There is always a gap in the forecasts unless you go specially looking for it. It is the period between, of just before, midnight, and 6am. During that time there were some heavy falls of rain. It seems to be brightening up now, and it is possible a little diamond bright chink in the clouds could let through a brief sunny spell any time now. It is almost as if they have regurgitated yesterday's forecast - just a few sunny spells moving to different hours, or even disappearing off the chart. Hopefully today will actually be similar or better than yesterday which had more sunny spells than appeared in any version of the forecast I saw.  The prediction of 16° C has survived several revisions, and it seems safe to assume it will be correct. Tomorrow will be a murky day with a temperature if either 16° C, or possibly 17° C if the BBC forecast turns out to be more accurate. The Met Office predict quite a few showers tomorrow, by the BBC say it will stay dry.

  Yesterday had it's good points, but ultimately I found it depressing. I was very slothful during a lot of the morning, but the start of the sunny spells speeded me up. Maybe I am cold blooded, and my thermometer tells lies ! I didn't have a special shave, shampoo, and shower like I usually do on a Wednesday morning, but just stuck to having a shower before I was ready to go out.

  As I mentioned yesterday, I intended to go to the pub to tell the regular barmaid, Asia, why we had not been there last Wednesday, and why Angela would not be there yesterday. I guess I cheated a bot because I didn't walk to the pub. I opted to get a train the one stop between Catford Bridge and Ladywell stations. This was mostly because I wanted to pick up a copy of the Metro free newspaper to take to the pub.
  I didn't take a big camera with me, but I did slip my pockets sized Nikon S6300 camera in my coat pocket. I was delighted to be in the right place at the right time, and with a decent camera in my hand to catch the track cleaning train going through Catford Bridge station. It is a regular visitor at this time of the year, and I think it uses it's water jets to clean the rails once on the up line, and once on the down line every day. It might do a night run as well. It is not a rare visitor, but yesterday was the first time in ages I have been there at the right time.

  Although it is sort of cheating to get the train to Ladywell, it doesn't cut down the walking that much. I have always felt that the walk to the station is often the worst part of any journey (or more so if it is to Catford station). Having got the train, which also means crossing to the far side of the station via the footbridge, I could then enjoy a couple of minutes standing still (but not sitting for such a short trip). At Ladywell it is up and over the footbridge before walking across the almost widest part of the park before going along the footpath behind St Mary's church to come out 20 paces from the pub.

  I arrived at about 12:45, and it is usually very quiet in the pub at that time. After 1pm a few more people come in, but it is very rarely very busy. Being so quiet meant I got to chat to Asia without interception to tell her that Angela had come down with Covid. After 5 or 10 minutes chatting at the bar I say down and got out the Metro I had picked up at the station. Before I got to the crossword I took a rather poor snap of the bar, and Asia standing behind it, and sent it to Angela. I said that Asia sends her best wishes for a speedy recovery.

  Angela replied "Bless you xxx". The strange thing is that at that time Asia had only expressed sympathy, and it was only as I was leaving that she said to pass on her best wishes and love. I thought I was only going to stay for one point, but I made very good progress doing the quick crossword in The Metro. In fact I finished it at about the same time as I finished the first pint. I thought that maybe another pint would inspire me to do the cryptic crossword. Sadly it didn't, and when I left the pub after my second pint I had only managed 4 or 5 clues.

  It wasn't planned in any way, but I seemed to leave the pub close on to an hour after getting there. I had contemplated getting a train back to Catford, but I didn't think I would enjoy the wall from the station to home. Instead I walked the slightly longer direct route from the pub to home. It was during a sunny spell, and that made the walk pleasanter.  I have to admit I was quite happy to get home because a few bits were slightly aching.

  Before going out I had half pre-cooked a packet of sausages. Another 25 minutes in the mini oven/grill got them hot and cooked through. I had half of the 10 sausages for lunch, and left the other five for dinner. I had those sausages with just some low sugar tomato sauce, and some English mustard, and I found I didn't really like them. They weren't horrible, or anything like that, but instead they were sort of bland.

  It felt good to get some hot food inside of me because my bedroom still felt cold. I don't think there was enough hours of solid sunshine to warm the room up. It was probably cooling off again during the dull periods between sunny spells. I felt reasonably warm enough in my thick indoor clothes, but everything I touched felt cold. I did feel comfortable enough to have a long snooze in the afternoon.

  It was when I woke up, probably around 4pm, that I noticed it must have rained because the road outside was wet. From that time on I felt very bored. I just didn't feel like doing anything, and I guess I felt sort of sad that another Wednesday had passed without seeing Angela - the highlight of my week.  I was also worrying that I might be going down with some sort of illness. Bits of me still ached, and I was still prone to a bit of a dry cough.

  Most of the coughing was during the night when I would wake up with a gummy mouth, and that irritated my throat until I had taken a drink. I did have a few bouts of coughing during the day, but a drink would calm the irritation down, and none of the irritation seemed to be from deeper than the top of my throat. Some of this almost, but still not actually bad enough to be called a cold, could be improved if I put some heating on. At the moment it feels like I am living through cold and damp Victorian times, but I just don't want to pay those bastards at the energy companies any more than I did last years before the gigantic price rises. I am aiming to actually spend less, but I know I will have to give in sooner or later.

  I basically moped my way through the rest of the day. There was a small break in the tedium when I had my dinner. As mentioned above, it was to be five sausages, but I wanted something with them this time. I threw caution to the wind, and microwave heated a pouch of ready prepared "Spanish style rice". The nutritional panel suggested that the sugar content was quite low, but I didn't dare read the small print. It probably said it was 3gm of sugar per portion, rather than per pouch, and that there were enough portions to server 12 people with one portion being one tablespoon full. Of course I ate the whole pouch, and it was sort of nice.

  I spent well over an hour in bed just reading last night. That was because I was so close to the end that I thought I may as well finish the book. After that I tried to sleep, but I was having a lot of trouble getting into a comfortable sleeping position. Occasionally I would feel my throat start to tickle, and had to take a gulp of drink before I started to cough, or to kill the cough if it had already started.

  During the night I concluded I probably did have some sort of bug. Bits of me ached, and the worst bit was my chest. It was not particularly bad pain, but more of the long lasting irritating type. The genesis of it was probably during the afternoon. While laying on my back reading, or waiting for my snooze to start, every time I breathed in my chest would make a dull thump, and the same when I breathed out. It was as if two solid bits, presumably bones, were catching each other. That in itself was completely painless, but it was very annoying, or distracting. It probably laid the foundations for some painful inflammation that bugged me in the night.

  As well as a dry cough every time my mouth go dry, I also seemed to have a slightly stuffy nose. It was either hay fever by the means of a probably allergy to autumn fungal spores, or the start of the common cold. This morning, after a very bad sleep, with one long period of insomnia, I feel no better or worse - apart from the usual improvement that happens once you are out of bed and moving around in daylight.

  Some of these symptoms, which also include feeling like a very, very mild form of asthma, could be attributed to a watered down version of the Omicron variant of Covid, which is itself a very watered down version of the full Covid virus. One symptom that probably has nothing to do with Covid, in any of it's variants, is a big sneeze. Until 30 seconds ago I had not suffered any sneezing. Maybe it was psychosomatic after thinking about the common cold. It all makes it difficult to stick to my guns, and not turn on the heating !

  One indicator of general health is my blood glucose reading, and despite all these things I am complaining about, it is a rather good 8.3mmol/l. That suggests I am nit fighting any infection. It also suggests that maybe that rice I had yesterday was fairly innocent.  I can see myself having lots of hot soup today, although I want to go to Tesco today, and who knows what temptations I might give into there. This afternoon I will put on a bit of heating in the dining room so that we are warm when Jodie comes over for a Thursday afternoon beer tasting session.