There are a few doubts about today's weather. So far everything agrees with the early version of the Met Office forecast. Like yesterday, the latest revision has knocked one degree off the top temperature, and now says it will be 16° C. That is probably likely because it will be very close to the same as yesterday. The BBC (Meteogroup) forecast is telling a different story. That only predicts sunny spells all day, and gives a higher estimate of the top temperature. I will have to try and keep an eye on my thermometers to see which came closer to the truth. Tomorrow will follow the same pattern as the last two days, but it could be a degree or two warmer.

   I had a busy day yesterday. I got as far as describing how I had washed a sheet, and hung it on the line to dry, had some breakfast, showered, and gone shopping in Aldi. What came next is that I did a bit more laundry. It was only a t-shirt, a pair of lounge pants, and two pairs of underwear. It was probably on the line, starting to dry around midday. It was about half past midday when I finally got through to the pharmacy to order my next repeat prescription - to be hopefully collected tomorrow afternoon.

  One thing I wanted to do was to go out in the sunshine, but I didn't fancy a lot of walking, although, in the end, it did turn out that I did do a fair bit of walking, and going up and down staircases and escalators made it more like real exercise. I decided I would go out for a while to get a few more pictures of trains. As I have probably admitted in the last 6 months or so, I have gone beyond just making a record of trains I have taken photographs of, to actually trying to collect all the numbers in a limited amount of trains (mostly trains that run locally to me).

  I set out to Catford station where I noticed building work has started to install lifts to make it a "step free station". I guess it is going to take a few months before they are in service (if all the work goes smoothly). I wonder if it might change the status of the station ? It is a busy station serving a large amount of local people. It would be nice if some of the coast trains could stop there. Once upon a time the Sunday service was only a once an hour service when the Dover train called there.

  I had a vague plan that I would catch a train to Denmark Hill station, and do some photography there, and then, if I was still feeling enthusiastic, I could get a train to Clapham Junction station. That is exactly what I did. The only trouble with Clapham Junction is that it is aligned such that for the middle of the day you are either shooting with the sun behind you, which produces the best pictures, or into the sun, "which is tricky" !
  Had I looked around I could probably have picked up a leaflet version of this, that I could have scanned, but this photos is clear enough. It describes how they are "investing" in Catford station, and also gives a far more pessimistic date for the finish than my far more optimistic guess further up the page. October is a very long wait if you can't climb the stairs.
  Yesterday was not the first time I have seen one of London Overground's trains in their new livery. I can't remember when I first saw one, but I would guess it must have been 2 years or more ago because I haven't been out "train spotting" for most of the covid lockdown. What I do know was that this was the first time that I took an extra picture zoomed in on the trains number near the bottom of the drivers door. I presume there is some valid operational reason for putting it there, and it is not to just to annoy train spotters. It is a shame because it spoils what otherwise seems to be an nice elegant design.
  I spotted this brand new train in the sidings at Clapham Junction station. According to the wikipedia page, South Western Railway intends to use them for all their suburban services in the not too distant future. I'm sure that was the original intention of the brand new Class 707 their predecessor, South West Trains ordered 5 or more years ago. The main difference between the two is that the Call 707s were built without toilets or cycle storage areas. Most of them have been dumped on South Eastern, but I did some still in service on South Western Railway services yesterday.

  The thing about Clapham Junction is that it has a lot of platforms, 17 of them, and they are all joined either by subway, or bridge. It was there that I did most of what was really exercise - going up and down stairs. I did find those stairs quite taxing, but I didn't let that slow me down. The worst problem was that all the standing around gave me painful sciatica in my right leg (mostly in the thigh).

  I might have stayed out longer, but a combination of the sciatica, and that rush was approaching, was a good enough reason to leave Clapham Junction, and head for home. I chose to go home via Waterloo and Waterloo East - a very well worn route from my days of commuting to Earlsfield every day. Despite feeling tired, much like after a day at work, I still found the energy to run up the escalators to get to the long walkway to Waterloo East station. There is something about the step height of escalators that makes them easy to run up (although maybe "fast walk" is probably closer to the truth than "run").

  Rush hour was approaching, but not fast enough. There is a period just before the rush hour timetable starts, when there is a very long gap between trains to Hayes (Kent), calling at Catford Bridge, and I arrived in that long gap. I could have got the first train to London Bridge, and changed to a train from Cannon Street, but when I checked the times it seemed I would have a long wait there. An alternative was to get a train to Lewisham, and change trains there. It probably didn't save any time, but the wait at Lewisham was less - and I could take a few more snaps of trains at Lewisham.

  It was just before 4pm when I arrived at Catford Bridge, or about 2.5 hours after I had passed it earlier on my way to Catford station. I was hope 10 minutes later, and feeling very tired. It had been a very busy day, and all that rushing around changing trains, plus hopping from platform to platform at Clapham Junction to get more photos, had really taken it out of me.

  The downside of feeling so tired is that I couldn't wait for 6pm and dinner time, but started snacking. It was all made worse by sitting at my PC going through all the photos I had taken. I wouldn't say it was boring exactly, but it is the sort of thing that is easy to do while snacking, and so I did ! Finally it was time to make my dinner. It was a very healthy grilled salmon salad - only very slightly spoiled by the new potatoes added to it.

  In my enthusiasm I set the time a bit too long for grilling the salmon. I seriously charred the skin. Fortunately it was still edible, and actually almost nice, but the smoke from the mini oven/grill filled the room. I had returned to my PC while it cooked/charred, and it was quite a sight to see when I opened the kitchen door. Anyway, as I said, it was still edible, and on the whole the salad was rather nice. I washed it all down with three bottles of very strong beer.

  I started watching The Prisoner on The Horror Channel while eating dinner, and then turned over to Channel 4+1 to watch The Simpsons. Then it was back to the photo editing. I was feeling very tired and I started making silly mistakes. Fortunately none were serious, and the undo function saved wasting too much time. Eventually I just had to go to bed, leaving the photo editor with a half edited photo open so I could continue this morning.

  I have no idea what time I turned the light out, but I am pretty sure I went to sleep very quickly. There is an awful lot I don't remember about last night because I seemed to be sleeping very soundly. One thing I do remember is not having any trouble with feeling too hot in bed. If anything I only just felt warm enough at times. One curious thing is that even when I did wake up for a pee I didn't really do much.

  Not peeing much could be a sign of low blood glucose, but it wasn't in this case. All that snacking, which included a tub of low fat cottage cheese - that is renowned as being extra healthy, but in reality has a much higher sugar content than I would have believed - plus maybe the beers, meant that this morning my blood glucose was up to 9.0mmol/l, and at that level I will try and fast for a lot of the day in the hope it will be a lot lower tomorrow. That will be aided by the fact that I probably ate all the worst stuff yesterday.

  Once again I have started the day in a productive way. Before I started writing this I hand washed a double fitted sheet and two pillow cases. They are now hanging on the line to dry in today's sunshine. Once I have finshed writing this I will have a shower, and then..... I have a sort of urge to go out on the trains again. I could possibly make a start on my quest to travel to all the most distant stations allowed on my Freedom Pass. On the other hand, I now have ore work to do on my ever growing spreadsheet listing all my train photographs (there are 4 or 5 pictures that might be included that I took last Wednesday). I could also do some housework - there is a lot that really ought to be done.....but it does feel a shame to waste today's warm sunshine.