This morning has started off very cold. The forecast of -3° C is easily satisfied. My thermometers at about 8am ranged from exactly -3.0 to -4.2° C ! The sky will stay clear for a lot of the day, and despite a lot of sunshine, the temperature is only due to rise to +2° C. By 10pm it will be down to -1° C again, but early tomorrow morning may only be -2° C. Tomorrow could be sunny again, and the temperature could rise to a magnificent (sarcasm) 4° C !

    Yesterday was another semi good day. I guess I could say I was quite excited to be going for my Wednesday lunchtime drink. It was too cold in the bathroom to do the full shave, shampoo and shower. I just had a shower, and left it at that. I put on my thick, hooded, orange winter coat, and plunged into the frigid air.

  It was a good test of my dodgy chest to see how it fared in a warm coat that is just big enough to not put too much pressure on my chest. Maybe it was that "not too much pressure" that meant that while I could feel some gentle complaint from my chest by the time I had walked to the station, it didn't actually blossom into pain. It gave some sort of hope that once warmer days are here again I'll be able to start walking longer distance without getting any chest pains.

 As usual, I took snaps of all trains I saw while going to the pub, and also on the way home, but none were new ones for my picture collection. With it being grey outside it was not a very exciting train ride, and I was happier when I finally got into the pub. It was just warm enough in there to sit there happily drinking with my coat off, and just a t-shirt on my top. I would end up having just two pints of Guinness yesterday.

  I had hoped I might be joined by Michael, and Angela. Of course I knew there was only a 0.00003% chance of Angela turning up. I also knew Michael would not be joining me. I had sent him a text message late in the morning reminding him that if he needed a break from his now almost week long vigil in the hospital, I would be in the pub next door. He replied that he had to stay at the hospital. I do worry that his fussing over his wife might actually make her mental health problem even worse, but I guess the hospital would act in some way if that was the case.

  As usual, there was a lot of fun banter in the pub. There are so few customers in there at lunchtime that I now know, to some limited extent, nearly all of them. It feels good to be able to occasionally contribute to the conversations. Mostly I try and concentrate on the two crosswords in The Metro. I managed the whole "quick" crossword because that doesn't need much concentration, but the banter was too interesting/amusing to concentrate on the "cryptic" crossword, and I think I only solved 4 or 5 clues.

  After my second pint of Guinness I said my goodbyes, and wandered off to get the train back to Catford Bridge station - a single stop. I did consider walking back. A bit of light exercise might have been useful, but I had an ulterior plan - one that would be my downfall. I had decided I would go home via the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. Top of my shopping list was more instant noodles - of flavours that Tesco do not stock.

  I didn't just get instant noodles. I also bought some sliced salami, a couple of cans of beer - one of which I don't think I have seen before - some sugar free chocolate chip cookies, a few little salad pots (the type with lentils or couscous in them), and last of all a bit of bread. I am sure the bread has a name in Turkey or Poland, but it doesn't have one here as far as I am aware. It was like a flattened bap with a glazed top with sesame seeds on it, and a rather sparse filling of some sort of almost powdered cheese and something else.

  My original plan for when I got home was to cook some oven chips, but the cold (and the beer) made me feel hungry, and that hunger was amplified when I realised how cold it was indoors. I had decided to turn all the heating off (which was generally just the fan heater in my bedroom) before going out. My bedroom, where my PC is, felt bloody freezing. That was an excellent reason for hot food, but I had that bread filled with sliced salami instead. It was sort of nice, but not as nice as hoped.

  I followed the bread with two of the salad pots. One was a lentils with flecks of tomato, and the other was couscous with some bits of vegetable in it. I added hot pepper sauce to both. Of course nothing I ate warmed me up, and it felt like my 2kW fan heater was never going to warm the room up on such a cold day. Of course it did eventually, but it felt like an age. I also had some of the sugar free chocolate chip cookies. They were interesting.... They had a slightly dry nutty taste, and were definitely not sweet. I never did check the ingredients, but I don't think the makers (possibly Turkish) bother to use artificial sweeteners to replace the use of sugar. Somehow they did seem to taste quite nice.

  By the time I had finished eating an unholy mess of lunch my bedroom was just warm enough to lay on my bed readings for a while, and then having a snooze. I woke up feeling a bit cold and stiff, and with a sort of mild hangover. By that time it was only about half an hour before the first Star Trek of the day - an episode from the original series. It was such a great episode that I can't seem to recall a thing about it.

  By 6pm I was looking forward to dinner, but I hadn't cooked the roast diced lamb and sprouts I had originally planed for my dinner. I did consider a takeaway, but I was till feeling slightly cold, and wanted hot food - NOW ! I solved that problem by heating up a can of Tesco Irish stew, and also making a double sized portion in a single bowl of tomato flavour instant noodles (two of the packets I had bought earlier).  It was all far from healthy, but at least it was hot.



  During the evening, while watching quite a few hours of TV entertainment (The Simpsons, QI, Have I Got News For You, etc) I sampled more whisky. Last night it was time to go back to the first whisky I had bought from the Penderyn distillery. having tried all three in the picture on the left, over three nights, I was finally in a position to write down some tasting notes.

The whisky in the red box is called "Legend". It is a standard 40% whisky, and it is rather pleasant. It was the whisky I was drinking last night. It is fairly pleasant when drunk neat, with no ice or mixer.

  The whisky in the green box, "Celt" is 41%, and is not so nice nice. In fact it is pretty horrible. It has a so called smoky flavour that is supposed to be from the smoke of burning peat. To my taste buds it is more like a fire in a chemical factory.

  The final whisky, in the clear fronted box, is described/named as Madeira Finish (it is supposed to be finished in Madeira casks). It is golden in colour, and in taste. With a strength of 46% it is dangerously nice. It slips down like someone oiled it ! It would be a tragedy to add a mixer of any kind, but maybe a single ice cube on a hot day might be acceptable.




  It was 11pm when I finally went to bed. I didn't start out to go to bed so late, but it was hard to ignore a showing of an edition of Have I Got News For You straight after a quite reasonable episode of QI. Even though it was so late I read in bed until I finally finished the book called "Roving Mars" an account of the first half year or so in the life of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, plus the decade of planning, internal office politics and stuff before their final launching.

  The one thing that lets the very interesting book down is that it ends on a cliff hanger - literally so in the case of one rover. That end was when it became winter on Mars and there was not enough sun for the solar cells to power everything on the two rovers. They were shut down, one parked on a steep north facing incline to get the best of the low angle sun during the winter months.

  Both rovers landed on Mars in 2004, and were only planned to last for 90 Mars days, but both far outlasted that time. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover Spirit was active until 2010, and Opportunity was active until 2018. It would have been nice if publishing the book could have been delayed for half a year so that at least a footnote could have been added to say that the rovers survived, and woke back up in the spring to get back to work again.

  There is not much to say about my night. I slept fairly well, but it could have been better. The dreams I had could have been a lot more memorable, and some very erotic dreams would have been nice (every night !!). Curiously enough, I do remember part of a dream that should have been erotic, but wasn't. It was about going to bed with an unknown female friend, but it was so cold that we kept our clothes on. No fun in that !

  Maybe despite leaving the heater on full all night long, and not kicking the duvet completely off the bed, the cold managed to seep into my dream and spoiled it. It was one of the coldest nights we have had this year, and maybe for a few years (but that is just guesswork). I made sure I took a snap of one of my radio linked outside thermometers, and I went for the middle figure. One said -3.0° C, another said -3.6° C. I chose the middle ground of -3.1° C for my picture......however, when I went down into the dining room there is another display down there linked to a sensor almost into the garden, and it was reading -4.2° C !


    I knew before I even checked my blood glucose readings that it would be a disaster after my very bad diet yesterday - and it was ! The very worst reading was on the Contour meter. It sometimes produces the lowest figure, but this morning it was the highest figure - well into the danger zone at 10.8mmol/l. The other two meters were very slightly more forgiving at 9.3mmol/l on the GlucoRX meter, and 9.8mmol/l on the Sino Care meter.

  In theory I should be fasting until dinner time after those readings, but two things argue against a complete fast. One is the very low outside temperature, and the other is afternoon boozing. The best I can do is to try and eat in moderation. This morning I only had one bowl of instant noodles for breakfast, but I have to confess it was a big bowl made from two medium sized packets of the same goulash flavour instant noodles.

  There seem to be some delays on trains this morning, but no trains seem to have been cancelled because of frost. This means Jodie should be over this afternoon for some beer tasting. It is highly unlikely that we will see Michael today. He will undoubtedly choose to stay at his wife side in the hospital, but he knows the offer is there if he needs to unwind for a few hours. I do fear his mental health is going to suffer if he doesn't allow himself some sort of break sooner or later.