09:13 BST

  Yesterday may have started off bright and sunny, but it didn't last long. The rest of the day was dull, and sometimes very dull. Rain was forecast for a couple of hours starting at 6pm, but I can't remember noticing any rain. The main thing is that it was another very chilly day. 8° C probably shouldn't feel as cold as it did, or maybe it always has, but I was desperately trying to be optimistic, and failing miserably.

  

  This morning started below zero, and there was quite a frost to be seen on the car roofs in the road outside. By the time I had taken a snap of one of my thermometers (on the left) the temperature had started to rise. Ten or fifteen minutes earlier it had been saying -0.5° C, and it might even have been lower earlier still. Since the sun rose the sun has been shining steadily, but by 11am a few clouds will reduce it to just sunny spells. The sort of good news is that they are now forecast to continue for an extra hour until the sky completely clouds over for 2pm. All the sunshine this morning should result in the afternoon temperature reaching 9° C , and it was stay there until late in the evening. Very little of the recent forecasts of rain have actually fallen, but so much rain is forecast for tomorrow that a lot of it must fall. Even after it stops the sky will remain very grey for the rest of the day. The day will be slightly sweetened by the temperature reaching 14° C.
  Yesterday was a day where any ideas about how it might turn out were completely wrong. It all started with a ring at my doorbell at approximately 9.30am. It was my friend of dubious quality, Lee. He didn't look so disreputable as last time, although he did stink. He asked if he could come in for a chat, and I agreed that he could for a short while.

  After some preliminary small talk he asked if he could borrow £200 from me. I said a definite no to that much, but I did lend him £100. I didn't really expect to get it back, but I thought I give him a single chance. He came out with an unlikely story that he wanted to take Sue to Hastings because she had been feeling down lately. Once he had gone, supposedly in the direction of the newsagents on Catford Bridge to buy, or top up an Oyster Card, I sent a message to Sue telling her about it.

  It wasn't long before I was talking to her on the phone, and she said " I bet you £10 he never turns up", and I replied that I too bet her £10 that he wouldn't turn up ! There then followed one of Sue's very long telephone calls. It was about 3 hours after Lee had left my place that Sue announced there was someone at her front door, and said goodbye as she went to answer the door. A few minutes later she sent a text massage to say it was Lee.

  He must have walked all the way to Sue's place. I later found out he had with him a quarter or half bottle of whisky. I had specifically told him not to use the money for whisky, but you can't tell a severe alcoholic anything. Later still I found out that Lee had actually taken Sue to Hastings. Much much later, around 9pm, and as the last train to London (calling at Orpington where Sue wanted to get to) was in 20 minutes time, there seemed to be a lot of confusion about train Tickets. I think Sue thought that Lee had bought return tickets for both of them, but when it came to getting the train home the ticket barriers were closed, and there were revenue protection inspectors in attendance.

  Sue was in a panic because neither of them had enough money for tickets. I suggested to Sue that the only option was to use her last £1.50 to buy a ticket for the next station to get through the barriers, and if a "ticket inspector" asked to see her ticket to say that Lee had their tickets, and let him try and bluff his way through it. One mystery is how Lee got through the ticket barrier. Sue said she thought one of the inspectors just opened the barrier for him, and let him through without a ticket. He went through after Sue had, and may have said that Sue had his ticket.

   I have yet to hear if they had any trouble on the train, or when leaving the train at Orpington (or even of Lee did leave there, or maybe stayed on the train for unknown reasons). Sue loves Hastings for some unfathomable reason, but reckoned she didn't have a great time there. It was icy cold on the beach, and the pub where they had a few drinks was to have a band on that she was looking forward to seeing, but they weren't due on until the time Sue and Lee had to get to the station for that last train home. Apparently they did have a nice meal in a Chinese restaurant, and at least Lee did pay for that as well as drinks in the pub.

  Meanwhile, back in Catford, it was lunchtime by the time I had finished speaking to Sue. I also had a bucket of laundry in the bath, and couldn't have a shower before I had dealt with that. It had been my intention to finish that laundry, and then have a shower, and finally to be dressed and ready to go out to get a bit of shopping by about 11am. I decided to have lunch before I did anything else. My guts hadn't been quite a volatile as the previous day, but they still weren't ideal. I thought I would give them a challenge they would never forget.

  I had a can of smoky lentils and bacon soup, and a can of pea and ham soup. Apart from the smoky lentils seeming to use the same smoke as smoky bacon crisps, and giving smoky burps for most of the afternoon, I enjoyed both soups, and I don't think anyone could say I didn't have enough fibre in my diet. If I had one problem is that it wasn't too long after eating lunch that I started to do the laundry that had been soaking all morning in the bucket in the bath, and was stone cold and slimy. I got half way through before I decided that doing so soon after eating was a bad idea, and I lay on my bed to read and (I think) snooze for an hour or so.

  I did get that laundry finished, and hung on a clothes horse to dry indoors, but it was at something like 4pm, and it felt too late to do anything else. I think I went back to snoozing and reading, although I don't think I actually snoozed again. I know my eyelids drooped, and I put the book down and closed my eyes, but I don't think I fell asleep, and as far as I could tell, I had picked up the book again just 5 minutes later.

  I did have a few snacks during the afternoon. They were ham on Dijon mustard, on rice cakes. Dijon mustard doesn't taste as good as English mustard, but at least I could spread it on with taking care, and it didn't blow my head off like the real English mustard I had spread far too thickly on some rice cakes the day before (or day before that). Those snacks made it easier to hold out until 7pm when I had my dinner. It was a very simple, but ultimately very unhealthy dinner of grilled bacon and (alleged) low sugar baked beans. Unfortunately they were genuine Heinz baked beans whose definition of low sugar actually means a lot of sugar, but less than the obscene amount in their main product.

  I might not have been able to hear and answer Sue's panicky phone call about last train times, and tickets, if it were not a rather good night on TV. The Sky Arts Channel were showing some music stuff as they usually do on a Saturday nightm and there were several things that I enjoyed. One was a documentary about the making of Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland album. The other was a recording of Roger Water's "Us And Them" concert filmed in Holland. I would speculate that it was filmed, and edited by Dutch or European people. The presentation was really good, and rather than just listen to it, as I have done with quite a few concerts they have shown, I actually watched almost all of it, and right to the end at midnight.

  It is hard to explain without really seeing it in 3D, and also having some idea of the behind the scenes stuff, but the stage set that Roger Waters used was mostly just a large projection screen. In some ways that made the stage set very simple, but what was being projected was very sophisticated. There were other effects, such as the inflatable pig above the audience, plus some drop down screens almost within the audience. Of course there were some lighting effects too, but the main backdrop was just projected.

  I guess I felt a bit excited when I went to bed, and I read for a while before I tried to go to sleep. It took some time to fall asleep because I couldn't get comfortable. My legs seemed to hurt whenever I covered them with my duvet, but it wasn't from the weight of the duvet. It seemed to be more related to temperature. It wasn't hot enough to make my legs damp with sweat (often an annoyance at other times), but it seemed like it was just my skin aching because it didn't like the temperature. It could have been an effect similar to the pain when you put frozen hands under the hot water tap. Of course that can be very painful for a few seconds, but the effect on my legs was very long lasting, and very mild, but still annoying.

  I can only speculate that it might have been gone 1am before I went to sleep, but once I did I seemed to sleep quite solidly. My only regret is that I woke up too early this morning. I felt I deserved to sleep a lot later, but the bright sun peeping around the curtains, and lighting up the curtains themselves, triggered the desire to be awake. I thought I could go back to bed after going to the toilet, checking my blood glucose, taking screenshots of the weather forecast, and taking my morning tablets. I guess by that time I was just too awake to go back to sleep.

  The morning my blood glucose was up to 8.5mmol/l, and I blame those baked beans I had. I would probably got away with it of I had eaten them for breakfast, but not when I had them late in the evening. Oh well, 8.5mmol/l presents no actual problems - it is just annoying when I am really aiming for 7.5mmol/l. The result of the lentils and stuff I ate for lunch was predictable. I was going to say entirely predictable, but they do seem to have caused a lot less wind that expected. I have had two very smooth visits to the toilet so far this morning, and I presume I can expect another sooner or later, but I seem to feel OK in several ways this morning.

  There are a few things I hope to achieve today. One earlier idea was to go to Hastings myself. From 3 to 7pm there are some bands on at a free gig on Hastings pier. It seemed like a good idea until I realised that it would mean a complex train journey because there are no trains from Catford station today. The second consideration is that it will most probably be bitterly cold on the pier today.

  I think the main thing I will be doing today is to get some shopping. As I originally intended to do yesterday, I still want to go out and buy some more instant noodles. Now I also want to buy some cheap "tupperware-like" containers, and some fresh mouse traps. Yesterday evening I thought I heard some movement when I went into the kitchen, and this morning I found one of my few remaining instant noodle packets had been nibbled on ! It seems I definitely still have mouse in my kitchen. It has been keeping a low profile, but I will get it in the end. My plan is to put the traps, baited with some bird seed in the containers with a small hole cut in it. The main theory is there will be less chance of my accidently triggering the trap by brushing something against it.