It was a cold morning, and the best this afternoon can offer would seem to be just 8° C. The forecast predicted mist early this morning. All I saw was a slight haze in the air. The latest revision says that 2 and 3pm will feature sunny spells. The rest of the day will be grey and miserable. Tomorrow is going to be worse than today. Much of the day will be grey, and quite a few hours will probably be dark grey. It will also be colder. The temperature may touch 7° C for just one hour, or even part of that hour, and most of the afternoon will be just 6° C.

   Yesterday was not a good day. I did feel good enough to pop out for a bit of shopping late in the morning, and while that felt OK, I think it had a very negative effect on me. I guess it could also be possible that it brought things to a head faster, and maybe that was advantageous. My shopping trip was to Poundstretcher, and as usual I went for a few things, and came back with a lot more.

  Top of my shopping list was white vinegar. I intend to use to clean off light limescale in the bathroom, but it is also good for giving drinking glasses a good sparkle provided you rinse them well after dissolving off the very thin haze of lime that can make them look dull. I also fancied some crisps. It was a stupid idea considering how high my blood glucose has been. I guess this illness is getting me down, and what I really wanted was a house brick sized lump of cake with half a pint of vanilla ice cream on it, but that would be taking things beyond madness.

  It wasn't long after getting home that the effect of breathing in the cold damp air started to take effect. Like when I went to the pub the previous day, actually being out in the fresh air did relieve the symptoms, but yesterday it wasn't long before I became wheezy, and the cough was a lot worse. My cough was a bit odd in one respect. The main irritation was what seemed like were tiny drops of mucus right at the top of the windpipe. They seemed almost impossible to shift without a lot of generally dry coughing.

  I can't say there was any one bad thing among my symptoms of this cold. It was more like Chinese water torture - a constant low level irritation. Later on, towards bedtime, it was either the cumulative effect, or something else that was making me feel quite miserable. Frequent doses of whisky seemed to have a very positive effect, but there was an even more positive effect when I got a phone call.

  It was about 10.25pm, way past my "business hours" when Brian Bath, the man whose birthday party gig I went to last Sunday, called me. We had quite a good chat, and it completely distracted me from my cold...or maybe almost completely distracted me. I do remember having the occasional cough during the call, but it didn't seem to be a big deal. The call concerned two interrelated things.

  It was about photography, and about Brian's next KT Bush Band gig. He wanted copies of the pictures I had taken at his birthday party. He has friends/relatives who will only get to see the pictures if he is able to show them himself, rather than sharing them via social media. That lead on to the subject of photography at the next KT Bush Band gig. He wants me to be their official photographer.

  As a quick aside, I was amused when Brian told me about comments made at his birthday party. It was particularly in relation to the rubber eye cup from the view finder of my camera. Somehow it had fallen off despite it being difficult to remove on purpose. It was found some time after I had left the pub, and as they discussed what it was, and whose it was, I was described as the photographer. That boosts my ego a bit more than "that bloke with the camera" !

  Brian is most keen that I take my camera along to their next KT Bush Band gig in a weeks time. The venue is a newly refurbished, or built venue under The Cart And Horses pub in Stratford. Open Street Map says it is about a 760m walk from Stratford station. It's about a 850m walk to the pub just beyond Lewisham Hospital. That is an annoying walk carrying a heavy camera bag. It is a lot closer to Maryland station, and as I have just discovered what was once the TFL rail service, which had a lot more train than the earlier Great Eastern train service, is now the Elizabeth Line with trains every 6 minutes between Stratford and Maryland stations. That is a plus point.

  Brian is very keen that I make it, and (hopefully) take some good photos. He was saying he could find me money for fares, and also feed me at some point. I told him that my Freedom Pass covered all my travel, and I could get by on a couple of pints of Guinness. I will also be on the guest list, and have an imaginary back stage pass. I think it is too small to need real back stage passes. I want to do this "job". I just hope I am feeling in good condition in a weeks time.

  After ending the call from Brian I went to bed, but I was fighting both feeling ill, particularly coughing, and feeling all excited by the hope I will get to take some of my first semi professional photos. It was not a combination to relax enough to get to sleep. It was well after midnight before I fell asleep, but I have no idea how well I slept. I seemed to wake up a lot, but I am not sure if some of those times were dreams.

  I was seeing to dream a lot about being at The KT Bush Band gig. I was thinking about what could go wrong, and what could go right. Trying to imagine what the venue would be like, etc, etc. A lot of the time I couldn't decided if I was thinking about all these things while awake, or while asleep. Some was definitely while asleep because some of the things, like a sort of balcony above the audience, that I could take pictures form, were just feverish fantasy, but the more practical stuff...I guess it could have been dream or wake.

  One oddity was how through most of the night the usually most comfortable positions for sleep seemed to be very uncomfortable. I did notice that during the course of the night my cough was changing. Before sleep it was triggered by the feeling of a drip of mucus at the top of the windpipe. During the night the cough went from potentially wet, to dry, and then to very infrequent wet - quite infrequently I would cough up a very small blob of mucus. That it pretty much the situation now. It is like the cough is almost over, to some degree, but I still feel ill. It is hard to describe just what "ill" actually is. I sort of think there is nothing I couldn't do now that I could otherwise do, but it's just that I wouldn't enjoy it.

  Of course there is one very tangible symptom of being ill. Once again my blood glucose is dangerously high (11.1mmol/l). I did try and be careful about what I ate yesterday, but I was often feeling cold, and wanted hot food to warm me up. So I did eat a lot more than I would under normal (and warmer) circumstances. There is also the fact that blood glucose does rise when fighting an illness. I'll just keep an eye on it, and try to do better.

  My plans for today are very simple - am expect to do nothing ! I may turn the heating up a bit and see if I can have a few snoozes. If I do suddenly feel a lot better I might ruin it all by doing a shopping trip - another bottle of whisky might be good, and a couple of bottles of Diet Coke would be handy, but neither is essential today.