10:29 BST

  Yesterday was another godforsaken grey, and miserable sort of day. The temperature only reached 14° C, but it was dry.
  Today is another in a too long series of grey and depressing days. With the temperature only reaching just 15° C it is going to be cold and miserable. The only solace is that it should stay dry, but maybe some pouring rain with a temperature of 20° will be a little cooler with a max of only 14° C expected, but, just for a change, we may see some sunny spells.

  In contrast to the previous few or more days, yesterday was an interesting day when at least one important thing was done. It was a day that brought good and bad news. The good could be a very exciting and welcome good. The bad is just intensely annoying. All these things may be explained further down the page.

  The main feature for yesterday was my long awaited, next appointment with the Cardiologist at Lewisham Hospital. It was not until 11:10am, and so it didn't mean a particularly early start, but I had little time to waste. I was quite surprised that I was able to complete yesterday's diary entry here before I needed to have an shower, get dressed, and go out. It was helped by the day before being quite a boring day without anything worth writing about.

  After writing I had a shave and a shower, but I had washed my hair the day before. I got dressed in shorts and t-shirt, but because it was a bit cold I did put a light coat on before I left. As my postman has told me on more than one occasion, wearing shorts in cold weather doesn't feel bad, and if it rains, your legs dry off quicker than soggy trousers. It didn't rain yesterday, but it was miserably grey again.

  I had left in time to go via the Pharmacy so I could order my next repeat prescription, and asked that a can of GTN spray be included this time. The pharmacist consulted the doctors notes and said the GTN spray would be no trouble. I'll have to see what I get when I collect my prescription tomorrow (Friday) because depending on how fast the prescription was made up, I might or might not get that GTN spray.

  After the pharmacy I walked to the hospital along the main road. If, once on the main road, I had looked behind me I would have noticed something interesting, and I may have also realised that the traffic seemed incredibly light. The reason for this I would not discover until I had finished in the hospital, and was in the pub, and where some of the regulars had tales to tell of what was happening in Catford.

  I arrived at the Cardiology department at the hospital about 10 minutes early, but I did not have to wait long before I was called by a nurse for the usual ritual humiliation. It starts with being weighed fully clothed (but with heavier stuff taken out of my pockets) instead of naked like I weigh myself at home. My weight looked a fair bit higher, although I think the nurse allowed me as much as a kilogram for the weight of my clothes, and so wasn't too far out of the true value.

  Then there was the blood pressure measurement. I suffer from "white coat syndrome" and so of course my blood pressure was high. It didn't help that I was far from relaxed after the walk to the hospital, and then choosing to walk up the stairs (I don't feel bad enough yet to give in and use the lifts just for one floor).

  The only other measurement was my temperature, and that was just 36.4° C - a tiny bit lower than "standard". Then I had a short wait until the Cardiologist called me to his office. We had some general chat and then he moved on to the topic of the time - my faulty heart valve. The news about that was rather good - apart from one minor annoyance, and not remembering to ask for some important details.

  The simple thing is that the valve can be fixed. In fact it will effectively be replaced, and in a quite remarkable way. Rather than open my chest up for an operation - apparently something they would be reluctant to do a second time -  that can fit the new valve like a giant sized stent. They can thread it up an artery in my leg, all the way to the heart. Once there is somehow pushed the old valve out of the way (at least that is how it was described, although I suspect there is slightly more to it than that), and then the shrunken new valve, made out of metal, will be expanded to full size.

  Initially this sounded like a very good idea, and I had visions that it would be done almost as an out patient - just like when I have had an angiogram. In my surprise I forgot to ask the Cardiologist what sort of recovery times could be involved. Other unknowns are would it be done with the heart still beating, or would it involved mechanical support (heart-lung machine) while the heart is stopped. If so then it would need restarting, possibly with a defibrillator. These possibilities suggest it might be done with me under at least light sedation.

  I suspect I will be lucky if I am only kept in overnight to check everything is OK before I am released from hospital, and then maybe only if I have someone to watch over me for a day or so. Fortunately it is likely that Patricia will be in the country, and she will volunteer to watch over me like she did when I came out of hospital after my bypass operation - except she didn't arrive until the next day. That didn't worry me, but it would have worried the hospital if they knew.

  I have now been referred to Kings College Hospital for the procedure, and I am lead to believe I will here from them sometime before hell freezes over. It is actually almost certain that when it happens Patricia will not be around, and I may have to lie a little bit. Another lie is that I have (while biting my tongue) agreed not to use any more GTN spray. There is a danger of it causing my blood pressure to drop far enough to cause me to pass out.

  I have checked this, and it does drop a bit, but when I am out walking my blood pressure is so high that it could drop a lot and still be rather high. That GTN spray is currently the only way I can reasonably walk any distance, and I will definitely need it to be able to walk from Denmark Hill Railway station to Kings College Hospital. I will be saving some of my current spray for just such a purpose.

  The Cardiologist says he will have GTN spray taken off my prescription. Now it is a race between the pharmacy making up my next prescription, or the ban coming through. I intend to use GTN spray while I can regardless of doctors warnings of impending death, or worse.

  After leaving the hospital I went straight to the pub. I was reminded the hard way that from Monday to Thursday they now don't open until midday (on other days it is the more traditional 11am). I got to the pub and found it was still closed. I had half an hour to wait until midday, and it took a few minutes to twig why it was closed.  After about 10 minutes I peep through a crack in the blinds I saw Ayse working in there, and so at least I knew it would open a bit later.

  Despite being the first to be waiting outside, I was actually second in the pub. I had paused to take a look along the road to see if there were still a lot of black people outside the hospital for no obvious reason. I had also noted that there was a lot more security staff at the hospital, plus a police care with a couple of coppers. I still didn't notice that there was very little traffic along a usually semi busy main road. Even more noticeable should have been that there were no passing buses.

  Once a few people started to trickle into the pub I heard word that there had been a stabbing and/or machete attack in Catford. A check on the BBC news site gave few more details than that, but did say it happened at 3am in the morning. It may never been confirmed, but the popular belief is that it was another turf war between rival black drug dealer gangs.  One man in the pub said he had seen a man with his leg almost hacked through by machete. I think he said he was on a night bus or something when he saw it.

  We soon learned that the road was blocked by the police, in both directions, either side of where all the violence happened. I think I had three pints before I left the pub, and I decided I would walk the long way home to see what I could see. Ayse (my favourite barmaid) was out side the pub having a smoke when I left. I could not hide it from her when I had a single spray of GTN, and said I had been forbidden to use the spray again. In fact I should have had a couple of sprays because walking a bit faster than ideal, in cool air, and adding a few hundred more yards to my journey home, had me feeling almost on the verge of angina.
  This is the sight I saw when I got past my own road, and got to the next sensible road to walk home. Fortunately that road was not closed. I saw a lot of police tape, and half a dozen coppers, but no forensic teams examining every inch of the road. The BBC news report I saw on my phone, before I left the pub did show a forensics van parked up. It was a white van, like the police van seen in the distance of my photo, but it didn't have side windows.
  Another view from a slightly different angle. I do wonder why the road was kept closed if the forensic team had done their stuff, and had left the scene of the crime. Incidently the area cordoned off is roughly a bit either side of the closed for over 6 months now, Catford Wetherspoons pub. Some people used to think some sort of massacre was a regular feature of that pub on a Friday night. They did have some trouble with drug dealing, and use in the toilets at the back of the pub, but they seemed to have solved that problem before the closed the doors for the final time (although the place looks so intect that it could reopen after nothing more than a delivery of fresh beer).

  I guess my small detour going home added no more than a quarter of a mile walk, and probably less, but I did feel like I was most glad to get home. I was going to add "out of the cold", but it was only the still nasty grey sky than made it feel cold even if it wasn't all that cold at all. I certainly was feeling hungry despite all that Mounjaro is supposed to do to suppress hunger.

  Maybe I did not feel hungry in one sense, but my mind was fixated in what I might have for lunch when I got home, and that made me feel hungry, and it completely overrode any messages my gut may have been sending to my brain. I had decided I would have cheese on toast for lunch, and that is indeed what I had. I used my mini oven/grill to make the taost and melt the cheese.

  While the mini over was hot I decided it was high time I cooked something I had bought from the reduced price shelf in Tesco out of curiosity. It was a box of chips with curry sauce. The sauce was in a little pot, and it probably suggested it should be placed in hot water to warm up, but I think I would have used it cold, and let the hot chips warm it up (and cool the chips off a bit to a more reasonable eating temperature.

  The chips were to be put on a tray in the oven to heat and crisp up a bit. They were originally supposed to be kept frozen - at least I though they were. I kept them just in the chiller rather than freezer, and maybe I kept them there too long, but it didn't seem to be terribly long, and I could not believe what I saw when I emptied th box onto the baking tray. The chips were covered in patches of grey/green mould. My impression was that the chips had been contaminated, possibly even before they went into the box. I don't think I will look out another box to try. I don't think I trust them.

  Instead of cooking the chips, which I would have had as part of dinner later on, I cooked something else I had put in the chiller over a week earlier. It was a Camembert and chilli flan, or quiche, or something like that. That didn't have any mould on it, and smelled and tasted fine when I had it as part of my dinner - the main course. I had been curious about what it would be like. I now know it was rather nice, and only a little bit short of a strong desire to buy another (but I wouldn't rule it out if I saw another one).

  After my late lunch I had a lie down, and that soon turned into a snooze. I then did some reading - the usual mix of book and online news. I was awake and alert, and once again contrary to what Mounjaro is supposed to do, looking forward to dinner while I watched the 6 O'clock news. Dinner was the Camembert and chilli whatchmacallit, and I followed that with finishing off a semi big portion of Dubai Style Chocolate ice cream (the one made with a lot of pistachio paste).

  I was quite disappointed the drama in Catford didn't make the national news, and only got a small mention on the local London news. I guess there is not a lot of information about it yet, Maybe the gruesome details will only come out after a court case - if there is one. I spent the rest of the evening watching my usual TV programmes, and went to be at about 11pm - an hour later than when the last programme I might watch - either QI of Have I Got News For You (assuming both are being shown) is rubbish. (Actually I think it was QI which was on first, and I should have gone to bed at 9pm because it was a repulsive edition featuring the vomit inducing Johnny, so called, Vegas.

  Last night I think I probably must have slept well. At least I can't seem to remember any negative things about it, and no positive things, and in fact, hardly a thing about it. I've never really thought about this way before, but I think I probably woke up in the best way. It was another morning when I woke up early, but felt no need to get up. I slept for a bit, maybe as little as 10 minutes, but probably more, and then opened my eyes for a few seconds to see how the world felt and then decided another 10 minutes of sleep might be good.

  After getting up it was the usual visit to the toilet, and seeming to also be normal to go again half an hour or less later. The second visit featured a bit more pee, and a fair helping of poo. This time I weighed less when I got on the scales, and it showed I had lost 500gm since yesterday. That counteracts the similar amount I put on 3 or 4 days ago. That sort of weight loss I would attribute to a bit of exercise, and choosing what I ate with some sort of semi automatic care. My current aim is to ignore the Mounjaro and do the slimming I know works most days even if only in small quantities.

  This morning the Mounjaro was not even working that well for my blood glucose measurements. Two meter read 7.2mmol/l. That is less than my last self invented target, and quite good, but I have had some results I can call excellent recently, but sadly those were not among them. The usually kind GlucoFix meter, the newest one as a "gift" from the NHS was definitely feeling slightly cruel for once. It read 8.4mmol/l, and I checked it twice to make sure. That is not a bad reading, but I had been getting used to better readings recently.

  The main thing on the menu today is an afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie and (probably) Michael. I had hoped I would finish writing this rather long piece a lot earlier, but I started very late. If I had more time I had hoped I would be able to go out and get some shopping from Tesco. Maybe I might still manage that, but it will be a very tight bit of a schedule.  I must admit that I do feel like rushing a lot this morning. I can't put a finger on what is wrong, but I don't feel all that good. Maybe it is just more grey weather, or maybe it is more grey weather after seeing a small sunny spell about half an hour ago. I don't know how it happened, but it made me sick with nostalgia for those wonderful days when we would see sunshine.