sweet tastelessness. I didn't
enjoy that at all, and the sugar just made me feel
very peckish. I've since eaten some other crap
that should have been used sparingly over a couple
of days. Now I can't have any proper dinner if I
stick to the plan. All I should have for dinner is
some fresh peas straight from the pods, and some
strawberries. Eating the peas should be fun, and I
assume that I will like them like I did many years
ago (30 ?). Some say that peas contain a lot of
starch, but I feel sure that I can survive that !
Tomorrow could be a good and bad day. Even
the bad part has a good part because without the
bad there can't be the good. To explain in a more
sane way.......Tomorrow I have to go to work -
which is bad, but without going to work I won't be
able to pick up at least one parcel, and hopefully
two - which if they arrive will be good. I am
expecting delivery of at least the wide aperture
lens for my new Canon DSLR camera. It won't be
much good without the camera, but I think there is
a fair chance that will turn up tomorrow too. All
I'll need then is an artistically lit gig to go
to, to see if I am a good cameraman or a complete
failure ! |
Saturday 4th July
2015
|
13:28 BST
Yesterday ended in a bit of a bang, but before
that it was very pleasant. There was a lot of
sunshine. The temperature probably went up to
something like 25° C, but there was a nice breeze
to make it feel a bit fresher. Without that breeze
it might have felt unpleasantly humid. It was a
pleasant night to be outside, walking to and from
stations, and very pleasant to be safely at home
in advance of about 11 - 11:30pm when all hell let
loose. Although the centre of it always seemed to
be around a mile away, maybe half a mile, we had a
terrific thunderstorm. For a while there was some
very heavy rain, and for a lot longer either side
of that, there was copious lightning, and the
thunder rattled the fillings in my teeth.
It took until 1am this morning before that
storm had moved away enough to show only some very
distant flashes, and barely heard thunder. The
rain had also stopped by then (I think). This
morning dawned bright and fresh. I think the
temperature had dropped to a fresh feeling 15° C,
but it didn't stay that low for long. It's been a
nice bright and sunny morning, and the temperature
is already up to 25° C. It will probably be hotter
before it starts to cool down again around 6 or
7pm, but if I doesn't cool down that much then I
reckon we could see another storm tonight -
although the weather forecast says not. Tomorrow
may be a rather dull day, and a lot cooler too.
Perhaps just 22° C, and there could be some rain
in the late morning.
I felt pretty awful at work yesterday. I
couldn't read anything on my PC for more than 5 or
10 minutes before my eyelids would start to droop.
There were a few times when I actually fell asleep
for a few seconds. Not only that, but I felt a bit
stiff and achey. It was a miracle then that I
managed to keep myself alert, and feeling
reasonably OK when I got home after a stress free
commute home. The reason that I forced myself to
feel alert and OK was that I really wanted to go
out last night. On Thursday, with Chris acting as
a courier, I was given a very nice birthday
present by Jo (of Chain) and I wanted to thank her
personally at Chain's gig.
Before all that there was what was happening
earlier in the day at Waterloo station. It started
about the time I arrived there on my way to work
in the morning....
Parked on the concourse, but unattended, was
this van whose sign writing offered a few
hints.....
My next view was at 4pm and they are giving away
tiny free samples of cider...
A man I know who knows all about cider says it
was not cider but something more similar to
urine (although I can't remember his exact words
!).
I didn't stop to
queue for any free samples, but made my way
straight home via the Turkish supermarket
where I bought a couple of cans of strong(ish)
Polish beer that I may enjoy tonight. I also
bought the ingredients for an unusually light
dinner - chick pea and three bean salads. Well
maybe their later effects may not be that
light, but they seemed to fill a hole with
over filling it last night. I then washed my
hair, and had a shower, and I was almost ready
to go. The only difficulty was not to get too
relaxed while I waited for my hair to dry.
Somehow I managed to keep the faith, and
set off to get the 8.06pm train to Eden Park.
The gig was actually in West Wickham, but it
is a bit of a trot up a hill from the station.
The lazy way is to go as far as Eden Park
station, and then get the bus which stops
right outside the pub. Once upon a time this
would have cost extra money, but thanks to my
60+ Oyster card the whole journey was free. I
arrived at the gig relatively free from sweat
- which was nice, and wouldn't have happened
if I had walked up the hill !
The only trouble with The Swan in West
Wickham is that I hate the place. All the
football shirts pinned to the ceiling make me
feel nauseous ! Not only that but the
acoustics of the place never seem to be very
good. The band is squeezed into a small space,
and always seem to be hidden behind mic
stands. The lighting is all wrong for
photography, and.......well I am sure there
are other things I don't like, but I can't
think of them for the moment.
This poor picture, where they all look
miserable, was the best I took that shows the
complete band. On the far left, Jo Corteen,
and on the far right, Chris Mayer. Ravi was on
duty for the bass guitar, and Gavin played the
drums. Gavin very rarely plays for Chain, and
may have only played for them once before. I
think I am safe to say it here, but I didn't
really like his drumming. I have a suspicion
that a fellow drummer would say he was very
good, and I can't fault his timing, but to my
ear it sounded rather mechanical. I prefer a
more fluid style even if it has more
(technical) mistakes. It sounds warmer and
more human to me.
I arrived at the pub at about 8.40pm,
and by 9.50pm I left. I had already decided
that I would leave early, and stuck to that
plan even though I was beginning to feel good
and enjoy myself thanks to consuming a couple
of pints of beer. I don't know if it was just
stubbornness to stick to my earlier plan,
based on the idea that I should have been
feeling knackered, or if it was some sort of
sixth sense in operation.
It felt rather nice walking down the
hill to the station in the warm night air. I
slightly misjudged my timing in the bet way,
and had 10 minutes to wait for the train once
I got to the station. I travelled back to
Catford in an empty carriage, and when I got
there I somehow suppressed all urges to buy
any takeaways for a late night supper, and
walked straight home. I guess I could have
chanced an extra hour out, but only by the
skin of my teeth, because it could hardly have
been more than an hour after arriving home
that the heavens opened, and the road outside
briefly looked more like a canal as the
lightning flashed across the heavens, and the
air vibrated to each boom of thunder.
I had a two part sleep last night. It
was probably around 1am when the storm had
moved far enough away to allow me to sleep,
and I think I slept very soundly for 3 or 4
hours. I got up for a short while before going
back to bed for another 3 or 4 hours of
slightly lumpy, but pretty good sleep. It was
getting on toward 10am when I had showered and
dressed, and I was feeling pretty awful -
although I can't really describe what was so
awful.
I certainly didn't feel up to, or even
capable of (hand) washing 5 shirts, some
underwear, a hand towel, and two tea towels,
but that is precisely what I did - and apart
from feeling very hot and sweaty with some
understandable aches in my arms, I felt really
rather good for it. So good that I also did
several days worth of washing up, and I empted
a few rubbish bins. Apart from writing
this, that brings me up to date. I have a
feeling I might do some more laundry before
the day is over, and I might go shopping
somewhere, but neither are important, and I
might do no more today, or I might not. Maybe
I'll have some lunch and try to decide if I am
coming or going ! |
Friday 3rd July
2015
|
08:04 BST
It was a bit cooler yesterday, but the big change
from recent days was rain. I think it was sometime
between 11am and midday that there were a couple
of light showers, and there was another very light
shower a little after 5pm. Those showers hardly
made any difference. The raindrops barely had time
to wet the pavement before they evaporated again.
The rest of the day was about 75% overcast, and
25% sunshine. The top temperature was somewhere in
the region of 25 - 26° C. During the night the
temperature fell to 15° C, and with a perky breeze
it felt quite fresh as I came to work. The
forecast says it will be a sunny day, but the
temperature will only rise to around 26° C. The
day is supposed to end with a bang ! The forecast
does not want to commit itself to any particular
time, and so it does show any icons for rain this
evening, but the write up does warn of severe
thunderstorms brewing up tonight. Maybe we will
get enough lightning to make it look like a
nuclear holocaust, and hail stones the size
of ducks eggs, and flash flooding.....or maybe it
will be a damp squib ! Tomorrow is looking like it
will be a fine day, although one similar to
yesterday.
A series of nights of poor sleep had me
feeling very tired at work yesterday - although a
lot of it was just boredom. As well as the
struggle to keep my eyes open, I was also
intermittently suffering from a slightly stiff
feeling back. That was almost certainly the result
of sleeping with the fan playing directly on my
back the night before. I tried to avoid that last
night, and my back feels mostly OK today. It is
possible that I slightly over did the air con in
my office yesterday, and it was a pleasure, maybe
a slightly short lived one, to get out into the
warm sunshine as I walked to the station.
That walk to the station was not entirely
pleasurable. Yesterday was one of those days where
a bus to the station would have been desirable,
but there is never a bus there when I need one,
and I walked as usual. The reason why getting the
bus would have been nice was that I was still
suffering from where my new trainers had ground
away the skin on the side of my right heel. I had
stuck a sticking plaster over the wound, and until
that came loose it did provide perfect protection.
By the time I got to the pub the plaster was
almost off, and it felt like my heel had been
rubbed with stinging nettles.
The pub was The Ravensbourne Arms in
Lewisham, near Ladywell - just 5 or 6 minutes walk
from Ladywell station - and it was the venue for
the Thursday night drinking club. I had three and
a half pints of nice beer in there, and a few
mouthfuls of a rather unpleasant beer. The
unpleasant beer had gone off in some way, and we
sent three pints of it back to the bar to be
exchanged for nice beer. I believe the bar staff
did that with hardly a grumble - which make a
change to some pubs I've been in before. I don't
think it was the bad beer, but after three and
half pints, which was really all I intended to
drink, I began to feel a bit off colour.
I think it was a combination of tiredness,
the discomfort from the wound on my heel, and at
that time one other mystery thing. I could have,
and probably should have, caught a bus to the end
of my road, but I decided I would walk home. It
was hard work, and a big relief to finally get
home. Once I was home I had some dinner. It was
mostly salad like stuff, although it also
incorporated smoked sausage ! During and after
dinner I watched some TV, and then I went to bed.
I think it might have been as early as 8pm when I
lay down. To my surprise I fell asleep very
quickly, although the real surprise was waking up
to find it was gone 10pm. I don't think I had even
realised I had fallen asleep until I saw the time.
With the night a lot cooler, I slept better
than previous nights, and while it was far from
perfect sleep, and definitely not for periods
longer than a couple of hours at a time, I reckon
I probably got at least 6 hours sleep. It is
possible that I might have slept even better if my
mystery ailment had come to a head earlier. It was
after getting up at 5am that the nature of my
mystery ailment revealed itself. I went to the
toilet, and it seemed almost normal. Once I had
finished I went and sat at my PC. 10 seconds later
I was rushing to the toilet again. Having finished
that I sat at my PC again, and this time I lasted
at least 30 seconds before I had to rush to the
toilet again ! That was the last time anything
major happened - until I got to work.
I was still feeling a bit strange,
particularly in the stomach area, when I came to
work, but on the whole I felt fairly good, and
most of the common aches and pains were very much
at a background level. After arriving at work I
began to feel a little, or perhaps a little odder,
and once again it was my Ebola fever, or East Nile
disease (not to be confused with West Nile
disease), or Dehli Belly, or whatever playing up
again. Since I started writing this piece I have
had to break off twice to visit the toilet. I
can't be 100% certain, and I would probably be
foolish to believe so, but I think I am now empty,
and have voided the creature from the black
lagoon, or the alien from Alpha Centuri, that has
been festering in my guts since some time late
yesterday afternoon !
Today is probably going to be another mostly
boring day at work, but I have ascertained that it
should be OK to take next Thursday and Friday off
work if the weather is looking good. If the
weather is good, and I am feeling in the right
frame of mind, I may re-visit Walton-On-The-Naze,
and from there walk back to Frinton On Sea station
(which is nowhere near the sea !) via the sea
front (plus a mile inland via the village). That's
something for me to look forward to in the future.
In the nearer future I am hoping to somehow find
the energy and enthusiasm to go to a pub that I
hate, to watch probably no more than the 1st set
of Chain's gig at The Swan in West Wickham.
It's a shame my new DSLR camera hasn't
arrived yet (although the lens could arrive
today). Tonight would be a chance to try it out -
if I get there - although one of the reason I
dislike the pub is that it is so hard to find a
good position to take pictures without stepping on
somebody's toes (or worse). It's a lousy layout in
an often too crowded pub that is made a million
times more unpleasant by all the football shirts
pinned to the ceiling, and all the other
foolballist stuff dotted around the place - plus,
of course, all the footballing fans who inhabit
it. Did I ever mention I detest, completely
loathe, really hate with double plus venom,
anything to do with football ? |
Thursday 2nd July
2015
|
08:05 BST
For once the forecast was spot on - at least as
far as the temperature was concerned. The forecast
said it would be 33° C, and that is exactly what
it was - on my downstairs thermometer when I got
home from work. The thermometer outside the back,
upstairs bedroom actually said 36° C. The thing
the forecast did not get right, or at maybe my
interpretation of it, was that there were some
fairly long periods when the sunshine became hazy
as the sun went behind some thin clouds. It took
until 10.30pm last night before the outside
temperature dropped below the temperature inside
my bedroom, and I could open the window to let
that slightly cooler, and much fresher air in. It
was still 20° C when I got up this morning, and
that is two degrees higher than the forecast.
That forecast also said that it would be
cloudy this morning. From time to time I have seen
some clouds drift across the sky, and as I type
this I can see another patch of light cloud about
to drift across the clear blue sky. The forecast
goes on to say that by midday the cloud will be so
thick that it looks black, and it will rain until
4pm. By 3pm the temperature will have hit it's
peak of 23° C, and it will stay like that until
9pm. It will be rather annoying if it is raining
at 4pm as I make my way home from work, and it
will be doubly so if there is enough heat to brew
up a thunderstorm - which the forecast does admit
is a strong possibility. I have brought a
waterproof coat, but I may not bother to wear it
if it is raining. On far cooler days than today
could be at it's worst, it sometimes gets so
sweaty under that allegedly breathable waterproof
skin that I sometimes seem to get wetter from
sweat on the inside than rain on the outside.
I guess I was one of the lucky ones
yesterday. The air con in my office kept the
temperature at least 10 degrees cooler than
outdoors, and even more than that in the
production area. It seemed like a furnace there.
Once I left work, and ventured outside, the heat
hardly bothered me. I got predictably sweaty,
which may have been offensive to others, but I
enjoyed that heat - although it was a little too
hot to attempt to run up the escalators at
Waterloo station - but I still walked up them at a
reasonable rate.
The only major downside of the heat was that
a chain of events left me with a bit of my right
heel being left with no skin on it. I was wearing
a brand new pair of Converse Hi trainers. They
looked to have a few subtle changes in
construction to my older versions. One minor
change was a sort of area of stiffening on the
heel. I can't see exactly what is causing it, but
it may be a slightly raised area of stitching that
started rubbing away the skin on the side of my
right heel. I guess it was made worse by my feet,
like most of my body, getting damp with sweat
(except for my forehead where the sweat was
pouring out !). It was a good enough injury to
scare away any buses at Earlsfield - although the
heat was enough to do that anyway. Walking to the
station started to become uncomfortable, and
walking from the station to home (actually via
Tesco) was getting unpleasantly painful. It was a
huge relief to get those trainers off when I got
home. The only good thing is that the blood did
not soak through to the outside. It wouldn't look
good on pure white trainers !
I suppose it was a typical shop in Tesco. I
was very careful to only buy the healthiest of
full price products, and was carelessly stupid
about buying stuff with reduced price stickers on
it. The two half price Tesco "Finest" sausage
rolls I bought were probably the sort of thing I
shouldn't be buying in this weather, or at any
other time, but at least they satisfied a strange
craving for sausages without having to buy and
cook a pack of greasy "bangers" (although for some
unexplained reason, it was a plate of greasy
"bangers" that I really desired.
I did buy a lot of salad based stuff that
included a ready made apple and cheddar salad. I
hadn't seen anything like that in Tesco before. If
I had not used the sachet of very syrupy sauce
that came with it, it would probably have been
fairly low in most things, but that sauce probably
had more sugar in it than I would have liked. It
wasn't bad as a ready made salad, but I don't
think I'll be buying another. As I munched my way
through it I couldn't help but think of the huge
profit they must be making on it. I can't recall
the price, but it may have been over £2 - which is
an impressive markup for what was probably little
more than 50p worth of ingredients !
Two other things I bought in Tesco were two
bottles of squash - one orange, and the other
lime. I was probably a bit dehydrated after my
sweaty journey home from work, and I continued to
(slowly) sweat indoors. Between getting home and
going to bed I must have drunk 3 pints of chilled
water flavoured with either the lime or orange
squash. Either went down very well ! During the
night I drunk sugar free cola that started off
cold and fizzy, and was warm and flat by the
morning ! Maybe I was more dehydrated than I
imagined because for all that liquid in, not much
came out as pee. Most of it came out as sweat.
Despite the sweatiness, I probably got more,
and better sleep than the previous night or two.
That may have just been the result of exhaustion,
or it may have had something to do with putting
different pillows on my bed with a doubled over
thick towel on them to soak up the sweat. Putting
the fan on full blast probably helped as well.
There was one thing beyond the heat and sweat that
kept me awake at one or two points during the
night, and that was a letter I received that
really pissed me off.
A little while ago I applied online for some
Premium Bonds. The online application process did
mention that my identity would need to be
verified, and that it would usually be done during
as part of the sign up process. So I went through
the sign up process, and gave them my bank
details, and transferred a lump of money to buy a
block of premium bonds. Soon after this process I
received an email to say my application was OK,
and that my block of Premium Bond numbers would be
entered into the draw at the beginning of this
month. That was yesterday, and it is possible that
I may have already won One Million Pounds ! But
there is a problem.......
Our lovely government is a complete lap dog
to the United States. It is well known that the
biggest drug dealer of all is the CIA, and they
will do anything to protect their interests in
Afghanistan poppies and the heroin they produce.
To stop anyone muscling in on the deal they
invented some rules for banks - not just theirs,
but ours, and under threat of nuclear retaliation,
most of the rest of the world too. They are so
paranoid that they have to trace every penny that
moves through the worlds banking system in case
someone buys some poppies from an independent
vendor. So every bank account has to be owned by a
verified customer, and bizzarely that includes
investing in premium bonds. So the Premium Bond
people have written to me to confirm my address
and identity - which I can't do. I am of a
generation whose parents and grandparents fought
two world wars just so we didn't have to carry
identity papers with us, and I haven't got any. So
I am livid that these jumped up civil servants, in
cahoots with American secret agents, are coming
between me and my 1 Million pound prize that I so
richly deserve !
I think I am looking forward to a little
drink tonight. I hope the Thursday night drinking
club is drinking in Catford, or somewhere nearby
tonight. I guess I'll be hearing from Paul, the
de-facto social secretary, about where we are
drinking sometime this morning. If it is anywhere
except Catford, I hope it is not raining too hard
as I make my way to the venue. Since starting to
write this the sky has really clouded over, and
rain does look very likely now. At least it will
make for a fresher day, and hopefully a fresher
night ! |
Wednesday 1st July
2015
|
07:54 BST
As far as I can recall, yesterday's weather was
exactly as forecast. That must be a first ! I
don't think the sky was completely cloudless from
dawn to dusk, but any cloud that did appear was
thin, and didn't hang around very long. In
consequence the bright sunshine drove the
temperature up to a very nice 28° C. This morning
there are quite a few clouds around, but they are
of the high altitude variety, and quite patchy.
Occasionally they will dim the sun, but the
forecast says there will be a lot of sunshine
again today, and with the addition of some warm
air being blown in from Spain/France, the
temperature is predicted to reach 33° C ! It's
going to be a very sweaty afternoon, but I think I
am looking forward to it. The only fly in the
ointment could be that those high temperature
could brew up a thunderstorm...although the
forecast makes that far more likely tomorrow when
more serious clouds are predicted.
There were times when I felt dreadfully
tired at work yesterday. This was the result of
very poor sleep the night before. Fortunately,
although it goes against the grain to say this, I
found I had some work to do, and that relieved
some of the boredom that had my eyes drooping as I
sat reading stuff on my work PC. I'm not sure why
I didn't find, or make the time to take a walk in
the park yesterday. A bit of fresh air might have
been nice, but then again it is rather nice in my
office with the air con going full blast !
Once I left work to go home I began to feel
a lot better. In fact it wasn't long before I was
feeling really rather good (relative to my average
for the last 6 months - which was about three
steps from death !). That should have been a cue
for a whole host of buses to turn up because I
didn't need one - although now I get free bus
travel on my 60+ Oystercard, I would have taken
one anyway. In truth, if I had arrived at the main
road 30 seconds earlier, and had been able to
cross the road to the bus stop, I could have had a
choice of two buses to take me the two stops to
the station.
I must have been feeling rather good at
Waterloo station because yesterday I came quite
close to running up the escalators. The day before
I walked up the escalators, but at a slightly
sedate pace. Yesterday it was a fast walk, and
maybe this afternoon, with the temperature around
33° C, I am hoping my legs will be working well
enough to actually run up that escalator. I can
only do these things while others are wilting in
the heat around me. Of course since I haven't
smoked for approaching 2 years now, I only get a
fair bit out of breath at the top instead of
hardly out of breath at all when I was on 40 fags
a day.
It was another sign of feeling good that I
had a little adventure on the way home from
Waterloo East station. I had heard that signalling
problems at London Bridge were causing some
delays, but at the time my 16:20 train was still
reported as being on time. However the 15:50 train
was running very late, and I had 2 minutes to
decide whether to get it or not. Ordinarily there
would have been no need to make a decision, but on
this occasion the first stop the train would make
would be New Beckenham - three stops after Catford
Bridge. I decided to take a gamble that I might be
able to get to New Beckenham, and then get a train
back to Catford Bridge before the next train from
Waterloo east would get there.
My hopes were soon dashed when we passed two
trains in quick succession near Lower Sydenham
station. The chances of a third train appearing
without a considerable wait were very low.
This train from Cannon Street called at
the station while I waited for the delayed 16:33
train to Cannon Street.
What should have been the 16:33 to Cannon Street
finally arrives at New Beckenham 15 minutes
late.
It was a gamble, and it didn't pay off.
The 16:20 from Waterloo East departed at least
10 minutes late (maybe 15), and the train I
was on from New Beckenham passed it at Lower
Sydenham. Had I waited at Waterloo East I
would have got home 3 or 4 minutes earlier -
which in the grand scheme of things is
probably completely ignorable, and probably
outweighed by the entertainment of a little
micro-adventure !
It was nice and cool feeling in my
living room when I arrived home. I had left
the curtains closed all day, and that had kept
the sun out. The back of the house was cool
too - relative to the 28° C outside. That
wasn't the case with my bedroom. Once again I
had left the curtains closed to keep the sun
out, but heat rises, and it felt warm up
there. I was very tempted to open the window,
but upon checking my thermometer I saw that it
was still one degree cooler than outside. So I
kept the window closed, and put the fan on
full.
I was feeling quite comfortable at
first, and some ice cold water, and just salad
type stuff for dinner kept me feeling
comfortable. Then I made a big, and rather
stupid mistake. I felt peckish while watching
some TV, and I started munching on a large
packet of salt and vinegar crisps. It was
stupid to even buy them, and it would have
been stupid to eat them at any time, but on a
hot night, and so close to bed time, it was
madness. By the time I went to bed I had gone
from being mostly dry to sweating like a pig.
It was another night of damp pillows and
poor sleep - although not quite as poor as the
previous night. When I went to bed the air
outside had cooled to a couple of degrees
below the oven that was my bedroom, and it was
time to open the window, and (very unusually)
leave the curtains partly parted. Together
with the fan going at full speed, it started
to approach comfortable enough to get a few
good periods of sleep - maybe 3 or 4 hours in
total. I guess I could add a couple of hours
of bad sleep to that to make a total of not
enough !
I remember that twice last night I
turned over in bed to the sound of my
ribs/ligaments/chest sub chassis cracking and
popping. As I am sure I have added before,
these noises are not so much heard as felt.
What I felt could best be imagined as a
handful of twigs snapping beneath the skin
(and bones). It doesn't hurt when it
happens....well not straight away, but it can
leave a soreness or tenderness that is easily
provoked into mild pain when certain
mechanical actions happen. That tenderness,
plus a few brief pains when doing stuff like
twisting around to grab the toilet paper from
off the cistern behind me, was just about the
only thing wrong with me when I set out to
come to work this morning.
Now I am at work I can add that my legs
were in that mood where they didn't really
want to go that fast. Now the only problem
with that is that it is boring to lengthen my
walk to work by nearly a whole minute ! A few
things happened that added some cheer to my
commute into work. I managed to get a brand
new ticket wallet to replace the exceedingly
scruffy one that my Pay-As-You-Go Oystercard
is in. On the scale of "cheer" that is
vanishingly low, but it's still a positive
thing.
One thing that was good, but is now a
negative thing is the food I bought from the
Sainsbury's Local shop around the corner from
Earlsfield station. I thought I would have a
couple of little snack type salad-like things
instead of sandwiches (I should have had
nothing really - particularly in this hot
weather). I found the Persian chicken snack to
be hard to like. It wasn't actually nasty
(except for the pomegranate seeds in it), but
I didn't really care for it. The worst thing
is that it had far more calories in it than I
imagined, and the amount of sugars in it was
almost lethal ! That is really going to make
me sweat in this hot weather. The cottage
cheese and couscous tasted better, but was
still far from exciting, and once again the
calorific value of such a small snack was a
lot higher than I would have guessed, and once
again there seemed to be a lot of sugar in it.
I cannot imagine why it would have that amount
of sugar in it. I think I am going to have to
be very careful with food from Sainsbury's in
future.
Tonight I am probably going to make the
fatal mistake of going home via Tesco. At
least I know more about their food than I do
about Sainsbury's, but I doubt that will stop
me buying something terribly inappropriate if
I see it with a reduced price sticker on it. I
am mainly after salad stuff, and drink.
Perhaps I'll get some more squash so I can
keep a couple of glasses made up, and chilled
in the fridge. The only problem with that is I
tend to drink iced squash (or plain water)
like beer - but with no guilt - except guilt
that several pints just before bed time is
going to wake me up more often than I would
like when I am struggling to stay asleep
because of the heat !
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