Sunday 12th April 2020

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Sunday 12th April 2020

Lockdown day 20

08:54 BST

I think yesterday was the first day I would describe as being hot. The sun was out all morning, and for a few hours into the afternoon. After that the sunshine did seem to get a bit hazy, and the sky seemed to turning a bit milky. The afternoon temperature was 25° C.

The latest revision of the weather forecast has depreciated the afternoon temperature by one degree, and the afternoon high is predicted to be just 23° C. That is still good enough to wear t-shirt and shirts, but it lacks the sizzle of yesterday's 25° C. Other than that small change, today should be very similar to yesterday until we get to 8pm. In the screenshot above a thunderbolt is depicted, but the actual chance of rain was thought to be just 9%. The latest revision omits the thunderbolt, and says the chance of rain at 8pm will be just 4%. Tomorrow is going to be a lot cooler. There should still be a mix of sunny spells and sunshine, but the maximum temperature could be as low as a cool feeling 11° C

Cubot Dinosaur version of my
walking route

I felt a bit creaky again yesterday morning, but I felt I had to get out again for another walk in the sun. I made the assumption that if I felt reasonably OK at the end of the walk the day before, I would do OK on this one. What is more, I wanted to push myself a bit more, and really walk 4 miles.

I did walk 4 miles, and maybe a little more, but once again there were glitches on the GPS trace that made it seem I had walked more than I really had. Yesterday I took two phones with me. I thought my old Cubot Dinosaur phone might have been less sensitive to the glitches that always seem to occur near Lower Sydenham.

For some reason it turned out the old phone was worse than the new phone, and yesterday the new phone only had a couple of tiny glitches, and they seemed to be when I was under fairly thick tree cover. The old phone, whose trace is on the far left, "threw a wobbly" when I went under the subway by Catford Bridge, and the trace insists I walked down to the town hall to cross the road !

With just two little glitches on the Huawei P20 Lite phone (the new, or latest phone), the right hand trace above, seems to have been close enough to accurate that I think my extended walk really was getting close to 4.13 miles. I have to admit that pushing myself to go right down to Bell Green, where I did a big loop to avoid the huge queues for the big Sainsbury's there, was hard work, and this time I really did feel knackered when I got home again.

Yesterday I added another bird to my non existent list of water birds seen on, or in, the river. Nearly all the birds are just Mallard ducks, but with the occasional sight of a Mandarin duck. There are coots and moorhen, and occasionally a heron is o be seen, but I can't recall any geese before, and definitely not Egyptian Geese like these two !

The day before I said that if I felt a bit more relaxed on my walk I would get down onto the shingle where the river bed is exposed while the river is running so low. Yesterday I did just that. The view above is looking upstream, and of the shingle I had just walked over. I had stepped down onto it from the left, from a point just beyond where the rocks can be seen in the water. I have no real idea why I felt it exciting to do this. I guess it must be just part of the built in human instinct to explore that many, but not all have.

I saw this huge electronic poster at Bell Green. The only trouble with this message is that idea of wearing crocs causes the bile to rise in my throat, and so all those people have lost any sympathy from me.

There were two things that spoiled my walk. The first was some family groups, and one family group in particular. At a time when you try your best to give all plague carriers the widest space possible, there was on family group, mum, dad, and kid on scooter, who could only manage an average speed of 2 miles per day, and mainly because the kid on the scooter was weaving around all over the place. Between the three of them they were using the entire width of the path.

While trying to keep 10 metres distance behind these slow coaches, our peace and tranquillity was ruined by a police helicopter buzzing around overhead. As far as I could estimate it was circling The Pool River Linear Park, Ladywell Fields, probably Blythe Hill Fields, and maybe even Mountsfield Park. I presume they were checking that no one was standing still, because that would not be exercise, and that everyone was trying to keep clear of the joggers by as many metres as possible without actually walking in the river. It occurred to me they had a better tool than a helicopter - police horses. Lewisham Police station has a stable with (I think) 6 police horses in it. They regularly exercise in Ladywell Fields, and leave their spoor (I think that is the term) on the roads around here. Patrolling the parks on horseback would be more ecologically sound, and the policemen and policewomen could actually offer advice instead of trying to intimidate people by buzzing them from the air,

I came straight home from my walk without getting any shopping this time. The last few hundred yards were really hard going. My legs were complaining, and even my feet were complaining. The latter was bothersome because prior to this it had seemed that my old Karrimor hiking boots were really comfortable. I did notice that the insoles are starting to show some wear, and I will try some new, but different insoles the next time I take them for a walk. Hopefully that will make them comfortable again.

The first thing I did when I got home was to strip of down to my underpants, and get on the scales. I had a most pleasant surprise. Despite knowing it was mostly dehydration, the scales showed my weight down to 126.0kg. That is the lowest it has been for....I don't really know to be honest. I am not even sure I got it down to that after my really serious dieting to try and cure my angina pains prior to my quad heart bypass operation in September 2013. That felt rather good, but as they say, pride goes before a fall. I thought I would check my blood glucose. I expected it to have dropped at least a point since early morning, but it had gone up 2 points, and I was now in the danger zone. I hope it was just the result of dehydration, but nevertheless it was worrying.

One reason it was actually even more worrying is that I was expecting it to go up a lot later because I was going to eat the other two "ploughman's" rolls I had. They were already out of date, and I couldn't defer eating them any more. I didn't actually dare to check my blood glucose again yesterday, but I checked it this morning, and while it would be great if it were a bit lower, it is not that bad, and certainly lower than I feared. Of course my weight has gone up again, but not as bad as expected, and I have still to empty my bowels this morning. Once that happens it may show that I did still manage to shed a little bit of weight yesterday.

There were two things going on that were probably reinforcing each other yesterday afternoon. I felt tired after that walk, but I also felt sort of smug to have walked my first 4 mile walk for ages. The two combined to give a sort of "I can't be bothered to fight this. I've done enough for one day, and now I will practice being lazy at an advanced level for the rest of today". That is exactly what happened. I spent much of the afternoon laying on my bed reading or snoozing, and once or twice listening to the words of some Prog Rock tunes with my eyes closed.

There was not a lot on TV last night, and I probably spent less than 2 hours in front of the "goggle box". Probably the most important thing I did was to make sure I was well hydrated by drink two bog bottles of beer. I could easily have gone to sleep earlier than I did, but I was getting near the end of the book I was reading, and decided I might as well finish it. I then did one more thing before going to sleep. I got out my pedicure tool and ground off some of the high spots on my feet, and treated my feet to some moisturiser. They actually felt quite good when I got into bed, and fell asleep.

My lack of any clear memories of waking up suggested that I was exhausted enough to get some deep sleep last night. I do have a dream like recollection of getting up for a pee one, and maybe twice, but my first real memory is of waking up at just gone 5am. I definitely needed a pee then, and while I was out of bed I refreshed the weather forecast pages so I could take a screenshot of it later. Then I went back to bed.

Once back in bed I went through what is now a very common thing. I lay there thinking I couldn't get back to sleep - particularly with the first light of dawn beginning to show around the curtains. Then, the next thing I knew was that two whole hours had passed, and I was waking up again. That seemed like the right time to get up properly. This morning I feel what I guess I could describe as positive.

My legs definitely feel a bit stiff and achey, but I have some sort of mad optimism that they will loosen up later. My blood glucose is very high (9.3), but I can directly blame that on the bread I ate yesterday, and it is not as bad as I predicted. My weight has predictably gone up from my dehydrated state yesterday, but as I said only a couple of paragraphs ago, it shows promise for coming down a bit more if I can just be reasonably careful.

The one thing I don't think I will do today is go on a long walk. I have contemplated a quick walk to Ladywell and back, but it may end up as no more than a walk to and from the Turkish, 24 hour a day, supermarket to buy some pop, maybe some beer, and maybe some food. I will try and do something to the back garden today, but what I really want for that is some rain. The grass seed I put out a couple of week back seems to have done absolutely nothing - probably because it has remained too dry (but it did get a little rain soon after I scattered the seed around. Once some real rain is forecast, perhaps next Saturday, I will try some of the seed I bought from the Poundshop.