This morning has got off to a nice sunny start, but both the met Office and The BBC forecasts now say the sun will be hidden behind clouds from 10am and won't be seen again today. We shall see ! The clouds are only forecast to be white clouds, and so at least it may not be gloomy. It should stay dry. and once again the afternoon should see 15° C. Tomorrow might see a return to dark grey clouds and rain in the middle of the day. The morning and early evening should see 10° C, but by 1pm the temperature may dip to 9° C. The BBC's forecast for tomorrow shows light rain or drizzle from 6am until 2pm, and they say the temperature could be 11° C.

   All the sunshine or sunny spells made yesterday a good day all by itself, but there were other good things too. I didn't write all that much yesterday, and so I finished writing moderately early, and I could have a quick rest before going for a shower. Having washed my hair, and shaved the day before, I was in and out of the bathroom quickly, and then I had plenty of time to get dressed, and get myself ready to head to Catford Bridge station.

  As usual I picked up two copies of The Metro so I could do the crossword, and Ayse, my favourite barmaid, could have a look at the news. Purely by chance I arrived at the station just before the Hayes train arrived. It was because I am addicted to taking pictures of trains that I stayed on the down (towards Hayes) platform to get a picture of the front of that train. While it was waiting to move off again I went over the footbridge to the up platform, and took a picture of the back of the train when it departed.

  I got pictures of the front and back of every train I saw yesterday, maybe 4 of them, and sadly I didn't have any new numbers to add to my spreadsheet of train numbers and photographs. I did consider using one photo because my old photo had grafitti on the front of the train, but I decided that I would keep the original. However, I did find many other photo opportunities both before and after I left the pub.
  I saw many squirrels near St Mary's church, and many were eating, and so presented nice posed views.
  A nice front pose, but without eating going on.
  I saw this ginger tabby strolling along on top of the wall at the side of St Mary's graveyard. I think it was feeling randy because it was calling to any cat's in the vicinity.
  When I got to The Jolly Farmers I found Ayse on her own. Her last customer had left almost an hour ago, but before he left he gave Ayse a copy of The Metro, and so my copy for her was redundant. It was nice getting Ayse full attention for a while, but after maybe 20 minutes people started trickling in - every one a regular who I know by sight, and in a few cases, by name.

  It was a good session, but I found the crossword rather tricky, and there was one clue in the quick crossword I just could not solve. It seemed obvious that I had probably made a couple of errors in words around the one I wanted, but I couldn't seem to find alternative answers for those that would provide additional clues. Once again the cryptic crossword was mind boggling. Maybe there were just too many interuptions, and there were quite a few, or my mind is going soft.

  I wasn't paying too much attention to the time, but I know I must have been there by a quarter to 1pm, and I probably left about twenty past two. In all that time I only seemed to drink 2 pints of Guinness - that should have been enough time for three pints. In consequence I felt very sober when I left the pub. I was torn between the more healthy option of walking home in the sunshine, or getting the train so I could photograph more trains. The trains won !
  Once my train arrived back at Catford Bridge I only hung around long enough to get a picture of the back of the train before going straight home. The first thing I did when I got home was to prepare a special healthy lunch - as pictured above. It was two smallish Pink Lady apples, cut into quarters, and de-cored, and with a scattering of mixed nuts. In theory it could have been low sugar, moderately low calorie, and all the fibre good for the bowel (this time it wasn't).

  Sometimes just two pints of Guinness is enough to make me very sleepy in the afternoon, but maybe the sunshine stopped that. All I know is that I felt no need to rush going through all the photos I took, checking the train pictures against my spreadsheet, and editing the photos of squirrels etc (there were more than I showed here). After all that was done I had a rest, and read for a while. I think I might have had a small snooze, or maybe I just wanted to, but didn't.

  My dinner was a sort of cross between healthy and unhealthy, although maybe I now think of it as all unhealthy. It was basically rather too many boiled potatoes with 4 mini pork pies, plus half a long red pepper. One unhealthy aspect, apart from the amount of potatoes was the butter I put on the potatoes. It should have been nice, but after thinking about I realised that butter has probably been in the fridge for 10 or more years, and I think it was rancid. It didn't have obvious bad effect apart from to spoil the taste of the potatoes.

  The very worst thing was the dessert I had after that main course. It was a single, smallish, waffle/wafer type thing with a very obviously very sweet filling. I think I got away with it last time because I ate one at lunchtime, and so there were plenty more hours to "process" it before I checked my blood glucose in the morning.

  Last night was yet another night with nothing exciting to watch on TV, and unlike some people I refuse to watch anything that is just TV filler - soaps, game shows, and similar dross. I did watch a single episode of The Avengers from my recordings collection, but I probably spent more time reading stuff on the internet before it seemed like a good time to go to bed with my book, and read for about half an hour (I think).

  I didn't take any painkillers before trying to sleep, and maybe that didn't help, and I went to sleep with no heating on at all. That didn't help either for a good night's sleep. After sleeping for maybe 2 hours I woke up from a dream about feeling cold, and did actually feel cold. In the dream I put on a pair of tough, motorcyclist style, leather trousers, and a thick leather jacket, that I think had a hood built in, and managed to warm up that way.

  I turned the heater on low, and gradually, maybe over the course of an hour, my bedroom warmed up a bit. I initially fell asleep under the duvet, but two hours or so when I next woke up, I had partly kicked the duvet aside. By then my bedroom was just warm enough not to feel too cool, but it would have been nicer if it had been a lot warmer when I came back from peeing in the bathroom.

  The day before yesterday, as I think I may have mentioned, it seemed mild enough to open the dining room, and bathroom windows to let some fresh air it. I closed both near sunset as it was starting to cool down. Yesterday I opened the bathroom window after I had my morning shower, and I left it open all day, and all night. At 3 or 4am it was still 10 or maybe 11° C, and if well dressed, and fairly active is not too cold, but when almost naked, and sleepy, it did seem to be quite a shock to go into the cold for a pee. I'll admit I turned the heater up full when I got back to bed.

  I've already mentioned reality intruding into my dream when I was feeling cold, but reality intruded into some of my dreams in the last hours of sleep. One dream involved waiting for a train, and another was about walking somewhere with somebody. I cannot remember much details about those dreams, but I do remember reality intruding in a painful way. In at least two dreams I dreamed I got cramp in my lower leg, and I woke up to find my lower (right, I think) leg was just starting to cramp, and I had to leap out of bed to put some weight on my leg.

  In consequence of losig some sleep in the night, I got up a little later than recently, just before 7am. The fruit in my diet didn't seem to work this morning, and I still haven't done a "number 2". I am also sad to report that my blood glucose, perhaps just on account of that late evening, very sweet wafer thing, has returned back to about typical average before I had my run of good readings.

  The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, an I guess I'll admit that is still fairly good. The GlucoRX meter read 8.6mmol/l. While very far from disaster, it does spoil a run of better figures. The Sinocare meter read 7.9mmol/l, and that is both very low fo that meter, and more like the sort of figure I hoped for. That is quite a range of readings, and I wonder which is close to the truth. Perhaps it is the Contour meter's reading of 8.2mmol/l - it is the same as the average of all three meters.

  It has just gone 11am (I was delayed by a long phone call), and the sun has finally got smothered by cloud, but at least the sunny spells lasted longer than forecast, and I have a suspicion we may not have seen the last of them. My outside thermometers say it is almost 16° C outside, and I haven't had the heater on since before I had my breakfast at about 8am. At long last I seem to have reduced my electricity consumption a lot. Very soon my standing order will cover the £25 I owe, and hopefully more than the next electricity bill - unless spring does a U turn - like it seems it might do tomorrow !

  I have a mere two plans for today. The first, assuming I get this writing finished, and have a shower in time, is to go out shopping. There is nothing I urgently need, but I have a yearning to have a wander around Aldi to see if there is anything it would be good to buy - possibly a couple of bottles of their own lime flavour sugar free cola. Their ordinary sugar free cola changed from very nice to very horrible years ago, but the lime seems good. Maybe I should try their own ordinary sugar free cola again to see if it has improved.

  The second plan today is to possibly get drunk while tasting some new beers with Jodie, and hopefully Michael this afternoon. I do seem to have quite a few beers that I can't believe Jodie does not want to drink - mainly because she somehow remembers drinking them a long time ago, and before her taste in beers changed in such a radical direction. Maybe it was Covid that killed some of her taste buds that now makes her thing very acidic, fruit beers (if indeed they can really be called "beers") are actually nice. It seems like they are dissolving my teeth whener I try and taste the very worst examples of some of Jodie's new favourites.
      







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