As I write this we are almost having a sunny spell. The cloud to the east seems fairly broken up, and the sun is valiantly trying to punch through it.....ahh, it has made it, and while it might only last a minute or two, it is rather nice. If the forecast isn't fantasy then the cloud should thicken soon, and it may start to rain in a few hours. The latest revision to the forecast now says it wall rain, sometimes heavy rain, from 11 The forecast has just been revised again ! It has now gone back to something similar to the screenshot above. Maybe the afternoon will be a bit brighter and cheerful than the pessimistic revision earlier. One constant thing through all the revisions is that today is going to be cold. It has started rather cool at just under 10° C, and is now cooling further. The middle of the day may be no higher than 8° C, and by the early hours of tomorrow morning the temperature could fall to just 4° C. Tomorrow is currently predicted to be very grey, with frequent showers, but the temperature gradually rising until it peaks at 10° C just before midnight.

   Having waited until I had come back from my exercise to write anything yesterday, I have already written about my exercise, or walk as I prefer to call it.  What I can add today is a few photos taken on that walk (I showed the route, and another crappy video yesterday).
  The recent showers have topped up the river, and it is now running at roughly it's "normal" level. This is the bit of river that has my favourite rocks. The previously exposed shingle bed that I used to access the rocks is almost, but not completely covered, and the rocks are only partly submerged.
  It was unusual to see a Ring Necked parakeet so low in a tree, and so handily near the path. I really had to "force" this picture for presentation. Originally the bird came out as almost a silhouette against the bright sky, but a few tweaks were enough to shows some detail and colour.
  Just along the path by the river from where I had a chat to Donna, who possibly runs the Facebook pages "Friends Of The River Pool",  the rest of the volunteers had a bonfire going to burn the unusable bits of tree they were cutting down. As well as cleaning and improving the river, these volunteers also do woodland management. I found out that what they were actually doing was to cut down some fast growing willow trees. Willows, as I have observed myself, are not strong trees, and tend to break when in gales. Being fast growing, which I didn't know, they tend to dominate over other trees that struggle to flourish under the canopies of the Willows. The work going on here is not to clear the area, as I once speculated, but to allow slower growing trees, like Oaks, to grow stronger.
  This is one of the volunteers dragging a thing whose name I forget. The thing was originally placed somewhere upstream to help the river get a more natural look where it is mostly trapped between concrete banks. I assume it had done what was needed of it, and was subsequently washed a bit further downstream. The volunteer was dragging it through the river to add to a berm.

  A berm is a sort of protrusion out from the river bank that alters, and improves the flow. The extra flow helps to scour the river bed, and deepen the water. This benefits the fish the river, and the berm itself helps to provide a refuge for fish that are in danger of being washed down to the river after heavy rain increase the depth and flow of the river. I learned quite a bit, maybe not 100% correctly, from my 10 minute chat with Donna (who was standing thigh deep in the river !).
  One thing I was keen to learn was the purpose of the recently spotted side exit of the river just before the "Bridge Of Doom" (as once was). The reason I only recently spotted it was that it was only recently de-clogged by the volunteers. What seemed peculiar to me was that this channel seemed to loop around, and re-enter the river a little further downstream.

  Some old maps show the area as having a small island at this point, and I think there was also a mill here once. Either thing could explain why the channel existed, but the real answer, although it could still be building on historic features, is that this channel is a fish bypass. The weir under the "Bridge Of Doom" is apparently too steep for fish to climb, and so they can take the scenic route to get to the other side !

  I didn't feel as knackered as I did after the near identical walk I did on Monday, but I still felt quite weary after I git home. It took a fair time before I had finished going through all the pictures I had taken, and edited the video I had shot. I had declined to eat anything when I got home, and that was despite having some new and tempting stuff I had bought in the morning. I did give in to having a large straight whisky. That is probably responsible for the "siesta" I had. I have no idea how long I slept in the afternoon. It probably wasn't that long, but I did find it affected my sleep last night.

  After doing my best not to snack or nibble until dinner time, although that was not 100% successful, I was very hungry by dinner time. The whisky I had earlier probably made me even hungrier. I ended up having a quite filling dinner. It was a large chunk of well roasted Polish style smoked pork (almost unsliced bacon), a small baked potato, and a sachet of Heinz "Mexican style" beans. I followed that by a tub of the low calorie/sugar ice cream that I get from Aldi.

  I thought I felt tired last night, and I looked forward to bed, but before going to bed I had one more thing to do, and that was to look through the Friends Of The River Pool facebook pages. I was told they had a website, but all I could find was the Facebook stuff. Maybe for some "Facebook" is the internet ! It was quite interesting. I learned a few things, and I also discovered that their photographs were sometimes not that good. I am not always happy with many of my own photographs, particularly those taken under dim autumn skies, but I reckon I still have a few good snaps they might like. Perhaps I'll put a few on a memory stick or something for when I next see them - they are usually out on Wednesdays.

  Once in bed I started reading. Unfortunately I was getting near the end of the book, and that drove me to stay up later to read it to the end. I think it was gone 11pm when I finished the book. I thought I would fall asleep as soon as I turned the light off. I didn't, and it may have been gone midnight when I got up again, and started looking at my photos taken through the year to see if I did really have a few good shots that the Friends Of The River Pool might like. I think I do have some, but I didn't make any notes as to the best of them. I will have to go through them all again at some point.

  It was just after 2am when I finally fell asleep. I seemed to sleep mostly OK from then onwards, but only got a little over 4 hours sleep. As far as my conscious mind was concerned, it didn't matter if I slept through to midday today, but the unconscious mind thought I should still get up at around 7pm, and started waking me up some time before that ! Grrr ! I don't actually feel too bad now, but I predict I will be wanting to take naps throughout the day.

  This morning my blood glucose is up to 8.5mmol/l. This is bad, although nut that bad. The worst thing is that I am not sure what I ate that could have driven it up that high. The ice cream has seemed to be fairly innocent in the past, and so I rule that out. Maybe that big chunk of pork had been steeped in sugar before being smoked. I'll have to check on that the next time I buy a similar piece. The baked potato would have been a small contributor once my body had converted the starch into sugar. Maybe those beans had more sugar than anticipated. That my blood glucose has gone up is not in itself of any concern, but not knowing/remembering why is annoying.

  I had expected the start of this afternoon to be bright for a few hours, and I wondered if I could manage another walk today, but the current version of the weather forecast has slayed that idea. This afternoon i taken care of, or at least late afternoon has. Jodie will be visiting with more beers to taste. Prior to that I had better do some tidying up, and that tidying up includes a corpse removal job !

  I went down into the kitchen earlier, and as I passed through the dining room I noticed that the mousetrap in there had caught a small little grey mouse. The peculiar thing is why it hadn't caught it before. I had baited it with a peanut, but it managed t0 grab that without triggering it. I was going to re-bait it, but I hadn't done so, and it seems I didn't need to. I had placed it where there was evidence that the mouse was trying to get under the door into the cupboard under the stairs. This morning the trap was upside down with just the back end and tail of the mouse showing. It is an unpleasant business, but I think I'll dispose of it by leaving it out on the tree stump for a hungry magpie or crow.

  It is no doubt a fallacious idea, but for some stupid reason I believe there was only a single mouse loose in the house. Statistics say there is probably a whole family of them. If my stupid idea is correct then my mouse problem is solved, but I shall continue to leave the traps down, and keep an eye out for any more droppings.