The sky was clear blue for all the daylight
hours yesterday, and the sun was shining brightly.
Indoors, where it was shining through my front
windows, it seemed like a summer day. Outside it
was rather different ! It was still very much like
winter with the temperature possibly not reaching
much higher than 6° C. The forecast said it would
be 8° C.
After the clear sky it is no surprise that
this morning has started with a thick frost. I
currently have three working outdoor temperature
sensors, and they can't agree on the temperature.
They say 1.1°, 1.6°, and 2.5° C. All of them
say that it is currently colder than the 4° C in
the forecast. The forecast gets one thing right -
it is gloriously sunny again. It should stay sunny
at least until mid afternoon, and then gathering
cloud will reduce it to just sunny intervals until
sunset. The cloud is apparently going to get thick
tonight, and that will keep some heat in. From
just after midday the temperature is supposed to
be 9° C. After a small dip it will rise again to
11° C by midnight. That was supposed to be the
start of the gale force winds and rain that was
blowing in from across the Atlantic ocean, but the
weather warning for those winds is now only
predicted to be on Sunday. Tomorrow may only see
light winds, and light clouds. There might even be
sunny intervals in the middle of tomorrow.
I didn't go out for any exercise yesterday,
but I did go out in the late afternoon for
drinking purposes. I spent most of my day, prior
to going out, doing just two things. One was to
finish the job, as far as I can, clearing,
cleaning, and tidying the bookshelves, and under
the bookshelves in the back room. I am left with
three heavy things that I can't dump in the
wheelie bin (although maybe one will at a
squeeze). I am hoping the man who gave two of them
to me will take them away again.
After dumping a few things in the wheelie
bin, it was time to get out another bowl of soapy
water, and also the hoover. I was pleased to find
no signs of mice behind the stuff on the floor
when I moved it. Maybe it was packed in too
tightly even for tiny house mice. It still needed
a good hoovering though. One of the last shelves
to be tidied needed a damp cloth over it to get
rid of dust, as did a few books. Among those books
were my school issued bible and common prayer book
- both from 1967 when mainstream education still
hadn't quite divorced itself from stories about
sky fairies.
The other thing that needed a good wash was
under the window of the back room. I had already
cleaned the window glass of dust and stuff on the
inside. I had also cleaned the outside of the
glass too. The paintwork on the inside came up
fairly well once a layer of nicotine was washed
off. The windowsill needed a bit of a scrub after
tears of muddy cat paws had left their mark.
Yesterday I washed the wall below the window, and
also the skirting board. Both also had suffered
from muddy cat paws over many years.
Ideally the window frame could do with a
coat of fresh paint, but it will do for now. The
bookshelves are now clean, and if I spent time to
sort the books and stuff so their heights or depth
matched better, I could say that job is done.
Essentially I have now done all four corners of
the room. Now it just remains to make some sort of
sense to the middle of the room. Unfortunately
that includes stuff that was once in the corners,
and is stuff I can't throw away - stuff like tools
!
I ended up spending lots more time playing
with the old Dell laptop I am trying to
rehabilitate. It is with hindsight that I realised
I have made a tragic mistake. I installed an
earlier version of Linux Mint Debian Edition, and
yesterday was taken up doing literally thousands
of updates. I think the first batch was something
like 1059 files needed updating. There was a
second batch of a similar amount that couldn't be
done until the first was finished. When it had all
finished I found that the sound card had not been
detected. I came to the conclusion it would
actually have been quicker to try a live CD of an
up to date version, and if the sound worked on
that, to just install that as a fresh
installation. Maybe I will do that today.
As 4pm approached it was time to get my
coat, and walk to the station to get a train to
Shortlands for my Thursday drinking session. It
was an interesting test of my health, and the
results were inconclusive in the extreme, or at
least in a silly way. It seemed hard work to walk
to the station, and yet going up the final three
flights of steps to get to the platform didn't
significantly slow me down. I wasn't even close to
being out of breath at the top, but it still felt
like a monumental struggle to get there. The silly
thing is that it seems I broke another speed
record getting there. I had no intention of
rushing there, and I didn't need to, but it seems
I couldn't seem to slow myself down. I had to wait
nearly 10 minutes before my train arrived. I like
to get there with just a few minutes to spare. At
least it gave time to take a bit of video.
The point of this
video was to show just how clear the sky was. As
I said earlier, if it had not been for the
temperature being so low, it could have been a
summers evening. As I (jerkily) pan around after
the train has left, the sun is hidden by a tree,
but it is fairly obvious that it is still well
above the horizon. It was not due to set for
another 50 minutes yesterday, but on this day
last month it would have set 20 minutes earlier,
and I would have been videoing in the dark.
I didn't notice that my neighbour Michael
had got on the front of the train I got. As we
approached Shortlands he walked through the
train to find me. (I always try to be near a
door that opens closest to the exit of a station
- unless I am deliberately
"trainspotting"). I then had to keep my
walking speed down to match Michael as we walked
to the pub. Michael had decided to come on the
spur of the moment, and hadn't really eaten much
during the day. He said he felt like the beer
was going to his head after two pints, and left
before me. I stayed for my typical three pints,
and got a train about half an hour or so after
Michael.
I stopped off at Sainsburys on my way
home from the station. It was still quite busy
in there, and if there was any reduced priced
stuff, it had all gone when I got there - except
for one cheese on brown bread sandwich. I
grabbed that, plus some Greek salads and two
ready meals. I then rushed home...although maybe
not as fast as I had rushed to the station
earlier. I had bought the ready meals because I
was unsure what I wanted to have for dinner when
I got in.
I didn't touch the ready meals last
night, but I did have two Greek salads. By
themselves they are quite healthy, but I added
stuff. I added some diced cheddar cheese to one,
and a small can of spam to the other. Both had
added mayonnaise to definitely kill any
healthiness ! I also ate that cheese sandwich. I
finished off with a sort of "sweet". It was
about 10 sugar free "Maria" biscuits. I have no
idea what a "Maria" biscuit is, but it was not
dissimilar to a rich tea biscuit apart from one
huge difference. That difference may have been
exaggerated by the biscuits being fairly old
(although still sealed in a cellophane wrapping)
- they tasted like cardboard. Perhaps the
artificial sweetener was breaking down or
something, but I think I am going to dump the
rest of the packet regardless.
I was in bed, and probably asleep by 10pm
last night. I am reluctant to say I slept well
this morning despite my sleep not being too
dissimilar to the night before that I did
describe as good. Last night there was a time
when I was awake for maybe 20 minutes in the
night, but other times when I got up for a wee
seem almost as hazy as dreams - and I had a lot
of dreams. Maybe most were towards morning, but
I did have one very strange dream much earlier
in the night. It was a dream where the visual
looks almost like something you might see on TV
- different angles, and jump cuts between them.
The core idea of this strange dream was
that at what would be the Ladywell end of the
park there were 4 chillies growing in a square
formation, and at exactly the right size to use
some sort of mining tool to harvest or collect
them. It is hard to describe more because I
don't think anything actually happened in this
dream. I know it involved Michael, but I didn't
actually see him, and I can only recall a sort
of aerial picture of the chillies. It was a
dream that was all ideas, and no action.
A later dream involved several smooth
transitions through different realities. I now
know that it was obviously a string of small
dreams one after another. I can remember the
first, or how I came to be walking down my road.
It was the road I lived in as child, and
although I was older, maybe even present age, it
was set in the 1960s when the entire terrace of
houses were due for demolition. Like in real
life, my house was the last to be lived in. It
was rather more extreme than in real life
because the other houses had been bricked up
rather than just boarded up. As I entered my
house it transformed into a different interior.
I don't think I actually recognised the
interior, although it felt like home. There were
two cats there who may have been the cats from
my mums house. It wasn't long before the first
weirdness happened. It seems there were two
medium sized green birds flying free in my
bedroom. They were bigger, but similar to
budgies, but smaller than typical pigeons. After
a while, and probably in another dream, I
noticed it was already a few minutes past 2pm,
and I should have been back at work. I thought
it would be better if I let the birds out into
the garden while I was at work.
That was when two more birds appeared.
One was a brilliant blue, and the other was a
duller brown. I took the brown one to the open
window, and it looked out and saw it was
raining. It looked at me and said there was no
way it was going out in that ! It said in a sort
of less screechy parrot voice. It then flew over
to a settee that was now in the room, and
started taunting one of the cats by meowing at
it. It apparently had no fear of the cat, and
the cat just meowed back. Maybe they were having
a conversation that I could not understand. I
think the dream just faded out after that.
This morning I calculate that I must have
had close to 9 hours sleep, and I think I feel
OK for it. The bright sunshine is very cheery
again. It might be a good day. I am also happy
to say that my blood glucose level didn't take
much of a hit after the beer, sandwich, and
sugar free (but still carbohydrate heavy)
biscuits. It was a fairly typical 7.4. I hope I
can get it lower than that once warmer weather
arrives, but it if fine for now.
Today I will go out for a bit of exercise
to stretch my legs. It is mostly because today
is the day that Angela suggested we might meet
again at lunchtime. I hope she is still able to
do it. At some point I want to go shopping in
Iceland - mainly because they stock (or did last
time) a fair selection of sugar free biscuits.
The plain digestives don't taste too bad. The
wafers, vanilla or chocolate, are sort of nice,
and the chocolate biscuits are pretty good, but
maybe too tempting.
Tonight it would be nice if I can find
the energy and enthusiasm to go to a gig. MT
Pockets are playing at the Railway Tavern by
Bexley station. On the plus side it is not that
bad to get to - probably the simplest is a bus
to Lee station, and then it is 5 stops down the
line. On the negative side it is a small, and
crowded pub. Once I lose my place at the front -
assuming I can get there early enough to claim
prime position - I might just as well go home
again. If I do go I am not really expecting to
be there for more than an hour or so anyway.
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