Once again it is a very murky morning despite the forecast saying sunny spells. Hopefully the sun will eventually break through, and like yesterday, it will be full on, non stop, from about midday. It should get the temperature up to a short peak of 24° C. Tomorrow may almost be a replay of today, except the forecast says that it will be a murky start, and the maximum tempeature may only be 21° C. The day after tomorrow may see the return of rain, and the BBC have even thrown a few of their beloved thunderstorms into their prediction.

   Yesterday sometimes seemed like hard work, and sometimes painful, but looking back it did seem to be quite fulfilling. It was a shame I didn't get to see Angela, but that was more hope than expectation. On the other hand it is a bit annoying that she didn't update me on her hospital appointment as I thought she would do, albeit probably via text instead of face to face.

  I did my major ablutions the day before yesterday, and so I only had to have a basic shower yesterday morning, although I did give my beard a small trim. It seemed like I could have gone to Catford Bridge station very early yesterday, but I waited until a little past midday before I started my way to The Jolly Farmers for my traditional Wednesday lunchtime drink. I tried to take my time walking to the station, but I still got there in time for a 30 second rest before going over the footbridge to the other platform to get the 12:19 train to Ladywell station.

  That was quite an early train - I usually get the 12:34, and occasionally even the 12: 44. The odd thing was that the walk from Ladywell station to the pub seemed to bring me closer to an angina attack that the walk from home to Catford Bridge station. When I arrived at the pub I thought I was the only customer, but I later learned there was a small, 4 person,  wedding party (from the almost next door Registry Office) out in the small "garden area" (which is mostly concrete).

  I was able to have a short chat with Ayse (my favourite barmaid) before more customers came in. It was still a bit of a quiet afternoon, but there was still some amusing chat to listen to, and occasionally join in with. I sit at a table so I can spread the paper out on it while doing the crosswords on it, and so I am not in the middle of all the banter that mostly takes place by those sitting at the bar.

  I found the quick crossword to be a bit tricky, but I did complete it. I soon gave up on the cryptic crossword. I did get a few answers, but there was too much going on, and the lighting was bad at my table, to really concentrate at trying to solve more clues. I could have been tempted to stay for a third pint, but I had to call in at the pharmacy to pick up my latest repeat prescription.

  I can easily remember the days when I would have walked partly via the park to enjoy the walk to the pharmacy, or fully through the park to go home. I did no enjoy it yesterday. I walked by what I am sure was the most direct route down the main road. I almost made it to the side road where the pharmacy is (attached to the Group Practice), but I had to stop and get my breath back, or let the developing pains of angina settle down again.

  It was probably about 30 seconds until I was walking again, but probably walking really quite slowly. When I got in the pharmacy the assistant asked me how I was. I said terrible, and recounted the story how, back in March, the Cardiologist, and Consultant agreed that my anti-angina drug should be double the dose (or one whole tablet), but never seemed to change my prescription.

  The pharmacist asked if I had ever tried to query it, and I told her how I had talked to the nurse about it, and how she said she would try and action it. Then how I did the same with the group pharmacist who promised to query it, and let me know the response, but didn't. The pharmacist urged me to go next door to the surgery to query it again, but I said it seemed I had already used all the channels available to me. I was told that the surgery now had a new Group Pharmacist, and the pharmacist said she would personally raise the matter with the group pharmacist. I wonder if I will ever hear any result - positive or negative ?

  One useful thing about that chat, and also waiting for my prescription to be made up, was that it was a nice rest, and I could start for home feeling almost back to normal. The walk to or from the Pharmacy is close to my maximum distance before I start to feel very uncomfortable, and do it very soon after walking from the pub would have resulted in bad pain, and the need to keep stopping. I just about managed to walk home without stopping, but I felt pretty bad as I go home.

  Usually the first thing I would do after getting home from the pub would be to have a light(ish) lunch, but yesterday I didn't dare to do that. I had just under three hours to rest before I had a horrendous walk to do. I passed a bit of the time checking the very few train pictures I had taken on my way to the pub, but none of them were of trains that I hadn't already got in my big spreadsheet of train pictures.

  I spent my time mostly laying on my bed reading. I did manage a short snooze. I was feeling really quite hungry, and my guts seemed to be gurgling a lot. It was almost as if I might be building up to a stomach upset. I did manage to do a little poo before getting dressed, taking another couple of Paracetamols, and finally taking a deep breath before going out.

  My walk would take me past Aldi, and I knew that was close to the limit before angina became rather painful. After passing Aldi, and crossing the main road, I was feeling bad enough to take a short break before continuing, but only for another 100 yards (or maybe it was only 50 yards). That took me to the bottom of the hill that Dik lives three quarters of the way up. I made plenty of stops walking up that hill until I found where Dik lives.

  I was very happy to sit down, and enjoy a small can of beer while we waited for the drummer and guitarist to arrive. The bassist, Steve who used to play with Chain, was already there when I got there. The point of all this was for me to take some pictures of the band that could go on a poster, and to do this I had lugged my heavy Nikon camera plus extra, wide angle lens, flash gun, and other accessories with me on my walk, that made it so much harder !
  This was one of the first pictures I took of the band lined up against a plain white painted wall a little way down the hill from where Dik lives. We tried several poses, some silly, and some similar to this one, but of course there are only so many ways 4 people can stand in front of a white wall.
 I must admit I was rather fond of this picture taken with the setting sun behind them. Maybe I like it because it was just a silly idea that seemed like a bad idea at the time (it was my idea), but it came out better than I thought. It is probably not poster material, but might look good on a record cover.

  One thing was noticeable, and that was in the maybe 15 minutes I was taking photos, the sun was sinking lower and lower. It wasn't noticeable to the eye that the light was fading, but the last pictures had a sort of soft look about them. There was one more picture to take, and I used my mobile phone to take it when we were back in Dik's flat.
 On his way back to his flat, Dik may have brushed by a bush or something, and this very big dragonfly landed on his arm. He didn't even notice it, and I think it was Jason, the guitarist, who spotted it first. It was longer than my longest finger, and I think it definitely deserves to be called a Dragonfly. It was much bigger than the mayflies I was too slow to get a snap of as the flittered around near the river as I walked through the park last Saturday.

  The walk home, being downhill, was much easier. I made it all the way to the pedestrian crossing opposite Aldi before I took a short breather. I think I either had one or two short breaks walking from there back to home. That was gone 7pm, and I hadn't eaten since my breakfast. I felt ravenous, and I didn't want to taste any time cooking anything that would take too long. I started on a big container of Satay Chicken Bites on Skewers.

  While I ate them I was cooking a small sausage and stuffing pie in the mini oven. The Satay Chicken bites initially seemed like they would be very low sugar until I read the small print, and saw that the very small figure referred to just one bite. I don't know how many were in the container - maybe 20 - and that could have added up to a not insignificant amount of sugar added to my diet.

  The sausage and stuff pie seemed to have a moderate amount of sugar in it, but not what I would call a low amount. Eating that pie was an interesting experiment. I could find no stuffing in it, and there was precious little in the way of sausage in it. I only noticed a few thin slices of sausage suspended in a brown jelly that could have been derived from fried onions. For all it's shortfalls, it was not that bad, although I am not tempted to ever buy one again.

  I ate my strange dinner while watching the last 30 to 40 minutes of Star Trek: Voyager. I can't seem to comment on it because I don't think I was paying a lot of attention to it. Once it finished I was quite tempted to head to bed to do some reading, but I still had work to do. At sometime around the middle of today I am expecting Dik to drop around to pick up a memory stick of the pictures I took, and to drop off a box of 12 beers - unfortunately I don't think I care for most of them, but I can't look a gift horse in the mouth.

  I spent maybe an hour going through the 16 pictures I took, and selecting 10 I thought I could do something with. I increased that 10 by doing slightly different versions of two of them. One was simply cropping the full length view to just a bit more than head and shoulders (it was actually head and torso). It would have been very tricky to try and do anything terribly artistic to 4 men in front of a white wall, but I did paint out a few cracks in the wall.

  Maybe I could have had a few ideas if I had not been feeling so tired. It was just gone 9pm when I got into bed, and I could only stay awake long enough to read 3 or 4 pages of the book I am reading. I was soon fast asleep. It was a warmer night than I thought, and at about midnight I woke up feeling too hot under the duvet. I kicked it aside, and then woke up at about 3am (maybe 4am) feeling a bit cool, and I turned the heater on low. I continued sleeping partly uncovered while the heater took the chill off the room until I got up.

  I actually had a lie in this morning, and it was just gone 7am when I got up. After going for a pee, but not a poo, I got on the scales and observed another useful drop in weight. I am now back to just a few hundred grammes above the lowest weights I have been so far this year, and if I can continue like this I'll may soon being seeing weights I have not seen for many years !

  I was quite surprised that my blood glucose readings were fairly good this morning. I thought that scoffing all those low individually, but sugar laden when added together, satay chicken bites, would have a very bad effect on my blood glucose this morning. They did stop me getting great readings, but I am happy with mere "good" figures. The Contour meter read 8.0mmol/l. The GlucoRX was best of all with an almost great reading of 7.8mmol/l. The Sinocare reading was least good, but still good at 8.1mmol/l.  

  Initially my blood pressure seemed to be a bit high this morning, but it was only because the Velcro that holds the wrist band on is getting very crap. When the pressure gets up near 130mmHg the Velcro starts to slip, and so the pump in the blood pressure meter keeps pumping - making it even worse. It is worth pointing out that the way the blood pressure meter works seems to be by over inflating the cuff, and then slowly deflating it, and it is then that it takes it's readings. One mis-measure can annoy me enough to make my blood pressure even worse. This morning I gave up for 15 minutes, and then took another reading with a finger pressing lightly on the Velcro pad. This time the reading was a very good 107/44.

  Two things should be happening today. As I have mentioned further up the page, Dik will be popping over to pick up the memory stick with the best pictures, (and the originals), and drop off my payment/thank you, of the 12 pack of beer. I can then relax until the man from Amazon delivers my latest order. It is two (one is just a spare) solid state, M2 format, hard drives.
  Pictured above is a 128GB M2 solid state hard drive. This one, from one of the two PCs I have that cane use them, is only 128GB, and that is quite small, although probably big enough for my web server when I transfer it from the old laptop to a mini Dell desktop PC. The drives I have ordered are both 500GB drives, and that is big enough for most PCs unless you have a huge amount of photos, or video on them, but I use a second drive for that.

  I have a newer, ex office, Dell PC that should be faster than the one I currently use, and has a slot for an M2 drive. My plan, which I could possibly carry out today, is to clone the operating system on to one of those 500GB drives (assuming I have ordered the right type (!!!) from my current PC to the new PC, and then swap the home drive, with all my data on it (which is also a solid state drive) into the new PC. It should end up as very fast....or so I try and convince myself.

  I suspect that what I'll be doing most of today is just resting rather than pulling PCs apart. All that walking, and particularly lugging my big heavy camera case up the hill, was very tiring, and I don't exactly feel full of beans this morning. If the man from Amazon arrives early, and I feel rested enough, I might consider going out in the warm sunshine, but I would almost bet money that I don't go out - even to one of the local shops.