Apart from a longer spell at 13° C, today seems like it will be the same as yesterday - which was hardly pleasant ! Tomorrow may start quite cold, just 9° C, but from as early as 11am there could be sunny spells that will warm it up to a far from glorious 12° C.

  There are reasons why yesterday was good and bad. The good was not very good, and the bad definitely was bad, but there were some probably bad things that may not have actually been that bad. Confused ? You should be, but I'll explain all.

  Obviously the dull and very cool weather were one bad thing, but they didn't stop me going out, which was a good thing. I finished writing quite early yesterday, in fact a fair bit earlier than usual. That gave me plenty of time to have a rest, and then wash my hair and have a shower. That felt good, and I almost has enough time to cool down before putting on my coat.

  Just for a change I took my Nikon D3200 DSLR camera with me on my journey to the pub. I felt that on such a dull grey day on;y a DSLR camera could take good pictures, and indeed that did seem to be the case.  It wasn't exactly intended timing, but by chance I left home in time to get to the station with plenty of time to have a minute rest after picking up two copies of The Metro, and then cross the footbridge.

  If I suffered anything it was shortness of breath, but not to the point of gasping for air, but definitely breathing quite deeply. It was as if my usual symptoms had changed. More about this further down the page. While waiting I seemed to get a good snap of the train going to Hayes, and a good snap of my train going to Ladywell (and ultimately, Charing Cross). I don't think I saw any train numbers I had not photographed before.

  When walking to the pub from Ladywell station I got a few snaps of a squirell, and other random snaps of some wildlife - mostly just ducks. I didn't expect those to come out well because it was pushing even my DSLR to take picture in the deep shade of the river as it flows between big trees. I did attempt to take a snap of birds in flight, plus a bunch of really noisy crows in the trees behind the church.

  I arrived at the pub maybe a few minutes later than usual. I ordered my first pint of Guinness, and sat down to have a quick flick through the paper. That was a bad mistake. There was no happy news in it, and a lot that was very unhappy. It must have put me in a bad mood because I couldn't even finish the quick crossword, although there was only one clue I couldn't solve. On the other hand, I solved more clues in the cryptic crossword than usual.

  It may have been the dreary weather, or the news from America, but the pub felt more subdued than usual. I usually find all the banter entertaining, but while there was banter going back and forth, it seemed very unexciting somehow. I had my second pint of Guinness, did my best to fill in a bit more of the cryptic crossword, and once my pint was finished I had a pee, and headed for home.


  I tried to get another picture of a squirrel as I walked to the station. At the station I got a snap of the front of the first train which was going towards Charing Cross. I was then going to get a snap of the back of the train, which would have a different number, but my camera seemed to lock up. After trying several things it suddenly announced that the memory card was faulty. It was the card pictured on the left - a supposedly well known and reliable make.

   A reboot made no difference, but fortunately I always carry a spare memory card for cameras that I transport in a proper camera bag (my little pocket sized Nikon is, as suggested, just carried in my pocket, and rarely even carry a spare batter for it, let alone a memory card. I swapped the memory card for the new card, and the camera was working again, but I lost many pictures on the old card.

  I ended up with just three pictures, and all were of trains, and all the trains were of no particular significance. The one pictured above is the front of my train back to Catford Bridge. The only notable thing is that it looks bright and sharp on such a horribly dull day.
  This is the back of the same train, now at Catford Bridge station, and already leaving. The cloud was so thick that it meant that everything was uniformly lit in all directions. This picture, on a clearer day, would have been taken into the sun, and the back of the train would have been in deep shadow compared to the surroundings.
  I still have not found the official reason, but there is at least one train of just 4 coaches that goes non stop down the line to (probably) the terminus at Hayes (Kent) and then comes back again. My guess is that it is some sort of proving run, using an empty slot in the timetable.

  Instead of going straight home from the station I did the little divert to go into the little supermarket just a bit down the hill (actually it is not a hill but a very shallow hump backed bridge over the railway). I wanted to buy some fruit, and I did add two golden and two red apples to my shopping bag. I also, as usual, bought some instant noodles of types/flavours I never see in Tesco. I also bought some possibly Turkish cheese, but sadly I could not find any sugar free biscuits in the shop. I have a feeling they very quickly sell out when they do get them.

  I don't think I can walk as fast as I used to be able, but maybe spurred on by the first feelings of a desire for a pee, I possibly walked a bit faster than I seem to now. Like when walking to the station, I didn't seem to feel any developing chest pains, aka angina. What I did feel was out of breath, or at least I was breathing a lot faster. When I got home I dropped all my shopping and raced up the stairs to the toilet, and had my pee while still almost panting. I could have ignored it, and waited for my breathing to normalise, but I suddenly realised I could use my pulse oximeter to measure my blood oxygenation.


   The result was rather pleasing, but also a bit mystifying. My blood oxygenation was 100%, and it doesn't come better than that. The thing that I could not understand was that if my blood was fully oxygenated, why was I still breathing like I was short of oxygen. One probably good thing was that to get to 100% my lungs must be working at full efficiency, and thus no COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). My thought are that the cause is the same as the angina pains I get - the smaller blocked or restricted arteries feeding some peripheral part of the heart, and it is the heart calling for more oxygen.

  I had already planned that I was going to have a couple more sausages in hot dog rolls when I got back from the pub. I did, but I really didn't enjoy them. The sausages were pretty poor quality in my opinion, and as I mentioned yesterday, they had a very bad, or maybe lack of texture. They were probably made form "mechanically recovered meat". When I was a kid, sausages were alleged to have been made with all sorts of off cuts including some offal, and I think that made them taste wonderful.

  I had those suasages in rolls quite late in the afternoon, maybe 3pm, and so there was not all that long to wait before dinner time. I was reluctant to make dinner much later because I wanted to allow plenty of time for the food to settle so it didn't cause any acid indigestion/heartburn when I went to bed. That was quite important because I was using up the last of the sausages as part of my dinner.

  I had those last 4 (or was it 5 ?) sausages with some reheated boiled potatoes, and smothered it all with a mix of (ready made) crispy fried onions and ketchup, and also some English mustard. It should have been wonderful, but it was almost unpleasant. With the added onions it had a double chance of causing some sort of indigestion. I followed it with a much nicer dessert of a red apple and a chunk of soft Turkish cheese (possibly not made with cows milk).

  There was very little on TV last night, and I amused myself for much of the evening with camera stuff. First of all I wanted to see if my photo (and other files) recovery software could see anything on the dead SD memory card. It couldn't - in fact it couldn't even see there was a card plugged in. It seems my memory card was just a slab of inert plastic after it failed.

  One of the things about my most professional grade cameras, the Nikon D310s and Nikon D600, is that they both have two memory card slots. The two cards can be used in various ways. One possibility is that that one can store jpg images and the other Nikon NEF (raw) images. A second possibility is that the second card can be used for overflow if the first card it full. The third, and best thing is that the second can act as a backup of the first. I have already used that a couple of times on the D600 camera - once when taking Angela's marriage photos, and once again when taking pictures of Dik's band.

   In the latter case it was mostly so I could hand over a copy to him without having to do it at home via my PC. It turned out that Dik had no way to read SD cards, and I had to copy the originals, plus some edits, onto a USB thumb drive for him. Since the memory card dies yesterday I have decided that I will always use the second card as backup on both my professional grade (if a bit old) Nikons. In the case of the Nikon D310s the second card is an older Compact Flash card, and I have few of those, and most of them quite small capacity.

  One thing I am pondering is whether the failed SD card might have been caused by it being too big for the camera to handle. It was a 64GB card, and older software, as could be in the Nikon D3200 and even more likely in the Nikon D310s, may only be able to handle 32GB. I have now changed the cards, SD and CF, in the Nikon D310s to 32GB cards. The only trouble is that I only have one 32GB Compact Flash card. I hope I never actually need it, but to be on the safe side I did another order on Amazon for two more 32GB cards (plus some other semi expensive "toys"). They should be delivered sometime on Sunday.

  I did not spend that long reading in bed last night. I had already used an hour or two playing with my cameras. I think it was gone 9pm, and maybe close to 10pm when I went to sleep. At that point I could feel some slight heartburn, but it seemed mild enough to ignore it. What was worse was that it felt warm enough to go to sleep without being under the duvet. I woke up about two hours later feeling cold, and in particular my chest was feeling very cold, and that was stirring up all the scar tissue and stuff from my operation in 2013.

  I am very sure that chest pain had no other cause than inflammation of the scar tissue because different bits hurt more when I stressed them with different movements. Whether that also caused the minor heartburn to get worse is an unknown, but the two combined meant I lost at least an hour of sleep while I waited for paracetamol and antacid to calm things down.

  After that I seemed to sleep quite well. I woke up as normal around 6am, but it seemed far too early. I had a pee, and went back to bed where I thought I would try for another half hour of sleep. 90 minutes later I woke up again ! It was time for time for another pee, and also a poo. I then weighed myself, and despite seeming to eat too much of the wrong stuff I seemed to have lost 400gm since yesterday morning.

  My blood glucose was also down, and up down at the same time. The GlucoRX meter read a very good 7.6mmol/l. The Contour meter was sort of in the middle with an OK-ish 8.4mmol/l. For reasons only known to itself, the new Exactive meter made another very spurious reading of 9.0mmol/l, and the second time, using fresh blood from a fresh finger prick, it gave a terrible reading of 9.4mmol/l ! At the current rate it is seeming to be even worse than the Sinocare meter, and I am wondering if the best place for it is the dustbin !

  I had an idea I might to and get to Aldi today, but time seems to be flying by this morning. It is not essential, but if I feel there is time I might still get there, if not, tomorrow will do. The main event today, being a Thursday, is a beer tasting session with Jodie and probably Michael. I think here are some potentially good beers in the fridges, but undoubtedly Jodie will favour some nasty sour tasting fruit beers. She may end up drinking them herself !