The most recent revision to the forecast shows this morning as being sunnier than the early version in the screenshot above. 10am is now shown as full sunshine instead of cloudy, but sadly it still shows no more sunshine after the sunny spells at 11am. Maybe it will be like yesterday, and I think like the day before - unscheduled sunshine in the afternoon - fingers crossed ! The temperature should hit 20° C today, but maybe just for one single hour. It should still feel mild or better. Tomorrow looks to be quite a grey day with rain in the middle and end of the day. The highest temperature could be as little as 17° C.

  Yesterday was a very satisfactory day, although not perfect. The most important thing yesterday was my visit to the hospital for my diabetic eye scan. It is where they take photos of the back of the eye to check for things like leaking blood vessels. It is not completely painless. The only pain is that the eye drops they use to dilate the pupils do sting a bit for the first second or two.

  Of course there are types of pains, and one of the worst was the fact they were running about 20 minutes late, and sitting in hospital waiting areas are boring in the extreme. Once you are finally seen there is a basic eye test using a chart on the wall, and a question and answer session. it ends with those drops going into both eyes. As I said above, it does sting a bit for a second or two, but very quickly settles down. You are then sent back to the waiting area for 15 to 20 minutes to allow the drops to work.

  One thing I didn't mention was that I went to the hospital on a train. There was one very special reason for that. I wanted to pick up a copy of The Metro. Having walked in the wrong direction to Catford Bridge station I caught the train to Ladywell. I then had to walk back to the hospital, clutching my Metro. I am unsure why I didn't pass some of the first waiting time my reading The Metro.

  Actually there were two reasons why I didn't read the Metro at that point. The first was that I expected to be called in for my assessment and eye drops at any moment. I didn't realise I would have such a long wait. Eventually I opened the paper, and I found all the so called news in it was tediously boring. During the second wait, while waiting for the eye drops to work I opened the paper at the crosswords, and with increasingly blurry eyes I managed to do all the quick crossword, and about 8 of the cryptic clues.

  The next bit of the exam is usually very quick. Mine was slightly extended, and initially that was cause for some concern. The technician retook several photos. Each one involved a flashgun going off inches from your eye. It is not exactly pleasant, although you can't call it painful. I was concerned why the technician was taking so many pictures. It was as if she had seen something that needed closer examination. Eventually she got up, and grabbed some tissues which she used to polish the camera lens. From then on it was the usual 2 pictures of the inside of each eyeball.

  Most technicians can do an instant diagnosis before you leave. It really only extends to the presence or absence of any big feature. She said that she couldn't see any obvious problems, but the usual warning that the pictures would be scanned by an expert, and a formal report issued in a few weeks. For the last 10 to 20 years that report has always been that they can see some insignificant retinopathy, and the only action is to re-check it next year.

  I left the hospital about half an hour later than expected, but that could have been a good thing. As intended, I went straight to the pub. I had informed Angela that I could be up to an hour early, but I would be happy to wait until 1pm as usual. I had thought that I would be doing my crossword until Angela arrived, but instead I had a long chat with Asia the bar maid. Of all strange things we were chatting about bus passes and similar things.

  I think Angela did manage to get to the pub about 10 minutes early. By that time I had almost finished my first pint, and ordered a second. I had bought Angela's first drink the moment I got there. Angela would buy my third pint of Guinness a bit later. We had a nice chat together. A lot of it was about health, but there was chat about music, gigs, and other stuff too. I think we left the pub earlier than usual. Maybe at 1.50pm.

  There was bright sunshine outside. It was dim inside the pub, and I forgot that my pupils were still very dilated until I walked out in the bright sunshine. It was blindingly bright. I put on my cheap Poundshop sunglasses, and they helped, but optically they are really crap. They seem smeary and seem to distort the view. Of course it was all made worse by my dilated pupils, but at other times I have found they are not very good. My rose tinted glasses seem to work best on bright sunny days.

  I said goodbye to Angela outside her office with a nice warm hug and kiss on the cheek. Then I put my best foot forward, and walked as fast as possible so I could get home, and away from the bright and sunny sky. Unfortunately I just can't seem to walk as fast as I would like these days, but I do wonder if it is that much slower than it used to be, or if I have just become more impatient.

  Once I was home I made a light lunch of cheese and sliced, pickled jalapeños, on Marmite rice cakes. I ate those, check my email, and then lay on my bed to quietly read....and ended up having a snooze. I don't know how long that snooze lasted, but I woke up near 4pm feeling rather cold. The sun that had added some warmth to my bedroom was too far round the sky, and too low to give any more warmth. I did not want to put any heating on, and so I made myself a big bowl of Kimchi flavour instant noodles for some extra warmth.

  I spent some of the late afternoon editing some old pictures for the disused station group on social media, and possibly some might end up on the disused stations web site - http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/m/merton_park/index.shtml It seems like all the pictures from 1997, when I took my pictures, were in black and white. Mine are in quite good colour !
 As the picture suggests, the station of interest was Merton Park on the very run down West Croydon to Wimbledon line. It closed soon after I took my pictures, and the trackbed is now used for the Croydon Tramlink branch to Wimbledon.
  This is the rear, or platform facing side of the old station building. It had been out of use for years, and was smothered in grafitti. Once the line became completely disused the station building was sold off, and it now a nice looking private house.
  In 1997 the train service was every half hour using a 2 car train. I have yet to check some old timetables, but I have a feeling it was sometimes just an hourly service, and no service at all on Sunday. With it's crumbling stations it was a very poorly used service, and yet as was proved with the Tramlink service that replaced a few years after closure, there were many people who wanted to travel along the line. Trams now run as often as every 10 minutes, and they can be very full at certain times. It seems British Rail never realised that the better the service, the more it would be used. On other lines, frequent London Overground services can very busy on the same British Rail routes that were hardly used.

  There was one other bit of excitement yesterday. I had an email to say my new (secondhand) Nikon camera had been despatched using the Royal Mail "delivery by 1pm service". It seemed like my new camera was on it's way. I got all excited, and spent some time checking a few things out. That may seem a strange thing to do after I had ordered it, but it was only a few special bits of info I was interested in.

  One particular thing I was interested in was about the extra battery holder I had also ordered. I can't quite see yet how it is mounted on the camera so that will come as an interest surprise once it arrives. The extra battery hold both improves the grip of the camera, and obviously provides extra power. It can take another Nikon lithium battery - the same type as used in the camera - or 8 AA cells. I was, and still am curious about how long AA cells may power the camera. I couldn't seem to find any info about it. Maybe it is only the occasional photographer in less civilised parts of the world who has to rely on AA cells if there is no way of charging the lithium batteries. One thing I did find is that they are still on sale for over £200. Mine was £40. That does seem expensive for chunk of plastic, but maybe there is more to it than that.

  My researches and other stuff kept me up quite late last night. I suddenly got curious about lenses after I had been watch QI (which finished at 10pm). I feel sure that the Nikon D300S, my new camera, can use lenses that need the focus motor in the camera body, and lenses that have the focus motor in the lens itself. I checked with my older Nikon D80 that it could handle both types. The D300S is basically a slightly newer, more advanced camera than the D80, but is other wise similar.

  I suppose my mind was still buzzing when I tried to get to sleep. I doubt I was asleep much before midnight, but it was once again one of those times when you can't sleep, but suddenly you are waking up. I did have a bit of trouble with feeling too hot under the duvet in the first hours of sleep. When I fell asleep after getting up for a pee the first time I couldn't bare to sleep fully under the duvet. The next time I woke up I was feeling cold, and it seemed to take ages to get comfortable and back to sleep.

  I think it might have been around 4.30am when I woke up in time to feel the muscles in my left calf about to cramp. I had to fight with the duvet before I could leap out of bed, but I made it in time before the real pain started. The best thing about my sleep was oversleeping until gone 7am this morning. I must admit it felt very chilly when I got out of bad. I was thankful that I have closed the bathroom window now (for winter) when I went to the toilet.

  There was a short time when I felt sweaty in bed. I did wonder if I should try and rehydrate a bit before checking my blood glucose, but I was expecting it to be high anyway after eating the big bowl of noodles late in the afternoon. To my surprise, and relief, it had gone back down a little bit to a satisfactory 8.3mmol/l.

  I now have to decide what to do with myself today. I think I feel moderately OK, and the sunshine makes me think I ought to go out. I won't be seeing Jodie this Thursday, and so I could go out, but I might go no further than Aldi. It will be a case of making it up as I go along. Maybe I might get distracted doing a bit more digitisation of some more old analogue camcorder footage, or maybe not.....

  P.S. I have an appointment with the vampire phlebotomist to give some blood samples early tomorrow morning, and I will probably start writing very late tomorrow.