The wind may be a bit lighter today, and that may allow the forecast 17° C actually feel closer to 17° C. Once again it should be very sunny, and of course dry. Even the night may not get that cold. Tomorrow the wind may shave off a degree or two, but it could be a very warm day. The headline may show 20° C, but the hour by hour forecast only shows a maximum of 19° C, but most of the afternoon should be this warm, and it may feel almost hot when out of the wind.  We could have another 7 days of good weather after tomorrow, although tomorrow should be hotter than any of those next 7 days.

  To my delight, yesterday was a pretty good day, or at least the results this morning say it was.  That's not to say there weren't a few negative things about yesterday. Those things will be revealed in due course, and it might turn out there was actually only one of them.

  I've been debating whether to call it a negative thing, or not, but I think I will. I seemed to take a bit more time writing yesterday, but I thought I would still have time for a rest before getting ready to go to the pub for my Wednesday lunchtime drink. I was just getting myself in the right frame of mind (or something like that) to wash my hair, and have a shower, when two interruptions, in the form of messages on my phone, came through. One involved stopping to watch and download a video showing a man of my acquaintance being stupid/unsocial/etc.

  I felt I only had time to shave and shower, and leave out washing my hair - which was a pity because it was not looking very presentable. Most times that would not matter, but one day, and maybe I have had one or more of those "one days" in the past, and someone has joined me in he pub who I would have liked to present a cleaner appearance to. I will admit that yesterday it didn't really matter.
 
  I still managed to get to the station inn time for my usual train, the 12:34, but an extra minute to recover before crossing the foot bridge would have been nice. I think I almost made it to the station at my old speed, but I was not feeling that good when I got there, and an extra minute to get my breath back would have been good. However, about 30 seconds seemed to take the edge off the expected discomfort as I hurried over the footbridge.

  It does seem that taking daily doses of Clopidogrel, the drug I was originally only supposed to be on for one year after a hospital visit in 2019. When I reminded my doctor about it he said to stop taking the drug, and I ended up with 5 weeks worth of pills left over. I have decided to use them up by taking a weeks worth, and then rest for a week or two. This drug in a blood thinner, and it does seem to help when I take it.

  I arrived at the pub at about my usual time, and ordered my first of just two pints of Guinness. It seemed a bit quiet in the pub initially, but quite a few more people soon turned up. Most of them I know by face, and some to talk to. I must admit I didn't talk that much because I was struggling with The Metro quick crossword. I came to the conclusion that one reason why it was so hard was that the "bastard compiler" often uses words that have different meanings, and sometimes the meanings can be more varied that the clue called for.

  Actually, I don't think that explanation is very good, and I need to think about a better way to describe it, and make notes of typical clues and answers that only match in a slightly twisted ways. Hmmmm, I've just thought up an example of the sort of thing I mean. This has never actually been a clue, and is just from my imagination. Clue: state of high readings on a scale. Three letters. Answer: Fat.

  One minor problem yesterday was that from time to time I felt a bit too cool in the pub. The heating was not on, as expected with the temperature outside being quite warm, but only out of the wind. Sometimes that wind would blow through the pub ! Other than that I felt quite good, and I was almost tempted to have a third pint, but I didn't think that would be a good idea on a day when I decided I was going to walk home.

  It was only last Sunday when I walked all the way to Ladywell, and back. Walking just half of that should have been half as hard, but there was a catch. yesterday I tried to do the walk almost non stop. I did take two short breaks to take a couple of pictures, but I tried to do the walk against the clock.

  Last Sunday I managed Ladywell and back at 1.6mph. I did stop the clock while I rested on the platform at Ladywell station, and that would have helped a fair bit. As well as stopping twice to take pictures, I admit that I did stop a couple more times to check my progress on the tracker on my phone. The latter probably took no more than 15 seconds, maybe even less, but even that was a useful breather.

  I managed an average speed of just a bit over 2mph. I don't think I have any examples of it, but I once used to reckon that of I was late to meet Angela, I could just about make it from home to the pub in 15 or 16 minutes. Yesterday I was going slightly up hill* and it took 23 minutes from pub to home. Maybe that is not too bad. The downside is that to do that I had to push myself to the point that my chest was really starting to hurt when I got home....although it wasn't quite like angina for some reason. It was definitely not a nice feeling.

* The idea of going uphill is not obvious until you consider one thing. Much of my walk very broadly follows the course of the River Ravensbourne, and it is well known that rivers run downhill ! Maybe I only ascended a single foot over the course of my walk, but even one foot is most definitely up hill !
  This picture, illustrating Spring, with a tree in full blossom, was taken in the St Mary's Therapeutic Garden. I am sure the sky was a much deeper blue, bit no matter how I tweaked the picture the sky came out either pale, or just weird.
  If you are not familiar with duck this picture could seem sinister - ducks with no heads ! But......
  ...after a very strong, and chilly gust of wind the duck on the right was woken from it's sleep, and has a yawn and a look around to see what is happening. The duck on the left, maybe after the strain of an extra loud quack, was too tired to wake up.

  Apart from rushing upstairs for a pee, the first thing I did was to make some lunch. It started out as two crusty rolls - one had ham and mustard in it, and the other corned beef with horseradish sauce. Both had sliced tomato in them. I'm sure I had something else two, but I can't remember what. I may be mistaken by including a snack I had later in the afternoon of a small amount of crisps and a small amount of peanuts.

  After eating I had a small amount of pictures to go through. As well as the pictures shown, I probably took about 6 or 7 pictures of trains I saw, but none were of any interest once I had consulted my spreadsheet. What I really wanted to do was to have a lie down and ideally, a snooze, but somehow there didn't seem to much time for that. Time seemed to fly by, and before I knew it, I had turned on the TV, and was watching a very often repeated episode from Star Trek: The Original Series.

  At about 5.30pm I was interrupted by the the delivery of one item I had ordered from Amazon. I had been made aware it had been despatched, but the only warning I had that it was out for deliver was a text message allegedly from the driver to say he would be with me soon (it was over half an hour later). The item was an amplified indoor TV aerial. I ordered it after seeing the rather rock solid reception on my 10 inch TV that came with an amplified aerial.

  I was not sure if the new aerial made any difference when I initially plugged it in, but a retune found half a dozen more channels that I could not see before (but those channels don't generally seem to be worth having !). With the retune done, and a after a quick flick through the channels, 6pm was fast approaching, and I went down to the kitchen to get my dinner. It was a very simple dinner, and I am sort of surprised I seemed satisfied with it.

  My dinner was a Tesco Chicken Caesar salad. For something so simple they are surprisingly nice, but I wouldn't normally say they are filling. I topped yesterday's up with a dessert. It was possibly a scoop and half's worth of Tesco Neapolitan ice cream. It is nice, but not wonderful.It would still be very easy to get carried away eating it, but I just about managed to show enough restraint. My blood glucose might have been better if I had had a lot less, or none, but I managed to cope with it - just.

  The BBC news was pretty boring, and Star Trek: Voyager was a bit tedious. Once again I was heading to bed soon after 8pm. I did do a few things that delayed me, and I don't think I actually got to sleep until a little after 9pm. I think I slept well, or "well" by recent standards. I still got up every few hours to have a pee. It was a lot colder in the bathroom, and I would get back to bed feeling cold, but I am sure that I often felt cold when waking up - and that was despite my room thermometer saying it was actually quite warm in my bedroom.

  I can only remember one dream, and it seems too disjointed to give a linear narrative about it, and can only describe the sort of theme of it. It seemed to concern a friend I haven't seen for ages since he moved so far away, but this dream was evidently set in a time when he lived more locally, and we would see each other very frequently. In the dream he seemed to be visiting me, but one of the trouble describing the dream is how the place were in seemed to keep changing.

  Some of it took place in my dining room, but at other times we seemed to be in his workplace. He was telling me he had recorded his first video presentation. He had a tape of it, plus out takes. He said I would find it quite amusing, and handed me a tatty old VHS tape cassette. That was one time when we jumped from his workplace to my dining room, and I said I would take a copy of his cassette. I already had two VHS machines wired together, but for some reason neither was connected to a TV or monitor. While we chatted the tape copied. That essentially was the dream, but there was so much incidental stuff going on, or to see, that it seemed like the dream lasted for ages. I know well enough that dream time and waking time run at completely different scales.

  I admit that was not exactly a thrilling description of a dream. The other one I can describe, and describe quite well, only left about 30 seconds of memory. I was trying to get into a tiny car, smaller than the original Mini. As I tried to get one of my legs into the footwell I got terrible cramp. As is often the case, the cramp was also back in the real world, and I woke up very sharply. I leapt out of bed, and once I had weigh on my leg the cramp just faded away.

  That seemed like a good time to get up, and it was about 6:10am anyway. I went to the toilet to pee, but I didn't poo. Fortunately, after standing up as I counted my pills for the day out, it felt like I would be doing a poo, and I did, plus a little more pee. At that time I had not eaten anything, and so I weighed myself again. Maybe that is cheating, but I didn't care because I was very happy to see I had lost 700gm.

  I know it doesn't always work, and this time it did a bit, but not enough to be statistical - I'm talking about peeing and blood glucose. I peed as much as usual last night, and maybe more, but my blood glucose readings, with one exception were good or good enough. The Contour meter read 8.0mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read only a bit lower at 7.8mmol/l. Both are good, and both close enough to corroborate each other. The Sinocare meter read 9.2mmol/l on my first attempt, and I knew that must be wrong. I cleaned my finger and squeezed out fresh blood. This time it read 8.7mmol/l. That is still higher than the other two, but at least it is a safe reading (if it is the case that it is right, and the other two wrong).

  The only minor annoyance this morning is that my blood pressure is a bit high - but only by a small amount. The best I could manage after two attempts was 114/48. I think that is still in the "Optimum", and that is well good enough, but it looks higher than my more average 108/48 for the whole of March. I am wondering if taking Clopidogrel tablets is responsible for this very slight rise.

  My initial plan this morning is that after I have had a short rest I will wash my hair and have a shower. Before doing that I think I will turn the water temperature down a bit. It is getting a bit hot now the weather has improved, and turning it down will not only make it more comfortable, but will save on my gas bill as well. Once I have done that I am going out. It would be useful if I had the time and enthusiasm to go for a mile or two walk, but I suspect I will only go to the shops.

  Later this afternoon there should be a beer tastings session with Jodie and Michael. I had suggested that we all go to Jodie's favourite meeting place to meet Alan, The Three Hounds Beer Cafe (as some describe it). The reason being that Simon Whitestar will be doing half of a solo acoustic guitar session there in their downstairs room. There are now a few reasons I don't think I will go - despite suggesting it in the first place. The obvious thing is that I would normally, and probably will today, drink quite enough for one day while I am here in my own home. Other reasons are that the gig is a 7:30pm start, and by then I would usually be thinking about bed. Maybe that is starting to change now the nights are a lot lighter now. The other important thing is that I expect Michael would not want to go. He would prefer to stay here to drink a lot, and offload all his moans about care homes, council tax, etc etc. He admit that out Thursday sessions help him hold on to his sanity.