The road looked wet from recent rain, or possibly ongoing light drizzle, well before the forecast time of the start of the deluge that may fall from 9am to 7pm. The highest chance of rain is shown as 95% for a few hours. I guess that leaves a 5% get out clause if they have got the forecast completely wrong again, and the sun comes out. Today will be far from warm with just 11° C predicted, and even that will start to slowly fall from 11am onwards until just 6° C at 11pm. Tomorrow starts with no reason for cheer, just 5° C, and more heavy rain. There is no reason for cheer for the rest of the day either. 1pm might see the temperature peak for just 2 hours at 7° C. The afternoon may be a bit brighter, but plenty more rain could fall. It is possible that midday and 1pm may be the only hours with no rain !

    Yesterday was good until it became bad ! A good shave, shampoo, and shower is always uplifting for at least a short time, maybe half an hour. I think my outside thermometers were agreeing it was 12° C when, at just gone midday, I put on a light coat, and went out into the icy blast from the north, north, east !

  I should probably have zipped up the front of my coat in the hope I would feel less freezing, but on my way home, when I did have the coat zipped up, I seemed to feel colder still, and began to suffer far more from the cold. I can't say I had a very pleasant walk to the station, and then beyond to use the hole in the wall cash machine to top up my wallet - real wallet with real cash in it, and not some electronic fantasy.

  Having topped up my wallet, and grabbed a couple of copies of The Metro, I walked back to Catford Bridge station. I hadn't planned to get any particular train, and just relied on the fact they were running about every 15 minutes. My arrival time was such that I only had a minute or two wait for a train going in the wrong direction, and then another 4 minutes for the train I wanted.
    I could say it is a hobby, but maybe it is a compulsion to photograph the front and back of every train I see. The idea is to get photograph of every single one of the local trains, and any others I can on various rail journeys. The train pictured above was the train that took me to Ladywell. The last two carriages were unit 466014, and I had never photographed it before, and so it has been entered into my great spreadsheet listing every unique train I have photographed.
   376011 was another train I had not photographed before. It was the next train going back towards Catford Bridge, and ultimately Hayes (Kent), and pulled into the station just after the train I had been on had pulled out on it's way to London Charing Cross. With so few gaps in my lists it is getting rare to get a picture of a train I had not photographed before. Getting two in one day is a real luxury !
  It wasn't just trains that I took snaps of. One the walk to the pub from Ladywell Station I crossed the footbridge over the river, and saw this pigeon that didn't seem to know if it wanted to be a dove or a pigeon. It had quite a striking mix of greys and bright white. A side photo would have showed it a lot better, but just as I lined up the shot it flew off.

  It was another very enjoyable session in The Jolly Farmers. I managed to complete The Metro quick crossword well before finishing my first pint of Guinness - despite distractions from a very friendly young springer spaniel dog. I never did solve more than 3 or 4 clues from the cryptic crossword, but that didn't matter because I was sort of happy for a different reason - but conversely also a reason to be unhappy.
  I took my spare mobile phone, with the SMART sim card in it to the pub. At home I can barely get 1Mbps download speed using that phone and sim card. It makes even simple things take some time to be ready for use, and things like software updates are so slow and with occasional drop outs that I have to resort to turning on WiFi. In the pub that phone and sim card managed to get a very usable 8Mbps download speed. If I lived in the pub I would be quite happy with that. On the other hand, I just checked what speed I get on my main mobile phone connected to Giffgaff (02 network). That gave 25Mbps.

  As I left the pub, after finishing my second pint of Guinness, I zipped my coat up, and stepped outside. It immediately felt colder than when I went there. The forecast, or at least an early version of it, said the temperature should have risen a whole degree while I was in the pub. With hindsight I wonder if zipping the coat up made it tight enough to loose a little bit of trapped under it, and so less insulation.

  I went back to Catford Bridge on the train, and so I enjoyed a whole 2 minutes out of the wind. Back in Catford I diverted very slightly to go via the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. I bought several very useful things including 3 different types of no sugar biscuits, and one from the same maker, but shown as "no added sugar", but the nutritional panel still showed it as having very little sugar in it. I also topped my stock of instant noodles, and they were all flavours that Tesco don't stock.

  By the time I got home my chest was really aching, and my breathing was getting wheezy. On top of that, some of my "favourite" aches were starting to get painful - most particularly my right elbow. It felt good to get in the warm, but I had turned off all the heating while I was out, and it seemed to take ages to get my bedroom hot enough to be comfortable. What I should have done was to have a couple of cans of hot soup, but my lunch was preplanned a couple of days ago to be a tomato and broccoli quiche - which I didn't bother to heat up.

  My chest was hurting so much from the cold, and didn't seem to be getting better as I slowly warmed up, that I became concerned that maybe this time it was my heart causing problems. I decided it might be wise to check my blood pressure (I think it was at 5.52pm rather than 6.52pm as the meter shows - it is probably still on BST). The reading I got was better than "normal", and the meter classified it as "optimum" !

  Soon after that I had some dinner, and took advantage of having some food in my stomach before taking a couple of Ibuprofen tablets. It was not long before they really went to work, and I was soon mostly pain free. I will add that a bit earlier than even checking my blood pressure I was laying down, reading, and every time I breathed in there was a distinct "click" from inside my chest - just like two bits of loose bone hitting each other with each breath.


  I still maintain I did far more damage to my chest when I did not obey my heart surgeon's orders after I was discharged from hospital back in 2013. I definitely felt a sort of "twang" in my chest when carrying 10 or more times the biggest load I was advised to carry. My doctors said it was impossible I could have torn stitches, or the wire staples holding my sternum and other bones together. Maybe what he (they) meant was that there was no way they would consider opening me up again to repair any self inflicted damage.

  My dinner was not exactly a healthy choice, but maybe as a one off it wasn't so bad. It was a two part dinner. The first part was the last two slices of the rye sourdough bread I had bought from tesco a few days earlier. I managed to cut the last of it into two thick-ish, but proper slices, and I first toasted them, and then put sliced cheese on them before further grilling to get the cheese well melted. After taking it out of the grill I added some starting-to-wilt salad leaves to make it "healthy" (but mostly to use up the end of the bag of salad leaves).

  That rye sourdough is bloody tough stuff, and did it's best to blunt one of my sharpest knives. Once I managed to get it into manageable chunks it seemed to have a nice crunchy/chewy texture. Part 2 of my dinner was two ready sliced, slices of Polish, zero sugar, sourdough bread with some salami slices in it. Maybe that would have been nicer, possibly more healthy, with added salad leaves, but it was pretty good as it was.

  I watched both back to back episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise last night because the second one was sort of good. That finished at 8pm, and had overlapped with an episode of The Simpsons, but I think it was an old one, and probably have a recording of it. I didn't like the look of QI, and so I went to bed early last night. After my poor sleep the night before, I deserved it, but I didn't get a very early night in the end.

  I read quite a lot last night, and I think I must have been reluctant to stop because I feared the return of chest pains when I turned over and tried to sleep. I did take some precautions in the form of some antacid tablets because I was occasionally burping up the taste of the salami sandwich, and acid reflux causes a lot of chest pain. I can't say I was perfectly comfortable when I turned over and tried to sleep, but maybe tiredness was the stronger feeling, and I did get to sleep before long.

  I sleep quite well last night, but not without incidents. I had had the heater on full until about half an hour before going to bed, and then I turned it on low. I eventually fell asleep under my duvet. I woke up around midnight, or maybe 1am to find I had been sweating, and one end of my pillow was damp. I turned the pillow around, and was soon back to sleep, but this time I left myself mostly uncovered. At 4 or 5am I woke up feeling cold, and turned the heater on full blast until after I had got up.

  One incident was a dream that started well, but ended in frustration, annoyance and despair. It started off at a railway station that I am sure had signs saying it was Catford Bridge, but looked completely different. One huge difference was that it seemed to be a terminus. It was very early in the morning, and I had gone to see a unique thing. Waiting in the station was a single, old style, slam door carriage that was fitted out as first class (old style first class with compartments and very comfortable seats).

  The idea was that an ordinary commuter train would be coupled to the first class carriage for one journey every morning, and I wanted to see it. I did see it, and decided I wanted to travel on it - just once, to say I had done it. I headed to the ticket office window to get a 1st class supplement ticket using my Senior Railcard to get a discount, and my Freedom Pass for the basic cost. The trouble is that I searched every pocket I had and could not find my Freedom Pass or my Senior Railcard anywhere. By the time I concluded I would just have to pay full price using my credit card (which I did have) the train had left.

  After the quiche I had for a very late lunch, and the bread I ate for my dinner, I was expecting terrible blood glucose readings this morning, and that is what I got, but I also got a very good reading ! The Contour meter read a fairly good 8.3mmol/l. That is a bit lower than typical average. The GlucoRX meter read a very good 7.4mmol/l, and the Sinao Care meter read a terrible 9.4mmol/l. That is a hell of a spread of readings for what should be the same blood squeezed out of the same prick in my finger. It is really odd how the Sino Care meter can so often give completely different readings to the other two, but at least sometimes it agrees - which was more than the Viva Chek meter did. I have put the Viva Chek meter back in the box, but when the Sino Care meter runs out of test strips I may give the Viva Chek meter another go.....until I order more test strips for the Sino Care meter.

  I can't say I feel wonderful today. My blood pressure is still "Optimum" this morning. My chest feels sort of tender, but without any actual pain. My right elbow has given a couple of painful twinges today, and I think that was when I was in the cold kitchen getting my breakfast together. The most worrying thing was what at first seemed like toothache, but now I think it is more likely a problem with my cheek. I may have somehow bitten it in the night, or it could be a blocked saliva gland. Happily it seems to have almost gone now.

  Ideally I would be going out shopping in Tesco today, but I feel reluctant to expose myself to the foul weather again today. The good thing is that while the road still looks wet, I have seen no heavy rain, and the wetness of the road more suggests light drizzle. However, I have no great need for anything except of Diet Coke, and I am hoping Michael will be going to Tesco, as usual, today, and will get me some. I have plenty of bread, cold meats, cheeses , instant noodles, and frozen sprouts. What more could a man want !

  The main amusement today should be a visit from Jodie and possibly Michael for some beer tasting. I even found a beer I didn't recognise in the little supermarket yesterday, plus I still have a can of 14.5% super strong, peanut butter flavour beer that I am looking forward to trying. Peanuts and the extreme strength means it must be wonderful (fingers crossed). Although I have plenty I could eat for dinner tonight, there is always a chance that after a few beer I may not want to much around in a cold kitchen. It seems ages since I last treated myself to a takeaway shish kebab. Maybe I will tonight.
     







2620 words today