When I arrived at Ladywell I was early enough that waiting just 4 minutes until the next Hayes (Kent) service was due to call there would make no difference, and even waiting until that train pulled out would not make me late for the pub, and I am very glad I did wait. The rear unit of the train was 707030, and it was the last of the series of 30 class 707 trains, and seemed to have been held back when SouthWestern Railways transferred/sold the train to Southeastern because they didn't like them.
  My photo collection of class 707 trains is now completer, and I won't need to photograph any of them again - although I probably will. It is possible I might spot oddities - like this picture of a parrot on 707030. I have never seen a parrot on a train before, but interestingly it is in the colours of the livery that Southwestern Railways use as their livery for suburban trains.

  Before leaving the subject of train liveries, I saw in The Metro that the new labour government is intending to re-nationalise SouthWestern Railways. That could possibly mean another change of livery. That will be cheaper than you might think because most modern trains come out of the factory in bland white and grey, and the livery is applied by way of vinyl stickers - huge, train sized stickers. Once the weather gets a bit warmer I must try and spent a few afternoons around Clapham Junction, and get photos of the current train liveries in case they change.
  I only took one more picture on the way to the pub. It is of this Mandarin duck. They are not exactly rare on the River Ravensbourne, but I am not sure I can recall seeing one in the middle of winter. I normally associate them with spring, maybe even late spring. I think it might be it's mate showing her tail end in the background. The females as quite drab compared to the males.

  The pub was very quiet when I got there. Ayse, my favourite barmaid, said the rowdy lot had been in early, and had only recently left. It wasn't quite so much fun, but it did mean I could concentrate on the quick and cryptic crosswords in The Metro. There were two clues I never did solve in the quick crossword. That is my best for weeks now, and it seems the howls of protest in the letters page has convinced the paper to go back to making the quick crossword quick again.

  I was pleased that I also managed to do at least half the cryptic crossword. Sometimes it seems that doing well on the quick crossword spurs me on to do better in the cryptic crossword. Maybe i gave up a bit too early because I ended up reading all there was worth reading in the paper, but also because as a few more people came in the pub there were more amusing distractions.

  The topic of the afternoon was bums and tits !  I'm not sure if this is the way it started, but someone said they were warned not to be surprised when a distant aunt came to visit because apparently she had gigantic, and presumably nature tits. Ayse thought that was gross, but at the same time I think she wishes her tits were bigger. It is my personal opinion that they are perfect - not that I have seen anything more than is shown through a t-shirt. She also has the most perfect bottom - according to my lecherous mind.

  After two pints of Guinness, and nothing more to read in The Metro I decided it was time to leave. I headed back to Ladywell station to get the train the one stop back to Catford Bridge. I almost considered walking home, but I had the perfect excuse not to - I wanted to get some shopping from the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. As usual I took pictures of the front and back of any trains seen, but nobe were of any significance.

  The shopping I wanted had some large oranges and some golden apples at the top of the list. I also wanted some more instant noodles - flavours that Tesco never sell. Other stuff I bought was 4 small pots of bean/lentil salads, and what turned out to be a very naughty and stupid purchase. It was a chocolate cake. The illustration on the packet strongly hinted that it was small squares of chocolate cake individually wrapped so I could just open one at special times, and keep the reast for ages if need be.

  When I got home, slightly short of breath, but otherwise mostly feeling OK, I investigated the chocolate cake because I though that walk deserved a treat. I was dismayed to find that it was not small individual cakes but one big square one. I have to say the small corner I cut off was delicious. The danger now is that I don't think it will keep for more than a few days, and I will have to use it up quicker than is probably good for me.

  Apart from that small, 2" by 2", taster I still wanted some lunch before I got down to checking the pictures I had taken, and preparing the three I have used here. I ate a whole pack of very mini pork pies (almost individual mouthfuls, but realistically one and a half mouthfuls each), and then I ate a small tub of spicy lentil salad. One error I made was only turning the heater on half power. It seemed warm enough after my walk, but......

  After eating and dealing with the photos, I did my usual of laying on my bed where I read a very short story (about 2 pages if I recall correctly) and then closed my eyes for a snooze. I must have slept for nearly an hour, and I woke up feeling chilled to the bone. I had turned off all heating while I had been out, and with the outside temperature so low the heater on half didn't warm the room up that much.

  Maybe I did not feel cold enough to actually shiver, but I did feel cold enough to ache. Almost anything that aches when cold was aching, and I felt a very strong desire to eat something hot even though it was still about an hour until about the earliest I might eat dinner, but I guess I had an early first course of dinner. It was a bowl of hot spicy noodles, and it did help warm me up. A little while later I used up the last of the oven chips I bought a week ago. It was actually quite a small helping, but I added the last of a bag of ready grated cheddar to bulk the chips out, but there was not enough cheese to make more than a thin mound in the middle of the chips.

  I guess my real dinner was a lot healthier, because after the starters I just had one single golden apple with a small chunk of cheese, but I did follow that up with another small square of chocolate cake. I could almost cheerfully have eaten even more, but I felt that very naughty chocolate cake had to be the full stop of my eating for the day. By that time the heater had got the room nice and warm, maybe almost mildly hot, and that helped reduce any food desires.

  I think I had achieved everything I wanted or needed to do by dinner time last night, and I could sort of relax by watching TV all evening (except between 8pm and 9pm. I watched three episodes of different Star Treks, although I wasn't paying close attention to all of them. After a one hour break when I did a bit of reading, I watched an episode of QI, and a repeat edition of Have I Got News For You.

  I brushed my teeth during a commercial break, and so as soon as Have I Got New For You finished I went straight to bed and turned the light out. I could have started to read another short story, but I decided I felt tired enough for sleep, and as far as I can remember, I fell asleep very quickly. It was almost as if it might be a perfect night's sleep starting, but of course there doesn't seem to be a perfect night's sleep these days.

  One curiosity last night was that I didn't seem to pee much. Habit seemed to mean I woke up at least twice to go for a pee, but nothing happened when I did. At 3am I woke again, and this time I did do a small pee, but more significantly I woke up with my pillow starting to get damp from sweat. I think it was some sort of hot flush, and it didn't last long. I soon started to feel a bit cool, and I turned the heater up full and left it like that for the rest of the night.

  In the early part of my sleep I had one dream that seemed to be quite long and complex. I am sure it must have been lots of shorter dreams that seemed as if they were all part of a longer story. The dream(s) seemed to start with getting off a special, heritage, train at Waterloo station, which was the end of the journey. There must have been about 20 of us who headed straight for the toilet, but found them locked because it was, or seemed to be past midnight.

  I and a few other decided to walk back to then train to use the onboard toilets. Why we had not used them in the first place is a mystery. Along the way I passed a door which had the familiar "gents" logo on it. I had never seen it before, but inside there were two very cramped urinals, and a small door. Before I could get started another man started to pee. He peed gallons, and has aim was terrible. I stayed back and investigated what was beyond the small door. It turned out to be two small cubicles in original 1930's state.

  I noted it for future use, but I no longer seemed to feel the need to pee. I made my way through a dark concourse to the exit barriers, and then to the outside. It looked very rural outside, and not at all like the outside of Waterloo station. I really had no idea where I was, but I spotted a bus stop not too far away. Curiously, it seemed to be daylight outside, and so there was no worry about the buses having stopped for the night. I saw two buses, and one I could have got towards home, but not in this day and age. It was a route 1 bus that used to go to Catford. As I waited for the next one the dream faded out.

  In the last hours of sleep I had another dream that seems to have left some memories, albeit rather disjointed memories. I can now only describe the basic theme, and it was that somehow I had managed to network together my phone and PC so I could play some sort of game. The weird thing is that in real life I have zero interest in computer games, but evidently I did in the dream, or maybe I was just curious to try something. I can't recall it working properly, but it did seem to do something before I woke up.

  There was  legacy of only peeing a third or even a quarter as much as usual through the night, and only doing a very small poo when I got up didn't help - it seems like I put on a lot of weight in the last 24 hours. Now I do admit I had a small amount of chocolate cake, and maybe the lines between my late lunch and early dinner were a bit blurred, but my money is more on something like water retention.

  Of course all that lack of peeing could indicate low blood glucose, but that seems very unlikely after the chocolate cake. Rather surprisingly it is at least partly because of very slightly lower blood glucose levels - even if that is stretching it a bit. The Contour meter read 8.3mmol/l (it was 8.4mmol/l yesterday morning). The GlucoRX meter read 8.1mmol/l (it was 8.4mmol/l yesterday). The Sinocare meter read 8.7mmol/l (and it was 8.9mmol/l yesterday).

  It does seem my blood glucose is marginally less than yesterday. Since eating breakfast, 2 rather small 50gm packets of instant noodles, I have had several moderately large pee, and passed one medium and one big poo. Sadly, with breakfast now mucking up everything, it is too late to weigh myself again, but in light of the slightly lower blood glucose readings, I did treat myself to a dessert after breakfast of a slightly bigger bit of chocolate cake. Now is the best time to eat it because, assuming I don't eat any more during the day (unlikely) all the extra sugar should be dealt with when I take my next blood glucose readings tomorrow morning.

  Without being able to weigh all I have excreted since weighing myself, and subtracting that from the first reading, it is hard to say just how much weight I have put on, but my guess it is a fair bit less than the unlikely gain of 1.2kg that it appears to be. Despite assorted aches and pains, that have now almost faded away since warming up, and eating, it does seem that all but my weight, is pretty good this morning, and that I am a sort of pretend healthy. One possible fly in the ointment, and it could be the cause of reduced "renal action" (kidneys not working well enough), is that my blood pressure last night was very low, just 98/52. This morning it is also unusually low, 98/45. During my spell in hospital in 2019 I was sent for some follow up tests for low renal action, and although under the stress of being in hospital my blood pressure was usually high, my home measurements showed that my blood pressure did go down to the same sort of levels I saw last night and this morning, and although never proved, it was suggested that it could be the reason for poor renal action. I don't think anything was done about it, and after a short while it all returned to normal.

  Maybe I'll be peeing all night again tonight. The main thing on the agenda today is another beer tasting session with Jodie, and probably Michael this afternoon. A few extra pints should get the juices flowing again ! I had been considering going shopping in Aldi today, but there is only one thing it would be handy to get, and I can wait another day or two for that. The chances are that if I did go I would just buy stuff I don't, or shouldn't want. I think I prefer to have a nice lazy day - except for some washing up, tidying the kitchen and cleaning the dining room table - today !