There is no doubt about it, it is wet this morning. The rain, as drizzle, started at 7am by my reckoning, and I have personal experience that it was drizzling on me at 8am. The rain could get heavier for a while, but the latest revision to the forecast shows the last rain at midday, an hour earlier than shown in the screenshot above. Nothing else has been changed. The rest of the day will be dull, and the temperature may not rise any higher than 17° C - a mere 2° higher than this morning. Tomorrow may be dry, but there could be white clouds all day, and no hint of sunshine. The temperature will be about the same as today.

  Yesterday was another good day, although not in the same sense as the day before. Until something else comes to mind, which it probably will, I would say I did three useful things yesterday. The first was a shopping trip to Aldi. As usual I probably bought too much stuff with a limited shelf life, but also a fair amount of stuff with a long shelf life - provided I don't eat it all up too soon !


  One of the things I bought, and that should have a long life, was a bottle of Rosé Bison Grass vodka. One Xmas I got quite drunk on Bison Grass vodka when my Polish workmate brought a bottle in at the Xmas party. It was the only Xmas party I enjoyed. It was far, far nicer than some of the acrid wines, and pissy beers that are the normal fair at these events. The bottle I bought yesterday is flavoured with several fruits and berries, as well as bison grass. I am not sure I like it. It seems a bit sweet and syrupy, and I fear it might not be good for me, but a little tot now and then won't hurt.

  I was a bit disappointed that Aldi had very little bird feed. There were no bags of grains, or seeded fat balls, but they did have jars of peanut butter in a green plastic enclosure in the vague shape of a house. As yet I have yet to see any birds try it, but I am sure it won't be too long before they quickly empty the jar.

  When I got home from Aldi I cooked some dinner. I had spotted a box of Greek Gyros in Aldi, and I allowed curiosity to get the better of me. I was disappointed when I saw the contents of the box - such a big box with so little in it. I expect it may have been better if oven cooked, rather than microwaved, but maybe not by much. The marinated pork seemed to include a lot of fat, and maybe that made it nicer. The marinade didn't seem to add much in the way of flavour. The disks of "Greek style" (allegedly) bread was sort of interesting. I still have one spare, but I may give it to the birds because it tasted like it had a lot of sugar in it. I didn't dare look at the nutritional information on the box because I didn't want to be put off my lunch !

  The next thing I did, after allowing at least half an hour for my lunch to go down, was to resume doing a small amount of laundry. It was just three pairs of underpants plus the warm, long sleeve top I have been wearing about the house to save having to use any heating. That top is made from quite thick material, and that made wringing it out tricky. I had soaked it in bio detergent for most at least 4 hours before doing three rinses and then fabric conditioner. It was too dull to try drying it on the washing line, and I hung it on the clothes horse with the desk fan (on the floor) blowing at it. I knew it would take a long time to dry, and so I just forgot about it.

  My final task of the day, or significant one, was to edit some footage I had transferred from my Analogue camcorder to PC a couple of day ago. It was over 20 minutes of video of The Little Red Train, aka The Cravens Heritage train, running for one special day in full public service between East Finchley and High Barnet on London Underground's Northern Line. There was nothing special in a greater terms about Sunday 29th August 2002, but it was special that the train was allowed to run on the public line.

  I carefully, or as carefully as I could, edited that 20+ minutes down to just under 9 minutes. My editing will never win any awards. With hindsight I could have edited it down a bit more without losing any significant shots. I showed on social media, and got a positive response, One person said it looked much better than most contemporary camcorder footage, and the Chairman of Cravens Heritage Trains gave it the thumbs up. At 9 minutes it is a bit long to show here - sorry.

  After having a lunch that was probably not ideal for my blood glucose I compounded the error with my choice of dinner. It was a couple of bits of haddock in breadcrumbs. The ultimate disappointment it would cause was made worse by that fact that I thought I had grabbed a pack of cod in breadcrumbs. I guess haddock was nice enough though. I do wonder why I dared buy more fish in breadcrumbs/batter. There is empirical evidence that it increases my blood glucose in the morning.

  I wanted to get to bed, and asleep early last night because I had to be up early this morning. I still stayed up to watch QI, and so didn't even try to get to sleep until gone 10pm. In fact it seemed to take a long time to get to sleep. After getting to sleep I woke up less than two hours later feeling very hot and sweaty. I am not sure of the cause, but the effect was to throw off the duvet. I lay there cooling off for what seemed like a long time, but maybe it was only around 20 minutes.

  When I woke up the next time, maybe only an hour later, I was feeling rather cold. The trouble was that when I tried to pull the duvet back over me I felt too hot again. I finally got to sleep about 3/4 covered. I woke up just after 5am, from a dream about a dead mate (although alive in the dream) and his micro-Mac - an Apple computer about the size of a book of matches, and basically impossible to use. It was a tricky time to wake up. I needed a pee, but I then wanted to go back to sleep - but still get up at 6am.

  Somehow I did manage to get up at 6am. The first thing I did was to have another pee, and some of that pee went into a sample bottle. I then checked my blood glucose. Maybe if I had more time, and had drunk a pint of water to replaced what I had lost as sweat in the night, my blood glucose would have been lower than 9.2mmol/l. I was expecting it to be high, and in that I was not disappointed. At least it was still the right side of the red line, and by a reasonable amount.

  This morning was a bit of a rush. It seemed like it was barely light when I had a shower. If the sky had been clear and the sun out it would have been light by then, but it didn't seem so under those dull grey, and dripping clouds. I was fully dressed and ready to go out a little bit earlier than essential, and I had time to check my washing that still had the fan on it in the front room. It was dry, and best of all was that the bio detergent had at least made the curry stain on the front of the top very feint, and hopefully far less obvious.

   Then it was time to step out into the rain to walk to the surgery. I had an appointment with a vampire for a couple of tubes of blood to be taken at 8.05am. I was actually seen at about 8.05. It was a fairly quick visit, and a 95% painless visit. Those vampires are really skilled at getting a needle into a vein with no mucking about. I felt the merest prick as it went in, and nothing after. It has left a small bruise that is tender, but that will soon go away.
  I knew my new camera would be delivered this morning, and I knew it would be early in the morning. In fact Sod's Law said a delivery attempt would be at exactly the same time my blood was being taken. I got home to find that card pictured above sitting on my doormat. I was only out for about 20 minutes, and there was no way I could change the time of my appointment at short notice - it was hard enough getting through to make the appointment in the first place.

  Now I will have to take a walk to the sorting office in the morning. Oh well, it's all good exercise. I had been hoping I might be able to use my new camera tonight. My plan is to get out well before sunset to get to a 6.30pm starting gig that Chain are playing in Chislehurst. It will be a chance to try out my new, improved, route to Chislehurst. I will get a train to St Mary Cray, and get the bus I used last time in the opposite direction. From the St Mary Cray it is only about 4 or 5 stops on a fairly straight route to where I get off. If I got the bus near Lee station it is about 5000 stops down every single back road between here and Timbuktoo !

   It is far too wet and miserable to go out before early this evening. I think I will pass a fair bit of time just being bloody lazy, and some time doing some more transfers of old analogue camcorder tapes to my PC. I don't know if I will do short clips or long clips today. Short clips would be good to show here, but some of the longer stuff would be more interesting for myself.