There was some really torrential rain around 8am this morning. It was accompanied by a quite gusty wind that blew the rain along like waves. The latest revision to the forecast tells a different story to the screenshot of the earlier version shown above. It now says we should expect heavy rain at 11am, and light rain at midday. At 2 and 3pm there may be light rain. After that the sky will start to clear bringing sunny spells, and maybe full sunshine from 5pm until sunset. Today's temperature may reach 17° C for just one hour, and 16° C will be more representative of the afternoon. Tomorrow may see rain from midday until sunset or beyond, and quite a lot of it could be very heavy. The temperature will be similar to today. We are mostly definitely in the tight grip of Autumn now !

  I think I could say that most of yesterday was a good day - sometimes for the wrong reasons (as I shall explain soon). The only things of note that I did yesterday morning was to hand wash a large bath towel. I knew there was hardly any chance that it could dry outside, but I did get it out for the longest gap in the rain of about 3 hours. I then had to bring it in still only half dry, and finish drying it indoors in front of a fan heater. We are now most definitely in the season where my electricity bill is going to start going up.

  The other thing I did was to go to Tesco around midday (or was it earlier ?). I mainly bought 6 cans of soup, but I did buy some nice steamed salmon, and some fishcakes. I also bought some Marmite flavoured rice cakes, that should be relatively safe, and a small loaf of Hovis with seeds, and that most definitely was not safe. However it was nice. I really wanted some wholemeal rolls, or a wholemeal loaf, but they had none. As I was poking about through their bread the "master baker" (actually the man who microwaves some of the ready made bread for 30 seconds to make it seem freshly baked. I asked him about wholemeal rolls or bread, and he said they haven't had any for months now. That is a shame because the whole meal "Scotch" rolls I bought in there, maybe 2 months ago, definitely had no sugar in their list of ingredients.

  The highlight of yesterday was the afternoon beer drinking session with Jodie and Michael. Jodie seemed a bit subdued, and not that excited by the German beers I had bought - and that was despite there being several that she had never had before, or at least hadn't had since she started logging all her beers on the untappd website. Apart from one beer which we all thought was horrible, Michael was enjoying the beers while complaining that he was getting drunk. It didn't seem to stop him having another.

  Michael left maybe half an hour, maybe a bit more, before Jodie left. She had been planning on going on to a pub in Bromley that was doing a special session with one of Jodie's much liked breweries, and that was why she did seem to drink extra slowly, but when it came to it she decided she would go today or tomorrow instead, and headed straight home. Having made that decision she had a couple of shorts for the road. She didn't seem drunk when she left. On the other hand I did. I had drunk more than anyone. I was far from rolling drunk, but it still had it's consequences.

  As soon as Jodie left I turned my attention to dinner, it being after 6pm. There were many, and safer things I could have had for dinner, but I wanted sandwiches using the seeded Hovis loaf I mentioned further up the page. I started off by using the southern fried flavour chicken steak I hadn't eaten the night before. It was a nice fit in that small Hovis loaf slices. I added a bit of chilli sauce, and a squirt of mayonnaise on it. It was much nicer in a sandwich than it was on it's own.

  If I was 100% sober and sane I would have stopped there, albeit with some reluctance, but I was far from 100% sober and I wanted more ! I ended up eating another 4 slices of that naught loaf  as two sandwiches with the warmed up steamed salmon I had bought earlier. Once again I added a squirt of mayonnaise and a sprinkle of chilli sauce. Those sandwiches were delicious ! They also seemed more filling than I imagined.

  The oncoming hangover meant that I was quite keen for bed, and I could have easily ended up in bed earlier than I did, but I was very conscious that I was feeling very full, and for a while I was wondering if I might vomit. I certainly benefitted from a couple of antacid tablets before I could start to relax in bed. I think those antacid tablets made the cautious burps I was doing feel worse. Eventually I managed to relax and I think I was asleep around 10pm. I still aim for 9pm, but 10pm seems like my most common time to go to sleep lately.

  I woke up about two hours later, and my stomach felt quite tender. At this point I have to mention that if I did any poo yesterday, it was only a very little bit. By the small hours of the morning it was like I had two days load. I did try and go to the toilet, but it was like I wasn't ready. A few hours later I did start to pass some wind, and it smelled absolutely vile ! Despite all this I did seem to get quite a lot of good sleep. I do remember having many dreams, but none stands out as anything I could describe without it sounding absolute nonsense.

  I woke up very close to 7am, and it felt like a good time to get up. The first thing I did after having a pee was to check my blood glucose. I expected it to be very high, and I wasn't disappointed ! It was 10.0mmol/l - right on the danger line. I suppose it was actually quite good that it didn't go any higher, but it is still high enough that I feel I ought to fast until dinnertime, and even than take extra care of what I eat.

   The problem is that I already feel starving hungry. That may well be the typical crossed signals I get from my gut. It is probably just sending a sigh of relief that I did make two substantial deposits in the toilet in quick succession, but my brain has interpreted those signals as hunger signals. It is going to be hard ignoring them, and I may have to make some sort of compromise.

  In an ideal world I would go out and do something to distract my attention. Maybe something like getting a train or two to somewhere "exotic", but probably still in the London zones that I can get free travel to on my freedom pass. The flaw in that idea is that I just don't have any confidence that today's weather will be any better than horrible (and could be worse!). There is also the little problem that I am expecting an Amazon delivery today. It is almost certainly going to be very late afternoon or evening - unless I am out then it will be early to mid afternoon.

  It looks like I am stuck in today with very little to do that will distract me much. The chances are that I will end up doing more two my current long term projects. These are getting every single mp3 recording onto one external hard disk (and another as a back up), and then there is the ever expanding task of cataloguing all my train pictures. I never knew I had so many. Most have been taken on trips with a different purpose than "trainspotting". I doubt that on average I go out more than once every two years to deliberately photograph trains.

  As I have moaned before, this job started out as only being about one type of train that is due to be phased out, but now it seems to encompass every single train except underground trains.  Both these tasks need a lot of patience, but it is hard to keep that up without taking a break every so often, and each break seems like it should involve a snack or three. Oh well...