Wednesday 9th December 2020

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Wednesday 9th December 2020

Lockdown day 261
Shopping embargo day 88 139

08:06 GMT

Once again the first, and subsequent revisions of the forecast seemed to be for somewhere than Catford. I didn't spot any mist or fog (although maybe there was a very slight haze in the distance for a short while). The morning was certainly gloomy, and it didn't seem possible that the sun would break through those clouds, but it did. The first rays of the sun appeared at around midday. Half an hour later it seemed sunny enough to go for a walk, and as I walked the sky cleared even more to give mostly clear blue sky. It started to cloud over a few hours later, and sometime after sunset it seemed like the cloud cover was complete again. For all that sunshine it remained a cold day with the temperature only just reaching 5° C at best, and then not for long in the afternoon.

I'm not sure if there is some fine drizzle falling at the moment, but the road outside is looking very wet. There was definite rain a bit earlier. The day has started at 5° C, as per the forecast, and considering that was the highest temperature yesterday I guess it is not too bad a start. At least it wouldn't be too bad if the temperature was going to rise beyond 7° C today (and the latest revision cuts that down to just one hour now). The latest revision also extends the sunny spells to last from 1pm to 3pm this afternoon. The rest of the time it will be cloudy with a 50% chance of light rain at 9pm. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be dry, but overcast. There could be rain at 1am and 11pm, but the rest of the day may be dry, and still cold, although a long period at 7° C is better than the last few days.
another 3 mile walk

Apart from my extra visit to Aldi, for some top up shopping, I was really quite lazy yesterday morning. By 11am (I think) I was laying on my bed, reading, and almost dozing. At midday, when the sun first broke through I started to stir. I still had to grit my teeth, and force myself to go out for a much needed walk. At half past midday I set out with no definite plan beyond walking to the River Pool Linear Park, and seeing how I felt.

I didn't feel that good. I felt like I was really out of condition - as indeed I was. I was walking with my coat done up because of the cold. The only good thing was that the air was almost still, and I wasn't subjected to icy blasts of strong winds. Had the sun not come out, and more importantly, stayed out, I might have only walked 2 miles, and possibly even less, but the huge areas of blue sky made me want to try to do a 3 mile walk on my well worn route to the bow string bridge and back.

I was particularly interested in what work the Friends Of The River Pool might have done last Wednesday - which is their working day. There were three places I wanted to check on. They were the pond in the part of the park known as The Vineries, the new berm constructed a few hundred yards upriver from the Bridge Of Doom, and the new picnic table.

Ducks on the river are pretty commonplace, but these two were really well lit by the sun, and it seemed worth taking a snap. The duck in the foreground was doing that weird thing of resting it's head on it's back - making it look headless.

This is the pond in the part of the park known as The Vineries. I think there may have been a farm here a long time ago that was named "Vineries". I don't know if the pond is natural or man made. What I do know was that it was clogged with weed. It has been tidied up, and is now looking much bigger. Some of the water weed that was removed has been replanted in/on the new berm. It is probably that next year that berm will be bright with water flowers.

This is the new picnic table that is currently surrounded by mud, but all the grass should grow back by spring (probably). It was probably late summer when I saw the area being cleared, and I speculated that maybe it was being cleared to make a picnic area. What was actually going on was fast growing will trees being cut down to give more light and space for slow growing trees like oaks. I can only guess that someone had the same idea as me - that now there is a lot more clear space it could be used for a picnic area. I believe that more tables like this are planned if the funding can be found.

I think the seasons are a bit mixed up at the moment. It seemed that summer kept going when it should have been autumn, and that winter started before autumn had finished. I think we are officially in winter now, and if not (because I think the 21st December may be the official start of winter), it certainly feels like it, However, this view looks very autumnal. I should have shot 30 seconds of video here to show the sun reflecting off the water, and giving bright ripples of sunshine along the concrete at the edge of the water. I have no idea why I didn't shoot some video because a static shot looses almost all the charm of the scene.

blue sky and
a tree in it's autumn colours

This picture shows just how blue the sky was for some of my walk. It is nicely contrasted against the yellow of the remaining leaves of the tree. The green looking trees on the right of the picture are evergreens.

I happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch Glendale, the company Lewisham Council uses to look after their parks, laying down a new concrete base for a litter bin. On the long path that runs from the railway footbridge (in the middle of the park) to the Catford Road entrance there are only 2 little bins. I don't think the work here is a new bin, but one of the existing bins being put on a firmer base (and probably anchored to it to stop it being knocked over). With all the heavy use the park had over the summer, as a result of Covid restrictions, it was obvious that new bins are needed.

These two ring necked parakeets were the only other birds I was able to get a snap of. All the small birds were just too quick for me, but these two almost posed in this tree by the Bridge Of Doom. I noticed the tree has many holes pecked into it. I don't think it is woodpeckers, although I am told there are woodpeckers in the park. I think these parrots nest inside trees.

The weather report ! Once again a hesitant commentary about the weather standing in the biggest field for a better 360° look at the sky.

I was about a mile from home, and I was feeling hot and tired. The latter I could do nothing about, but I could, and did open my coat to allow myself to cool down a bit. It was not long before the cold air hit my chest that it began to feel uncomfortable. To describe it as chest pain makes it sound more drastic than it was, and also doesn't describe the real discomfort. It was like the arthritic/rheumatic pain that cold causes in knees or elbows, etc but in this case it is my rib cage that complains. It is not usually a strong pain, and the worse bit is the way it sounds/feels like bits of bone grating away at each other.

That was not terrible, but it wasn't nice, and combined with how my legs were feeling, I was very glad to get home. I arrived home feeling hot enough to be a bit sweaty. I initially cooled off in the cold kitchen where I prepared a rather big, but simple lunch. It was a couple of medium sized sweet potatoes. I big one, or two small one would have been right, but I only had medium sized one, and so I had quite a generous portion. I baked the sweet potatoes, and when done I split them open to put on some butter and grated cheese. I then microwaved them for a couple of minutes.

They were a nice warming, and obviously quite filling lunch. There are unsubstantiated belief that sweet potatoes are more healthy than normal potatoes, and particularly for diabetics. I have my doubts about this, but it was a satisfying meal after my walk, and having eaten it I laid down on my bed, and had no trouble having a nice snooze ! I don't really know how long I was asleep for, but it may have been as much as an hour, and the sun was setting when I woke up.

It wasn't a spectacular sunset, but it was still a bit pretty. I was yawning heavily when I started going through the pictures, and video I had taken. I am yawning now just thinking about it ! I hadn't taken that many pictures, and so it didn't take too long to go through them, and select the more interesting snaps. Editing the short video was also just a short job on my new PC. By the time I had finished I was starting to think about dinner.

I wanted to keep dinner simple, and a bit smaller than usual after that heavy lunch. I opted for just bacon and beans. The only annoyance was that as I was pouring the beans into a pan to heat them up, I realised they were not the reduced sugar and salt beans I thought they were. My recent bad habit continued when I had a dessert. It was 4 kiwi fruit. They seemed sticky and sweet, but I chose to believe, rightly, or probably wrongly, that their sugar (fructose) level was not that high.

I was good to get to bed last night. I think it was probably gone 10pm before I was asleep, but once asleep I sometimes slept well, and sometimes didn't. I think it was soon after laying down in bed that I started coughing. It was a dry cough, and it seemed to take several swigs of drink to calm it down. Later on I would wake up and cough for a minute or two. I assumed I had caught another dose of Covid-19. That idea was reinforced by waking up at about 3am with my pillow, and parts of the bottom sheet wet with sweat. It seemed like I had a fever - another good sign of Covid-19.

While I went out for a wee I took my temperature, and if I had had a fever it must have finished some time ago because my temperature was just 34.9° C - which is about as far as you can get from a fever. It was closer to being dead ! I think the sweating was where I had wrapped myself tightly in the duvet, and fallen into a deep sleep - so deep I couldn't feel any discomfort from getting too hot. I have no idea about the cough. Maybe it was some toothpaste that had stuck to my throat (somehow) and was irritating it. The toothpaste I was using before the current one was always making me cough.

After turning my pillow around, so as to avoid the dam area, I fell asleep again, and from then on I slept quite normally (where "normally" does not always mean good). I thought I deserved much more sleep, but that bit of brain you can never argue with, decided that I should get up at 6am for some silly reason. Apart from my feet feeling a bit sore, I didn't really feel any worse than most days. That doesn't mean I want to go out again, but maybe I will.

I did my usual routine, of which the most important was to see how my blood glucose was this morning. I was hoping that the baked sweet potatoes, and the kiwi fruit wouldn't make it go up any more than the day before - which was atrociously high. They didn't and it had gone down to 8.6mmol/l. It is still too high, but at least it is now almost in a sane area. I'm not sure I am on track to get it lower still tomorrow, but anything is possible. What makes it unlikely is that I have already had an extremely unhealthy breakfast of crisps. They were Camembert and Rosemary flavour, or alleged to be, if they had been even 10% as delicious as that sounds like it could have been, it would have been worth the sacrifice. It wasn't !

Today I have one small definite plan. I wrote out some Xmas cards yesterday, and sometime this morning I'll pop them in the postbox. I may do something along the same lines today - trying to find some forgotten addresses, and write a few more cards. The forecast is...err, was... saying that there could be some sunny spells this afternoon. The latest revision says that only 1pm will see sunny spells now. That makes it less likely I will be going out for another walk, and there was only a 50:50 chance to start with. It is feeling more like I will be staying in, and probably doing the work/experimenting on the mini PC that I hope will take over as web server from the old Toshiba laptop I am currently using.