Today there is likely to be what I can only described as mixed weather. I woke up the ground being very wet, and rain drops hanging from the washing line. There may have even been some very final drizzle still falling, but the forecasts say it should have been dry. The current revision to the forecast is looking a lot like yesterday's weather - brightening up towards the end of the morning, and sunny spells in the afternoon. The maximum temperature is even forecast to be what I thought it probably was yesterday, 15° C.  Tomorrow could be bright, but with no sunshine, and a few hours of light showers in the afternoon. It may be a degree cooler at just 14° C.

   With a definite plan for yesterday it had the potential to be a good day, and it was, although the evening was semi bad. The main plan for yesterday was to go to the pub, and there was also an optional second plan which was to get a bit of shopping on the way home from the pub.

  During the morning I trimmed my beard, washed my hair, and had a shower, all under he watchful stare of the rather large spider that had made my bathroom's ceiling its home. It's lifestyle would change a bit later, but I carried out my ablutions without interuptions, and was ready to go to the station to pick up two copies of The Metro, and get a train to Ladywell station. While about the stations I did some trainspotting.
  There was not a lot exciting about this superficially very ordinary train seen heading to Hayes at Catford Bridge station. The "interesting" thing is that it is a 465/9 train, specifically 465909, and they were a batch of trains modified with a 1st call section (actually more like 1.9 class, and without the labels you would hardly realise that area was any different than the rest of the train).

   They were modified for longer distance operations while the trains that currently go down to the coast, for instance, were being modified to work properly, and being built up to squadron strength. They may have only been used for a year or two, and then left in outside storage for years on end. To this day they look very grubby - particularly from the front. The other thing about this train was that I had never photographed it before.
  At this point I am a little confused. I prepared these pictures for use here soon after getting home from the pub, and I seem to have three train pictures, but I am very sure I only took pictures of 2 trains that I had never photographed before, and recorded their picture file names in my spreadsheet of all trains I have taken snap of over the years. I admit that if I checked my spreadsheet I would know if this one was new.
  It is possible that this is the second picture of a train I had never photographed before, but I might have included it for another unique feature - I took this snap using my mobile phone camera. It doesn't seem much different to the pictures taken on my Nikon S6300 pocket camera. For a nicely posed train the phones camera is pretty good, but while it has a limited zoom lens, the pocket sized camera has a much better one, and at times that can be very important.

  When I started walking to the station I didn't feel so good. My chest was complaining, and making clicking noises like two bits of bone rubbing together. By the time I had taken a few pictures, travelled to Ladywell Station, and taken a couple more pictures, I was starting to feel almost OK. All I needed to complete the cure was some booze !

  I started off with a pint of Guinness. My favourite table already had someone sitting at one end of it. I sat down at the other end because Ayse, my favourite barmaid said no one would join the other man at the table. I was about three quarters of the way through my first pint when I finished all of the Quick Crossword in The Metro. I never did finish the cryptic crossword.

  A second pint of Guinness initially helped get a few cryptic answers, but I just could not manage more than 6 or 7 answers. To pass some extra time I started talking to the other man. I think it was a few words he said to the barmaid that sort of broke the ice. I soon discovered two important facts. One was that his name was Mac, or at least that is what everyone called him.

  The second fact was that by the calendar he was only 6 years older than me, but he looked to be more like 20 years older ! I wonder if some time spent in prison aged him a lot more. He told me he was once a biker, and had got involved in some sort of fight. He didn't go into details, but something like 20 years later he still sees a probation officer, and it is usually on a Wednesday, and presumably the probation office is somewhere near the pub. I am guessing he did someone a very serious injury, maybe even killed his opponent to be still seeing a probation officer after all this time.

  Two interesting facts came up in out chat. One is that he used to see me and Angela in the pub every Wednesday, and thought were were "an item". Sadly not, but in those glorious days, before her accident, we were extremely close. The other interesting thing is that Mac swore he had seen Angela in the pub just a few weeks ago. He couldn't remember when exactly, but it couldn't have been a Wednesday or I, or Ayse, the barmaid, would have seen her too. Maybe Angela has been going there on a different day.

  I had one more pint of Guinness, and then a double Jameson's. That was topped up by another single courtesy of Mac in return for the brandy I bought him. He is so inform that he had to use a taxi to get him home to wherever he lives. I stayed for another ten minutes after he left, and then headed home. I was feeling quite good after that booze, and the pub was warm enough to lull my aches into fading away for a time.

  I did consider walking home, and I probably could have done it without too much discomfort, but I opted to get the train back to Catford. As I once calculated, it only knocks off about 0.2 miles from the entire journey home. I mainly did it because I wanted to do a little more train spotting, but I also wanted to get some shopping from the little supermarket on Catford Bridge.

  I had missed a train by no more than a few minutes when I got to the station, but I felt strangely calm, and had no need to rush. That was handy when I got to Catford Bridge station. The timing is usually that I get off the train from Ladywell, and the train I have got off has barely cleared the station when the Charing Cross train arrives (and another photo opportunity). On this occasion the Charing Cross train was delayed at Lower Sydenham station for unknown reasons, and the next Hayes train arrived to block the view of the arriving train. Fortunately I was able to get a snap of the back of the Charing Cross train after the Hayes train had departed. That was when I had to use my mobile phone because the battery in my camera went flat.

  My specific purpose for going to the little supermarket was to stock up on some of the tasty Polish, and other instant noodles. I bought loads of them, plus a couple of 5 packs of instant noodles - one was very cheap, and the other a bit expensive. I guess the two together added up to about average. I also wanted to buy some other potentially nice things, but even though I was obviously a bit drunk, I was still very aware that I should avoid thinks known to be bad for my health, although I came very close to buying some bread.

  There were two specific "very nice" things I did buy, neither of which I had tried before. One was a pack of Italian kabanos (very thin, ready to eat [I hope] sausages). The other was a pack of soft squidgy cheese with bits of bacon in it, formed into triangles to fit in a round container. Both were very nice. The kabanos were chewy but soft, and best of all they had no gristly bits that stick in the teeth like most kebanos.

  The cream cheese with bacon triangles were, in one respect, not so good. I expected them to have strong bacon flavour, but maybe the very mild hint of bacon did go very well with that soft, processed cheese. I had maybe two thirds of the pack on cheese flavoured rice crackers, and just ate the other third on their own. By this time it was almost time to turn on the TV for Star Trek, and an hour later it was dinner time.

  I almost didn't feel hungry after all that cream cheese, rice crackers, plus the kabanos that I had eaten, but I didn't dare try to keep the pork and vegetable curry I had cooked for the previous night for yet another day. That stew, with added curry powder was in a sort of no man's land between nice and nasty.  If I had eaten it on an empty stomach I would have probably looked around for something like a dessert to have afterwards. Instead I just had gloomy feelings that I had eaten too much, and I would get very bad blood glucose readings in the morning.

  When Star Trek Voyager started I sensed it would be another terrible episode, and turned the TV off. I didn't really appreciate what I was doing until I had actually gone to bed soon after turning the TV off, and once in bed realising it was only 8.15pm. I thought I felt quite tired, and predicted I would sleep really well, and then possibly get up extra early this morning. I couldn't have been more wrong.

  I must admit it all feel very vague now, and that suggests that I slept a lot more than I thought I did. I know that in the early hours of my time in bed the curry powder, and also a good splash of hot pepper sauce, was seeming to heat my body. It is hard to describe the feeling when ever I pulled the duvet over me. It was a bit like feeling like I was coming to the boil. Most of my skin seemed to be something like stinging, but "stinging" is not quite the right word to use. Without the duvet it was feeling very cold, but I did sleep like that for time.

  By 2am my bedroom had cooled down so much that all my aches and pains were getting quite strong. I felt I had no choice by to put the heater on - but only on low. It took a long time to take the chill off my bedroom, and I think I was wake for most of that time. The other thing I almost fortgot to mention was that the curried pork and vegetables had given me heartburn, and so I had an added chest pain. A couple of antacid tablets, taken soon after actually going to bed, calmed that down.

  After a few hours of sleep here and there, I woke up at about 5am, and turned the heater on full. I think it was about 5.30am when I could almost comfortably sleep with the duvet almost kicked aside. There is a small chance that the next couple of hours were the best sleep I had all night. I got out of bed feeling terrible though. I even had a pain in my left elbow. I have never (probably) had a pain in my left elbow before ! Fortunately it quickly faded away once I started to move around.

  It was with almost fear that I checked my blood glucose readings this morning, but in act I had nothing to fear at all.  My oldest meter gave the highest reading, and that was just 8.5mmol/l. The other two agreed on 8.3mmol/l, and in my book, even if the nurse would disagree, is a pretty good reading for me.

  After a late start, and the distraction of eating two bowls of instant noodles (one just a small one), I seem to be getting very late in finishing this. Fortunately all I have to add is that this afternoon should be a typical beer tastings session with Michael and Jodie....although possibly not quite typical - Jodie was talking about possibly an early finish for her so she can get to a possible gig afterwards.