The garden has been watered, and will be watered more today ! I don't think I would call the rain, I saw earlier this morning, heavy rain, but it was certainly enough over a couple of hours to give the garden a good watering.  It seems like the garden is going to be watered several more times today. The latest update to the forecast says there could be a sunny spell around 10am. That seems unlikely when I look out the window, but there definitely was a sunny spell a little earlier on. It probably lasted for 10 or 15 minutes. I think it probably happened just as the last rain was falling. Today is not only going to be predominately dull and gloomy, and wet, but it is going to be a rather cool 18° C.  Tomorrow gets better, and worse. There could be a few hours featuring sunny spells, but more rain is predicted to fall than today, and it was also be very close to cold. An afternoon high of just 15° C is predicted.

   My cheese delivery arrived at about 9.30am yesterday - about in the middle of the one hour time slot I was advised of. It was of two huge chunks of mature cheddar, and a pretty big lump of Red Leicestershire cheese. Both types of cheese would be described as "arty anal" (artisanal) cheeses, and were slightly above supermarket prices, but not much more.  The Cheddar cheese had a few veins of blue near the outside. That gives it a slightly non cheddar taste, but I like blue cheeses, and so is not a problem.

  The red cheese is like no supermarket red cheese I have ever tasted. To be honest I am finding it hard to like. It is a lot harder than typical supermarket cheeses, but that could be a good thing. It is the taste that is a slight problem. It tastes a lot like grass (the stuff cows eat, not the smoking stuff) ! I suspect it is an acquired taste, and so of course I have eaten it as slices on rice crackers several times in (almost) the last 24 hours. Now it is no longer a shock I may be getting to enjoy it a bit more.

  With my cheese delivery out of the way so early I had plenty of time to do other stuff before going out for a walk. "Other stuff" was almost exclusively doing a bit of laundry. It was only a small amount consisting of a t-shirt, a pair of underpants, and a pair of "sports pants". I call them sports pants because I can think of no better description for them, but I have no idea what sport you would do in them. To me they are just a pair of simple pull on trousers that are good for slouching about the house in. I hung them all on the line outside to dry, and they were dry by mid afternoon.


  I don't think I have mentioned this before, but there is a sort of anecdote to do with laundry. Once upon a time (it could have been as long as a couple of years ago) I ordered a pair of rubber household gloves from Amazon. I was getting fed up with all the local shops only stocking yellow rubber gloves (Marigolds). The pair I ordered were a nice purple colour. That made a nice change. What I didn't realise was that they would be shipped from China, and take weeks to arrive.

  When they finally arrived I approved of the colour as a one off novelty, but there seemed to be a problem with how they fitted my hand. The main problem is that the fingers seemed too tight. I set them aside until the day before yesterday when I thought I would give them another go after the pair I was wearing sprung a leak. To my amazement they fit perfectly. Now I know why my gut is not shrinking as fast as I was sure it should. It seems my weight loss includes my fingers. They are evidently not as fart as they used to be !

  With the laundry out the way I had no more excuses not to go for a walk. I didn't want to walk too far while my feet are still healing from previous long walks, but I didn't see any reason not to use some hill climbing to burn off a few more calories. I planned my walk to go right over the highest part of Hilly Fields. I still couldn't make it to the top non stop, but it is getting easy every time.
  It seems sort of strange you can't enter the Brockley & Ladywell Cemetery if you have Covid-19. It make me wonder where all the bodies are buried. Some of the doom sayers still maintain that people are dropping like flies from Covid-19, but if they are, where are all the bodies ? They are not piled up on the street corners, and so it seems the death rate is rather less, but a large factor, than some of the screaming maniacs say it is.
  This would appear to the the tombstone of an RAF pilot who was killed over home soil in World War One. I am guessing it was an accident rather than by enemy action. Another accident, that seems very frequent in this cemetery, is the amount of people buried because they fell asleep. Burying people who are asleep is not very nice, and in some quarters it could be judged as murder ! There are two other people under this headstone who were buried after falling asleep.
   One thing you see a lot when looking at headstones in any of the very old cemeteries, is young many people died young. I selected this grave as an example because it is so easy to read. Just under 100 years ago, and died aged 44. There are examples of some living into their 80s, but they are few and far between. There are probably more graves of people dying in their 20s. People from around the end of the 1800s, and the beginning of the 1900s would probably laugh at our pre-occupation of a handful of people dying of Covid-19. One hundred, or more years ago, death was an everyday occurrence, and people may not have liked it, but they accepted it. They had to !
  There is nothing particularly rare about this Victorian era post box on Adelaide Avenue, but I thought it worth taking a snap before our crazy prime minister flogs them all to America, or paints them blue.
  It is simple really. All I have to is to follow the long and winding road towards the horizon, and when the air thins to negligible proportions I will be at the top of Hilly Fields.
  Although I have been to the top of Hilly Fields before I have never been to this part, although I probably passed within a 100ft of it.  This is the "tea room" at the top of Hilly Fields. I note the banner on the roof line contains the "Extinction Rebellion" logo. I wonder if the council, who own the park, realise such a radical thing is being shown ?
 I am not sure if this Ordnance Survey triangulation point is at the very top of the hill, or if it once had the clearest view towards distant points. The view now is obscured by trees in most direction. The last time I saw it was a few years ago, and the only decoration it had was dog wee stains. It looks like it has had a makeover since.
  There is a convenient gap in the trees (perhaps intentional ?) that allows a view towards Greenwich, and the Millenium Dome. I know a telephoto lens foreshortens everything, but even so I was surprised at how close the dome seems to be to Greenwich town centre. The tower with the blue clock face was/is the town hall near the railway station, and the white church steeple just to the left of it is not far from the Cutty Sark.
  Views to the south and east are probably better than any other direction from Hill Fields. I'm sure the church spire in the middle of this picture is on Lewisham High Street. The high street itself would run from left to right across the picture. I'm guessing that the fields seen in the top left of the picture is probably Blackheath.
  Just outside the park now, and a 484 bus struggles up Vicars Hill - possibly in first gear. It is just approaching a bus stop. Using the bus would be the very lazy way to get to head start to almost the top of Hilly Fields. In the distance are the three tower blocks opposite Lewisham Hospital.
  I've almost shown this view before, but that was from a bit lower down the hill. I would estimate it was from nearer where the blue car is on the right hand side of the road. From here it seems an awful long way down to Ladywell Village. The building in the distance is the new part of Lewisham Hospital. It contains, on the second floor if I recall correctly, Chestnut ward where I stayed last year after my little heart attack.

  It felt good to be home, and the actual walk itself felt good. A three mile walk, even one involving a big huge hill is almost routine now. That is not to say I didn't look forward to putting my feet up and having a rest when I got home. I was a bit disappointed that my weight had not dipped as low as it did after my walk the previous day, but it was not too far away.  Maybe three mile was not quite enough to dehydrate me despite it feeling quite warm out.

  I didn't have any soup yesterday, and that was because I had cheese ! I did have a snack of thin(ish) slices of cheese on rice crackers. I don't know if I have explained if for some time, but these rice crackers are exceptionally low in calories, and don't seem to have any effect on my blood glucose level. Cheese doesn't really affect my blood glucose either, but of course it does contain many calories !

  My dinner was a bit of an unknown quantity. It was mostly pasta and beans (both butter beans and borlotti beans). In theory the pasta, being all carbohydrate, should raise my blood glucose, but maybe in the past I have overestimated how much it may do this. Last night I did try and take care to not make so much pasta, and maybe that helped when I checked my blood this morning. A few chunks of melted cheddar helped make the pasta much nicer.

  I seemed to sleep better last night. It was similar to my recent sleeps, but without a few hours of insomnia in the middle of it. Oddly enough, while it seemed better, I think I felt less refreshed when I finally got up this morning. Maybe it is the change of weather. It initially seemed like someone had thrown a bog switch, and switched between summer and mid autumn. Now it is over half way through the morning, and midday approaching fast, it doesn't feel as bad as I expected it to be. Sometime it has been very grey, but it is sort of bright, without actually being sunny at the moment. This is actually now shown on the revised forecast. The 10% chance of rain at midday has now vanished, but the chance of rain at 3 and 4 pm has now gone up to 90% - and it will probably be heavy rain !

  While I might have felt not fully refreshed after my sleep, I think my usual aches and pains were very mild. My blood glucose had gone up to 7.9mmol/l, but that is OK, and less than expected after that pasta and several bottles of beer (that I forgot to mention earlier). My weight is very satisfactory. Even before I had done a poo it seemed like I had last 100gm, and now that I have has a satisfactory visit to the toilet it could be 200gm (but that is more an estimate).

  It is difficult to know what to do today. I thought it would be wise to not be out at midday because of rain, but now it seems I probably could go for a walk provided I am back home well before 3pm (when heavy rain is expected). At the moment my feeling are 50 - 50 about going out. It won't be so enjoyable under a grey sky (even a mildly grey sky). Giving my feet a bit more rest to heal properly might be wise. On the downside is I won't be able to look forward to seeing another dip in the reading on the scales unless I starve myself today - and I am feeling hungry just thinking about it. At this point I can't make a definite prediction one way or another. Maybe I'll have a shower, and decide after that.