There were two things that put me off going for a walk...maybe three things if I include my feet being sore after the battering they took the previous day. To be honest my feet were not that sore, and if it were not for the two other things I would probably have gone out. The first of the other two things was the grey sky sapping my enthusiasm. Had I been more patient before making a decision it would eventually have been bright and sunny, and my enthusiasm revitalised, but then there was the other problem. There was nothing dramatic about it, but once an hour, or perhaps a little less, I had to go to the toilet for a poo. I wasn't sure when that would end, and didn't want to be caught short in the middle of the park !

  Once again, if I had been more patient I would have realised that my guts had completely calmed down by the time the sun came out. The positive aspect of all those visits to the toilet was that at what I thought was the end of it (and it was) I weighed myself, and I found my weight had dropped even closer to the lowest this year (or the last 4 or 5 years). I can't remember the exact figure now, but I think I was within 500gm of my lowest weight, and if I could keep up whatever I was doing, I would soon be hitting a new low.

  I did a few useful things in the afternoon instead of going out. One of the first things I did was probably before midday. I had washed, and git dressed ready to go out, but I was not feeling comfortable to do so - or at least not to go far. On this occasion I only went as far as my front garden to water, and feed, my window boxes. To my delight, although it was a very subdued delight, I noticed that one plant had two tiny flowers on it.
  At the moment these two little flowers are a bit underwhelming, but hopefully many more are to follow. The only problem is that with hindsight, my "throw loads of seeds in the pots and see what happens" may not have been such a great idea. The plants are crammed in rather tightly now, and ideally I ought to try and transplant some of them to a plot in the back garden.

  Another thing I did, and this time it was in the afternoon, although I wish it had been in the morning, was to do some special laundry. I only have two white t-shirts with pockets (the pocket being a useful place to store my glasses when I am not wearing a coat). One of those shirts has some curry stains on it that are only slowly coming out with multiple applications of "Vanish". The other was still brilliant white, but needed washing after the last time I wore it and got it sweaty going up Blythe Hill.

  Being a white t-shirt I wanted to wash it separately from coloured stuff, but I sort of compromised. I hand washed it on it's own, and did the first rinse on it's own, but I then washed, and did the first rinse of some coloured stuff in the recently vacated water. For the next two rinses, and the fabric conditioner, I did everything together. I then hung everything to dry in the garden. To my dismay I noticed a small yellow/orange blotch on my nice white t-shirt. It looks exactly like a tiny curry stain, and I don't know where it came from.

  Fortunately it looked worse when the t-shirt was wet, and now it is dry it is not very visible. Actually the same appears to be true with the other white t-shirt. It still looked bad after I had treated it with "Vanish", and then washed it. I have just looked at it again, albeit not in bright sunshine, and the stains have almost faded away. In these days of social isolation it probably doesn't matter about those stains. They are probably not visible to someone 2 metres away who is not looking for them, and that is the closest I will get to anyone until all this is over, and the pubs re-open.

  The one thing I wanted to get if I had gone out yesterday was a watering can. Later in the afternoon when I went out into my garden I realised that I what I really need is a hose. It started when I decided I ought to water what should be a flower bed, but was my potato and tomato bed last year. A few of the seeds I sowed there months ago might be doing something, and there is even what looks like a new potato plant growing there, but everything is stunted because with no rain it is so dry out there.

  I started out giving that bed a bucketful of water to which I had added a bit of plant food. One bucket didn't seem enough, and so I gave it another bucketful. Later on, as the sun was setting I emptied another bucketful on it. None of the grass seed I had sown had germinated because the lawn area was so dry, and as I discovered, the top had been baked solid by the sun. I "swooshed" tow bucketfuls of water over just under half the lawn area, and then tried to rake the top so the grass seed might get slightly covered by wet soil. I found that the water had hardly penetrated half an inch, and the rake just showed dry dusty soil underneath. Once again, later in the evening, I splashed a few more buckets of water over the far end of the lawn. I am hoping that once the grass does finally start to grow it will protect the surface of the soil, and it will retain more moisture, but I reckon I am still going to need a hose to keep that lot growing. I'll probably buy yje hose on the first day the rain falls - which could possibly be tomorrow, and almost definitely the day after.

  I had one other project that took a fair bit of time yesterday. It was to find and download the first 10 episodes of Star Trek - Picard. Some of the files seemed to use a slightly weird coding, and I ended up recoding all 10 files to mp4 files. I think they all play OK now. There was no Star Trek of any series on TV last night, and so I started watching Star Trek - Picard. I only watched the first two episodes, and it took that long to start enjoying it.

  I find it sort of annoying that each episode is filmed in movie style instead of TV series style. Huge amounts of money would appear to have been spent on CGI to make really busy looking scenes, and yet is seems that the story line is strong enough to not need all that added expense, nor does it need Hollywood style mega explosions to make it exciting. All these things distract from the story.  One of the things that Star Trek - The New Generation got right was to increase the visible instrumentation of the ship compared to the sparseness of the original series, but they still kept the lines clean with no clutter. Later versions of Star Trek, Deep Space 9, and Voyager started to look cluttered, but in Picard they seem to have used CGI backgrounds to jam in as much junk as possible. Having said that, Picard has yet to set foot on a ship at the end of episode 2, and so once they are in space I will have to re-evaluate my criticism.

  In theory I should be spending half my morning on the toilet again after what I ate yesterday. My lunch was a cheese salad, but the salad was fairly finely sliced red onion and red cabbage plus green bell pepper and a couple of plum tomatoes. It was rather nice, but I am surprised the raw onion, if nothing else, hasn't cause a bit of commotion in my guts. Dinner was cold chicken shish kebab - once again lots of raw onion, red cabbage, and other salad vegetables. To really set the cat among the pigeons I had some supper. It was a can of chick peas in tomato sauce. I noticed there were other vegetables in the sauce including some small bits of onion, and what may have been finely diced potato.

  My sleep was unsatisfactory again last night. I seemed to wake up quite frequently, although there didn't seem any need to do so for maybe half the times I woke up. Having woken up it felt like it took a long time to get back to sleep, although I suspect it was a lot faster than it seemed to feel like. I seemed to be dreaming a lot last night, but only two snapshots seem to remembered. One snap shot was about 2 seconds of dream where I was on the top deck of a bus heading towards home and I was eating a chocolate lolly and chocolate ice cream at the same time (I suspect I might have been using the lolly stick to scoop up the ice cream, but I have no clear memory of it). The other snap shot of a dream was once again a few seconds (which isn't truly a snapshot) of walking down a road, and blowing my nose. What came out was like green paint. It was not pleasant !

  This morning I don't think I feel that good again, but all my health indicators say otherwise. The two good things are that my blood glucose is still relatively low, but I think those chick peas in tomato sauce probably made it a bit higher than it could have been. The other good thing, as I have already mentioned, is an apparent drop in my weight. Contrary to what I believed would happen, I have not yet been to the toilet for a poo. Once I do I hope to see my weight look even better.

  I ought to go for a walk today, but I am unsure if I really want to. Maybe once it has warmed up a bit the urge may come over me. If I took a walk in the Pool River Linear Park, even if not to the very end, I could come home via Poundstretcher (the Catford Hill branch), and assuming they are open, and assuming they have any hosepipes, I could come home with a hosepipe. What actually happens today will be a story for tomorrow.