The weather
forecasts kept changing yesterday, but it
seems the first attempts got it about right,
and then they just mucked everything up. As I
mentioned yesterday, the early BBC
(Meteogroup) forecast was the most optimistic,
and it was also the forecast that proved to be
most accurate. After a misty start the sun
broke through, and the rest of the day was
sunny (apart from when a very occasional cloud
would pass in front of the sun for a minute or
two. I can't say for certain what the
afternoon temperature was, but I feel sure it
was closer to the BBC's 20° C than the 17° C
offered by the Met Office.
Neither the BBC or
Met Office predicted this morning's misty
start, but at least the BBC got the full
sunshine right after the mist lifted. The BBC
website is currently showing full sunshine
until sunset, and a top temperature of 18° C.
The Met Office seems to have drifted a long
way from the current reality by showing it
being cloudy, and even in the early morning
version of the forecast (as shown above) they
only showed sunny spells. The latest revision
says sunny spells won't start until 11am, and
will finish for the rest of the day after 1pm.
Both forecasts seem to agree on 18° C this
afternoon. When the forecast for today is
apparently so wrong it makes me wonder if it
is worth saying what is predicted for
tomorrow. For the sake of completeness it is
generally predicted to be less sunny, but both
forecasts disagree on how less sunny it will
be, but both forecasters agree on an afternoon
temperature of just 16° C
After my bad night's sleep, and
initially a possible light hangover, I did not
feel good. I'm not sure if I did have a
hangover because other rough feelings tended
to obscure any hangover symptoms. I'm not
entirely sure I can blame it all on a lack of
sleep. It may have been frequently interrupted
sleep, but I probably got over 5 hours of
sleep in total, and while my memories about
dreams may have been very vague, I know I
definitely did dream a lot, and dreams are
very important for mental health.
I think one of my problems yesterday
was more in my head than in reality. I do seem
to suffer from being unable to change my
feeling during the day. To put it a better
way, if I wake up feeling bed I tend to
feeling bad all day even after the stimulus to
feel bad ceased hours previously. The short
version of a long story is that I couldn't
raise the enthusiasm to do anything yesterday.
In fact that is more or less the long version
too !
I did two things yesterday, and one was
more important the other. The least important
was to spend many hours going through all the
scans of the negatives taken in the days when
I used a film camera, and picking out all the
reasonable, or better, pictures of trains
taken in the late 1990s. I would then
edit them before saving them in a special
folder ready to be transferred into my ever
expanding spreadsheet catalogue of all my
train pictures.
I discovered I had taken a couple of
pictures of trains in liveries that only
existed for a short while. The picture above
of a
class
332 train is one such picture.
Apparently only 5 of them were built. They
were first used on Stanstead Airport Express
services from Liverpool Street station where
this picture was taken. One one side they said
Network SouthEast, and on the other side
"Stanstead Express". Sadly I don't have a
picture of the other side. These trains are
apparently still use in other parts of the
country, but carry slightly different numbers
now because they keep changing the seating
plan in them !
The other thing I did yesterday was
slightly more important. I managed to control
what I was eating rather well for a day when
there were few distractions from, real or
imagined, hunger. I did give in and eat almost
all a triangular tube of Doritoes strong
cheese flavour "Stax". Previous experiment
showed that these corn based snacks carry very
little sugar - probably because all the fibre
from the corn makes them very similar to
cardboard.
I had a slightly late lunch of a couple
of low(ish) fat beefburger patties. I had them
on their own except for mustard and some low
sugar tomato ketchup. Part of the reason to
open the tube of Doritoes, mentioned above,
was because I started to think that maybe
something to mop up the residual fat in those
burgers might be a good thing. I thought I had
better play it safe when it came to dinner,
and I just had two cans of soup (both selected
for their low sugar content).
Despite thinking I lacked sleep the
previous night, I didn't seem to be in much of
a rush to go to sleep last night. I read in
bed for some time before I turned the light
out. I guess I was fast asleep by 10pm. My
sleep might have been almost perfect last
night had I not woken up freezing at about
1.30am. I had started to go asleep partly
covered by my duvet, but I had obviously
kicked it aside while sleeping. I didn't have
any heating on because my bedroom had been
warmed by the sun during that day, but at
1.30am it had cooled down a lot. I turned the
heater on low, and I was soon asleep again.
I know I woke up several times after
that, and I think that every time I changed
how much my duvet was covering me. By the
morning I think I was completely covered
(except for my face which I never cover). I
had a couple of notable dreams during the
night. One of them was much more describable -
at least I think it was, but while it might
have been exciting at the time, it has
completely evaporated from my memory now.
The other dream is far harder to
describe because there was so much of it, and
most of it was too bland to describe. It was
yet another in a recurring series that pops up
quite frequently with slightly changed
details. In these dreams I am at some sort of
college. Sometimes that college was the BT
training school near Old Street, and sometime
variations on the college where I did my City
And Guilds courses.
It is obvious to me that the setting of
many of these dreams is influenced by my old
school. That school had one peculiar feature.
The science labs were on the top floor, but
the top floor was split into two, and you had
to use the right staircase to get to the right
lab. In my dreams this is taken to
extremes....and worse. Like in last night's
dream, going back down a staircase does not
guarantee you end up where you started.
In one part of my dream I had left the
classroom to go and find a toilet. I knew
there was one on the landing I had come up
from to get to the classroom, but everything
had changed when I went back down towards that
landing. There seemed to be no urgency about
finding a toilet (or I would probably have
woken up), and I set out on a sort of magical
mystery tour. One staircase I went down came
out in a shopping mall. That is a sort
of recurring them in many dreams. It seems
that many buildings I go in keep getting
bigger, and more wings or stories are added
that have uses far beyond the original purpose
of the building. I guess these dreams reveal
something from my deep subconscious, but I
just enjoy them - usually.
My careful eating resulted in my blood
glucose dropping to 8.2mmol/l this morning.
That was lower than I expected, and so all is
good there. What is not so good is that I have
to try and plan today so I can go out for a
few hours tonight. Chain are playing an early
(7pm) gig in The Chatterton Arms tonight, and
I would like to go there even if only for 15
minutes. I fear there will be people there
whose presence annoys me, and so I will
probably just be wanting to get a dozen or two
quick snaps and go home again.
My problem is what to do with myself
during the day to ensure I am fit and ready to
go out at about 6.15pm to get the bus, and
it's long tedious journey to beyond Bromley. I
think I will have to stop eating after a lunch
at about 1pm. I can't go out for a walk today
or I will be too tired to go out later. I can
foresee I will be back working on my ever
expanding train pictures spreadsheet again.
The other consideration is whether my guts
will be OK by this evening, At the moment I
seem to be constipated, but I am starting to
fart a lot so something should happen sooner
or later.
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