Today sees the start of a run of warm sunny days. The forecast starts off wrong ! At the moment, while the forecast, the one above, and the latest revision, shows just sunny spells for 6am, and in the latest revision 7am too, but when I look outside my windows I see nothing but blue sky with just a bit of haziness in one quarter of the sky. My guess is that the day started as it is forecast to continue - solid sunshine until sunset. The afternoon temperature should reach 22° C with maybe a short period of 23° C. Tomorrow shows a very similar pattern, but with two changes that are that the afternoon high could reach 26° C, and the last few hours of daylight may only be sunny spells.
   
I couldn't complete the walk I was intending to do yesterday. I had intended to walk over 4 miles, but I cut my walk short because I was feeling uncomfortable. My feet felt sore - both of them - and my chest felt sore. The chest soreness was, I think, I hope, the return of my "twisted rib". The worst pain was when putting on the t-shirt I wore for the walk. There was nothing special about that t-shirt, but as I poked my left arm through the sleeve I felt something pop approximately behind my left breast. After that it was so easy to provoke my chest into a light, but annoying ache.

  My feet pains were a bit more complicated, and while the cause seemed easy to explain, the underlying reason was a mystery. One specific pain was my part skinned toe. I had put fresh sticking plaster over that toe, and maybe I didn't do such a good job as the previous day, but there was another factor with wider implications.

  I thought it a good idea to put on fresh socks for yesterday's walk. Those socks seemed very similar to the last pair of socks, but turned out to feel very different. One obvious difference was that the elastic at the top of the socks seemed a bit stronger, and I have trouble with any elastic there making grooves in my flesh. I am sure that increases foot fatigue when walking.

  Another difference was not so easy to see, but apparently easy to feel. For reasons unknown, it started to feel like I was walking on grit. The soles of both feet started to feel sore after a couple of miles of walking.
  The start of my walk felt mostly OK apart from the occasional twinge from my chest/ribs. I was initially heading for Blythe Hill Fields for another go at walking up a lot of hill. That meant crossing the railway in the park (by the footbridge). On the other side I found this ice cream van. I have my doubts he had permission to drive into the park, and even less to park on the grass. I wouldn't be surprised if the Disney Mafia would be upset that he was using images of their talking rat, and other characters, probably without paying a licence for them....but maybe the international brotherhood of ice cream sellers has negotiated something on behalf of all their members.
  There have been plenty of individual dull days, seemingly lasting for ages, but somehow the year seems to be racing by. It may well be the proper time, and I have just never really paid it much attention in previous years, but it seems this year is racing past, and seeing these half grown conkers just seems reinforce that idea.
  For whatever reason, my camera screwed up the focus of this picture, and it was the only snap I took of young apples growing on the tree near the Ravensbourne Park Road exit of the park. There is a proper orchard in a corner of the park near the Catford Bridge exits, but I didn't realise this tree was here, some distance from the orchard.
  I had noticed this alley in the past, but had never tried it before. It is a short cut towards Blythe Hill Fields, but only reduces the distance by a few yards ! It had novelty value more than anything, but maybe it made the uphill walk a bit easy by having relatively level areas before and after steeper bit. The route by road, while only very slightly longer, is relentlessly uphill all the way.
  The view from the top of Blythe Hill Fields can be rather spectacular, but this view also shows the funny weather. I was standing in sunshine when I took this picture, but the view towards Canary Wharf was very dull and grey. I always like to take a couple of minutes to take in the view here, but that was not my main purpose of walking up all the hills to get there. It seemed like my walk up to Mountsfield Park was a lot easier the day before, and I wondered if I could make it to the top of Blythe Hill Fields without stopping. I couldn't ! The best I could do was to stop for a short breather less times, and possibly for shorter periods of time. It seems I still have a lot of practice to do !

  One useful thing was that all that extra effort did not kill me. Sometimes the chest/rib pains I get when they have a flare up can feel a bit like heart problems, but some potentially destructive testing revealed no extra weakness. I must admit that the discomfort did reduce when going down the other side of the hill, but I think was more to do with a change of gait to cope with the even steeper hill going down the other side. In it's own way it is almost hard work going down !

  My original idea was to revisit a route I did some weeks ago. I would walk up to near the top of Perry Hill, and then walk down into the River Pool Linear Park, and make my way home through there. At the bottom of Perry Hill I decided I just felt too uncomfortable to go home the long way round. I did end up going through a little bit of the park to cut through to Poundstretcher. I did a little bit of shopping in there, and to my great annoyance I forgot to pause the tracker while I was in the store, and cut off from the GPS signal.

  I must admit that when I zoomed in on the GPS trace it did look like the phone had actually made a fair effort at tracking my progress through the store - presumably just using the accelerometer in the phone to work out what I was doing. As such the calculated distance of 2.981 miles may not be too inaccurate, but for safety I think I'll only claim just over 2.8 miles for this walk, and coincidently very similar to the length of my walk the day before.

  It was nice to get home, and get my boots off, although even with my boots off my feet still felt a bit "tenderised". The good thing, if indeed there was a good thing, was that there was no sign of any actual damage. I think one of the first things I did was to strip off and get off the scales. I can't remember the figure because I didn't like it ! It was still higher than expected.

  Things could only get worse because lunch was reheated chips that were left over from my fish and chips the night before. Being real chip shop chips, and not those terrible "fries" that come with American style fast food, they were almost amenable to being reheated in my mini oven/grill. I might have over cooked them a bit, but they were still pleasant to eat...or were they ? I think I actually found them a bit underwhelming, but I convinced myself they had to be wonderful to make it OK to eat stuff that I really need to avoid - most of the time.

  I felt really tired in the afternoon - not just fatigue from a long(ish) walk, but really sleepy. After my chips I lay on my bed, with a book at my side, but I didn't pick up that book because my eyes were closing. I slept, maybe a couple of short snoozes, or maybe something longer. I really have no idea how long I laid on my bed with my eyes closed for most of that time. I guess it was a long term result of the periods of insomnia I had been experiencing in the middle of the nights. I suppose it is also possible that tiredness didn't help me overcome some of the discomfort during the walk.

  Just writing about it has me yawning again !

  After that long and deep rest, which may not have been as long as it seemed, I had a look at the pictures I had taken, and edited them to show a few here. All the while I was looking forward to dinner. It was to be chicken kebab. I had hoped it would be shish kebab but the menu I ordered it from was a little vague. Thankfully it was chicken shish - bits of skinless chicken cooked on a grill, and served with a salad. It was nice, but not as good as it could have been. The salad was about right, but not as good as some places, and the chicken seemed a bit dry. Of course I couldn't be too objective because I was eating it cold.

  A little later I had a snack of BBQ flavour rice crackers that I had noticed, and bought from Poundstretcher. I am sure I have had them before - possibly expensive ones bought from an Asian shop. I paid more attention to the nutritional info on the packet this time, and while the basic info is based on the idea of a stupidly small portion, they still seem relatively benign even in more useful quantities. They were quite tasty too !

  I stayed up reading a lot later than usual last night. I knew that my extended afternoon nap might interfere with my sleep, and so I read until almost midnight. I was probably asleep minutes before midnight, but I still woke up a little after 1am. It was as if I was going to have another few hours of insomnia again. I really don't know why I wake up at around that same time on many nights, but at least this time I got back to sleep again fairly quickly. From then on my sleep was only interrupted by an occasional need to pee, or a dream that had got too weird.

  Actually I can't recall if I did have any dream that was so bad that I would wake up, but I did have a couple of dreams that were a bit weird. I think I can only remember a snapshot of one of them. In a segment that probably only lasted 10 seconds I was at a place of work, although nowhere in the real world that was that similar. It featured a metal spiral staircase going up to the top floor, and which was on the outside of the building. The staircase had a bramble bush/plant entwined around it, and I had to cut bits away to get past those points. This was almost a reflection of what I was doing in real life along the tiny path by the river in the park. One big difference was that in real life I had a pair of secateurs, but in the dream I just had a small pair of wire cutters.

  There was one special time that I woke up during my sleep, and it is almost as if my subconscious had planned it, and had open my eyes, while looking in the right direction at the right time. I opened my eyes to see the time displayed on my PC screen as 03:14:15 which can be seen as 3.1415, or the first 5 digits of pi ! Maybe it was pure coincidence, or maybe parts of my brain know something that it is not revealing to other parts !

  Once again on a Monday morning, I am up early because I want to go shopping in Aldi before the place starts to get busy, and just like last Monday I am going to have to stop writing now, and come back to this after I have got my shopping. To save accidents I will publish this half finished, and republish it again when complete.....back soon.....

10:02 BST and I'm back again.

  I had a shower, and the went to Aldi. My luck held out, and like last week, it was relatively quiet in there at 9am. I bought quite a lot of stuff, but I didn't go quite as mad as last week. Notable things were two bottles, and two cans of beer, plus a few packs of fresh fish. One fish was sea bass. I am not sure if I have ever tried it before, or if I have, I can't remember what it was like. I will probably have it grilled with salad for dinner this evening.

  When I was walking to Aldi I noted that the lights were on in the corner shop, but it was still closed. On my way back from Aldi I saw it was now open again. I think I was their first potential customer. I say potential because all I really wanted was two top up vouchers for "3", and a new "3" sim card. Unfortunately it may take another hour before their computer for doing these things is up and running, and so I may try again later this afternoon.

  When I got home I first put away my shopping, and then watered my window boxes before they get too frazzled in the hot sunshine. Being on the south side of the house they get the sun full blast, and those window boxes dry out far too quickly. I also too the opportunity to get a broom on all the web that was starting to build up in the front porch. I hope I brushed out the tarantulas and black widow spiders that build their webs there.

  Now I shall have a bit of a rest before going out for a walk in Ladywell Fields, and Lewisham Park. It probably won't be a long walk even though I seem to have done a better job of protecting my sore toe today. It hardly complained at all when I went to Aldi - although that is only a fairly short walk. I also picked off a load of fluff from the brand new socks I wore yesterday. I think that fluff was responsible for making it feel like I was walking on grit. The hope today is that I will bump into Angela. It seems highly likely she will be in the park on a warm and sunny day, but I am unsure when. I think I mentioned sometime last week that I think she might be taking an earlier lunchtime now. If I choose the wrong time today I will have to try another time tomorrow - which should also be hot and sunny.