The sky is clear this morning, and that means two things - a cold, but sunny morning. The temperature almost dropped to 9° C, and was nearer that than the 10° C forecast. With luck the temperature will rise to 17° C today. Initial warming will come from full on sunshine this morning, but by 1pm the clouds will gradually cut off the sun for the rest of the day (according to the latest revision). Tomorrow may start a little warmer, 12° C, but may only rise to 14° C. We'll be lucky to see the sun, and more likely to see rain - particularly during the morning.

  One important thing happened late last Friday afternoon. I got a text message from the nurse. When I saw her on Friday morning we discussed whether I should still be taking the blood thinner Clopidogrel. The original prescription from 2019 said it was only to be prescribed for 12 months, but that prescription was just duplicated every 2 months. The nurse consulted one of the doctors, and the decision was that the drug would not appear on new prescriptions.

  I set aside my Clopidogrel tablets, and haven't taken any since. There could be consequences to this - possibly mostly good, and just a chance of something bad. Thicker blood means a better chance of a heart attack, but otherwise could be beneficial. The most obvious thing is that I will be less like a haemophiliac - a small nick when shaving could bleed for ages.

  It is only this morning that I have confirmed an idea I had (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/haemophilia-s-crippling-joint-pain-is-a-target-for-scientists/). I guess I read somewhere in the past that one symptom of haemophilia is bleeding inside joints causing stiff and painful joints. One of the problems I have suffered from, particularly as the temperature has dropped, is a few stiff and sore joints. In particular I have suffered a lot with a sometimes very painful right elbow joint. It is hard to say exactly when it improved a lot, but over the last two days it has gone from very painful to almost not noticeable this  morning. If my knees and ankles are also improved it should make going on some walks more probable.

  I only did one physical thing yesterday afternoon, and that was to hand wash a hand towel and some other stuff. It was a useful way of warming up. With little sun in the afternoon my front rooms, particularly my bedroom where I spend a lot of my time, was not very warm. I left it too late to hang the washing on the line in my back garden, and so once again I dried it on a clothes horse with a fan on it all night.

  I spent a fair bit of yesterday afternoon familiarising myself with my new camera. I didn't do it in one intensive session, but used a probably better way of learning. I spent 10 to 15 minutes playing with the camera, and then took a rest of 20 minutes to let it sink in. One thing I think I noticed is that resetting to factory defaults doesn't restore everything. The first pictures I took looked a bit dim.

  I found the previous owner had set it to under expose everything. That is possibly a good idea is the images are stored in RAW format because that gives more freedom for post production correction. The one thing that can never be corrected is over exposure. In the digital world, once you hit the red line there is nowhere to go. It is why early CDs often sounded a bit distorted. Back in the day the sound engineers would run as close to the red line to keep noise to a minimum. On analogue equipment there is still a little headroom above the red line, and any distortion is mild. In the digital world there is no headroom above the red line, no headroom at all !

  By the end of the afternoon, or maybe by early evening, I felt I had a good idea of how to operate the camera, and I was getting some good pictures. I made a few decisions about how I would use the camera. It seemed a good idea to do the main recording into a cheap (by comparison, but not actually cheap) SD card, but to also use a Compact Flash card. There are options as to how to use the two cards. One is to send stills to one card, and video to the other. Another is to use one as a backup to the other. I suspect I will use that options when photographing anything very important. The other thing I decided was not to use the extra hand grip/extra battery case that screws on the bottom of the camera. It is a fairly heavy camera by itself, and the extra weight of the hand grip is an added burden for most uses.

  I decided on total relaxation last night, and decided to just vegetate watching TV. That plan went west when I went through the Freeview programme guide and found nothing on all night. Instead I watched a few more old episodes of Drop The Dead Donkey, and at around 9pm I went to bed. I seemed to fall asleep fairly easily last night, although I had a period of insomnia at around 1am. I was probably unable to get back to sleep for over half an hour.

  One thing I am sure I have commented on, in one form or another, is having dreams where it is like I am watching TV, and play no part in what is going on. One of my dreams must have been like that last night. It was about some people being medically adapted to breathe in liquid so they could explore inside an alien spaceship. The aliens in the Jerry Anderson series "UFO" were liquid breathers - apparently so they could survive very high G forces.

  There was a story, and sequel by one of my favourite Sci Fi writers about a spaceship that would look for (and ultimately find) intelligent life inside the thick clouds of Jupiter. To withstand the huge pressure of those thick clouds the spacecraft was filled with liquid which they had to breathe. The idea of liquid breathing is not far fetched at all. Some flourocarbon liquids can carry a lot of oxygen, and there were proposals to use it as an emergency replacement for extreme lost blood. I am sure if you searched You Tube you would find an aneathetised dog being immersed in highly oxygenated liquid, and surviving.

  The big thing about being immersed in highly oxygenated flourocarbon liquid is the gag reflex as soon as you breath it in. In the sci fi story I read the participants had to be held under the liquid the first time until they had stopped choking, and found they could still breath OK. I feel very sure that if I had not been just an observer when I dreamed about it I would probably wake up fighting with the duvet or something. Instead it seemed as peaceful as watching it on TV.

  I did have one dream that was like a mild nightmare. In this dream, which i think happened in my last hour of sleep, I had just come out of work at lunchtime. I felt hungry and started walking to a nearby Sainsburys. It was a dream where I still smoked, and I lit up a fag when too close to the supermarket, and just walked straight into the store with the fag still alight. I quickly had to stub it out before anyone noticed. I found a long queue at the sandwich counter, but it soon seemed to thin down. What I found at the counter was a bewildering variety of sandwiches and stuff, but somehow none of it seemed available. I think I woke up feeling hungry.

  I thought I had eaten a very similar diet as the day before, but this morning my blood glucose had gone up a bit, but it was still very good. Yesterday it was an excellent 6.7mmol/l. This morning it was a still very good 7.3mmol/l. Being as today is Sunday, and in some way that is special, although since retiring I have no idea why, I decided to treat myself for breakfast. As well as a small bowl of Polish instant noodles, I had something similar to a pizza. It was the left over Greek styled bread from the box of Gyros I had last Thursday. I covered it with cheese and some chorizo slices then gave it a few minutes in the microwave. It was nice, but not as wonderful as I hoped.

  I can't decide what I am going to do today. I feel I have to take my new camera out to take some test snaps, but I am not sure where. I may just go for a wander in the park, or maybe I will jump on a train somewhere. Trains from Catford station are on diversion to Victoria today, and that could be a slight novelty. In a few hours I'll try and make some sort of decision.