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My Diary/Blog For the Month of May 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
After I
finished writing I went to Aldi yesterday. I did
seem to buy rather a lot, and unfortunately a lot of it
was perishables, and so will have to be eaten soon.
Fortunately a lot of them are benign stuff like salad
ingredients. One thing that was not so benign was the ice
cream pictured on the left. 
If I recall
correctly, I woke up 30 seconds before my alarm sounded. I
was just turning over to try and get back to sleep when my
alarm sounded, and I had to get out of bed. As soon as I
sat up on the side of my bed my left calf muscle started
to cramp, but stopped as soon as I stood up.| Thursday 18th May 2017 |
| 08:01 BST There can be no doubt about it - yesterday was a horrible day. It was 50 shades of grey, and it rained - a lot. I'm not even sure about the temperature reaching 20° C being a good thing. It was so wet that it just felt hot and sticky. The only tiny good thing about yesterday was that somehow the sun managed to come out once for a few minutes around midday.  Yesterday was a mixed sort of day. A few bits of it were OK, and if the whole day hadn't been overlaid by depressing grey skies, I might have gone as far as describing a few minutes of the working day as being almost enjoyable. I did do a few small satisfying jobs yesterday, but there was still a lot of boredom or drudgery. I don't remember any significant discomfort of a general nature, but I did find the shoes I was wearing getting uncomfortable as the day wore on. That was a little odd because they are the same shoes I often wear to gig, and I don't recall them being uncomfortable at gigs. I wore then yesterday because they were more suited to puddles - usually in the gents at a well attended gig, but in this case because of Earlsfield's lousy, lumpy pavements ! The very worst thing about yesterday was getting home from work. As has been the case for the last week or so, I have tried my best to race against the odds to get to platform A, Waterloo East station, in time to catch the 15:50 Hayes (Kent) train which takes me to Catford Bridge station. Once again I was so close, but not close enough. Yesterday afternoon that had implications beyond being disappointing. All I needed was for that train to be running just 90 seconds late, and I would have had no trouble at all. The problem was that the train that would form the 16:02 service from Charing Cross station, and arrive at Waterloo East as my usual 16:05 service, was delayed for unknown reasons on it's incoming journey to Charing Cross. The advice was that it would be running about 8 minutes late - or only about 4 minutes before the 16:17 train that was shown (and actually was) on time. Eventually there was an announcement over the Tannoy acknowledging that there was trouble with the 16:05, and that the latest advice was that it would be starting at London Bridge station. We were all advised to go over to platform C for the first train to London Bridge. I did this, but when I got there I started checking the timetables on my phone. It appeared, and indeed was the case, that the first train to London Bridge would arrive 2 minutes after the Hayes train had already left from a different platform at London Bridge - a platform that would need a couple of minutes to reach by going down the stairs or escalators (or lift), across the "circulating area" and back up the other side ! There was an unlikely slightest of the slight hope that the train at London Bridge might be held until we had arrived, but of course that didn't happen, and eventually we caught the train that would have been the 16:17 train from Waterloo East. The only downside was that by the time it arrived at London Bridge almost all the seats were taken, and I had to stand all the way back to Catford. On the plus side it did give me a chance to take a few snaps of London Bridge station while it is still being rebuilt.   I eventually arrived home feeling rather damp, and slightly cool because of the damp. With hindsight there were two things I should have put on my mental agenda (and noted here) to do when I got home. One was to do some washing up. I still have a sink full of stinking dishes, and doing that will probably be my number two priority - top priority is another appointment with the nurse - nurse Julia if I recall correctly. The one important thing I did do was to turn down the heater for my shower. Now the weather has warmed up it was getting almost too hot to shower under. This morning it was rather pleasant ! Some of what I ate yesterday evening was not as bad for me as some of the stuff I have eaten recently, but I still ate more than I should have. It is difficult to control your eating when eating is the only source of enjoyment for the whole day. While I did try and minimise the damage by controlling some of what I ate, I still ate more than I should if I want to try and get a bit fitter for the real summer months. I'm not sure if I could get into some of my favourite shorts at the moment, or if I could they would be comfortable enough. I'm clutching at straws here, but it does feel as if something I ate which I don't normally eat was responsible for suffering lots of cramp in the night. Last night I was getting cramp in my feet as well as my calf muscles. After sleeping fairly well for a few hours I had to get up at around midnight to walk around for a bit to stop the cramp. I even spent 15 minutes on my PC. Eventually everything seemed OK, and I went back to bed - where I failed to get to sleep for an unknown time that felt a lot longer than it probably was. I laid down in bed, and had a good wiggle until I thought I had found the most comfortable position. As I lay there I thought there was a good chance that I was about to fall asleep. Of course at that very moment a bit of hair, or maybe something imaginary started to tickle my ear. So I had to lift my head off the pillow to give my ear a scratch. Then I settled down again, or did my best to before suddenly realising I needed to pass wind ! With that over I should have been able to get to sleep, but no ! I guess everyone sniffs their own farts, and although it wasn't a head under the duvet case, I am no exception. Maybe I should have put my head under the duvet for a better sniff because sniffing the slight leakage outside the duvet made me aware of my breathing. Now there is nothing worse than trying to consciously regulate your breathing when laying in bed with no distractions around. It is far better to let your autonomous system get on with it by itself. I don't know how many seconds which felt like hours it was that I lay in bed trying to decide if I was breathing too much or two little. In that condition it should always be a pleasant surprise to wake up in the morning neither hyperventilating, or gasping for air - of course you never do, and your autonomous systems never get the praise they deserve. Today I feel mostly OK, and I even think I have some moderately interesting work to do today. Providing there are no cock ups on the trains tonight I might even arrive home feeling not that grumpy. If by some unlikely chance I manage to get the 15:50 train I might even be somewhere near that rare state known as happiness. I have two major plans for tonight and no minor ones. Most important is seeing nurse Julia (or is it Jane - always confuse the two), and second most important is to do something with the stinking heap of dishes in the sink ! |
I
didn't think so at first, but yesterday's weather was
actually very close to what was forecast. I thought there
may have been a bit more sunshine, but looking back at the
screenshot I showed yesterday, it probably did show about
the right amount of sunshine. The temperature came out
almost spot on too. At the time I thought the peak was
supposed to be 20° C, but 22° C was forecast, and that is
almost exactly what my thermometer was saying (pictured on
the left). That was the thermometer outside my back door.
The thermometer outside the back bedroom added another 2°
C to that figure, and even said it was 24° C in my
bedroom. Funnily enough it didn't actually feel that hot
in there, although various activities, like walking back
from Aldi with heavy shopping, did leave me quite sweaty !
| Tuesday 16th May 2017 |
| 07:32 BST The forecast for both the only sunshine for the day, and the only rain for the day, didn't match reality at 10am yesterday. As far as I noticed there was no rain at all yesterday, and I seem to recall there were a few sunny intervals scattered through the day......or did I just imagine that. It was certainly a mild day. It was perfectly comfortable going home from work in my short shirt sleeves, and only a bit cool when coming to work. I think the temperature probably just exceeded the forecast 16° C.  I felt pretty rough yesterday, but a lot of it was all in my head. The brief message I exchange with Angela, where I said I was worried that it was uncharacteristic of her to blank everybody at the pub on Sunday night, did not go down well. I feel like we are no longer even friends any more. That rather hurts. Eventually you come to realise you were flogging a dead horse, hoping that she might remember the intensity of our relationship in the mere months when it was indeed very intense, but of course real life doesn't work that way. The thing that really bothers me is that I am not convinced she is happy going down her chosen path. I am told that her two sons, and her daughter think she is doing the wrong thing, and that she was actually far more happy and relaxed when she was with me. It all makes it harder to bare. During the working day I had some acid indigestion, plus some other assorted aches including a headache. Without them I could have almost got some way towards enjoying work yesterday. I did a few things that I like doing, and all done at a relaxed pace, but I enjoyed going home even more ! Once again I left work as early as I dare, and arrived at Waterloo just 30 - 60 seconds late to catch the earlier train back to Catford Bridge. To soak up a bit of time I decided to use one of the cash machines to top my wallet up. I try to spend my money as fast as I can by buying photography stuff and other bits and pieces from amazon.co.uk, but it does seem my account is slowly growing. I ought to decant some more into Premium Bonds, or alternately I could stop my primary income by quitting work. Now I have no one else to spend my wages on (I had planned on taking a holiday or two this year with Angela until things fell apart), the idea of quitting work seems an ever stronger idea. I don't think I felt depressed as such when I got home from work. I think I have been beyond, or sideways from that for quite some time, but I most definitely had a gloomy feeling of despair, and it affected me in almost the usual way, but with a twist. My moods affect my appetite most profoundly, and generally in the worst way. Last night was different in a twisted sort of way. I felt both hungry and not hungry at the same time. I think I didn't want to eat a protein heavy meal like I had on Saturday and Sunday, but I did want some sort of novelty meal just to spice up a very bland feeling evening. The final outcome of all this is that I had a reverse dinner. A reverse dinner, a description I have just made up on the spot, is when you start with desert, have something in the middle, and finish with a light salad. My desert starter probably made my blood glucose level shoot up into the danger area, and the sweatiness I feel this morning can no doubt be attributed to it. It consisted of a couple of big chunks of plain Madeira cake with canned mandarin segments in juice (not syrup) poured over it. It was rather nice, but I felt I needed something stronger. So for my middle course I ate as many Twiglets as I could before their sharp ends completely lacerated the roof of my mouth ! Twiglets are good. They contain lots of fibre, and are baked and generally fat free. The yeast extract flavouring contains lots of B vitamins - possibly ! I finished this strange dinner with a fairly small cheese salad. I had intended to go to bed quite early last night, but while I was on my bed quite early, it was just after 9pm when I got into bed. I needed to distract my brain before I tried to go to sleep. I managed this fairly well with the aid of quite a few very large whiskies, and immersing myself in some good science fiction by one of my favourite authors - Harry Harrison. The last time I noted on my clock before I fell asleep was 9:04pm. I slept for nearly three and a half hours before I woke up with an acid feeling in my stomach, and I needed a pee. I took some Settlers, had a pee, and then gave the Settlers 15 minutes to settle my stomach. It all seemed to work, and the next thing I remember was my alarm waking me at 5am. I know I had a variety of dreams last night, and I would guess some would include some sort of elements of my trouble with Angela, but the only one I remember seemed to be unrelated to anything I can think of. All I can remember of it was being with one or two unnamed people walking down a fenced off pathway between two fields towards the back of what I think was a vicarage. I had with my some butter that could have been mistaken for cheese. It was about the size and shape of a 440ml can of beer, and like cheese it had a rind - yet I knew it was definitely butter. I am not entirely sure why we were heading for what I think was a vicarage, but somehow the idea comes to mind that I wanted to steal some bread to put the butter on. I can't for the life of me think how any of that dream relates to real life, but I guess that's typical of many dreams. This morning I feel sort of OK - just the usual aches and pains, although I am a bit concerned about my right hip. It's not affecting my mobility, but after periods of inactivity it is starting to get a bit sore when I start moving again. I think I am slowly passing on from despair to "very philosophical". Maybe this time the traffic lights have been showing different aspects, but I have been down this road enough times to slowly become a bit numb to it. Tonight I have a possible three things to do to distract me. The foremost is to see the nurse as part of the never ending dressing changes at 5.30pm tonight. Tonight it is nurse Norlin - the only one who thinks it still needs packing and special dressing - the other nurses feel that a simple plaster, or even nothing would be sufficient. I have left a duvet cover soaking this morning, and tonight I had better try and find the energy to finish the laundry process, and get it hung up to dry. Double duvet covers are quite a challenge to do by hand, but it is at time like this that a good challenge is useful. The other thing I will probably do is to do a bit of shopping in Aldi after I've seen the nurse. I must be careful not to buy anything too naughty though ! One other thing I got done last night was to upload two photo albums to Flickr. There are the pictures I took on Saturday night at the Chain gig in The Partridge pub, and the pictures I took on Sunday night at The Black Cat featuring The Midnight Flyers (or Midnight Brian, or Miranda's Flyers). These albums, and all my others,can be found here :- |
| Saturday 13th May 2017 |
| 09:15 BST The sun was a bit patchy yesterday, but there definitely was some sunshine yesterday afternoon, and possibly in the morning too - but at work the time is a sort of blur. I think I just go into a sort of catatonic state until I notice it's home time ! At home time the temperature had risen to a nice shirtsleeves sort of temperature - very comfortable without feeling warm - perhaps in the region of 18° C - which is what was forecast. Once home I paid very little attention to the weather. I think there may have been some rain at some point in the night, but it was bone dry first thing this morning. It did look grey enough to rain then, but it seems to be getting brighter now,  Yesterday was not terribly satisfying, but I have to go into extreme pessimism mode to make that statement. I will have to state that if nothing good happened at work then it was a bad day......oh OK, I'll concede that it just wasn't a good day, but I can inject more pessimism into the narrative by moving on to my journey home from work. I left work as early as I thought I could get away with, but despite trying to rush as fast as possible I still only managed to get the same train from Earlsfield that arrives at Waterloo just in time for me to miss an earlier train back to Catford Bridge by 30 seconds - and that is after trying to cross from Waterloo to Waterloo East as fast I could manage ! So I caught my normal train home, and arrived with plenty of time to prepare myself for my appointment with Nurse Norlin at 6pm. I think I only did one thing that was useful in the time available to me, and that was to swap my PC keyboard for a nice clean one that I had salvaged from the WEEE (waste electrical equipment e? bin. It feels quite strange typing this on a clean keyboard with clearly marked keys. I realise this is getting away from my pessimistic prose, but I felt that I was getting quite proficient at typing without having to read the keys. I won't say "not looking at the keys" like a touch typist because if I don't look at the physical location of the keys I invariably miss them - or even the whole keyboard ! My appointment with Nurse Norlin was a disappointment treatment wise. In one other respect it was quite good. A ransomeware attack on the NHS core computers meant that there was no computer system running at the surgery. This seemed to result in a more efficient system ! My arrival was noted on a piece of paper in reception, but all the nurses and doctors had to go out to the waiting area to call their patients in. My nurse was actually taking some paperwork to reception when she spotted me waiting. Once she had dropped off that paperwork she signalled me to follow her, and I was probably seen a good 5 minutes early. She was very quick renewing my dressing, and I was back out on the street at about three minutes past my official appointment time of 6pm. That was the good news. The bad news is that she disagreed with Nurse Anne who I saw on Wednesday night. Anne thought that after last night I wouldn't need any more dressings. The wound has been dry for well over a week now, and the hole is slowly closing up, but nurse Norlin insisted that she still needed to pack the hole, before putting on a full dressing again. She wanted me to make appointments for three time next week so she can continue the treatment. It is no bother to go along there after work for a quick 15 minute or less session (often including waiting time), and it is perfectly painless (and has been for the last three or four weeks), but I think I am getting bored with it. My next disappointment should not really be classified as such, and if I was feeling in a more optimistic mood could have been described as a delight, but I feel sort of gloomy or depressed lately. At about 7pm there was a ring at my door doorbell. It was the lady next door, and she had some free Thai food for me again. I thanked her profusely, and then went inside to examine what she had brought me. It feels wrong to be disappointed about it, and that in itself is depressing, but it wasn't as good as previous freebies. It was obvious it really was the scraping at the end of the day. The containers were at least two thirds rice (instead of about 50 - 50), and the non rice bit was rather dry. It was still nice, and I am very grateful for it, but I was hoping for something wonderful again. I think it could have been as early as 8pm that I was so bored that I lay on my bed to start reading. I didn't seem to read that much before my eyelids started to droop. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't before 8.30p that I put the book down and fell asleep. It was about 9.30pm when I woke up and decided I ought to brush my teeth before going to bed properly. Including my pre-sleep sleep, I slept in three parts last night, and all of them seemed like good sleep to me. Best of all, and I know this departs from the miserable narrative I am trying to do, I didn't suffer from any cramp last night ! To approximate times I slept from 8.30pm to 9.30pm, and then from 9.45pm to 4am. I got up for a while at 4am, but was back in bed, and fast asleep by at least 6am, and probably earlier. I finally woke and got up at, if I recall correctly, 8.25am. There are some things I have to do today, but maybe only one thing I want to do. I have already done all the washing up, and I have put in a weeks worth of work shirts to soak. After I finish writing this I will do all the rinsing, wringing, conditioning, and hanging them up to dry. After that I had better wash myself. Maybe the next thing I ought to do is to go along to the surgery and see if I can book some appointments for next week. I could go straight into Aldi afterwards, although there is not much I need from there, and I am not sure I want to risk the temptation ! The first thing I want to do today, although not with 100% enthusiasm, is to go along to The Partridge pub in Bromley to watch, and photograph a Chain gig. The Partridge is yet another pub where the layout really annoys me. If I could stop trying to be a photographer, and find a nice single viewpoint where I can see some of the band I would be happy, but I think I am addicted to photography. Worse than that is that my "fans" are addicted to my photography, and will be looking for some nice photos if they see me there. It is feeling like it is going to be one of those gigs where I'll spend an hour or so there, and then go home on my own early. |
| Friday 12th May 2017 |
| 08:08 BST The weather forecast for yesterday overestimated the amount of sunshine, and underestimated the temperature. A lot of yesterday was forecast to have either outright sunshine or sunny intervals (maybe sunny spells too). There was a little bit of sunshine, but only a very little ! On the plus side, I think the temperature may have hit 20° C, or 2° C higher than forecasted. Today has got off to a good and bad start. It was 13° C, as forecast, but someone stole the sunshine again.  There's not much to say about work yesterday. I didn't enjoy it, but it wasn't awful. My spirits were very slightly lifted by the idea that there was a very small chance that I might see my friend Patricia last night. Unfortunately that didn't happen, and I'll have to wait until next week sometime before I see her for the first time since late last summer. To make myself available in case she had the time to see me I missed out on my Thursday night drink, and so did several of the others for various reasons. I partly made up for it by opening a couple of cans of Guinness. One of only two notable things I did last night was to eat, and I ate a lot ! My basic idea was to eat some fish, ideally oily fish, to see if it helped a few aching joints - principally my right hip. I started off with a tin of herring in a rather bizarre curry and pineapple sauce. I had that with some salad leaves, a couple of small tomatoes, and some croutons. It made for a bizzare, but not too unpleasant snack/starter. It is what I had next that lead me to over do it. Hidden in the back of my freezer, and quite possibly well after their use by date, was a bag of "wild Alaskan salmon fillets". I have no idea how long they had been in there but while they seemed in good condition, I thought it wise to use them up. Ideally I would have cooked just a couple and padded the meal out with something like some peas, but I decided I would just dress them with tartare or tomato sauce, and eat them with nothing more. One of the fillets seemed to have a slightly odd taste so I discarded it, but the rest I stuff down, and felt over stuffed for the rest of the evening ! The other thing of note that I did was to watch the first episode of "The Secret Service". This was a Gerry Anderson series using both puppets and live action that I hadn't even heard of until recently. So I ordered a DVD set of all the 13 episodes made, and started to watch it last night. I have to say it doesn't evoke the same excitement that Thunderbirds, or even Captain Scarlet did, but it wasn't that bad. I do feel I might have to force myself to watch every single episode ! I think I probably slept a bit better last night, but it was still far from ideal. One good thing, or I hope it is a good thing, is that it seems like the cramps I having been getting in my calf muscles seemed to have peaked the previous night, and I suffered from them less last night. Of course it may have been because I found the cramping seemed to start when I didn't keep my legs straight. On the other hand it is impossible to consciously keep your legs straight when fast asleep, and so I hope that my theory about being past the peak, and it going away again is correct. I feel that if I had been able to, I would have got up for an hour or so this morning, and then gone back to bed for, hopefully, at least another full hours sleep - ideally another 2 or 3 hours. Apart from a weary, end of the week, feeling of fatigue, I probably don't feel too bad this morning. I was OK at moving at average commuter speeds, but I didn't really fancy racing anybody on my way into work. My walk from the station to work seemed almost sedate, and yet I don't think it took more than 20 seconds longer ! Make me wonder why I rush sometimes. This evening I have what may be my final visit to the nurse to look forward to. I can also look forward to being exceedingly lazy tonight. I am going nowhere, and seeing no on - except possibly, if I am very lucky, my next door neighbour. It is possible that I may get some more free Thai food, but it all hangs on how much they sell at the Greenwich market stall. If there is less sunshine than the forecast suggest there may be, which is entirely possible, it may cut down on the number of tourists in Greenwich, and there will be food aplenty at the end of the day. Maybe I can be a glutton again tonight, or maybe I will save a meals worth for tomorrow, or maybe I will have to do my own cooking on both days. |
At 6am the forecast predicted 9° C and
bright sunshine. It was actually lightly overcast, and as
you can see it was only 8.1° C at 6:19am. Half an hour
earlier it was just 7.4° C ! There was some sunshine while
I was on my to work, but the sky is looking very milky
white at the moment - it is supposed to be sunny !
Hopefully reality will catch up with the forecast before I
leave work to go home. Hopefully reality will not march
off in the other direction and rain on us because I
haven't brought a coat to work today. I am rather relying
on it being a glorious sunny 19° C when I go home after
work.
| Monday 8th May 2017 |
| 07:46 BST The weekend weather could have been a lot better, but it wasn't bad. Saturday was mild enough to venture all the way to a windy hilltop in Sevenoaks, and Sunday seemed like it might have been just slightly milder still. Sunday was the sunnier of the two days, but both days were fairly bright regardless of actual sunshine. I think the temperature yesterday peaked at around 16° C, and Saturday was maybe a degree less.  I have had a busy weekend ! I finished off writing on Saturday morning by saying I didn't know if I would go to the shops or finish my laundry first. In the end I opted to go to the shops first, and finish the laundry second. The only thing I bought of note in the shops was some new "Original Source" Hibiscus and Pomegranate shower gel. It smells quite nice ! After I git back from shopping I finished my laundry. Once I had hung it up to dry I relaxed until it was time to go out to see Jo Corteen doing her solo acoustic set on the bandstand from the Vine Gardens Food and Drink Festival. I had to be there at 4pm, and I managed to get there a bit early because of two things. The first was that I got an earlier train than expected. The train before the one I intended to get was running 25 minutes late, and I was there on time to catch it. That gained me 5 minutes, and possibly a little more. The other reason was that the long hill that you have to walk up to get from the station to Vine Gardens seemed easier to walk up than on previous occasions. Admittedly I did stop a couple of times to take photos on my way up it, but even so, it still felt like less effort than previous times. Maybe I am fitter than I like to believe. You can see the pictures I took on the way up the hill, the pictures of Jo Corteen and the festival, and some snaps of a cricket match that was going on behind the bandstand, right here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums/72157680344014514
As well as all the
photography, I also took advantage of the festival to
spend far too much money on buying weird stuff -
mostly booze and cheese - but I also bought some fancy
Scotch Eggs made with rare breed pork and assorted
spices. The Thai spiced and satay (peanut) flavoured
were probably the best. Some of the stuff was really
expensive, and some not too bad. Five assorted cheeses
for £10 didn't seem too bad, but £10 for a chunk of
Lavender flavoured cheese seemed bad.
   Two more expensive
products - gift packs of miniature bottles of
booze. The top picture is of flavoured vodkas -
very weirdly flavoured vodkas. I bought these with
Angela in mind - vodka is her drink - but without
any realistic prospect of her visiting to try
them. The lower picture is of miniatures of
special gin. I bought these with Patricia in mind.
There is a very real prospect of seeing her at
least a couple of times before she goes back to
Argentina towards the end of summer, and gin is
her current favourite booze. Buying miniatures is
always an expensive way to buy booze, but probably
a safer prospect than buying full sized bottles of
stuff that might be anywhere between bland and
horrible.
 I was lucky enough to get a lift back to Bickley station (one stop further out than Bromley on the line back to Catford) after the gig. I was also lucky that I only had to wait 10 minutes for the train at Bickley. On the whole it had been a rather splendid afternoon. Once I got home I had enough time to eat two Scotch Eggs, and have a short rest before going out again to The Black Cat to see The English Rogues playing there. It was a very enjoyable gig, and the place was not as deserted as I feared it would be. It was not a big crowd, and we probably didn't drink enough beer to fully justify the fee that the band were paid, but everyone had a good time. My experience was enhanced by a new black back drop where the bands play. It made for far better pictures of the band in action. I am told it is not actually finished yet, and it may be even better when it is. Whether that, advertised by the pictures I took, will pull in more people is open to conjecture. When I got back home again after the gig, which incidently Angela did not go to, I ate my other two Scotch Eggs, and soon after finishing them I had brushed my teeth, got into bed, and fallen fast asleep. I slept OK, but I would have liked to have slept on past when I actually got up. I think it wasn't that long after 7am that I got up and started looking at all the pictures I had taken. In the afternoon I had taken over 100 snaps. A few were duff, but most needed very little work to make them presentable - mostly just a bit of cropping to centre things up a bit. Then I just chose a selection of the best. After I had dealt with them I took a look at the pictures I had taken of The English Rogues. I think the new black background in the Black cat made me a bit shutter happy. I took 583 snaps during the gig ! That was mainly because I had the camera set to take pictures in burst mode, and each "shot" would actually be a fast sequence of 5 or 6 pictures taken in quick succession. That allows me to choose the instant when the rapidly changing lights give the best effect, or when my subject is in best pose. Of course this does mean I have an awful lot of pictures to wade through and select the best. By the time I gave up on Sunday evening I had gone through as little as a third of them, but I did find a few pictures that seemed really good. Possibly the best I have ever taken at The Black Cat. Maybe tomorrow I'll show a couple here, and provide a link to Flickr for the rest of them. I did take a break from selecting/editing pictures during the afternoon. I mentioned to my friend Jodie that I had bought the turquoise cheese, and she insisted on seeing it, and trying it. She not only likes cheese, but turquoise too. In fact to say she likes turquoise is an understatement of a grand order ! So Jodie popped over for a couple of hours, tested the cheese, and we tasted a few vodkas. Then it was back to photo editing, but only for another hour before I got fed up with it. One of the things I hoped for last night was some more Thai food from my neighbour, but it seems that peace offering for the disruption caused by having the builders in has now ended, but I have been given a new offer. Today a new skip should arrive to replace the one that their builders have filled to well over capacity. I have been given official permission to take advantage of it, and I will be most pleased to dump a couple of old TVs in it. Other things I will be doing tonight are getting the dressing on my back changed by the nurse at the surgery, and more photo editing. I could easily give up on the latter because I already got a fair selection of pictures for a photo album, but I am sure there are some really good snaps still to be found in the 583 I took on Saturday night ! |
| Thursday 4th May 2017 |
| 12:47 BST The horrible greyness left me feeling quite depressed yesterday (there were other reasons, and I might mention them later). In theory it shouldn't have felt that cold yesterday, but there was enough wind to make 11° C feel a lot chillier than it actually was. Today is different - sort of !  I felt thoroughly fed up at work yesterday. The dull weather was the big trigger, but other lesser things needled me. Windows 7 (on my work PC) sometimes annoys me for reasons even I don't always know - probably because I have less control over it than I like. Having to use Outlook 365 really annoys me. Half the time it is on the verge of crashing with frequent "not responding" messages, and because it is all done online it can sometimes be very slow to react and update. Then there is my workmate, or co-worker, or the guy who frequently uses my room. Worse than that, he often takes over my work bench leaving me no place to do my own work. In some respects that doesn't bother me, but I do get bored sitting around doing nothing - although I wasn't totally doing nothing yesterday. I did a few small jobs for others. Stuff like crimping cables. I can do that sitting at my PC. One of the real irritations of my co-worker is that he insists in doing a lot of stuff himself that I could do better and faster myself. If he stuck to writing software, and similar stuff it would be mostly OK, but whenever he tries to do any soldering he makes a mess of it, and then I am lumbered with sorting out his mess. It would be far better if he just asked me to do it all in the first place. Most other people do, and my good reputation at work is based on doing those odd jobs quickly, accurately, and in many cases better, or prettier than originally imagined. Anyway, I didn't resign yesterday, although the thought kept passing through my head. Maybe the next time I am nagged about "Performance Hub" I will think about it strongly again. Performance Hub is a piece of American software (I think it is American - it has that sort of smell about it), and it's purpose is to record stuff like work objectives, and how well they have been achieved. It is also where the results and notes of monthly one-to-ones are recorded. If there is other bollocks to it as well. Ultimately it is used to guide my boss to my end of year appraisal. In turn that guides those further up the food chain to decide on bonuses and/or pay rises. To me it is just a load of intrusive bollocks. I have made my prime objective, and I think it was even accepted into the system - to come to work, to do some work, to go home again ! It was a great relief to go home yesterday. The dull weather meant that I didn't resume that little bit of hourly exercise I started the day before, and so the first time I stretched my legs was when I was going home. After some initial stiffness I found my legs were working well again. I doubt I broke any records, but my walk to the station was fairly brisk, and once again I did a few short runs on the platform at the station. The first was to run as far down the platform as I could because the front of the train passed me as I waited for the left doors to open. I managed to run all the way from the lift to the second to last carriage before getting on the train. I guess the distance I ran was only in the region of 200ft, but I still find even a shirt distance like that a novelty. Once on the train I made my way toward the middle of the train - which is as far as you can go. At Clapham Junction I got off, and far enough to get on the back doors of the third carriage from the front - or just over one carriage length. When we got to Waterloo I walked briskly to the escalator, and because there was no one in front I ran to the top ! There was no reason to do all this running as I was doing it, but it turned out to be really handy. After crossing the link to Waterloo East, also at a fairly brisk pace, I noticed that the 15:50 train was running 3 minutes late. I had just enough time to rush down the platform to arrive at my favourite boarding spot at exactly the same time as the train got there. It was the first, and only good thing that happened yesterday. I had threatened to get very drunk last night but that didn't happen. I had some food....well to be honest I had too much food. I tried to watch a bit of TV, but the news bored me, although I did watch some of a Time Team episode. To be a bit creative I uploaded three photo albums to Flickr. If you click here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/135353558@N03/albums - you can find new photo albums of Life Of Brian, Back To The Frey, and 1st Class Stamps, plus all the older albums. Once I had uploaded the albums, and captioned some of the pictures, I remembered that I wanted to drink lots of whisky. Unfortunately there was only time for one glass of whisky, and then it was time for bed. I didn't even have time to wash my hair - one of the things I was intending to do last night. I think I have given up trying to work out if I slept well or not. I have recently concluded that sometimes when I think I have slept badly I feel OK the next day, and sometimes when I think I have slept well I feel lousy the next day. I only know two things for definite about last night's sleep. The first is that I had some sort of dream that involved changing trains at Ealing Broadway station, and that I had a dinner plate and cutlery with me that needed washing up (it all seemed to make some sort of sense in the dream, but I'm blowed if I can remember what it was). The second thing is that I woke up 20 minutes before I needed to. Waking up a bit early was sort of handy because it gave me a bit longer to wash my hair this morning. Ultimately though it was a waste of time. My guts were feeling a little volatile this morning, although not explosively so. My hair was wet. The weather was cold and grey, and I just didn't want to go to work today. So I didn't. I slightly expanded the truth when I called work this morning. It was perfectly true that the hole in my back (where the sebacious cyst was removed) was itching, and at one point it did seem to be very slightly tender when I laid on it this morning, but I didn't seem out an extra appointment with the nurse to get it checked. I am seeing the nurse at 6pm tomorrow for real, and will get it checked than. I expect it will be the same old story - the occasional itchiness is a good thing, and it is caused by the skin re-growing. I guess there are three useful things I have done today that I could not have done if I was at work. The first was to sweep the garden path again. When I cleared up the debris that next door's builders had spilled onto it last time it was wet. This morning it was dry and I could sweep the dry dust away. It's currently clean enough to walk on with bare feet - which is pointless unless the weather warms up a lot ! The next thing I did was to go to Aldi. I had intended to go there over the weekend, but never got around to it. This morning I probably got a little carried away in Aldi. I only bought a smattering of perishable food to eat now, but I did buy a lot of canned or bottled food. I'm not sure if I am stocking up for WW3, or a harsh winter, but my selection of canned goods is looking fairly good for the moment. Add three 2l bottles of diet cola plus a 1l (or 1,5l ?) bottle of fabric conditioner to the weight of the canned stuff and the other stuff I bought, and it all added up to one heavy rucksack, and two very heavy bags to lug home. I did it not stop at a fair pace, but only just ! The final useful thing I did was to collect a parcel from the corner shop. I was so pleased how my 160 LED video light worked to brighten up the ceiling above the band, and indirectly the band themselves, at the recent gig in The Coach And Horses that I ordered another two from Amazon. It cost a little extra P&P but it is very handy to have parcels delivered to the corner shop. I guess it was just after 11am when I got an email to say the parcel was ready to pick up - which is far easy than sitting in the front room looking out for a dodgy postman.  The next thing of any significance today should be boozing. Thursday night has come around again, and tonight we should be meeting in The Shortlands Tavern. As I write this I don't feel terribly keen to go. I probably will though. Before than I fancy a lay down, and a snooze ! |
