Today will share many features of yesterday. The middle of the day should be very sunny, and the temperature should reach 21° C - that's a couple of degrees less than yesterday, but it probably won't feel that much less. This morning some light cloud made the sunshine a bit diffused, and perhaps the same will happen for the last few hours of daylight. Maybe those last few hours will be worse than that, and the sun will go in from time to time. Tomorrow should follow the same pattern, but the afternoon temperature may only reach 17° C. That will feel a bit cool after the last few days.

  I deliberately chose the route, and then elaborated on it by often walking in loops to push the distance I walked. It was also planned to take me through the park where I had hoped to see Angela at 1.30pm. I overestimated the time it would take to walk there, but not by much. I think I was only 8 minutes early. I hung around for a few minutes, and then thought that if she was coming I could walk towards where she might emerge from work. There was no sign of her, and she didn't even respond to my text message to say I would give her a wave as I passed. Doing these walks without the inspiration that Angela provides makes them so much harder to do, but at least I am getting some positive benefit from them.
  Once upon a time this was my old school playing field. I, like many other boys, was "tortured" here by sadistic PE teachers who thought we might enjoy kick a ball, or running around in the rain. I guess I was lucky in that I manage to wangle going swimming for most of my PE lessons. In later years I discovered that if you didn't join any team at all, no one missed you, and I could play truant for the afternoon. That was a very satisfactory discovery.
  Compared to the hills in some parts of the country it is not spectacularly high at the top of Mountsfield Park, but it is a lot higher than Catford, and a lot higher than central London. Depending on how thick the trees get, and how clear the air is, some views can be magnificent. I was looking forward to all the clear, pollution free, air that so many had talked about recently, but I found the view disappointing. This is the view towards the Crystal Palace TV mast, and I have seen it look much clearer than this. The top of the mast seemed to be sitting in a bad haze (although it can't be seen in this reduced sized picture).
  I noticed this very odd looking shrub in Lewisham Park. From a distance these red leaves, or are they flowers, or are they both, gave the bush a very autumnal look. I have no idea what they are called. One thing about Lewisham Park is that it is a riot of colour at this time of year. It is very much a "garden park", and quite different to Ladywell Fields. The latter doesn't really have any flower beds as such, and while I think that the river banks used to be cultivated, the look now is a more natural look - by the end of summer it can be all nettles and brambles.
  By the time I got home my feet were starting to complain, and it felt good to get my boots off. Like after the 3 mile walk the previous day, this 3.66 mile walk didn't leave me exhausted like Tuesday's 2 mile walk did. I had run out of ideas to extend yesterday's walk, but I think I would have been mostly comfortable had it been 4 miles, and maybe more. I think I have to aim for a 5 mile walk soon - if only I can think of a possible route that doesn't involve miles of boring backstreets, or having to get a bus or train to somewhere.

  Soon after I got home I had a Sainsbury's Greek salad that I enhanced with some goats cheese pellets, and some hot chilli sauce. Like the dinner I had later, it didn't really satisfy. I am glad that I didn't give in to topping it up with something inappropriate because my blood glucose was very good when I checked it before dinner.

  It is probably some sort of character flaw, but I don't really care that one big achievement, such as a long walk, seems enough to me for one day. There were things I could have done, and maybe should have done, like hoovering the stairs, but I just opted to be mostly lazy for the rest of the afternoon, although I did go through, and "process" some of the photos I took during my walk, before laying on my bed and reading. I was going to say "and snoozing" but I seem to think that I didn't snooze despite giving myself the chance to do so.

  My dinner was the meal I had cooked and chilled two days earlier (it was replaced by a takeaway on the night I was going to eat it). It was just one fillet of Chicken bought from the butchers counter in the little supermarket that is mostly a pleasure to shop in - i.e. there is rarely a queue outside. The chicken was accompanied by a whole sliced Pak Choi (or Chinese cabbage) along with some sliced chillies and spring onions. I had added some Chinese 5 spice powder for additional flavour. I can't say it turned out to be very exciting, but it was nice enough.

  Like my lunch, that dinner left me feeling hungry. I think the lack of any response from Angela was making me feel very unsettled, and left me with an urge to eat that it was hard to overcome. I did end up having a small packet of sugar free vanilla wafers, and some peanuts. While those wafers have no sugar in them, they are still made from flour, and being a carbohydrate it is turned into sugar. They are not quite as innocent as they seems, but on the other hand they are a good compromise. A consequence of that carbohydrate is that my blood glucose was 8.3mmol/l this morning. I would have much preferred it to be a point or more less, but it is still in an OK area.

  One of the things I feared about seems to have happened during this lockdown. With no pubs open I seem to have lost some of the desire to drink beer. I may, or may not, have had a small whisky last night, but I think that may have been the previous night. I certainly had no desire for beer, although there is also the fact that I didn't want to deplete my beer stock. Buying more beer can be easy enough, I bought 4 cans of Guinness two days ago after my 3 mile walk, but I keep thinking of the worst case scenario where supplies of beer become very rare during this Covid-19 apocalypse.

  I went to bed stone cold sober last night, and while I slept reasonably well, it could have been better. I found it increasingly difficult to stay asleep as dawn approached. I felt I needed more sleep, maybe hours of it, but I kept waking up for silly, or not so silly, reasons like my hand going to sleep as I pinched the nerves to it (or something). Even when I did get up, about 8am (or was it earlier ?) I still wished I could roll over and go back to sleep. Maybe I just didn't want to face another empty day.

  As I have already written, my blood glucose level was higher than desirable, but still well clear of the danger area. All my other health indicators were looking good - and that included my weight. There is still some way to go before it is low enough to get back where I left off, and go for even more weight loss, but this morning saw an improvement of a couple of hundred grammes.

  At the moment I am feeling like I don't want to go for a walk today. I feel a bit creaky, but that could change once I do a few things like having a shower and washing my hair, doing a few days worth of washing up, and watering my plants. I hope after that I will physically feel like going for a long walk. I do have a wish to do at least a full 4 miles today. It's just that at the moment I am not sure if I could enjoy that. I guess tomorrow I will either reveal I have done a long walk, or just hoovered the stairs !