09:15 GMT

  This morning started at 11° C (or 12° C by my thermometers). It also started wet. So far I have only seen intermittent light rain, but heavy rain may fall after 10am. After midday the temperature will slowly drop, and by midnight it could be a very chilly 5° C. From 5pm it should be dry (or maybe dry). The sky will clear during the night, and that means tomorrow may start at 4° C. I would not be surprised if it were a bit lower, and we had a frost. It is possible the sky will remain clear during the day, and we will see full sunshine for all daylight hours. It will look very nice, but it may still only reach 7° C.

  Yesterday was not a great day, but bits of it were fairly good. The rest of the day could probably be described as bland - nothing bad, but nothing good either..... Oh actually there was a good and bad thing, but I'll get to that later.

  I have already described much of yesterday morning - getting ready early so I could get to my appointment to give two test tubes of blood, and then coming home again to have some breakfast. My breakfast was, if I am not deluding myself, a single packet of instant noodles. Soon after that I could have my first snooze of the day, although I did check a few things on the internet first.

  I failed to fall asleep because I could not stop being alert for a visit from gas bag. He said he would drop by in the morning to repay some money he owed me, and to give me some RAM sticks that he had no further use for. I did not fancy another long meandering conversation and so I tried extra hard to fall asleep. I am not sure if I did sleep or not, but sometime later my doorbell rang, and I ignored it. Then I heard a thump as my bag of RAM sticks landed on my mat.

  I finally relaxed, and I think I did manage a very short snooze. It may have been an hour later when I decided I ought to get off my bed, and do stuff. Initially that was to have a shower. I then got dressed and went down to see what had come through my letter box. It was the money I was owed, and the RAM sticks. As expected most were older generation stuff, although a few of them might work in my PCs.

  There was one which was an SO-DIMM (small outline memory as used in laptops mainly). That one intrigued me. It was a 4GB stick, and I hoped it might fit in one of my laptops. Later on I cleaned it's edge connector with some alcohol and stuff card, and tried it in one laptop. To my surprise it matched the stick already in the laptop, and with it in the empty second slot it increased the total memory to 8GB.

   Some say even that is far too small for a Windows 10 or 11 PC, but my laptop runs Linux, and was mostly happy with just 4GB. With 8GB I can probably do stuff I don't need to do !  I haven't looked at memory prices recently, but I have read they have gone up a lot. It is possible that single stick of memory was worth more than the money gas bag owed me !

  Once again I am getting ahead of my self - maybe because the stuff I had done before playing with the RAM stick was less interesting. What I did before that was to go shopping in Tesco. There were a few things I needed, and which I didn't get, and will have to get possibly on Saturday. I was partly concentrating on stuff I needed for Patricia who says she will probably visit me Tomorrow, and I think she is probably going to stay overnight again.

  The important things I got for her was a new bottle of Gordon's gin, a box of 10 (or 12 ?) small cans of tonic water, and some milk. This time I made very sure the milk, and just a single bottle this time, said it was best before 5th December. It is in the fridge, and I hope that when it is opened to make coffee it will not be more like yoghurt and stinky - like the milk from Aldi was after it had been in the fridge over a week, and a day or two past it's sell by (or use by ?) date.

  Of course I also got stuff for me. It included several reduced price things from the sandwich shelves. The last time I did that I over stuffed myself. This time I merely stuffed myself when I had a late lunch. I was so disciplined that I saved one large wrap type thing for a snack today for after I get back from a possible long afternoon out. For my dinner I got a pack of mini BBQ ribs....or something like that. Finally I got a small assortment of Indian style ready meals so I have something to feed Patricia, and something I know she likes.

  It was after my late lunch that I spent an hour or so trying the RAM stick in the laptop. It was a little bit more than just trying it, and I did things like charge the battery, and check for updates, but after a while I settled into a lazy afternoon. I can't actually remember doing so, but I am sure I must have had a real snooze. The hours drifted by painlessly, and soon it was ready to prepare my dinner.

  I timed dinner to be ready to eat while watching the 6 O'clock news on BBC1. The timing was easy because it was just a single item. That was not the healthiest thing, and maybe I am reaping the rewards of it this morning. It was the mini ribs. They needed heating in the oven, and towards the end of cooking needed a stick sauce to be poured over them. The cold and congealed ribs were about as big as my fist, but like all ribs, at least 75% of it was bone. I may have eaten a whole pack, but the amount of meat recovered from those rib bones was hardly enough to feed a cat.

  Obviously I needed something to top that up, and I had another theoretically unhealthy dessert of ice cream and cake. Another thing I bought in Tesco was a tub of "Caramelised Biscuit" flavour ice cream. It looked like it might be really delicious. It was nice, but not really nice.  With that eaten it was time to slob out watching TV until it was time for bed.

  To my surprise, all that meat (which as I said, was not really much at all) did not cause any significant heartburn. I did get a hint that it might happen, and I had a couple of Gaviscon tablets as a precaution. I think I fell into a deep sleep some time before 11pm. I am sure I remember getting up to pee a few times in the night, and I do remember enough of a dream to be able to describe some of it.

  The dream was set in Petts Wood - where I should be this afternoon for a few hours, and it featured at least one person who may be there today. That person was the photographer who provided me some tips, and or encouragement in my early days of trying for better photography, and who I now usually exchange a bit of banter when our paths cross. He may be there today, but tends to go for big venues these days.

  My dream seemed to be centred on Petts Wood Railway station - which is close enough for the music on the Live stage to be audible. Before going to see what was happening on the Live stage I was taking a few snaps of passing trains. I was also suggesting that maybe my photographer friend could extend his range by taking a few snaps. I am not sure why I would suggest that. His photography is processed to look very "arty", but I think train pictures should be as close to reality as possible - enough to count the rivets as some have said.

  It seems vague now, but I think that dream faded out when I woke up. It was early enough that I could have tried for another half hour of sleep, but I thought I was in a rush this morning. In reality, I don't think I have to go and find a train until about 1pm. I got up soon after waking up - initially because I needed a pee - but after that I thought that I may as well stay up.

  I had a fair sized pee, but no hint of a poo. I still weighed myself, and it did not look that good. I then started to count out my drugs and vitamins and stuff for the day. After that I went for another pee, and I thought I would have a poo, but it was just a bit of wind. I then weighed myself again before I did anything else. That looked a bit better, but a gain of 100gm was nothing to celebrate.

  That gain was no surprise when I considered all the stuff I had eaten yesterday. In many ways a gain of just 100gm was quite mild.Even more surprising, in a good way, was my blood glucose measurements. The Contour meter read 6.7mmol/l, and that is pretty good. The GlucoRX meter read a bit better at 6.5mmol/l, and the GlucoFix meter read a not so good, but still OK 6.9mmol/l (any reading starting with a six is good). All three gave an average of 6.7mmol/l, and that is lower than many average readings this month.

  My blood pressure is good this morning (117.53), and I almost feel fairly OK, albeit a bit tired. I had one good bit of news earlier this morning. The first results of my blood tests have arrived. My renal (Kidneys) test was judged "normal". My Cholesterol was "normal" and my bone markers profile (a new one for me) was also "normal". There are other test that were done on my blood samples, and I don't anticipate anything bad from them. So I am in wonderful health - it is a shame I never feel that way most days.

  I thought I was in a desperate rush this morning to get to Petts Wood, and the Xmas lights celebration (with live music stage). The first band I may want to see is a band who I am actually rather dubious about, but they are on at 2pm. That means I don't need to get a train from Catford station until around 1pm or later. I have to change trains at Shortlands station, but that should only be a wait of just 4 minutes. The entire journey time, Catford station to Petts Wood station, is only 24 minutes. I will probably allow 20 minutes to take a slow walk to Catford station.

  The walk from Petts Wood station to the Live stage is little more than 5 minutes. Getting home again means a slightly different route, and one that I am sure was rarely shown on the trains journey planner, but it was one I worked out for myself several years ago. It is to get a train from Petts Wood to Lewisham, and then change to a train going to Catford Bridge station. It should only be a 7 minute wait at Lewisham. Maybe tomorrow I may be able to show a few pictures from Petts Wood, but I expect it could be another day or two before I have the time to "process" all the usable pictures I take.








   2,089 words today.