I noticed that it was raining at 6am, and since then the rain has just turned to light drizzle. I noted that people passing by were still using umbrellas just now. Maybe it will stop drizzling by late morning, but it will stay heavily overcast until 3pm according to the latest revision to the forecast. It is possible that there could be a few brief sunny spells after that. The latest revision to the forecast omits the small chance of a shower at 5pm. It should be almost as warm as yesterday, 17° C, but without the sunshine it will probably feel quite cool. Tomorrow may be lightly overcast until the cloud starts to thicken in the afternoon. By mid afternoon it may start to rain, and that rain could continue until gone sunset. Some of it could be quite heavy.

   Yesterday I achieved something I didn't think I would do. I did have some alternate ideas for things to do yesterday, and there were a few things I thought I should definitely do, but by the time I was washed and dressed the lure of the sunshine got too strong. I never did get around to doing that washing up, or re-check the old PC I had been playing with. I just had to get out into the sunshine.

  Yesterday's walk was one of those walks where I kept daring myself to go further. I started out with the intention to walk through the linear park as far as the bowstring bridge by the back of the Bell Green Sainsbury's supermarket. That is 1.5 miles from home, and by crossing the river, by the bridge, and heading for home again, I would have walked a nice 3 miles.

  By the time I got to that bridge my legs had warmed up, and were finally feeling OK. My feet also felt fine, and so I decided to walk to the end of the park, and then possibly to Lower Sydenham station. At Lower Sydenham station I decided I would continue along the Waterlink Way as far as Cator Park. I might have then walked the short distance to New Beckenham Station where I could cross the railway, and walk back towards home from there.

  I could have done that, but I walked in the other direction towards Penge East station. Before looking at a map, and seeing where it was in relation to some of the places I had previously walked to, I always thought of it as being impossibly remote. Yesterday I walked all the way there, and obviously walked home from there.
  A few days ago my older sister sent me a photo of her in her back garden. In the background was a teasel like this one I snapped as I walked through the linear park. I thought that maybe I could collect a few seeds from the multitude to be seen in the park, and grow one in my back garden. A little research I did later suggested it might not be a good idea. Apparently it takes two years of growth before teasels produce these distinctive heads (which start out as mauve flowers), and apparently they can be a bit invasive unless carefully controlled. I decided against the idea.
  Long shot of Lower Sydenham station being bathed in warm sunshine. This was the point of my first major decision to walk further. The earlier decision, but the bow string bridge in the linear park didn't really need much thought.
  Every time I walk past this water treatment place I can't help but think of the second Quatermass II SciFi story even if the scale of this water treatment works is rather small compared to the Shell Have Oil Refinery which was used in the TV programme. Check the link if you have never heard of Quatermass.
   Just beyond the water treatment works the Waterlink Way continues alongside the River Pool. Near the entrance to the path I noticed a small mud pathway, and decided to see where it went. It paralleled a small stream, and maybe 30 feet in it ended where the stream entered the main river. That was sort of interesting. More interesting was why a foam fire extinguisher had been abandoned, looking as if it had not been used (safety pin still through the trigger) in the middle of a patch of nettles and other vegetation.
  Towards the other end of the main path is this unusual sight of a pair of conjoined twin trees. I have seen one or two incidences of two trees joined at the base, but this one also has a join halfway up the main trunk.
  I like it when somewhere includes a bit of history about their premises. It is even better when it is a church because it helps cut down of the God bothering notices that are a feature of so many churches, particularly the "happy clappy" type that seem to spring up everywhere.
  This is the spire (or is it a steeple ?) of The Holy Trinity Church. I like church architecture, but I am not interested in what goes on inside churches.
  If it wouldn't mean bypassing a sight I particularly wanted to see, I would have entered this park here, and had a wander through it. That could have shaved off a few hundred years of my walk.
  This is what ultimately all the pain was about, although there was not much pain at all, just some fatigue. Walking all the way to Penge East station. It would probably have been as little as 10 minutes from here to Penge West station, and from there just a few minutes walk to Crystal Palace Park. That would have been pushing things too far, but if they don't let up on masks on for public transport, I hope that I am ready for some extra long walks next summer if I can't get to the seaside.
  By going up a few steps on the public footbridge, and leaning over the railings, I could get a picture along the platforms. In the distance the tunnel mouth that takes the line right under Crystal Palace can be seen.
 I can imagine that two different council departments, or maybe one was a local council, and the other the GLC, had different ideas about how far it was to Crystal Palace Park. Having now checked the map I am in favour of it only being ¾ of a mile.
  This place, Wesley Hall, is actually a Methodist flavour church. It is halfway down Sydenham Road. When I was very young, perhaps as young as 8, my older brother was the drummer for a skiffle band. For some reason I believed he played here. I might have come to this idea when he asked my dad to drop him here when we were out for a drive, or something. My brother was always a bit of a God botherer, and so maybe he had other business here, but maybe there is a hall separate from the pews, and they did have gigs here. Some churches are into music, and perhaps they held a (heavily chaperoned) youth club here. I guess I'll never know what the truth of this vague memory is.

  The good thing about Sydenham Road is that it is all downhill in the direction I was walking. At the bottom I had the choice of avoiding another hill by walking thorough the park again, or facing going up and over Perry Hill. For some masochistic reason I decided on the hill. The funny thing is that it was comparatively easy going up it. I guess practice really does work.

  The very last "bad" bit of my walk was going up and over the railway by Catford Bridge. I can remember that once being a struggle after along walk, but I found myself accelerating up it to overtake a slowcoach. It was sort of strange to not feel shattered after such a long walk - the longest, admittedly by only one tenth of a mile, I have walked for many, many years. Oops, I tell a lie - one of my walks over Blackheath was two tenths of a mile longer !

  It was just as well that I was not on my last legs when I got home because I found my PC dead when I got home. Before I could investigate that I checked my weight, and I was very happy to see it so low again. If I was able to walk, say, 5 miles today, I think I could set a new low record again. Unfortunately the weather is not good for another walk, and I have other stuff to do today.

  I unplugged my PC, and took it downstairs so I had the space of the dining room table to work on it. I suspected it might have overheated, and this later turned out to be the correct guess, but not in the way I originally thought. I plugged it in downstairs and it started to start up, but died again in a few seconds. Before I could do much else I got out the hoover, and cleaned all the accumulated dust from inside. I then tried a different power supply unit. That did nothing. At that point I was worried that the CPU may have been cooked to death, but then I found the fan on the graphics card was choked with dust, and would not turn.

  I removed the graphics card, and tried the PC with the monitor connected to the internal graphics adapter. It fired up first time. I had to conclude that the semi expensive graphics card I had been using had cooked itself to death. Fortunately I had a spare graphics card that wasn't quite as high spec as the other, but it worked. After bit more cleaning I had my PC back in my bedroom, and hooked up to it's usual peripherals. it has been working fine ever since. It is even a bit quieter with the new power supply and graphics card. Whether it will render video as fast as it used to with the old graphics card is an unknown, and may remain that way for reasons I'll come to later.

  By the time I had got my PC re-installed in my bedroom the afternoon seemed to be passing fast, and I still had to add my health details (my new, improved weight !)  into the spreadsheets I store on the PC, plus copy the pictures I had taken to the PC. Only then did I lay on my bed to get my breath back...sort of. All too soon it was time to think about dinner. I thought that long walk deserved a careful reward such as a takeaway.

  I also had an ulterior motive for a takeaway - particularly an Indian takeaway. I was thinking that my recent diet had not included that much fibre, and I was feeling a bit bunged up. Sometime there is nothing like a good, hot curry, to clear the system !! I ordered quite a selection of stuff to reach the 20% discount for orders over £20. When it came down to eating it I found I was satisfied after eating less than I would have imagined. Depending on how ravenous I feel tonight, I could easily make another two dinners from the remainder of my order.

  I expected to sleep like a log after my busy day, but I had a terrible night. I could not get comfortable when I went to bed. My legs seemed to start aching in most positions, and I was getting the same pain in the back of my right thigh I get when sitting down. That was only in one position, and unfortunately it was in the same position that was most comfortable for the rest of my legs ! I think it was about midnight that I gave in, and swallowed a couple of paracetamol tablets. By 1am they had kicked in enough to allow me to get to sleep.

  I am not really sure how well I slept after that. I have a suspicion that some of the times I thought I was wake was actually in dreams. The best I can say is that it was light outside (albeit a grey and rainy light) when I finally woke up, and got up. This morning I do not feel on top of the world. I still feel tired, and I predict I will be having a few snoozes in the afternoon. My legs feel a bit stiff, but that is not unusual in the morning these days.

  The good news is that my weight, although not quite as low as at the end of my walk, is still low this morning. Provided nothing silly happens overnight, I will probably be able to claim I have lost 3kg this month. I may also also be able to claim I have ended the month with suitably low blood glucose. This morning it was the same as yesterday, just 6.7mmol/l. If it could be this low every day I would be very happy.

  The appalling grey and wet weather has put me off going out today - even if it does brighten up a bit later. However I have other excitements. In the middle of writing this I had a package delivered. It is my new PC. I ordered it via Amazon, and it cost just £118.  That is a lot less than I was anticipating spending (possibly closer to £300). I have obviously spent a bit of time looking at it. It has two problems, but only one is serious. The first problem is that it is physically very small, and balancing my printer on it might not be possible.

  The second problem is one I knew about from the very beginning. These are ex-office PCs, and although fitted with a powerful processor, and a generous amount of RAM, they do not have the storage capacity for heavy multimedia use. All my pictures and videos use a LOT of hard disk space. What I didn't anticipate was how small these PCs are. There is only room for two laptop sized hard drives, or one full size drive. I want to retain the solid state, and very fast (hopefully) hard disk, and add a conventional "spinning rust" hard disk for bulk storage. There is no way I can fit any hard disk I have into the case alongside the existing disk, and so I have had to order a new 2.5 inch, laptops sized disk. That is another £60 added to the bill, but once again that is less than I was anticipating. Hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.

  Until the new hard disk arrives there is little I can do to the new PC today. That means I can indulge in extreme laziness today...maybe. I still have some washing up to do that is mouldering in the sink. I was supposed to do that yesterday. I guess I have no excuses left not to do it today. I will also see about disposing of the spare PC I was playing with. That mostly means taking out anything useful, putting the case back on it, and burying it at the bottom of the black wheelie bin with plenty of crap over it to hide it.