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Thursday
6th October 2022
07:38
BST
It was surprisingly warm yesterday.
Until the rain started just before 3pm, the
temperature rose to a few tenths of a degree
short of 20° C. It was a little spoiled by
quite a strong wind. Neither forecaster I
check (The BBC and The Met Office) got their
forecast for the rain right. The reality was
that there was maybe 10 minutes of light
rain followed by 10 minutes of sometimes
very heavy rain. Then it just stopped and
the rest of the day was a bit cooler, still
dull, but drying out. In the last hour
before sunset the skies cleared, and we had
some very low on the horizon sunshine for a
while.
Now there's a first
! The BBC and Met Office have produced near as
dammit identical forecasts. Basically it will
be sunny all day, although some hours may only
feature sunny spells. In the latest revision
the single gap at 3pm shown in the screenshot
above has been filled in with sunny spells.
For all that sunshine, only 18° C is expected
today. Tomorrow should start off with at least
sunny spells, but maybe some sunshine too. The
afternoon will probably end up wet. The
temperature will probably be the same as
today.
After hearing that Angela wouldn't be
at the pub lunchtime, because she had taken
the day off work sick, yesterday could have
ended up as a very boring day. Fortunately
there were a few things that made it almost an
interesting day. It allowed for a more relaxed
visit to Tesco to buy a few odds and ends.
Those odds and ends included a couple of
bottles of Diet Coke, a bottle of Tesco own
brandy blended whisky, and some large candles.
I don't know why it was, but yesterday
was one of those rare days when I fancied a
sandwich. I purposely shunned Tesco's ready
made sandwiches, but I did buy some
ingredients for sandwiches before I carefully
scrutinised their fresh bread to see if I
could find a wholemeal loaf that didn't appear
to have sugar as an ingredient.. It was
actually more than a "wholemeal" loaf. It was
a multi seed loaf, and it was rather nice. I
used it for some corned beef and onion
sandwiches - which were very enjoyable.
The only problem is that they were too
enjoyable, and although I had used the rest of
the onion in my dinner, I had a couple more
corned beef sandwiches, and this time I used
some mustard on them. They too were very
delicious. The only catch is that I am now not
convinced that bread was as sugar free as I
though it was, although maybe there were other
things I could blame for adding more sugar to
my diet than was ideal. The only problem is I
can't seem to think of something else to
blame.
A lot of my afternoon was spent
transferring a couple of long Hi8 camcorder
tapes to my PC via my USB digitiser. One tape
was almost useless in terms of content. It
consisted of loads of little bits of video
that were sort of interesting to me, but
otherwise almost useless for editing together
any coherent video. There was one exception,
but it still has very little general
appeal....or maybe I am wrong.
This
video (if your browser can show it)
was shot in February 1996 and shows
a rare example of "wrong line"
working at Catford Bridge station.
Unlike now, when they reckon it is
cheaper to shut the whole line when
engineering works are taking place,
the rail company would terminate the
train at Catford Bridge on the wrong
platform, and start it again on the
wrong line until it could be crossed
over at the points. The points used
to be controlled by the signal box
that used to be at the end of the
platforms at Catford Bridge, but was
closed down when automatic signally
was introduced in the 1970s (or
possibly earlier). In those days it
was more routine, but with the need
to send three trackworkers out to
change the points, it was
discontinued because of cost. It is
possible this could have been the
last time this was ever done !
The first tape I transferred was
branded "Polaroid", and it was a fairly
clean transfer. The second tape was one I
had hoped to transfer, but it was made by
Sony, and it has seemed that all the Sony
tapes I used had deteriorated. I tried a
trick that I knew was often recommended
for old audio tapes - fast forward to the
end of the tape, and then fast rewind back
to the beginning. It is said to take some
of the tensions out of the tape. For this
tape it worked extremely well. I got a 99%
clean transfer of three important-ish
recordings. One was over half an hour of
the 1996 Uckfield Gala.
The Uckfield Gala was one of those
things that never happen now. The railway
company were proud of new works done on
the line between Oxted and Uckfield
stations, and so the issued a special
ticket for unlimited travel on the line
for one day, and ran a very intensive
service using almost all their trains in
service at once, and a guest appearance by
the preserved Hastings Train.
I hope that I can edit down the
Uckfield Gala recording down to a few
interesting minutes at some time in the
future when I am feeling creative. There
were two other interesting recordings on
the tape. One was another rare event of
Bakerloo Line trains reversing at
Piccadilly Circus station while the line
was blocked by engineering work to the
south. The final thing, and I feel sure I
have already shown a version of it here,
was all the video I shot when the
preserved Cravens Heritage train (ex-
London Underground central line - and
generally the Epping To Ongar shuttle) was
in public service for a day running the
Chesham shuttle train.
In the evening I watched my limited
selection of TV programmes. I did have a
dinner cooked and ready to eat at 7pm,
while watching TV, but for some reason I
didn't fancy it. I had two cans of soup
instead. One was a can of Irish Stew, and
the other was a minted lamb and chunky
vegetables. It is possible the two of
those combined contained more sugar than I
bargained for.
Even though I seemed to remember
most of the 9pm showing of QI from not
that long ago - or so it seemed - I
watched it through to the end at 10pm. I
then went straight to bed, and tried to
read for a while. I soon felt very sleep,
out the book down, and I guess I was
asleep not a lot later than 10.30pm. On
the whole I slept well again, but I
suspect all the chilli sauce I had added
to the soups 4 or more hours later, must
have brought me out in a sweat. I did
remember feeling rather hot at some point
in the night, but it didn't seem to stop
me sleeping. Later on I fond a damp patch
on the sheet about breast level, and my
pillow was damp on one side two.
I had one very curious dream last
night. In theory it was not a nice dream,
but it seemed so natural. In this dream it
seemed like I was living in some sort of
squat. It was a typical terrace house with
an extension at the back with a lower roof
than the main roof. The house I was in
seemed small, but very roomy. It was in a
poor state of repair, but at least it was
basiclly intact - unlike next door, That
house was empty, and the lower roof had
all but fallen in. The last thing I
remember was trying think of a way of
crossing that broken roof to use it to
support one end of a long wire aerial for
a pirate radio transmission.
Some things can by mildly, and
irrationally annoying. One such thing was
waking up 10 minutes early this morning.
There seemed no reason to wake up when I
did. For instance I wasn't busting to go
to the toilet. I think I woke up at
6.25am, but for some irrational reason
decided that I would have really preferred
to have woken up after 6.30am. Quite why
6.30am should be such a crucial dividing
line is lost in the confusion of changing
from dreams to the real world.
The reason I made so many mentions
of sugar in what I was eating yesterday
was that this morning my blood glucose was
up to 9.0mmol/l. It is only annoyingly
high rather than dangerously high, plus it
also annoyingly messes up a string of
lower readings. It also seems to be
stopping me writing plain English without
frequent use of the spelling checker - but
that only catches the wrongly spelled
words, and not wrongly used words.
The highlight today should be a
beer tasting session with Jodie this
afternoon. I am expecting her to bring
some more of her nasty beers here because
my stocks are running a bit low, although
having said that, I do have enough to get
sufficiently drunk on. It's just that
Jodie often doesn't like the sort of beers
I like. Curiously enough, many of the
beers I like I got a taste for when I
first started buy world beers with Jodie
30 years ago !
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