Early this morning was interesting in so much as the temperature reached it's lowest, maybe as low as 7° C before rising again. It seems to be between 10 and 11° C as I write this. It is currently dry outside, and so it seems likely that the forecast shower for 8am never happened. It is certainly very dull, and it seems almost certain that some, if not all of the rain forecast for between midday and 5pm will fall. The afternoon temperature should peak at 14° C. A clear night means it will end up as a very chilly night. Tomorrow could start at just 6° C, but it will be a mostly sunny day, and that should warm things up to a still shivery 10° C.

   I didn't go out for any exploring the railways, add another tick or two to my quest to visit all the limits of my Freedom Pass, and nor did I go to a gig in the evening, but I did have a productive day - by some definitions of the word "productive".

  There was some good news yesterday. The postman brought my latest energy bills. My gas bill is so much in credit that I could almost stop paying for the next 12 months, but once the price of gas goes up, and winter is upon us, the miserly amount of my monthly standing order will not be enough, and that credit will slowly erode away.....but it is probable I may make it all the way through winder without having to increase the standing order, and I'll still be in credit !

  My electricity bill is well covered for now with a healthy amount of credit built up. That makes me feel less anxious about running the heater on low (= "1 bar") a lot recently. As winter starts to bite it will need the heater turned up full for longer and longer periods, but it seems like my build up of credit may be enough to see me through winter without increasing my standing order.

  One very useful bit of productivity was doing some laundry, by hand, as usual, yesterday. It was two white t-shirts, and my favourite bath towel which is also mostly white, apart from a light blue band at each end. About halfway through the process I separated the towel from the t-shirts because it would need many more rinses, and I wouldn't be using any fabric conditioner on it - I like my towels to be harsh and almost scratchy. They seem to soak up moisture better that way.

  Splitting the job half way meant I could have a rest in the middle. Wringing out a towel, even a medium size one like my favourite bath towel, is quite hard work. On the plus side, it does warm me up on a cold day ! I don't think I was actually feeling that cool when I had my lunch - a nice hot bowl of cream of mushroom and chicken soup. I spoiled it a bit by adding some garlic and herb croutons. They just didn't seem to go with that soup.

  The definition of productive gets a bit tentative when considering something that takes a long time, but offers no real value. On the other hand it was great to use up a lot of boring hours, and it combined a bit of nostalgia, and the satisfaction of getting things sort of neat and tidy. It was delving into my photo archives again, and finding pictures of tube trains to add to a spreadsheet listing all the train numbers I saw, and links to pictures of those trains.
  Most of the tube trains I found were Northern Line trains, and nearly all were taken underground. That meant the lighting was often a bit odd. A mixture of different lighting type could often give odd colour casts to the pictures. All picture had to be taken with ambient light - no flash allowed around any trains - and that ambient light was not always good. The above train, 51657, seemed to be lit well, and needed very little editing to show here.
  This picture of 51566 doesn't look too bad when shrunk to fit on this page, but the original sized picture looked pretty grotty. It was not only a bit dim, something easy to mess up under tube station lighting, but it seems to be is soft focus.
  For a bit of variety, here's a train taken from another angle. I should have put this one, 51565, first, and then followed with 51566, and then 51567, but it seems they presented themselves to my camera in reverse order for unknown reasons.
  I took this picture from near the far end of the platform, and so it includes quite a few passengers too. I must admit I was surprised to see that in 2018, when many of these pictures were taken, I managed quite an early start. It is possible I was out soon after 9.30am when my 60+ Oyster card became valid. The picture above seems to have been taken at 11am, and already I am miles from home. These days I won't have left the house by then.
  Although I have edited this picture to mostly show the main subject of these pictures, the full picture shows the fairly narrow island platform with trains running either side of it. This was at Clapham North station, and it is one the two remaining narrow island platform stations on the tube network. Apparently there are many technical/geological problems to bore a new tunnel so that each direction of travel will have it's own wide platform.
 Once again I had edited this picture to make the train the main subject of the picture, but the full picture shows that it is the other narrow island platform station, Clapham North.
  This picture does give an idea of how narrow the island platform is at Clapham North. Apparently, during the rush hour, with trains entering the station on both lines, it can get quite scary as people crush together to avoid being too close to the platform edge.
  Just for a change, a Victoria Line train. The problem with the Victoria line is that, except at the depot, which has no public access, the whole line is underground, and there is no chance of taking pictures except under artificial light. Although taken with what should be my best Canon camera, my 600D, it looks grittier than most of the Northern Line train pictures that were taken with a new Canon 1200D camera.
  This picture, taken with the same camera as the previous picture (it is actually the next frame) seems far better. Maybe the lighting is better on the Piccadilly line platforms at Finsbury Park station. The platform are side by side, and so you can duck between the Piccadilly and Victoria line to get snaps of whichever one has the next approaching train. The great annoyance here is that at the time (and possibly currently) Piccadilly line trains do not display a train number on the front. That makes keeping a record of the trains rather tricky.
  Back to the Victoria line at Finsbury Park station, and another picture that looks sort of "gritty" because the platform lighting is not as good as the adjacent Piccadilly like platform.

  I have actually shown about half the tube train pictures I found in my archives going back to 2018. Probably even this amount looks a bit boring, and samey, and I chose not to show more here, but I have recorded the numbers and pictures on my new Tube train spreadsheet. I am sure I have a lot more to find. It is one of those jobs that throws up some nice memories, but I can't escape the idea that this is all a bit of a waste of time....on the other hand, these says I have an awful lot of time to waste !

  I feel sure I must have had some sort of snack during all the photo editing in the afternoon, but I can't seem to remember what it was, although I suspect it was probably a couple of packets of crisps. My dinner was far more healthy, almost perfectly healthy...maybe. It was grilled skinless and boneless chicken with a pile of mostly steamed, diced (ready diced and frozen) vegetables. I'm pretty sure I had a packet, or two of crisps as a sort of dessert after that.

  Maybe I subconsciously wanted a change from photo editing, or something like that, but last night I ended up watching TV until gone 10pm. I had turned the TV off at the end of Star Trek: Voyager ( a pretty poor episode), but turned it on at 9pm to watch QI. It seemed a good enough episode, and that I stayed watching to see an episode of Have I Got New For You, which was also quite entertaining.

  After going to bed, and turning over to sleep, I got some hints of indigestion, and also hints of a more angina like chest pain. I took a couple of antacid tablets washed down with a single tablet of dispersible Aspirin dissolved in water. One or both things took maybe half an hour to do their stuff, and I spent that time reading stuff sat up in front of my PC. Once I felt OK I want back to bed, and I think I was probably fast asleep in mere minutes.

  I think my dreams were loosely on the subject of rejection, or isolation, or something like that.  One dream seemed to be set in a sort of lockup that we (whoever we were) had rented for some purpose. It may have been a mix of office space, band rehearsal space, and possibly a pirate radio studio. I definitely saw a desk, a bench, and some sort of audio mixer in there. There were several people in there, including a woman, and she was very keen that I should leave by 7.45pm for some unspoken reason. Considering I had a share of the rent, I was a bit miffed.

  It is possible that dream was linked to another dream. The other dream was very simple. It was just me and a young woman I was once acquainted with walking down a road, although there was no background view in the dream - all I could see was this woman walking next to me. I was saying something to the effect that I was sorry I couldn't come to a party later. It was supposed to be a themed party and the theme was pervy sex, which mainly meant just outrageous costumes. I asked that I got to see plenty of pictures from it. I think I couldn't go because I didn't really enjoy parties, and in this case preferred isolation.

  One other thing about my night, apart from some forgotten dreams that I think continued the theme of feeling isolated (probably by choice in most cases), was that I got up to pee about the usual amount of times, but each pee was a lot smaller than usual. In fact if it was not such a habit, I could probably been able to bottle up half the pees, and done two bigger ones.

  Although it is often a false lead, this time it was because my blood glucose level was nice and low. The Contour meter read a very nice 7.2mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read and even lower 7.1mmol/l. Even the Sinocare meter was behaving again, and read a very good 7.3mmol/l. That is all three readings in the light green zone, and one very close to to being in the rarely seen dark green zone, between 6 and 6.9mmol/l.

  It has happened again ! I evidently ate carefully enough to get these great blood glucose readings, and yet I didn't lose an once of weight. I suppose it is good that I didn't gain an ounce either. I do feel a bit constipated this morning. Hopefully something will pass before midday (as often happens), but it is a shame it couldn't happen before I had breakfast. It feels like it could be worth a couple of hundred grams when it comes, and that, if it had happened before breakfast, could have shown a small weight loss this morning.

  This morning, even after a second attempt, I have just recorded my highest morning blood pressure reading so far this month. That sounds quite dramatic, but it is just a couple of points higher, and still easily in the "Optimum" area according to the blood pressure meter. It was 111/53.

  With the prospect of a damp afternoon, I don't feel like I will be going anywhere further than a possible, but unlikely shopping trip to Aldi. I think I have enough food here to feed myself for a couple of days without resorting to cans of soup, although they feature is some of my diet today. I am expecting a delivery of a couple of leads from Amazon today, and if I assume they will come late afternoon/early evening, and go out, they will probably come early afternoon. I think I'll just stay in to avoid the stress !