Saturday 3rd October 2020

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Saturday 3rd October 2020

Lockdown day 194
Shopping embargo day 72

09:14 BST

Yesterday was wet, cold and wet, grey and cold, grey, wet and cold, and it wasn't very nice. There was less rain in the afternoon, but still some rain. The sky wasn't always dark grey. Sometimes it was light grey. sometimes the rain was light when it was supposed to be heavy, but it still rained. The afternoon temperature was only predicted to be 14° C, and although I can't recall actually checking what my thermometers said, 14° C was probably about right.

It rained through the night, and it rained this morning, and although it seems too light to see easily from indoors, I am pretty certain it is raining now. It is no wonder there is a yellow weather warning for rain. It warns of transport disruption, flooding, and all the usual evils. The latest revision to the forecast says the rain will actually stop after one grand finale of heavy rain at 11am. It could be, but probably won't be, dry for the rest of the day. The afternoon temperature will still probably be the same as yesterday, 14° C. After a possible respite from the rain today, it will return tomorrow with heavy rain predicted for most of the day. It will probably be even colder - just 11° C, and without any sunshine that will feel very cold.
3.17 mile walk
mostly in rain.

I did say that the chances of me going out for a walk were very slim yesterday, but I seemed to take that as a self imposed challenge. I have to admit I was very curious about what the river would be like after the heavy rain. I was also curious as to how I would feel not just wearing a coat, but wearing a raincoat during a walk.

When I set out I still had in mind that I would just go as far as "The Bridge Of Doom" that crosses the River Pool where it meets the River Ravensbourne in the River Pool Linear Park. That was a bit more ambitious than just a shorter walk into Ladywell Fields. Once I got going I decided that having got that far I may as well do a complete 3 mile walk.

I found an answer to my wondering about wearing a coat - I didn't like it. I much prefer to walk unencumbered. In the highly unlikely scenario that I could lose my bulging gut by next summer, I would be more than happy to do these walk topless. Worse than a coat is a raincoat, or at least my raincoat.

My best raincoat was very good at keeping me dry even when meeting semi heavy rain, but it is not comfortable. Unless I wear a long sleeved t-shirt, which I did yesterday, my arms feel cold and clammy in the rain. The worst thing is that it is a non-breathable fabric, and after a mile or so of walking I start to sweat. It's not a heavy sweat, and on a nice warm, dry day that sweat would dry off as it formed, but not when there is no airflow. By the end of my walk my arms were wetter inside the coat than it was outside the coat.

I had barely left home before I took my first, and only picture during my walk. I had a leaflet dropped through my door that explained this road closure. This coming Thursday there will be a film crew doing some filming here....Well not actually right here, but at the end of the road where there is a right angled bend in the road by the entrance to the park. Apparently the scene they will be filming (videoing) involves an ambulance in collision with a cyclist for some sort of drama series being shown on Sky Television.

I theory I would want to be nosy, and try and take some long shot photos from inside the park, but I don't know if I can be bothered, I guess I'll see how I feel on Thursday afternoon when the scene is scheduled to be shot. I guess I will be curious about what sort of crew they have for a cheap TV station doing a location shoot. For stuff like this, involving stunt work, and road closures, I may be an even bigger crew than the BBC (or was it ITV ?) had when the filmed almost outside my front door several years ago. That was actually an interesting afternoon. The camera crew were most chatty about their camera, and the actual cameraman said their mega expensive lens was not really that much different to the lens I had on my Nikon camera, but all the extra motors and stuff made it look a lot bigger.

While I didn't take any other useful pictures during my walk, I did shoot a video of some of the stages along my walk. As usual the production values were very low, the dialogue done on the spur of the moment, and while there was no excessive wind noise on this occasion, the roar of the water by the "Bridge Of Doom" did it's best to drown me out.

Yesterday's walk was both enjoyable, and unpleasant. There was something about going out in the rain, challenging, and winning over my reluctance to do so, and also challenging nature itself, that was enjoyable...or maybe "satisfying" is a better word. I also achieved my aim to see how the river was doing after the heavy rain - it was not in flood, but it was running very high, and also very fast in places.

I have already mentioned half the down side of this walk. It was getting hot and sweaty under my raincoat that was most unpleasant. I do wonder if I would have been any wetter if I had just walked in shirtsleeves. In reality the answer to that would have been yes - I would be literally dripping wet after some of the rain I walked through. At least that coat kept me dry for maybe the first mile while I was still warming up.

The other downside was probably a function of the rain, or the cold and damp, and it was that my walk felt quite hard going. My legs felt quite stiff and creaky, and by the time I got home it felt like I had walked much further than 3 miles. The only good thing is that my feet still felt fine, and could have gone on for a few more miles without complaining too much - I think !

I was very happy to strip off my outdoor clothes, and sit down when I got home, but of course the first thing I did was to weigh myself. Although it seemed I had sweated a lot inside my raincoat, it was probably not that much - it was just that it couldn't evaporate. The reality was most stark in that my usual weightloss after the walk was rather less than a walk on a warm sunny day. I think the scales only read a couple of 100gm less that the morning. On the other hand, I had eaten all sorts of crap before going out.

My parcel from Star Bargains turned up a little later than expected, but still inside the 1 hour delivery slot. Everything in it, except the rice crackers, was "naughty stuff", and after depriving myself of "naughty stuff" for some time, I tucked into several items. The hot Pepperami probably encouraged me to sweat while walking, and the high carbohydrate stuff wouldn't have done me any good. It probably accounted for at least another 100gm that I hoped I might lose. Interestingly enough, I note that Star Bargains do sell Diet Coke, but a large amount would weigh so much that I probably couldn't even drag the box through my front door. I may consider it for the future though.

Quite a lot of my afternoon I spent just resting, and apart from editing my video of the walk, I did nothing of interest until dinner time (except for eating a few more forbidden snacks). My dinner turned out to be based on the fourth part of my Indian takeaway from Monday. It was the naan bread. As I suggested I might do, I had it with Marmite, beans and melted cheddar cheese. It was rather nice. Apart from it not being exactly a healthy option, it also had the downside that my spare kebabs from the day previously are not spending an extra day in the fridge. I hope they are OK when I eat one or both of them tonight.

Although I went to be quite early to do some reading, it was about 2am before I managed to get to sleep. I tried for sleep from about 9pm, or perhaps a little later, but I was troubled by trapped wind. Actually, to tell the truth, it wasn't exactly trapped a lot of the time. There are two things I don't understand about it. The first is the usual !what caused it ?", and the second is how did I manage to not realise it was happening until I turned over in bed to go to sleep.

From the minute I turned over my guts started churning, and bubbling, and fizzing, and.... and soon producing prestigious amounts of gas. Every half hour or so I would go out to the toilet, but nothing would happen apart from a continuation of the gurgling, churning, and farting. I think it was probably about midnight that I turned the heater on, and sat reading at my PC for 2 hours. By 2am I seemed to have stopped farting, but there had been no other action while on the toilet. I got back into bed, and fell asleep relatively easy. I woke again a couple of hours later, and went for a pee, and a fart or two, but no more. After a while I managed to fall asleep again. I think I woke up again, and repeated this a couple of hours later, but then I slept through until gone 7am. I would have been happier with an extra 2 or 3 hours sleep.

This morning I guess the good thing is that things are not as bad as I thought they may be. My weight, despite the bad diet, seems static - which is better than it going up. my blood glucose has gone up, but it is not as near the danger line as I expected after my naughty eating. Whether I can be good enough to get it down again on a cold grey rainy day is an interesting question ! Well there is some actual good news. At least I think it is good, my blood pressure seems to be nice and low this morning.

I have some likely plans, and some possible plans for today. The possible is going for a walk. I am curious again about the river. After a night of more rain it could be a raging torrent this morning. I would like to get a bit of video of that, but I really don't fancy going for a walk today. Maybe I might take up yesterday's option of a short walk into Ladywell Fields, and see how it feel from there.

One thing I have done in preparation for some sort of walk today is to dig out my other waterproof camera. It is also a Fuji, but an earlier model to my XP71. It is an XP10, and if I recall correctly, it even has a preset for underwater photography. Whether it is still waterproof enough for that after all these years is an unknown, but it should be OK in heavy rain. It uses the same battery as my XP71, and that means I could take three batteries with me.

The XP71 really eats batteries in video mode, and it can get through a fully charged battery after as little as 5 minutes of video. I hope the XP10 is a bit more frugal. It's video is lower resolution, but still "high resolution" and that should take less power to process. If I do go out in the rain I shall take both cameras, and use one for video, and the other, the XP71, for stills. It has better zoom and more pixels than the XP10.

The one thing I think I will definitely do today is to order more beers. I intend to use the same place I bought the Australian and New Zealand beers form last month. They seem quite quick, and their prices do not seem too bad - as usual, not as cheap as supermarkets, but cheaper than pub prices. I am going to get a South African beer as well some more New Zealand beer, but I am also going to get a few South African food products. I like their weird sausages, and dried meats. Both are expensive, but seem cheaper than the prices I used pay from the mini supermarket I used to use on my way to work in Earlsfield. All I have to do is not get carried away......