After my experience yesterday I am taking the idea of sunny spells this afternoon with a pinch of salt. Maybe the temperature will reach the forecast 11° C, but with no sunshine it will feel very cold. By 1am tomorrow morning the temperature will have dropped to 4° C. It will continue to drop and tomorrow morning may start as low as just 3° C. It might possibly be a bright days with sunny spells and possibly a full hour of non stop sunshine at 1 and 3pm, but the temperature is only forecast to rise to 10° C. We have some very cold weather on the way if the long range forecast has any credibility. Tuesday and Wednesday of next week may see daytime temperature only reaching 4° C. That is cold enough for rain to fall as sleet !

  Yesterday started off good, but ended very badly. I was looking forward to my lunchtime drink in The Jolly Farmers, and had a good shower, although I didn't wash my hair, and I didn't have a wet shave. I did use my beard trimmer with the shield off to have a quick buzz over the worst of the stubble.

  Once again I left home quite early so I did not have to rush to the station. In fact it was far earlier than needed. I arrived with at least 5 minutes to spare to catch the early train at 12:19 instead of the more usual 12:34. There were some delays on some trains, and I couldn't do my usual sequence of train photography. However I did get a bonus train when I got to Ladywell.
   After getting off my train, and walking down the platform towards the exit I saw on the passenger information display the warning to stand clear of the platform edge. It was because the next train would not be stopping. Usually it is a class 465 "Networker" train that I am guessing is on some sort of test run. Yesterday it was a class 375 "coastal train". These are the trains that go all the way from London to various parts of the Kent coast. It was a bit of a novelty, and it was also one I had never photographed before. Ideally it was going for a clean because it looked very grubby.

  I walked from the station to the pub non stop because I didn't see anything new to photograph, and besides which it was very overcast - as it would be for the rest of the day. I ordered my first pint of Guinness, and ended up drinking it very slowly because I was having difficulties with the crosswords in The Metro.

  I don't know if I've blown my last braincell, but I had a lot of difficulty with the quick crossword. I can often solve that before I finish my last pint, but I barely finished half of it. It might have been because I was interrupted while doing it. To my surprise I received a message from Angela.

  I guess Angela was bored because what she told me was that she was being "pumped up" with Potassium. I think that was her way of saying she was on a drip feed of potassium, and had just just sit, or lay there waiting for it to diffuse into a vein (or artery).

  I replied with the picture of my pint of Guinness on the left, and worded it to say I was being "pumped up with Guinness". She replied to say "the good old Jollys (Jolly Farmers)", and asked if the normal people were there. It was not until last night that I remembered to answer that question.


   I got distracted looking up good sources of dietary Potassium. Top of one list was avocados - which I know Angela likes. I suggested them to her, and included a link to the website where I found the list. She replied that she would definitely go for it, but only once the mouth ulcers she had were cured. That was another fact she had not mentioned before. Apparently they are a result of the radiotherapy.

  The next thing on the list was sweet potatoes. I suggested them because they very easily make a very a very smooth mash, and that should easily pass by the ulcers. Part of my reason for making these suggestions is that she did tell me that the doctors urged her to eat freely to keep her strength up, and because she would sometimes be off her food (or even throwing it up like she did after chemotherapy sessions). She is naturally thin, and does not have a lot of reserves for times like this.

      [10:14 - Contrary to expectations, there is now glorious sunshine pouring through my bedroom windows, and warming up my bedroom nicely.]

   After sending my last message to Angela I thought I would tackle the cryptic crossword. I had done so badly on the quick crossword that I was not expecting much from the cryptic crossword. I did solve 6 clues, and that is 6 more than I was expecting. I think I might have managed more, but my heart wasn't in it. I resorted to actually reading the news in the paper, and it was all rather depressing. It was more interesting to listen to Ayse and a couple of men at the bar.
  I have never got a good picture of Ayse, and the one above is definitely not good ! I can't seem to correct the strange skin colouration given by the dim lighting in the pub. I did not take this picture yesterday. I found it among some photos taken 2 years ago ! I had not used it before because itw as such poor quality, and that is a shame because the pose is just perfect (although one of her better smiles, and not looking shocked would be an improvement).

  I only stayed for two pints of Guinness, and when I had finished the second pint I said my goodbyes, put my new leather jacket on, and zipped it up tight before going out into the gloom and cold outside. Maybe gloom is a bit over the top, but it was definitely grey outside.

  I had not checked on the train before I left the pub, and I did not check until I was actually on the platform at Ladywell station, and saw the next train was cancelled. I had walked directly to the station, and I had to rest for a bit before doing any more walking.

  I most definitely did not like what I saw when I checked the trains on my phone. It seemed that I had missed the previous train by about 10 minutes, and would have only had a 5 minute wait for the next train - except it was cancelled. The next train was just over 20 minutes time, and I was feeling too cold to want to wait that long.

  My only real option was to walk home. As I have mentioned in the past, getting the train only saves about 5 or 10 minutes of walking against walking straight home, but it does split the walk into two, and that helps a lot. Yesterday I had to walk back from the station to get onto the path through the park. Instead of saving 10 minutes by walking direct from the pub, I had added an extra 10 minutes to the total walk.

  To make matter worse I was feeling cold. The peculiar thing is that in the past I have always thought that leather jackets are often too warm, but that was not the case yesterday. Although to be fair the worst thing was having to breathe in the cold air. It just made me feel colder, and it was irritating everything. I had chest pains from inflamed old scar tissue, and also growing angina pains, on top of a feeling of being short of breath.
  I had to frequently stop on my walk home to get my breath back, and allow the angina pains to fade. One such stop was as I passed the back of the Lewisham Hospital building with most of the wards in it. With a lot of trees losing theor leaves it was easier to see more of the building. On the second floor, and roughly in the centre of the building is Chestnut ward where I spent a couple of days back in March.

  I couldn't help thinking that if I did not take care on the walk I could easily end up visiting Chestnut ward again. I did feel really awful walking in the cold air with a belly full of Guinness - although as I walked that Guinness was slowly heading to my bladder. I wasn't keeping an accurate count, but I think I did the walk in four major portions. By the time I got home I was feeling like I would not have been able to walk much more without a long rest - ideally somewhere warm.

  It was obviously a joy to get home. The first thing was to go for a pee, but with that done I turned the heater up full in my bedroom, and than went down to the kitchen to heat up the first of two cans of soup. The first was potato and leek soup with added chilli sauce, and a very good sprinkling of grated Cheddar on top. I had never tried adding cheese to anything but tomato soup, but it seemed to work well with potato and leek.

  Soup number 2 was a can of chunky beef and vegetable soup. That got the same treatment - chilli sauce and more grated cheese. I don't think the cheese really went with that soup. It was not horrible or anything like that, but it just seemed a bit of bland addition. Anyway, the good thing is that at last I felt warm inside and out. It wasn't too long before all the chilli sauce made me feel sweaty hot, but even that felt better than the cold I felt when I got home.

  I was feeling very tired after having my soup, and it would have been so easy to have had a lie down once I had eaten, but I found some reserve energy to allow me to check the train photos I had taken (only one of which was useful) and the other pictures I have used here this morning. I then laid down to read for a bit and catch a short snooze.

  Only a few hours had passed since I had eaten the last of the soup, and I was feeling hungry again, and fortunately dinner time was fast approaching. I thought it was time to use the last of the bread I had, and also a pack of quarter pounder burgers that had been in the fridge for something like a week. I knew it would be an unwise sized dinner, but I went ahead, and cooked and ate the lot.

  The original idea was to make sort of burgers using toast, but I only had three slices for four burgers. The only possibility was to have chilli sauce of burgers, on tomato sauce on the three slices of toast. It was very nice at first, but I quickly realised it was going to really fill me up after that two cans of soup, and just two of the burgers and just two slices of toast would have been quite sufficient. Nevertheless I shovelled the whole lot down !

  I watched, or sometimes just half watched the usual Star Treks, and then turned the TV off to spend some time reading while laying on my bed. I soon realised that I was feeling too uncomfortable to try for sleep for several hours when some of the food I had eaten had gone down a bit. On top of that I had a lot of other pains. They were probably the result of getting cold on my way home earlier, but with them all being assorted muscle and joint aches, I was wondering if I was going down with 'flu.

  I turned the heater up full again, and spent an hour or more reading stuff on the internet while sitting in front of my PC. While doing so I had a couple of paracetamol tablets, and some antacid liquid. the latter was more a precaution at first, but I now think it was well that I did so. It was probably gone 10pm before I got to sleep, and that that point I had turned the heater down to low again.

  I did feel a bit too warm under the duvet, and I am sure I kicked it partly aside, and I slept partly uncovered. When I woke up around 2am for a wee I felt awful again. My shoulders, wrists and elbows ached, and I seemed to have aches in quite a few arm muscles. I then turned the heater on full blast, had my wee, and then got back into bed where I fell asleep, partly uncovered again, very quickly.

  I think I left the heater on full blast until I got up. That was expensive, but maybe it was more important that I felt a lot more comfortable when I got up to pee a few more times before I got up. It was 7am when I got up, and apart for some short lived lower back pain I seemed to feel generally OK, although I was aware of a slight feeling of bloat. I expected to poo when I went for a pee, but I just let out a blast of wind.

  I was quite surprised when I checked my blood glucose readings. All three were quite reasonable. The Contour meter read 8.4mmol/l - that's not good, but neither is it bad. The GlucoRX meter read a better 8.1mmol/l. The Exactive meter read 8.6mmol/l - one of the first times it has broadly agreed with the other two meters. I wonder why ? There was bad news about my weight. It seems I have done the impossible and gained a whole kilogram in 24 hours. I suspect I will be doing some big poos later today - or at least I hope I do.

  This morning my blood pressure is extra low - possibly because I had breakfast quite late, and only a few hours have passed since eating it. My blood pressure is usually lower after eating. This morning it is just 95/44.

  I had three plans for today. I think that there is not enough time left for the first. It was to go shopping in Tesco. The second has to happen. At 2.45pm I am due to have my diabetic eye exam in the hospital. I think I will allow a full half hour to get there. It might take me 20 minutes to walk to the hospital, and ideally I want a 5 minute rest before going up the stairs to the 2nd floor. I could take the lift, but I feel the walk is good exercise - sort of.

  I hope that I will be able to get there even earlier. That might just make for a longer boring wait, or if I am very lucky I might be seen earlier. Time will be of the essence because there should be a beer tasting session later in the afternoon. I have advised Jodie that it would be best to aim to get here at 4am. I hope I will be no later than that, but if they are running late.....