Having walked all the way through the Pool River Linear Park I faced a long walk up to near the top of Southend Lane to get access to the next park I would be visiting. In this picture the railway bridge at the bottom of the hill is barely visible. It is easier to see the bright blue industrial style building just beyond it. It felt like quite a long walk up this hill - even if it was probably little more than a quarter of a mile, and maybe less.
  Once inside the park I soon found there was a nice view of the Crystal Palace TV transmitter mast framed by trees.
  One feature in the park is this cute looking hump backed bridge. There is only one strange thing about it - it doesn't cross anything (unless there is a weed choked drainage ditch beneath it). The Pool River does go through this park, but mostly underground, although I think a little bit of it is exposed near this bridge. That little bit runs to the left of the bridge - parallel to the bridge. Maybe when the river is higher there might be an artificial backwater that is supposed to go under the bridge. I will investigate this again when I feel I have the energy for an even longer walk.
  Southend Park - not anywhere near the popular bit of seaside called Southend. This is the south end of Catford...sort of. It is not very big, but my first quick look showed that there is more to explore, and that it seems quite nice. It has a good mix of grass and trees. Some corners, that I didn't explore, could be almost described as miniature woods, although that is only the perspective from a distance. Maybe they are actually very sparse up close.

  I was actually feeling quite tired, or footsore at the halfway point of this walk. That is why I only did a short walk through Southend Park, and why I walked home almost non-stop to get it over and done with. I did stop once, and that was to buy some beer, and a few other bits and pieces from the little supermarket near Catford Bridge station. I bought two cans of Perla Mocna (pictured on the left). "Mocna" is Polish for strong, and indeed, at 7.6% this beer is pretty strong. I also bought two cans of another Polish (I think) beer that is 7%. I would be enjoying the Perla Mocna later in the evening.

  As always, it was a relief to get home again, and get my boots off. I had experimented with some slightly thinner socks for this walk, and I didn't like the results. There were a few red areas on my foot, and the elastic top of the socks had dug into my legs. I guess they couldn't have been that bad or I would not have been able to walk 4.19 miles in them. On the other hand, having walked half that I had no option but to walk the same distance home again. So maybe they were that bad ! I think the special hiking socks, with their weird elastic panels, that I tried some days ago, were probably better, although I think I can still find something better than those.

  Once I was able to relax I indulged in some very naughty food. As well as the beer, I had also bought a large packet of crisps, and a sort of vegetable salad. The latter was something like a very coarse version of Sandwich Spread - finely diced vegetables in something like salad cream. I used the crisps to scoop it up. That, and maybe the bottle of 9% Duvel Citra beer were probably instrumental in taking my blood glucose up to the danger zone when I checked it a few hours later.

  To compensate for that culinary extravagance I had sliced vegetables and some strange turkey with herbs sliced, mechanically recovered (probably) meat slices for dinner. That should have been fairly benign, and I didn't really anything, apart from a chunk of Red Leicester cheese, for the rest of the evening. I did drink the two cans of Perla Mocna beer for a sort of pudding, or desert after my dinner.

  Those two 7.6% beers, and the 9% beer before dinner, left me feeling sleepy quite early in the evening. I think I started thinking about bed at 8pm, and I may have been asleep by 9pm (although for some reason I wonder if it was a bit closer to 10pm for some reason). Once asleep I seemed to sleep very soundly until, as I noted further up the page, I woke up some time after midnight with powerful flatulence ! I was in no pain, and very little discomfort, but I could not get comfortable enough to get back to sleep. Over the next 3 (or 4) hours I tossed and turned as I tried to get to sleep, and I had to visit the toilet twice before I eventually fell asleep again.

  As much as it felt like I was awake for the whole time during that unpleasant episode I know I must have snatched a bit of sleep here and there. I know this because I was having short dreams. I can't remember much about those dreams, but there was one motif, almost like a trademark, that I kept seeming to think about. Most of the time I could not actually see this motif, and just thought of it as a sort of memory. I am pretty sure it is something from real life, but I cannot think of where it comes from. It was a silhouette of a man wearing a tall "stovepipe" hat" sitting on a steam powered swan - complete with small smokestack.

  This morning I feel tired after my lost sleep, and I have a few odd aches, but basically I am OK. Even my blood glucose level has come right down to what it was yesterday morning - a very pleasing 6.6mmol/l. There is much I could do today, but I expect I will do very little. I was thinking that I would definitely take a rest, and not go for a walk today, but now I am wondering if I might go for a short walk around Ladywell Fields - maybe in trainers instead of boots. Trainers may be more comfortable, or at least make me feel more light footed, for a short, maybe no more than 1.5 mile, walk. I may still stay in and be very lazy for for a few hours before getting bored enough to maybe do some more work clearing and cleaning my back room - something I have most neglected for a few weeks now. Basically, I think I'll just let today happen as it happens with no plans at all.