Yesterday was a rather splendid day with far more sunshine than forecast, and not a single drop of rain. It even felt like a warm (but not hot) summers day. The temperature probably reached around 23° C, or two degrees higher than originally forecast.° C.
       

  The sky is blue, and the sun is shining. It should soon start to warm up from a rather cool feeling 14° C. If the forecast is correct the sunshine will give way to just sunny spells, but the temperature is still expected to rise to 22° C (The Met Office say 14° C !). At midnight some light rain could fall, and it could continue to rain until 6am tomorrow. After that, tomorrow should be mostly dry, except for some drizzle, possibly around 10am. It will be a generally dull day, and not warm at all. Just 17° C is expected.
 
   The good weather obviously helped, but yesterday was a splendid day for other reasons. One such reason would lead to the evening being a bit of a train wreck. The core of the reason for yesterday being so good was a short visit from my friend Patricia who I last saw in September last year.

  There were several things I needed to do yesterday morning in advance of Patricia's visit, and I managed to start writing earlier than usual (although oddly, one minute later than today !), and because the day before was so dull I had little to say. That meant I finished writing very early - something I may not have done since the days when I used to write these pages at work, and couldn't spend the whole morning doing it (although on a few occasions I did just that !).

  One other change yesterday morning is that I went straight from writing these pages to having a wet shave, shampoo, and a shower. Only after I had finished that, and dried my hair, did I have a lie down, and read a few pages from my book. I didn't rest for too long before I got dressed to go out. I needed to go to Tesco to get, at a minimum, a small bottle of milk, plus a packet of Jaffa Cakes in case Patricia arrived earlier than expected, and wanted some elevenses before we went out for a meal.

  Of course I bought other stuff from Tesco while I was in there, and I was rushing it all home, hoping to get home before Patricia texted me to say she was on her way. I was almost within sight of my front door when I got my phone out of my pocket to check the time. I didn't hear it come in, but there was a message from Patricia saying that she had been shopping in Lewisham, and was on her way to Catford.

  I found Patricia sitting on my front wall, soaking up the sunshine, when I got home. My rushing around had not been in vain, and she was early enough to want coffee and Jaffa Cakes. I must say that last rush to to get home did start up some mild angina pains, and I would not have been able to rush like that for another minute.
  This picture was supposed to be posed with Patricia with Jaffa Cake in hand, but she automatically popped it in her mouth. We chatted in my dining room for maybe an hour. Unfortunately it was mostly not happy talk because Patricia had so much to say about her sister who amongst other problems has mental health issues. I think Patricia was unloading a lot of stuff about her sister because I was the first person available who knows a lot of the background to a rather unhappy time.

  It was just after 12:30 when we took a walk to the pub. I did my best to let Patricia set the pace because I knew she would be a bit slower than I would normally walk. It was a good idea because that just very slightly slower pace meant that the walk to the London & Rye, Wetherspoons pub took me to to the point where it was just starting to get uncomfortable. had I walked alone I would probably have got strong angina pains by about 3/4 of the way there, and have to stop for a minute to get comfortable again.
 As it was I still needed to sit down quietly to let even a mild angina discomfort fade away. As seems to be the tradition, Patricia bought me lunch in the pub. I had "An American" burger with quite a small portion of chips. As far as I cans see, the only difference between an American burger and their ordinary burger is just s slice of dill pickle - which I quite liked. Patricia had the chicken tikka masala - her favourite Wetherspoons meal, and the main reason for going to that pub.

  I had forewarned friend Kevin that we would be in the pub, and invited him to join us, but give us enough time to finish eating. Kevin was waiting in for a Parcel delivery, and only just made it to the pub by 2pm. By that time I was on my second pint, and with Kevin there that went up to four pints. It was probably 3pm when Patricia decided she had to get back to the hotel where she was staying with her partner. They had to be up super early for a 6am flight to Italy, and she wanted to have a long siesta.

  I decided I had had enough booze, and was going to go home. I had suggested to Kevin that if it was a short drink in The London & Rye I might consider going on to The Jolly Farmers to see Ayse. Kevin was heading to Lewisham because he wanted to buy a birthday card there. So we all walked over the road to the bus stop. After standing in nice, gently warm sunshine, I changed my mind about going to The Jolly Farmers. We all got on the bus together.

  Kevin and I got off the bus almost outside The Jolly Farmers, while Patricia stayed on it to go to the DLR station. When we went in the Jolly Farmers Ayse jokingly told me off for being late. It is nice to be a regular, if only for one lunchtime a week, and be known and welcomed into the pub. We couldn't spend too long in the pub because Kevin still had to get to the shop before it closed, and we just had another pint, and the (dangerous) "one for the road" whisky.

  That made 5 pints and one double whisky for me, and I wondered how the walk home would go. While Kevin got the next bus into Lewisham, I walked to Ladywell station. If it were not for the angina it would have been a nice walk through the park in the warm sunshine, but I thought splitting the journey it two might be wise. I think I did my normal speed walk from pub to station, and by the time I had walked 3/4ers  down the platform I had the expected angina pains - still fairly mild, but a warning they could get a lot worse if I had wanted to walk any more.
  I didn't have a proper camera with me, but I still wanted to do some train spotting/photography while I was there. The picture above is of 376009, and was the 17:20 (approx) train to Charing Cross at Ladywell station. I had to wait another 7 minutes for my train. The annoying thing about this picture is that it is too good ! It helped that it was nicely lit from the sun on the left of the picture. I had used the "Pro" setting on my Huawei P30 Pro mobile phone, and locked the ISO rating to 800. That ensured a very fast shutter speed in the bright light, and in turn that meant no motion blur despite the train still going quite fast as I took the picture. I sometime wonder what I use a proper camera, and then I remember that my proper cameras have proper zoom lenses, and manual setting can be a lot simpler than on the phone.

  When I got to Catford Bridge it was my intention to wait just 4 minutes to take snaps of the front and back of the next Charing Cross train from there, but a quick check showed that it was delayed, and seemed not to have even left Hayes (Kent) at that point. Once I discovered that I left the station and headed home. With the wonders of hind sight I soon realised I had made a tragic mistake. I was no more than a third of the way home, or about 2 minutes after leaving the station, when I heard the sound of a diesel engine, and the Orient Express (style) Pullman train came roaring through the station. Now that is an extremely rare event. I cannot remember any time when it has gone through Catford Bridge instead of Catford station. I was (slightly) devastated I had not waited just two minutes to get a snap of both the front and back of the train (a class 66 diesel on each end).

  I did take a slight pause on my way home to send a message to Kevin about seeing the train, and that slight pause of probably no more than 30 seconds was just enough to stop my angina coming to the boil as I got home. I am sure that without it I would have had to stop to take a breather before I got home. As it was, it seemed like one non stop walk even if it wasn't exactly so. I was quite glad to have got home for three reasons.

  One reason was obviously to stop reaching full angina pain, and another second obvious reason was that after drinking so much beer it wasn't long before I needed to go for a pee ! The third reason was that the booze was making me feel ravenous. It was pretty close to 6pm anyway, and that is about right for dinner time. I stuck to my much earlier decision of just having a couple of cans of soup in the hope of getting better blood glucose readings this morning.

  Unfortunately 5 pints and a double whisky seriously weakened my resolve. It was barely 15 minutes before I was topping up the soup with some cream cheese and rice crackers. After that came an even worse decision - not checking how many alleged sugar free chocolate on very thin biscuits was in the packet I took up to my bedroom where I was watching the usual early evening Star Treks. There were far more biscuits in the pack than I realised, and I ate the lot. This morning my thoughts that maybe those biscuits were no that low in sugar was reinforced.

  I was feeling very tired last night. I stayed up to watch QIXL, and as far as I can remember I had never seen that episode before, and so it was worth staying up. I did start to watch Have I Got news For You, but only because I saw in the electronic programme guide that the guest host was Bill Bailey. Maybe he warmed up a bit after a while, by my immediate thought was that he did not make a good front man for the show. he can be very funny in the correct setting, but he seemed to be badly out of his depth hosting the programme, and I turned off after 5 minutes and went to bed.

  Maybe that was a mistake because I was already getting some pains that were probably acid indigestion while watching QIXL. As soon as I got in bed, and turned over those pains got worse, as the usually do, and I knew I would have to get up again, and take some antacid tablets. While waiting for them to work I could have turned the TV on again, but I still didn't think I would enjoy it. It was probably about the same time as it would have ended, 11pm, that I seemed to feel OK again, and tried for bed again. That time it worked.

  Apart from waking up just after 5am, and having a lot of trouble trying to convince my brain that I wanted at least an extra hour of sleep, I seemed to sleep quite well. I do have a vague memory of getting up for a pee, but I have a stronger memory of feeling too hot, and having to sleep quite a bit of the night partly uncovered. I do remember something like a very vague précis of a dream that seemed to last hours, and yet I could not really make head nor tail of it.

  The dream was about small tiles being made from plaster, and I think they were originally to stick on tombstones, and apparently gave the medical description of the cause of death. It was one of those dreams where you see writing, and all you see is "writing" instead of letter and words. The actual use of those small, almost postcard tiles seemed to be quite varied. As far as I can remember they were the only thing I saw in the dreams. I don't recall seeing any people and I seemed to have a completely passive role. Maybe if I could have read, and remembered what was written on those tiles the whole world would be a better place...... or something like that.

  I can't say it was good sleep, but I did eventually get some of the extra sleep I wanted, but I was still up at about 6.30am this morning. I can't seem to remember feeling bad, but at the same time I can't remember feeling good. I know that I felt like I needed to pee and poo. The pee seemed a lot less than I thought it would be, and the poo was only a fart. Needless to say that like that, and after all my excesses yesterday, my weight had not gone down since yesterday !

  I suppose that all the peeing I did yesterday afternoon onwards, but maybe more in the evening, left me very slightly dehydrated, and that is why I didn't pee much during the night, and first thing this morning. being slightly dehydrated is the only excuse I can think of, beside the reality of what I ate and drank yesterday, as to why my blood glucose readings this morning were nothing to be proud of.

  The Contour meter read 8.6mmol/l, or a tad above my old target (my new target being a lot lower). The GlucoRX meter initially read into the pink at 9.0mmol/l - getting close to the danger zone. I too that reading again with fresh blood and that time it was a less worrying 8.6mmol/l - the same as the Contour meter - so it must be right ! The Sinocare meter read a slightly better 8.3mmol/l. At least my blood pressure was good this morning at 108/46 in the "optimum" area.

  Trying to eat healthily for lower weight and lower blood glucose will be another challenge today. There are just two things on the horizon today. One is I should have my 4 CD Woodstock "boxed set" delivered today, and I will find out if I have just wasted £17.50. The other thing, and the thing which will perturb my eating choices, is another Thursday afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie. Other than that I will be finishing the last few pages of the book I am reading, and it would be nice to get some serious snoozing in !