It seems I may have made a cock up yesterday, and labelled yesterday as the day before. Hopefully I will correct as much as I can, and get the dates correct from now on. Yesterday was actually a semi good day - good as in the rain held off for long enough to go for a walk in the park.

  I guess I was distracted by worries about my weight and blood glucose level yesterday morning. If I was not due to see the nurse tomorrow I would not worry too much because I know I can, and I am correcting these things. The weather forecast looking so crap was another reason to be distracted by negative thoughts. I blame both for making mistakes when writing these daily web pages.

  When I had finished writing, and correcting one error ( and since this morning I may have corrected the other error), I had my usual lie down, and read for a bit. I then had a shower because I thought that in light rain I could still go shopping in Tesco. Then I realised that although it was quite gloomy outside, not a drop of rain had fallen. I had a mad idea, I would dare to go for a walk.

  Had it been bright and dry, and warmer, I might have chanced a long walk through the Linear Park, but under the gloomy sky I thought I was brave enough to take a chance on walking to Ladywell Station, pick up a copy of The Metro, and then walk home. Had it started to rain there were plenty of places to shorten the walk without going over the same ground. That is one advantage that Ladywell Fields has over the River Pool Linear Park. Once inside there, with the exception of a short part of it where you can walk either side of the river, you can only cover your own steps when leaving again.

  I did my 1.428 mile walk with no breakfast inside of me, and maybe that helped make it a bit easier going.Having said that, I could still only average 1.783mph. That is about the same as last time, although it is possible that last time I did pause the tracker almost every time I stopped for more than a moment to take a picture. Yesterday I only paused the tracker when I was getting my breath back at Ladywell station.

  The dark grey sky, with the ever present chance of rain, made the walk less exciting....and at the same time more exciting. There was a minor thrill of defying the odds I guess. One thing about yesterday's walk was that there was no worries about getting too hot. The wind was quite chilly on my bare legs and arms. One peculiar thing is that I felt some sort of fellowship with all the joggers - who were the majority of people I saw in the park.
 At about the halfway to Ladywell, past the sports arena and the kiddies playground. I was able to take a long shot that showed a large expanse of a filthy grey sky. The whole world looked very grey.
  I had the feeling that I may have walked to Ladywell station quicker than recently, but I didn't take a screenshot of the tracker to see if that feeling came close to the truth. At Ladywell station I took a short breather, and this train arrived while I waited. It is a bit of a rough picture - partly because it was rather dim out, and partly because I thought it prudent to use my fully waterproof Fuji XP71 camera. That camera can be used underwater, but I didn't expect it to get that bad.
  These days I see loads of Lime hire bikes laying around, plus a scattering of "Boris Bikes" (now sponsored by Santander). On rare occasions I see others from places outside London. I thought this "Forest" bike might be an escapee from Epping Forest, or even The New Forest, but their really, really terrible web site that doesn't render properly on my PC, and uses horizontal scrolling instead of the more conventional Vertical scrolling, suggests that may be based in north west London, but cover all but the south east of London.
  This picture would have looked a lot better if I had used one of my better cameras, and where I could use a very fast shutter speed. There was a lot of wind, and the twig in the foreground was blown at the camera just as I took the shot. The relevant bit of the picture is out of focus and suffers from motion blur. It was supposed to show small cherries on what looks like a cherry tree.....possibly. I think it may be an "ornamental cheery tree" instead of an edible cheery tree. I really have no idea why I had not noticed it before.
  I thought my little waterproof camera could take a good picture of something big and solid, but in the dim light the shutter speed must have been so slow that some camera shake has slightly blurred the picture. Using the x5 zoom function at full wouldn't have helped either. Being ignorant I shall just call this a tractor, although I expect it has a different name for those in the trade.

  At first I thought it was cutting the already short looking grass on the football pitch, but when I examined my picture a bit better I realised it had a hopper on the back. That hopper was either for seed or fertiliser, and probably both. It looks there is a rotating tool that pricks the grass, or something like that, and then there is a big heavy roller to flatten it all down again (and possibly sealing the seeds out of reach of the birds who might feast on it.

  It may be false optimism, but I think I had got closer to home than last time, before my ankles and legs started to complain. At time, and particularly when very near home, I tried to lengthen my stride to walk faster despite the aches. To a limited extent it did work, although I couldn't keep it up for long. I feel I am going to try and force myself to do this more often in an attempt to strengthen my legs.

  One good thing is that I had no chest pains at all on this walk, nor the return of the stitch I had on my previous walk. It was still good to get indoors. I thought it was going to be extra good because I thought I felt the start of some very fine rain, but it came to nothing. After that walk without any breakfast, I deserved a good lunch. I had two Ciabatta rolls filled with cheese, tomato and baby salad leaves. Two was probably more than I wanted, but I definitely wanted more than just one. They were nice, but maybe it was just guilt that made me think two was too much.

  Before I had a rest I dealt with the photos I had taken, and I had a quick flick through the copy of The Metro I had collected from Ladywell Station. Then I laid down and read for a bit before having a short snooze. I think it was about 3pm when I got a bit bored with that, and because it still didn't seem to be raining I decided I would go out again - and this time it would be a shopping trip to Tesco.

  I put my shorts back on, followed by my first pair of Adidas trainers, and a clean t-shirt. I then went down to the kitchen to check what I might need from Tesco. I glanced out the window and found the rain had finally started, and it looked like it was catching up on what should have fallen in small amounts over the course of the day. It was absolutely bucketing down ! There was nothing for it but to go back to my bedroom and change back into indoor clothes.

  Among the things I did to keep me amused until it was time to watch the news on TV (plus a bit of TV before that) was to attempt the crosswords in The Metro. The quick crossword was compiled by "the bastard" yesterday, and I barely managed half of it. I was feeling a bit disheartened, and I don't think I put my full effort into the cryptic crossword, but I did managed 5 or 6 clues.

  Another I did was to have a snack. It was spam on race crackers with some mustard pickle (which contains an unacceptable amount of sugar in it). A bit later on I would have a simple dinner of two Scotch Eggs with some chilli sauce. I don't think they contained much sugar. That was the last thing I ate except for a small handful of peanuts. It may be that it not having Captain Janeway appearing very often was the reason why I almost enjoyed Star Trek: Voyager.

  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was almost enjoyable as well. I would have continued to watch TV after the latter finished, but I checked the guest on the episode of QI that I would have watched next. One guest on the panel was Johhny Vegas. I really hate the man, and so I switched off the TV at 9pm and headed for bed. I read for a while, but I was fast asleep around 10pm.

  Curiously enough, I woke for a pee at exactly midnight, and then again at exactly 2am. On each occasion I didn't seem to pee much, and I am sure I could have bottled it all up to do a much bigger pee at 2am. I think I woke at 2 more, more random times for more peeing, but still in lesser quantities. I think I may have woken up when I didn't need to earlier on because I was feeling cold. I had set the heater thermostat to cut out probably just before In was comfortable. At 2am I turned it up a bit. At 5am I had to turn it up more - it was quite an cool start this morning.

  There was only one notable dream that I had last night, and it was another curious dream where I seemed to be just reading a news story or something. Apart from being a reader, I took no part in the dream. It was about a sort of race using small boats with 9 of them being "driven" by NASA test pilots, and the other one by an artist of some unknown description. Each boat was noted as being identical, and the race was around a small circular pond or lake. The NASA test pilots all took the same course, and all did it in an almost identical time. The artist took a little longer, but claimed he or she took a more artistic route, and so was the winner !

  Getting to bed and to sleep earlier meant I got up earlier this morning. I went for another smaller than usual pee, but no poo was forthcoming. I expected to see I had put a lot more weight on, but it was just 200gm, and that is almost within experimental error. I must admit that I was hoping for a big drop. There is now very little time left to get ready to surprise the nurse when she orders me onto the scales as part of my annual humiliation.

  Could all the lack of peeing large amounts (which would also have made my weight less) signify my blood glucose was back down to a far better figure ? The answer was almost no. The Contour meter read 8.8mmol/l - which is high but acceptable. The GlucoRX meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that is not bad at all. For reasons only known to itself, the Sinocare meter decided my blood glucose was a really awful 9.9mmol/l. That is right next to the red line and danger zone. One possible thing is that it was the very last test strip in the container. It does sometimes feel like those test strips can go off after a time. It might explain why they only put 25 in a container while the test strips for my other two meters come in containers of 50 test strips.

  The main thing on the agenda for today is my usual Wednesday visit to The Jolly Farmers for my usual two pints of Guinness. I think I will walk there, and collect two copies of The Metro from Ladywell station. I shall probably get a train back to Catford so I can buy a few things in the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. That will include more of the instant noodles that claim zero sugar content. A couple of packets of those may be my dinner tonight.

  One of my tasks for later this afternoon will be to get one of two printers working to get printouts of all my health speadsheets to give to the nurse when I see her. Both printers have not been used for ages. It is certain that the HP inks will have dried out, and anyway the HP printer is a crappy printer. I am hoping the Canon printer may still work because the paper feed in that printer should work OK. The HP printer will usually only accept one single sheet of paper very, very carefully fed into it at a time.

  I see the nurse at 9.30am tomorrow, and although I may make a start at it, I will never finish writing in time before I have to wash, dress and go out (probably into pouring rain). I will finish the job after I get back home, or possibly after having finally got in the shopping I have been meaning to get since Monday !