Wednesday 26th August 2020

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Wednesday 26th August 2020

Lockdown day 156
Shopping embargo day 34

07:42 BST

Yesterday's weather came in two halves. The morning was very wet, and the afternoon featured sunny spells. Through most of the day it was very windy. It was still very mild with the temperature peaking at around 21° C for a short time.

The forecast has not got off to a good start ! There is currently a lot of blue sky, and the sun is shining. Maybe 10am will see dense clouds, but it doesn't feel like it will happen. It does seem feasible that this afternoon may be bright, and sometimes sunny. Today is another day when the Met Office forecast is very different to the BBC (Meteogroup) forecast. They even manage to disagree on the temperature, but only by one degree. The BBC are slightly more generous with 22° C against the 21° C of the Met Office. At least both agree that the strong winds/gales we had yesterday are over, although yesterday it was thought they would continue today. Tomorrow may start sunny, but the afternoon will feature rain, and some of it may be heavy rain. It looks like it could continue into Friday. Tomorrow could be a couple of degrees cooler than today, and Friday could be cooler still - feeling quite cold by comparison to a week or so ago.

As I write this I am at a high level of alert because I am expecting a parcel delivery - potentially, but unlikely, any minute now. An email message said it was out for delivery from the Catford depot at 6.08am this morning. I was not aware that Amazon had a depot in Catford. I have a strong suspicion it will be Royal Mail doing the "final mile". The parcel/packet/box is a 6 x 280ml pack of hot chilli sauce !

a short walk

It was gloomy and damp yesterday morning, but I still wanted to get out for a walk to stretch my legs. My other ambition was to see how deep the river was after the rain, and also whether it had finally started running through the man made stream across old playing field in Ladywell Fields. It was still very lightly raining when I went out. I had only intended to walk to Ladywell and back, and so it would really matter if the rain persisted, or even got a little heavier. The rain didn't feel particularly cold, and I didn't bother with a coat.

It felt good and bad when I set off for what would only be a 1.4 mile walk. I had expected to do it quite quickly, but the bad got worse. The bad was specifically a pain in the rear muscle of my right thigh. Maybe it is a ligament instead of a muscle, but I feel sure it is the same thing that sometimes hurts when I am sitting down at my PC for to long. When sitting down I usually attribute it to my right knee, but when walking yesterday it was very obviously higher up than my knee joint, but not by much. The fact that it was worse in damp weather suggests to me that it is likely to be rheumatism - or other age related thing.

The good news was that I achieved my main objectives - stretching my legs, albeit one of them painfully, getting a breath of fresh air, and seeing that indeed the man made stream now has water flowing along it after being bone dry all summer. My feet were very mildly sore for most of this short walk, and it was mainly my right toes because I didn't put a plaster on them to cushion them. That discomfort was almost ignorable, but not the pain in the thigh muscle/ligament/whatever. Without that latter pain I may have been tempted to walk a bit further. Maybe even into the River Pool Linear Park. The ironic thing was that I had taken a couple of Paracetamol before going out, and they seemed to be kicking in just as I was approaching home. Had I taken them maybe half an hour earlier I might have saved myself a bit of pain.

I didn't take any pictures during my walk, but I did shoot this video. Some of my commentary can't be heard because it was still very windy, and I am drowned out by the roar of the wind across the microphone aperture on the camera. If the camera had an external mic socket I could use a microphone with a wind sock on it, but alas that option is not available on my little, waterproof, Fuji XP71 camera.

After I got home I rested my leg for a while, and then I started to form a plan of action for the day. I thought I might do something in the garden, but it would have been so muddy after the heavy rain that there would be little I could do except pull a few weeds up. What I would like to have done was to run the strimmer over the lawn again, but I will wait until it is a bit drier for that. Having had a bit of time outdoors during my walk, I put gardening on the back burner, and thought of some stuff to do indoors.

The obvious was what I had been mulling over for a few days - painting one of the walls in my dining room. I didn't get as far as getting the paint out, but I did do some preparatory work before being interrupted. I got a call from my friend Jodie who wanted to invite herself over to drink some of my beers. Actually it is unfair to say it in that way because she did bring over several beers she had bought herself to share with me. The big trouble is that she operates on a different time zone to me, and once again it would not be until one hour before my dinnertime before she arrived.

Breaking news:

It was about 8.50am when my chilli sauce was delivered, and it was delivered by Royal Mail. Quite why "Amazon Logistics" couldn't have done the final mile is anyone's guess. Anyway, I think I may have made an expensive mistake. The chilli sauce I ordered was expensive compared to what I might usually buy from Tesco. I think the 85ml bottles of "Dunn's River", Jamaican style hot sauce were 90p the last time I was in Tesco (34 days ago now). At least my new bottles are considerably bigger at 280ml.

This make of Chilli sauce was much recommended by two of my old workmates. They would both use it on their lunch in the canteen, and take turns buying it from, I think, the South African shop near the station. The said it was very hot, and very nice. I note my bottles say it is mild. Maybe they do an extra hot version, but the heat is not my worry. This stuff is, according to the ingredients, like a pourable chilli syrup. The main ingredient is sugar, and I will have to use it exceedingly sparingly. Until I saw the sugar content I thought I could use it extra liberally if it really was mild.

Back to yesterday.
I pressed on with my preparation for painting. I took down a few pictures that had been on the wall, untouched for years. They needed a wash to remove years of dust and nicotine. Unfortunately one was actually a paper poster, and I don't think I can clean it. The wall behind the two that had been up longest was surprisingly close to white !

The next thing I did was to take down the curtains. They were in a bad state, and I threw them away. I have some brand new one that I will put up once the wall is painted. A month or two after that the creases may fall out of the new curtains !! With the curtains down I washed most of the wall ready to do the painting. I had to stop there and prepare for Jodie to turn up. It was a long wait.

One of the beers that Jodie brought over was a lemon meringue flavoured beer. It was quite nice in a strange sort of way. It was a bit like cream soda mixed with lemonade with almost undertones of beer. A second can also had lemon in it, but it wasn't quite as nice. I can't remember what the third can was like. I think it was nondescript when judged against the other two. I think it is possible that Jodie actually only drunk one of my Mexican beers in the end.

I guess I have to applaud Jodie's generosity with the beers, but her time keeping was still annoying. She did leave earlier than last time, but it was still almost two hours after my dinner time. Like last time I was feeling extra hungry after the beers (I had started with some Guinness while I was waiting for Jodie), and although it was rather less alcohol than last time, it was till enough to make me think that I couldn't be bothered to cook, but I could treat myself to a takeaway.

As per almost every day, Just Eat, those of the vomit inducing TV adverts, were offering discounts on from some restaurants. Yesterday one of them was an Indian/Sri Lanken restaurant. I ordered enough stuff to qualify for the 20% discount, and then sat back and waited, and waited. It turned out to be a very bad choice. The food arriving almost 20 minutes later than the estimated time was annoying. The food itself was rather different to what I had been expecting.

Maybe that was the Sri Lanken influence. It wasn't as nice as I would have hoped, and one reason was because it was like stepping back in time. Everything was swimming in oil. Most places seem, in my limited experience of "Indian" or even "Chinese" food recently, to have really cut down on the oil for a more healthy meal. However the very worst thing is that one thing, the chicken biryani was not to be found in the bag. It may have been left in the kitchen, or not even made, but the omission of that was very annoying, and completely blew my 20% discount out of the window !

I went to bed feeling very annoyed - partly fired up by Jodie, but obviously mostly with the restaurant. Pretty soon now I will probably be getting an email to ask me to rate that takeaway. It is going to get just one star, and an accompanying moan ! To calm down I read for 30 minutes or more, but once I put the book down I seemed to fall asleep quite quickly. I woke up quite a lot in the night, and a few times it seemed to take a long time to get back to sleep, but I think "long time" probably only equates to 5 or 10 minutes in real time.

One problem last night was the temperature. It was probably only one degree cooler than needed to sleep comfortably with no covering, and after a while, quite a few degrees too warm under the duvet. Sometimes life is bloody awkward. Despite all that I probably got enough sleep. I was going to try for a bit more, but I saw the email to say my chilli sauce would be delivered today, and that it had left the depot really early. It seemed to dangerous to go back to sleep, and in reality I probably would have not been able to fall asleep anyway. I might try for a snooze sometime later though.

This morning the good news is that I didn't have any hangover from yesterday's mixture of beers. The Tarka Dall, one of the things I had ordered in my takeway, is of course curried lentils, and like lentils do they are doing their stuff this morning. A couple of trips to the toilet already, and I suspect a third on it's way, and my losing the big spike in my weight is continuing nicely this morning. My blood glucose has gone up compared with yesterday, but I predicted that would happen. Those lemon beers did have a sweet taste, and I blame them.

The pain in my right thigh is back again after sitting here writing for too long. I think I am inclined to rest it today, although I may possibly go for a walk this afternoon if it does turn out to be sunny. What I ought to do this morning is to start painting the wall in the dining room. It will be nice to get that done. The emulsion paint I am using seems to dry quite quickly, and I think I may be able to get the second coat on later today if I get the first coat on early enough. I must admit that I don't really feel ready to work just yet, and it shouldn't really matter because I have all the time in the world (until I die) now I am retired.