It sometimes felt a bit humid, almost like
a thunderstorm was brewing, around midday
yesterday. Some of the rather dark looking clouds
made it look quite likely, but it stayed dry all
day. There were even a few brief sunny spells
during the afternoon. I'm not sure if the
temperature reached the earlier forecast of 18° C,
but it did seem to feel warm enough to raise a
sweat when walking.
It was supposed to be raining
almost from daybreak this morning, but while
the sky is heavily overcast, it remains dry.
The latest revision to the forecast says the
rain will now start at 11am. In the meantime
it feels rather cool even though I think the
temperature may already be 15° C - which is
the highest temperature forecast for today.
Only light rain is forecast for today, and it
may just be in discrete showers, but with
almost the rest of the day for it to do it, I
don't think I'll be needing to water the
garden today. The rain is predicted to
continue through until tomorrow, and only
finish late in the afternoon. Tomorrow should
be a warmer day with the temperature peaking
as high as 19° C as the afternoon ends.
I was in two minds yesterday. I
wanted to go out, and I wanted to stay in
the warm. I almost stayed in. For part of
the morning I lay on my bed reading, and I
was getting very close to falling asleep. I
think it was after the second time that I
found that I had closed my eyes that I
decided I had to get up, and get out. It was
almost midday before I went out, and that is
a bit later than some of my recent walk (but
was quite a typical time some while back). I
had taken some painkillers earlier, but I
still felt a bit creaky.
Once again I only expected to walk a
couple of miles, and once again my pains
became easier once I started walking. The
first three quarters of a mile, or the
distance from home to the start of the
narrow little path alongside the river,
seemed like heavy going. I am not sure when
it was that I decided I could possibly walk
a lot further. In fact there probably was
not any single time when I planned to walk
much further. It was a sort of organic
growth - adding more and more distance as I
progressed.
As the map on the left shows, I ended
up walking almost 4.6 miles. In one respect
that was disappointing because as I
approached the halfway point, where I
started heading for home again, I thought I
might push it to a 5 mile walk. It felt a
long way to go, and yet was less than I
thought. The good thing is that even as I
reached home again, I still felt I could
walk another mile, and maybe more.
Being not totally exhausted didn't
mean that I fancied doing anything more than
rest and be as lazy as possible when I got
home. I think in some ways it was more like
mental exhaustion. I think, or at least I
like to think, that if called upon to do
more stuff, I could have done it. It was
probably the wrong attitude to think that I
had done the great task for the day, and no
more needed to be done. The grand flaw in
that argument is that I preferred to rest a
lot before I could raise the energy, or was
it enthusiasm to "process" all the pictures
and videos I had taken.
I came across these bottles on the
path and thought the vodka squad had been
having another session, but the mud on the
bottles suggested these bottles had been
pulled out of the river, although why they
were then dumped in the middle of the path
is a mystery.
This bramble shoot was at neck height
right across the path. It could have ripped
my jugular out. Maybe next time I head
for that path I will take a pair of garden
clippers, and clear some of these hazards.
I know that poppies tend to be very
short lived flowers, but I was surprised I
had not seen these growing by the path
towards the end of the park near Lower
Sydenham.
This settee, or sofa seems to be
carved from a solid lump of tree. It is on a
small triangle of grass on the junction
between a side road, whose name I forget,
and Southend Lane. Shame about the old fag
packet, and the empty beer can, but
otherwise it is rather good.
My route home was deliberately not
direct so I could extend the distance
walked. My route took me passed The Catford
And Cyphers Cricket Club. I once went to a
very interesting open mic session there in
approximately 2014. The open mic session was
a sort of wake for the man, John Fisher, who
Angela would later fall in love with. I am
not sure what stage of cancer he was going
through at the time, probably an early
stage, and he wanted to have a sort of party
and music session before his illness made
such thing possible. I was not really aware
of his condition at the time, and I don't
even think I knew it was supposed to be more
wake, that open mic session. The ironic
thing is that Angela lives probably less
than 10 minutes walk from the place, and
didn't even know it was happening. Perhaps I
was lucky in as much I was there to help
celebrate his life, and Angela, who dumped
me for him, was only able to celebrate his
death.
I shot a couple of bits of video
during my walk, but this one is
possibly very slightly more
interesting than some of the
others. It starts with me walking
up the path that almost looks
yellow when wearing my rose tinted
sunglasses, and that ends up at
Lower Sydenham station. It is
interesting to me that having now
walked that path twice it seems to
be getting shorter. It seemed much
longer the first time.
The second part of the
video is when I reached the
station, and starts at the top of
the public footbridge, and looking
down to the steps I had just gone
up. Once upon a time, and maybe
not too long ago, those stairs
would have winded me, but even
after an almost 2 mile walk, the
last bit of which was gently
uphill, it seemed to take very
little effort, almost none at all,
to walk up those steps, and at the
top I was not breathing so heavily
that I could not string a few
sentences together.
On my way home I
called into the Sainsbury's Local shop by
Catford station. There was nothing much I
really needed, but I thought that after
that long walk I could have a tub of low
calorie/sugar ice cream as a reward. I
also bought some salad, and one other
indulgence. I was not even sure if
Sainsbury's did an own label whisky, but I
thought they might do, and indeed they do.
I bought a bottle of it, and it was only
£13.25 (if I recall correctly). I have
tested it, and I have to say it is not as
good as my favourite - Tesco's Special
Reserve whisky. The Sainsbury's stuff has
a hint of something I can only describe as
having a sort of hint of something fishy.
The good thing is that it doesn't have
that bonfire/burning tyres taste that some
whisky lovers like, and so it is
drinkable, but not very enjoyable.
Once I got home I seemed to slip
into relaxation mode rather easily.
It is hard to tell now if it was actually
exhaustion, or just believed exhaustion. I
think the latter is closer to the truth.
Until I stopped it did feel like I could
have walked another mile without too much
effort. Maybe I allowed myself to relax
too much as I ate my ice cream, and
afterwards I just did not feel like doing
anything, even, as I said above,
"processing" the pictures and video I had
shot. I probably spent an hour
laying down reading and snoozing before
doing anything else.
The first thing I did was to
prepare a rather late lunch. The
reason for this late lunch, and what I
chose it to be, were dictated by the fact
that I intended to have another fish based
dinner. For that I had to open a sealed
pack of 4 non frozen, battered fish
fillets. I did not want to leave the pack
open for too long, and so I first cooked
two of the fish fillets, ate them for
lunch, and then cooked the other two for
my dinner. I put a squirt of mayonnaise on
the lunch, and it didn't go with the
fish as well as I thought.
I delayed my dinner a bit after the
late lunch, and the fish was cool (but not
cold) when I had it with a few baby
tomatoes, and a small heap of salad
leaves. This time I dressed the whole
dinner with some balsamic vinaigrette
dressing, and that worked really well.
That is a recipe I will be trying in the
future. By dinner time I had finally
processed my pictures and video, and so I
didn't have much to do after dinner. I
watched two episodes of Star Trek, and
sooner after I went back to reading in my
bed rather than on it.
It seemed like a good night for an
early night, and I can't be sure, but I
think I was asleep around 9pm. It was a
good start but it all went wrong when I
received a text message at 11pm. It was a
message from Jo to say that Liz, Jo's one
time backup singer, and later fronting her
own band, had died from cancer, and Jo
didn't want me to have to wait until it
appeared on social media to find out.
I only ever knew Liz as a
singer, but had no idea about her private
life, and also no idea that she had
cancer. As such her death had very little
impact on me, and I felt more sad for Jo
and her loss of a good friend. Of course
such things get the mind churning, and it
took hours before I got back to sleep
again. I don't think I slept that well for
the rest of the night. It didn't help that
I seemed to wake up far too soon. Instead
of 8 hours sleep I may have only got 5
hours.
This morning I feel tired, and I
seem to have a bit of a headache, but
otherwise I don't seem to be suffering
from any result of my long walk. I could
also go for another walk, and in fact I
was considering one later on, but I now
doubt it will happen. In the middle of
writing this I was interrupted by a phone
call from Lee. As usual he took two hours
to see what only needed 10 minutes if he
could stick to the original point. It is
now just gone midday, believe it or not,
and I am thinking more on the lines of a
light lunch and a siesta before doing
anything else.
One thing that held me back from
having any more dynamic thoughts earlier
was the promise of rain lasting most of
today. As usual it was a sort of broken
promise. At 11am enough rain fell to leave
a pattern of individual rain drops on the
pavement outside, but since then - nothing
! It is still bloody gloomy outside, and
that dull grey light is sucking the will
out of me to do anything useful for now.
Maybe I'll get bored enough to do
something useful this afternoon....but on
the other hand I have a book to finish,
and another that I am waiting to start
once the last is finished !
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