I am not positive about it, but I believe there was some frost around sunrise, but the forecast says it was 2° C at 7am. The Met Office forecast said it would be misty, but it seemed clear to me. Today should be much like yesterday, except that a high of 13° C is forecast. Maybe it will even warm up a bit quicker then yesterday. The temperature is forecast not to drop too low tonight. The forecast says it will be 7° C at sunrise, and the afternoon could reach 14° C after another day of golden sunshine. The day after tomorrow could start damp and murky, but the afternoon may still see sunny spells.

  Things never seem to be clear cut these days. Yesterday was good and bad again, although the bad wasn't quite that bad, and the good was fairly good. The important thing is that it was a bright and cheerful day - except for the pain. I'll explain all further down the page.

  It was nice to open the curtains to bright sunshine yesterday, and it enthused me to make better use of the day - to finally get out and take some pictures and stuff. Of course I had my writing to do before I could do anything else except eat breakfast - the usual instant noodles. While writing, and later, I kept an eye on my thermometers. They seemed to be creeping up ever so slowly.

  After writing I had the traditional rest, but at about 11.30am it seemed time to wash my hair, and have a shower. There didn't seem to be any rush to do this because of the much slower than expected rise in temperature. In theory I was ready to go out by midday, but I was waiting until my thermometers said it had hit 10° C outside. My plan/desire was to walk bare armed, and I set 10° C as the break point between chilly and just about acceptable.

  I did a few things to waste time, but as 1pm approached it seemed like it might just be mild enough, and if I waited any longer I might lose interest. I put on my one favourite walking boots, my sleeveless denim jacket, and ventured out into the sunshine. The sun was bright and warm, but the air was still not quite warm enough to give a feeling of joy. It is good that there was hardly any wind or the wind chill would have made it feel very chilly.

  As I walked to Catford Bridge station I realised that the boots I had done some very long walks in, in the past, were no longer comfortable. Maybe my feet have changed, or maybe those boots are just too worn to stay comfortable. The result was I realised I had another, and even stronger reason not to push myself to try and walk 3 miles - which was my original goal. I then came up with an alternate plan.
  As I neared the station I saw a 284 bus at the Catford Bridge terminating bus stop. The 284 does not stop here. Later on I checked the TFL page that showed the current route, and it confirmed that it should not stop here. I can only guess that it had broken down, and it was a convenient place to wait for assistance, although later on I came to doubt that.

  For this outing I had taken my Canon EOS 600D camera with a general purpose lens and a 300mm telephoto lens. I regard it as one of my better cameras, but I could not see a good upgrade path for it, and so I started to use, and love Nikon cameras. My Nikon D610 camera is almost a professional camera, and it shows ! I had decided I could not bare to walk through the park, but I still wanted to spend a couple of hours in the sunshine.
  I started off getting a train to Lower Sydenham station. The meant I could get a few snaps of trains, although none would turn out to be useful. I caught the next train back to Catford Bridge. I did consider taking a long walk home from there, but then I had another idea. I would go to Catford station, where I took the above picture, and possibly get a train as far as Shortlands station where there are usually many trains to photograph.

  It was while waiting for a train from Catford station that the above train came through the station. It was modestly fast, but also empty. It seemed to be like the trains I keep seeing at Catford Bridge, or Ladywell (depending on my timing). They are always just 4 car trains, and my guess is that they are test runs. The odd thing about this train through Catford station is that the line can be a lot busier, with less free slots than the line to Hayes. It just makes it all the more mysterious.
  While still waiting for the down train (all stations to Sevenoaks) I saw this class 377 train, 377501, heading non stop to Victoria. The thing about this train was that it was the first train I have photographed, for what seems like ages, that I had not photographed before. When I got home it was duly entered into my every growing spreadsheet of the numbers of all the trains In have photographed.
  This picture is one of two that proves it was handy that I had taken a 300mm telephoto lends with me. This plane, possibly made by Airbus (but I am definitely no expert) was flying high enough that I could see no detail with my naked eye, but the full 300mm telephoto lens, and some cropping of the picture, shows what looks like a fairly crisp and detailed picture of the aircraft. I feel sure it was better than the best I could manage with my ultra cheap Chinese 700mm lens.
  The second good reason for taking the 300mm lens was to get this snap of the sidings beyond Bellingham station. As mentioned a bit further up the page, I was going to go to Shortlands, but I decided to get off the train at Bellingham so I could leave the station, cross the road, and take this snap from the road bridge over the railway. I think it is about the best shot I could get. Ideally I would have moved about 2 yards to the left to get more of the length of the trains stabled there, but that would put a dense bush in the way !

  The trains on the Catford Loop Line are only every half hour, although there are other trains that don't stop until they get to Bromley South, and even beyond, but they would not get me home again. I decided it would mean too much waiting to go on to Shortlands station, and so I waited for the next train back to Catford. That still meant standing in the nice sunshine for about 15 minutes, but it was starting to feel warmer by this time.

  When I got back to Catford I really fancied taking my boots off and resting my feet, but there was one small detour I wanted to make. I wanted to go in the little Sainsbury's Local shop by Catford station. My plan was to get a couple of their tasty salads. The initial problem was that they were not where they used to be, and I started to think they no longer did them. I started to put other stuff in my basket, and fortunately most of it was at least slightly healthy (although one wrap gave me strong doubts).

  I did eventually find one Greek Salad tucked away at the back of a bottom shelf. I also found an interesting looking potato and egg salad. That too went into my basket. One odd, but quite tasty thing was some sort of Greek side dish (I think) of finely diced herbs and leaves with finely crumbled Feta cheese. It was quite odd, but also rather nice. One other thing was some sort of Asian dish that was a layer of salad like stuff, with a lot of black sesame seeds over a sticky rice - that probably make it a Thai inspired thing.

  I almost made the wal back from that small Sainsburys to home in one go, but fortunately there was one good excuse to stop for a brief breather when I got back to the terminating bus stop at Catford Bridge. I should have taken a photo so I could compare number plates to see if it was the same 284 bus I had seen earlier, or another one. that was not the only oddity. There was another similar or identical single decker bus parked behind the 284. It's blinds just said "Not In Service". A little further down the road was yet another identical or very similar bus also displaying "Not In Service". What was going on ?

  I can't say it was a fast walk, but it seemed about as fast as my feet could take, and my two very short breathers, were very brief, but I finally arrived home just as I was starting to get the first hints of angina pains. They faded away very quickly once I got home. My feet felt much better once I got my boots off. After stripping down to my underpants to change into indoor clothes, I weighed myself. I knew it was mostly dehydration, but the scales showed a very favourable figure !

  I very soon tucked into my purchases from Sainsburys. I thought I had bought enough for a lunch and dinner, plus possibly a snack for today. I felt so ravenous, and because most of what I bought seemed fairly safe, I ended up having what was really quite a big lunch - even if salad leaves was quite a significant amount of it. Before I got too carried away I transferred the picture taken from my camera to my PC, and also put the camera battery on charge.

  It was gone 3pm when I got home, and that means I probably spent 2 hours in the sun, and I think that may have added a hint of colour to my bare arms, but at this point in the narrative the significant thing is that in between eating, and editing the pictures I would use, time seemed to fly by. I barely had a 10 minute lie down before I was up again to watch the 6 O'clock news on BBC 1. It is usually quite depressing, and if there was any alternative I would watch something else. In this case I might have done well to have had a half hour snooze instead, but then I would have missed dinner time.

  My dinner was the egg and potato salad I mentioned earlier. It seemed like the sort of thing my mum would have once made from leftovers. It was rather nice and I will get another if I see another in Sainsbury's some time. That was everything I had bought in Sainsburys's, and although I had had a rather substantial very late lunch, my dinner didn't feel complete. I completed it with a single Golden Delicious apple and two slices of Gouda cheese.

  After the BBC news I watched Star Trek: Voyager, and two old episodes of The Simpsons. I then went to bed to read for maybe 20 minutes. I wondered if all that food would give me any heartburn. Fortunately it didn't and I was soon fast asleep. It was almost an uneventful night. getting up approximately every two hours to pee no longer counts as out of the ordinary, but one event was at about 2am. I came back from having a pee, and I could not get back to sleep. There seemed to be nothing to keep me awake - I just could not get back to sleep.

  It felt like I was awake for a full hour, but I have a suspicion that as much as half an hour of it, perhaps more, was a dream about being awake. I have nothing to substantiate that idea, but it just feel that could have been the case. There were real dreams I remember fragments of, but I don't think I can remember enough to provide any coherent description. One was about living in some sort of terraced house that looked out on itself....by which I seemed to be able to look out the window and see the front of the house next door. It was all a bit weird.

  This morning was yet another morning where I woke up at what could be a reasonable time to get up, but decided to try for more sleep. It barely worked. It was possibly an hour later when I woke up suddenly as if I had woken from an unpleasant dream or something. In that fraction of a second between sleeping and being it felt like I was thrashing my legs around or something.

  After my first pee of the waking day, but no poo, I weighed myself. All that exercise, which really was not much exercise at all, and all the healthy food I stuffed down my throat that wasn't all that healthy, did allow me to say I lost some weight yesterday - it was just 100gm, and I will regard that as good even though it is less than experimental error.

  My blood glucose was not too bad this morning. It could have been good, but.....  My GlucoRX meter gave a very good reading of 7.2mmol/l. The other two meters were not so good, and in close agreement with each other. The Contour meter read 8.6mmol/l, and that is good enough. In a rare case the Sinocare meter gave a slightly lower reading of 8.4mmol/l. There have been periods of time when I would have regarded that as very good, but I know I can do better.

  There are two things on the agenda today. The second is going to be good and bad. The first is I'll be going for my usually regular Wednesday lunch time drink of a couple of pints of Guinness in The Joly Farmers. After that I have to pick up my latest repeat prescription from the pharmacy. I have no option but to walk home via the pharmacy. The last time it left me feeling winded by the time I got there, and I fear today may be worse. All I can hope is that bare arms, warms sunshine, and hopefully more comfortable shoes may make it more pleasant.