I am writing this very late in the evening. Today has been a busy day - or at least I was busy until mid afternoon. After that I guess I was just lazy, although I have prepared a lot of pictures - some of which  will be showing today, ad maybe more tomorrow. Yesterday morning started with my successful trip to the pharmacy to collect the correct dosage drugs to complete my repeat prescription.

 After a somewhat hedonistic weekend, my blood glucose was peaking a bit high yesterday morning, and I thought I had better do something about it. The most important bit was to be very careful about what I ate, but increasing my exercise would help too. To that end I took the scenic route when I went to meet Angela in the pub at lunchtime. I first walked away from the pub, and looped around at Catford Bridge station.

  There was a small disaster at the pub - they were just about to run ut of vodka, and could only offer me a single vodka instead of the double I usually buy for Angela. To my surprise she made it last the whole lunchtime. Maybe it was because we had a lot of positive stuff to talk about. The one thing I really wanted to hear about was the final story of her trip to Romford to stay overnight with her daughter Miranda.

  As I mentioned yesterday (or the day before) I had help guide Angela to get on the DLR train at Lewisham, and how to change at Canary Wharf. For the later she didn't listen carefully to what I said. I said she should get off the DLR train on the right hand side when facing the direction of travel. Her seat faced the rear of the train, and she got out on her right hand side, and not the right hand side of the train. Fortunately she did listen when I said that if she did get off the wrong side she would have to go down, and then up the escalators to come up on the right platform for the Stratford service.

  Her final problem was that there were no trains from Stratford, and ideally she would have waited for, or found the rail replacement bus. That would have taken 53 minutes (from memory) to get to Romford. Instead of getting that bus she jumped on a normal red bus which stops at tens of stops on it's 1 hour and 17 minute journey to Romford. It made me wonder how long it might take if all the trains were running correctly.

  I was happy to hear that once she had met up with Miranda she had a very enjoyable evening together. I was a bit saddened that Angela decided that she would pay for a taxi to take her all the way home on Sunday. She had the excuse that when she left it was pouring with rain, and I think she said it was after dark. I had sent her details of a fairly quick route home involving a bus, a tube ride, and than a train straight to Catford, but sadly Angela is not good at travelling on unfamiliar routes.

  When we left the pub it was already wet outside, but it felt like the rain held back it's full torrential downpour until just after we left the pub. It is a truism that walking with a lovely woman in the rain is....well, I can't go as far as to say nice, but it was definitely not as traumatic as after we said goodbye outside her work, and I continued on by myself with icy water running down my neck. At least I did have a coat that was comfortable when done up, and was waterproof, but it would have been better if it had a hood.
  One of the peculiar things about my walk yesterday was that I only stopped to take a few photos, instead of many, and yet my average speed was shown as just 1.38 mph. I thought that I was walking quite fast - particularly so in the rain. I have suspicion that somehow the hour when the app was paused while I was in the pub was not subtracted from the total time to leave just the time I was walking. Anyway, the one picture that I thought worth stopping for was these crocuses growing in the shelter of a large tree. By today they were probably in full bloom

  I don't think it really added any distance, but maybe the view was marginally better when I decided I would walk back partly through the park rather than on the roads. In all my walk was 2.57 miles, and was the longest walk I had done for a week or so. When I got home I felt cold and hungry, but I knew I had to be very careful what I ate. I ended up eating a couple of little cans of well drained mackerel in flavoured sauces, and I ate those while waiting for two fishcakes to cook. They were the second pack I had bought from Aldi with a half price sticker on them. I thought they were cod and chorizo flavour like the other pack I had, but the half price sticker obscured the description. They turned out to be Thai flavoured fish cakes - quite nice, but I think I preferred the cod and chorizo.

  I wasn't totally lazy when I got home...well not after a bit of rest. I hand washed the pillow cases and sheet from my bed, and hung them up to dry overnight. Then I was lazy....or mostly lazy. I was lazy enough not to bother eating, but it was part of my master plan to try and have a light dinner. I think some smoked ham with a load of salad leaves, and some tomatoes and bell peppers was fairly light - or was light until I may have go a bit carried away with the mayonnaise again.

  During the evening I was fermenting a cunning plan - sort of. I thought that if I was up to it I would see how fast I could get from home to Romford by my favourite route. The only reason it is my favourite is because it avoids Stratford station. I don't like that place - it is forever associated with those bloody Olympic games in my mind. To give myself a chance to get to Romford and back in time to meet Angela at lunchtime I knew I would have to leave fairly early (actually 9.15am), and to that end I went to bed early-ish.

  I think I had a fair night, but it was punctuated with some weird dreams. At least I think they were weird. By this late in the day I don't think I remember a single detail from any of them. I woke up this morning feeling basically OK. My partly careful eating may not have been careful enough to lose any weight, but my blood glucose level was down to a nice 7.00mmol/l. The detail of my trip to and from Romford will have to wait until tomorrow, but I will say that my favourite route let me down when I missed a connection by less than 10 minutes and had a 24 minute wait for the next train.