Today's forecast brings no joy. It is going to be cold and grey - sometimes very grey ! It is quite hard to get excited about the latest revision to the forecast raising the maximum temperature to 3° C instead of the 2° C shown earlier. In the latest revision there is another double yellow warning of ice, and snow and ice. I feel sure these are added to the national forecast, and in this case they probably are redundant to this local area - although, of course, there is still a lot of snow laying on the ground, and melting away even as we look at it. Tomorrow is shown as uniformly light grey, with a top temperature of 2° C. Like today, the chances of any precipitation (drizzle/rain/sleet/snow) is vanishingly low.

   I can't say I was completely over my cold yesterday, and not even today, but I was at least 97% over it, and only annoyed by a few twinges now and then. I think today could be similar, and the final cure won't come until we have had a hot sunny day - where hot could be at least 20° C ! However, a lot of yesterday felt good.

  After having another late morning shower (they always seem to be late morning these days) I wrapped up warm, and went to Tesco. Despite the cold foggy air I seemed to feel quite good. Maybe I actually enjoyed it in some sort of twisted way. I must admit I am very thankful I have several warm coats that I can do up to keep the cold off my chest. Maybe 10 years ago, perhaps a little more, I didn't have a coat that I could do up the front, and being out in weather like, or even worse than yesterday's weather, and it was perishing. Fortunately, in those days I didn't have all that operation scar tissue across my chest.

  There were three types of things I wanted from Tesco. The first was the inevitable bottles of Diet Coke. Second was some more meat and green vegetables to make my (hopefully) healthy dinners. As well as some diced beef I also took advantage of some meat balls with herbs that was reduced to about 2/3rds price. On reflection I seem to recall the last pack of them I bought didn't seem to be as healthy as hoped - mostly in terms of apparent sugar content.

  The third thing was to take advantage of some Clubcard offers on one litre bottles of whisky. I bought a 1l bottle of Bells, and a 1l bottle of Whyte And Mackay whisky. During the day I gave both a quick sip, and both seemed very drinkable. There are more offers like this, and I can see myself getting another bottle or two the next time I got to Tesco. I probably also ought to get a 1l bottle of Smirnoff Vodka while it is so cheap.

  I suppose it was because I didn't get any negative effects after going out in the cold, misty and frosty air after being ill for a week, that I found what should have been almost mundane to be almost exhilarating, and worthy of celebration. I should have denied myself because I didn't write out the Xmas cards that I intended to post in the Post Box in Tesco, but I celebrated anyway. I cooked a big plate of oven chips for lunch. When I say big, I don't mean huge - it just didn't seem worth keeping a quarter of a portion left in the almost empty bag.

  I can't quite remember the order of things, but I think it was while the oven chips were cooking that I did the major preparation work for my dinner. It was to be diced, and rather fatty lamb, with "miniature" potatoes*, flavoured with mint. Later on I would add some cauliflower and mange tout.

* Miniature potatoes: Tesco seemed to have three different bags of potatoes that looked to be the same type, but slightly different sized. I think each bag held 1kg, and each type cost a different amount. The miniature potatoes were 10p cheaper than the "salad" potatoes, and they were 10p cheaper than the "new" potatoes. The differences in sizes was very small, and back in the real world they would all be mixed and just sold as new potatoes.

  Once again Jodie was late coming over. She had gone to Lewisham to do more Xmas shopping, and apparently the queues in TK Maxx were horrendous ! I think it was about 4.30pm before she arrived. She then sat there fiddling with some of the stuff she had bought, plus eating the remains of a pizza in a "doggy bag" from when she was out the previous evening. All this time I was dying of thirst until I gently reminded her it was time to open a can of beer.

  She got her revenge for my impertinence - The first three cans she selected were nasty sour beers. In fact the first was a very sour fruit beer of blackberry and apple, and one other fruit. It was really acid, and I could feel my lips peeling as it ate into them. We did finally open a bottle of a nice, Belgium style, beer. I don't think we had time for any more beer after that, but we did have a couple of small tots of whisky to "keep the cold out" before Jodie set off under some very light snow, to the station.

  It was fortunate that Southeastern Trains appear to have their own track clearance trains. I didn't notice any cancellations or delays on their part of the network while some parts of the Southern and South Western Train were at a complete standstill. Jodie's train was on time, and as far as I am aware, all the trains after that.....Err, it seems I spoke too soon. I have just learned that Southeasterns network complete fell off the rails (so to speak) last night, and this morning there are many cancellations. Services on the Mid Kent Line (Lewisham to Hayes, Kent) may not start to run normally until after 10am this morning.
  The picture above was taken at 7.57pm, and as you can see there is a fair covering of snow. The picture was taken through my bedroom window using the "night mode" on my new Huawei P30 Pro mobile phone. It essentially does a long exposure, but it sort of blends several shots together so that some movement is visible without it being a long exposure blur. It certainly has brought out far more detail than I could see with my naked eye on a dark night.
  I moved the camera viewpoint a bit to try and capture the falling snow as illuminated by the street lamp. It wasn't perfect, but the flurry of snow is shown as streaks under the street lamp. The other clever thing the phone does is to not allow the brightness of the street light to be completely over exposed, and bleach out much of the picture. I have to admit it would be tricky to take this picture using "conventional" techniques.
 About an hour passed (it was 9pm) before I thought I ought to get a picture from the other window, and that would show the deepening snow. There was one useful "cheat" I used to get these night shots looking good, and that was to rest the phone against the window pane so it couldn't move. It was almost like using an tripod.

  It wasn't long after taking the third picture, at 9pm, that I went to bed. At that point I was not feeling as good as hoped. I had had a small bout of light coughing earlier, and my throat felt funny. It was enough to delay me getting to sleep for about 2 hours, but some of that time was taken up by reading in bed. Once I did get to sleep I seemed to sleep exceptionally well.

  I can only remember waking for a pee maybe twice in the night, although I feel sure I woke up a few more times, but didn't go for, or need a pee. It is all very vague now, but it feel like I might have woken up a few times to consider what I was dreaming.....or maybe I only dreamed I woke up to consider what I was dreaming. Maybe I was lucid dreaming. I can't remember enough of any dream to recount it, but I do remember there was a common theme of making some sort of chair or stool from used drumsticks.

  I can't say I felt that wonderful when I got up this morning. I had a selection of aches. Most have gone no since moving around a bit, but it seems I might have jarred my chest during the night. I had two semi painful twinges when I reached out to flush the toilet just now. It makes me think I may be better off staying in the warm today. On the other hand a bit of exercise has been known to be a cure for aches like this. One of my original plans was to go and do some snow photography, perhaps even before sitting down to write this, but as well as not really feeling like going out in the cold, a lot of snow is already melting away, and I can imagine the main roads are nothing but black slush now.

  Maybe I might take a camera out later, but for now there is reason to celebrate, although I can't think of a suitable way of celebrating my victory over this recent disease. The best indicator of this is not my creaking body, but my blood glucose reading. Having a big plate of chips for lunch, some dubious beers, and then having quite a few "miniature potatoes" in my beef stew dinner, could have had a bad effect on my blood glucose, but this morning it was down to a very ordinary 8.6mmol/l. That is slightly above average, but most definitely good when compared to every other day this month !

  I have no definite ideas of what I'll be doing today, but a few things cross my mind. I might still take a wander into the park with a camera. The snow might look a bit fresher in there for a few more hours yet. I still have to write out and address some Xmas cards. For some unknown reason I think I'll be doing that in the dining room. I certainly have one more present to rap, and I will need the dining room table to do that. It all means I'll have some heating on down there. I may as well use some of that heat to dry a few clothes. I guess I better start to wash some clothes to dry, but do I do that before or after I have a shower. Do I actually need to shower today ? I doubt I will be seeing anyone or going anywhere social today. I guess I can save a bit of money by not heating water for showering. Actually, with the price of gas this winter, it is a very valid excuse !