Sub zero night

The temperature dropped to minus three by the time I settled down for the night. Although I was suitably clad with a blanket of my duvet, I couldn't stay warm. Congested with phlegm, I kept on needing to sit up and cough over the next hour or so. It meant I couldn't stay warm enough to relax and sleep, and started to shiver. I added a fleece and later a heavy dressing gown, but couldn't stop shivering even though I was half asleep. I had a dreadfully disturbed night, and woke up fog headed, unsteady on my feet. A real set back. After a bite to eat, I spent the rest of the morning sitting again in my armchair, coughing. 

Meanwhile Clare went to town and bought me a new duvet, fit for winter. The one I've been using until now is a summer one, it's surprising it's not given me adequate protection before now.

I felt better after eating, enough to record the audio for next week's Morning Prayer and Reflection. My voice was bound to sound a bit wheezy, but when it came to editing the audio with Audacity, I discovered how to filter the hoarseness out of my breathing. A small gain from my down-time. I walked for an hour at sunset. It was very cold, but amazingly I coughed very little. My lungs weren't at all sore and refreshed by breathing clean cold air, clearing a foggy brain.

The waxing crescent moon, tracked by Venus was in bright clear evening sky after sunset. It was too cold to take a camera with me, so I missed out on perfect conditions, but when I got home, I tried with three different cameras to get the best shots I could from the garden. They would have been better with a tripod, but it was too much of a fuss to set one up as the couple raced towards the western horizon. I did notice another planet seemingly popping up in eastern sky, and pondered why. I think it was Mars. I guess it's on a different trajectory and may appear as it passes out of the sun's shadow into its light. I need to find out if this is what's happening.

I started watching episodes of the second series of 'SAS Rogue Heroes' on BBC iPlayer. It tells the story of how the clandestine military operations unit developed and survived the military politics of the second world war despite its successes in changing the fortunes of war in North African and Italian campaigns. Members of the SAS were reputed to be the most violent, ruthless, and ill-disciplined men, somewhat an embarrassment to upper class leadership, despite effectiveness and enterprise in battle. This portrayal pulls no punches in terms of the brutality of the conflict waged by these men, and its impact on them. They saw themselves as 'dogs of war' - savage animals in classical history sent in to sow chaos before the legions went into action. Although the story line has elements of 'Boys Own' comic war hero characters about it. It names the real life people on whom they are based.  The SAS history has been well researched in its own right. How near this film version is to that reality, I don't know. Worth a watch though.

Time to test the new duvet now!