08:51 BST

  Yesterday started horrible, but changed to "fairly pleasant" late in the afternoon. As suspected, it was a dry day yesterday. Some light showers were forecast, and indeed it is possible I might have missed one, but with a 50% or less chance, it was always very possible it would stay dry. Some late sunny spells were originally forecast, but they disappeared from later revision. However, reality knew better. Most were fairly short, and sometimes it was just hazy sunshine, but after the horrible, filthy grey clouds that dominated earlier in the day, they looked rather good, and I think they started earlier than even the most optimistic forecast. It was also a lot warmer than forecast. By late afternoon the temperature had crept up to 20, or even 21° C.

  

  I wouldn't describe the clouds as being mid grey, as shown in the early version of the forecast for the start of the day, but it was cloudy. The sun has broken through now, and I would describe it as sunny instead of just sunny spells. The latest revision to the forecast shows just sunny spells until 11am now, but from then on it should be full sunshine until sunset. The afternoon temperature may only peak at just 17° C, and that just for one single hour. I would have expected the temperature to rise to 20° C today, but I guess 17° C is pretty good. Tomorrow may only feature sunny spells until 11am, and the rest of the day could be cloudy, but 21° C is predicted.

  I didn't feel washed out yesterday like I did after spending many hours out at the Sweeps Festival last Saturday, but I didn't feel 100% after spending nearly 6 hours out the day before yesterday. On the other hand, the horrible grey skies yesterday morning sapped most of my energy and enthusiasm for the day. It wasn't helped by the fact that I knew I had a tedious task ahead of me yesterday.

  I admit it took me a long time to get going, and the first thing I did was something that could have been done any time, but it was still satisfying to have got it done, and it did lead me on to other things. That little job was to repair the connector on one end of one of the test leads to a multimeter. I had done a non-soldered bodge job ages ago, and it could have stayed like that for ages while the meter was only very occasionally used for things like a checking a battery. I soldered it up properly, and used several layers of heat-shrink sleeving to give it some strength.

  At almost exactly midday I had some lunch. It was a couple of fish cakes with salad. Maybe a little infusion of energy, despite my blood swimming with glucose, helped to perk me up a bit. I did take the unusual step of checking my blood glucose before lunch, and in the 5 hours since I had taken it in the morning, it had already fallen from a bad 9.8mmol/l to a not-too-bad 9.0mmol/l. I had a short rest after lunch before getting down to the main work of the day.

  That work was to go through all the pictures I had taken of trains on Friday, to see which ones I needed to edit and add to my great spreadsheet cataloguing all the best or most interesting train pictures I have taken over the years. To my surprise, there were only a couple of trains that I had photographed before, but that left something like 50 or 60 photos to edit, and then add to the spreadsheet, and it's associated folder of pictures.
  Fortunately I had used a camera I rarely use, a Fuji HS35 EXR camera, and under good conditions, like last Friday with the blue skies and sunshine, it produces an excellent picture. I don't use it very often because under less than ideal conditions it produces mediocre pictures. When I first bought it from a second hand shop, for maybe as little as £35*, I tried it at a pub gig, and it was useless ! It was starting to show it's weakness in the last pictures I too on Friday when the sun was getting low, and the sky became dominated by thin cloud. Incidently, it looks like a posh DSLR camera, but in fact the zoom lens is fixed, and it would be called a "bridge camera" - bridging the gap between pocket cameras and DSLR cameras.

* I've just checked and the old receipt says I paid £110 for it, but I think the guy in the shop threw in an old Canon pocket sized camera that had been sitting on the shelf for months with nobody taking an interest in it. I got a couple of cheap, low end cameras for free from him - provided I bought something more expensive.
  This was one of the last pictures I took on Friday, and it was taken at East Croydon station. By this time the sunlight was very hazy, and although open to the sky, it did seems ever so slightly gloomy in the station. The significance of this picture was that this train had broken down in the station, and delayed my travelling, and many other too. I might have mentioned it yesterday, but didn't show a picture of the sad old thing. I had to lighten up the mid tones to show a bit more detail of the train, but it made the already grey shadows look a very pale grey - a sort of wintery look.

  I was doing the photo work in batches yesterday, and taking several breaks. Mostly I would lay down and quietly read for half an hour, or maybe longer. In fact maybe it was longer because I didn't finish the job until just before dinner time. I can't say that I enjoyed what I was doing, but there were few, if indeed any other options, and it was something that had to be done. It was a nice relief when it was all finished. One slightly annoying thing was that while doing it I checked on all the pictures I had taken of class 455 trains, which are being taken out of service on the 14th, just 5 days from now, and I only have photographs of maybe half of them.

  All I ate yesterday before dinner time was the fish cakes and salad. I thought I was doing pretty well, and decided I should hang the expense, and go for a known good option for my dinner - shish kebabs. Maybe it was a silly mistake to also order a donor kebab along with a couple of shish kebabs and some grilled wings. The wings and one shish kebab was for today. I thoroughly enjoyed the donor and shish kebab I had last night.

  I also thoroughly enjoyed, except for the too frequent commercial breaks of Sky Arts showing Pink Floyd's "Pulse" concert at Wembley Stadium last night. It didn't start until 9pm, and I feel sure it was heavily edited to fit a 90 minute, or maybe 70 minute plus commercial breaks, slot. What they did show was good, and maybe it was because they used a European/English camera crew, the production values were far better than some of the crap that comes from America.

  There was one irony about staying up to watch Pink Floyd. I had thought I would be in bed, and asleep by 9pm. This was particularly so after I got and then exchanged several messages from Angela. Some weeks back Angela told me that lover boy was playing a gig with the new band he is in at The Elm Tree in Elmers End. She suggested it would be good if I could get there to keep her company - with subtle hints we could go outside now and then when she had a cigarette, and though not said in words, there was the hint that maybe we could have a brief cuddle or two.

  I completely forgot about it, or specifically that it was last night, and when Angela texted me to see if I was coming I had just finished stuffing my face with kebab, and the chilli sauce was just starting to ring on a bit of a sweat. I was in no fit state to go out, and wouldn't be for many hours. To make matter worse Angela said that I could meet her at her house, and she would order a cab to take us to the gig. It has been so many years since I was last invited to go to her house, and even longer since sharing a cab with her (although the best time was sharing a can after a gig !).

  I felt really awful letting both Angela and myself down, but mostly it was letting Angela down. I knew she would have to sit there all night, having few if any people to talk to, listening to stuff she may not even like. Maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but I felt so sorry for Angela. It sort of ruined my night, and apart from the Pink Floyd, I ended up having a terrible night.

  I just couldn't seem to get to sleep last night. I didn't feel at all sleepy, but I did feel like the bed had a thousand new lumps and bumps, the duvet was too warm, and bit of me ached. I suspect I got a few more bits of very light sleep when it seemed like I was awake for ages. By 1am I had thrown off the duvet as being too hot, and an hour later I turned the heater on because I was too cool to sleep. An hour after that I took a couple of painkillers because I had all sorts of aches - nothing that new, but too many at the same time, and maybe sometimes a bit stronger than usual.

  It felt like I didn't get any decent sleep until about 4am, and then I woke up 2 hours later and couldn't get back to sleep again despite feeling awful. I do wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye - some sort of long Covid or something. Despite taking what I thought were fair precautions, my blood glucose was up to 9.6mmol/l this morning. This run of "nines" I have had over the last 3 or 4 days may indicate I am fighting some sort of illness, or maybe I have just been eating crap without realising it - which is sadly probable.

  I do not feel good this morning, but mostly it is just this idea I have in my head that I am owed a lot of sleep. I don't know how the day is going to pan out. I feel that I should take advantage of the sunshine to go out and do something. I don't feel right for a long walk, even though that could be the best thing for me. I could go out and try to get more pictures of the soon to vanish class 455 trains, but Sunday are not good days for the railways (too many engineering jobs going on).  Rather than try and force myself to do anything today, I am just going to lay on my bed when I have finished this writing, read my book, and see if I can doze off. Maybe later I will find the inspiration to go somewhere - and that is on the assumption that I am not seeing Jodie for a beer session today. I think she said she is busy this Sunday, but I had better confirm that before doing anything else.