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My Diary/Blog For the Month of June 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday 26th June 2017 |
| 08:00
BST Yesterday evening remained dry and bright, but the temperature fell a fair bit once the sun went down. This morning it was just 14° C when I walked to the station this morning. Actually that wasn't far off what was forecast yesterday.  I'm back at work after the weekend, and I feel really tired. I did have some trouble getting to sleep last night, and also after waking up a couple of time during the night. This was on account of my dodgy chest. It has been playing up a lot lately, but as it has been for the last three and a bit years, it is so random. Last nights pain was a very localised, almost stabbing pain from a relatively small area just to the right of my operation scar. It was rather unusual in that there was a definite tender spot. I'm not sure, but I think I could almost feel a lump. It does little to persuade me that the idea of the surgeon leaving his wrist watch inside me is no more than pure comedy ! For much of the time I felt no pain. It was very posture dependant. One posture, laying on my right side, could be particularly uncomfortable, and was responsible for not making it easy to get to sleep. This morning I think it was triggered by reaching out to turn the taps on, and other similar movements. Since coming to work it seems to have almost cured itself, or the wristwatch has shifted position to a more traditional area, somewhere behind my left man boob. That seems to be where any discomfort is coming from now. I feel that it is going to be very boring, and ultimately annoying day at work today. I'm not expecting anything actually negative to happen, although even that could be preferable to 8 hours of blandness. In an effort to appear positive I have to keep reminding myself that it should be wonderfully bright and sunny when I go home again, and I am wearing shorts to help soak up as much of that sun as possible ! I hope that when I get home I will still have some energy left. Ideally I will be wanting to go out again soon after getting home to get some shopping from either Aldi or Tesco. I didn't get a chance to go to either yesterday, and it was for the same reason why I shouldn't have much spare time tonight - photos ! I've got a load to upload to Flickr, and I still haven't even looked at the pictures I took at The Life Of Brian gig on Saturday night. I've got to do something with them sooner or later ! |
I can't decide whether it was a
good or bad day at work yesterday. I think it was probably
just an average sort of day - a bit of work, a bit of
boredom, and Outlook, our email client with all storage
done in the cloud, pissed me off as usual because it is so
slow and cranky. On the plus side, the person who annoys
me most was not here, and neither were most of the
managers (they were all at a trade show in the Excell
centre). | Thursday 22nd June 2017 |
| 08:46 BST I have to confess, yesterday was rather hot. The temperature probably hit 32° C in some places. One place was outside my back bedroom window. At ground level it was only 30° C. I had left the curtains drawn at the front of the house (which faces south, and gets the full force of the sunshine). That helped the indoor temperature to stay lower than outside, but it was still a terrible temptation to throw all the windows open when I got home from work. Had there been some wind it might have made sense to let some air blow through, but with the air fairly still it would have just allowed the temperature in my bedroom to rise from a little over 27° C to 30° C (or maybe a bit more). Later on, as the sun started to go down, a breeze did spring up, and I opened the windows. It was still rather sultry in my bedroom at 5am this morning !  I suppose it was useful being at work yesterday. The expensive air conditioning units that were fitted here a couple of years back to replace the cheap (in relative terms) did manage to keep my office cool - unlike the single unit they replaced that could keep the office cold ! On the other hand, it was still have been even nicer to be out frolicking in the fresh air, and so it was when I made my way home. The train from Earlsfield was rather hot and sweaty, but the train from Waterloo East actually felt a lot fresher. There were a couple of reasons for this. One was that the train from Waterloo East had probably been sitting in the shade at Charing Cross station for possibly half an hour, and maybe even longer before it went back into service. It was also from one of the first batch of class 465 trains that had the airline style forced air nozzles fitted. Although not chilled in any way, that extra blast of air to the top of the head was very nice ! When I got home it was instantly noticeable that it was cooler inside, although only by about three degrees. The slightly peculiar thing is that upstairs felt much warmer than downstairs. That would seem perfectly logical if it wasn't for my thermometers saying there was only about one degree difference ! It did make for a bit of a sweaty evening ! It also made me feel quite drousy. After I had eaten an assortment of stuff for my single meal of the day I felt like laying down. The last thing I expected was that I would fall asleep, but after reading a page or two of the book I am currently reading*, I put the book down, closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew was that it was 8pm ! * The Mote In God's Eye - not a religious book, but a sci fi book by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In this book God's Eye is an astronomical feature, and the mote is an alien spaceship. Despite most of my evening being taken up with eating and sleeping, I did manage to get a few things done. I made a start selecting/editing the pictures I took at St Pancras station on Monday, and I uploaded the pictures I took at Deal to Flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157685333344275
One other thing I did was to
lightly wash some brand new dish cloths and cleaning
cloths I had bought from Poundland last Tuesday. I
don't really intend to use them for anything more than
small towels - mainly in hot sweaty weather, but they
should be useful later in the year when venturing out
into the rain.
I was a bit surprised when, after sleeping for an hour a bit earlier, I still felt like going to bed at my usual time - 9pm. I was perhaps even more surprised in retrospect when I put my book down, and was fast asleep around 9.30pm. It is really weird that in weather where everyone is complaining that it is too hot to sleep, I seem to have slept easily. I don't know if I slept well though. I only remember waking up once in the night, and this morning I woke up closer to 5am than I have for a while. This morning I only have one particular ache to complain about. It was something that caused me some discomfort yesterday. Today it may be on the wane, but only time will tell. It is yet another variant on the pains I get in my chest. This one can be a sharp stabbing pain above my left man breast. At it's worst it can really feel like a broken rib is trying to push itself through the skin. More usually it is just a residual ache from what is really only occasional far worse pain. What I do know is that it can be brought on by an action as simple as reaching out to turn a tap on with my left hand. It is yet another legacy (or maybe the same legacy) of my open heart surgery. I really don't know if it was that the surgeons didn't put me back together again properly, or if I didn't heal properly, or if I damaged the healing process. The latter is quite probable ! Usually I try and ignore it, or at least don't make a fuss about it, but it seems everyone in the world knows it is my birthday. On the whole, there is no reason for today to be like any other day, and apart from a few distractions it will be. One such distraction is the automatic birthday card from work. Maybe I am too cynical, but the idea of a birthday card from work, which everyone is obliged to sign, seems no more exciting than any other paperwork we get lumbered with.  I have nothing planned for today beyond enduring another day at work, and my regular Thursday night drink. Tonight it will be in Bromley again. So I can look forward to a sweaty ride home on a packed bus. |
| Tuesday 20th June 2017 |
| 09:01 BST We have had some hot days recently. Yesterday, perhaps only in some unique environments such as inside a Thameslink class 319 train from St Pancras International station at 4pm, were pushing the boundaries towards very hot ! I think yesterday saw the temperature rise to 30° C, and possibly a tiny bit higher. Saturday was very warm, but not as high as yesterday.  I've had a few busy days. It all started on Saturday night, and the MT Pockets gig in The Black Cat. I had been hoping that Angela would be there, and be by herself, but she didn't turn up. A very few, very subtle clues suggested she wanted to be there, but circumstances made it impossible. Nevertheless, MT Pockets played two excellent sets to a very lightly attended pub, and I put my new (secondhand) Canon 600D camera through it's paces. The camera produced some very good images, but also a lot of useless images. I think the auto focus was more easily confused by the rapidly changing lighting than the auto focus on my Canon 1200D. Alternatively it was operator error. That is actually likely. The options on the new camera are almost, but not identical to the old camera, and maybe I need a bit more experience with it.  MT Pockets at The Black Cat.  This is one photo where the camera
lost focus at a most crucial time. It was also a time
when it would have been ideal if the lights were on
white and not on blue ! When shrunk down to this
size you could almost write off the blur as "action
blur" as Dan leaps in the air, but in the full size
version it just looks horribly out of focus - most
annoying !
There are a multitude of reasons why I ended up taking a stupid amount of pictures on Saturday night. If you must know, I took 1,176 snaps ! The principle reasons were :-
I think it was Sunday night, although it could have been Saturday night, when I spent most of the night sleeping on top of the bed, instead of being in it, and with the fan blowing across my body. On Sunday night I seemed to sleep quite well like that - possibly even better than usual ! On Monday morning I woke up feeling semi-refreshed, and determined to do something exciting - I had booked the day (and today) off work as holiday in anticipation of doing something. I wanted to go to the seaside, and on this occasion I chose Deal because it has a pier that I have never seen before. I like piers, and I am not sure why. I do know I prefer them if they retain some remnant of their original purpose such as a place for ocean going pleasure boats to moor. I'm not too keen on piers just smothered in noisy amusement arcades bleeping away. To get to Deal I thought the least painless way would be to get the high speed train from St Pancras. It is a little more expensive (£21) than by slower routes, but the travelling time is a more bearable 70 - 75 minutes compared to 120 minutes plus by other routes. The catch is that it takes over half an hour to get to St Pancras in the first place. The good thing is that when everything goes perfectly the connection time at St Pancras is quite small. When things go less that perfectly, such as yesterday, and the train to St Pancras from Catford is delayed by 10 minutes, it means a wait of almost an hour before the next fast train to Deal departs. That was a bit annoying, but it did give me a chance to do some photography around, and in the station. Eventually the clock inched around, and it was time to depart.  While I had been on a high speed train before yesterday, it was only on the slow lines between Rochester and Margate. Yesterday was my first taste of speed, and it was also my first taste of Stratford International station. Now admittedly I could only see what I could see of the station from inside the station, but it was a most depressing sight. The station is essentially in monochrome - the colour of concrete in all it's shades. I would have expected an "international" station to be a bit more glamorous.....but it gets worse ! The station is in a deep cutting, and the walls of the cutting appear to be covered in sprayed on concrete. It is rough and stained, and has about as much glamour as a 1960s, piss stained, concrete council estate built in the most brutalist style !  It was nice to arrive at
Deal and stretch my legs. What was most surprising is
that one of the UK's most modern, most advanced train
(almost) is still controlled by semaphore signals at
Deal (pictures probably tomorrow). Deal itself is a fairly nice seeming seaside town. It is nice that it is not all brash like many seaside towns - all fish and chip shops and amusement arcades. In fact I saw very little in way of amusements and stuff beyond a few small pubs dotted here and there. I certainly saw none of one very important amenity for a place that expects lots of visitors - public toilets ! At least I assume they expect visitors otherwise it wouldn't have been worthwhile modernising the pier. The pier itself is nice, but apart from a cafe type place at the far end, and a few anglers, there was nothing on it. It was interesting that much of it was of modern concrete construction. The supporting pillars reminded me of the Docklands Light Railway. As can be seen by the picture on the left, I only did a short walk of 2.42 miles before going home again. My original idea was to walk in the opposite direction, and get the train from the next station, Walmer, but for some reason I walked away from that station. I did consider the possibility of still walking to Walmer, but at the far end of the walk I actually did I had a paddle. That paddle in the sea did two things. The first was that my shoes filled up with sand and gravel, and that hurt my feet (although less than walking barefoot on the shingle). I had taken the precaution of bringing a spare pair of dry shoes with me because I had intended to have that puddle, and my feet would have soon recovered from walking in a wet shoe full of gravel, but there was one more thing...... It is a steep descent across loose shingle to the waters edge. Going down was easy enough (mostly), but trying to get back up to the top was really, really hard work. At one point I had visions of being stuck down there forever. At times I would try and step up about 8 or 9 inches, and slip down nearly a foot ! By the time I made it to the top I was exhausted. I slowly recovered from that by the time I had walked back to the pier, and the turning that goes back to the station - well almost recovered. At that point I checked the time and noticed that the next train was due in less than 15 minutes. It is only an hourly service, and so I decided I would walk straight to the station. I got there with a good 5 minutes to spare, and it was nice to get out of the heat and onto a (slightly) air conditioned train. I believe it was possibly only 25° C in Deal, and while the train felt cooler, it did not feel cold at all. However it is all relative. Back in central London, where it was at least 30° C (and possibly 32° C) the air felt really hot as the train doors opened, but that was nothing ! The High Speed train connected well with a Thameslink service back to Catford. I only had to wait for a couple of minutes before it arrived, and when it arrived it was even hotter inside than on the hot platform (that in turn seemed hotter than the air at ground level). By the time I arrived back in Catford I felt well and truly cooked ! I got home at about 5pm, or not too dissimilar to when I get home from work, and like on a work day it seemed there wasn't much time to do anything but eat and drink before going to bed. I didn't eat all that much, but one item made up for it and more - a tub of raspberry sorbet and chocolate ice cream. I was not unexpectedly a bit dehydrated and I drunk quite a lot, and much of it was just tapwater with a squeeze of lemon or lime in it. Like the night before, I slept on top of my bed with the fan playing over me. I think I slept quite well last night, and I even managed to have a small lay in before I got up. It was still hot in my bedroom, but other parts of the house didn't feel quite so bad, and the outside air, at around 20° C almost felt refreshing. It seemed like a good time to wash a few t-shirts. A few of them I washed because they have not been worn for well over a year, and were a bit dusty and musty. Doing that got me sweating again, and I am still sweating now. It is going to be another sweaty day. I am not sure what I am doing today yet. I was thinking of going out with my camera again, and maybe I will, but before that I need to do something with the photos I took yesterday. I also need to wash and make myself presentable to the outside world ! What I ultimately need to do is to do just enough to wear me out enough for a good night's sleep, but not too much to leave me feeling too knackered. I'm back at work tomorrow, and with the temperature predicted to reach 32° C that could be a good thing - if the air conditioning is up to the challenge ! |
| Saturday 17th June 2017 |
18:49 BST
Yesterday was far sunnier than expected, and it may have
been a little warmer too. In fact considering it was only
supposed to reach 21° C, I am sure it did, although I
don't have a figure to suggest. The real surprise was
today. Yesterday the forecast said today would be on the
dull side, and particularly so in the afternoon. The
reality is that today has been every bit as sunny as I was
hoping tomorrow might be - and maybe it will be. There
have been quite a few clouds in the sky, but it seems they
have mainly lurked in the northern half of the sky. That
has allowed the sun to shine most of the day, and in turn
that has allowed the temperature to soar. The last
temperature I saw on the thermometers outside the kitchen
door was just approaching 28° C, but go up 10 - 15ft, and
still permanently in the shade, the thermometer is saying
31.6° C. It is also 29.6° C in my bedroom ! The most
recent weather forecast says we can expect the same
weather tomorrow and Monday.I felt a bit strange when I came home from work yesterday. Fortunately it was strange in a good way. Maybe my body was already anticipating today's weather or something. I had a passably OK day at work, although a few things were annoying enough to reinforce my desire to hand in my resignation at the end of the month. I still don't know if I will allow myself to be talked out of it or not, and whether any changes to my circumstances, perhaps with regard to Angela, will finally alter my ideas. I can't say going home from work was any worse or any better than average. It seemed sort of normal. The only break in tradition was that once again I had to go to the corner shop to pick up my new camera bag that I had ordered via Amazon. Tonight I will be trying out that camera bag, and I am wondering how it is going to feel. It would appear to have one silly design feature - the loops for the shoulder strap seem to have been designed to be well away from the centre of balance. It seems like it will be constantly wanting to tip over, but maybe it will actually be fine once it is hanging at my side. Everything else about it seems to be as good as I hoped. The really strange thing about last night was that while I felt a bit hungry, I didn't feel in a rush to eat. Maybe it was because I had had a rush of sugar when I ate a coconut flavour Magnum ice cream bar that I had bought from the corner shop when I picked up my parcel. Instead of eating (apart from the ice cream) I started on some housework type stuff. I washed all my work shirts, and hung them up to dry, and then I did the washing up. The sink was full when I started on it, but there weren't actually many items in it, and it took less time than I estimated. With the two most important bits of housework done I thought about eating. It had gone 7pm, and no free Thai food had turned up, and I assumed I wouldn't be getting any. Maybe, now that the most intrusive building work has finished next door, I will never get any more. It didn't take me long to consider that what I really wanted was a kebab, and so I ordered one on line....and it was jolly nice ! Last night's sleep was a bit of a disaster. I don't think I was in bed much later than usual, and I seem to recall that I fell asleep quite quickly. The silly bit was when I woke up around 1am for no particular reason, and couldn't get back to sleep again for what seemed like hours. Even when I did get back to sleep it didn't seem to last long. I'm sure I barely got 5 hours sleep last night, and yet because I am not at work I haven't really felt tired at all today. I guess today has been a busy today because I haven't been bored, and yet I don't seem to have achieved much....or have I ? This morning I traumatised the neighbourhood by putting on my shorts for the first time since last summer (and maybe not even then), and going to Aldi to buy rather a lot of shopping. Once again I weighted down my shopping bags with some assorted canned stuff, several bottles of flavour infused olive oils, a bottle of lemonade, and two bottles of sugar free cola. I think they were the heavier items. It was hard work lugging them bag with the temperature already nudging "quite warm". I've also done yet more laundry. It seemed like the time of year when some white t-shirts might be good. I dug out 4 nice big ones, but they were still infused with old cigarette smoke, and needed a good wash. Other than that I finally went through the last of the pictures I took on my walk on Wednesday. You can see the entire set, complete with some annotations, in high quiality, right here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157682279182043 Next on the agenda is to get dressed in suitable clothes, and go to The Black Cat. Tonight MT Pockets are playing, and it should be a good gig. It could even be an excellent gig because I think there is a credible chance that Angela might be there, and on her own ! |
| Friday 16th June 2017 |
| 07:49 BST The Gods must be happy with us - yesterday was another nice day. It was almost as forecast, but there might have been just a little more cloud in the afternoon. The most important thing was that it was warm, bright and dry.  I did a little bit of interesting work yesterday, but most of the working day was boring. As the day passed I seemed to feel more and more uncomfortable. My back felt stiff while sitting down, and my legs felt stiff on the few occasions I got up and walked anywhere. On a scale from 1 to 10 I would only rate my degree of feeling uncomfortable as a 2 or 3, and that is at a level were it is perfectly ignorable - provided there are sufficient interesting distractions, but there weren't ! Perhaps the worst thing was that every creak and groan of each muscle and joint seemed like the precursor to a traumatic walk to the station, but my walk to the station was just about normal - more boring than anything else. Of course it would be a lot nicer if I felt like I had the energy to run to the station, and every limb ran as smoothly as a well oiled machine, but I don't think I have ever felt like that in my whole life, and the prospects of ever feeling like that in the future seem to be infinitesimally slim ! On the whole it was a smooth journey - not to home, but to The Shortlands Tavern for my Thursday night drink. As usual I stuck to having just 3 pints in there, although the second two were a little strong at 5% alcohol. In many respects The Shortlands Tavern is one of the better places we drink in on some Thursdays. Getting there and getting home again is generally OK, and in particular, getting home by train is far more relaxing than having to get a bus. I finished my third pint at about the right time to wander over to Shortlands station to catch the 18:32 train. It just so happened that about 30 seconds before my train arrived the "Orient Express" train went roaring through the station. Of course it isn't really the Orient Express, and sadly it wasn't steam hauled on this occasion (that is a fairly rare treat), but it is rather more visually exciting than the rather bland railway carriages used by Thameslink and Southeastern trains. When my train arrived at Catford I rushed as fast as I could, which wasn't very fast at all, not to home but to the corner shop just past home. There was absolutely no reason to get excited, but I was excited anyway ! I was excited to pick up a parcel of stuff from Amazon. Quite why a couple of rubber lens hoods for my camera lenses which I won't need until Saturday at the very earliest, and probably not even then, should be reason to rush is unknown, but I did it anyway. I also wanted a couple of bottles of diet cola, but it was those lens hoods that really had me rushing around. It might happen again tonight. If it arrives today, as predicted, I will be looking forward to getting and hopefully using, a rather posh camera bag allegedly made by the makers of well regarded tripods, Manfrotto. I felt very hungry when I finally got home, and had I not taken a bit of care I could have slaughtered the non existant horse, and eaten it whole between two slice of bread (which I didn't have either). What I actually ate was some lentil salad, followed by some Silesian sausages (smoked sausages made in Silesia) with mushy peas. It was fairly nice, but I wanted more, and I had some rather naughty sweet biscuits. They seemed to do the trick, and maybe an hour after eating I was in bed - maybe even asleep. I slept well until about 1am when I woke up from some slightly unpleasant dreams, and feeling really quite chilly because I had kicked the duvet aside. The dreams strongly suggested I was suffering from sleep apnoea, although I didn't feel short of breath when I woke up. It's a bit tricky to remember what I was actually doing in my dreams, but it seemed like I was walking my pet tiger through the jungle - a jungle that seemed to be mainly hydrangea bushes - and I noticed that there were several lions moving in on us. I did my best to shoo them away, but I couldn't seem to make any noises come out of my mouth. It wasn't until I came back from the toilet, and got into bed again that I felt the need to breath slightly deep - more than just through my nose. The other anomaly is that while I almost felt shivery when I first woke up, I felt perfectly comfortable in the bathroom near an open window, and once again I felt far too hot when I tried to pull the duvet over me when I got back into bed. Once I got back to sleep, which may have only taken 5 to 10 minutes, but felt much longer, I slept OK, and I even had a lie in ! Unfortunately it was rather less exciting than that sounds. I didn't wake up until 4.40am - 20 minutes earlier than ideal, but better than the 30 minutes early of the days before ! From time to time I have felt pretty much OK this morning, but in the intervals between those time I have felt typically rough. I guess my main complaint this morning is that my legs feel unusually stiff. It is just like I had gone on a long walk the day before. Surely it can be a delayed effect of the walk I took the day before yesterday, although that is the sort of feeling. Oh well, once the working day is over I can put my feet up and relax - if I want to. Tonight I probably will relax. If I am extremely lucky I might be able to relax with a free Thai meal from my next door neighbour, but I think I will work on the assumption that I will have to make my own dinner tonight. I don't think there are any gigs on tonight that I could go to in the extremely unlikely event that I have any energy left when I get home. Looking further towards the future. I am looking forward to a great gig in The Black Cat tomorrow night. I think there is a passable chance that Angela might be there on her own, and that could make the evening even better. |
| Sunday 11th June 2017 |
| 16:23 BST Just as the forecast said it would be, it was nice yesterday. A bit warmer may have been nicer, but 21° C was very acceptable. The only thing that spoiled yesterday was the wind, but only in as much as it was contributing to a lot of noise. It was making the tarpaulin on the skip that next door's builders are using flap about noisily, and they have a sign attached to the scaffolding that is only attached at the top. It is only some sort of lightweight fibre, but it can still make a racket !  I wasn't sure if I was going to be 100% lazy yesterday afternoon, or only 75% lazy. It is possible that I was actually less than 75% lazy ! After I got washed and dressed properly I went out and took a big carrier bag full of assorted shirts to The British Heart Foundation shop. I find it quite amazing how many shirts I accumulated over the years. Most were probably one size too small - just half an inch around the collar seems to make quite a difference to the around the gut measurement ! While I was out I also popped into the 99p shop to buy some more scented oils for my oil burners, and some more tea lights to power them. I also found a lemon squeezer in there. I've been looking for a lemon/lime/orange squeezer for some time (but obviously not very hard), and now I have one - and it's rubbish ! Maybe that is not quite true. I tried it on a lime, and I could squeeze out 4 or 5 times the juice just between my thumb and fingers. I suspect that the squeezer would be far more effective on a nice ripe lemon. Finally it was time to go out for the evening. I had done some research, and found the correct bus stop and bus route number to get from my first port of call, The Mitre Hotel pub in Greenwich to me second port of call, The British Oak pub in Blackheath. I arrived at The Mitre Hotel quite early, and had a chance to exchange a few words with Chris and Jo from Chain who were playing there. That gig started, or should have started at 8pm, and so I could watch almost all their first set before moving on to see maybe half of Life Of Brian's first set (and all their second set).  After watching (and photographing) Chain for about 50 minutes I packed up my camera, went for a quick wee, waved goodbye to Chris and Jo, walked to the bus stop, waited for a bus, and finally travelled on that bus to The British Oak. According to the time stamps on the image files there was just a gap of 29 minutes between the last picture I took at The Mitre Hotel, and the first picture I took at The British Oak.  I was sort of lucky that Angela was there, and she was by herself. Her John was originally going to go, and he did driver her there, but while he is undergoing radiotherapy he is understandably a bit ratty, and Angela suggested he should go straight home again. I did manage to get a little bit of time with Angela, but not as much as I hoped, and we didn't share a cab home, although we were in the same car. I was offered a lift back to Catford with Angela and Maxine in Maxine's dad's car.  When I got home I had a few sandwiches, checked my email and stuff, and finally got to sleep at something like 1am this morning (possibly a little earlier). If I had slept through to something like 9am I would have been very happy, but I didn't. There were a few times in the evening when I had the mildest of stomach aches. Nothing seemed urgent, but I knew something was brewing. At 5am (or I think it may have been earlier) I woke up full of wind - wind that was often escaping ! After two visits to the toilet, with about 10 minutes between them, I found myself feeling considerably light, and rather more comfortable. I had also forgotten how to sleep again ! Today I have done two things, and one of those is not complete yet. The complete one was a bit more laundry. Yesterday, while sorting out shirts I didn't want, I found an old pair of work issued trousers - issued by my previous employer something over 14 years ago. They were rather smelly, but in otherwise good condition, and they were the right size according to the label. I put them in to soak last night, and this morning I washed, and fabric conditioned them. I note now that they are actually a very dark blue colour and not very dark grey. If they are dry I might wear them to work in the morning to see how they feel. If they are still OK I may put them aside for special occasions when formal trousers might be useful - my own funeral maybe. The other time consuming thing today has been electronic darkroom stuff going through last night's photos. It seems the more skill you acquire doing this, the longer it takes. It makes daylight photography so wonderful - no colour balancing or exposure correction - just the occasional bit of straightening, and maybe a bit of clipping. Eventually I'll get around to uploading the best photos to Flickr, and post a link to them here. I have just one more thing to do before getting in the mood for extreme laziness, sleep and preparing for work tomorrow, and that is to keep my fingers crossed that I may be treated to some delicious free Thai food. I'm not optimistic about it, but I live in hope. |
It almost seemed like the
moment I stepped off the train at Catford Bridge I felt
far, far better. I would go as far as to say almost normal
! It was no trouble at all to walk down to Tesco, and buy
all sorts of old junk, and almost a pleasure walking from
Tesco to home.
| Saturday 3rd June 2017 |
| 11:21 BST I got so wet going home from work yesterday that I think I shall write the whole day off as a very wet day. Maybe that is a little unfair because there was some sunshine in the morning, and maybe just a little bit of the afternoon.....and while I was walking from work to the station, but after that all hell broke loose. Oh well, it was sort of warmish rain....  Tomorrow and Monday are not looking very inspiring - just 19° C and cloudy, and Tuesday could be horrible, but I rather expect the forecast for Tuesday will have changed beyond recognition once Tuesday actually arrives. Perhaps Wednesday will start the slow climb back to "flaming June". I don't know if I felt good or bad at work yesterday. I get so many random, and often short lived pains these days that it is hard to come to a conclusion about what the average state of me is. I do know that there were times when I felt extremely sleepy. Of course these were times when I couldn't be bothered to find anything to do to distract me. I definitely recall feeling a bit rough just before going home, and thinking that getting home would be quite an ordeal. Perhaps it was just another facet of my imaginary allergy to work, because within 30 seconds of actually leaving work I felt fine. I was aided in this by the extraordinary situation of the weather. Just 5 minutes before leaving work there was torrential rain, but as I opened the door to step outside I was greeted by strong sunshine !  I then faced a 15 minute wait on the platform for my usual train home. During that wait the sky got a little darker, and a few drops of rain fell, but it didn't seem to be significant enough to bother walking a few tens of feet along the platform to seek shelter. It might be worth noting that I did have a rain coat with me, but it was still in my rucksack at this point, and in fact it would stay there until I got home. When I alighted from the train at Catford Bridge the sky seemed suspiciously dark, but it wasn't raining, and I didn't stop to put my rain coat on - I was hoping I wouldn't need it. I didn't go straight home last night because I wanted to go in Tesco. I had barely walked for 15 seconds when the first rain drops fell, in another 15 seconds there was the most torrential downpour - and I was just in shirtsleeves. By the time I got to where I could have cut through to Tesco I was soaked through, and I concluded it wouldn't make any difference if I walked on to The Black Cat to see if there was a gig on there tonight. There wasn't, but I thought I might pop in for a quick whisky while I dried my glasses and mobile phone. Unfortunately the barman there knows me too well, and pulled a pint of Guinness for me with asking what I wanted. So I stayed in there a bit longer than intended. While I was in there I thought I would send a friendly message to Angela telling her of my plight. What I learned in return was that John, my rival for her love, was in a lot of pain, and that it seems he is now losing the battle against his cancer. It seems there may be a chance that I might get back together with Angela sooner than expected. It is a tragedy that it comes at such a price. After drinking my pint of Guinness I could have put my raincoat on to go back out into the heavy rain, but I was so wet it didn't seem worthwhile. So I braved the rain and went over to Tesco where I bought a lot of salad stuff, and surprisingly little else. After I took my shopping home - in the pouring rain - I went out again, still in just shirtsleeves, to the corner shop to pick up a parcel from Amazon. I didn't do that much last night, but I did make some effort to eat healthily. I may, or may not have failed. Dinner part 1 was perfectly OK. It was salad dressed with a sprinkle of olive oil, and with a very small amount of pork luncheon meat - rather fatty, but it was only 35p's worth of it from the reduced price counter. I'm not sure of the goodness or badness of the middle course. It was something I haven't had for ages, and I spotted it on the reduced price counter for just 45p. It was 3 small lamb hearts. They seemed quite lean, and after what could be called poaching them for 20 minutes in the microwave there was not a lot of fat floating around in the stock that I had "poached" them in - and any fat there was mostly stayed with the stock which I didn't eat. Those hearts were nice, but typically a bit tough, and I think I have satisfied my curiosity again for some time. The final part of my dinner was a punnet of strawberries. They obviously have a certain amount of sugar in them, but they weren't extra sweet. Very nice though. Eating dinner was the last thing I did of any note last night. I was on my bed (it felt too sticky to get in it last night) reading quite early, and I can't be sure, but I think I probably put the magazine down and turned out the light before 8.30pm. I don't think I slept very well at all. I woke up quite a few times in the night, and on one of those occasions I woke up with my left hand almost completely numb. It was very much how it felt when I woke up after my operation in 2013. It wasn't pin and needles, but just numb. That was a bit worrying, but the skills I learned back in 2013 came back to me, and I could still lift up, and open a bottle of diet coke without being able to feel it. I think it was the action of doing that that seemed to restore my hand back to normal very quickly. I woke up again at 4.30pm, and from then on I hardly got any sleep - at least it didn't seem to feel that way. Since then I have done two lots of washing, and very little else. One piece of washing was quite specialised - I washed the mud off the slip on plimsole like trainers I wore on the way home from work yesterday. While I was doing it I also spruced up two other pairs. Then I washed my work shirts, and that was about it. Oh, I've also had some elevenses - a rather strange elevenses. It was a "NEW" Tesco beef madras curry. It was quite small - you could have poured it into a half pint glass with ease, and came with no rice. I was quite annoyed to see it seemed to have quite an excess of oil in it. Without it I could say it made quite a good little snack - or would have done if it a lot nicer. I think the main problem was that the chunks of beef in it were of dog food quality ! One reason for eating it for elevenses was that I want to bring all my eating forward tonight so I don't feel hot and bloated when I go out tonight. Tonight I am going to see The Life Of Brian at The Mitre Hotel pub in Greenwich. It is not one of my favourite pubs, although bands love it. I find it is hot and sweaty at this time of year, and is often very full of drunks who crowd around the end where the bands play, and generally get in my way. My intention is to try and get there as near the start as possible, and try and shoot off a few snaps before going home again. It is possible I will grit my teeth and stay longer if Angela is there by herself. I would guess that John is in no fit state to come out tonight. I don't know if Angela will be happy to leave him on his own, but if he is zonked out on super strong painkillers then the best thing would be to let him rest, and probably sleep. I guess it could be argued that it might be unsafe to leave someone like that unmonitored, but that just reinforces the idea that the best place for him now is a hospice.  I finally remembered to upload two of the pictures that I used some electronic darkroom effects on to enhance. I think they came out quite well. You can view Geoff Paice here, and Jo Corteen here - both in medium high resolution. (They will open up in a new tab or window on a PC). |
