It is indeed 11° C this morning, and should be 12° C, but it comes at a price of rain. Fortunately most of the rain will be very light, and much of it just drizzle. It may be dry after 6pm, but the temperature may not drop from 12° C. That will mean a mild start to tomorrow. There could be a few hours of sunshine tomorrow, although I think we might be straddling two weather systems, so nothing is guaranteed for tomorrow. The best bit could be 14° C while there is sunshine. That could feel really nice.

  Yesterday was one of those days that started well, but ended as a disaster, although the true outcome of the disaster was not obvious until this morning. One other negative thing was the betrayal of the weather forecast. One good sunny spell does not make a day of sunny spells !

  The really good thing was that after I had finished writing, and had my usual post writing rest, I washed my hair and had a shower. The great thing is that my new fibreglass patch over the crack in my bathtub worked as hoped. There was no leakage that I could see, and even better was no ominous cracking sounds. I didn't dare actually tread where the patch is, but it did seem like it might be able to take my whole weight if needed. I still intend to add another layer, or two of fibreglass to make it even stronger, and also a covering of resin putty to give a nice smooth finish, but that won't happen for a few days yet.

  Once I was clean, dry and dressed I could head out to Catford Bridge station to pick up two copies of The Metro - one for me, and one for Ayse in the pub. I hoped my newest leather jacket would keep me warm enough, but I did still feel a bit cool until my walking had warmed me up a bit. There was hardly a hint of any sunshine at that time - contrary to the forecast of sunny spells.

  As is now usual I started to feel tired as I approached the station. It was more or different than just "tired". I was very lightly short of breath, I could feel the first hints of angina, and indeed my legs and feet did feel a bit tired. Fortunately I had plenty of time to stay on the "down" platform for half a minute to part recover before going up and over the footbridge. I then still had to wait around 10 minutes for the train to Ladywell.

  After arriving at Ladywell the only slightly bad thing is going up the steps to road level. My legs always feel creaky as I get to the top, but everything else is OK, and it is downhill and then flat from there to the pub, plus there is often a good reason to stop and take a picture of something in the vicinity of St Mary's church.
  I didn't see anything to photograph at first. There were always squirrels, but I take too many pictures of them. Then suddenly I saw a pigeon hopping. I've seen many a pigeon with deformed feet where they have to stand in their own poo on narrow ledges on buildings in the middle of London. (At least I think that is the main cause). This pigeon had one leg and foot that seemed normal enough, maybe apart from looking a bit more muscular, and seem to lack any sign of a second leg. I presume it was the result of injury, maybe even a cat, but it might possibly have been a birth defect or something.

  The pub was a bit quiet when I got there, and maybe that is why from next week it won't open until midday from Monday to Thursday instead of the usual 11am. I am unsure why it periodically it has very quiet afternoons, although even the quietest can become quite lively later in the afternoon. Being quiet was probably good for doing the crosswords. I did manage to solve all but 2 or 3 clues in the quick crossword, but the cryptic crossword seemed too cryptic yesterday. It is usually the case that solving a couple of clues can give good hints about the words around them, but I don't think I solved a single cryptic clue yesterday.

  I just had the usual two pints of Guinness yesterday, but I must have been drinking slowly because they lasted longer than I am sure is normal. This was possibly the reason why my day started to fall apart yesterday. I thought I had timed my exit in time to photograph the first of the two trains back to Catford Bridge that run about 10 minutes apart. I'm sure I didn't mess that up by stopping to take a single picture.
  This was a single bright yellow crocus in a sea of green grass in the little triangular bit of land between the river, therapeutic garden, and the footpath. As I approached the station I saw one train in the station, and I got there just in time to take a picture of the back of it leaving the station. I thought that was the first of the two trains in reasonably quick succession. It wasn't, and that meant a 20 minute wait for the next train.
  I amused myself for some of that wait when I noticed that through the fence I could see many bees buzzing around an early flowering shrub. I keep wanting to call it honeysuckle, but I am sure it isn't. I hope I could have got a sharper picture of a bee if I could have got closer to the shrub, but this was the best I managed of half a dozen tries.

  When I left the pub we had a short, 5 or 10 minute burst of sunshine, and it seemed like it was nice outside for a change. I didn't bother doing up my coat, and I think I regretted that much later because I had allowed my chest to get cold while waiting on the platform at Ladywell, and also walking home from Catford Bridge station. I would have liked to walk fast to help keep me warm, but I can't do that in my current state, and I felt quite chilled when I got home, and also very tired.

  I don't think that feeling of tiredness left me for the rest of the day. I still had enough stamina to make two Ciabbata rolls with corned beef and horseradish sauce in them, and to take them upstairs to me computer. If we had the sunny spells the forecast promised my bedroom should have been warm when I went up there, but it had cooled off, and it took ages to warm it up again (although it would have been faster if I had turned the heater up full).

  With the extra wait at Ladywell station it was gone 3pm when I got home, and so it was not a very long wait for dinner time. I ate my two rolls, copied my photos to me PC, and edited the ones I have used here, and then I had a lie down. I don't think I really intended to, but I had a snooze that lasted for nearly an hour (I think). When I woke up I felt cold, stiff and aching, and that made me want an instant and warm dinner.

  That instant warm dinner was instant noodles, and double small portions of them. They helped me warm up a bit, but I still decided I would run the heater at full power for half an hour until I could eat what would have been my originally intended dinner - two chicken breasts with a spicy coating. I had high hopes for those chicken breasts, but they were not very nice at all. They also seemed to be quite a lot to eat on top of those instant noodles.

  It would have been far better in several ways if I had had just one of those two parts of my dinner. I felt uncomfortable all evening because I didn't. I still can't believe that it was too big, but maybe I have been getting used to smaller portions recently. Later in the evening I came close to vomiting some of it up ! Unsurprisingly it gave me heartburn, although it didn't seem too bad until my first visit to the toilet for a pee after I had been in bed for a while.

  I seemed warm enough under the duvet, but the icy cold hit me as soon as I went out my bedroom. There was no other heating on, and the bathroom was very chilly. I came back to my warmer room with a combination of heartburn, and angina pains from getting chilled. I tried getting back in bed to warm up, but I just felt worse when I laid down. I had to get up, turn the heater up full, and read some stuff on my computer screen for half an hour or more until I felt comfortable enough to go back to bed (and turn the heater down again).

  That happened the next time I got up for a pee, and that seemed far too soon after the last (although I was probably not counting the time I was sitting at my computer). one curious thing, although I didn't realise just how curious it was until after I got up this morning, was that each pee seemed very small, and not really needed at the frequency I was going out to that freezing bathroom.

  One thing was very confusing. At about 2am I woke up for a pee, and after that it seemed I could not get back to sleep again for a whole hour. The confusion was that it seems I had dreamed not being able to sleep. I am sure it genuinely started like that, but the big clue was waking up again. Obviously I must have dreamed some or more of that time. I do remember some bits of another long seeming dream.

  I can't quite remember enough to give a coherent description of the dream, but I can try and give the flavour of it. It was a sort of SciFi dream, and involved artificial hibernation to help pass long periods of time for very distant space travel. I thing someone, or something, was hypnotising people who were waking up to go back into hibernation. I discovered, at least I think it was me, discovered if you wrapped something like a shirt around your head you didn't get hypnotised.

  I think I managed to get a couple of people out of hibernation to help me get control of the spaceship. It could have been, and probably was a mishmash of different dreams because I can barely remember there was actually any hint of it actually being set in a spaceship. I do remember one very strange thing, and I can't seem to remember what the significance of it was, but it seemed terribly important to extract a rubber glove that had been stuffed in a bottle. I seemed to do it by filling the bottle with water, and that allowed one finger of the glove to get near enough to the top for me to gently easy it out enough to pull out the rest. What I did with it, and why, remain a mystery this morning.

  When I woke for a pee at about 4am I turned a heater on at the end of an extension cord, and left it on low blowing some warm air into the bathroom. It meant that with the 11° C outside, it was much more pleasant to spend a bit longer in the toilet when I got up. It still wasn't enough to have a big poo - which I assumed would be the case after stuffing myself the night before. Nothing happened, although I did have a pee. When I got on the scales I discovered I had put on 800gm in the past 24 hours.

  The small amounts of pee last night suggested that maybe my blood glucose might be fairly low this morning. I could not have been more wrong. This morning I was well past the red line, and well into the danger zone. The Contour meter read a terrible 11.1mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 11.3mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter read a horrendous 11.7mmol/l. I knew I ate a lot yesterday, although I didn't think it was all that excessive as I was shovelling it in, but even so, I didn't think it had a very high sugar content. I wonder if it was a reaction to illness. The cold I was feeling last night did seem a lot worse than it should have been. In fact I seemed to be getting more fatigued than expected all day yesterday. One possibility was inhaling fumes from the fibreglass resin as it was setting. It was a pretty powerful smell.

  Hopefully my weight and blood glucose will settle down today. I was shocked enough to skip breakfast this morning, and I will try for the lightest lunch I can get away with today. The problem there is that today is Thursday beer tasting day with Jodie, and possibly Michael too. The beer maybe no problem itself, but it's effects include extreme ravenous hunger - just what I don't want now. I think my "light lunch" will be just rice crackers and cheese. The fat in the cheese may help buffer the booze a bit, but not nearly as well as a full English breakfast. Sadly I can't have that even if I could have one.