07:53 BST

  Once the sun burned through the morning clouds, yesterday turned out to be a nice day. It was sunny until the end of the day, and with the temperature reaching 22° C it felt nice and warm. The wind was very light, and that helped it feel so good.

  

  The forecast keeps changing, and the main variable is when, or if it will rain. Last night rain was forecast for the small hours of the morning, and it does look like there has already been a very light splash of rain. The latest revision to the forecast still shows light rain for 2 and 3pm, and has added more light rain between 6pm and 8pm. It seems the chance of seeing the sun today will be zero, but it should still feel warm with a few hours at 19° C late this afternoon. Quite a lot of rain is forecast for after midnight tonight, but later tomorrow there should be a good amount of sunny spells, and the temperature may reach 22° C again.

  Being out so late the night before left it's mark yesterday. I didn't feel as if I had that much get up and go, but maybe things weren't quite as bad as I thought. The first thing I did when washed and dressed was to go shopping in Tesco. Stepping out into the fresh air probably revitalised me, and the walk to and from Tesco, carrying heavy shopping on the way back, felt OK. Perhaps I should say mostly OK.

  There have been several times in the last week or two when I seem to get the merest whiff of a hint of sensation that could be a very early clue to the return of something like the angina I suffered from before my quad heart bypass operation. The only problem with this hypothesis is that the aches don't seem to follow the same rules. In fact I tend to think it is just the aches of muscles waking up after getting little use for hours and maybe days.

  After getting back with my shopping I faced a bit of a conundrum. I really wanted some lunch, but I had already eaten a double breakfast of two bowls of instant noodles, and I didn't want to eat prior to some exercise I was going to take later. I did partly give in and have plain cheese slices on four Marmite flavoured rice cakes. It was just enough to keep the worst of the hunger pains away.

  For the next few hours I was very lazy. I laid on my bed and read some pages of a book between snoozes (I think I dozed off twice for a short while). The only important thing was to be at Catford station by about 4.45pm. I suppose there was one other important bit, and that was choosing which camera to take with me. I selected my Canon EOS 1200D and a Tamron lens which went from slightly wide angle to moderate zoom. It might not have been a great choice. I am increasingly critical of Tamron lenses. Their plus point is that they are comparatively cheap, but they do seem to produce a slightly sift image.

  Yesterday was the last day of service of Southern Trains class 455 trains. An early plan was to go out and try to photograph them during the afternoon in various places where I was confident they would be running. I thought Purley station might be a good place, but than I thought, why not let the trains come to me ? Southern Trains were running a special rail tour with a pair of class 455 trains connected together, and visiting places all over the Southern network - including Brighton, and to my surprise, Sevenoaks.

  To get to Sevenoaks the train would be passing through Catford station, and I, plus a couple of others I have spoken to, can't even remember seeing a class 455 on most Kent routes, although an ex-BR employee says they did visit the wheel lathe at Slade Green depot. Going through Catford was sufficiently historic that I just had to get a few snaps of the train as it passed through.
  The train was threaded through gaps in the timetable, usually following a fast train. For reasons unknown it was late leaving Blackfriars station, and missed it's slot. It had to wait 30 minutes for the next. I am indebted to Kevin, who wasn't allowed out (for family reasons), but was following the progress of the train on his PC at home, and who sent me a text message to warn me of the delay. Finally, about 30 minutes late, unit 455835 entered Catford station, and slowed to almost walking pace. It was now following a very long, and not very fast freight train.
  I can imagine that the driver kept having to slow down as he saw a succession of yellow signal lights until the train reach the start of the four track railway at Shortlands station. It should then have had a clear path to Sevenoaks where it's turn around time was reduced from 30 minutes to just 7 minutes - and the toilets at Sevenoaks are at least a 3 minute walk away for anyone needing one on a train with no onboard toilet ! The picture above shows the rear unit, 455841 having just cleared Catford station on it's way to Sevenoaks.
  It was a long wait for the train to go all the way to Sevenoaks, wait 7 minutes, and then return  to pass through Catford. In this picture unit 455841 leads on it's way to Victoria - both the starting and ending point of the rail tour.
  Unit 455835 on the rear of the train as it leaves Catford station on it's way to Victoria. Yesterday was the last chance to see green painted class 455 trains, but red ones, used by South West Railway. will continue to run for some time to come. They will be replaced by brand new class 701 trains, but only about a quarter of them have been constructed so far, and even the few they have will spend some time on testing, and driver training. I wonder if, when a finishing date is announced for the South West class 455s (an class 456s) a rail tour will be announced for the last day. I wonder if it will pass through Catford - I rather doubt it, but I won't give up hope !

  I was out for about 3 hours yesterday, and for something like two and a half hours I was doing little more than standing on platform 1 of Catford station. I did walk to the end of the platform once, and I had to sit down once or twice when I was suffering from sciatica in my right thigh. It may not have been a very long outing, but I arrived home feeling really knackered. A soon as I got home I put my dinner in the oven to cook. It was a couple of chicken breasts stuffed with something unlike butter with garlic and herbs in it. A chicken Kyiv I think it is called now.

  While the chicken cooked I started to check the photos I took, and there were quite a lot of them because I tool snaps of every train that called or passed through Catford station (and a couple of snaps of trains calling at Catford Bridge station. All I did last night was to pick out the 4 relevant snaps I had taken of the rail tour, and I will leave the other snaps for sometime later.

  I then had my dinner. It was the aforementioned chicken Kyivs served on a deep bed of lettuce, and an over generous amount of mayonnaise on the lettuce. I feel sure the chicken, or maybe it's breadcrumb coating, contained a fair bit of sugar. I really must check sometime to see if my theory that they add sugar to the breadcrumbs to make them go a more golden brown when cooked. It would explain some things.

  What didn't need explaining is the fact that certain types of lettuce, and apparently it is the more wild types, contain chemicals that act as soporifics. Once I had eaten dinner, the lettuce, plus the fresh air and stuff, left me feeling very tired, and it was a joy to go to bed to read for a while. I thought I would read for a lot longer, but I had put the book down, turned out the light, and was fast asleep by, or before 8.45pm !

  I can't be positive about it, but I think I slept non stop for 4 hours. That is a bit of record these days. After that I still slept for approximately 2 hours and then a couple of one hours. The last hour in bed was one where I was sort of drifting in and out of sleep. It was probably in that last hour that I may have had a snippet of dream I half remember, but what I probably remember more of is thinking about the dream during one of the awake but still a bit dreamy intervals. It was a simple idea for some weird greetings cards. They were all on the same theme, but the only slogan I can remember exactly, at least I hope I do, was "May your next orgasm be the greatest !".

  This morning I was very slightly disappointed that my blood glucose was a little higher than expected. It was why I was blaming the breadcrumbs around the chicken for containing sugar. 7.8mmol/l is still a very good figure, but after eating so little, and getting a bit of exercise, I was hoping it might have been a fraction lower than yesterday's 7.7mmol/l. Maybe one factor was not what I ate yesterday, but what I might have eaten the day before. I only say that based on the amount of poo I seemed to have passed this morning. It can't all be accounted for by what I ate yesterday !

  I still have a lot of photos to go through to see if any can be added to my big spreadsheet listing all the better train photos of a representative of each train number I have taken snaps of. I will probably do some of that this morning, but it doesn't feel like there is much of a rush because there are still some from around 2018 I have yet to find and add to the spreadsheet. This afternoon I should be tasting some of the beers from my last beer order during another Sunday afternoon beer tasting with Jodie.