Last night the forecast predicted a misty start to today (the BBC forecast still does). This morning's update shows no mist, although the air is a bit hazy off in the distance. The latest update still looks like the screenshot above with just a few small changes. There might be only one sunny period now (although looking at the thick blanket of cloud I have my doubts about even one sunny period). The first light rain is now shown to start at 3pm instead of 2pm, but the same pattern follows with the potential for thunderstorms at 7pm, and heavy rain into the night. The afternoon should see the temperature rise to 23° C, and so at least the rain should feel warm....sort of. Tomorrow shows the chances of rain to be 30 or 40% except for a few hours when it falls to 10%. I expect that will change by tomorrow, but there still seems to be a fair chance that I won't have to water the garden again.

  Yesterday was one of those odd days where I didn't really do much, but the day seemed too short. I was trying to psyche myself up to go for a walk, and I probably would have if it were not for two linked problems. As I was close to going out, just after 11am, I had another long rambling phone call from my friend Lee. It may have been good that he delayed me for over an hour because towards the end of the call I was beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable. Initially I wasn't sure if it was just my stomach rumbling because I was hungry, and maybe that was all it was then.

  Once I managed to hang up the phone I went to the toilet, but not much happened (which isn't the same as nothing). The other thing that happened was the rumbling seemed to be lower than my stomach. Maybe 10 minutes later I had to go to the toilet again, and this time things were more satisfactory, and afterwards the only rumbling did seem to be hungry belly rumbling. Ideally the latter would have happened while I was out because after a few minutes it would usually fade away. Unfortunately I was in, and near food !

  I might still have ignored it, but there was also the fact that once I had taken off my outdoor clothes I was feeling quite chilly. I gave in and started looking for food. The answer came in a large can of ratatouille. It was past it's best before date and needed to be used. I thought it was bean or lentil based, but essentially it was just stewed vegetables in a tomato like sauce. It was essentially a soup, and an almost healthy one. It warmed me up a bit, and stopped my stomach rumbling.

  Digging out that can, and another four large cans of other "meals in a can" took a bit of my time because the logistics of taking down teetering piles of cans, and then rebuilding them was quite complex. However, after that, and eating my  ratatouille, I went into lazy mode. I really couldn't think of anything I wanted to do except for catch up on some of my internet reading, and a bit of book reading.

  There is no Star Trek on a weekend evening, and I had a search of the  Freeview channels to find something to watch while eating. I eventually settled on a film that could have been called. I think it was called Robot Overlords, and it was an English film instead of an American movie. As such it could have been good, and in parts it was, but other bits were terrible. The Horror Channel made no attempt to rebalance the picture for TV, and it was possibly worse when watching it on a computer monitor. The problem was that several important scenes were so dark that it was difficult to see what was happening. This used to be a problem with some of the Star Treks when shown on cheap channels, but the BBC always made them look good by employing vision engineers to correct stuff that may work in a cinema, but not on the TV screen.

  My dinner was probably bigger than it should have been after the ratatouille lunch. It was two kebabs ! For the first time I scooped off all the salad before microwaving the meat up to a decent temperature. I then put that salad back on the meat. They definitely seemed better that way. In the meantime, I did my best to enjoy the film. I guess that it was not that bad. It would probably also have been an improvement if I hadn't missed the first half hour. That may have explained things that I probably never did piece together as I watched the rest.

  Two things happened after the end of the film. One was that I noted that mist was forecast for this morning. That made me think there could be some atmospheric photo opportunities if I could get myself out early enough. To expedite that I started preparing my Nikon D3200 camera. I though I would use a good camera if there were some interesting sights. I put a battery on charge because I found the one in the camera was half discharged. I then considered lenses. A 200mm telephoto might be good for some long shots, and a wide angle lens would be good. I spent ages looking for my Tamron wide angle lens. I eventually found it attached to a Canon camera - which is what it was designed for. (Another indication of my brain wearing out !). Having selected a wide angle lens for a Nikon, my photo kit was prepared.

  It was while preparing the camera and lenses that I was doing a lot of bending over - much of my photographic equipment is stored in padded bags on the floor. At one point I stood up, and at the point, with apparently no earlier warning, I realised I had 10 seconds to get to the toilet. Maybe that rumbling I had felt/heard around lunchtime was more sinister than I realised. I needed two visits to the toilet in quick succession before I felt comfortable enough to relax, although past experience of these dramas suggested just two visits might not have been enough. Fortunately they were.

  The other that happened after watching the end of the film was that I noticed PBS America, a channel that seems to show a lot of British stuff - maybe because only we tend to make decent documentary type stuff, would be showing a 2 or 3 hour documentary about Woodstock. I hoped it would be rubbish because it would mean staying up later than intended, but it was actually very interesting. Staying up until 11pm probably sealed the fate of any attempt to get out early this morning.

  I seemed to take a fair while to get to sleep last night. There is that impossible, but very common idea of being too tired to sleep, and I think that was what slowed me down getting to sleep. Once I got to sleep I didn't always seem to sleep that well. I woke up at least once in the early hours not sure if I felt cold or not. I tried covering odd bits with the duvet cover, and got back to sleep. I had one strange dream about travelling on a modern German train with someone, and for some reason neither of us had tickets. Most of the dream was too complex, or changed too rapidly to remember what happened.

  I woke up at 5am, as intended if I wanted to get out at the crack of dawn, but I felt so rotten that I turned over and went back to sleep. I think it was 6.40am when I next woke. My neck felt stiff from sleeping awkwardly (I guess). I still felt tired, and I was very creaky. There was no way I was going to get ready to go out like that. More importantly there was no mist to be seen when I looked out of the window, although I will admit the air had a slight haziness in the distance.

  Several hours have passed since I started to get up, and I don't feel that bad now, although I also feel no great desire to go for a walk. That might change because to my great surprise, the sun is battling really hard to get through the clouds. It hasn't made it, and may not do so, but it is a lot brighter than it was as little as 10 minutes ago. There is currently a 40% chance that I might go out today. Maybe I can stretch that to 50% when I consider that I need some practice to remember how to use my Nikon DSLR camera.

  One thing I can do is to celebrate exactly one year passing since I was discharged from hospital after walking in there in the early hours of the morning, in the rain, on the 10th August to get some unusual chest pains checked out. At the end of my stay in hospital the only conclusive thing was that something, probably some sort of mild heart attack, had happened, and had left it's legacy that could be seen in a blood test, and also more easily seen in some high blood glucose reading. There were a few other chemical imbalances found too, but no actual reason for it was ever suggested.

  Some of those chemical imbalances maybe have been caused by a reaction to the dye they used during my day out to Kings College hospital for an angiogram. This is where the dye enhances the contrast of an X-ray image (moving images) of the blood flow around the heart. It had been thought that maybe there was a problem with my quad heart bypass, but the radiographer told me the heart surgeon who did it had done an excellent job. It was a nice day out, but that dye also made me feel really itchy for the next 24 hours.
   This was my hospital bed for my entire 6 day stay in hospital. I was in Chestnut ward, bay 5, bed 20. Chestnut ward was supposed to be just a reception ward, and the idea was that we would be transferred to a different ward once some sort of diagnosis, and treatment were worked out. Some of the others were moved after 3 or 4 days, but I spent my whole time in there.
  This was one of my lunches. While others (I think there were usually about 5 of us on the ward most days) would have steaming great piles for lunch, and full dessert, I tried to stick to something I thought was a bit healthier. Unfortunately that chicken leg was not very nice at all.
  This meal was one of the suppers I had. The ham was nicer than the cold greasy chicken leg, but I can't say it was that enjoyable. I think the new food contractors were pretty poor compared to whoever prepared meals when I was in there in 2013. If there is a next time, and there probably will be now I am riding this rollercoaster, I think I will skip breakfast.

Breakfast was always just a single slice of toast with some butter on it. Eating it was something to do while waiting to see what the day would bring, but I shouldn't really have eaten it.

  One of things I was determined to do during my stay was to keep my legs working. I did nothing for the first two days, but on the third day I tried walking up and down the corridor outside the ward (or maybe it was the bay I was in - the whole floor might have been the ward). Few people paid much attention to it at first, but I did mention to one of the nurses I was stress testing my heart.

 On the fourth day (if I remember correctly) I set myself a target of 25 minutes of non stop brisk walking for 25 minutes. I estimated that would be equivalent to a mile with probably some to spare. The next day, and my final day, I tried to do this at least twice a day.

 It was sometime in those last couple of days that I got a visit from the Cardiac Rehabilitation Nurse. It was on that occasion I started to hate her. She gave me zero credit for my exercise, and more or less said that if I didn't attend her classes, and do exercise her way, I could easily be dead in a year. She said the same 6 years earlier after my quad heart bypass, and I found that the one class I attended was so ridiculously easy to do that I quite after that one session, and told her that my commuting was far harder. Maybe she was instrumental in stepping up the amount of walking I now do, or maybe it was just finding more comfortable boots, and continuing desire to explore. It is the walks of exploration that I enjoy most even if they are painful to do sometimes.