Today has started as dull as ditchwater, and the forecast concurs with this observation. Unfortunately it also predicts it will last all day. The only positive thing that can be said is that it will be dry all day, and with the temperature at 10° C in the middle of the day, and only a couple of degrees less at the extremities, it will be another "not cold", but not warm either day. Another positive thing is that sunset tonight will be after 4pm by a whole minute. It is a painfully slow process, but the days are finally getting longer. Tomorrow may be a degree warmer than today, and there might even be a few minutes of sunshine just as the sun is setting. Unfortunately the temperature will drop a lot tomorrow night, and there will follow a series of much colder days, and even colder nights.

  I felt mostly OK yesterday morning, but it was probably a reaction to the gloomy morning that I didn't feel very dynamic. It made one of the first significant things I did something where I had to really push myself to do it. It was a shopping trip to Aldi. It is only a 6 or 7 minute walk to Aldi, but I think it took longer yesterday. It wasn't helped by the shoes I was wearing. A couple of days prior to yesterday they seemed very comfortable, but yesterday it was like wearing ill fitting wooden clogs, and the walk to (and from) the supermarket was a bit of a slog.

  I astounded myself with what I ended up buying in Aldi. Apart from drinks, most of it was salad ingredients, or stuff to put in salad. One item may have been redundant. I am not sure why I needed two heads of Romaine lettuce when I bought two (or was it 3 ?) bags of loose salad leaves, but I bought them anyway. Buying the bottle of balsamic vinegar was probably an investment - perhaps for after BREXIT when supplies may be low and expensive. When I got home I realised I already had two unopened bottles of the stuff already, although I originally though one bottle was olive oil.
  This was one of the results of all my salad buying. Many of the ingredients in this Greek inspired salad actually came from Tesco. To keep the oil/fat content very low it is dressed in just balsamic vinegar, and no olive oil. The only fat and oil in it comes from the 4 or 5 cubes of Feta cheese, and the green and black olives. This was actually my dinner last night. For lunch I had a smoked salmon salad using the second half of the half price smoked salmon I had bought from Tesco. These salads are very tasty, but they are not always very satisfying. Yesterday I ate far too many nuts, compared to the amount proposed by my grand imaginary plan. There were several times when my desire for something to nibble on overcame my will power.

  The only other significant thing I did yesterday was to select and process the best, or most interesting photos I had taken at the gig on Saturday night. I was rather disappointed that I had not taken anywhere near as many good photos as I had hoped. The big problem was, as always, the lighting. The stage lights in The Elm Tree are bright enough that no flash should be required, and now they cycle through some sensible colours (they were stuck on pink for months and months once) there were times when decent flesh tones could be captured. The only trouble is some of the more interesting pictures, the type with good smiles or poses, so often seem to be when people were lit with outlandish colours. It didn't help that Back To The Fray had their own lights at the side of the stage, and they sometimes clashed with the fixed stage lights. Nevertheless, I did get a few good snaps, and some where, for instance, Miranda was lit up bright green, like an Orion slave girl from Star Trek, did respond well to being converted into black and white.

   There was still a slight haze in the air at first light this morning, but the temperature has been climbing again. Today will probably be about 1° cooler than yesterday, and the temperature range will follow a similar pattern to yesterday. Also like yesterday, it seems that it will be another very grey, overcast day. The afternoon temperature should be 12° C. Tomorrow, the last day of the year, will be another degree cooler than today, and once again the sky will be covered in dense, 50 shades of grey, clouds.

  Yesterday was a surprisingly busy day. I finished writing yesterday saying I was thinking about going out to take some photos. I did, and I ended up walking a lot further than I ever thought I might. It was essentially a train spotting expedition, although I took few pictures of trains on my travels. I started out walking very carefully to the station, avoiding all the Triffid tendrils waiting to trip me up, and I arrived there safely. I also got there feeling sort of good. Once again the fresh air seemed good, and my legs seemed to be working well - probably a lot better than the rest of my body.

  My only major discomfort was when sitting down on the train. As I sat down the leg of my jeans rubbed against the damaged bit of my knee, and it was bloody uncomfortable for a few seconds before I pulled the leg up a bit to give more room inside it. That was the last time my injuries gave me any trouble while I was out and about. My first destination was New Beckenham station, just 3 stops away from Catford Bridge. Prior to 1866 the station was a further 100 to 200 yards further to the south. Until about 10 - 15 years ago the old station house still stood, but the house was demolished, and the land, along with an extensive area of garden, was built with little modern houses. Part of the old platform face still exists to this day, and it was that I wanted to photograph.
 Even though the station is visible just a few hundred yards away, it is a bit of a walk to get to the road bridge that crosses the railway, and gives the best view of the old platform face. It was pure serendipity that my arrival there was a good time to include two trains in the picture. The old platform, disused since 1866, can be seen on the left of the rear of the white train. That is the Charing Cross service, and will be calling at Catford Bridge on it's way there. The blue train in the distance is a Charing Cross to Hastings service that has been diverted because of engineering work. The spur hat branches off to the right goes to Beckenham Junction.

  An aerial I had seen suggested it would be easy to get to the fence at the back of the disused platform, but reality showed two big problems. The fence turned out to be far more substantial than a simple wire link fence, and worse than that was that the estate has big gates across the access road. It is possible the side gate may not have been locked, but I couldn't be bothered to intrude, and carried on walking. It was quite a long walk, although probably less than a mile, to my next destination - Kent House station.
 Kent House station is a big and busy station with four platform faces. I didn't actually go up to the platforms, but I walked through the subway/tunnel from one side of the station to this side of the station. The building seems to be in good repair, and well looked after, although the biggest improvement is the access road. The last time I was there, maybe two years ago, like many back roads in Beckenham, it was not asphalted, and was just gravel. It gave it a nice rustic look.
 From Kent House station I walked all the way to Beckenham Road tram stop. Once again, and with no planning, my timing was just right to take a snap of the tram to Wimbledon just leaving the stop as a Southern "heavy rail" train from Beckenham Junction was passing on it's way to Crystal Palace, and probably Victoria beyond that.  Four minutes later a tram came from the opposite direction to take me to Beckenham Junction.

 At Beckenham Junction I was more or less ready to go home, but I opted for a little more sight seeing, and an idea for a specific destination. I went to the bus stop for a 54 bus to Elmers End. It gave me a chance to check that after all the years of digging up the high street, and the buses being diverted, everything was back to normal. It was, and it seemed a quite smooth, and fast ride to Elmers End. The speed was critical if I didn't want to have a long wait for the next train to Catford Bridge. While the bus wasn't actually going fast, it sort of surprised me how quickly we arrived at Elmers End, and instead of having to run for the train, I had a good 5 minute wait for it.

  The whole idea of going to Elmers End, and getting the train back to Catford Bridge was that I could exit Catford Bridge station just a hundred yards from the new Sainsbury's Local shop. I went in there and bought a few of their excellent salads as well as a couple of whole meal "subs". Once I got home I ate them in the wrong order. I ate the rolls first. I should have saved them for later in the evening because they seemed to slow me down a lot.

  I had a very relaxed afternoon, and early evening, and I wondered if I would ever find the enthusiasm to get out to the gig I wanted to go to. Fortunately I did, and so I set out into the dark roads of Catford, keeping a wary look out for any marauding plants as I walked to the station to get the  8.37pm train back to Elmers End station. The Elm Tree pub is just a 4 or 5 minute walk from the station - when you are feeling fresh !

  When I got there I was greeted by a very intrusive "security operative" who wanted to search my camera bag. I decided to play games with him by initially refusing with a big grin on my face, but I then relented. The odd thing was that my stark, but cheerful refusal must have started his brain working. I had barely open the zip enough to show the camera inside when he said "are you with the band ?". I said yes, and he quickly let me through and apologised "but it was just standard security". I told him he was a trouble maker, but I did it with a grin.

  Once inside the pub I was greeted by Miranda who gave me a big hug. That was a good start. A short while later, after he finished fiddling with his guitar, Brian stepped down and shook my hand. He would later buy me a pint of Guinness just as I was about to leave after the first set was finished. The only sad thing was that Angela couldn't make it because lover boy was feeling "frail". A whole month or more has gone by since he was released from hospital after a far more minor operation than the one I had, and he is still feeling frail. I can't help but think it was just an excuse not to go to the gig because he had a falling out with the band the last time they played, and he muscled in as a percussionist. Evidently he laid it on so thick that Angela didn't want to leave him and go out by herself to support her daughter singing.

 Even without Angela it was an enjoyable evening, and breaking all recent tradition, I didn't leave until after 11pm, although as I have said, getting an additional Guinness from Brian did delay my departure by an extra half hour (the trains were only half hourly). So I got to see 2 or 3 more songs from the second set before I took a stroll to the station. It did seem very slightly tiring as I walked to the station. It was partly because the walk to right side of the station to go home means walking up and over the humped road bridge, and partly just creeping fatigue.

  My train arrived on time, and I was soon on my way back to Catford Bridge. When I got there my legs were beginning to feel very heavy, and just walking over the footbridge seemed a bit like hard work. Despite eating those couple of big and heavy rolls from Sainsbury's in the early afternoon (which I could blame for my increasing fatigue) I couldn't resist getting a couple of chicken burgers and fries on the way home. I guess I can blame 4 pints of Guinness for that.

  I walked as fast as my legs could carry me from the fried chicken shop to home, but it seemed annoyingly slow. It was nice to get home, and tuck into my food. Once I had degreased my fingers I reviewed some of the pictures I took, and even transcoded one of the bits of video I shot. I think I have a good selection of pictures to make up a photo album of the gig, and that will be my main pre-occupation today. Some of the video I shot came out really well too. The video feature option on my Canon EOS 600D has rendered all my camcorders totally obsolete !

  It was about 1am when I got to bed last night. I can't decide if I slept well or not, but I do know that I would have loved to have spent a good few more hours in bed, and asleep. I feel rather tired this morning. Initially my chest was hurting too. I remember turning over in bed and hearing that crunch as something gives way in my superstructure, and on this occasion to was a bit painful, and  had to shift my position a bit sharpish ! Apart from yawning at an industrial level, I seem to mostly feel OK now - although I am sure I can change that if I make a stupid move !

  As I said, my main job today is going through the pictures I took last night, and tidying up the best of them. I also want to have a few extensive snoozes, and I think I want to to Aldi at some point. I think that seems enough for one day. I'll finish with one more picture. It is probably because we have had a mild start to winter that these fungus, seen a few tens of yards away from the exit of New Beckenham station, are flourishing. In honour of the famous painting by Van Klomp, I have named this fungus "boobies".

   Today's forecast has started off right. It is mild outside - at least as high as 9° C - and there is a covering of thick clouds. By 1pm the cloud should be thinner, and the temperature may be just a degree short of the afternoon high of 13° C. It would be nice if the pattern set over the last two days repeated itself, and the sun breaks through this afternoon - or before ! Tomorrow starts off a little cooler than today, but the prediction is that the temperature will soon rise, and the rest of the day will be very similar to today. One small uncertainty is that there is a small chance, as high as 11%, of rain tomorrow morning. That would put a dampener on the day - literally !

  Many things might have happened yesterday, and none of them did. There were two reasons for this. The simple one os that I got my dates mixed up, and Back To The Fray are playing tonight, and not last night. The other reason is that I had an accident, although I suspect it was no accident at all. I thought that it might be an interesting diversion to go and see what photos I could take of the remains of the platform of the original New Beckenham station. 10 or so years ago there was also an old station house to be seen, but that, and the extensive grounds it was located on, have been built on, but if I recall correctly there is still a short section of platform face to be seen.

  New Beckenham station is only 3 stops down the line from Catford Bridge station, and there were 4 trains an hour running yesterday. That should have made for a quick and easy photo expedition, and seeing that I had nothing else to do, I took a walk to the station. I got about halfway there when some nasty Triffid plant, disguised as a long bramble shoot, shot out and grabbed me around the foot. I tripped and went splat !
  I can't swear this was the actual Triffid tendril that tried to kill me, but if it wasn't, it was very similar to it. I went out and took this picture at first light this morning. As my face started heading for the pavement I somehow managed to react with lightning fast speed. Both my hands were free, and I put them out in front of me to break my fall. Somehow I managed to find a third hand to save my glass that were slipping off my head, and threatening to smash themselves on the hard paving slabs.

  At first I thought my knees had sustained the worst damage. Both were quite painful soon after when the adrenaline started to wear off. My left knee was sore, but most of the skin was intact. My right knee came off a lot worse. Quite a bit of skin must still be attached to the inside of my jeans leg, and the knee itself in not a pretty sight.
 This was the first picture I took when I took my jeans off at home. It looks a bit bland even if it was rather painful.
 Even this morning it doesn't look as spectacular as it feels. It was a little later when I realised it wasn't my knees that came off worse but my left hand. My right hand had some very light abrasions visible, but my left hand must have taken the full weight of my fall. Once again there is not a great deal to see, but apparently it is possible that I have fractured my scaphold - which I assume is a bone. This was suggested when I described my symptoms to someone who had fractured his scaphold twice. Although the abrasions are on the right side of my left palm, the really sore bit is the area where the palm, thumb and wrist meet.
  Once again the picture of my abrasions don't seem to look very spectacular this morning, but I assure you the pain is very real. It is centred more to the left of the visible abrasions. All in all it turned out to be a rather painful adventure. It also left me a bit shook up. I can't seem to explain it, but I felt really tired soon after getting home, and I ended up resting on my bed, and reading for the rest of the afternoon. What was particularly galling was that as I lay there the sun came out, and if it had been in the right place in the sky, it could have made for some very improved photos.

  Against all the pain and bad news there was one ray of light (apart from the sun coming out), and that was the fall had no effect at all on my costochondritis chest pains, or if it did it must have been a positive effect. My chest didn't complain at all except for the surge of adrenaline. That did make my chest feel sort of strange for a while, but there was no pain.

  It came as some relief late on when I found out that the gig I wanted to go to last night was actually on tonight. Had it been on last night I would probably have forced myself to go, and I would most probably milked my painful situation for any sympathy I could get (although I will confess I am thinking of sympathy from one person in particular if she was on her own). It meant I could watch a bit more TV - although that was hardly inspirational - and I could spend more time reading The Garden Of Rama, the third book in the Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke, and Gentry Lee. Much of the first half of the book was really good, but towards the end of the first half there is a certain amount "alien wonders" overload. I fear that the book is now going through a dull phase. Hopefully it will get exciting again later in the second half. Once this book is finished I have the fourth and final part of the series ready to read - "Rama Revealed".

  Once I had finished reading, and turned the light out, I didn't have any problems with my knee, but I had to be a bit careful with my left hand. That turned out to be mostly easier than I had thought - it's not easy trying to think about how you position your hands and legs etc when in bed. You do it without thinking, and so I had to wait until I was in bed to see what I actually did - although to be honest I still don't really know what I do with my hands apart from knowing that whatever it is didn't cause any discomfort to my left hand.

  On the whole I may have slept better than usual last night. While I feel sure I got up for a pee once or twice, it doesn't register on my conscious with any detail. Perhaps the bigger measure of how I felt when I got up this morning was how quickly I felt ready to go out and take the picture of the Triffid tendril. As I walked, breathing in the nice fresh air, it seemed like my legs wanted to walk, and while I could feel something from my right knee, it didn't seem to spoil the short walk, and I don't think it would have spoiled a longer walk. My left wrist/hand was definitely slightly sore as I walked, but the most important thing was that the pain was no so bad that I couldn't pick up, and drink from, a full pint beer glass - sadly not filled with beer.

  This morning, which seems to be evaporating far too fast into the afternoon, I might go out and take the pictures I intended to take yesterday - assuming the trains are running today. I haven't checked yet, and I haven't heard any yet, but I generally don't hear them anyway despite being only a few hundred yards from the railway. Apart from that I have only one other tentative plan to go to the shops for some more shower gel. Most of my energy I will be saving for tonight, and the Back To The Fray gig in Elmers End.

   Today's forecast is like a very slightly warmer version of the forecast for yesterday. Looking out the window doesn't provide much hope, but it would be nice if today's forecast turned out to be as wrong as yesterday. The latest revision to the forecast hardly changes anything. It would seem that today is going to be overcast all day, and the highest temperature will be 9° C this afternoon. Tomorrow may start an even darker grey than most of today, but it will be almost mild with the temperature predicted to be 12° C in the afternoon.

  If I had known that yesterday was actually going to be a mostly sunny day I might have done something different, but all I did was enjoy the sunshine coming through the front windows while sometimes feeling a bit bored. As I discovered later, I needn't have been bored at all ! The first thing I did yesterday was to finish washing the clothes I had left soaking from the day before. Getting the clothes out of the stone cold water, and wringing them out was most unpleasant, but from then on the rinses in hot water warmed my hands up again, and after three rinses followed by fabric conditioner I was able to hang the washing up to dry on the clothes horse in front of the heater in the living room.

  The next thing I did was to go to Tesco. There was a fair amount of stuff I wanted, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to get it from Tesco or Aldi. I chose Tesco for two reasons. Firstly they do seem to keep their ready to use salad ingredients better, and secondly I thought they might have a few bargain, ex-Xmas, reduced price items. They did have lots of reduced price, often only slightly reduced, chocolate and similar stuff, but that didn't interest me.

  I came away with a couple of bags of assorted salad leaves, plus some stuff like celery - I have some serious salad making to do ! I didn't buy any cheese or meat, but I did buy quite a few little cans of mackerel or sardines in interesting sounding sauces. It seems that Tesco are currently trialling some "posh" tinned fish, and are selling it quite cheaply. I expect the prices on it will rise to something silly if it sells well. If it is nice I ought to get back there to buy more cans while it is still 90p, and before it goes up to something silly like £2.50 a can !

  The final things of interest that I bought I can't really put a name on, but I bought two packs. They appear, and sort of taste, like a blob of cheese mixture on a thin slice of soft greasy baguette. The original packs were labelled "Pick and mix - 8 pieces for £2", but the sticker over the top said 40p. At that reduction they were worth taking a chance on. I feel they will be nicer if put under the grill for a bit, and eaten warm, but they were nice-ish when cold, although they did leave a bit of a greasy feeling all the way down my throat.

  After going to Tesco, and having a bite to eat, I didn't really do much for some time. Eventually, perhaps inspired by looming boredom, I washed a towel. It was a medium sized bath towel, and it was hard work. Towels usually need more rinses than t-shirts, and it was hard work. So I did it in two stages with a rest between, but had it hanging up to dry early in the evening. By 6pm it was time for sprouts, but my sprout surprise was not good. I had tried to cook it in a container that was too small to allow the stock to boil freely, and to percolate all through the rice. I had cooked it enough the day before - I think - but when I came to eat it yesterday I found parts of it were still very cold.

  That put me off, and I resorted to plan 2. This was to heat up the rice that came with the Thai curry given to me by my neighbour, and to reheat it with chicken stock, a diced green chilli, and a diced up smoked sausage. I did that in a bigger pan, and it was definitely scalding hot all the way through. For "pudding" I had some sugar free choc chip cookies. |They may have been sugar free, but they contained a lot of calories. It is my intention to try and have a very reduced calorie day, today.

  While eating I watched some Star Trek - The Original Series, and then followed that with Star Trek - Enterprise. Neither really grabbed my attention for some reason. I think that the rose tinted glasses we use to view the past made me forget that there were plenty of not-very-good episodes of the original series, and Enterprise was only good in places, but the attempts to make it serial, instead of stand alone episodes, spoiled it a lot despite some episodes being brilliant.

  After Star Trek Enterprise finished I decided to do what I thought I would be doing on Xmas day, and probably Boxing day - reading the book I had specially ordered for the occasion - the third part of Arthur C Clarke's Rama series. I lost some enthusiasm for it when the very long second part seemed to ramble on too much, and had bits that were boring even if they did contain background material that was later used in the narrative. Once I got reading I found the third book to be a much better read. It is less about the sex lives of the main characters before they started the great adventure, and more like classic Sci Fi. I read until gone midnight.

  I didn't really sleep for more than about 6 hours last night, but it felt like I got some good sleep. My main disturbance was at about 5am when it sounded like the fan in my fan heater, left on low, was about to expire. It wasn't that at all, but the fan in the power supply of my web server. I had to get up to give it a large tap on the power supply. That shut it up, and after a pee I went back to bed, and fell asleep again. A little after 7am I woke up again. There was just a slight hint of the coming dawn in the eastern sky, and maybe that was enough to make me think I would get up soon.

  I did try for sleep again, and maybe I got a few minutes, but basically I was awake, and not feeling that bad. There are still many things I could complain about, but it still seems my head cold is finally over after all these weeks,