Last night was not as cold as the previous night. I noticed that the temperature was only turning negative at midnight last night. This morning it was about -1° C, but it looks very frosty outside. Like yesterday, the temperature should rise to about 4° C by mid afternoon. The latest revision to the forecast acknowledges that it is already sunny, and the period of dark cloud, shown above for 11am, has been changed to white cloud. Maybe apart from 11am, the day should be bright and sunny like yesterday. Tomorrow will be like today except the sunny spells may be replaced with full sunshine, and that should raise the afternoon temperature to 6° C.
 
   Much of yesterday was rather good, although the evening was not so good. Having said that, there was one short lived fly in the ointment towards the end of the morning. I had a very nice shower, and washed my hair, but as I predicted, the drain pipe from the bath had frozen up, and at the end of my wash there was 3 or 4 inches of soapy water that could not drain away from the bath.

  While it was very cold outside, I seemed to be ready, and almost eager to go out in the sunshine. As I mentioned further up the page, when talking about the weather, I was surprised that there was very little breeze, and that allowed the sunshine to feel warm even when the air temperature was no more than a couple of degrees. It made for a pleasant walk to the station. I knew I was going to get to the pub early, and decided I needed a copy of The Metro so I could amuse myself until Angela arrived for our Wednesday lunchtime drink.
  This picture shows how sunny it was, and that nice blue sky. It also shows a train, 465193, which I had never photographed before, and so it became another entry in my huge great spreadsheet listing all the numbers of trains I have photographed. It's like my version of Pokemon - gotta get them all ! I guess it was rather good that having only seen two trains while out, I could add one to my collection.

  I arrived at the pub at about 12:30, or half an hour before Angela would arrive. Not only did I have a copy of The Metro, so that I could pass the time doing the crosswords, but I had actually picked up three copies. I gave two of them to Ayshe the barmaid because she likes to read them in preference to The Sun which she usually seems to have. It was partly because I was distracted by some of the banter going on, but I never managed to complete even the quick crossword before Angela arrived. There were two clues I just could not get.

  Angela was very cheerful when she arrived. She had been looking forward to our drink, and on this occasion there was no special reason for it except she likes my company - either that or it is a very long term plan to keep me amused enough to go to her wedding in June. That idea is probably too cynical. There has always been some sort of magnetic attraction since I first met her. It is a shame that she has never considered me husband material.

  During my extra time at the pub I drank three pints of Guinness instead of the usual two pints. I think I made the right decision to go and have a pee before we ventured out into the cold air again. The walk back to Angela's office was partly silent. There was a lot of traffic noise, and the water jetting, or whatever it is that makes the terrible noise from the blocks of flats opposite the hospital, plus Angela wearing a thick and furry hood to keep the cold out, meant we could barely hear each other. We finally got to talk again when we turned off the main road. We parted with a nice hug, and with Angela saying how much she had enjoyed the hour, and looked forward to next Wednesday.

  Maybe it was because I was wearing my second thickest coat, and gloves, but I seemed to feel quite good as I walked home. The previous weeks it had felt a bit of a strain walking home, but yesterday it felt like I could have walked, and even sort of enjoyed walking 4 times the distance. I had two pleasant surprises when I got home. The first was the 4th of five books I had ordered was sitting on the doormat. The other, although it was a bit later before I noticed it, was that the bath had emptied. Evidently the afternoon had warmed up just enough to let the waste pipe thaw out.
  One of the things we talked about in the pub (or was it when we were walking back to Angela's office ?) was food. In particular some of the food that Angela had cooked for me when we were a sort of couple back in 2016. One such food was bacon sandwiches after going back to Angela's place after a gig, and also chips under the same circumstances. I said that made me think that some chips would be great after I got home from the pub.

  That is exactly what I had, although much to my shame, I also had a hot steaming bowl of instant noodles while the oven chips cooked in the mini oven/grill. I have to admit that my presentation of the chip on a plate, in the picture above, is very poor. My partial excuse is that I cooked them on the foil covered baking try I had used for the previous night's sausages, and quite a few of the chips stuck to the foil, and broke up when trying to get them off. The chips at the top of the plate look a bit pale and underdone. They weren't and I think they only look that way because of trying to photograph them through a lot of steam rising off them.

  After my double lunch I was feeling quite relaxed, but also just very slightly sad. The sadness was just the often coming down from the earlier high of seeing Angela, and being in a pub, and having three pints of Guinness, but mostly the joy of seeing Angela. For some reason I can't seem to remember if I had a snooze or not. I know I was intending to have one, but I think my bedroom had cooled down too much while I was out, and it seemed to take ages to get it warm enough to feel drowsy.

  I had part cooked my dinner before I went out to the pub. I started watching some TV at 5pm, and during the first commercial break I added the last ingredients, and put it into the microwave for 15 minutes to finish cooking.  In the break between one programme ending, and the next starting at 6pm, I went and got my dinner from the microwave. By that time it had cooled off to a nice temperature for eating straight away.

  There wasn't much to my dinner. It was stewed diced lamb, which shrunk a lot during cooking, a small amount of miniature potatoes, and a lot of white cabbage. The lamb partly shrunk as it gave off quite a lot of fat, but some of that fat sort of glazed the lumps of cabbage, and it tasted really nice like that. I had also sprinkled on some rosemary before I started cooking it, and that gave the lamb and potatoes a very nice taste.

  One thing I started doing during commercial breaks in the stuff I was watching, was to actually read some of the news in The Metro which I brought home from the pub. Much of the news was of no particular interest, but the front page was about upcoming strikes in February. Apparently there is going to be a lot of them by various workers, but in particular there will be more rail strikes on the 1st and 3rd of February.  Depending on what services are affected by them, it seems probable that my photography outing to the KT Bush band gig on the 3rd February may have to be abandoned.

  It may have been a silly mistake to stay up to watch Have I Got News For You on Dave last night. It finished at 11pm, and I was in bed soon after. I was definitely yawning a lot, but I just could not relax and get to sleep for at least an hour. I tossed and turned, trying different sleeping position, and probably felt asleep in one of the first positions I tried - such are the working of Sod's Law ! Once I fell asleep I seemed to sleep quite well, maybe even very well for some of the night.

  At 4am I turned the heater up to full, and slept for a few more hours. It is rapidly becoming a cliché, but once again I woke up at around 6am, and thought "just 5 minutes more", and like previous days, I seemed to sleep soundly for almost 2 hours ! It still did not seem all that warm in my bedroom despite having the heater on full, and the outside temperature not being as low as yesterday.

  I did my usual routine when I got up. The important bit being checking my blood glucose. This morning, despite my double lunch, it had come down to slightly less than my typical monthly average at 8.3mmol/l. As I write this I still haven't, as they say in the medical profession, opened my bowels. It will probably happen a bit later, but even without that, my weight is just a tiny bit less than yesterday (but plus or minus 500gm it is staying remarkably constant no matter what I do.)

  Like yesterday, and probably the day before, the bright winter sunshine is very uplifting. I could almost imagine wrapping up warm, like I did for going to the pub yesterday, and going out for a longer walk. Unfortunately I can't today because this morning I need to go to Tesco to get some ingredients for my next few dinners, and this afternoon should be a beer tasting session with Jodie and probably Michael too.