Sadly we have returned to poorer weather, and it will get worse before it gets better. The BBC forecast (above) says there should be sunny spells now, but it is no sign of the sun, and it looks a monochrome light grey outside. The Met Office forecast seems to be correct by adding some light mist as well as cloudy skies. It may not even stay dry today. The BBC forecast says light rain for just 4pm, but I note the ground is slightly damp from some rain in the early hours, and the Met Office forecast suggests drizzle quite a few times during the day. There is even some debate about the afternoon temperature - The BBC says 14° C, and the Met Office say just 12° C. Neither are terribly bad, but I definitely think a coat is needed if I go out. Tomorrow it just gets worse - mostly grey with a couple of sunny spells possible, and the warmest it could be will be 9° C for maybe just a single hour. The day after tomorrow will probably be colder and wetter.

  Yesterday was a very busy day by my standards. Before I could do anything else I had to get my web server up and running to serve these pages. That was just the start, but there were many other things I did, and I didn't really get to rest until after dinner time.

  The problem with my web server was a power supply problem. The web server is actually an old laptop, and so the power supply is an external brick. The problem is that the brick could not give enough power to run the laptop, but only by a small margin. The combined power level of the brick and the very poor condition battery in the laptop managed to almost run the laptop, and after a reboot it lasted just long enough to upload yesterday's writing.

  It was later in the day before I could more fully diagnose this condition, but the battery was flat by then, and the brick did not have enough power by itself to run the laptop once it had fully booted, and was drawing full power. Fortunately I was sure I had a suitable spare power supply brick, and I did. It was actually the original, and it seems to be working OK for now. I think I bought the one that failed because of a misdiagnosis that was either faulty RAM or hard disk. Last night I ordered a new brick in case the original does fail.

  Back to the morning, and once I seemed to have got the server running I could have my breakfast, and then write yesterday's short piece - just 1,263 words. Once written and uploaded to the server I have to contradict what I said a few paragraphs back - I did have a rest, although maybe it was less intense than usual because I had so much to do, and specifically I had to get back to the laundry I had started the day before yesterday, and didn't get back to yesterday.

  That laundry was 2 pairs of lounge pants, and about 5 pairs of underpants. It did not include a t-shirt, although I did think it did at one time. Having wrung out the final rinse water, and then the fabric conditioner, I had the pleasure, or what I thought of the pleasure of hanging it all on the washing line to dry. Despite it being a warm and sunny day, it was still very slightly damp when I brought it in near sunset. I hung it all up indoors, and it should be perfectly dry this morning.

  With the laundry out of he way I could wash my hair and have a shower. That felt good, although it was with water hot enough to be still comfortable, but hot enough to make me feel hot, and I was feeling a bit sweaty as I towelled myself dry. Once I had blown dry my hair I got dressed, checked my Canon EOS 1200D camera, and stepped outside into the warm day wearing just t-shirt and jeans (plus shoes, of course).




  It did feel good to be walking in warm air and in warm sunshine. I wondered how I would fare on this walk. Previous ones, and shorter ones had been quite taxing. This time it was just like some years ago when after a lull in my walking I had to toughen up my muscles and build up to be able to tackle longer and longer walks. The last time I did this walk I could only manage 1.384 mph. Yesterday I managed very slightly faster at 1.498 mph. The difference was that on the previous walk (on 10th January) I just could not push myself any faster. Yesterday I could have probably gone faster, but I was trying to enjoy the walk more.

  I think it would be true to say that for most of the walk I stopped for brief moments, usually to take photos, rather than having to stop to let assorted aches and pains subside. I will confess that on the home straight I was very happy to stop for a couple of minutes in one case when I saw opportunities to get some snaps of some small birds. Normally I am hopeless at getting snaps of small birds in trees, but yesterday I got lucky twice.




  I took several pictures along the way that had little merit. One was of a Parakeet, but I couldn't be bother to show that here because those birds are as common as pigeons now. This picture I took after reaching Ladywell, and heading for home. The prime reason to take it was to show how there was a lot of thin clouds at the time, and they were making the sunshine very muted.
  The last time I did this walk it was a sort of forced walk because I wanted to take some test shots using a new wide angle lens. I still hope that lens is going to be very useful at gigs when I am too close to the stage (or stage area). It was not good for most landscape photography. One picture I took was of the Riverside block of Lewisham Hospital. That picture was not good at all, but this one, taken with a normal lens, shows all I want, although I must admit it does look a bit dull. I took it during the time the thin clouds were making the sunshine very weak.
  When I took the above picture I had walked about 3/4 of the route, and by then I was glad for a short stop to mainly rest my ankles that were starting to ache rather more than I cared for. I heard this Robin, and looked up in the trees until I saw it. I am not sure if it was calling for a mate, or warning off other robins that this was it's territory (they are very territorial birds). It took a bit of patience, which fortunately I had plenty of while I rested my feet, to catch it in the middle of it's song with it's beak open. It is surprising how such a little bird makes so much noise.
  I formed the impression, probably wrong, that there was another robin in a nearby tree. I scanned the treetops and I did see some silhouettes of small birds. I couldn't see more because it was more or less in the direction of the sun. However, if I went up the "curly wurly" footbridge over the railway I could could get up to a similar height to where I saw the birds in the tree, and this time the sun was behind me. Once again it took some patience, but I managed to get this shot of blue tit (at least I think it is a blue tit, but I haven't yet checked to confirm it). They aren't award winning photos, but I feel fairly proud of these two small bird pictures.

  After not moving around much my ankles and feet seemed to feel OK for a bit, but the aches seemed to return fairly quickly, and the last bit of the walk was a bit of a slog. Once I got home I had to fight the idea of a lie down and a rest because I had more to do. I still had a bit of washing up to finish, and then I wanted to make some lunch. Once again it was quite a late lunch, and I think it was about 2.30pm before I sat down and ate a single Paninni sandwich of ham and cheese.

  I ate it at the dining room table because by then it would not be long before Jodie arrived to go through more of the beers in the fridge. I was still finishing the last of the sandwich, and washing it down with a none too pleasant hazy IPA beer bought from Aldi, when Jodie arrived. I am not sure why, but I didn't seem to be drinking very fast yesterday, but it was still faster than Jodie. She was partly slow because she was, as usual, spending ages on her phone.

  Some of her phone usage was to log the beers she was drinking on the Untappd web site, and she was doing it like a professional - a little sip, make a note, another little sip, or maybe another sniff of the smell of the beer and another note added. Somehow it all seems very odd for me, brought up on the idea that beer is for quaffing in big mouthfuls, and wine is for sipping and smelling.

  I guess....no, I know I was tired after that walk, and so I was not really in a beer drinking mood, or not fully, anyway. It was handy that Jodie had to leave early to meet Alan up in town where they were going to see the huge illuminated cats in Leicester Square. She left at about 5.20pm, and it was not long before I started on my dinner - a little bit earlier than usual.

  I started my dinner with the second chicken tikka samosa I bought from Aldi on Friday. I left this one out of the fridge for only about half an hour. It still didn't warm to room temperature, but it was better than the previous one that I ate straight from the fridge. That one seemed very tasteless in comparison to the previous two I had bought a week or so previous, and I didn't bother to put them in the fridge because I knew I would be eating them that day. They were really delicious.

  Part two of my dinner was Peking Duck flavoured instant noodle pot. It was a bit of a random decision to have that. I think I was probably going to have a can of soup. That would have been a more healthy decision, but maybe not so convenient to just pouring boiling water into a disposable pot. With hindsight I thing soup would have been a nicer option. I finished off dinner with two apples of different varieties, a very ripe, small, banana and some cheese.

  All I could really find on TV last night was some more episodes of The Simpsons, but that did include a couple of new episodes that I recorded. One some dreary day, maybe like today, I will have to edit the growing collection of recordings, and then archive the top and tailed, and advert free episodes. It was a very typical night last night - TV until 9pm, and then reading in bed for 15 to 20 minutes, and then into a fairly deep sleep.

  Last night I seemed to wake less to get up to pee less. I can't think of any real reasons why, but I feel I did not sleep well last night. I do feel sure I was dreaming a lot last night, but only one bit of one dream has stayed in my memory. I was back in a Telephone exchange, and this time it was Catford exchange. I seemed to have gone back there after many years had passed, and there were a lot of changes, but much of it seemed familiar. The one big change, and the bit I remember best was that there was now a young and attractive nun working there !!

  I could have got up at just gone 6am this morning. It was starting to get light, but I decided another half hour in bed would be nice. It was 7.50am when I woke up and than got up. Maybe all that extra sleep, well over 8 hours sleep, or seemingly so, was one good reason to think most of my sleep was not so good. I went for my usual pee, and this time it was quite a big one, but at that time there was no poo.

  It is a shame that it was only 10 minutes ago, long after eating breakfast, and drinking about a glass full, that I had a heavy seeming poo, and another medium poo. It might have made me weight look a bit better, but this morning I recorded it as exactly the same as the day before yesterday - which was fairly good, but not as good as the exceptionally low weight of yesterday.

  The less amount of peeing last night could suggest my blood glucose was lower then often, and to my surprise it did indicate that correctly this morning (often it means nothing at all). All three meters were in very close agreement, and all were nice and low (but still not as low as desirable). The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l. The GlocoRX meter initially gave a stupidly high reading, and so I used a new test strip, and made sure I had a nice clean pinprick of blood to check, and it then read a very good 7.9mmol/l - just low enough to go into the light green on my spreadsheet colour code. The Sinocare meter was in full agreement this time with a reading of 8.0mmol/l - just missing being colour coded light green.

  My original plans for today was to capitalise on the improvement in my legs and feet as I slowly strengthen them. Based upon the forecast for today a day or so ago, when the forecast said a bit cooler, but still sunny, I was thinking of trying a slightly longer walk today. When I look out the window at the dull greyness outside I think I have lost the will to go out - even to the local shops. I can think of a few things I could buy from Poundstretcher, but I am not sure I can raise the enthusiasm for even that.

  Being very lazy today seems like a good idea.....up to a point. As mentioned a few paragraphs up the page I really ought to try and make some headway in reducing my backlog of recordings of The Simpsons. If it does brighten up a bit I might consider doing a bit of tidying up in the garden. It is already just starting to go higher than 10° C, and could reach 14° C. I guess that should be mild enough to endure an hour or two in the garden, but I have to admit I don't seem to have any enthusiasm for it at the moment.