07:39 BST

  The first half of yesterday featured grey skies and what I think I would describe as persistent rain, and not heavy rain, although I did here that there was one short period of heavy rain. From mid afternoon it brightened up, and there were even a few sunny spells. Light rain was originally forecast for mid evening, but I am not aware of any falling then. Compared to recent days it felt rather cool with the temperature only reaching 16 or 17° C.

  

  It seems today will be dry, and that there will be some sunny periods scattered about during the day. The actual times and strength, plus duration seems to be impossible to forecast judging by the way each revision of the forecast is different. This afternoon probably will be 20° C, and in any sunshine that should feel very nice. Tomorrow may feature a lot more sunshine, and the temperature should reach 23° C. One curious thing is that the BBC forecast shows a grey morning, and a sunny afternoon today.

   As usual, I probably let yesterday's very dull and wet start drive my whole day. I only had any enthusiasm for one thing, and during the afternoon, when there were sunny spells, I didn't feel enthused to do anything at all. In fact I felt very lazy ! My first real taste of the horrible weather was mid morning when I went to the pharmacy to tell them they had left two drugs out of the repeat prescription I picked up on Wednesday afternoon.

  Both drugs were, in my uneducated opinion, the most important of all my medication. One of them was the low dose aspirin tablets I take every day. They make the blood less sticky, and are recommended for many people as they get older to help ward off strokes and heart attacks. The other drug, Clopidogrel, is a blood thinner. The strange thing here is the the prescription actually said I was only to be prescribed them for a year after my short stay in hospital in 2018, or whenever it was.

   No Doctor has said to stop prescribing them, and so they appear on my repeat prescriptions, and the pharmacist keeps dishing them out. If they reduce the chance of a heart attack I will keep taking them without further query. It does seem that everytime I go to the pharmacy I cause chaos, and yesterday was no exception. There was a lot of running around, and possibly stock levels checked, but 10 or 15 minutes later I had my drugs, and walked home through the rain again.

  The highlight of my day was meeting Angela for a rare Friday lunchtime. That meant another walk in the rain, although by 12:30 the rain was actually very light. It was just gone 10am when Angela sent me a text to say not to bother if I didn't fancy walking through heavy rain. That was apparently when there was very heavy rain. I must admit I didn't notice it. I replied that I wasn't bothered by the rain, and unless Angela didn't want to walk to the pub in it, I was still looking forward to seeing her.
  As I walked through the park the rain was very light, and I would have been quite comfortable in a light coat, but I had chosen my full raincoat with hood. Actually it was probably a good choice because getting my hair wet would not be nice, but an even better reason was to stop my chest getting cold and damp. A cold and damp chest can really trigger the aches and pains from my operation scar(s).
  As I passed the weir behind Lewisham Hospital I was amazed at how much debris had been caught by the weir there. It looks a bit of a mess, and I wonder if it will ever be cleared away, or just left until it has rotted down. Of course trapping debris is not the main function of the weir. It's main purpose is to raise the water level so some of it can be sent down the man made stream through the middle of what was once a playing field. Unfortunately that stream has been dry for well over a year now.
  The point of this picture may not be obvious.... Work is taking place on the north (shaded) side of St Mary's church to tidy up, and beautify the ground between the ancient gravestones. This picture shows some newly cleared ground with a large sack full of litter, and weeds, and even an old football. Sitting in front of it, and difficult to recognise in this picture, is a cob of corn still mostly covered in kernels of corn. Quite how it came to be there, and why it hasn't been stropped bare by the squirrels is a mystery. (Maybe squirrels don't like corn on the cob ?)

  I was hoping that Angela might get to the pub a bit early, and stay later, but she stuck to her normal times. It was nice seeing her, but it was different to how I expected. I thought there would be more to say about the previous Friday when we met at the gig. It was mentioned, but somehow the subject of trains came up. Angela is not trainspotter, but does have some nostalgia about steam trains. Like me, she barely remembers then, but apparently her mum used to tell her about them in glowing terms.

  Angela did say that she thought the woodwork in old carriages was very elegant. I wasn't sure if she was thinking of the old electric slam door trains before most internal panels were covered in formica, or if she was thinking of the sort of carriage interiors you see in movies set in Victorian times. I made a promise that if I won on the lottery (by which I really mean a big win on the Premium Bonds, I would book us a ride on one of the short dining trips on "The Orient Express train" (now the British Pullman train).

  Back in 2007 I went on a luncheon trip on it with Aleemah, and so I know first hand how beautiful those carriages are - even the toilets with their mosaic finishes, and marble surrounds look great. Yesterday afternoon I checked the British Pullman website, and found that I would indeed have to have a large windfall to afford their prices ! The basic luncheon trip, lasting a few hours, costs somewhere in the region of £370 each, and some of the trips can top out above £1000 ! If my relationship with Angela was something more than a once a week secret tryst, I would be happy to buy us a couple of the cheap(er) seats from my savings.

  The sun was shining as we came out of the pub at about 2pm, and I walked Angela back to work. After a hug goodbye the sun went in again, but it did come out again before I got home. As far as I can recall it stayed dry as I went home, and I don't think I can recall any more rain for the rest of the day, although there were times when it did turn very gloomy for a while.  Even during a sunny spell it felt very cool, and I kept being tempted to put some heating on. I did give in once or twice, but fortunately for my electricity bill, it didn't take long on the low setting to warm the room back up.

  I only had a single bowl of instant noodles for breakfast, and after some walking in the cold and rain, plus the depressing effects of grey skies, and not forgetting two pints of Guinness, I was feeling ravenous after I got home from the pub. That was not a good state to be in when trying to keep my blood glucose low, and in an ideal world, trying to lose a bit of weight. My solution was a sort of compromise. I had a load of fish in the form of some fish fingers and fish burgers for an early afternoon meal. It was tasty, but left me feeling guilty.

  After eating I lay on my bed and read for a while before I fell asleep. I am unsure how long I slept for, but it was gone 4pm when I woke up. I still hardly did anything until it was dinner time. I very quickly put together a dinner of ham and a load of lettuce adorned with mayonnaise, and a scrape of mustard on the side of the plate. It satisfied the need, and it was sort of tasty, but such a dinner, as healthy as it is, is starting to get boring.

  I watched, or part watched, some music stuff on Sky Arts, and then faced a big dilemma at 9pm. Suddenly there was four things I might have watched all on at the same time. I finally settled on Have I Got News For You on BBC1. I thought it would be a good way of hearing some of the news I have missed. It all seemed strangely bland news wise, but it was still funny. I think that in general I shall avoid News, and ignore the outside world.

  There was one other thing I did yesterday morning, that I forgot to mention nearer the top of the page. It was to put fresh sheets and stuff on my bed. I was looking forward to sleeping on fresh sheets. Of course they ultimately feel no different to the smelly ones, but they still feel good in my mind !  Maybe they did help me sleep, or maybe I seem to need more swleep than I am getting. I did sleep well last night.

  One reason for sleeping well was that it was a cool night, and I had allowed my bedroom to cool down in the evening. I don't recall having any troubles with mostly sleeping with the duvet covering all but my face. I think I may have fallen asleep around 10.30pm, and it seemed to be almost 4am before I woke up. I find that hard to believe, and I wonder if I sleepwalked to have a pee at around 2am, but on the other hand, the gallon of pee at 4am does suggest otherwise !

  After 4am, as usual, my sleep was not so deep, and from about 5am I kept waking for a minute or so to check the world was still existing. I think it was about 6.30am when I decided to get up. Apart from the few minutes it takes to get my muscles warm, and functioning at a usable level, I seemed to feel fairly good this morning. To my great surprise my blood glucose was a very good 7.2mmol/l. If only it was as easy to control my weight as easy as it often in to control my blood glucose ! What is perplexing is that quite often, when I have been so carefull about what I eat that my blood glucose has dropped to nice low levels, my weight has actually gone up !

  Today is mostly a blank slate. If I don't do anything requiring any effort by this evening, I could be tempted to go to a gig tonight, but I can't seem to raise any enthusiasm for gigs recently. All of a sudden both weather forecasts from the Met Office, and the BBC, have added loads more sunny spells for today. It would seem today could be a good day to wash the undersheet and pillow cases I took off my bed yesterday morning. Once they are hanging on the line to dry I could go out to take some pictures of trains, and maybe even visit a couple of South Western stations on the limits of my Freedom Pass - maybe Ewell West and Chessington South. Before getting excited about that I will check for engineering work and other typical weekend disruptions to the rain service.