Yesterday the weather was almost perfect to go for a walk, and it seemed like it would be the last opportunity this month if the long range weather forecast has any credibility (slim chance). At about 11.40am, after a quick shower, that I went out for my first walk in ages. The picture above was taken in the park, and it should have been brighter, but if I brightened it up it lost all the fine details in the clouds.

  There is a distinct line at the edge of those clouds, and I think it is actually a weather front. To the north there may have been more cloud, while to the south (behind me as I took the picture) the sky was clearer, and the sun stronger. Unfortunately that thin, semi transparent cloud was moving towards me, and later on the sun sometimes seemed a bit weak and watery.


  I took a chance on the temperature by wearing my sleeveless denim jacket. It felt good to get a bit of sun on my arms, but the wind was often a bit chilly. I only stopped to take one or two pictures, and tried to walk to Ladywell as fast as I comfortably could. I probably only got half way before I had to slow down. I was starting to get some Angina like pain, and my legs were starting to feel tired. It was not a good start to a walk, but I persevered at a slightly slower pace, and that felt more comfortable. Oddly enough, the Angina-like pain seemed to have almost gone away by the time I reached Ladywell.

  I did think of calling in at The Jolly Farmers while I was nearby, but as lovely as a pint of Guinness would have been, I was part assessing how fit I was, and how much better I was after my stay in hospital. By the end of the 1.66 miles I walked I was feeling OK, but rather tired. Compared to just walking home from the hospital, it seemed to be almost easy going. If we had more bright and warm days it definitely felt like it would be possible to build my stamina up enough to do 3 mile walks, and ultimately 5 or 6 mile walks.

  There was one other thing I did on this walk - I took my old, 2.3Mp, Toshiba PDR-M61 camera for a walk. It is a 23 year old camera, and still works almost perfectly. It's one failing is that the LCD display seems a bit dim, and is almost impossible to see in bright daylight. Being only 2.3 megapixels does not leave much for cropping and editing, but the basic pictures are pretty clean, although they do seem to lack the punch of modern cameras, on the other hand, one a nice contrasty scene it doesn't seem to lack much.


  As sort of proof that I did walk as far as I did, and also how that Toshiba camera can take a nice punchy picture in the right setting, I took this picture looking towards Catford on Ladywell station. I think this picture compares favourably with anything I could have taken on one of my big DSLR cameras. I had been hoping to catch a picture of a train, but the next one would mean a 10 minute wait, and I wanted to get moving again before I seized up.
  I had remembered to bring a bag of old, possibly starting to go stale, nuts to tempt squirrels to pose for me, and the best place to see lots of them was around St Mary's church. All I saw at first was what looked like some homeless person's things probably drying out on top of a grave. It is possible that the stone slab had warmed up in the sunshine, but I didn't feel it to see if my theory was correct.
  Some times the churchyard, and the Therapeutic garden behind the church is swarming with squirrels, but maybe many of them were having a lie in, or sunning themselves at the top of high trees. However, I did see plenty of daffodils among the ancient grave stones (I don't think there have been any burials in there for 100 years or more).
  I finally found a squirrel paying enough attention to me to see me throw some nuts its way. This picture showed one big deficiency of the Toshiba camera. It seems it's auto white balance is calculated by what it sees in the middle of the picture. It saw a lot of green grass, and so turned the green down to the extent that the squirrel seemed to be sitting in a purple shadow. My correction hasn't fully corrected the colour unbalance everywhere, but at least the grass looks greenish, and the squirrel almost looks squirrel coloured.

  Another big deficiency of the camera is that while it has an optical viewfinder, as well as the LCD display, it also has a x3 zoom lens, and the effect of that can only be seen in the LCD viewfinder. The optical viewfinder doesn't show the zoom. I could have got more, and better squirrel pictures if only I could have seen the picture in the LCD display.  Obviously I treat the Toshiba camera as more like a toy, although I can imagine it cost a fortune back in 2001 when first released (I think I paid £10 to £15 in a charity shop) . For serious pictures I have serious cameras.
  This was a sight I particularly wanted to see for myself. I had seen a poor version of this sight taken on a mobile phone, but it was probably too zoomed in to see the setting. The blue tent is most probably "home" to some homeless person. I've seen tents like this in much more discrete positions for some time now. I think the record was three tents, all discreetly behind trees or bushes in the linear park. I think I have even met a couple who lived in one. At a guess they were East Europeans left stranded her after Brexit. This was the first time I have seen a tent so near an almost busy path, completely out in the open. They are only about 25 feet from the river bank, and I wonder if they are troubled by rats ?

  After taking this last picture I only stopped once to take a picture of a tree that didn't turn out to be a very good picture. I headed not straight to home, but a slightly more scenic route. I was in a curious state of my legs were aching, but not too badly. I didn't want to prolong my walk too much, but it was feeling like I could, if need be, push myself a little bit further - maybe I could have rounded it up to a 2 mile walk, but it was great to get home.

  The first thing I did when I got home was to prepare some lunch. After that walk I decided I had earned something more than rice crackers. My lunch was some boiled baby potatoes with sliced raw mini bell peppers, and some ham. I thought the potatoes were a bit daring considering my high blood glucose readings since coming out of hospital, although I had an inkling of an idea that maybe they would not be so bad.

  I spent maybe the next hour eating and editing photos (plus the time it took to download the photos from camera and mobile phone to my PC). On the whole I was happy with the photos I took on the Toshiba camera, and apart from the screenshot from my mobile phone of my route and distance, I didn't need to use anything else taken on the phone. Once the pictures had been taken care of I laid on my bed to read for maybe no more than 5 minutes before I had at least an hours snooze.

  It seemed half the afternoon had already passed before I was ready to do more stuff. That included preparing my dinner, and finishing off some laundry I had left soaking in detergent after I had my morning shower. I thought I could do all the backlog of laundry, but I still had 2 t-shirts, and two towels still to be done (and this morning I can add another t-shirt, and pair of underpants to the pile). By the time I had finished that laundry, and had hung it on the clothes horse to dry, my attention was firmly on dinner.

  By then I had given the diced pork that would be the important bit of a pork stew, a good 20 minutes in the microwave. An hour or two later I gave it another 10 minutes to help tenderise the meat. It was about then that I started thinking along the lines that my exercise probably demanded some sort of treat, ideally a safe sort of treat, in the form of shish kebabs takeaway. Then common sense too over, and I knew all I had to do was to add the bean sprouts and pak choi to the meat, and give it another 10 minutes microwaving for a tasty meal.

  I showed a picture of dinner near the top of the page to part illustrate all the beansprouts, but last nights dinner had only about half the amount of the previous night's dinner which produced the amusing effect when I went to the toilet yesterday morning. The extra pak choi, and less beansprouts didn't produce the same effect this morning.

  Last night was another night with almost nothing to watch on TV , at least at first it was. There was stuff on later that I recorded on my big TV in the living room. One problem was that the Great TV! channel seemed to have lost it's Electronic Programme Guide so it was purely by chance I noticed that they were doing another string of back to back episodes of The Avengers. I also found that they were not showing them in the same order as originally broadcast.

  It was maybe an hour after dinner, and possibly the worst time, when I decided to do one quick check on my blood glucose. It is rare in the extreme that I will do it in the evening, but maybe my subconscious thought it might not be scary. It wasn't ! The reading I got on the Sinocare meter was just 7.4mmol/l. That is wonderful at any time, and seemed to promise good news this morning.

  I think I was in bed around 9pm, and initially I didn't seem to sleep well. I think I may have turned over too fast, and "pinged" my ribs and/or sternum. Maybe I had a bit of acid indigestion on top of it all. I was not comfortable, and probably didn't get any deep sleep before 11pm. Once I was asleep I had some sort of nice dreams - if dreams of being back at work can be called good. One dream was about getting superglue that someone had accidently dripped onto a bearing, out of the bearing. I got rid of enough to get the bearing moving again, but ultimately it meant stripping the thing down, and replacing the bearing. I think I probably woke up before the stripping down started.

  I woke at about my usual time of shortly after 6am, but decided I deserved a lay in - it was a Sunday morning for want of a better excuse. I don't think I expected to get back to sleep, but suddenly another hour had passed. It was time to go to the toilet - a nice smooth action, and no "worms" this morning (where worms = part digested bean sprouts). Next it was time to check my morning blood glucose readings.

 This morning they were stunningly good ! The Contour meter read 6.8mmol/l, and the GlucoRX meter read 6.6mmol/l. I haven't seen figures that low for years. Of course the Sinocare meter read 8.3mmol/l, a lot higher, but still good in the ordinary run. I find myself asking why these readings are so low after several days of very high readings. I'm sure a 1.66 mile walk wasn't the reason. Perhaps it was the boiled potatoes and ham, but that seems very unlikely. Maybe my new drug has cleared a semi-blocked artery leading to the pancreas, It would be great if that were true, but it still seems unlikely. Maybe it is just a one day wonder.

  I'm not sure if it is raining at the moment, and the lack of big puddles suggest that we have only had very light rain this morning. If I can avoid any heavy rain I feel I would like to take a very short walk today, but only for a shopping trip. There are a few things I could get from Savers, and Poundstretcher, but I am thinking that maybe I might go a tiny bit further to Aldi. On the other hand I may save my energy for this afternoon's boozing session with Jodie.