This morning started at around 8° C, and if we are lucky the blue sky and sunshine will drive the temperature up to 18° C, or 20° C according to the Met Office forecast. Yet another day for bare arms when outdoors. It should be a clear night, but the temperature will not drop far, and tomorrow could start at 10° C, Once again there will be plenty of sunshine, but apparently the temperature may only rise to 17° C. It will start to cloud over by 5pm, and a couple of hours later it will start to rain, and this very pleasant warm and sunny spell will be over for the rest of the month, and maybe the start of next month.

  Yesterday was generally a good day, but also another tiring day, and it was rather spoiled by my lower legs and ankles complaining after walking for fairly short distances. I am so glad that I can get the train to go to The Jolly Farmers. It does not reduce the amount of walking much, but it does give a break in the middle.

  I am not sure why I consider my personal grooming being very important when going for a couple of pints at lunchtime. Maybe it is a hangover from the days when I used to meet Angela in the pub at lunchtime. Before going out I had a wet shave, washed and conditioned my hair, and had a shower. Together with a blast of deodorant, and mostly fresh clothes (I have to confess I should wash my jeans soon), I felt ready to face the world with my head held high....or something.
  One unusual thing yesterday is that I took my Nikon Coolpix S3500 out with me. As far as I can remember it was another camera I had bought from a second hand, or charity shop very cheaply. I am sure I was hoping it would be as good as my Nikon Coolpix S6300 camera. I think I gave that camera to Patricia when she needed a good camera, and I soon realised I needed another camera that was really good and versatile. The S3500, despite being a 20mp camera, more resolution that the S6300's 16mp, was not so good in many ways.

  The main problems are that the processor inside seems very slow, and downloading to my PC, via a USB lead, is slow enough that playing video is impossible. The next problem is that there is very little in the way of some manual control of the settings. As an alternative it offers different "scene" settings, but, for instance, even the "Sports" setting does not seem to switch to a high ISO sensitivity so that the shutter speed is set to very fast to compensate. When set to auto it can take very good pictures if conditions are just right, and really lousy pictures otherwise.
  As usual, I walked to Catford Bridge where I caught the train to Ladywell station. While waiting there, and it was a long wait because the train I wanted to catch was cancelled, I took pictures of any train I saw. It took me a long time to work out why this picture does not look good. The train has only just entered the station, and is only just starting to slow down. I think I had the camera set to "active focus", and it was keeping the front of the train in focus, but the rest of the picture has mild motion blur. With my Nikon Coolpix S6300 I would have set the ISO setting very high so the camera uses a very fast shutter to freeze the whole picture.
  This picture, which was actually taken on my way home, looks a lot better. The train is closer to stopping, and is going much slower. Most of the background is fairly well focussed, but the lighting seems very strange. The sun was probably very diffuse at this time as it shined through thin clouds. The cloud in the sky at the back of the picture looks over exposed, but the rest of the picture looks quite drab.

  Out of curiosity I checked other pictures on the memory card, and they go back to 2020. There were some pictures taken on a walk through the park, and some on a day trip to Herne bay. Both had a mix of good pictures, and picture that were just wrong in some way. I know that my Nikon Coolpix S6300 occasionally produces a crap photo, but that is mainly when attempting to shoot into the sun - never a good idea for the best pictures, but sometimes it has to be chanced.
  When I got to Ladywell, and was crossing over the brow of the road bridge over the railway, I found I had a great view of the steeple of the Lewisham United Reform church in Courthill Road. It was wrapped in a very impressive array of scaffolding, and I knew this was a job of my Nikon Coolpix S6300 - which fortunately I had also taken with me. This picture give an idea of the scale of the image.
  This picture is a cropped version of the upper image, but now you get get a bit more idea of just how big this thing is by getting a better view of the two men, presumably scaffolders, working on it. I knew I needed the x10 zoom of the S6300 camera (the S3500 is only x7), but more importantly I needed a really fast shutter to keep the image sharp over such a distance without using a tripod to keep the camera still. I love my Nikon Coolpix S6300 camera, and I bought a spare in case one fails. Both were bought second hand, and moderately cheap. My original, that  gave to Patricia, I bought brand new.

  I had a mostly good 90 minutes or so in the pub, although there was one annoyance. It is a very friendly pub, and the lady of a man and wife duo insisted in giving me 10p when I didn't have any change, and only had a £5 note to pay for my first pint. I was warned that it would happen sooner or later, and now it has - Guinness has gone up to £5.10 a pint now. I started to get my credit card out to pay for my Guinness through the card reader, but the lady insisted that she pay the extra 10p for me.

  When I bought my next pint I just used my card, but I told Ayse (my favourite barmaid) to take £5.20 from the card, and give the 10p change back to the lady. Later, as I was leaving, the husband told me they put the 10p in the charity box. The thing that was annoying was that some bloke, after his mate left, decided he was going to sit with me and help me do the crossword in The Metro. He did help with at least one clue, but I found him to be generally intrusive to my personal space.

  I only stayed for me usual 2 pints, and then started to leave, but I was waylaid by Sid, the friendly Sikh. He works for Lewisham libraries, and in his very soft voice, that I have difficulty following, he was telling me some, I have to admit, interesting stuff about good and bad stuff the council does. One interesting thing that is either happening, or about to happen is that via the library service they may give away free mobile phone SIM cards to those in need. They only last for 6 months, but there is or will be the option for the user to take over the account at the end, at presumably the current rate. The SIM card being given away, and there is only a limited amount of them, are something to do with a deal made with one of the mobile service providers - either because the Council have made it part of a deal to use their services for their mobile communications, or maybe some sort of deal for permission to erect mobile phone masts in some areas.

  I am happy to say that the railway service towards Hayes (Kent) has resumed it's evenly spaced 15 minute service now the points have been repaired between Ladywell and Lewisham. It meant a shorter, but still a bit of a wait when some train faults were causing many trains to be delayed. I think I had something like a 20 minute wait for my train back to Catford Bridge. In the warmth that was not that bad, although the sunshine was very hazy by then. The worst thing was that I knew I had a limited time to get home before I would be wanted another pee.

  Fortunately I was home before my need for a pee became desperate, but maybe another 10 minutes later it would be starting to feel important. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of this is that I just could not speed up my walk from the station to home. I went the most direct route, but my lower legs and ankles, and to a slightly lesser extent, my feet also, were all aching. I could not get the speed up enough to start suffering from anything like angina or other ailments above my legs.

  I was hoping that all this extra walking recently would be starting to strengthen my muscles, and those aching bits would start to ache less, or maybe just later. I had a very brief rest when I got home as I opened a few letters found on my doormat when I got home. Once I had looked at them I went upstairs to the toilet. Now the strange thing is that it was like my aching legs and ankles had been completely reset. Going up stairs was no trouble at all.

  Once home, and changed into indoor clothes, I was very much looking forward to some late lunch - maybe a little bit too much. It seems surprising that two pints of Guinness can drive me insane with imagined hunger, but I suppose there was also the fresh air and exercise. I used my last two Ciabatta rolls to make two beef, horseradish, sliced pickled gherkin, and babyleaf salad rolls. They were delicious, and they seemed mostly filling....for maybe an hour !

  As usual, after washing my hands clean of seepage from my two rolls, I transferred the pictures I had taken from camera to PC. I had taken quite a lot of pictures, and many of them seemed terrible, but some were good, and some might be improved to be good enough if any of them were pictures of trains I had not previously photographed. There was one I added to my spreadsheet because although it was not a great picture (it was the picture of 376001 I showed nearer the top of the page), but it was slightly better than the original picture I used.

  Any work I did with yesterday's picture was over far faster then when I dealt with the pictures I had taken the day before yesterday, but I still felt just as exhausted when I finished. Once I had finished I was looking forward to dinner. It was to be another of those "Calorie Controlled" ready meals I had originally had some days ago. Last night it was ton be the Cod Mornay with peas and mash.

  Before I had that I had a fishy snack. it was a sort of experiment. I opened one of those small squarish cans of Mackerel in (in this case) (alleged) hot sauce. I ate it, and also partly a smaller tine of sardines in Tomato sauce, but using a teaspoon to scoop out small amounts, and put them on rice crackers. It was OK, and sort of pleasant, but I don't that is the best way to eat fish.

  I ate my main course, the cod ready meal, while watching the BBC 6 O'clock news. The news was mostly depressing, but that is nothing new. I can't conceive how, but maybe it was enough to put me off my dinner. That is the only explanation I can think of as to why I found that small ready meal seemed filling enough that I did not want to eat any more....until maybe an hour or two later when I did have a few peanuts.

  There is still not much on TV to attract my attention in the evening, and I think when Star Trek: Voyager finished at 8pm I turned off the TV. I did spend some time reading more technical news on the internet, but I was yawning before 9pm. I then read in bed for maybe about 15 minutes, but I must have been half asleep because I have no memories of what the time was. I think it was not long after 9pm when I turned out the light, and I think I fell asleep fairly quickly.

  Last night was another night when I didn't seem to pee as much as usual. I am not really sure, but I seem to think I got up to pee less frequently as well. Maybe that explains a short period of insomnia I had at around 4am this morning. I had been for a pee, and then I couldn't seem to get back to sleep for as much as half an hour. I have no idea why that happened. I am sure I was warm and comfortable enough, and I think my mind was fairly blank.

  Once I did fall asleep I slept apparently very soundly. Once again my dreams left no more than a few disconnected images that make not enough sense to try and describe them. I do remember one dream was in a workplace setting, but I can't even remember if it was set in a telephone exchange, or a TV repair workshop. I do remember there were people there, but they are just blank faces doing nothing.

  One consequence of not peeing much is that my weight was rather high when I weighed myself. It didn't help that I didn't seem to want to have a poo when I got up. A few hours later and i am getting hints I will probably go in the next few hours. It seems hard to believe, particularly based on what I think I ate yesterday, that I could have put on 1.1kg in the last 24 hours. Once again I blame it, rightly or wrongly, on pee and poo retention !

  I guess I would have liked to eat less yesterday, but I don't think I ate to excess, and my blood glucose measurements tend to back that idea up. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that is pretty fair. The GlucoRX meter read 7.6mmol/l for the third morning running....which seems a bit suspicious...but if correct it is very good. The Sinocare meter part backs that up with a reading of 7.9mmol/l, and that is the first time that meter has produced a reading that low in at least 30 days. There were a few similar readings like this at the beginning of last month.

  Today is going to be a bit different to how it might have been on two points. The first is that Jodie is off to some beer festival this afternoon, and so will not be drinking here as usual. It is possible I will still have a couple of beers with Michael though. On what promises to be the warmest day so far this year, I would probably have gone out for a walk in the sunshine like I did last Thursday (and still got back in time before Jodie arrived).

  I won't be going out for a walk today, but I expect to spend some time in the sunshine doing gardening ! I may even do it topless if the work gets me feeling hot enough. I intend to savagely prune, or even cut down the small and stunted, plus unidentifiable tree at the back of my garden. I have been deliberately pruning it to stop it getting too big over the last 3 or more years, but it has not done anything interesting enough to make me want to keep it. While it is only about 9ft high I think it is time to go. I hope I can find enough strength to saw through the main trunk - it is nearly 4 inch thick near the bottom. I don't intend to try and dig it out because it is right next to the fence.

  As well as gardening, in unknown amounts, I have other housework to do. I have just taken a break from writing to put a t-shirt, a pair of black lounge pants and four pairs of underpants into soak in detergent. I am looking forward to being able to dry them outside on the washing line in the sunshine. I also have a fair bit of washing up to do sitting in the sink ! I don't know how much of this I will achieve, but I suspect I'll have a different set of aching muscles tonight and tomorrow morning.