I was hoping a refresh of the weather forecast to the latest revision would show a less dismal story that the screenshot above, but nothing significant has changed. The day is still shown as being very gloomy with some light rain. The worst of the rain, in terms of it's timing, will be tonight, but fortunately it should still be light rain. On top of everything else, today is going to be cold. The temperature is going to be mostly 6° C with a few hours at 7° C. Tomorrow could possibly see a frost in the early hours of the morning, but maybe not. The rest of the day will generally be colder than today, but it will be marginally less gloomy, and at the moment no rain is forecast.

  Yesterday was a day when I felt very little motivation to do anything. That wasn't helped by a bad night's sleep leaving me feeling tired, although oddly enough I am not sure I managed a single half decent snooze. I'm not even sure I snoozed at all. There were a couple of times I lay on my bed, and after reading a page or two, I closed my eyes, and tried to snooze. It didn't feel like I slept at all, but maybe I might have drifted into and out of sleep so gently that I didn't even notice it.

  For all that, yesterday was actually a fairly productive day. I did a small load of laundry. It included my "drinking trousers" ! Wringing those out took some extra skill and strength. They are a bit like sports trousers, but they don't look sporty. Basically they are comfortable to wear indoors, but look far less shabby than any of my old lounge pants. I hasten to add that they are at home drinking trousers. At a pub I would be wearing proper jeans.

  The other thing which occupied a lot of my time was doing more of my long ongoing task to catalogue all my train pictures in a big spreadsheet. The original task has mutated a lot since I first started it. It started as a list of three types of train that were going to be, or had been taken out of service, and some of them scrapped. What is more is that it was originally going to only include the best pictures.

  The three classes of trains started with the class 319 trains that used to be used exclusively on Thameslink services. They have all been replaced by "new" class 700 trains, although I believe some have been modified to be used "up north" or somewhere. I then added the class 465 and class 466 trains. The class 466 is actually just a 2 car version of the class 465. They are still very much in use, but their end is very close as they are replaced with "new" (actually secondhand) class 707 trains.

  The big trouble with this project is that starting with the idea of recording the best pictures, it has become an exercise in electronic train spotting. Once upon a time Ian Allen books used to (and maybe still do) publish "ABC" books containing lists of train numbers, and the idea was that schoolboys, and very old schoolboys, would tick off every one they saw. I seem to be doing the same by including every single train I have photographed over the years, and seeing trying to include every train number of, mostly, the class 465/466 trains while they are still running.

  As such I am now including some slightly poor photos, but no really crap ones. My progress is such that I have now done most of the electronic pictures, and now I am going through scanned negatives of pictures taken in the days when I used a film camera. Some of those pictures can be a bit poor, but it is a different sort of poor to electronic photos. Some of the film camera shots look to be very soft, and yet they still seem to have a lot of detail. The very worst thing about the film camera photos is that the results under artificial light, particularly in big stations, can be awful !

  After my excessive toilet visits during the night and morning, I was probably very empty by yesterday lunchtime. I did have two bowls of instant noodles for breakfast - both new flavours I was eager to try. At lunchtime I had two Turkish sausages just on their own. They were juicy, succulent, and nicely spiced. They make a good treat now and then. As the evening approached I checked my blood glucose. I rarely check it at any other time than the morning, and it was interesting.

  All I had eaten had taken my blood glucose up from 7.0mmol/l in the morning to 7.1mmol/l in the early evening. I thought that was a good enough excuse to have a nice treat, and also something that might sit more comfortably on my digestive system. It was a takeaway of cod and chips. I ordered it from the shop that I thought didn't supply chips even though the menu says "cod & chips". I ordered a portion of chips in case the cod didn't come with chips. I also included a couple of shish kebabs as well because it was also a kebab shop. I will be having the kebabs for dinner tonight.

  I think the best way to eat cod and chips is to eat them after not having them for months. They seem extra delicious that way. I enjoyed them immensely, but there was always a slight worry about what all those chips would do to my blood glucose this morning. I'll worry about what they might do to my weight another day. It is sufficient for the moment to say they were very enjoyable, and I didn't feel any need for anything else to eat all night.

  After my bad night's sleep the previous night, I felt I ought to get to bed early last night, but I didn't really, although I did put down the book I am reading without reading that much, and then completely failed to get to sleep before 11pm. Incidently, the book I am currently reading is Isaac Asimov's "The Early Asimov Volume 2". All of the stories were written in his early days of being a writer in the very early 1940s. He was exploring different styles, and also dabbling with fantasy instead of SciFi. I have to say that many of the stories are quite turgid.

  I don't think I slept that well last night. For one thing I did have about half an hour of insomnia at about 4am. After that I seemed to be continually dreaming. It was lots of little dreams that seemed like one very long dream, but it was easy to realise that every few minutes the "scene" would change so much that it could not be one contiguous story, although there did seem to be some common themes to many of the dreams - some echoing a dream I had much earlier in the night.

  There are only a few facts I can remember from a dream I had some time I can only describe as after midnight. One dream was about taking a shower, and wanting to use chocolate and chilli shower gel because I was expecting to be very intimate with a person of the opposite sex a bit later. The only real bit that sticks in my memory is that shower gel. As unlikely as it seems, it did/does really exist. It was part of of the weird and wonderful "Original Source" shower gels.

  I think it was also in the first half of the night that I had a completely separate dream that also involved a member of the other sex. She seemed to be either well tanned, or maybe was a light skinned Indian. I remember very little of the dream, and there is even less that I feel I should describe. It was far too brief, or at least that is how I remember it, but in those brief moments it was very erotic !

  This morning I was awake too early, or earlier than I thought I should be, but it was only about half an hour earlier. It was probably silly to worry about it. I considered trying to get back to sleep, but I thought I might then sleep too late, and so I got up. The first thing I did, after having a pee, and cleaning any contaminants off my hands - in particular some hand cream put on last night whose remnants could contaminate the pin prick of blood for my blood glucose meter - I checked my blood glucose level.

  After that big portion of chips I expected the worst, but it was nowhere near as bad as I feared. In fact the reading was just 7.8mmol/l. By my current standards that is a bit high, but by my standards of a month or two ago it was low. I celebrated by having the spare portion of chips for breakfast this morning. Microwaved chips are not that nice, but OK. I now feel very bloated....although that is not the word I am looking for...perhaps stuffed would be better, but I am really looking for a word than means my guts now feel heavy.

  That full feeling (another way of describing it) should fade away during the morning, and it most definitely needs to. It is possible that I might not eat anything but fruit (a couple of oranges) for lunch, and just have the smallest of snacks later in the afternoon. There are two reasons for this. The first is that having those naughty chips early enough in the morning means they may have a lot less effect left when I check my blood glucose tomorrow morning.

  The other reason for getting the worst out of the way as early as possible is so that (with a lot of luck) I will feel all sort of lively tonight. It is my intention (at this end of the day) to go to another two gigs this Saturday night. First of all I want to see at least half an hour of MT Pockets at The Chatterton Arms. They should start at 8.30pm (but I bet they will be late). It will mean a very boring ride on a 320 bus.

  I will then get a bus (several routes possible) back to Bromley and The Partridge pub where Hell On Tap are playing. I really hate The Partridge, but Hell In Tap have to be seen, and because they play very heavy rock, it might scare some away, and make it less packed in there. Once again my aim is to stay there for about half an hour (or maybe longer if it is not too uncomfortable in there) before getting the bus home. Once home I can have my dinner of the two shish kebabs I bought last night. Once the pitta bread is discarded they usually have a very low sugar content. The only downside is that they will need very gentle heating to avoid cooking the already wilting salad.