There is no hint that this hour, 9am, will feature any sunny spells. It looks very grey outside. Rain may be a possibility, but I suspect less than in the forecast above. Maybe it will only happen if warm, and wet air passes over us, but maybe today will see an afternoon temperature of 8° C. At 3am, tomorrow morning, strong winds blowing from somewhere warmer may push the temperature up to 9° C, and it may rain. It may still be raining at 6am tomorrow, but the strong winds may be replaced by a strong breeze by 9am. The rain will continue until 10am, and by then the temperature may rise to 10° C, and some sunny spells after that may push it up to an almost warm 11° C by midday. After that the temperature may slowly fall down to a more typical, for this time of year, 6° C. Of course the forecast for tomorrow may turn out to be completely wrong.
 
  Another very late start this morning ! The reasons will become apparent later in today's narrative. Most of yesterday was fairly good - except for the grey skies and cold - but things definitely went down hill in the evening. Come to think of it, maybe that should say from late afternoon !

  I thought I was in a terrible rush to go out yesterday, but with hindsight there seemed to be plenty of time - mainly because I didn't have all that much to write about the day before. Despite the late start I managed to finish writing soon after 11am, and that left me half an hour to have a rest before I had a shower, and then got dressed. I somehow managed to get walking to the station in time to get the earlier 12:19 train.

  It was a bit touch and go before I left to walk to the station. I felt like I might possibly need to have a poo, but a brief try produced nothing, and I bravely went out as I was. I knew it would not be a pleasant experience if I had to use the pub toilet, but at least that toilet is usually a lot cleaner than most pub toilets, although being out the back of the pub it would have been a very cold experience if I had needed to use it.
  As I approached Catford Bridge station I saw a lorry delivering beer to The Catford Bridge Tavern. The notable thing about it was the curtain down the side of the lorry as I approached. Menabrea would seem to be an Italian brewery, but there is a dot uk web address shown. I don't think I can ever remember drinking Menabrae beer, and I feel sure that it has never been sold in the pub, but I suppose there is a possibility that it will be on sale there soon.

  Having got the earlier train, and it being too cold and grey to spend any but the minimum time walking through the park at Ladywell, I was fairly early getting in the pub. There were no more than 3 or 4 customers in there at that time, and even by the time I left the place was still looking poorly attended.

   It wasn't entirely quiet in there, and there were some things to hear and even comment on, but maybe it allowed me to concentrate on the crosswords a bit better. I must admit I only solved 4 or maybe 5 clues in the Metro cryptic crossword, but I did almost finish the quick crossword with maybe two unsolved clues. That is quite good for the new crosswords that are a lot harder than they used to be.

  I had my usual two pints of Guinness, but I followed those with a double Jameson's whiskey - to help keep the cold out on my way home. I left the pub after about the same time in there as usual (if there is such a thing as usual there), and so I left the pub a bit early. I was aiming to see three different trains when I got to the station. Since the strange timetable change, the services to Hayes (Kent) now run in bunches instead of regularly spaced through each hour.

  I didn't get to the station in time to see (and photograph) the front of the first train to Hayes, but I did get there in time to get on it if I had wanted to, which I didn't. I did photograph the back of the train, plus the front and back of the next train to Charing Cross, plus, after only a 10 minute wait, the next train to Hayes - which I got on. I photographed the back of it after getting off at Catford Bridge.
  I got a bit carried away with my narrative about trains, and the photos I took of them - none of which I needed because I already had photos, and often better photos taken in good light, of them. On my walk to Ladywell station I passed this robin sitting on the railings at the back of St Mary's church. It allowed me to get with a couple of feet of it, and was still there when I took this picture of it with holly in the background. It would have been a good Xmas picture.

  Back to Catford Bridge, and I decided I would do what I had planned to do earlier. It was only a possible idea, but I did bring a big shopping bag to go shopping in Poundstretcher. The walk from the station to Poundstretcher is probably almost as long as it is from the station to home, and I was starting to feel a bit tired when I reached Poundstretcher. I say tired, and on this occasion it was a weariness rather than aches and pains.

  I did my shopping in Poundstretcher, and mostly bought odds and ends - including more of their very cheap 5 packs of small packets of instant noodles. I was a bit disappointed that they had no good paper plates. I had hoped to get a pack or two of the metal foil covered plates they had, but all I could find was packs of vile yellow and nasty pink paper plates. I still bought a pack of each, but they didn't even have any plain white paper plates.

  By the time I got home I was feeling almost exhausted. Once I put my shopping away I made up two baps - one with beef and horseradish sauce, and the other with cheese and tomato. I took them upstairs to my PC, and my bedroom. This time I had left the heater on low while I was out, and it didn't take long to get the room up to temperature. A week or two ago I had turned the heater off while I was out, and I was shivering until early in the evening.

  I munched my two baps, and they were nice, but it did seem that one mouthful of the bap with the sliced beef in it tasted a bit odd. It might have been that one bit of beef, or even the bap itself, was off or contaminated. If it was it was probably too soon to cause some trouble I would have later. While eating I went through the photos I had taken, and realised there was only the two I used here worth using. The rest were pictures of trains that I didn't need pictures of.

  Once I had finished eating I laid down on my bed intending to read for a bit, but I barely glanced at the page before putting the book down, and falling asleep. I don't know how long I was asleep. It may have only been half an hour, but I think, with no good reason for it, that it was more like a full hour. The only thing that had changed when I woke up was that I seemed to have a hint of a sore throat, and the much earlier feeling that maybe I might need a poo had changed into a sort of constipated feeling.

  I had woken up in time to waste many hours watching TV - mostly Star Trek, and episodes of The Simpsons, but I did also watch an episode of QI. I had my dinner at just before 6pm, and it was oven chips and fish fingers. It seemed to go down OK, and it was enjoyable (but no nectar of the gods). It was after I finished eating that I noticed my sore throat had got worse. It was not noticeable while swallowing food, but it was when swallowing my own saliva.

  I still had a feeling a bit like constipation, but apart from a fart or two, nothing happened when I went and sat on the toilet for a while. In the mean time I sterilised (!) my throat with a couple of very large whiskies. They did seem to help for a while. Later on I tried both Ibuprofen and Paracetamol. Neither seemed to help with the sore throat, but a slight sore shoulder was helped.

  One thing I tried just before I went to bed was a couple of squirts of Ultra Chlorasaptic, anaesthetic throat spray. It was curious because it changed a fairly sharp localised pain to a dull ache for a far bigger area of my throat. That was not exactly an improvement, and it only lasted maybe half an hour at best. The sore throat was not any reason for not being able to get to sleep despite feeling really sleepy. I was almost falling asleep at my PC keyboard before I got into bed.

  Once I had laid down, with the lights out I could not stop myself from noticing every discomfort in greater detail. That included a continuing feeling like constipation, and also some acid indigestion. My throat was of no consequence except for a brief twinge when swallowing in a certain way (or so it seemed, but I never quite knew what that certain way was). The acid indigestion was calmed down by a few doses of antacid tablets.

  Then the main problem was the constipation feeling. By midnight there were indications that things were on the move. A long cold wait sitting on the toilet eventually produced a small hard poo. It was like taking the cork for a bottle. Over the next 2 hours I went from constipated to full on dysentry-like. After that first go I was back on the toilet 10 or so minutes later to very easily pass quite a large amount of poo.

  I may have been 20 or 30 minutes later, after trying to go to sleep, that I was back on the toilet again for ages as I seemed to produce loads of very low pressure diarrhoea. Even after apparently completely emptying myself I still felt sort of sore for another hour - which I mostly spent sitting at my PC because I thought that maybe I hadn't finished. In a way I hadn't because I did manage to produce a few farts.

  It was almost 3am before I was back in bed, and possibly after 3am before I had some real sleep. From then on I slept almost normally, except that I didn't seem to pee much, and of course I didn't wake up until it was about 8.30am - my current record for over sleeping. I could still feel some soreness from my throat, but otherwise I might have felt even better than most morning - although most mornings, particularly at this time of the year, are nothing to celebrate.

  After getting out of bed I went for my first pee of the day, and despite it being over two hours, maybe even over three hours since I had last had a pee, it was sort of average in size. I felt like I might need to do more poo - which seemed unlikely after all I had done in the small hours. I did pass some wind, but even now, I still feel like something more could happen.

  Maybe it was the lack of peeing in the night, but to my surprise after doing so much poo, I actually seem to have put on 400gm of weight. It made me wonder what all this might mean for my blood glucose readings. It seems in that reaspect it was all for the better. The Contour meter read a very good 7.7mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter only just missed getting in the light green area (of my spreadsheet colour code) with a good reading of 8.0mmol/l/ The Sinocare meter read a very good 7.9mmol/l. That makes my average for today 7.87mmol/l down from yesterday's 8.07mmol/l. I have been on a downward trend since a nasty high last Sunday.

  Despite these negative health things, my blood pressure remains nice and low. Even during the worst of last night's "adventures" I was keeping an eye on my blood pressure - mainly because the acid indigestion was giving me heartburn, and that can feel almost the same as other reasons for chest pains - and my blood pressure never went above normal, and was mostly in the lower "Optimum" area. This morning it is slightly higher than typical, but 113/44 is more than good enough.

  The plan for today is to have a very quick rest after I finish writing this, and then have a quick shower. I should still have plenty of time, although less than is desirable, to go out and get some important shopping in Tesco (I've been meaning to do this for the last 3 or 4 days). This afternoon should be a beer tasting session with Jodie and Michael, and some of the beers will be the beers that came in my last beer order last week, and so far remain unopened. A few might even be to Jodie's approval !