I felt generally miserable yesterday. I think my brain had come out in sympathy with the morning weather, and didn't really change it's opinion for the whole day. Strangely enough, it made for quite a productive day, but in a way that itself was a miserable experience. That is not to say that there wasn't a single highlight of the day. There was, but just the one.

  It was just before midday when I went out to get a bit of shopping. I never did go and see if Poundstretcher still had their 50% off sale, but I did go to the little supermarket on Catford Bridge to mostly buy more packets of instant noodles, but also to get other things that might seem interesting. I ended up buying two packets of sausages - one was of Silesian (Poland) sausages, and the other was Cyprus style sausages. I also bought 4 of those little pots of bean salad (although two of them were actually couscous).

  The highlight of the day happened while walking to the shop. I saw someone who looked vaguely familiar, but evidently I was more familiar to him because he stopped and asked if I was Bill. At that point I realised who he was. He was a neighbour kid from a few houses away in the mid 1960s. I can't remember the date, but I'd take a stab at 1969 when we moved away from each other when the whole terrace of mouses was demolished to make way for the Catford Tescos, and Milford Towers on top of it.

  I can't think why I should be able to recognise him, and him recognise me after all these years, but we did. My lasting memory of him was when I knocked him out. There were several of us playing in the road, and somehow covered it with mud or something. I got a broom to sweep it up, and when it was done I started swinging it around my head. Unfortunately Tony, for that was his name, walk straight into it ! He still has a scar, but to my relief he bears no grudges for it.

  We chatted for a bit outside his late mums house that he is doing up. He told me he actually lives in Sevenoaks now, but had occasionally seen me around this area. After we chatted for a few minutes he said "wait a minute" and dashed into the house, and up the stairs. A minute later he came down again clutching a photo.
  He thought I would be interested in it because it shows my old house. It is (I estimate) about three doors down the road, but from this angle no detail can be seen. What actually interested me more was the van parked at the kerb next to the two ladies and child. I think he was the child, and he was with his mum, the taller woman, and his aunty Violet. That van was my dad's old van, and although I don't think I could get the numbers in the right order, it's registration plate NV5725 has stuck in my memories through all these years.

  The van itself is an Austin 10-4. I expect it probably had some sort of name, but it was basically a 10 horsepower, 4 cylinder engine. Maybe it didn't have a more generic name because a coach builder had built the van section onto the frame of a saloon car or something. At a time when most cars were painted black, it was painted a pale green colour. I believe my dad thought it was a safer colour because it was easier to see in the dark - when streetlamps were few and far, and also not that bright.

  After I got back home with my shopping I decided I didn't have any enthusiasm to go out again, but I did have some enthusiasm to have something to eat. I think I started with a little pot of couscous, and a little pot of edame beans with feta cheese. Not too much time passed before curiosity made me open, heat and eat a can of giant beans and proper sliced  sausage. It was not the same make as the cans I bought from The Metro Food Centre, but quite similar to them, and also lacking in any English description.

  At the top of the page I said I did something that was a miserable experience. That is a bit of an exaggeration, or maybe I just can't find a more accurate word to describe it. What I ended up doing, because I couldn't find any enthusiasm to do any of the other possibilities, was to get back to work on my ever expanding spreadsheet listing an example of every train I have taken pictures of. The thing that makes it a bit long winded is that I now include a link to a file of pictures of every train appearing on the spreadsheet. I didn't start out doing that, and so a lot of the job is now tracking down the original pictures, and adding them after some editing - so they are a standard size of 1600 pixel wide, if they were big enough to start with, and do any cosmetic work to improve the picture.

  After adding some recent pictures, including the ones on my day out on the trains last Saturday, I seem to have gone back to pictures taken in 2003. I seemed to have had many days out on the trains in that year, and my pictures include loads of old slam door trains. The spreadsheet originally started as just the local types of trains that have just gone, or about to go obsolete. I then included any "modern" trains I had taken of photos of anywhere I had been. Then I added some older stuff, and while there are still loads of newer stuff to add, there are loads of slam door train that I am now adding. One problem I had was identifying the type of train. There were many different types of slam door train that superficially all looked the same, and the numbers on the front were only the last 4 digits of the complete number. I am now getting the hang of (hopefully) correctly identifying them.

  I have no idea how many hours I spent on the spreadsheet yesterday, but it was a lot ! I dread to think how many hours in total the job has taken since I first started it ! The big trouble is that it is more like a job than the pleasure when I first started it. It was good when dinner time came around. I waited until 7pm (that being the new 6pm in BST times), and had a beef burger salad for my dinner. It was based on the idea that I would have at least one healthy dinner yesterday. Everything else I ate was close to junk food...sort of.

  I didn't want another uncomfortable night last night. I had been sitting down at my PC for far too long, and I was expecting muscle cramps, aching this, that and the other, or worse. I took a couple of Paracetamol tablets a couple of hours before going to bed, and I did indeed have a comfortable night. It was much better than the night before when it sometimes felt I had hardly had any decent sleep.

  Maybe the Paracetamol wore off by 5am, or maybe I had had enough good sleep that I needed little more, but at 5am I had a period of insomnia that lasted for about an hour. Even after that I don't think I slept well, but on the other hand it did come as a surprise that it was suddenly just after 7am, and there was a sort of grey murky light filtering through the curtains.

  It came as no surprise that my blood glucose had shot up to 8.6mmol/l this morning. Oh well, it could have been worse, and it is still in the region that the nurse described as "good glucose control" when I saw her about a year ago. The rest of me doesn't feel too bad this morning, and maybe I am even feeling a little less miserable today - although that is on the understanding that we should soon be getting at least some sunny spells. There is not a single sign that the sun could breakthrough yet though. According to the latest revision to the forecast the complete blanket of white clouds has 30 minutes to completely clear off to leave blue sky and full sunshine - and you can tell that to the marines !

  I guess it is now the new normal to say I haven't really got a clue as to what I am doing today. One think I am not doing is my usual Monday morning shopping trip to Aldi. I have sufficient food here already, and buying more might encourage me to eat more. I may get to Poundstretcher today to see if their 50% off sale is still happening, and if they have any stock left. If the sun really does come out I might go out and add another station to my quest to visit the extremes of the Freedom Pass availability. Maybe I might get to Dartford this time.