It is a real shame that yesterday was so cold. Being so unexpectedly sunny could have inspired me to do more. I might even have gone out to catch the last few hours of bright daylight after Aleemah had left and gone home. However, even taking some rubbish out to the wheelie bin was enough to make me glad that I stayed in. Today is going to be very similar except that the day has started bright and sunny, and I am at work and couldn't get out even if I wanted to. Another significant change is that there was a stiff frost this morning. During the day the sunshine will raise the temperature to a glorious 7° C - and very similar to yesterday (although I think I saw 8.5° C at one point). Tomorrow is going to be warm and wet - if you can describe 12° C as warm in the pouring rain ! The temperature drops after that - or it might do - forecasts more than 23 minutes ahead are not terribly reliable. Wednesday could see some "wintry showers" (sleet or even snow).
 I thought the sky looked interesting at 5.30pm last night, but I don't seem to have captured it all that well in this photo. On the other hand it does show how bright the sky was at 5.30pm, and although it was some time past sunset, it wasn't quite dark at 6pm. Things are looking up ! This morning it was still a bit dim, but there was definitely enough light to see colours when I walked to the station, and sunrise was only 13 minutes away when my train left Catford Bridge station at 06:33. After what seems like a long wait, both my journeys to and from work are now done essentially in daylight (although the clear sky this morning helped a little). Now comes the long wait for the weather to warm up, and apparently it could be a long wait. The long range forecast, although as accurate as pulling random slips of paper out of a hat, predicts that march will be a cold month - and it might even snow ! (Although any snow is more likely in the north of the country).

 This morning I feel fairly good. I don't seem to ache much, and walking seems very easy. This is all rather surprising considering I had one of my most lousy nights ever ! Several factors were involved, and they probably all reinforced each other. I probably was not as initially tired as I thought I was. That didn't help, and neither did the temperature of my bedroom being at that awkward temperature where it is too hot under the duvet, and too cold without it. I was using different pillows on my bed last night, and they seemed a little too high, or a little too low, and a little too lumpy, and a little too soft all at the same time ! The mattress seemed to have extra lumps in it last night that appeared from nowhere, and disappeared by morning. Even when I did find a comfortable spot in a comfortable position, some stupid would happen like my eyebrow would start itching ! (That did happen once !!).

 There was one other problem besides all those physical problems - my brain would not switch off ! I had thought up a possible idea for a new web page, and then had to work out how I could possibly make it work. The web page I had in mind for when I finally transfer my web server to an old laptop would be a very simple web page, but it would contain some information that I would like to add automatically. Perhaps updating every 10 minutes. Running a simple script that is triggered by the Linux Crontab command (basically a sort of timer), and that would write some information to a simple text file is easy enough (although I would have to refresh my memory to do, but I have done it in the past).

 The tricky part is writing that into a web page html file. There are various command line commands that will manipulate text files (and an html file is just a rather more complex text file). There is a command called Awk (of gawk) that I think could be persuaded to do the job, but the command Sed seems a better idea. The trouble with these two commands is that the syntax is not easy to grasp. I'm sure if I had to use it more than once in a blue moon it would suddenly became obvious and easy, but it's all a bit mind boggling - doubly so when you are trying to imagine how you might use it while you are supposed to have been asleep in bed for the past 3 hours !

 Eventually, after much thought, and even dreams about it in the short periods of sleep I did get, I suddenly realised there was an easy way to do what I want to do. It is easy to join several files together to make one big one. So all I would have to do would be to design my web page and substitute a space where my added, updates text would go, and then split the file into, for instance a beginning and and an ending. Then every 10 minutes I would reconstruct the whole file by adding the beginning, to the updated text, and then add the ending. The only inelegance that I cans see compared to other ways of doing it is that it is wasteful of hard disk space because there will always be, in effect, two versions of the same file at the same time, but I expect it to be a very small file, and disk space is plentiful these days.

 With the problem solved I was finally able to relax, well sort of relax, and I started to sleep properly at 1am (or was it 2am ?). That was an awful lot of sleep to lose, and I rather doubt I will be wanting to stay up a minute later than I have to tonight. So I won't be starting work on my new, old laptop based, server tonight ! It would be nice if I was fast asleep by no later than 8pm, and that I could sleep non stop until my alarm wakes me at 5am tomorrow morning. It seems unlikely it will happen like that, but I live in hope.

  Yesterday was generally grey and uninspiring...and also rather chilly ! Yesterday I said this "It's looking like tomorrow will be very similar, but not identical. The temperature range will be roughly the same, but at midday the cloud will be particularly thick and dark, and then at 4pm there could be a sunny interval !". That's what the forecast said, and it was wrong ! It was indeed a rather cool grey morning, but then things changed - initially for the worst, and then for the better. At 11am there was some unscheduled rain. There wasn't a lot of it, but it felt like snow or sleet when it hit my face. Once it had done enough to make sure the surface of the road was mostly wet it stopped, and then before midday the sun came out. It hasn't been sunny all the time since then, but it has been sunny most of the time !

 It is of course still rather cold outside, but with the temperature reaching nearly 9° C, it was a lot less cold than forecast. I was almost tempted to go out for a while, but I was saved from doing that by entertaining Aleemah. After today it is hard to give any credit to tomorrow's forecast, but it would be nice if it were correct. The forecast predicts that the temperature will start near freezing. There could easily be a frost, but the temperature will climb to about 7° C by late afternoon, and there should be a lot of sunshine tomorrow.

 As I suggested yesterday, I decided not to bother going to the gig in Bromley last night. Neither did I do what I suggested might be my back up plan - reconfigure an old laptop as a new server for these web pages. I hope I will get around to doing this little job sooner or later, but I have been meaning to replace the temporary lash-up that is serving these web pages for the last few years. So I guess there is no real rush.....
 It's swimming in a sea of dust. The case is sitting on the floor nearby, and the hard disk with the website files on it is sitting upside down, unprotected, on the top of the chassis. This is the server that is serving this web page at the moment. I'm sure it has been sitting there like this for the last three years when the previous box died on me. For those interested, the server is running Linux Mint, and it's run on a little ITX motherboard with a 1.8GHz (I think) Intel Atom processor with 1GB of RAM.

 So what did I do last night ? Well it could be described as nothing, and ignoring assorted biological functions that give the impression of life as we know it (sort of), that would be an almost entirely correct description. There was nothing on TV that grabbed my attention, and so I read for a while, and then I went to bed. I wasn't clockwatching last night, but I think I was probably fast asleep by 9pm, but it could have been slightly earlier, or maybe as much as an hour later.

 I seemed to sleep quite well last night, but even better than sleeping quite well was being able to go back to bed for a couple of hours after waking up at 5am. Maybe if I wasn't seeing Aleemah this morning I might have tried to spend even more time in bed, but it seems I had enough sleep to not feel tired today...well not up until now, but even now I don't feel the fatigue I sometimes feel at work (mainly when I am bored it has to be admitted).

 I almost missed meeting Aleemah at the station because I was distracted a little while before I needed to leave to go to the station. I was looking out the kitchen window and spotted a pair of birds in the tree that I could not identify. I grabbed my camera and tried to snap a picture of one of them, but they were both obscured by the tree (still bare of leaves at this time of year). The bird was pigeon sized, and it was dark coloured - probably a dark brown. I couldn't see it's beak clearly, but I formed a strong impression that it was bigger and thicker than a pigeons beak. It was probably black. I couldn't really see what sort of feet it had. The only other feature that I noticed was a flash of blue from the tail feathers when it flew off. If such things existed I would say it was a dark coloured magpie, but I've never seen a magpie without a lot of it being white. It is possible they were jackdaws.

 After I met Aleemah we went for breakfast in the pub. After not boozing on Friday or Saturday night I rather enjoyed a pint and a half of ale for breakfast. After breakfast we went to Poundstretcher so Aleemah could buy a fan heater. It seems her heating has failed and she was freezing at home. After Poundstretcher I dragged her around Tesco where I bought a few odds and ends - including a couple of sandwiches for a more solid breakfast than the beer. In theory I am still not eating bread, but I made an exception for today. I have a feeling that now I have been resting my pancreas for a few weeks it will deal with the extra sugar (from the digested carbohydrate) fairly quickly, and my blood glucose level will not go up too high.

 Since Aleemah went home I have done nothing of not apart from eaten a small, snack like, lunch. Later on I will have something similar to a small dinner (I'm not sure what it will be yet). Apart from that I don't think I intend to do anything except watch a bit of TV (if there is anything on worth watching), and and do some reading. I am quite keen to finish the Arthur C. Clarke book (Fountains Of Paradise) that I am currently reading so I can make a start on the three Larry Niven books I received from Amazon recently.

 And with that, my only regret is that I have to go to work again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and..........

  It wasn't anywhere near as good as the day before, but there was quite a lot of sunshine yesterday morning - rather considerably more than was forecast ! The forecast was right about the temperature. It was a chilly, but probably seasonal 6° C in the afternoon. It was less than that this morning, but I don't think it sank so low as to give a frost. At one point this afternoon I thought I noticed that the temperature was 7° C, but as I write this it has sunk to just below 6° C again. Apart from it being rather cool, the main feature today has been the greyness. There has not even been a hint of sunshine today. It's looking like tomorrow will be very similar, but not identical. The temperature range will be roughly the same, but at midday the cloud will be particularly thick and dark, and then at 4pm there could be a sunny interval !

 My hope that I might find some extra energy yesterday never came to fruition. I couldn't even bother to get any shopping on the way home from work as I intended to do. That rather dashed my idea that I might go out to a gig in the evening. The only energy I did find was expended on quietly reading - and even then I didn't read for long. I was fast asleep by 8.30pm.

 Last night I slept in two parts - a luxury I can't do when I have to get up to go to work. I slept fairly well until about 4am, and then I woke up, and half got up. After reading some stuff from the internet (news and stuff) I went back to bed, and while I didn't seem to sleep that well, quite a lot of time passed without me being aware of it. The next thing I knew was that it was gone 8am (in fact I think it was almost 9am).

 I'm not seeing Aleemah today (although I will tomorrow) and so I was free to do anything I chose. One choice was to go out and do some photography. I did contemplate going to Brighton, and I even went as far as to look up the times of the trains, and the fares. It is relatively easy to get to, at least it is once I've got to East Croydon station, and using my 60+ Oyster Card for free local travel, and my Senior Railcard for discounted rail travel, it would only be £7 return on a Thameslink Train. It sounded like a good idea with just one fatal flaw - it would be damn cold, and miserably grey !

 Instead of going out doing some photography I stayed local and did some useful stuff. I did a double shopping trip. I went to Iceland and bought some more "Slimming World" meals, and some low calorie/sugar snacking type stuff like cold sliced beef and some baby plum tomatoes. I carried that in my rucksack. That left my hands free to go into Poundstretcher where I bought a duvet and pillow set, and a yard broom (to replace the cheap and cheerful one that next doors builders seemed to have run off with).

 By the oddest of coincidences, when I got back home I found a big clump of moss has apparently rolled off the roof and landed on my front garden path. So my yard broom had it's first use even before I had got through my front door ! Once I was indoors, and had put the food away, I gave the broom another test outside the back door. It's hard bristles seemed to do a good job of scraping away a few patches of green moss or lichen that manage to grow on the path there. I've never seen that path look so clean !

 I was almost tempted to stay out for a bit and start to do a bit of garden tidying, but I'll save that for another day. Besides, I had other plans - plans to do a bit more shopping. So out I went again to plunder the 99p shop, Poundland and Savers. It was only last week (or the week before ?) that I discovered the latter shop. It is a good source of stuff like shower gel, shampoo and conditioner at similar prices to the 99p of £1 shops.  One peculiar thing I was looking for was a hammer. I found one in the 99p shop, and one in Poundland.

 When I got them both home and examined them, I found that it was definitely worth paying the extra 1p. The hammer from the 99p had a very rough finish, and looked very cheap and nasty, but the hammer from Poundland was well finished, and (in dim light) could be mistaken for a professional tool. Maybe the only other notable thing that I bought on my second shopping trip was some Lychee and Coconut shampoo and conditioner !

 My last great job of the day was to do some laundry. I washed one long sleeved shirt (and forgot one) plus a t-shirt, and two pairs of lounge pants. The latter need quite a lot of effort - they are heavy when wet, and seem to need extra rinsing. Once that lot was hung up to dry I could relax - and I did by cooking some sausages for lunch. After eating those sausages I lay on my bed to read. After a while I fancied closing my eyes, and I did. I was very surprised to find it was almost 5pm when I opened them again. It didn't seem like I had slept much, if at all, but somehow a lot of time seems to have passed, and I suspect more went by because I was busy than because I was asleep.

 There is a gig on tonight that I know several people are going to, and I did think I might like to make the effort of going myself, but I don't really like the venue (it's always very crowded), and I don't like the band that much. I think I should just admit that I don't really want to go, and to put plan B into action.

 Plan B is actually the very vaguest of ideas that I might finally stop using the temporary lash up of a server to serve these web pages, and build something a little more dedicated for the job. I have been giving some thought to using one of the old beaten up laptops I have hanging around doing nothing. It would have two positive aspects. First it would put some redundant equipment to good use, and secondly it would be more economical on electric power than running a full sized PC 24 hours a day. Maybe the next thing I'll do is to pull out one of the old laptops and give it a good long hard stare !

  A pattern begins to emerge...maybe ! For the past few days the weather forecasts have been one day out. Yesterday's forecast was for a cloudy day with no sunshine. In fact there was a lot of sunshine, and that was how the weather was forecast for the day before that. Today the forecast is for lots of clouds, and no sunshine...or at least it was. In the last hour the forecast has changed to admit that there might be a brief flash of sunshine at 10am this morning. Other than that, it is going to be dry, and the temperature will probably be one degree cooler than yesterday at just 6° C. Having said that, I am not so sure that the temperature was any more than that yesterday. Maybe the temperature dropped very rapidly after sunset, but I seem to recall my thermometer said it was just 4.8° C when I got home at approx 7pm last night. Tomorrow is set to be about the same temperature, the clouds will be thicker, and the day will be even gloomier, but it should stay dry.
 This was the view from over the back of platform 3 at Earlsfield station. In the foreground is Earlsfield cemetery, and in the background the position of the rising sun can just be made out. It's a little right of centre where the pinkish glow on the horizon becomes slightly brighter and less pink. With less cloud it might have been much more spectacular. As we leave winter behind, the sun would have been fully risen when I took the picture at approx 07:18. Sun rise today was at 06:53, and with it getting earlier by almost 2 minutes a day, it won't be that long before the sun will have risen before I get my morning train at 06:33 - which will be very nice !

 I can remember times when I have felt much, much better, but apart from yawning a lot, and almost dozing off a couple of times while reading from my computer screen, I felt fairly good yesterday. Maybe the magic was wearing off a bit when I left work because I spotted a bus coming up the hill, and decided to be lazy and get the bus the two stops to the station. I should have forced myself to walk, but I had other opportunities to walk later - such as from Waterloo to Waterloo East station, and then from Catford Bridge station to Tescos.

 One of the useful things about last night was that the Thursday night drink was in The Black Cat pub (formerly The Catford Ram). That meant I had plenty of time to grab a bit of shopping. It was a toss up between Tesco and Iceland, and Tesco won - mainly because Tesco does better ready made salads. I bought 3 £1 bowls of salad plus some reduced price salmon, and also a reduced price pot of anchovies. At least they call them anchovies, but they are not the type that are dark in colour, and very salty. The ones I bought last night were closer to sardines. The other healthy sort of thing I bought was a rather extravagant pack of pre-sliced peppers. It's best not to think about the cheese I bought...

 I had a nice drink in the pub. One thing was rather peculiar, and it occurs to me it could have been caused by me abstaining from any obvious sugar recently. I don't normally like Young's ordinary bitter, I find it to be too hoppy and too bitter, but last night it was at least acceptable, and possibly even getting close to nice. Where my theory falls down is that a couple of other people remarked how good it tasted. Maybe the new theory is that they have changed the recipe.

 It wasn't good enough to tempt me to stay at the pub for more than three pints, and once I had drunk three pints I headed for home to make some dinner. Dinner part one was a bowl of ready made salad with a generous scoop of anchovies, and a sprinkling of rice wine vinegar. Part two was grilled salmon with raw sliced peppers and a liberal dose of rather thin, and hopefully fairly low sugar, seafood dressing. Both parts were rather nice. Part three was less nice. It was reduced price, ready prepared, baked mushrooms with cream cheese and herbs (or something like that). This was the second time I've had this Tesco ready meal (ready side dish ?). The first time I thought it was very nice. Last night I was not so impressed. maybe it didn't work after eating fish.

 I forced myself to go to bed early last night, and after reading for a while I turned out the light, and was fast asleep by (approx) 8.30pm. I may have woken once, but it seemed I slept very well until I had the most vivid dream. In this dream I dreamed I was in bed, and had just woken up. I looked at the clock, and it was just before 5am. Realising it was time to get up I opened my eyes, but this time for real. They opened on exactly the same view as I had in my dream, but this time the clock said 02:18 and not 04:59 ! From then on my sleep became crap. I even got up for half an hour and looked at the internet.

 I'll never know if it was really the case, but as happens far too frequently, it seemed like I had just got the hang of sleeping again just before I had to get up. It really felt like that if I had turned over I could have slept solidly for many more hours. I got up feeling peeved that I hadn't slept as well as I thought I should do, but in other ways I didn't feel too bad. I even felt as if I had lost a bit of weight. A little later I would observe that I couldn't do my belt up any tighter, but it did seem there was less gut in the way of looking down at my belt fastening.

 I think I know why my waistline is not shrinking as fast as I want it too, and that reason is amnesia, or insanity, or travels on the astral plane, or whatever. During these out of mind experiences my body must be secretly be having 5 course meals. There may be anecdotal evidence of this beside my gut not shrinking as fast as I would desire, and that evidence would be poo ! My output this morning was very controlled, no nasty explosive issues, but seemed to be rather more than my input as far as I can remember it. I guess I can blame some of it on extra fibre in my diet, but I am sure that doesn't account for it all. I blame the aliens !

 While I didn't feel too bad this morning, I did feel like it was worth taking yet more Ibuprofen to calm down my chest muscles which were producing a very weak diffuse ache. Other than that, I felt fine until I exited Earlsfield station. At that point, and it was almost like turning a switch on, I suddenly felt physically tired. I have walked from the station feeling far worse in the past, but this morning it was like I just couldn't find the energy to get up to speed. So I walked at a more sedate pace, and in consequence I arrived at work 10 minutes later instead of 9 minutes later. I am not sure why I should bother about a mere one minute, but I do....or maybe I don't. I think it's just that I like to walk at a certain speed (usually close to 3mph on average), and this morning I couldn't.

 I hope I regain some sort of energy tonight. I am hoping to go out to see The Bromley Bastards gig tonight. It's in The Alma Tavern in Lower Addiscombe - the same pub that Chain played in last Friday. Walking is only a small part of the energy I'll need. Some of it will need to be mental energy - the will to get up and go. From this end of the day it doesn't seem like I have any, but that could change in any direction during the course of the day. Then there is the matter of staying awake - I would really like to go to bed - right now !!

  This is what it was like going home from work yesterday.....
 I took this picture of blue sky, fluffy clouds, The Shard, and a few other building, from platform C of Waterloo East station. That makes a change from platform A where I, and a host of other people, usually take pictures of The Shard from. It looks as if it could have been taken on a summers day, but it was definitely yesterday, and the temperature was only 7 or 8° C ! Apart from being colder at either end of the day, most of yesterday looked like this with lots of cheerful sunshine. Today was forecast to be mostly overcast, and occasionally heavily overcast, but probably still dry, and indeed the day did start overcast, but looking out my office window I can see blue sky and sunshine !

 Perhaps it will suddenly cloud over again before the forecast notices. The only time that sunshine is supposed to be allowed is at 3pm for a few minutes ! The forecast also said that it would be zero degrees at 5am, and I reckon it was plus 2° C. Later on the temperature will rise to about the same as yesterday - somewhere around 6 to 8° C. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be dry, but fully overcast by light cloud. It might, or might not, be about a degree less cold than today.

 I felt very sleepy at work yesterday, and on more than one occasion I found myself "resting my eyes" while reading stuff on my PC. Other than that I didn't feel too bad. As is so often the case, I felt better, and then even quite good when going home from work. Initially I thought I would feel bad. As soon as I went outside, and the cold air hit my chest, it started to ache, but that ache all but disappeared after a minute of walking. By the time I reached Catford I realised that I felt perfectly good to walk the long way round, via the high street, to the pharmacy where I picked up my repeat prescription.

 Unlike the surly lot in the doctors reception area, the staff in the attached pharmacy are a cheery and helpful lot. The young black woman who serves in there scored a gold star for recognising me by name. That is probably because of previous occasions where I have had to tell them that despite my official name, the one I have been using since the day I was born, and appears on my birth certificate, is Bill, the surgery insists on calling me William. This amuses me, and it amuses the staff in the pharmacy - or at least it is a convenient hook to remember my name by.

 One other thing that was amusing is that the young lady who actually prepared my prescription, looked at her PC to check she had provided all the drugs, and noticed my age. She didn't believe I was 60 until I showed her my 60+ Oyster Card with my picture on it. She could only comment that she must be on the wrong diet ! The only disappointment was that it seems that the blood glucose test strips I use aren't on my authorised repeat prescription list. So I didn't get any, and that means I have just three single use test strips to use until I see my doctor. That is a little ironic because it was she who was hoping I could do a nice diary of daily readings. I'll have to pick my time very carefully to try and get some nice low readings with those three remaining test strips !

 I wanted to wash my hair again last night, but I couldn't raise the enthusiasm for it. I couldn't raise the enthusiasm for several other things, and I think it was because my mind was fixed on the idea of going to bed early to get some reading done. I wasn't very successful at doing that either, but it wasn't a complete failure. I was in bed in time to read a few pages before turning out the light, turning over, and falling asleep by, or soon after 8.30pm. I seemed to sleep very soundly until just gone midnight.

 From midnight I slept rather intermittently - which was annoying. While I slept I had two dreams that I seem to remember fragments of. The first was about horses. I am not a horse person, and I can't recall horses appearing in my dreams before, but this dream featured three ! The first two I mistook for police horses, and I was worried that I would be arrested for loitering near a railway line. I think this dream was set in the near future where anyone who is still warm and kicking, and is not a member of The Party, is presumed to be a terrorist. It turned out that they were police horses, but were being ridden by civilian staff. As they passed me I noticed that on the other side of the fence there was a mounted railway policeman riding alongside the railway lines looking for terrorists.

 The other bit of dream I remember was much nicer and very positive...well, sort of positive. It seemed I owned a couple of mobile phones that had a very nice feature - they doubled up as hip flasks ! I took out a bung where the earphone socket would be, and poured out a nice warming drink straight into my mouth. The drink was something I am not sure actually exists, but it may do. it was a liqueur with the flavour of gingerbread. I think that would be worth a short lift of my self imposed ban on sugary stuff !

 One of the reasons I didn't sleep so well after midnight was because my chest was aching again. It is still like it now, although it is highly variable. Sometimes I don't notice it, and sometimes it almost approaches the threshold of pain. Generally it is just the mildest, but annoying, diffuse ache. That is probably about the only thing worth moaning about today. My legs still seem to be working well again this morning. Maybe not quite as well as yesterday, particularly as I was striding through Catford on my way to the pharmacy, but many times better than some mornings.

 Well, a fair bit of time has passed since I started writing, and instead of it clouding over, as the forecast dictated, I can see nothing but blue sky out of my of my office window. I am unsure what to believe about the weather for the rest of the day, but the seagulls seem to believe that it is worth coming inland because of bad weather (at least I believe this is what they do).

  It is a shame that it was so cold yesterday. Had it been warm, or maybe even mild, it could have been recorded as a rather nice day. It was dry, and there was plenty of sunshine, but with a top temperature of only 8° C, it could only be described as "satisfactory" as old school teachers used to say in diplomatic school reports about their underperforming pupils. The clear skies that gave the sunshine yesterday continued through the night, and the result was a frost this morning. Both my thermometers agreed that it was 0.0° C  (although one of them did occasionally flick to -0.1° C). The lack of clouds meant that when I stepped out of my front door to walk to the station, I was greeted by a nice bright glow on the eastern horizon. By the time I arrived at the station it was almost daylight despite sunrise still being half an hour away. The sun is forecast to continue to shine right through the day. The temperature will slowly rise in the sunshine, and by 4pm the temperature is forecast to rise to a glorious 7° C. So it will look good, but I think it will be more comfortable with gloves on !

 I was fairly comfortable at work yesterday, but I felt far from energetic, and it was hard to find any enthusiasm for what I was doing. I felt better and worse when I left to go home. It was nice to get out into the sunshine, and at one point I could actually feel the heat of the sun on the back of my head, but I had one strange sensation. It is one I have felt before a few times over the last year. It is as if the front of my left man boob, including the nipple, has been replaced with lead. It is not a pulling sensation, nor is it painful in any way, but it feels sort of heavy. I'm not whether to describe it as an annoyance or a distraction.

 Once again I wonder if this is a nerve problem, or if it is something else, although I can't quite imagine what. However I do know of a cure, and it is rather dramatic and painful. At Waterloo station I decided I ought to use the gents rather than risk killing people by farting on the train. As I reached the top of the stairs leading out of the underground toilets I swung around to the left, and maybe I did it a bit too sharply, because a huge pain ripped through the left side of my breast. For a second or two it took my breath away...or at least breathing was painful. A few seconds later most of the pain had gone away, and the strange heavy sensation in my left man boob had gone away.

 The thing with these painful episodes is that they either leave my chest feeling better than before, or worse than before. In this case it felt better than before, and that seemed good enough reason to attempt the hand laundry I had speculated about yesterday. I ended up washing three short sleeved shirts, several pairs of underpants, and two mini table clothes. A few bits ached after doing that, but my chest seemed to bear up to it rather well. Before I did the laundry I did other stuff.

 The first thing I did when I got home was to check my blood glucose level. The day before it had started rather high in the morning, but was very satisfactory after work. Last night it was even lower. I would still like to get it lower still, and maybe it will be tonight. It is not helping that I seem to have gone back to eating excess amounts of food recently, but at least I have been choosing stuff that I know to be low in sugar. Eating even less should be easier once the days start to warm up a bit more - or at least that is what I try and convince myself. On a more immediate positive note, I did manage to pull my belt up one notch tighter than usual this morning. Sadly, it was maybe a little too tight for comfort.

 One of the things I kept attempting to do last night was to go to bed extra early. It would have been nice to get some extra sleep, but there was another reason - reading. Taking time out to do some reading is most enjoyable, and I don't know why I allowed myself to be distracted by my computer last night. From today it will be more important to find a bit more time for reading. I am expecting the first of several books I've ordered to be delivered - three in total. They are follow on books from Larry Niven's Ringworld, and Ringworld Engineers books. Both these Sci Fi books were an enjoyable read, although they both seemed to have rather rushed endings.

 I slept OK again last night except for the curse of waking up too early again. I didn't feel too bad when I woke up, and I continue to feel not too bad. Although I can feel the effects of doing the hand laundry last night, it doesn't seem to have left any more than the merest of ache from the odd muscle here and there. Yesterday I complained that walking seemed a bit like hard work. This morning I am still not walking as fluidly as I would like, but it is better than yesterday.

 Hopefully I will have a comfortable day, and will have some spare energy after work so I can do one little important job. I have to go to the pharmacy tonight to pick up my repeat prescription for all the drugs my doctor keep shovelling down my throat. I am not sure if this is for her benefit or mine ! If I am feeling extra energetic I will walk straight from the station to the pharmacy. If not then I will go via home. If it is worse than that I will get a bus from near the station, but I hope it won't come to that. Getting those drugs is about all I plan to do this evening....apart from going to bed early to read, and maybe anything I haven't thought of yet.
 This is another look at the new Tesco store due to open on Saturday in Garret Lane, Earlsfield. It could be quite handy because I have to walk right past it every time I walk from Earlsfield station to work, but there could be a catch. It is still being fitted out, but I have a horrible suspicion that it is going to be almost exclusively self service checkouts. I refuse to use them. The same is almost true of the Sainsbury's "Local" I use, but they do have three tills for selling cigarettes and booze, and a member of staff will usually be there to serve you, or will come over from supervising the self service checkouts quite quickly.

  I displayed two screenshots of the weather forecast yesterday. One screenshot was taken at 5am, and the other at 8am. Neither showed that there would be a light shower at around 11am, and neither showed that much of the afternoon would be sunny. The sunshine started as sunny intervals, and the intervals got longer until the sunshine just stayed shining until sun set. Correction: The earlier forecast did forecast a shower at 11am, but it also predicted showers from 8am to 10pm, and it was dry then ! The one thing both forecasts got right was that it was 8° C when I got home from work. I'm sure the forecast was that the temperature would fall to almost zero overnight, but it was still 5° C when I got up just before 5am. Maybe it is tomorrow that will start at zero. The latest forecast for today predicts that the weather will be almost exactly what it was in reality yesterday - except it doesn't mention rain at 11am !
 The picture above shows several things. I took it as I walked from work to the station last night. My shadow shows that it was bright and sunny. The puddles, left over from rain 24 hours earlier, show just how terrible the pavements can be in Earlsfield !  I took another couple of pictures on the way to the station. The second one is out of focus, and looks pretty terrible, but I'll include it for completeness. I think I took some better pictures this morning, but I haven't copied them off the camera to check and edit them yet. I'll probably do that at home tonight, and show them tomorrow.

  Yesterday remained dry, and there were more sunny spells in the early afternoon, but the cloud got too thick for any sun beam to worm it's way through as the afternoon wore on. It stayed mild right through the evening, and this morning it was still almost 11° C, but the temperature is dropping now. I am unsure when the rain started, but it was raining when I woke up, and for a while it was torrential, but fortunately it was very light when I left home to walk to the station - and was even lighter when I walked from Earlsfield station to work. The weather forecast for today has changed in the last couple of hours - as it so often does. Here's what I was expecting at 5am this morning.

  I'm not sure why, but for some reason I had expected yesterday to be fairly dry, and today to be very wet. There is still plenty of time for today to change, but while it was quite frequently wet yesterday, this morning has been dry, and as I write these words a little beam of sunshine just lit up the room. The sky seems too grey and cloudy to let any sunshine through, but maybe we will be treated to a brief sunny interval or two this afternoon. The temperature is a rather unexpected 16° C right now, and it is all thanks to the humid warm wind from the west. This rare treat is not set to last long. By this evening the temperature will start to fall. Tomorrow morning is (or was) forecast to be diabolically wet, and once that dries up, maybe around midday, the temperature will fall even further. By tomorrow night it is going to be quite chilly !

 It would have been nice to go out last night, but it was also nice to stay in the warm, and have a few whiskies. I can't say I actually achieved anything last night. In fact I can't recall doing anything of note at all. I read a bit - both paper and internet - and I listened to the radio. Basically I was thoroughly lazy. That should have meant that I was in bed and asleep quite early, and this morning I should have been well rested, and raring to go !

 It wasn't quite like that, but maybe I could have gone out this morning and taken some photos while re-aquainting myself with a few bits of the west end that I haven't seen for ages. I was put off doing that by the belief that it would rain, and that even if it didn't it was too horribly dull and grey for photography. Not only that, but it felt like I wouldn't enjoy walking. To some degree I was wrong about that.

 I did decide to go out, but only to Tesco, and indeed when I first set out I did feel rather creaky. That didn't last long, and on the way back, carrying a moderate load, I found myself striding along like it was almost easy. There was nothing I actually needed from Tesco, but on Friday I got a letter type thing from Tesco containing my latest Club Card vouchers, and a reminder that I had £6.50 worth of vouchers that were dues to expire at the end of this month.

 I decided I had better use those vouchers before they expired, and also some more with expiry dates this year. I spent the money on booze ! Well no, I did buy another bottle of Tesco Special Reserve whisky (my favourite whisky), and I bought a sort of own label version of Jack Daniel's "Tennessee Fire" (which may or may not be a copy of "Fireball" a sold in Wetherspoon's pubs and a few other places now), but I also bought some food as well. Some of the food was reduced price stuff like Veal burgers. I had never even heard they existed, let alone tried them before. So I have an interesting experience coming up later today or tomorrow.

 I also bought some frozen food that is now in the freezer so there is no rush to eat it, but also some fresh stuff like salad that needs to be eaten soon. While I was in Tesco I made an interesting sighting. It was the husband of the lady who runs the corner shop buying quite a heap of stuff. Until this morning I would occasionally have feelings of guilt about not supporting the corner shop more. The shop is ever so convenient being just a couple of minutes walk away - so close in fact that I could probably just about run there without dying of cardiac arrest, or lack of oxygen. Unlike some smaller shops, it doesn't stay open very late, but it does open early, and opens 365 days a year (and that includes Xmas day). So it is useful, but now I have seen where they shop, I won't feel guilty walking past there on the way back from Aldi.
 Here's another observation I made while I was walking to the station to meet Aleemah. These are the new electric car charging points just round the corner from Catford Bridge station. I usually see them with their tops glowing green like the second one is doing in this picture. Green appears to show "ready for use". I have also seen one glowing red before, but yesterday was the first time I have seen one glowing blue. Presumably one colour means "charging in progress", and the other means "charging complete", but I have no idea which is which.

 I am going to dedicate some of this afternoon, and maybe some of this evening to finally getting around to choosing and editing the better pictures I took on my Canon camera at Friday night's gig. I know there are quite a lot of pictures between mediocre and complete crap, but I think with a few tweaks here and there, I can show off a few good pictures - maybe more. My only other aim is one that usually goes wrong, but I will be attempting to get to sleep nice and early tonight, and to sleep really well to I am all fresh and keen for work tomorrow...No, forget about the keen bit. I'll just aim to be comfortable at work, and be keen for the working day to be over !

  It was not as wet as I feared last night, but the initial rise in temperature that started near sunset didn't last, and the temperature fell again. It only fell to something like 5 or 6° C, but with some light drizzle, and a fair amount of wind, it didn't feel too nice. Today has been very mild. It is currently 12° C, but once again it is raining. It has been raining on and off all day, but there were gaps of up to an hour long where you could do stuff. Also, just like yesterday, the wind, although not that strong, is making it feel worse. This is probably the pattern for tomorrow too, although earlier forecasts were talking about the possibility of the temperature hitting 13° C, and even 14° C in central London. That would be exceptionally nice if it were dry and sunny, and the wind was no more than a slight breeze. Oh well, Spring is not too far away now.

 After a day off work, lots of rest, and eating surprisingly lightly, I felt quite keen to go out last night. It was an "interesting" journey to The Alma Tavern in Lower Addiscombe, but it actually worked quite well. There was a very strong moment of doubt on the way home when the arrivals screen at Addiscombe tram stop seemed to suggest that the next tram was forever 5 minutes away. It was still saying it would arrive in five minutes as we were leaving the tram stop. Basically, my journey was a good example of integrated public transport.

 Maybe it was pure chance that my train from Catford Bridge connected with a tram at Elmers End, and that there was only a minute or two wait for a bus at Addiscombe tram stop. The journey home also worked quite well apart from the aforementioned faulty (or just plain mad) arrivals display at Addiscombe.  I think I had to wait as much as 10 minutes at Addiscombe, but it might have been more or less - it sort of felt more because it was dark, wet and late at night.
 This was the tram that took me from Addiscombe to Elmers End. It terminates there, and waits for 10 minutes or so before going back to West Croydon. I had about a five minute wait for the 23:08 train, the second to last train of the day, to take me back to Catford Bridge.

 Although I could only stay for the first set, it was a very enjoyable Chain gig last night. There were quite a few people I knew there - including a "mad" South African lady called Fran. She is not actually mad, but just slightly eccentric in a most delightful way. It was the first time I had seen her at a gig for quite some time, and she gave me the full smacker on the lips greeting as she tends to do (which was rather enjoyable).

 Another enjoyable thing was testing me latest camera out (The Fuji HS35EXR). Unsurprisingly it struggled with the light, but I think it did better than some cameras. The real killer is the need for a fast shutter speed to stop motion blur. With a more static scene you can use a long exposure to pull detail out of almost low light, but musicians do have this habit of moving ! One partial remedy is to convert the picture to black and white to hide all the multi coloured speckles.
 The other alternative is to use the flash, but I try to avoid that where I can. I did use it a few times, and the results were rather good - not that you can see it so well on this small picture.
 I also took over a hundred pictures on my Canon camera, but I haven't had time to go through those properly yet. A quick scan reveals a few that have come out nicely, and a whole heap that are rubbish - but you can get away with that with digital photography. If I was using film I would go broke buying new film, and getting it developed only for most of it to be a complete waste !

 My excuse was that I had eaten surprisingly little all day. I was feeling cold and hungry, I had drunk three pints of beer, and something I'll think of later. These excuses seemed good enough to treat myself to some fried chicken on the way home. On this occasion it was fried chicken and nothing else at all. So while it was still terribly unhealthy, it was not as bad for my aims as it could have been if I had bought French fries as well. While eating the chicken I wondered why I ever bought French fries with fried chicken. I didn't miss them last night, and that may well be because French fries, as opposed to genuine chip shop chips, are pretty damn revolting when you think about it.

 I was definitely on a high last night because once I had eaten my chicken I set out to check and edit the pictures I had taken on the new camera. I was mostly driven my curiosity I guess, but I didn't seem to feel tired at all, and even when I felt a hint of tiredness, at nearly 1am this morning, I wondered if I would ever manage to go to sleep. It turns I did go to sleep quite easily, but I was awake 3 hours later, and it took a little while to go back to sleep. From then on it would have been nice to sleep for hours and hours if I could, but I had to be up reasonably early to prepare for a visit from my friend Aleemah.

 It wasn't exactly a rush, but I would have preferred more time to get to the station to meet Allemah who arrived on the 10:06am train from Charing Cross (to Hayes, Kent). From then on it was the usual breakfast in the Wetherspoons pub. Then shopping in Aldi, and then back here for 4 more episodes of The Tripods from Aleemah's DVD boxset of the old BBC TV series.  After Aleemah went home I cooked up an experimental dinner using ingredients I had bought in Aldi earlier.

 The meal turned out to be quite big, and very tasty. It started with some salmon grilled in the oven. Then I wondered what would happen if I added a bit of butter to the dish I had cooked the salmon in, and attempt to fry some eggs in it. The worst thing is that despite being careful, two of the yolks broke when I cracked the shells, but the frying process seemed to work quite well. If I had just used half the amount of salmon, and half the eggs, and then bulked it all up with some green vegetable, it would almost be a sort of healthy meal - even more so if I had used less oil and butter, or found a way to mop up the excess.

 While that meal was nice, it did leave me feeling a bit bloated...or maybe not bloat as such, but it was definitely too oily. Any more and it could have made me feel sick, but as it was, it just made me want to lay down - and that is what I did. I think I even fell asleep for a while. That goes some way to explain why as I write this I am not getting off a bus in Bromley to see another Chain gig. I did say I would try and get there tonight. It is a simple journey, but maybe I was just not keen enough. The venue is a pub called The Partridge, but it is not a pub I like much.

 What I should be doing if I am not going out is to start selecting and editing the pictures I took on my Canon camera last night. Instead I seem to be getting drunk on whisky. I think I feel a early night coming on. Tomorrow I would like to go out for another walk around a bit of London, and take some snaps. I thought that maybe I would snap a few of the theatres along the walk from Charing Cross up Charing Cross Road, and then cut through Soho to Piccadilly Circus before heading back to Charing Cross station via Trafalgar Square.

 There are few problems with that plan. The first is that I don't know if the trains are running to Charing Cross tomorrow, and another problem is that it is likely to be very dull and very wet ! Maybe tomorrow is when I'll tackle those pictures from my Cannon camera. In the meanwhile here is a picture I took on my way home from work last Thursday. It is the top of The Shard set against a cloudy blue sky. It was never intended to look the way it is, but the way it came out reminds me of a a typical futuristic picture on the cover of a Sci Fi paperback (maybe from the 1970s).

  I don't  think I saw any more than a couple of spits of rain hit my office window yesterday. I certainly didn't see any wet snowflakes ! My impression was that yesterday was rather cool and rather grey, but was otherwise unremarkable...although perhaps the speed with which the temperature dropped after dark was remarkable. It was probably about 6° C until sunset, but within half an hour of the sun setting (invisibly behind clouds), the temperature dropped to 3° C. It did seem that if it kept dropping like that it would be a long way below zero by morning, but it was still slightly above zero this morning. Today seemed even cooler than yesterday. At least that was how it seemed this morning, but it has also been a lot sunnier, and if I didn't know better, I would say that has warmed things up a lot. In fact it is the leading edge of a mass of warm, wet air heading our way from the Atlantic ocean that has both warmed the temperature up to 10° C, and filled the sky with soggy grey clouds. From now, for a couple of days, it is going to be warm, maybe as high as 14° C on Sunday, and rather wet. Unfortunately that includes tonight when I want to go out.

 Most of yesterday was rather good in as much as I was mostly free of pain. The penalty for that was that I seemed to lack energy - specifically the energy to make walking seem easy. I have no idea how the two could possibly be related, and the chances are that they were not related in any way, and it was just coincidence. Not having any energy, or maybe just my legs not seeming to work as fluidly as they can be, wasn't enough to stop me doing a small diversion on my way to the pub after work.

 It was only a few minutes out of my way, although I did miss walking through the park, to walk a hundred feet or two up Lewisham High Street to have a look in Cash Converters (not to be confused with the very similar looking Cash Generators in Catford). I was curious what they had in their - particularly photographic stuff. They had a few cameras, and one was a tiny bit interesting, but I didn't like the ambience in there, and left fairly quickly.

 I was going to allow myself to have three pints when I got to the pub, and one of those was going to be because I normally arrive before anyone else at The Ravensbourne Arms. The reason for that is that notionally we meet at 5pm, that being the time the original drinkers used to finish work and go over the road to The Catford Ram. My train arrives at Ladywell almost half an hour before then, but by the time I had visited Cash Converters I found that Jodie and Andy were already in the pub, and the others soon followed. That gave me time to be sociable while I drank two pints, and I decided that was enough for the night.

 On a warm evening it is a pleasant walk back home from the pub, and in summer months it is even nicer to walk home through the park. Last night was bloody freezing, and I only had a light coat on, and I didn't feel like walking. So I waited nearly 90 seconds at a bus stop and got a bus for the three stops to the nearest bus stop to home, and walked from there. I felt stiff and cold when I got home.

 Feeling stiff and cold was not ideal for what came next - I opened the fridge to pull out a 3l bottle of Diet Coke. As I took the full weight, and the bottle swung from horizontal, where it had been laying on a shelf because it was too big to go in the bit where bottles can stand upright, my so called floating rib went "sproing", and it bloody hurt ! This was bad for a couple of reasons.

 One reason was that it spoiled my recent eating habits. I thought I would be patient enough to cook some battered cod in the oven, and while I did do that, I started getting the munchies. What was supposed to be a small nibblesworth of peanuts was a large nibblesworth of peanuts, and I had even more some time after eating the cod. I doubt I ended up losing any weight yesterday, and it raised my blood glucose level a bit this morning.

 The pain in the side of my chest didn't exactly keep me awake last night, but it didn't make sleeping any easier. It wasn't a continuous pain, and in fact if I was careful how I moved I wasn't in any pain at all....but make the wrong move and OW ! I wasn't convinced that Ibuprofen would calm the pain enough this morning, and so I called work to say I would not be in. I wasn't quite sure if that was truly justified, but it turns out it was, although perhaps only for the morning.

 In theory I should have stayed in this morning, but I decided to go out to do a bit of light shopping, and indeed was quite light. It wasn't always light enough to stop my chest hurting though, but maybe it was the cure. There was one time when I had quite a jolt of pain, but since then my chest has been considerably better. It is probably complete fiction, but it is almost like my imaginary floating rib (imaginary because such things are apparently not possible) was first dislocated last night, and then relocated this morning. My chest still feel a bit tender, but not in the same way it was before.

 While I was shopping I bought all sort of things from various shops. I discovered several new and exciting flavours of Original Source shower gels, and a vanilla flavour Palmolive shower gel. I know it is stupid, but I feel impatient to test them all out. Maybe tomorrow I will try out the blackcurrant and plum Original Source shower gel, and see if makes me feel so hungry that I gnaw my arm off. I also bought some new toothpaste -
 This Arm And Hammer (very red Soviet !!) toothpaste "Contains Potassium Nitrate, an ingredient clinically proven to reduce tooth sensitivity", and also an ingredient of gun powder !! I don't think this is the toothpaste you want to carry through the airport on your way to your holiday - trebly so if it is to panicky North America. It would probably earn you a one way ticket to a waterboarding.

 As well as shopping for household stuff I also did some shopping in Cash Generator. For the past week I had my eye on a Fuji HS35EXR camera. The first time I saw it, it was priced at £130, and that seemed quite reasonable for it when I did a brief check of the specs of it. This morning the price tag was shown as £119. So I went in and gave the bored looking young lady in there a cheery "good morning", and I asked to have a look at the camera. To confirm which one I meant she asked if it was the £120 one, and I said no, the £119 one. She said that she thought it was actually £119.99, and I jokingly replied that I didn't want it then ! Evidently this amused her, as it was intended, and when she came back with it she said that as it was Friday I could have it for £110.

 I gave it a quick test in the shop, and it seemed to work OK, and while it lacked a lens cap, the main lens was protected by a UV filter. So I bought it. I have yet to try it on any real subjects, but it seems to be rather good. From what I have just read when looking for the link I gave above, it might even be rather good for gig photography. Apparently it has a special low noise low light setting that adds some pixels together in some sort of noise reducing way. That lowers the overall pixel count, but it is still 8Mp, and that is fine except for printing out A1 sized pictures - something I am unlikely to want to do....although when I come to think of it......

 This afternoon I have mostly been lazy, and resting my floating rib/ligament/muscle, or whatever was the real source of pain, and as I sit here in the warm typing this I feel perfectly comfortable. Hopefully I will feel perfectly comfortable when I go out tonight, and hopefully it will not be pouring with rain when I go out. I will have the usual 6 - 8 minute walk to the station when I could get soaked, and I think there is something like a 10 minute walk at the other end when I walk from the tram stop to the pub. Of course there will also be the chance to get thoroughly soaked when I do the journey in reverse coming home !

  Yesterday wasn't devoid of sunshine. It just that if you blinked you would have missed it. For most of the hours of daylight the sky was covered in fairly bright white cloud. There wasn't much wind so 6° C didn't feel too bad. The forecast for today has changed in the last two hours, and it is looking like today is supposed to be an improvement on the old forecast. Originally there was to be very dark thick clouds with a chance of some sleety rain until about midday. The afternoon was, and still is forecast to be bright with sunny spells. The temperature forecast remains the same - about 6° C - the same as yesterday. The reality is that there has been some rain, and the colour of the sky looks very much like the earlier forecast. Perhaps the sky will brighten soon, or perhaps I'll see a soggy looking snowflake plummet past my office window sometime this morning. The weather should be changing sometime tomorrow. A great mass of warm and moist air is heading our way. The weekend could see temperatures around 13° C, but it will be depressingly grey, and most probably rather wet !

Good news ! (possibly) I finally finished editing and uploading a selection of the better pictures I took last Sunday to Flickr. You can find the album right here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157662446238864 (The first picture is of the Canadian embassy Mike).

 I felt good and bad at work, and fairly good in the evening yesterday.  While I was at work I had a few assorted pains around my chest. Most were quite mild, but sometimes they can be the most annoying. Perhaps the annoyance is that they keep reminding you that all is not well, and if I make the wrong move (usually some sort of twisting movement) the gentle nudge can turn into a short lived sharp pain. Of course none of these things matter while my blood pressure and blood glucose level stay where my doctor likes them.

 I had a reasonable amount of energy on my way home, and that was good because I needed it. There was a minor problem with the trains, and a major fuck up in Lewisham. The minor problem was some sort of lineside fire near New Beckenham station. While that was dealt with my train was terminated at Lewisham. In the past that would be annoying, but of no great consequence. I would walk out the station, down the short entrance road, turn left at the main road, and the bus stop for buses to Catford were no more than 30 seconds walk away. That is not the case now !

 The end of Lewisham around the railway station is currently one huge mess. It is all building site. Paths and roads have disappeared. the traffic hardly moves, and the bus stops are now a five minute walk away from the station. to make matters worse I assumed that there would be a bus stop outside the new bus station (which is not a station but a bus park). There are two nearby, and one is after the bus station, but is not for bus routes going anywhere useful. There is one bus stop that is beyond the exit of the bus station, and so no useful buses from the bus station stop there. Fortunately one solitary bus from Deptford that goes to Catford does stop there. If it didn't I would have been flaming mad !!

 It didn't help my sanity that it appeared that the train we were all turfed out of, that terminated at Lewisham did actually go to Catford Bridge, and then on to Hayes, because the lineside fire had been dealt with by then. The next train was slightly delayed, but ran normally as far as I can tell. What's more is that it arrived at Catford long before my bus managed to weave through the terrible congestion in Lewisham !

 I arrived home feeling miffed, but otherwise feeling OK. I expected to find my blood glucose level even lower than the day before after all the extra effort I had put in going home, but it was higher. So there was no reason to celebrate about that. The curious thing is that I didn't feel all that hungry when I got home, and I didn't rush to get some dinner cooking. After I had got changed, tested my blood, and done a few more chores I cooked part one of my dinner. It was the new flavour I had found in Iceland - Beef in red onion gravy with veg crush. "Veg crush" is a fancy way of saying mash - and with the main ingredient being turnip it was pretty nasty. I wouldn't recommend this new meal, and I feel lucky I only bought one to test.

 To take the taste away I nibbled on some cherry tomatoes, and some cold sliced beef while I cooked a couple of Aldi's poshest beef burgers. They are quite tasty, and contain very little fat (and no added sugar). I also had a few other nibbles last night. Individually, nothing was particularly bad, but I guess I am getting sloppy about the amount I am eating because my blood glucose level was a bit higher than I hoped this morning. Of course that could also be because I seemed to get fairly good night's sleep last night.

 This morning I woke up feeling far less closer to death than usual, and half an hour later I felt almost good (in a comparative sort of way). I am wondering where that feeling went to. On the plus side, I only had a few twinges of mild pain on the way to work, and I seem quite comfortable now I am here, but on the negative side I seemed to lose all energy. The walk from the station to work was almost hard work. My legs felt very stiff, and I just could not raise the enthusiasm to try and push myself a bit harder.

 Tonight I am going to the pub. Our Thursday night boozing session is in The Ravensbourne Arms, near Ladywell station, tonight. It is easy to get to, and I fancy a pint tonight. It seems the pint and a half I had last Saturday morning didn't have any bad effect on my blood glucose level, and I think I feel safe to have as much as three pints tonight - but no more !

  There was quite a lot of sunshine yesterday. I was even dazzled as I walked around the middle part of the Z bend in the road between work and the station on my way home after work. The sunshine may have helped thaw the frost, but it only warmed the day up to about 6° C, and once the sun set the temperature soon fell. This morning it wasn't as cold as yesterday morning. My thermometers agreed it was a full plus 2° C when I left home to come to work, and that small increase over yesterday morning was enough that I could still just about feel my fingers when I walked from the station to work without my gloves on. Today is, or was forecast to be similar to yesterday, but with far less sunshine - if indeed there is any at all. It is quite bright now, but I can't see any blue sky from my office window. Tomorrow may add another feature - rain - I'll wait for a more up to date forecast before being sure about that.

 Yesterday was a mixture of disappointments and triumphs. It was definitely disappointing that I still suffered twinges of pain. They may have been in other places too, but the more annoying ones were from my chest. One curious novelty was that a lot of the time these pains would pop up at random times in random places in my chest. I don't recall that there was one single pain that was notably stronger, and lasted for a long time. That could be a good sign, or it could be a sign of something completely sinister. What it feels like is that a good strong dose of blazing hot sunshine would go a long way to calm these pains down, or even eliminate most of them.

 Another disappointment was that after my extended sleep yesterday night, I ended up yawning all yesterday afternoon, and at one point I fell asleep for a few seconds reading stuff on my PC. I think some of it may have been boredom because I didn't feel sleepy once I left work, and I didn't seem to be in a hurry to go to bed when I got home. Maybe my final disappointment was when I used Google maps to plot my Sunday morning walk, and measure how far I walked.
 Just 1.77 miles is rather disappointing - particularly when it felt like a fair bit more. All I can say in my defence is that this is a crude approximation of where I walked, and the plot cuts corners, and misses essential diversions such as dodging in and out of, and around knots of camera waving tourists who didn't know if they were coming and going. (I hear similar problems exist up in Cumbria in popular towns in the lake district). Oh, if you click on the map it should open up a bigger version that is easier to read.

 Once I got back to Catford, on my way home from work, my disappointments turned to triumphs. Maybe it is silly to call shopping in Iceland a triumph, but I did find a new flavour in their Slimming World range that looks promising. It is beef with potato and vegetable mash. They don't actually call it mash. I can't think how they describe it this morning, but it sounds like mash to me. I think I'll be testing it tonight. I also bought some fish yesterday. I had a hankering for some battered fish, and I did buy some to hide in my freezer, but I also bought some that was "dusted" with seasoning, and ready to be popped in the oven. They were not cheap, but low in calories, very low in sugar, and very tasty !

 My second triumph was when I came to measure my blood glucose level. It had been good in the morning, and by the time I had got home it was right in the middle of the ideal range. If I could keep it like that for the next three weeks until I see my doctor (on 8th March if I recall correctly) I would hope that she would be very pleased, but I am to get it lower still. I will have to start getting a bit careful that it doesn't get too low, and possibly take the precaution of carrying a small pack of biscuits with me in case it gets so low that I start feeling "funny" (or collapse !).

 I achieved two other things last night. I have finally finished selecting/editing the pictures I took on Sunday morning. It was too late to upload them to Flickr last night, but I hope to do that tonight. I also managed to wash and condition my hair. That is a relief because it was looking and feeling horrible - maybe not actually unpleasant horrible, but bad enough for me to feel bad about it.

 Finally I went to bed. My bed felt fairly comfortable last night, and I reckon it was not long after 9pm before I was asleep. I'm not sure I slept that well last night. I did have some long block of solid seeming sleep, but there were periods when it felt like I was half awake, and I did rather annoyingly wake up almost half an hour before I needed to. I think I managed to recover from sleep faster than usual this morning, and within 10 minutes of getting out of bed I had stopped feeling like death was imminent and welcome. From then on I felt tolerably OK. I could wish to have felt far better, but it wasn't bad by recent standards.

 My journey into work was smooth - insofar as the trains were running to time, and there were plenty of seats - and for the most part I was comfortable right up to the time I was going down the stairs at Earlsfield station. I was going fairly fast, but not the two steps at a time that I might have done many years ago, but I was jarring and jerking my chest enough to trigger a stabbing pain from my "floating rib". I still feel a bit uncomfortable now, 90 minutes later. Hopefully that will fade soon, and if I can avoid triggering any more pains, I might have a comfortable day.

 Tonight I will test the new Slimming World ready meal from Iceland, and I might treat myself to a piece of oven cooked cod in batter. Then I shall upload Sunday's pictures to Flickr. There are quite a few of them, and most are high resolution (and some of them deserve to be - others less so). Uploading will take a bit of time, but so will doing all the tags and descriptions etc - probably even long. Doing the later is probably the bit about photography that I really don't like, but it is essential for pictures like these if others are going to get some enjoyment, pleasure, of education from them. (Maybe I should take up nude or porno photography - that needs no tags or descriptions - such pictures speak for them selves !).

  Yesterday's weather didn't run exactly as forecast, and that was a good thing because it didn't rain when I was going home from work. It was another cold day, and it was often quite dull, but there was some sunshine. One sunny period was when I was going home. Trading rain for sunshine was excellent news. This morning the forecast for mist was wrong, and instead it is a gloriously bright sunny morning. The only caveat is that the temperature was, and probably still will be for another hour or two,  -1° C (that minus 1° C). The forecast I saw at about 5.30am said that the sun would not break through until midday, and from then on the temperature would rise fairly rapidly to a maximum of 6° C. The updated forecast has dumped the idea of mist or fog until midday, and substituted sunny intervals, but the peak temperature this afternoon remains the same. As I can see nothing but blue through my office window, I am guessing this must be a sunny interval.

 I felt pretty dreadful at work yesterday. By midday I had to take another couple of Ibuprofen tablets to dull some of the aches and pains, and all the while I felt terribly tired after my sleepless night. After finishing work, and starting to walk to the station I began to feel better in some ways. Just like in the morning, I found my legs working really well, and while other bits ached, creaked, and protested, my legs got on with the job of walking to the station with little or no protest.

 It was quite a relief to finally get home. I had left one heater on low while I was out so that it would take the chill off, but it was still rather cool indoors. So the first thing I did was to turn the heating on full blast. Then I checked my blood glucose level, and it was still nice and low (which was only to be expected after only eating just a salad for breakfast). Once I had changed my clothes, and the place started to warm up, I felt mostly good except for feeling very tired.

 I continued my special low sugar, and lower calorie diet last night. Dinner was a Saag Chicken curry (with no rice) from the Iceland "Slimming World" range. In addition to that I had a couple of snacks, or was one a starter, and the other "afters". There was very little time difference to these snacks and dinner so I guess they were starter and afters. The starter was a chunk of cheese with some cherry tomatoes, and the afters was a handful of almonds. Neither of these were exactly low in calories, but I feel satisfied that they don't contain or produce any significant amount of sugars.

 After eating I turned everything off downstairs and went up to me bedroom. It wasn't quite comfortably warm up there, and after a while I decided it might be nicer to get under my duvet to do some reading. Within a few minutes I had an idea, and I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Then I went back to my bedroom, got into bed, turned out the lights, and I was asleep not that long after 6.30pm ! I slept solidly for two hours before waking up again for no apparent reason - initially.

 The heater was still running full blast, and by then the room was very comfortable with no clothes on. So I went to me computer, which was still running, and checked an email that had come in. It was then that the first hints of what had woken me up became apparent. I needed the toilet, and in the time it takes to walk 20 - 25ft (or however far it is to my bathroom) that need became far more urgent, and once I was sitting comfortably I exploded. Five minutes later I repeated it for luck, although this second time it was not as explosive.

 It took a little while to get back to sleep after that, but I was probably asleep again not that long after 9pm, and certainly before 10pm. I then slept almost continuously, with some nice dreams about cats and kittens, until 10 minutes before my alarm was due to wake me at 5am. I felt far, far better than I did yesterday morning, but given the chance I might have tried to get even more sleep. I still had a fair selection of my usual aches and pains, but they were mild compared to many mornings. On the whole I felt neither good nor bad.

 I have no idea if my explanation is fiction or not, but once again it seemed that having a good sleep allowed my lower intestine more time and energy to extract the last morsel of energy from the food I had consumed. After not consuming food for about 11 hours my blood glucose level had risen again. This morning it was lower than any other morning apart from yesterday morning. Yesterday was obviously a fluke, and it now seems I am back on the gradual decline, and maybe it is at the sort of rate I would have expected. I think I am still on target to get my blood glucose level well within the healthy range when I see my doctor again on the 8th March.

 There was a possibility to make my blood glucose higher or lower today. It looked as if the trains had stopped running to London, and I would have to phone up work to ask for a day off. I am unsure what the problem was, and Network Rail were using the very vaguest of terms to describe what was wrong on their website (or phone app).
"This train has been cancelled because of urgent repairs to the railway". Where in England ? For how long ? What line ? So many unanswered questions ! The screenshot above was from the National Rail app on my mobile phone, and is actually from an earlier train (that I am sure used to go to Charing Cross, and not Cannon Street). I usually get the 06:33 train, but that was cancelled for the same vague explanation. Luckily the 07:04 train was running, and it was not so crowded that I couldn't get a seat on it. I guess I was half an hour late for work this morning, but I can't seem to remember checking the clock, and it may have been less. I think I'll assume it was less - a lot less !

 Tonight I shouldn't need to go to bed so extremely early, and that should allow me enough time to get some shopping in Iceland on my way home from work, and later on I can have another go at washing my hair (which feels even worse than it did yesterday !). Hopefully I'll have the time, energy and enthusiasm to edit and post more of the pictures I took in London on Sunday morning.

  I think it was at 5.45pm last night that I noticed that over in the west there were still patches of bright(ish) looking sky among the clouds. It felt rather good to think that it won't be too long now before it is daylight until 6pm - just one marker along the way to longer days. Even more remarkable, and exceedingly welcome, was that at 6.15 this morning I looked to the east as I stepped out of my house to walk to the station. I could see the silhouettes of clouds against the first dim signs of the coming daylight. Going to work in daylight is a well deserved luxury that I can't wait for. It was almost daylight as my train left Waterloo station this morning.

The top picture shows Chris Mayer (lead guitar) bathed in red light. All my pictures could have looked like this, but they do look a lot better when converted to black and white snaps.

This is one temptation that doesn't bother me - free samples of pizza.

At least I think they will be giving away free samples of pizza at Waterloo station today - they were still setting up when I passed through there at 7am this morning.

SSE, who are an energy company (I think) are doing some sort of promotion on the concourse of Waterloo station where you can win tickets to see The Who this coming Saturday. What you have to do to win, and where The Who are playing on Saturday are currently a mystery to me. Maybe I'll learn more on my way home late this afternoon...or not !

I must have walked past this sign post hundreds of time, and barely gave it any recognition until I was on my way home from work yesterday. It's roughly halfway between work and Earlsfield station on Garrett Road. The thing that struck me yesterday was how much it looked like a cheap and nasty replica of a traditional English iron sign post - if such a thing actually exists. To be honest I am not sure what I was, and what I am thinking of. It just sort of feels like it has a replica look about it.

The last couple of pictures taken using my now retired Olympus X42 camera...When it was being built this skyscraper had a big banner on it saying it's name, but I can't remember what it was. This is the view over the wall at the far end of platform A at Waterloo East station.

Class 465 train at platform B of Waterloo East station with The London Eye in the background.

Last Friday morning one of the new electric vehicle charging points near Catford Bridge station (at the end of this road) was in use. It seems they glow green when ready to use, and red when in use.

A car on charge with an expanded view of the top of the charger inset - you just about see that the top glows red while this happens (although it's more obvious on the pavement side).

Free samples of popcorn on the concourse of Waterloo station today.

Popcorn girls !

It wasn't terribly obvious what this second stand on the concourse of Waterloo station was all about.

It seems that some sad bastard was trying to sell some, or all of Virgin Media's products to some sad bastards !