You'll note that nowhere on the forecast does it predict a thunderstorm, or even any heavy rain except at 7pm. Even the BBC, who like their thunderstorms, show none on their forecast for today. However, I think I might have been woken up by some distant thunder at maybe 5am. It looks almost dry now, but the road outside looked wet at about 6am. No sunshine if forecast for today, and it looks like there will only be random light showers during the day except for heavy rain at 7pm. That seems to have survived the small changes in the latest revision. Despite the gloom it should still reach a mild feeling 17° C today. Tomorrow there is a choice of weather. The Met Office predict a dry, but dull day. The BBC predict light rain for much of the day, and once again a dull day.  Both say it will be colder. 13° C for the BBC, and 14° C for the Met Office.

   Yesterday was another very enjoyable day, although things seemed to be heading for the bad at the end of the day. It never quite reached bad, but it was still a bit disappointing. The single thing that dominated the day was lunchtime in The Jolly Farmers.

  It was because I was expecting lunchtime to be extra special that I had a full washing and grooming session in the morning. I had a shave, shampoo and shower. At the end of it I filled a big bucket with bio detergent, and left a hand towel soaking in it. It is still there this morning, and finishing washing it will be the first task this morning. I can have a shower once the two big buckets are out of the bath.

  I made sure I left in plenty of time so I didn't have to rush to get to Catford Bridge station where I would grab two copies of The Metro - one for me, and one for Ayse. Although I didn't rush, I still seemed to keep up a good enough pace to get there 5 minutes earlier than needed, but I did seem to hold off any angina like pains until I had to go up and over the footbridge.

  I had one mild disappointment just before I went out. It was a message from Dik to ask if I would be in the pub. I said yes, but I would not be able to give him my full attention until after Angela went back to work - assuming Angela would even turn up, but last week she sounded quite keen about it. One thing that spoiled this outing was that none of the trains I photographed was a new train to add to my collection of train numbers in my spreadsheet.

  The first to arrive after me at the pub was Dik. To my absolute joy he was closely followed by Angela. Dik excused himself, and went and sat at the bar to allow me and Angela to chat together. The really great thing was that it seemed like the last 6 or 7 months hadn't happened, and it was just like another great lunchtime with Angela. Obviously there was a little bit more than a weeks worth of news to catch up on.

  I have to say that Angela was looking stunning. Some of the pictures I saw of her over that 6 or 7, or after a quick and dirty count on my fingers, it was more like 8 or 9 months since I last met her for lunch, she had looked a bit haggard. Maybe for me she put on her best happy face, and she did seem very happy to catch up with me again. It may have been an upset at the time, but I found she had obviously not been cross for long after I didn't go to her wedding reception, and she found out I didn't hate her for marrying the wrong man. I was actually more worried for her than anything else.

  It seemed a very quick hour before Angela had to get back to work, but it did end with a very warm hug. After Angela had left I was rejoined by Dik. I think we had another two pints of Guinness - making it four for me. We also had a dangerous "one for the road". It was Highland Park Scotch whisky, and it was not a favourite, but seemed pleasant enough.

  Staying as late as we did could have been a good idea if the BBC weather forecast had been correct. I predicted heavy rain and thunder and lightning for 2pm, and I was only wearing my sleeveless denim jacket. I did have a thin plastic, hooded, rain coat rolled up in my courier bag if the worst case was to happen, but like the Met Office predicted, it was dry, and warm all day.

  I'm not sure what time we left the pub. I do know that it was just after 6.30pm when I got home. I went to Ladywell station as usual after we left the pub. It was partly to do more train photography, but as noted further up the page, the pictures I took were sort of worthless. There were two good reasons for going home via the train. The first was that I feared the walk from the pub to home would most probably trigger some angina pains, and if not that, then it would definitely get my leg muscles aching.

  Just walking to the station, and then almost the full length of the platform was enough to get my chest starting to ache. Fortunately the ache very quickly faded after resting for as little as s single minute. The final, and in some ways the more important reason for going home using the train was that I could call in to the little supermarket on Catford Bridge on my way back home.

  There were a few definite things I wanted from that supermarket, and I almost bought those, plus a few things I hadn't expected to buy. The two most significant things were a selection of mostly, but not entirely, Polish instant noodles, and I hoped to get another packet of the quite nice sugar free choc chip cookies they have from time to time. They didn't have any this time, but they did have some Gollom sugar free cereal bars that I bought instead.

  A few random purchases were three nice red apples, a few "Greek style" dips, and a little tub of diced mixed vegetable in a sort of mayonnaise. One semi random purchase could have been lumped in with the other instant noodles, but they were a 5 pack of (alleged) Japanese instant noodles. It was possibly not a good idea, but I couldn't resist trying one of them as soon as I got home again. I had it for a very, very late lunch, or maybe a very, very early starter for my dinner.

  After finishing those Japanese noodles, which were strangely nice, I quickly checked my train photos, and then with none of them usable I went and laid on my bed to rest and to read. It was not long, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, before I was snoozing. I am unsure how long I slept, but I must have mopped up at least an hour of missing sleep from the previous night. It was just about dinnertime when after I came to, and I went down to the kitchen to prepare my dinner.

  The principal ingredient of my dinner was two Sainsbury's Scotch eggs. I didn't think to check them for sugar content and that may have been a bad idea, although it would be far too late to do anything about if they had a lot of sugar in them - which maybe they did. I had 4 small bits of left over boiled new potatoes, and I had quite a lot of the tub of mixed/diced vegetable salad stuff in mayonnaise. I suspect the latter may have contained a lot of sugar.

  It did not look like it was a big meal. I initially thought it was small enough to warrant eating a red apple as a dessert after it. I had prepared that apple, by quartering it, and cutting out the pips and stalks. It is a shame I had done that to the apple before finding out that my seeming small dinner was enough to make me feel quite full. I almost had to force the apple down. There was no possibility of saving it because it was starting to go brown before I had finished eating the Scotch eggs.

  My total TV entertainment last night was to watch a single episode of The Simpsons. I did tuned the TV to Great TV! where there was an episode of The Avengers on at 9pm, and then switched it off until 9pm, but by then I was feeling tired enough to want to try for sleep. The only trouble was that stuffing down the last of my dinner seemed like a strong recipe for yet more heartburn.

  I did get a little mild heartburn, but a couple of Rennies killed that very quickly.  In the end it didn't seem very long to get to sleep, and I would guess that after a bit of reading, it may have been not long after 9.30pm. The only trouble was that I didn't seem to sleep well. Sometimes I seemed to be awake for some time, but I am wondering if those periods were just dreams. On reflection, they did seem to have a dreamlike quality. For one thing, despite seeming to remember being awake in the night, I can't seem to recall any details of that time. I don't remember seeing the clock, or remember anything I might have been thinking about.

  I do remember fragments of dreams I did have. One dream was set in work, but it is unclear where I was working. Sometimes it was like a telephone exchange, and at other times it was more like a typical industrial unit. I can't even seem to remember what I was working on, but it seems I worked through the night before I started to make my way home. For some reason I hadn't got changed, and was just wearing underpants when I went outside to the road, and was surprised that it was light outside, and there were a lot of people about. Only wearing underpants didn't seem to worry me.

  Having left work, and in what must have been a new dream rather than a continuation of the previous one, I was now wearing trousers, I had to get home. I decided to take what I hoped was a short cut home. I started out to cross a medium busy road, and to walk around a roundabout with loads of overhanging bushes and shrubs. The significance of the plants was that it was hard not to stray into the road and being in danger of hit by a car.

  I finally saw a gap, and a building I could duck into. That was the start of another adventure - trying to find a way out while still heading in what I hoped was the direction to home. One of the first places I walked through was on the first floor of the building, and it was labelled "The Seafront". There was like a narrow ledge with the sea breaking over the edge of it. The view looked almost authentic, but oddities, like parallax errors gave the game away that it was a big hologram, although the water lapping onto the path was real.

  I passed through that room, and found some iron steps going down, and I started to descend only to find they doubled back on themselves, but not by means of a balcony, or mezzanine, but by just folding back on themselves. There was no way to get to the next flight down except to climb on the outside, but that seemed to tricky to try. I then went back up the first flight again, and tried a different door. That seemed to contain toilets, but it was still a through route, and I think I might have come out into a supermarket. There was a lot more like this, but the memory is getting hazier by the second.

  Some good news: Unlike yesterday, I went for a poo, in fact two poos, with ease. That felt good, but not enough to counteract the disappointment of my blood glucose readings. Two were sort of OK high, and one was unacceptable high. The Contour meter read 8.4mmol/l, and for a long time that was OK, even slightly good, but having tasted much better it was no more than blandly OK. The GlucoRX meter read 8.9mmol/l and that is really pushing the idea of it being OK. The Sinocare went into very pessimistic mode with a terrible reading of 9.6mmol/l. I checked that twice and it insisted that was what it was. I choose to discount it, and to work from the other two, more reasonable figures.

  I should probably skip lunch today, but this afternoon should be a beer tastings session with Jodie, and so it would be beneficial to get some extra buffering against the booze - maybe something like greasy grilled bacon 0 which I have got in the fridge, and it is high time I checked to see if it is still edible after being in there weeks after it's use by date. If bacon is properly cured it should last for ages. The whole point of curing bacon was to make it keep for long periods with no refrigeration.

  It is no point making predictions about lunch and dinner because with so little in the fridge I want to try and go to Aldi today, although if things get too late I will just get a few essentials from Tesco. Before doing anything else today I have to finish washing the towel that has been left soaking for 24 hours of more now. It may only be a single towel, and only a single towel, but it is going to need so many rinses it will feel like forever before I can hang it up to dry.
        







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