By my reckoning, based on the results of several thermometers, this morning was closer to 5° C than the forecast 4° C. It is certainly very dull at the moment, and at either 10 or 11am it is going to get even gloomier, but apparently there is only a 10% chance of rain at any time today. The sunny spells shown for 1pm in the screenshot above has now been moved to 3pm in the latest revision to the forecast. This could mean no sunny spells at all, or maybe sunny spells for more than one hour. The best change to the forecast, in the latest revision, is that 3 and 4pm are shown as being 8° C. That is not exactly warm, but less cold than recent days. Apart from the temperature being lower by a single degree, tomorrow looks like it might be the same as today.
 
   There were probably more good bits than bad bits of yesterday, but the bad still almost outweighed the good. The bad was all to do with my bodies reaction to the cold, damp, and probably atmospheric pressure. I endure a fair bit of pain at times yesterday.

  The first bit of good news about yesterday is that my 12 bottles of hot pepper sauce were delivered at about 10.30pm. That was within the window predicted for the delivery, but towards the late end of the one hour slot. With the delivery in my hands I could semi relax, and that meant a nice hot shower. All that cascading hot water washed away all my aches and pains. The unfortunate thing is that it only lasted until I had been out in the cold for 10 minutes.

  With the possibility of it being misty, and the chances of it were quite realistic in the park near the river, I put on my bright orange winter coat. It is not a coat I wear very often, and that is partly because I find it a bit tight across the chest. However, a winter or two ago, when I was fitter, and probably a tiny bit thinner, I did wear it, with the hood up, for a couple of 3 or more mile walks. On those occasions the thick-ish insulation not only kept me very warm, but I ended up sweating !

  Yesterday it didn't feel all that warm when I went out in the orange coat, and that was particularly so across my chest. By the time I had walked to the station, and over the bridge to the platform for trains to Ladywell (and beyond) I was feeling quite uncomfortable. Mostly it was my chest aching like I was starting a heart attack. It could even have been something like that because once I stopped walking the worst of the ache faded away.
  Considering that it is such a short journey from Catford Bridge to Ladywell, about 2 minutes, and I arrived no more than 10 minutes early* I managed to do a bit of trainspotting. 376019 was just leaving to go towards Hayes (Kent) when I arrived at the station. It was another train I had never taken a picture of, and so it was added to my spreadsheet of trains I had taken pictures of.

* I had deliberately left home early so I wouldn't have to rush to the station. I knew rushing would aggravate quite a few aches and pains that were barely on simmer when I left home. That idea was a failure because I just can't seem to walk slowly, and when heading for a station I actually seem to speed up no matter how early I am !
  I had a bit of trouble at Ladywell station. I am unsure if my train was a couple of minutes late, or the Hayes bound train was a couple of minutes early. It is quite possible it was just a small change in the timetable recently that meant the train I got off at Ladywell blocked my view of the arriving hayes bound train. I never got to see the number on the front, but I did snap the back of the train. It was 466013, and while I did have a picture of it, it was from many years ago when the train was in Network South East livery. Now it is in Southeastern livery I need an extra picture in my spreadsheet.

  I saw quite a few squirrels as I walked straight to the pub. I had a Nikon camera with fairly good zoom on it, but I didn't have any nuts to tempt the squirrels closer, and pose with their nuts. I arrived at the pub about 25 minutes early. I had informed Angela that I would be early, and she said she would see me soon. In fact I think she only arrived about 5 minutes early. Ayse, our favourite barmaid was off sick, and Emma was barmaid for the day. She is not so distracting as Ayse, and before Angela arrived I had done 95% of the quick crossword, and maybe 25% of the cryptic crossword before Angela arrived.

  As always, it was wonderful to see Angela. One of the potentially boring bits of our conversation was about my aches and pains, and how I found a website that agrees with my own diagnosis that the cold can inflame scar tissue - scar tissue like a fair bit of my chest after my heart bypass operation in 2013. Either Angela has the knack of appearing to be very interested, or she was actually interested in my moaning and groaning.

  We did chat about more interesting stuff such as Angela recently receiving her long service certificate. She was a bit miffed that it said "more than 10 years" instead of 25 years, but maybe in this day and age keeping NHS staff for more than 10 years is considered really good. She is now expecting something like a £50 voucher to arrive. All too soon it was time for Angela to get back to work.

  Despite being in the pub for about an hour and 20 minutes, I still only drank two pints of Guinness. I think I was distracted from drinking by trying to find more answers to the crossword clues. I decided that it might be prudent to have a pee before going out in the cold - although it shouldn't have been needed for just two pints - but it seems it was ! When we left the pub it first seemed that we were walking out into light mist, but it was actually very fine drizzle. It seemed to fade away after little more than a minute.

  When we got to Angela's office she gave me a nice warm hug, and then I started walking towards home. I had not gone all that far before my chest first started to feel cold, despite my thick winter coat being securely zipped up, and it was not long before my chest started to ache. Once again I couldn't seem to slow down. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable when I got home. One thing that was odd was that initially, when I first took off my coat, it felt surprisingly warm in my dining room despite it only being about 13° C in there.

  I fancied some hot food, and food that was completely at odds with the high blood glucose reading I got in the morning. I fancied a plate of chips. It turned out to be more than that. The first problem was that the bag of oven chips had about enough for a plate and a half, or something like that. I just tipped the whole lot out onto a baking tray and shoved it into the mini grill/oven. My plan was that I would first eat the top layer of chips, while leaving the bottom layer to cook for another 20 minutes. It was going to be a long process and so I made another foolish decision and warmed up a can of Polish beans and bacon.

  While I had been out for around two and a half hours, I had turned the heating off in my bedroom, and the temperature had dropped enough to make it chilly until I had some hot food inside me. Even so, it seemed to take the heater being on full blast for something like 3 hours before I really felt comfortable. While uncomfortable I got to thinking about the nature of my discomfort, and what the root cause really was because it seemed to be excessive for just being cold.