Both forecasters almost agree that from the start of the morning, until mid afternoon, it will be bright. The BBC say only sunny spells, but the Met Office is unusually optimistic by predicting full sunshine. At the moment the sky is clear blue, but the downside of that is that we became just a couple of degrees of a frost this morning. Towards the end of the afternoon the temperature should reach 14° C. It will probably rain from 10pm tonight. Tomorrow will be mostly dull, and it could rain at any time (the two forecasters I consult show completely different times for rainfall). It will be a slightly colder day with only 12, or maybe 13° C predicted. It is time it started to warm up more, but the BBC's long range forecast, for a fortnight ahead, shows high's of no greater than 13° C for most of that time.

   Yesterday was an OK sort of day, but much of it was sort of neutral - no great highs, nor lows. Apart from having a shower, and washing my hair, I spent a little more of my morning on money matters. One interesting this is that I checked to see how much had been debited when I paid my rail fare on Tuesday morning by credit card.

  I found only 10p had been debited. This was obviously a trial debit, very quickly made, to confirm I was using an active credit card. I would like to think no more would be debited, but back in the real world I am sure I would see the full fare debited if I check today (and I might if I have a spare moment), and it is possible I would also see that trial debit re-imbursed instead of the rail fare having 10p deducted from it.

  My current account was looking healthy, and I also confirmed that EDF had their last payment on the 5th of this month, and it would more than cover, but a considerable latitude, the £7.50 they were whinging about wanting to be paid - even to the extent of sending me a warning latter. I suppose I ought to try and phone them to confirm they do acknowledge getting it. I am also happy to say my two credit cards were easy to pay to reduce my balance down to zero.

  With my finance in good order I felt it safe to spend some more money. I ordered another £90 or so box of beers - which may possibly be delivered today ! I made an order with Amazon for more blood glucose test strips, and a few other things including a 4 Terabyte hard drive that I may, with an awful lot of faffing about, fit into my current PC which is currently getting very full - although, having said that, the free space on the hard drive is still nearly 200GB ! That is big, but it only represents just 9% of the full size of the hard drive (a 2 TB drive).

   My final order was for a new lens for one of my Nikon cameras. It is actually a Nikon "Nikkor" branded lens. It is a zoom lens covering 18 to 200mm, or quite wide angle, and quite a lot of zoom. It is effectively to replace a Tamron branded lens of similar specification, but which always seems to produce a rather soft image. It is as if the image was slightly out of focus, and yet if I zoom in all the detail seems to be there. I hope this new lens looks a lot sharper. It includes an anti vibration system, and that may help sharpen the image. At £259 it is relatively cheap as lenses go (I really lust after some lenses that cost over £1000, but that is beyond my price range).

  Just after midday I set out to Catford Bridge station to pick up two copies of The Metro, and get the train to Ladywell. It was interesting that although I found myself a little breathless, I didn't seem to suffer any angina pains. When I got to Ladywell I tried to increase my walking speed a bit on the short walk to the pub, and once again I didn't get any chest pains. It is probably mere coincidence, but it does feel like something positive happened when I had my MRI scan.

  I was hoping that Ayse, who I had picked up an extra copy of The Metro, might have some news about her medical condition, but it turned out she had to see her consultant that very afternoon, but I would have gone home by then. The big hope is that what she thought were nasal polyps, were exactly that, and not, as one doctor suggested, possibly cancerous growths.

  I had a very pleasant 90 minutes in the pub. There was some good banter, and Stella the dog came in and entertained us. Maybe there was too much distraction because there was one clue in the quick crossword I just could not answer. I think I only managed to solve one and a half clues in the cryptic crossword. I wonder if my brain is now on it's long decline into senility !

  On the way back to the station, I did have some chest pain, but it was brief, and I am pretty sure it was not angina. I think it was a brief relapse of my apocryphal "twisted rib". It actually felt like my left man boob was heavy, and wobbling enough to hurt. It seemed to just stop hurting a few minutes later. It didn't seem reason to slow down, and while it may not have been a brisk walk, I walked to almost the far end of the platform with no angina pains. Until recently I would usually have to stop for a moment once or even twice before walking that same distance.

  Apart from taking pictures of the front and rear of every train I saw, both going to Ladywell station, and returning, I id nothing else on my way home, and sadly none of those pictures were of train numbers I had not previously photographed. I did try and walk fairly fast from station to home, and I was not held back by any angina pains, but my legs, ankles and knees were starting to feel very tired by the time I got home.

  My original plan was to have a fairly light lunch of just some fruit, and maybe some nuts, but I noted that I had bread to be used up. It had been opened maybe 5 days, and it was starting to dry out. There were two slices left, and a very thick bit of crust at the end. I managed to cut that crust into two slices, and a thin bit of crust. I made cheese on toast out of all 4 slices and the crust. It was quite tasty.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon being fairly lazy. In theory I should have been finishing washing some t-shirts and underpants that I had left soaking after my shower, but maybe it was because I had started believing I would not have the energy or inclination to do it even as I was putting it all in to soak in detergent, that I found I didn't have the inclination, and possibly not the energy to do it when I could have been doing it.

  Some of my laziness was just laying back reading the next book on my reading list "Assignment In Eternity" by Robert Heinlein. It didn't seem to take long before dinnertime rolled around. I had almost two very small, slightly bigger than a glf ball, apples. One had a bruised section that I cut off and discarded. I followed the apples with the last two salads I had bought from Sainsbury's the day before - a Greek style salad, and an Italian style salad. An hor or so later I had some sugar free choc chip cookies.

  At 7pm I watched another recent repeat of an episode of Secrets Of The London Underground. It finished at 8pm, and I seemed to feel lightly tired, and went to read in bed. I finished reading just before 9pm, and I expected to fall asleep very quickly - I didn't, but at least I think I was asleep before 10pm. It was one of those nights where I can barely remember anything with any certainty.

  I am fairly sure that I got up to pee twice, possibly three times, but they just left a sort dream like memory. I am aware that I was dreaming, but any memory of them was so insubstantial that I have nothing other than some extremely vague thoughts about what those dreams were about. I all sounds like I had a very good night's sleep, but I don't feel that refreshed, but I did seem to feel fairly OK when I got up at just gone 6am.

  One negative feeling when I got up was that I was feeling cold, and my under-the-tongue temperature measurement was quite low at 34.9° C. That is not unusual on warmer days and nights when I sleep mostly, or even totally uncovered. Another negative thing is that I seemed to be constipated, but it does feel like it won't be for too long now. Despite not doing a poo, my weight still seems to be holding a couple of kg below my last official entry on my medical record. Another good thing is that with no effort, and without needed a second attempt, my blood pressure is nice and low at 108/41.

  Despite not working too hard to restrain my eating, and maybe actually eating more than I thought might be good for me, my blood glucose readinga are pretty good this morning. The Contour meter read  8.1mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read a better 7.8mmol/l. The Sinocare meter read 7.9mmol/l. That is a nice tight grouping of figures, and averages out to just 7.93mmol/l - a generally very good figure. If I can keep this up, or even slightly better, I think I will be confident to submit to the blood test the practice nurse has been wanting me to do since the start of the year !

  I have not had the official notification yet, but I know the beer delivery I ordered just yesterday morning, has been despatched, and arrived at DPD's Southwark depot. The next stop on it's journey should be to here, and it could arrived any time in the next few hours (possibly soon after midday). I have just read that my Amazon order has been despatched, and that should arrive tomorrow. It will probably be early next week before my new camera lens arrives.

  This afternoon should be a beer tasting session with Jodie. It is always possibly we could be joined by someone else, but I doubt it will be Michael - he is back on his hospital bedside vigil, watching over his dementia suffering wife who doesn't even realise he is there.  If my beer delivery arrives in time to be chilled in the fridge, we could be tasting some of the new beers.
        







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