The yellow warning of rain today is because heavy rain is expected at the start and end of the day, but also for the total amount of rain expected to fall through the whole day. However, the latest revision to the forecast has downgraded some previous hours of heavy rain to lighter rain now. The dry, but still terribly gloomy few hours in the middle of the day has now been expanded to be dry between 1pm and 4pm. The temperature may still hit 12° C, but only for a single hour at 4pm in the latest revision. There is still a rain warning for tomorrow, but it looks like it will mostly be light rain, and with many hours possibly staying dry. Tomorrow's temperature could also hit 12° C for a few hours.

    Yesterday was another good and bad day, but it was also a day that more evidence to one of my health theories. One great thing about yesterday was the early delivery of a parcel I was expecting to come later. It wasn't all such a great thing though....

  The Royal Advised me that my parcel would be delivered between 10.55am and 1.55pm. The later time would wipe out my lunchtime appointment with a couple of pints of Guinness in The Jolly Farmers. At about 9.50am I thought I had plenty of time to wash my hair, and have a shower. At 9.55am I had lathered up my hair with Shampoo, and at 9.56am my doorbell rang.

  At that point I had only hung my head over the bathtub, and my legs, and most of my body was still dry. I bellowed down the stairs to "hold on a minute" and then went back to my bedroom to put some trousers on before rushing down stairs to answer the door to the postman with suds running down my face ! It was not my usual postman, but one who seems to get here much earlier - either he starts earlier, or takes a different route.

  As I answered the door the postman apologised, with a part hidden smile on his face, for calling at an inopportune time. Having thanked him, and closed the front door, I should have gone straight back to the bathroom, but I couldn't resist opening the package. That small delay meant I was starting to get soap in my eyes, and was half blind when I staggered back to the bathroom.

  A little later, after shampooing and showering, and with my parcel delivered, I found I had almost a couple of hours spare before I needed to go to the pub. I spent some of that time laying on my bed reading. I almost had a snooze....at least I think it was "almost". A bit later I finished getting ready to go out and left in plenty of time to see the next train to Hayes that runs about 5 minutes before the Charing Cross train that I would get for the one stop to Ladywell.

  Getting to the station was an interesting, but compulsory experiment. The day before yesterday the temperature, ignoring some quite strong wind chill, was almost double that of yesterday, and I had done a fast walk to and from Tesco without a coat, and elt cold, but otherwise fine. Yesterday, a similar length walk, done in a nice warm coat that was done up, got my chest hurting - feeling very similar to Angina.

  I do not know the exact mechanism of what is taking place, but it does appear to be a fact that I only get the chest pains when the temperature is below a certain figure. I think it is the gulping in the lungfuls of frigid air that inflames the scar tissue from my bypass operation from 2013. On the other hand it might be possible that the cold is constricting the blood vessels, and what I am feeling is real angina. Which ever it is, it seems to be from applying the cold air internally by breathing - something it is hard to stop doing ! Externally my body was reasonably warm under my coat.

  Along the way I took photographs of the back and front of the few trains I saw, but none of them were new ones for my train photo collection. As expected, I was not joined by Angela or Michael, but about 10 minutes after sitting down with my first pint of Guinnness I was joined by Dik Tokarski, the guitar player from The Entourage Band (and others). I throttled him back for 5 minutes so I could complete the quick crossword in The Metro newspaper.

  After that we had a good natter about music and life in general. Dik is coming up on the age where he is eligible for his state pension, and we compared notes about it. Like many, he feels he will continue in work, maybe doing less hours, to top his state pension up. I was fortunate that my BT pension tops my state pension up to just enough to be mostly comfortable provided no big expenses come up.

  My plan for the lunchtime was to only have 2 pints before walking home via the pharmacy to pick up my repeat prescription. In fact I stayed for three pints of Guinness, and maybe that was good to possibly cushion the pains of walking in the cold air. I guess it is close to a 10 minute walk to the pharmacy, and I was very glad to get there, out of the cold, and into the warm. By then my chest was really hurting. Unfortunately the pharmacy had been very efficient, and I was only in there was a minute of two before I had my bag of assorted rugs, and continued my walk home.

  I was in a lot of discomfort when I got home, but it all very quickly started to fade after a few breaths of warm air. While the pain fell to nothing, it did seem to leave a sort of tenderness behind, and it seemed to take hours before I felt properly warm - and I had left the heater on in my bedroom while I was out. I should have had something like hot soup, but I had a late lunch of just rice crackers and cheese.

  After an hour or so I began to feel almost warm, but then I went back down to the freezing kitchen to prepare my dinner - which was another cold salad ! The salad was a slightly stripped down version of the salad I had the previous day. Although I didn't add any spring onion, or celery, it was actually a fair bit bigger because I thought there was no point of leaving a small amount of mixed salad leaves, and just tipped the whole lot in.

  I waited until the end of the first Star Trek episode, which finished at 6pm, and which I didn't watch because once again it seemed to be no more than a few weeks since I last saw the same episode, before I started my dinner. I ate while watching Star Trek: Enterprise. Like the salad, it was fairly good, but maybe not the best. It did feature quite a lot of T'Pol, and she is always very pleasant on the eye.

  There was a half hour break before watching an episode of The Simpsons, and then there was a full hour break before Have I Got News For You was on. It was still a bit early, but I was still feeling cold inside, or something like that, and with the heater on full I lay on my bed reading my book for maybe half an hour before I thought I might as well read it from inside my bed.

  The current book I am reading is "Sixth Column" by Robert A. Heinlein, and it is very easy reading, and quite enjoyable - even when it could be little more than a year since I last read it, and I can remember a fair bit of the plot. I read for at least another half hour before I reached the end of a chapter, and that seemed to be a good point to ut the book, turn out the light, and try for sleep.

  Sleep didn't come easily, and I didn't stay sleep for long before I was awake again needing a pee. The needing a pee was because I actually fell asleep thinking I should have gone of a pee before falling asleep. There was then another reason for not falling asleep quickly. I seemed to be digesting my salad dinner like a cow or something. There were lots of gurgles and "movement" in my gut, and while it didn't signify any need, it was very distracting.

  Later in the night I woke up feeling cold because I had got my room so warm before going to bed that I was sleeping almost uncovered. By 4am my room was feeling very tepid, and it seemed time to turn the heater up full. It seemed to take hours before my bedroom felt really warm, but once it did I decided to luxuriate in it for just a bit longer, maybe just 5 minutes longer. An hour later than usual I finally got up.

  Unlike yesterday morning, I had no trouble going to the toilet. There was no urgency about it, but once I was sitting comfortably on the toilet seat those internal muscles produced their peristaltic waves, and second later, whoosh.... After that it seemed like a good time to get on the scales. Everything I have eaten for about the last three or four days has been generally thought of as healthy. Loads of salad = weight loss, according to the self styled experts. Wrong ! It may only be a mater of a few hundred grammes, but I have put on weight.

  It is all to do with balancing calories versus sugar content. I must admit I have no had great results when checking my blood glucose recently. I am happy to admit that this morning 2 out of three readings were excellent. The Contour meter read 7.9mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read an even better 7.7mmol/l. The Viva Chek meter went completely mad and read a terrible 9.6mmol/l on the first attempt, and a slightly more reasonable 8.3mmol/l on a second attempt. I sometimes think that the Viva Chek meter just gives out random numbers. I think I will retire it soon.

  Today brings a couple of certainties, and one possible. The first certainty concerns a stupid mistake I made yesterday, and that I should heave learned from the previous couple of times I have made the same mistake on a Wednesday. After my shower I put a few items of laundry in to soak in the ridiculous belief that after coming back from the pub I would do the rinses and conditioner. Like those previous times I couldn't raise the enthusiasm to finish the job. I have to finish it this morning before I take a shower.

  If there is plenty of time* and it is not too wet, and I can find the enthusiasm for it, I may pop out to buy a few items from Poundstretcher. Later in the afternoon I should be having having a beer tasting session with Jodie. With luck we will be trying a few beers that I have been waiting to try for some time now.

* Time could be a variable quantity today. I haven't been sent a message to give some sort of predicted time, but I am expecting another parcel delivery today. It will be delivered by Hermes/Evri. Their tracking page says it is at their local depot, and I will be notified when it is out for delivery. Usually they are fairly early, but who knows when.....