The screenshot of the weather forecast I showed yesterday was not terribly accurate, and so I have checked the latest revision to the forecast today before commentating on it. I needed have worried about it - it is hard to spot the differences between the early and later revision. The biggest change is that it now recognises it was minus 1° C at 8am. I am not that sure that it is 0° C even now, but apparently the afternoon temperature will reach 4° C. The headline feature remains the same - a day of non stop sunshine with a lovely blue sky. Sunshine could be in very short supply tomorrow. It will start cold and with light cloud covering the whole sky. The temperature will rise until by the afternoon is will be similar to today, but the temperature will continue to rise even as it starts to rain in the early afternoon. It could reach 6 or 7° C by the end of the day, or the idea of a forecast 24 hours into the future could be complete fantasy, and something else will happen.

   My morning ambition was to take some pictures of the snow yesterday - assuming any fell. Initially the forecast for snow looked like a false alarm, and then suddenly it was snowing. I was torn between visiting the Linear Park, and Ladywell Fields plus some of the high street. Then I came up with the crazy idea that I would do the high street, and then Ladywell Fields first, and if the snow held out, go to the Linear Park later. I was swayed to this idea because I thought I would stand outside the place where I first met Patricia, and send her a short, low resolution video of the snow falling there.

  It was sods law that as soon as I got to the place she used to work at, next door to Poundland (which seemed to be closed), the snow stopped, and hardly any had settled on that part of the high street. There were a few flakes to be seen in the video, but compared to the quite heavy flurry when I first went outside, it was very sparse.

  Yesterday I tried out an idea I had last year, or maybe the year before that. (I don't think we had any snow last year). It was to see if a pair of disposable latex, "surgical" gloves would keep my hands from freezing while using a camera. They did help a bit, but the cold seeped through them in the end. The worse problem was that it was really hard to try and put my black leather gloves on over them to keep my hands warm when not taking photos.

  I was wearing my orange winter coat, with the hood up, while I was out, and it kept me quite warm - too warm in places. It seems a lot more comfortable than I expected, but the next size up would probably have been more comfortable, and it would allow a bit more airflow to stop me overheating - it is my arms that seem to get hottest of all.

  My walk ended up as being 1.844 miles. That is fairly short by even my current standards, but it seemed about right when walking in snow.
  This was the high street. You can hardly see any evidence of snow in this picture. It just looks very wet, but the roof tops on the left hand side of the picture show a thin covering of white snow.
  This picture is looking a lot more wintry. I took this picture because the evergreen tree seemed to give an extra seasonal flavour. I wish had taken one of my DSLR cameras when I took this, and several other pictures. I would have selected a fast shutter speed to "freeze" the snow flakes as they fell. The longer exposure, set automatically by my Nikon P500 camera has rendered the snow as streaks instead of flakes.
  Once again, the evergreen yew trees in the graveyard outside St Mary's Church add a seasonal look, but once again the falling snow looks very streaky. At least here you can start to see the grass being covered by snow.
  Just a few minutes after the last picture was this one taken in the "Therapuetic Garden" behind St Mary's Church. If I had taken this with a "proper" camera I would entitle it "Yew And Yew in the snow". It certainly looks wintry, but I don't think it is a good enough picture to deserve a title.
  This picture doesn't show it, but I found there were loads of people who had come out to frolic in the snow in Ladywell Fields. This view is looking south from the Ladywell Road entrance.
  This is Ladywell station. If you look carefully you can see a few flakes of snow on the rails. That is normally enough to shut the line until about April or May, but trains kept running all day !

  Although I was fairly keen to get home again, I seemed to feel OK when I got home....maybe just a little light fatigue. I treated myself to a bit of breakfast, er, sort of breakfast. That "sort of breakfast", or maybe it was brunch, included some hot Pepperami sticks. They had all come from Star Bargains, and while I didn't check, they were probably near their "use by" date. I don't think that would have caused one of the sticks to taste a bit weird. I suspect that if I had examined the packet carefully before opening it I might have discovered the packet was damaged in some way. The significance of that may have contributed to how I felt for a lot of the day, but probably not. There is a far better chance it contributed to a later problem, or it may have just tasted a bit odd, but was otherwise totally innocent.

  It may have been after my body temperature had equalised - after all bits had reached normal(ish) body temperature - that I began to feel awful. It is hard to describe an almost random distribution of mostly mild aches or pains. Most prominent was my chest. That was typical of my incorrectly called "twisted rib" problem. I had taken care not to get my chest cold, which causes this sort of problem, but it was like i had allowed it to get cold. It could be called a rhuematism type pain, but there is also the popping and clicking from under the skin as I made certain movements.

  There was one thing that would cure it, or actually just distract from it, and that was booze, and plenty of it. I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about Jodie wanting to pop over for a boozing session because I felt so rough, but it would certainly involve lots of booze. Jodie had mentioned that maybe the weather justified cracking open a few of the strong Polish beers I had. Needless to say, the discomfort, and the the prospect of booze made sure that my earlier idea of going out again to the Linear Park didn't happen.

  Once I started boozing I started to feel a bit better, and then a lot better. I sneaked in a quick whiskey before Jodie got here to start the feeling better process. We had a usual session where we would split a can or bottle in two, and so we got through quite a few types without actually drinking that much by the end of the session. I think we may have had about three pints each on this session. That is not a lot, although many of the beers were very strong.

  Jodie left after 7pm to get the 7.24pm train if I recall correctly. That was the latest ever since we have been drinking in my rehabilitated dining room. After Jodie left I tucked into a very simple dinner of very well cooked chicken thighs and tinned garden peas. I deliberately cooked that chicken for far longer than normal because I thought it was getting close to going off. It had a feint smell about it. (This morning the remaining thighs in the pack were definitely not happy and I donated them to the foxes).

  Only a couple of hours would have passed, and maybe less before I would have gone to bed, but just before 9pm I had a call from my friend Lee. As usual it went on for ages as he meandered away from the main theme all the time. The main theme was that had had hurt himself in a sort of car accident, and had to walk 6 miles home (or my my reckoning only about 3 miles if he had any sense of direction). It seems that like an idiot he had been driving around for ages with a broken front suspension spring. That corner of the car collapsed as he went around a roundabout. Fortunately it was late at night, and he had the road mostly to himself. Even I know the dangers of a broken front suspension, and I am not a car driver. What might have been a few hundred pounds to replace the spring has now been suggested to be £1500 to repair the front of the car - and that is more than the cars is probably worth.

  I ended up in bed later than intended, and even then it took some time to go to sleep because I was uncomfortable. If I lay on my back my chest would click and pop with every breath I took. If I laid on my right my right shoulder would hurt, and if I laid on my left my chest would hurt. On top of that I had an undefined pain lower down. The cause of that would become apparent at 1am, although not the original cause. Sometime after 10pm I managed to fall asleep (I think).

  It was approximately 1pm, maybe a little later, when I woke up, and it took a bit of time to realise what one bit of discomfort was. I seemed to need a poo - which is a very rare occurrence at 1am, although there have been a few previous occasions over the last 5 or 6 years. I got up, and went out to the cold bathroom. There was no rush for what happened next, and it was all a bit underwhelming.

  It wasn't long before I realised I had opened Pandora's box ! Basically by the time I had got back to my bedroom, I had barely enough time to blow my nose before rushing back to the toilet. I think I paid 3 (maybe 4 ?) return visits to the toilet, and on one occasion I didn't even get half way back to my bedroom before having to turn around. Those return visits were anything but underwhelming ! Well, except for the last visit. That was just the last few drips, so to speak. It was all very unpleasant, but I eventually felt better for it.

  The fact that I felt no desire to vomit suggests it was nothing I had eaten that day that caused this upset. All I can think of was that it was something to do with the takeaway the night before, but the place I had ordered it from had a 5 star "Score On The Door" award from the health inspector. I guess even in the cleanest, well run places, the odd bug can still get in. Anyway, once it was out of my system I slept quite well. I woke up a few times after that, but I seemed to sleep very solidly for the last 2 hours until 7am this morning.

  That left me just enough time to quickly go through my morning routine, shower, and get out to go shopping to Aldi. I must admit I was a bit apprehensive about going out. My chest still felt tender, and I thought that the cold, and carrying heavy shopping would cause an even bigger flare up. So far it hasn't ! I bought a fairly normal selection of stuff in Aldi, but I did buy a couple of extravagances. I was feeling hungry, or was it just hollow after my hour of visits to the toilet in the small hours ? That made me make a few poor choices and I bought some pasta based snacks from the sandwich counter.

  Those snacks will probably do me no good, but at least this morning my blood glucose had dropped to 8.0, and that means I am not too far off my self imposed target of 7.5mmol/l. Ideally I should go out again and do a three (or more) mile walk in The Linear Park. The bright sunshine does make it temping, but I do feel a bit "off" today. Some of it is just tiredness. Once I have finished writing this I look forward to laying on my bed, and dozing off while reading, and also while bathed in warm sunshine pouring through my bedroom window at the moment.

  There are some jobs around the house that it would be good to do - including tidying up the kitchen again (what dies it seem to get so cluttered lately ? Probably because it is freezing cold in there, and so I am not spending much time in there). I think I could be happy enjoying the sunshine indoors today. It is certainly the warmest way of enjoying it.