Today has started fairly nice, although maybe not as nice as the forecast predicted. There are a few heavy looking clouds in the sky, mostly to the north, and we have only had sunny periods instead of non stop sunshine. I think that may well be the case for the next few hours despite what the forecast might say. From about 4pm rain is forecast. It may only be light rain, but it still comes at a very inconvenient time for me. This morning has started off quite mild, and by this afternoon the temperature is supposed to reach 21° C.. It should be another mild night tonight. Tomorrow may reach 21° C again, but maybe only briefly. There is a very small chance of rain tomorrow with the biggest, but still small chance in the morning. There should be sunny intervals all day, but probably no very long spells of sunshine.

  Yesterday saw my chest/ribcage aches and pains subside a lot. My chest still felt a bit tender, but mostly gave no trouble. I concluded, rightly or wrongly, that what had been just a normal sporadic flare up was made worse by the 'flu jab I had on Monday. At first it didn't seem that jab had caused any bad effects, but it seems it just took a bit longer than previous years. In the end I noticed typical mild 'flu symptoms such as joints and muscles mildly aching, and with hindsight it was obvious that it would amplify the aches and pains I get from my wonky ribcage.

  I hope that 'flu jab does provide protection against this winters 'flu strain. It isn't always easy to balance the pros and cons of the 'flu jab. If it does protect against the misery of a fully fledged attack of 'flu than it is a very good thing, and the day or two of usually very mild symptoms is a small price to pay. Even the one time when it gave me a day of half strength 'flu symptoms, which needed a day off work, it was still probably worth it. The difficulty is that there is no way to know if you would have been laid low with 'flu if you didn't have the jab. Another slightly unusual effect this year is that I noticed that the site of the injection was quite sore about 36 hours after the injection. Maybe I just didn't notice it earlier because I had other pains to worry about. One other unusual thing is that the injection seems to have left a little red dot on my arm. I don't think that has happened before. Maybe I shall blame it on the pharmacist being not as well practiced as the nurses. His injection was definitely a bit more painful than the nurses best efforts.

  I was still feeling uncomfortable yesterday morning, and so I decided not to go out - at least not to go very far. I had still intended to go for a walk to the shops, or in the park, but I think I got too relaxed for that. I certainly didn't try and do any garden clearance, but I did do something almost as hard. I washed a large bath towel. Manhandling, and wringing that out by hand took a lot of hard work, and raised a sweat, but the extra work my heart had to do didn't cause any problems. In fact it was the other way around. As has happened in the past, all that lifting of the very heavy wet towel, and wringing it out, seemed to pull my ribcage back to a more favourable setting which seemed far more comfortable.

  That bit of hand laundry was the only physical thing I did yesterday. The other work I did was just on my PC, and took hours. It was to go through hundreds of songs, ripped as mp3 files, and editing their id3 metadata tags. In reality it was a pointless exercise that had it's roots in a project I was considering while I was at work. Having got fed up with most legal streamed radio, and at the time the prospect of a sort of pirate internet station I used to listen to at work closing down, I decided I ought to start my own private radio station.

  One thing I wanted to do was to have the correct titles being displayed for the tracks that were playing, and to do that all the id3 tags needed to be correct - and perhaps more importantly, consistent. So as I added more and more tracks to the playlist I would edit their id3 tags. In the end I ended up with a folder containing over 2000 songs ready to broadcast over the internet. Then I realised that I may as well just put them on a memory stick and play them at work off that. So the idea of streaming them onto the internet fell by the wayside.

  Well over a year later I still use those 2000 plus tracks as my main listening source. In theory it can take a couple of days before a song repeats. After all this time I decided that I ought to make a "psuedo radio 2" folder as an alternative. So I have been collecting songs together again, and editing their id3 tags to be consistent. At the moment I have 366 songs in the playlist, and because they include some longer prog rock tracks, it should take 25 hours to play the entire list. I hope to increase it to 2000 songs in the end - and then I'll work on "Pseudo radio 3" !

  Yesterday I looked in the fridge and considered what to have for dinner. There was not a lot in there, and what there was didn't feel very exciting. So I ordered a naughty Chinese takeaway. It was very nice, very satisfying, and all that salt and sugar has probably halved my life expectancy, but what's the point of life if you can't enjoy it. I think the best individual dish was chopped spare ribs with salt and chilli. I didn't notice the salt, but the chillies did give it a nice, but not powerful kick. Maybe I was feeling a bit full, but the chow mien did not seem very good. I picked out the chunks of meat, and then left over half the noodles.

  I was in bed nice and early last night. It seems I have reverted back to early nights like when I was at work, and with it getting dark so early now, it is going to be a major upheaval to get out to gigs again. I assume I will start going to gig again, although when I sit back and look at what's on offer I find that I don't feel very excited about the majority of the gigs. There are very few, or maybe none that I would consider travelling far to see, but there are a couple coming up that are not too far away, and could be worth trying to get to. I'm not sure that there is anything this weekend that will get me out, but I'll have another look at the listings again to see what's on.

  I can't make up my mind if I slept well or not. Some of it was good sleep, or so I believe. I certainly wasn't kept awake by chest pains, and wondering if I ought to go to the hospital. There was one short period of time that I was kept awake by another thing. It was a thing that happens sporadically, maybe once a month, maybe every two months, and it is as mysterious as it is annoying. It is an itch on the sole of my foot. It was the right foot last night, and maybe it has only happened to the right foot a few times in the past, but I can't remember that much detail. I have no idea what causes the itch. It is like the result of a tiny cut or similar injury, but there is nothing I can see. It is possible it is nerve damage caused by excess blood glucose, and if it is it could be a sign of far worse things to come in the indefinite future.

  This morning my neck, and right shoulder were a bit stiff and sore when I first got up, but they seem to have settled down fairly quickly. My chest still feels a bit tender, and under some circumstances I get a sort of tight feeling across the very top of my chest, almost directly under my chin. It is a bit weird, but nothing that unusual. I probably do really need to do a bit of walking today to settle everything down. I need to do a bit of shopping so I have something exciting to come home to after my late afternoon exercise - going out for my Thursday drink with the lads.

  Today promises to be better than yesterday. If it happens as forecast, we should see the temperature climb to 22° C. The only flaw might be at 4pm when a few clouds may block the sun now and then. Of course that is taking the forecast too literally, and sods law says the forecast will be revised soon, and the new version may not be quite as good as the one in the screenshot above. Tomorrow may start dull, but there should be sunny intervals from a few hours after daybreak until almost the end of the day. The temperature will probably hit 21° C, but from 5pm there could be showers that will continue into the evening.

  Yesterday was both exceptionally good, and also a bit bad. The exceptionally good was that Angela accepted my invitation to meet in the park at lunchtime. It was wonderful to see her on her own, and it was lovely to sit in the hot sunshine with her. She enjoyed seeing me as well. She also liked my gifts - almost. As well as returning her expensive electric toothbrush that she had left here after the days when she would almost spend the night with me, I gave her some photos I had printed out, and put in cheap frames for her.

  Two of them were of her daughter Miranda singing with Life Of Brian. She liked one of them, but she really like the other, and said it was going straight on the wall. Another photo was one I took of her standing under an umbrella outside her workplace last spring. At the time she said she liked it, and she does look very desirable in it, but now she is not so sure she likes it. I think that is because it may be difficult for her to explain how I managed to take it to lover boy. It was, of course, taken one day when we were secretly meeting most days of the week.

  It may be that Angela has no need to explain that photo. She has decided that she will say that she met me briefly yesterday to receive the photos, and to soften the blow, and as a distraction, there was one more photo that I had to grit my teeth to even look at, let alone print. It is of lover boy himself at his drum kit. Being a drummer, or currently a drummer on hold while he has a heart problem fixed, he was usually at the back, and poorly lit, but I managed to find one picture of him that was usable.

  In some ways it felt like time had stood still when I was with Angela in the park, but there was a reluctance to get too close and special friendly, and I don't think it was just me who was like that. Angela went to great pains to say how happy she was to be with lover boy, but it was like she had to force the words out. There was definitely some hesitation, and one explanation was that she was trying to convince herself more than me. The alternate explanation was that she was just stepping carefully over a subject that was not nice for me. In truth it was probably a bit of both.

  When the time came for Angela to get back to work I walked with her to her workplace. Outside we said our goodbyes, and I said we must do this again next spring, and maybe we will, or maybe there could be some excuse to meet before then. Maybe a pre-Xmas drink might be a good excuse. I couldn't let Angela go without a hug, and I hope we both enjoyed the 3 or 4 seconds in each other arms, plus a kiss on the cheek.

 I walked home via the Poundshop after that. As usual I went in for just a few things, and came out with much more. The much more included some very naught yoghurt coated peanuts. That yoghurt coating is full of sugar, at least I presume it is, and I currently try to avoid concentrated sources of sugar. I think I am going to use them as a scape goat for something that had already starting to happen much earlier.

 That something was my rib cage playing up. It was slightly sore when I got up. It seemed to get better when I had a warm shower, and then got a lot worse when I put a t-shirt on. It was just the action of raising my left arm, and twisting it about as I threaded that arm through the short sleeve of a t-shirt. It triggered a well known pain just above my left man nipple. It is a sort of burning sensation. As I walked to the park I could feel my ribcage moving with a sort of clicking and grinding sensation. These are all precursors of trouble to come. The first bit of trouble was when I did a sharp right turn in the park. As I did so I felt stabbing pains down some of my right side. I got a lovely picture though !
  The sky was blue. The grass was green, and so were some of the trees, but some trees were showing their autumn colours. There is nothing in the picture to give a clue as to how warm it was. You'll have to imagine that yourself.

  Apart from those individual distinct pains, which were mainly short lived, and the annoying but painless clicks and pops, I arrived home with my chest feeling delicate, but mostly OK. It wasn't long  before I ate those yoghurt coated peanuts that I mentioned earlier. They were a poor, and probably ill advised substitute for breakfast and/or lunch. After eating them I laid on my bed to read for a bit, and after a while, to have a snooze. I woke up with my chest feeling very sore. It was sore enough to wonder if it was something more than the usual, but not sore enough to be a heart attack....or so I hoped.

  Some pain killers, and possibly more appropriately, some antacid/indigestion tablets reduced the discomfort to a minimum, but I was still aware of some tenderness for almost the rest of the day. I avoided doing anything that might aggravate the problem except for sitting quietly at my PC and laying on my bed. Unlike the Angina I had in 2013, and which was definitely a heart problem that only reared it's ugly head when I did any excercise, my chest/ribcage pains tend to be worse when resting, and apart from odd pains caused by twisting movement, or similar, usually go away when doing exercise.

  I spent quite a lot of time photo editing yesterday afternoon, and into the evening. It can be hard mental work, but otherwise the only energy expended is to move the mouse on my PC. Sometimes I would get some discomfort that had to be relieved by having a stretch, or walking a couple of paces. It is a posture problem, or so it seems. The pictures I was going through were the pictures I had taken on Monday when nI went out exploring north London's railways.

  Today should be quite different to yesterday. It looked a bit grey at sunrise, and it was a lot cooler than the forecast predicted - although it may not have specifically predicted the temperature outside my back door on the north side of my house. It was just 7° C at about 8am. The sun is out now, and the forecast says it should shine all day. That will, or should, raise the temperature to a very pleasant 20° C. The latest revision to the forecast says it should stay that high for several hours this afternoon. It looks like it is going to be an even milder night tonight, and tomorrow should start at 12° C. It is currently predicted to peak at 23° C, but there will be a bit less sunshine than today should have.

  I went out twice yesterday. The first was a successful visit to the pharmacy. To my great relief they had my repeat prescription there, but they hadn't made it up. It was quiet in there, and they said they would get it together in about 10 minutes if I cared to wait. While I was waiting, the nice pharmacist, Maurizio, asked if I would like a 'flu jab. Apart from possible problems with early batches of the 'flu vaccine, such as it not offering full protection to this years 'flu strain, it was better than getting hassled by the group practice, and 100 yard long queues for their walk in service. So I said yes. It wasn't as pain free as some of the nurses sometimes manage, but he did a reasonably good job. A day later and I seem to not have been affected by the jab - some years I suffer from some mild 'flu symptoms for 24 hours.

  The second time I went out is more long winded to explain. I went out to put some extra miles on my 60+ Oystercard that gives me free travel on London's buses, tubes, and trains. I had two particular destinations on mind. One was to go to Turkey Street station somewhere up in North London. There was only one reason why I wanted to go there, and that was because the name seemed funny to me. Having been there, and checked on Google maps, it is less funny now. The station itself is fine, and it is named after the road it crosses, and that may be named after the Turkey Brook that runs alongside it for some of it's length.

  A few days ago there was hope that today might be fairly sunny, but with every revision of the forecast less and less sunshine has been shown. The very latest revision restricts any chance of sunshine to a few sunny spells between 5 and 6pm. The sunny spells between 8am and 10am have disappeared from the forecast, and in protest, the sky which seemed to have enough broken cloud to let through the odd ray of sunshine, is now blanketed with thick cloud. Fortunately the temperature, estimated to be 17° C for several hours this afternoon, should stay the same, although the brief blip to 18°C at 4pm seems to have disappeared. Tomorrow is still set to be fine. There should be plenty of sunshine, and the temperature could reach 20° C if we are lucky.

  It was fairly pleasant when I went shopping in Tesco yesterday. That was about the only thing of any significance that I did, although I was not completely idle. For various reasons, the details of which were not really significant enough to remember, I did seem to go up and down the stairs a lot yesterday afternoon. It was mostly to go to the kitchen for food reasons, but also to do some low priority stuff on my laptop. I was ripping a couple of DVDs to make back ups of them. It is a CPU intensive task, and while the CPU on my laptop is pretty poor by modern standards, it was happy to sit there slowly munching through the bytes, and leaving my desktop machine upstairs free to do other stuff.

  One of the standard problems of going to Tesco was that I came away with some stuff that I couldn't resist eating too soon. Although in yesterday's case it was just some loose ham from the reduced price shelf. Maybe the apple and pear, with a chunk of cheese, were in excess of what I needed, but apart from the cheese, the fruit is apparently good for us. At least I deliberately selected types that don't seem to taste sweet, and so theoretically have less natural sugar in them.

  One superfluous item was a packet of sausages that I had bought in Aldi earlier in the week. I ate them in a sort of protest. One item bought from Tesco was a roast beef ready meal, and it was just one tick away from being describable as horrible. It certainly was not enjoyable, although I am not sure why. The roast potatoes were the best thing. They were surprisingly nice considering they were microwaved. Unfortunately the Yorkshire pudding did not seem to be organic in origin. It was not just that the texture after microwaving was poor, but it actually tasted horrible. The carrots tasted horrible, and the beef tasted strange. The gravy it came in tasted fine. If the meal had just been the gravy and roast potato it would be a very small meal, but very nice.

  During the afternoon I had this idea re-assure Angela that I was looking after myself, and keeping an eye on my health. I checked my blood pressure, and I have to admit it was higher than expected. In some ways this was to be expected after running out of most of my medications, and I had to almost get myself in a zen like trance to get a blood pressure reading that was only on the very edge of acceptably low to photograph, and send to Angela. She never responded to my message which was a little annoying, but I expect she was busy, or had lover boy hovering over her shoulder. She has probably forgotten about it now.

  During the evening I was laying on my bed reading, and concluded that my pillows were uncomfortable. It was tricky to know what to do because I find the height of my pillows to be very important. I decided to replace one pillow with a memory foam pillow I had bought a few years back, and at the time decided I didn't like it. This time it seemed fine just on it's own. I went to bed after watching some TV, possibly just after 10pm, and it seemed like my head felt comfortable.

  I did seem to sleep well for quite a few hours before waking up for a pee. I felt rather good for sleeping on that pillow. It seemed like it was the cure for several ongoing aches and pains. The only problem was it only seemed that way. After my pee I got back into bed, and I was soon fast asleep again. I don't know what I did different, but I woke up an hour later and those aches and pains were not only back, but magnified. My neck and shoulders felt really stiff and painful. I tried to be very careful when I went back to sleep, and somehow I managed to wake up again feeling far better, and the stiff neck and shoulders almost, but only almost back to being OK.

  I don't think it had anything to do with the pillow, but I had two memorable bits of dreams lodged in my mind when I woke up. One dream was very frustrating, but the other was intriguing. The first dream was set at a gig in a large hall. I was there with my camera, but for some reason I had only brought one lens with me, and not only was it not the ideal lens for the circumstances, but it kept fogging up. I had to keep taking off a filter element at the front, and cleaning it. By the time the dream seemed to fade away I don't think I had managed to take a single picture.

  The other dream sort of followed on from the first dream, but there was a large gap in time between the two. In the first dream I was not the only photographer, and there was one there who is a sort of friend. He must have offered me a lift home, although I have no memory of the offer, or getting in his car. My second dream started with me sitting in the front passenger seat of his car. In the dream he owned a self driving car, and I was alone in it with no knowledge of how to tell it where to go, and how to stop it. Fortunately it stopped at some traffic lights very near the Post Office in Catford. I have no idea why, but I wanted to go into the post office, and so while the car was stopped at the lights I jumped out. As soon as the lights changed the car drove off by itself to who knows where. It was probably a vision of the future...maybe.

  This morning it felt prudent to take a couple of pain killers, and they, maybe helped by a hot-ish shower seem to have left me feeling sort of OK. I have little planned for today except to go along to the pharmacy once my freshly washed hair is a bit drier. Hopefully they will have my repeat prescription made up and waiting for me. If not then I hope the prescription has been printed out and waiting for me in reception next door in the group practice. The worst case scenario is if they want to force me into getting my meds reviewed by a doctor. The difficult there is actually trying to get an appointment !

  There is a fantastically small possibility of Angela contacting me to arrange a meet so she can find out what it is that I said I would be giving to her. The chances of that happening are probably not even worth considering, and despite my eagerness for it to happen, a meeting in the park when it should be warm and sunny tomorrow would be a far better idea. I think my intention is to assume that I won't hear from Angela, and to go out somewhere to distract me from food. I really need to have a couple of days of eating less. I may just go for random rides on trains and tubes using my 60+ Oyster card for free travel.

  Today is in complete contrast to yesterday. It is bright and sunny, and should stay bright and sunny. It won't rain, and yesterday's soggyness is drying out. The only catch is that it will not be particularly warm. The overnight temperature could have been low enough to have been only a couple of degrees away from a frost. As I write this the temperature should have just passed 8°, but in reality, or outside my back door, on the north side of the house, the temperature has barely reached 7° C. Tomorrow may start very slightly less cool, and the temperature may briefly hit 18° C in the afternoon, but there may only be some sunny intervals for a few hours in the morning, and then a few more hours towards sunset. The middle of the day could be a bit dull. Oh well, there could still be some mildly warm days coming in the weeek ahead.

Today's forecast started off wrong - again !. This morning, after 2 misty mornings, the forecasters assumed that this morning might be misty too - it wasn't ! The current forecast temperature seems about right, and at best the temperature is only going to rise another degree. Then, after a couple of hours, it will start to get chilly before the afternoon is even over. To make the misery worse it is going to rain. The latest revision of the forecast says the rain will finish a bit earlier than in the screenshot above, but when it does rain it is likely to be heavier. Tomorrow is now forecast to be much sunnier, but it may still only be 15° C. Monday, shown above as being overcast, is now though to be sunny, but still only 18° C.

Today's forecast started off wrong. I'm guessing that someone at the forecasting centre looked out the window and saw the fog and mist that they hadn't predicted. He (or she) then quickly pencilled in "Mist" for 9am, and hastily issued a revision. I have the feeling that when the mist lifts it will reveal a sunny day that will slowly warm up until it is pleasantly warm. It is the sort of thing that happens at this time of the year.  The forecast reckons the sunny periods will drive the temperature up to a nice 21° C soon after midday. After sunset it will cool down again fairly quickly, but not get as low as last night. Tomorrow will then be an awful day. It is predicted to be very grey, quite wet, and just 13° C.  Fortunately after tomorrow's low point the weather should start to improve again, and by the middle of next week it might be quite nice again for a day or two. The picture below is the view from my bathroom window at about sunrise.