09:00 BST

  Yesterday was a tiny, weeny, improvement over the day before. For one thing there was some sunshine very early in the morning, and later in the day it did seem to get bright enough for a few short periods to make you think the sun was about to come out. It didn't come out. Ultimately the cloud was too thick for that. Sometimes the cloud was very thick and dark looking. The late afternoon temperature reached 16° C, and with some sunshine that would have felt warm, but without sunshine it didn't. Under those grey clouds the whole day felt cold, although mainly when being very sedate.

  

  It does look like it could rain as I write this, but so far it remains dry. The latest revision to the forecast has changed the rain predicted for 11am and midday to light rain, and reduced the chance of it falling to 50%. The means it probably will, but allows enough wiggle room if it doesn't. It seems it is going to be another rather cool, grey day, although the latest revision to the forecast does give hope of an hour (6pm) at 15° C. Tomorrow may see the temperature reach 17° C, but there remains little chance of any sunshine.

  Yesterday was another day that was not a good day.  I began to feel like I had picked up some sort of bug when I was in Rochester on Saturday. If I did, on a scale of hay fever to Covid, it was probably somewhere just under man 'flu. I felt like I had no energy (even though it seems I did), and I felt cold for most of the day. I did check to see if I had a fever, and maybe by my own peculiar standards, I may have come close to a fever (or just under normal for most people).

  I did have a few aches yesterday, but while they were the sort of thing you don't want when feeling low/off colour, they were nothing unusual these days. I think a lot of it, probably all of it, was in my head. I was feeling bored, unenthusiastic, and depressed. I blame it all on the weather. If it had been sunny I would probably have gone for a walk, or maybe even train spotting/photographing.

  Funnily enough it was not actually a day when I did nothing at all (except reading and snoozing). I wasn't sure they would be open on a bank holiday Monday, but I went to Tesco, and bought some shopping. Some of it was stuff I definitely shouldn't have bought, but when feeling depressed I will eat without considering the consequences - for a short while, and then get depressed about it later.

  Let's call eating too much of the wrong stuff the second thing I did yesterday, although it was, obviously, spread out a lot through the day. Another simple to describe thing was to water the garden. I thought there might have been some rain yesterday, but then I realised there would be none, and the garden was looking very dry. So it was out with the hose, and more charges on my water bill.

  Talking of charges, it added to my depression that because I was feeling cold I had the heater on low for a long period of time in my bedroom. My bedroom is where my main PC is, and for long periods of time I would be sitting in front of my PC, only moving my fingers, and feeling chilly. With the huge increase in gas and electricity charges since the 1st April, I really don't want to have to artificially heat the room, but the gloomy weather leaves me little choice.

  Another thing I did yesterday was to finish off an odd project to scan all my supermarket receipts so I can hoard them in digital form where they take up no space at all, and the information will last a lot longer than the print on many receipts. I guess I can do it so I can compare prices now to those of the past. The curious thing is that I never seem to bother to do that, or maybe not in any serious way. I do have the occasional flick through some past receipts when adding new scans to the folder on my PC.

  The final thing I did was to do more work on my grand spreadsheet cataloguing all the train photos I have taken over the years. Yesterday, like the last few sessions I did, I was concentrating on the photos of the old slam door trains. I now realise I have quite a good representation of all the types in service for the last 10 years of their service. Sadly I have none of some older types that would have still been running when I had my first camera or two. The thing that triggered me to start doing it yesterday was because I had a few modern photos I needed to add that I had taken when I went to Rochester last Saturday.

  I'm almost forgetting one other thing of importance that I did yesterday. I ordered some new curtains for my bedroom, and it seems not a moment too soon. The old curtains had been clawed by one or more of my old cats. They had done it to try and open the curtains so they could sit in the sun (and see the world go by last night). The weakening effect of sunlight on the fabric made those scratches so easy to tear . Mostly they go down the edges that are drawn together when the curtains are closed, but last night I found that there was an added tear going across the curtain.

   For ages they have been looking tatty, but now they are getting even worse. One excuse for delaying their replacement for so long was that it seems modern curtains don't have the slots for the hooks that run along curtain rail. I couldn't find any yesterday, and settled on some that are for a curtain rod. The complication is that the bigger window in my bedroom is a bay window, and would need a modified/bent curtain rod. I am going to see if I can get away with modifying how the existing curtain rail is screwed to the window frame. The unknown is how stiff it will be I take out the supports either side of the bend in the bay window, and put the supports in the middle. It will only be a short(ish) run, and the rail may be able to support the curtain without sagging. If not then I will think again.

  I lost track of time last night, but I think I had my dinner at about my typical time now of 7pm. My dinner was just a pack of Tesco ready cooked spicy chicken wings. I couldn't be bothered to heat them up, and just ate them cold. The spicy coating did make them taste much nicer than the Sainsbury's chicken thighs I ate the other day. The only bad thing was that the spicy coating was described as sticky. It wasn't exactly sticky, but the nutrition panel on the pack showed the high sugar content.

  Maybe it was the spice, or maybe it was the sugar, aided by a large whisky, but I finally felt warm enough to turn the heater off, and apart from a short period to take the chill off the room before I went to bed, the heater stayed off until 5am this morning. I think I had a generally good night's sleep last night, but I did have a very weird dream. It was probably inspired by the SciFi book I was reading before going to sleep, although nothing in the book described anything like my dream.

  The dream was peculiar in so much as the idea behind it was set in deep space, but was being simulated at the end of my bed, under the duvet. It concerned two planetoids, one black, and one white, surrounded by lots of small moons. The two planetoids were in orbit about each other, and once in a long while the small influence from the gravity of the moons would flip the planetoids around to make the black one appear on top of the white one, and then maybe years they would flip positions again.

  It was all a bit vague, but I think the idea of watching it as a simulation, under my bedclothes (what an insane idea !!) was so it could be watched at high speed. The funny thing is that I am sure I have read about something a bit like this actually happening for real - possibly it was two stars orbiting each other, and whose orbits were being changed by a nearby black hole. It was definitely nothing so dramatic as two planetoids (small planets) in highly contrasting colours, and of course a black planet couldn't actually be seen against the blackness of space.

  As expected, all the comfort food I ate yesterday has come back to bite me on the bum this morning. My blood glucose has shot right up to 9.6mmo/l. The only good thing, and maybe surprising thing, is that it hasn't crossed the red line at 10.0mmol/l, into the danger zone. I definitely need to take extra care about what I eat today. Fortunately, unless I deliberately go out to buy something, most of what I have in the fridge is almost benign.

  I was going to try and force myself to go out today so I was definitely away from any temptations. In this gloomy weather I don't fancy walking anywhere, but I considered that maybe I could go trains photographing. I still want to go to Caterham, and probably a few other stations near there, and on the limits of my Freedom Pass validity - as part of my quest to visit the limits in all directions. It doesn't look like I'll be doing that today though. I will be waiting in for an Amazon delivery. It could come early afternoon, but it will probably be much later. I don't want to take chances, and so I will be staying to do.....what will I do today ??