It doesn't seem it at the moment, but a lot of today should be brighter than yesterday - not actually sunny, but light grey. The latest revision to the forecast shows heavy rain for 9am, and lighter rain at 10am. More rain could fall at 1pm. It is going to be another very cool day with possibly only a couple of hours at 14° C, and 13° C being a bit more representative of the day. This morning the temperature was almost as low as 9° C. Tomorrow may start at just 8° C, but at least it could warm up to 15° C in the afternoon. There could be a couple of sunny spells, but most of tomorrow will probably be dull like today.

  After a good day on Sunday, yesterday was in complete contrast a rotten day. It was dull. It was wet, and it was cold ! My only real achievement yesterday was judging when there would be a long enough break in the rain to go shopping in Tesco. It may have been dry for an hour, but it felt so cold that I put on one of my winter coats, and left the front of it done up from the moment I left home until after I had got home again.

  It is sort of interesting to see what I wrote about the weather for this day a year ago - "While yesterday morning was quite wet, extremely wet for a while, the afternoon was mostly bright and sunny. There were a few times, particularly just after midday, when the clouds bubbled up and covered the sky, but they didn't last long. For my purposes (drying clothes) the more important feature in the afternoon was the wind. It was quite blowy for most of yesterday. In the morning it drove the rain in sheets along the road. In the afternoon it dried my clothes. With the temperature rising to no more than 18° C, and that only briefly, the wind did make it feel rather cool."

  While I was out shopping yesterday, including carrying some fairly heavy shopping home, I didn't feel too hot, and start to sweat - I was barely damp in those places to start to sweat first. It does feel like winter is now really close, when conventionally I am sure we think of September as almost a summer month. It makes me wonder just how bad this winter is going to be. Of course, with the ever rising energy prices, even a mild winter is going to be pretty bad when you have to be very frugal about putting any heating on.


  I decided to try an experiment yesterday, and see what 8 large tea candles would do to my bedroom temperature. They did help keep the temperature up a tint bit. In the first half hour they seemed to raise the temperature by a mere 0.2° C, and over the next couple of hours I think they stopped the temperature falling below 19° C.

  The big problem with low temperatures, plus the psychological effect of dull grey weather, is that I felt hungry all the time. I ended up eating far too much yesterday. It started with two packs of sandwiches bought while I was in Tesco. Both were chosen to be in the lower range of sugar content for all the sandwiches on offer, and by themselves they would not have been too bad.

  I can't think what else I ate yesterday, but I feel sure I had a few snacks that I shouldn't have. Maybe they were just cans of hot soup to help warm me up, but I do know I had quite a lot of peanuts when totalled up from a few here, and a few there, etc. Another bit of excess was eating the last two "salad" pots I bought the day before. One was a four bean salad, and the other was a spicy couscous.

  One other definite fact about eating was that when it came to dinner time I did wonder if I should eat anything at all. Then I had a brainwave/excellent excuse. I had a vacuum sealed bag of Polish smoked chicken wings. I'm sure they had a use by date still well into the future (or at least a year), but it seemed a good time to eat them. In theory they should have had a minimum sugar content, although I have some doubts about it now. They were rather nice, but maybe now I have satisfied my curiosity I won't be buying any more - if for no other reason than that they were not cheap.

  It feels like I was very lazy yesterday, but I did do two other jobs in between being lazy. One was to go through the other half of the pictures I had taken of trains on Sunday, to see which needed to be added to my huge spreadsheet listing all my train pictures - but generally only one picture of each train number. The exception to that is when a train has had a brand new livery, and then I include a before and after picture if I have them. Each picture required at least some minimal editing, usually just cropping and re-sizing, but some needed a few touch ups. In total, including the pictures I added on Sunday, I added 29 new pictures to that spreadsheet !

  I also did a bit of video editing. There was a video I shot almost 5 years ago, probably on my little Sony digital camcorder. My original edit sounded good, but the picture was rather murky. I thought I could improve it now I have learnt about a few more tools in my video editor program. I spent a fair bit of time on it, and the result was barely improved.  The biggest product of all that work was a half sized version of the video that I could include on this page except for one thing. No matter how I tried to re-size it, it came out with black bars either side of the picture featuring tall thin people. It was as if a wide screen video was being shown in 4:3 ratio. The full size edit looks fine (apart from still looking rather dull), but at 40Mb it is a bit too big to embed here.
  This is a view that Jodie told me about a week ago. It was only on Sunday when I remembered to take a snap, and it is only in the last 10 minutes that I remembered that I was going to show it here. What you are seeing is a very overexposed picture that was deliberately over exposed to brighten up the main subject that was in shadow. That subject is mini green bananas !  It seems unlikely that a banana tree can grow in our climate, and even more unlikely that it would produce bananas. This banana tree is in a front garden on the road around the corner from the entrance to Catford Bridge station. It might be possible that the bananas are a small species, and it might be possible they could be ripened indoors, but I have my doubts.

  Last night didn't get off to a good start, although the latter half of the night was OK. For the second night running I couldn't get comfortable when I went to bed because my guts were rumbling. At midnight I got up and went to the toilet. A bit like the night before, I just passed a lot of wind. I thought that maybe that was all, but maybe five minutes after getting back in bed I was back on the toilet again, and this time it was considerably more than just wind. With visions of what happened the night before I didn't bother going back to bed because I was pretty sure I would be back on the toilet in another five minutes. I was, but this time it was far less dramatic. I still didn't go straight back to bed, but stayed up, shivering, and reading some stuff on the internet. As 1am approached it seemed like enough time had passed with nothing happening, and I went back to bed. I was soon asleep.

  I can't seem to recall what time it was when I had an interesting dream. It was a throwback to adolescent years (I think). I was in a room with dim lighting, and we were playing cassette tapes for entertainment. "We" were me, another one (or two ?) young men, and two young women. It seemed to be quite an intimate evening, and I had visions/hopes of taking one of the women back home with me. I don't know where the dream took place, but there was a strong feeling that I lived "just around the corner".

  The only difficulty was that one of the young women had a stunning figure, but a face that would scare the horses (or maybe that is a slight exaggeration). The other woman had a far less attractive body, but the most beautiful face. Of course I didn't have to make any difficult decisions because just like all* my adolescent dreams I woke up before anything exciting happened.
* where "all" = about 98% of the time - I did have few rare dream triumphs !!

  This morning I don't feel great. I have a few aches. None are that bad, and what could have been some worse one are still not happening since coming off blood thinning tablets. One thing I was hoping would be a complete cure, my right elbow, still gives some pain now and then (including this morning), but it is nowhere near as bad as it was. I guess it is going to take a bit longer to heal (f it can).

  It was inevitable with all I ate yesterday, my blood glucose has shot right up. At 9.5mmol/l it is below the red line, but it is still not good. In theory I should be fasting until a carefully cooked dinner tonight, but on a cold morning like this morning I have already given in and had a hot bowl of instant kimchi flavour noodles. The next big decision will be what I have for lunch (on the assumption I won't be able to resist it). I probably ought to have ham on rice cakes if only to use them up before they pass their use by date. On the other hand, if I am still feeling cold, and the weather forecast almost guarantees that, I expect I'll be on the hot soup.

  I have only a vague idea of what I am doing today. I am slightly constrained by waiting for a parcel delivery. It is a 6 pack of Soft & Gentle deodorant spray - Verbena and Water lily flavour. I have always found it to be a very clean sort of smell, but I haven't seem any on the shelves for ages now. I checked Amazon for it, and ordered a 6 pack. It is a bit more expensive than Poundland, but possibly cheaper than Tesco (where I have never dared to look for it).

  Apparently the parcel is currently at the delivery depot, and presumably will be out for delivery today. I have already had one other parcel delivery this morning. It was a 12 pack of my favourite Tropical Sun, Caribbean, Hot Pepper sauce. It is in 120ml bottles - Tesco only stock it in 85ml bottles.

  One creative thing I expect I'll do today, assuming my next parcel doesn't arrive early enough to consider going out into the cold grey light - which doesn't sound likely - will be some video editing, and maybe a bit more video transfer from my old analogue Hi8 camcorder to my PC. The video already transferred is some video shot around the Thames Flood Barrier in 1992. It has one odd problem. The sound and video is out of sync by up to a couple of seconds. It is possible that won't matter because there is not a lot going on that needs tight sound and vision synchronisation. If I do any transfer today I will be fiddling with the sound settings to find out what caused the bad sound and vision synch after fiddling last time.