November seems to have started with a very autumnal vengeance ! The temperature now has been correctly forecast at 13° C, which is almost mild for early morning. It will rise to 15° C by midday, but after a couple of hours it will fall again, ending up at just 11° C late tonight. The temperature is not much to write home about, and it will be partly because off all the rain that is forecast. I strongly suspect that the forecast as shown above is only a guide to give a flavour to the wet weather, and that will fall at times of it's own choosing. All we can say now is that today is going to be very wet ! Tomorrow may have a bright start, a slightly dull afternoon, and then more rain in the evening. The maximum temperature is likely to be just 15° C again.

  Yesterday was not a great day. There was stuff I thought I might do, but somehow I never got around to it. It was partly because I got into a very lazy mood when I saw sunshine landing on my bed, and warming it up. I couldn't resist laying down on my bed and quietly reading. Of course the sunshine didn't last more than an hour or two into the afternoon.
  I was inspired to take this picture at 1pm because the current revision of the weather forecast was showing black clouds for when I took this picture. As you can see it was anything but black clouds, although there were some on the far horizon that can just be seen between the trees. The forecast black clouds arrived little more then ten minutes later. It was so quick that it was like someone turning off a light switch.

  I wasn't entirely lazy as the morning turned to afternoon. I did quite a lot of laundry. It included two pillow cases. Now I admit they are easier to hand wash than t-shirts, and the only significance of them is that I made a tiny advance in washing a small backlog of bed stuff. The next bit will be a fitted sheet, but it could be some time later, possibly an awful lot later when I do the two duvet covers. They need some serious manhandling, and it's best if the can be dried on the line in the garden because I just can't wring them out anywhere near well enough to stop them dripping.

  It wasn't long after midday that I had my next meal of the day. Breakfast was instant noodles, and early lunch was instant noodles in a pot, but not Pot Noodles ! It was chicken flavour ramen noodles. They need a splash of chilli sauce, but they are quite nice. I got a couple of pots of them from Poundstretcher. I think I'll get a few more the next time I am shopping in there - it could be today.

  I had what could be called "tea" in the middle of the afternoon. It was 4 Marmite rice cakes with cheese and sliced green chillies on them. I could have been quite bored in the afternoon because I couldn't raise the enthusiasm to do any video digitisation as I thought I might do in the morning. Fortunately taking the pictures of the sunshine, the one above, provided me with a way of passing a fair bit of time.

  When I checked the embedded time of that picture is said it was taken at 13:58, but I knew it to be 12:58. The camera was still set to BST, and I needed to change it to GMT. I also needed to set something like another 14 cameras to GMT. It does seem I have quite a lot of cameras, and I only did the cameras in more common useage. It was quite a useful exercise because a few cameras seem to have clocks that are not very accurate. One was nearly 10 minutes out, not including the hour change from BST to GMT.

  There are some specific times when an accurate clock is essential...well sort of essential. For instance in my giant spreadsheet of train pictures I like to include the date and time the picture was taken. In theory, if I did deep enough research through old railway time tables I could find the starting point and destination of the trains - if I didn't know it when taking the picture.

  I also found that the battery in one camera only had 30 seconds of life in it. That camera was my Nikon P500 "bridge camera". It was my favourite train spotting camera because it is lightweight while still taking great pictures in daylight. It has recently fallen out of favour to my Canon 600D DSLR camera, although that does not take significantly better pictures. In fact I tend to rotate through my cameras so they all "earn" their living. The thing is, I could have just grabbed the Nikon P500 and found the battery flat. It would not be a disaster because I have two spare batteries I carry with that camera, and both were just about fully charged.

  Apart from finishing cooking my dinner, and eating it, I didn't really do anything of note during the evening. My dinner was half nice. It was Tesco meatballs with herbs in a stew like gravy with three small new potatoes, and some Kohlrabi. The latter is a vegetable that is a favourite among Greeks and Turks, but rarely known here. It has a thick rind, and a white flesh inside that tastes of cabbage. I bought a small one, and didn't cut enough of the rind off. It rather spoiled the "stew". Another possible problem is I have reason to believe those meatballs had sugar in them.

  I suppose I watched a lot of TV last night - two different Star Treks, The Simpsons, and two episode of QI. The last one finished at 10pm, and I went straight to bed. Maybe it was the heavy rain and howling wind, but I felt a bit too restless to try for sleep. I read for maybe half an hour before I put the book down, and turned out the light. It might have been half an hour before I fell asleep.

  I think it was in the first couple of hours sleep that I had a dream on a subject I can't recall dreaming about before. It was one of those dreams where I seemed to be just a viewer, and not a participant. It concerned someone I didn't know, but I think was supposed to be a work colleague. He had found something out that Microsoft should know about. He told Microsoft that for £9000 he would describe his method of finding it (some sort of dangerous software bug).

  Microsoft readily agreed, and he got paid his £9000. I saw it counted out as cash into his hand, but the bank notes did look rather a lot like ancient red tram tickets ! It may sound unethical, but in fact most software houses offer rewards to those who tell them about bugs in their software. Apple have increased their top bounty to half a million pounds (or more likely dollars) for some specific areas of their software. So £9000 is actually quite a small reward.

  The first time I woke up I think it was more the wind and rain that woke me, and not the desire for a pee, although I did have one anyway once I was awake. The storm was sounding quite fierce, and I heard a few suspicions "bonks" like the roof was about to come off. Everything was intact here this morning, but I am sure I have located the source of all the noise. 3 or 4 gardens down from the back of my garden is a house who were holding a very noisy birthday party on Saturday. They had erected a plastic framed, 30ft long marquee in their back garden (and hence why it sounded so loud). This morning that marquee was totally wrecked. I am surprise that is seems it is all still in their garden. It must have been heavily weighted down at the sides because otherwise that wind could have deposited it on the other side of town !

  At around 3am I felt slight cold in bed. That makes a change to feeling too hot under the duvet. I am not sure why I felt cold, and wondered if I had some sort of fever. This morning my body temperature was perfectly normal (for me), but I must admit I did seem to ache more than usual when I got up. Now, a couple of hours later, I don't feel that wonderful. It is probably because it is cold in here, and I am still refusing to burn any electricity - and doubly so when there is a tiny chance that there could still be enough sunshine between the showers to take the chill off my bedroom and front room.

  One area where I am definitely not good is my blood glucose. It is very high this morning at 9.6mmol/l. I think I blame those herb infused meatballs I had in my dinner last night. I feel fairly sure that I didn't eat anything else that could account for that high reading this morning. It might be possible that I am fighting some sort of infection because that always raises my blood glucose. It would account for how I feel this morning - it is nothing definite - just a sort of off kilter feeling.

  If there seems to be a good gap in the rain later I think I will go out shopping today, although it is more an exercise in stretching my legs rather than needing anything desperately. The other thing I will probably do, because I think it needs doing now, is to wash my bath towel. It is big enough that it will be just a single item to wash. It is a shame I'll have to dry it indoors. Although winter can have it's occasional charms, I can't wait until summer comes along !