There were some strong winds yesterday, but
only occasionally. The rest of the time there were
strong breezes ! The wind, whether very strong, or
just light, made the day feel cooler than the 13°
C that was reached even before midday.
Unfortunately it was overcast all day, and so
there was no sunshine to make that 13° C feel even
slightly warm.
With most of the daylight hours already
passed it is difficult to match reality with what
was forecast for today. For instance there has
been a fair bit of sunshine this afternoon, and I
think there was some late in the morning. There
were some light showers soon after sunrise, but
they wee almost ignorable. There was also a period
of time earlier this afternoon when the sky became
very dark, and there was a light shower, but it
probably lasted no more than 15 to 20 minutes. The
current temperature is around the forecast 13° C,
but it will soon start dropping. It shouldn't drop
that far, and tonight may be only as low as 8° C.
At 3am tomorrow morning the temperature is
supposed to start rising again. Unfortunately it
will probably be accompanied by rain. Tomorrow is
forecast to be wet, and maybe very wet at
lunchtime - when I will be walking through the
park to (hopefully) meet Angela.
I started yesterday morning feeling
ill. I had woken up with a few aches and pains
plus a feeling very similar to a hangover. It
didn't take long to throw off the worst of the
symptoms, but I still felt mildly off colour for
much of the day. It didn't stop me making two
shopping trips. My first shopping trip was to
Poundstretcher where I came away with 12 cans of
pop (4 cans of Ginger Pepsi Max, 4 cans of
Raspberry Pepsi Max, and 4 cans of sugar free Irn
Bru), plus some other stuff.
Ginger flavoured Pepsi Max tastes sort of
weird. It is almost, but not quite nice. If it
wasn't for a hint of cleaning fluid it might
actually be nice. A good slug of whisky in it
seems to improve it a lot. Raspberry Pepsi Max is
quite pleasant, ut I wouldn't pay full price for
it. It is my belief, right or wrong, that
Poundstretcher have the contract to dispose of
Pepsi's less successful experiments. The ginger
variety is currently being sold for 29p a can to
clear it, and the Raspberry is 39p a can. The
sugar free Irn Bru is good stuff, and is, if I
recall correctly, 45p a can.
One thing I noticed yesterday morning was
that the seeds I planted in what will be window
boxes, has started to sprout. The little green
splodge in the picture above was the first obvious
leaf shaped sprout (when looked at
carefully). 24 hours later and there are
many shoots. I wish I could say the same for the
seeds I planted in the front garden, but I guess
keeping those window boxes indoors, in the warm,
will really have brought them on a lot faster. I
live in hope that eventually my front garden will
be a riot of colours, but it seems the window
boxes will get there first.
My second shopping trip was to Tesco. I had
a few definite items on my shopping list. It
included another 5 packets of Batchelors
Cup-A-Soups. I seem to like them, and because they
have a very long life (at least I imagine they
should do) they will still be handy in the future
if I go off them for a while. I also wanted some
more fruit. The 6 pack of Braeburn apples I bought
from Aldi, earlier in the week, were tasty, and
seemed to have no consequences for my blood
glucose level. They may have had a profound effect
on my bowels though, and apart from the
inconvenience when it happened at annoying times,
it must be good for the health...probably.
Yesterday I bought another 6 pack of
Braeburn apples from Tesco, as well as a couple of
loose conference pears. I also bought some whisky
- two bottles of it ! One was yet another one
litre bottle of Haig - still selling for less than
the price of the 70cl bottle. I now have quite a
good stock of Haig, and when my money runs out I
be able to drink myself into oblivion with no
expense. The other bottle was a single malt
whisky. I generally don't favour single malts, but
this one was on special offer - £13 off, and only
£20 a bottle. I only had a little shot glass of
it, and it seemed to be quite good.
During the afternoon I washed another
towel. It was the towel I use for drying my hair.
It is just the right thickness, size and
absorbency. I don't know where I will find another
if this one goes out of service. Washing it was
less a physical thing that the bath towel I did
the day before. This morning it was dry, and ready
to use. Washing that towel was just about the only
thing I did yesterday afternoon - not included a
few odd minutes here and there doing tiny little
tidying jobs in the back room. Mostly I was saving
myself for the evening.
It felt far too much like going to work on
a cold dark morning, but I ventured, with little
enthusiasm, into the night to go and see Something
Else playing in The Railway pub next door to
Blackheath Station. The notion that it was like
going to work was actually more or less true. Some
of my motivation was curiosity - I had never been
in the pub before, and I had never seen the band
play before - but I was principally going as a
photographer with a job of work to do. It didn't
matter that no one asked me to do this job, but a
lot of the band invites I get seem to be because I
can take a reasonable, although far from award
winning, gig photo.
I still wasn't feel all that good when I
left home, and that reduced my enthusiasm. My
enthusiasm was reduced further when I got to the
bus stop just in time to miss a 54 bus that would
take me to Blackheath. Perhaps my enthusiasm crept
off rock bottom when saw that I only had
about a 10 minute wait for the next bus. I guess
it took just 15 to 20 minutes to get to Blackheath
(I didn't actually time it). When I arrived at the
pub I found the volume level of the recorded music
was really high. Apparently the youngsters like it
that way, although how the boys and girls manage
to chat each other up through that sonic wall of
sound is a mystery.
The band, Something Else" are 4 piece, but
maybe with only 2 constant members - Sasha in the
middle, and James on the right. I think the
guitarist on the left was a freelancer.
In this second photo you can just see the
drummer peeping over the top of his drums. He is
John Sutcliff, and I know he plays with many
bands, and if he is not playing with a band he is
playing at an open mic. I think he is at his drums
8 days a week. He is the man who invited me to the
gig.
I probably stayed for about an hour and a
bit. As is so often the case, the advertised time
of a 9pm start never happened, but it may have
only been 10 minutes later that the band finally
started. Maybe I watched the band for 45 minutes,
and that was quite long enough to judge them to be
very good. Even their selection of songs that they
covered (while I was there) met with my approval.
At the end of that 45 minutes I felt like I had
taken enough photos to make a fair photo album.
There was no one else there that I knew, and I
decided to go home again. At the bus stop I was
reminded that there were two bus routes that go
back to Catford.
I could get either the 54, and I had used
to get to Blackheath, or the 202 bus. These buses
stop at well separated bus stops in Catford, and
to get to Blackheath I have to one or other bus
stops. Going home I can get either, and as the
picture above shows, the 202 bus was due in just 2
minutes, and so I caught that bus. That was a big
mistake. There are roadworks that seem to have
been going on for ages on Brownhill Road as you
approach Catford. The temporary traffic lights,
and one direction working, really slows down the
traffic there. Had I waited the extra 4 minutes
for a 54 bus I may have been home at least 15
minutes earlier.
When I got home I had a treat waiting for
me. It was a load of grilled chicken wings that I
had ordered as part of my takeaway order the night
before. I am not sure sure they were grilled
because they seemed to have a thin batter on them.
That made them less healthy than I hoped, but they
were still very nice. As much as I try to, I can't
think of any way those chicken wings could have
contributed to the lousy night I had.
When I first came home I found my room to
be rather cool because the heater was off while I
was out. I put the heater on full blast, and
promptly forgot about it. I slept under the duvet
for maybe 2 hours before waking up feeling like I
was being cooked. It was very strange because my
skin was very dry. It doesn't usually need much
heat to get me sweating. When I went out to the
toilet I felt shivery cold, and couldn't wait to
get back to bed (but this time with the heater on
low). I can remember what pains I might have had
at that time, but the next time I woke up I had
quite a selection of pains.
Many depended on what position I was in
bed. The worst pain, and it could be quite fierce
if I made the wrong movement, was my right
shoulder. It is now a frequent source of pain, but
last night it excelled itself with the pain
sometimes seeming to cross the top of my back.
Less painful, but in some ways more annoying, was
a pain in my right leg - mostly from the right
knee. It was really only there when laying down in
a certain position, but very hard to ignore. I
also had some pain from my right ankle, and some
twinges from my other favourite - my right elbow.
All the tossing and turning was really inflaming
my dodgy ribs/tendons/whotsits, and so I also had
a painful chest. Just to complete things I started
suffering from trapped wind pains.
I seemed to wake up more frequently than
usual last night, and at about 6am I gave up
trying to sleep for a while. I took two Ibuprofen,
and two Paracetamol tablets. After giving them 20
minutes to work I went back to bed, and managed a
bit more poor quality sleep. When I got up again
didn't feel to be in much pain, and moving around
reduced it further. I was surprised that my knee,
for one thing, seemed almost normal - maybe even
normal because it has been no impediment to
walking around indoors - I haven't been out today.
While I wasn't in pain, I still felt very
groggy, and it was a real effort to sit down and
start going through the photos I had taken the
night before. Curiously enough, I felt my best
when doing some light tidying up in the cool back
room. Little by little, sometimes just in 10
minute sessions, I am clearing the desk in there.
Once I finally get my new firewall up and running
I can clear the desk totally, and probably use the
desk in my bedroom.
In some ways I am not looking forward to my
bed tonight because I fear that all the pains will
start up again. On the other hand the idea of
sleep is ultra appealing. I would definitely love
to get 8 hours of quality sleep. It was some
relief when I realised that a gig I thought I was
going to have to really push myself to go to this
afternoon is not until next Sunday afternoon ! I
hope that by then this bug I am suffering from,
because it must be some sort of bug, will be over,
and I will be firing on all cylinders next
weekend. At the moment it does feel like I have
been suffering from a mild version of 'flu for
over a week now....but probably not because it
comes and goes.
To finish off, a video of Something Else I
shot last night. The almost constant green stage
lighting made it a bit gloomy, and I have
brightened it up a bit. The biggest problem is
that in the middle of shooting it I was suddenly
struck down with a cough I just could not stop. It
made holding my phone steady impossible, although
it doesn't seem to be as bad as it seemed on the
night. This is Something Else covering Sheryl
Crow's "If It Makes You Happy"
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