This morning has started off very mild, and the temperature is predicted to rise to 19° C by midday, although it will slowly fall an hour or two later, and maybe just 14° C by 11pm. The BBC predict sunny spells lasting through until 5pm, but The Met Office say the sunshine will fail at midday in their latest revision. Both forecasters predict either drizzle (BBC) or light rain for an hour or two from 6pm. Tomorrow should reach 16° C, and there might be sunny spells for most of the day.

   Yesterday was generally a very good day, but it turned out to be very different to how I might have expected it to. I had a fairly sedate morning until things shifted up a gear when Kevin messaged me to say he was OK for the Friday drink we had hoped we might be able to do.

  I must admit I was taken by surprise, and was expecting Kevin to say he was otherwise too busy to come out to play. I had to rapidly pull my finger out, ad have a shower before getting dressed to go out. I had hoped that in the mild, going on almost warm air, I might be able to walk the mile, 3/4 quarters of a mile, or whatever, to The Blythe Hill Tavern - particularly when not carrying heavy shopping, or heavy camera, or even a heavy coat.

  I wore my sleeveless denim jacket, and apart from some of the gusts of wind that felt a bit cool, it was otherwise very comfortable, very nice. Unfortunately my chest seemed to show hints of getting heavy after only walking as far as the station. I stopped there to pick up a copy of The Metro free newspaper, and to take snaps of the next two trains - both of which arrived, one in each direction, within 4 and 7 minutes of me getting to the platform, Neither was a new train number for my collection.

  I guess it only needed a rest of under one minute before I felt perfectly normal, but I decided that if I continued to walk to the pub I would still have to go up and over what is essentially a long humped back bridge of the railway, and then there was the hill by St Dunstans college. Neither were anything like a mountain climb, but would still be a bit taxing. I decided to wimp out and get the bus the two stops to the pub. After all, it is what my Freedom Pass is for !

  The bus saved me at least 15 minutes, and I arrived at the pub 15 minutes earlier. I think Kevin was probably 10 minutes late, and I was well over half way through my pint of Guinness when I heard his voice ordering a pint of Harvey's Sussex bitter (on of his favourites) from the other bar. I quickly went round to the other bar, and greeted him there with my glass only about a quarter full. He bought me my second pint of Guinness, and I had finished teh first by the time it had slowly poured.

  We went out into the garden of the pub so that Kevin could smoke, and I could get some sun on my bare arms (although it was mostly on my right arm). I noted that, presumably since Covid, the garden is not so much pretty garden, as it once was, but more geared to outdoor seating.  There was even a big, and quite ugly looking, white marquee in the middle, with a gas heater in it. We sat at a table under a clear plastic roof, but at the end of it so the sun could still shine under it.

  It was a good session, and much banter took place. In fact it was probably too good because a "swift couple of pints" turned into 5 pints, plus two shorts. One thing of interest was that Kevin had a picture of the very end of my road taken in (I think) 1922. It seems the building was originally built as a car showroom, and today it's usage is still based on cars because it is now a branch of Halfords. It has also done duty a motorcycle repair place, with a particular slant towards new tyres.


  When the picture was taken the name above the showroom was Hovis. I wondered if it had any connnection, maybe a family connection or something, with the modern day bread maker Hovis. Apparently it had a very direct connection with Hovis because it was built and operated by the bread maker. It seems they were probably pioneers of "industrial" bread making, and delivered it direct to shops in custom made vans. Those early vans were made and repaired at the end of the road !
  One of the amusing things about The Blythe Hill Tavern is that the gents toilets (and possibly the ladies) is home to several snails. I expect that at all times, possibly except in the cold days of winter, the toilet windows are left open all the time, and those windows are surrounded by pots and planter. It seems that snails go walkabout, and find themselves in the toilet. If they go out to the ceiling they are not exposed to cleaning and stuff. I think we reached a total of 7 snails, all quite small, in the toilet !

  It must be because I only meet up with Kevin every 6 weeks or more that we seem to have so much to say to each other. The net result is that 2 pints became 4 for Kevin, and because I had started maybe 20 to 25 minutes earlier than Kevin, 5 pints for me. It may have been lucky that I had two portions of instant noodle for breakfast yesterday. I could feel the booze just starting to work when Kevin suggested "one for the road" to kill some of the 7 minutes wait for the next bus (the bus stop is only 10ft from the front of the pub). Kevin suggested our usual "short" of Jamesons whiskey, but only a single.

  While drinking that I noticed something that intrigued me. It was Redbreast Irish whiskey. I had never heard of it before, and neither had Kevin. It had to be tried ! There were actually many other unknown whiskies we could have tried, but one more single seemed like it should be made the ultimate limit. We both agreed that it was the most mellow, and tasty whiskey we had possibly ever had. Maybe because it was so mellow that other flavours I rarely taste came through. It had definite undertones of toffee, and similar flavours. I must try and get a bottle to keep here for special occasions. The only trouble is that it costs £50 a bottle, and the 27 year old version costs £507 !!!!

 Our timing was good, and we only waited a minute or so for a bus back to the heart of Catford. It was a very full bus, and with only 2 stops to go for me, I stayed close to the doors. Those two stops later I got straight off the bus, and straight into the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. I had brought a shopping bag with me, but only thought I would be getting a few things. I got several things ! The one thing at the top of my shopping list was a loaf of sliced, Polish, sourdough bread, but I saw other stuff. One thing I had not seen before was small rectangular tubs of "spicy" Greek cream cheese. Personally I would describe it as "tangy" rather than spicy. It was very nice.

  I also noticed some instant noodles I had never seen before. I think they were all Korean in origin. A couple were quite big 120gm packs, and I got two different ones. I also saw packs of 5 small (60gm) bags of instant noodles, and I put one of those in my shopping basket too. Other things I bought were a medium large packet of crisps, a bottle of Tequila flavoured, or blended beer - it is probably rubbish, but it has to be tried. Two big bottles of hot pepper sauce, and finally a big pack of sugar free chocolate chip cookies.

  Now it probably sounds as if it was drunken shopping, and I guess it probably was, but I didn't seem to feel drunk, and the walk home with the shopping was almost in a straight line. I think I walked fairly fast, or at least at my normal walking pace for bringing shopping home, and unlike when walking to the station, which s an almost identical distance, I never even felt a twinge of any chest problems.

  The first thing I did after getting home was to have a pee, although there was less urgency to it than expected. I then made a couple of sandwiches using the new loaf of bread I had just bought. I should have stopped there, but obviously the booze was still very active, and just could not stopping myself using the crisps in the packet I had just bought to scoop up the Greek cream cheese. It was a marvellously tasty, and marvellously unhealthy snack !

  It was quite late by then, getting on for 6pm, and I should have called that food dinner, and be done with it, but I still thought of it as a cross between a late lunch, and a snack. By the time I had copied the pictures across from my phone (all three pictures above were taken on my phone camera), and edited them for showing here, it was time for some TV. I just caught the tail end of an episode of Yes Prime Minister. When that ended I turned the TV off for half an hour, and read some stuff on the internet.

  At 8pm I turned the TV back on, and watched an episode of The Avengers. It was not a great episode, but it was the best there was. While watching it I ate my "official" dinner. It was one medium, and one small, "easy peeler" orange, plus two small, and rather bitter apples. Those four, mostly small pieces of fruit were a lot more filling than I thought they would be, Next on TV was "Secrets Of The London Underground". I suspect is was from series 3 because I had never seen it before.

  That finished at 10pm, and I went straight to bed, although it was some time before I tried to sleep. I found I was probably no more than a dozen pages from the end of the book I have been reading. I had trouble keeping my eyes open, but I read it through to the end, and then turned out the light, and tried for sleep. I had turned the heater off as soon as I got in bed, and it was starting to feel like it was cooling down a lot, and I wondered how I would sleep. I needen't have worried. I fell asleep fairly quickly, and it was hours before I woke up again.

  I'm sure I woke up once for a pee before 4 or 5am, and from the way I have written it, I was not sure when it was that I woke as getting up time was getting close enough to turn the heating on, but only low was needed to make sure I got up into a warm room. It seems I had slept well enough to all but forget nearly any dream I had had. One bit of a dream does remain, but what I probably remember more is trying to think "how did that work" in a dream.

  The dream featured gambling, but in a sort of more modern, high tech equivalent of scratch cards. What seemed to happen is that you bought a pack of 5 cards. Four of them were the so called random element. each was an touch card that needed to held up to a reader for the secret number or symbol on it to be read. Some cards were winner, and some were losers. To win you needed 4 winning cards, but if they were all of different values the prize was the lowest value. If two were the same value you would get a prize worth twice the value of the two same value cards.

   There were similar rules for three matching cards, and the jackpot was four matching cards of the highest possible value. It was all mathmatically rigged to pay out about 25% of what the cards cost to buy. The real clever thing was the fifth card. It was like a single use credit card. If you won anything you would tap the firth card to the reader, and your prize money would be transferred to the card, and it could be spent like any credit/debit card until it was emptied. I guess new winnings could be added to it, but it couldn't be topped up any other way. I have actually made that last bit up on the spur of the moment, but it seems like it all makes a coherent plan.

  I made no effort to eat carefully yesterday, and it seems I probably went out of my way to eat badly.  It all stuck out like a sore thumb when I checked my blood glucose readings this morning. A month or two ago I would have said they were quite good, but they were poor compared to recent readings. The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l, and that was the lowest reading. I guess it is not much about readings in the sevens. The GlucoRX meter, usually is more generous, but it read 8.3mmol/l, and typically enough the Sinocare meter read the highest at 8.6mmol/l.

  I am not sure how, but I ought to try and get back on track with readings in the sevens tomorrow. One thing about my diet yesterday is that I definitely didn't suffer from any constipation this morning. I had been out of bed for about 20 minutes before it happened, but it was smooth and easy when it happened. It seemed to be enough to be noticeable when I weighed myself straight after. If I imagine hard enough, I might be a whole 100gm lighter then the previous time I got on the scales. In the wider scheme of things it sometimes seems I am anchored to one fixed weight that goes up and down a few hundred grammes by phases of the moon, and is almost unaffected by how much or how little I eat. Of course that must be completely wrong, but.....

  I don't know what I am going to do today. I think what I might try is going for a walk. I may just have the minimum wash possible, and then go out with camera, but no coat. The temperature is now just about 19° C, and with no rain expected, just a t-shirt, and no coat should feel very comfortable. Before going out I shall take a couple of pain killers, and a single 300gm dispersible aspirin tablet dissolved in water. If those two don't stop any Angina like pains I will be rather annoyed. If they do, and also stop my legs aching too much, I might achieve the three miles I am thinking of, but it seems most unlikely I will make it that far. I will have to be careful I turn around, and come back before things get too bad. The might mean I funk out earlier than I need to.

  One of things I promised to show was the portrait pictures I had taken at the Whitestar open mic at The Partridge pub. I rarely even did proper portraits before these, but I am quite pleased how they came out. It seems I have enough of a reputation as a serious photographer now that nobody seemed to object, or even have me a good pose, although one of the best, that of Simon was taken before he realised what I was doing. It's funny how the non posed pose was probably the best.
      







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