The forecast rain seems to have started a bit late this morning. The second to last time I looked outside was about 8.50am, and it was still dry then. It is now raining, but the clouds are only mid-grey, and the rain seems to be very light. Maybe those clouds will turn to dark grey, and heavy rain will fall, or maybe the forecast is being extra pessimistic. The latest revision to the forecast only changes two things compared to the screenshot above. The light rain is now predicted to last until 1pm, and at 3pm there could be a sunny spell ! Today will be cooler than yesterday, and although there may now by a single hour of 10° C, 9° C is more representative of the day. Tomorrow should see much lighter cloud, but there could still be at least a 30% chance of rain at times. There could also be a sunny period or two. The temperature will probably be about the same as today.

  I felt I just had to take advantage of the forecast sunny spells, and the almost warm weather, to go for a walk yesterday. I have to admit I was a bit impatient to get out, and left before the sunny spells had really got established. I think the forecast was still saying that midday to 1pm would not feature any sunshine, and that was almost true. The best periods of sunshine started when I was three quarters through my walk, and continued after I got home.

  Although one bit of my brain was keen to go on the walk, another bit wasn't. Although  was feeling basically OK when static, my legs, and all the joints from the hips down seemed stiff and creaky. It made my choice of route seem a bit insane, particularly so when I am so out of condition.

  I decided to walk over Blythe Hill Fields. That has always been a taxing walk. When I was feeling really fit (by my own standards), back in September or October last year, I could do that walk non stop, and I didn't have to pause for breath once I got to the top, but I could still feel I had been working hard.

  Yesterday I did stop for a few very brief breathers, perhaps no longer than 60 seconds, at a few places on the way, but with hindsight I wonder if I really needed to do so. I'm sure I can remember a day last year when I decided to see what happened if I didn't stop for those short breathers, and found that I felt OK for it. Maybe next time I might try it non stop again - if I can.

  Everywhere I walked was saturated with water (except the roads with their proper drainage system). The huge great puddle in the photo above is at the junction of 4 paths in Ladywell Fields. I am standing on the path that leads up to Ravensbourne Park Road, but I turned around to take this picture. You can't even see the path to the right that heads towards Catford Bridge. The path ahead is the main path that follows the river  towards the curly whirly bridge over the railway. All the grass around the puddle is really churned up as people have walked around the puddle. It was muddy in the extreme !
  I had to use a lot of zoom while standing in unstable/slippery mud to get this picture of a ring necked parakeet spreading it's feathers against the bright sky. It is not a great picture, but it made me think. From time to time I come across the occasional feather from a pigeon, and because there are less of them, the even more occasional feather from a crow, magpie or even gull, but I have never seen a green feather on the ground !
  This puddle under the tree on the right is not that rare, but I wonder if it is supposed to be an intentional feature of the landscape, or if it was possibly a dip in the ground left when an ancient tree was removed before the days when a lot of a rotten tree was left in situ to rot naturally.
  At first sight this looked alarming - a cat sitting on an upstairs narrow window ledge. In fact it is less alarming than it looks. Cat's legs are attached to the rest of it's skeleton in a unique way that makes it like they have built in shock absorbers. That cat could leap direct to the ground and walk away as if it was an everyday occurrence. What the cat would probably do is far less dramatic - a graceful stroll down those tiles followed by about a 5ft drop onto some wheelie bins, and then the 4ft drop from the top of the wheelie bin to ground. I wouldn't be surprised if that is how it got up there.
  When I got to the top of Blythe Hill Fields I was rewarded with this very murky view. It looked as if it might have been raining in Docklands. At this point I had only seen one all too brief sunny spell, and it seemed like it could start raining at any moment. To celebrate the almost warm day I was wearing my sleeveless denim jacket that I can't do up, and a short sleeved t-shirt. I was quite comfortable while it was dry, but of it had started to rain I would have been soaked !
  There was an underlying idea in my choice of route. This was the exit I chose to leave Blythe Hill Fields. One of the houses in the far murky distance is where Angela lives, and I intended to drop an envelope through her front door. The envelope contained the form she could use to ask for a forecast of her state pension (I sent mine off a week or two ago). It seems odd that it was probably a year ago, before the first lockdown, when the pubs were still open (and I was meeting her at lunchtimes) When we were discussing our pensions, and thinking about getting some sort of forecast of how much we would get at pension age. I mentioned it to Angela that I had been on the government web site, and how frustrating it was until I found you could download a form and do it all by post. Angela seemed quite keen, and now she has the form to fill in, and get her forecast - although I suspect we are in for long waits as covid continues to disrupt everything.
  As I came down the hill from Blythe Hill Fields I spotted this man working on this cute little car. From a distance he looked the splitting image of my dad before he died in 1968. Once I got closer I could see two significant differences. I can't remember my dad ever having a beard, and my dad had a little less hair, but there were still many similar things. Probably has stance and build were very similar to how I remember my dad, and then there is the blue boiler suit. Although the memories are very hazy now after so many years, I can still picture my dad in his blue boiler suit doing work on our van (we never owned a car - only a van that could be used to deliver big heavy TVs that my dad repaired). I asked this man if I could take his picture, and he readily agreed once I told him how he reminded me of dad. We ended up having a nice chat for a few minutes.
  As I made my way up Perry Hill towards Angela's house I passed the old Perry Hill pub (formerly The Two Brewers). It has been shut for well over a year now (maybe since July 2019). It is now starting to look derelict. It seems unlikely that it will ever re-open as a pub. I would not be surprised to see a big block of flats built on the site in another year or two.

  After dropping off the envelope through Angela's front door I walked down Winsford road into the Linear Park. It was incredibly muddy in there, and no more so than on the little path alongside the river. One curious thing is that I was sure that some muddy water had seeped into my right boot on the right hand side of my right foot. When I got home I saw there was a very small damp spot on the left hand side of my sock. It seems my right foot can't tell it's left from it's right !

  It was a mostly pleasant walk through the park back to Catford. I could feel myself starting to tire, but I seemed to be walking quite freely. All, or maybe most of the aches and pains and creakiness had gone. I made a small detour to check the ponds, and the stream in the Vineries, and got into a short conversation with a dog walker. She had two dogs. One was medium sized, and barked a lot. The other was a bigger dog, about the size of an alsation, but pure white, and not unfriendly at all. In fact it mostly ignored me. Apparently it was a rescued dog that had been living wild in the mountains in Spain. Apparently it is as good as gold except it hates small yappy dogs. It is thought that the small dogs probably could nip in and out and get more than their fair share of food in the feral dog pack.

  It was good to get home again, but it didn't feel essential. I was tired, but not knackered, and I think that I could have easily have pushed myself to do an extra mile, but 3.8 miles after only a few 3 mile walks in January was quite enough. I used the extra energy to sit straight down and go through the photos I had taken. I selected and edited more than I have shown today. There are a few I might show tomorrow if today is as quiet as I think it will be.

  I must admit that soon after I had done my photo "processing" I laid down on my bed to read for a while, and promptly fell asleep. As little as a week ago, on a typical dull and cloudy day, it would have been dark when I woke up again, but it was still light, and because of the clear(ish) sky it still seemed almost light at nearly 5.20pm. The days really are getting longer now ! I hadn't really eaten much at all at that point. It was too long to wait for dinner, but I decided I was going to cook some sausages for an extremely late brunch ! I also grabbed a very small handful of liquorice allsorts to chomp while I waited for the sausages to cook.

  Eating those liquorice allsorts was probably a mistake, and I compounded the mistake when I discovered I had not cooked the sausages for long enough, and turned the grill on again for another 15 minutes. I had another more of those liquorice allsorts. Eventually the sausages were cooked nicely, and I enjoyed them with just a squirt of tomato sauce, and nothing more. By this time it was only about an hour until dinner time.

  I could have had a late dinner, but I decided that I would have a dinner that could have been served with the sausages. It was basically cabbage and mashed potato. If I had given it a severe grilling it could have been bubble and squeak, but it was probably closer to colcannon. I left too much water in it and so it was a bit sloppy, and that was made worse (or better) by both a generous amount of butter, and also cheddar cheese. It was rich, and tasty, and probably very unhealthy.

  There didn't seem to be anything on TV that I fancied watching after the second episode of Star Trek, and so at 8pm I started heading for bed, although only initially to read. I forgot to mention that I washed my dinner down with a bottle of beer, and that I had also opened another two bottles of beer. It must have been about 2 pints in total. Soon after I had finished the last bottle I brushed my teeth, and started to get ready for sleep - but not before I read another short chapter of the book I was reading.

  I may well have fallen asleep by 9pm. My sleep was unremarkable until about 3am when I got up for the 2nd time (I think) for a pee. After that pee I didn't seem to be able to get to sleep again. I had had something in the region of 6 hours sleep, plus you could count the nearly 1 hour snooze I had before dinner. In the middle of summer that might have been enough for the night, but we are still in winter (and there is the prospect of another light dusting of snow next Monday if you think that winter is abating). After 40 to 60 minutes of tossing and turning I finally fell asleep again. I think I probably woke up again briefly after that, but I was ultimately surprised to see it was almost light outside when I finally woke up, and got up.

  I am unsure how I feel this morning, apart from slightly annoyed (more on that in a minute). Sometimes it feels that I may have provoked my recent chest flare up to start again. My chest does seem a bit clicky, but it has caused no discomfort except in the night when I may have rolled over and put too much pressure on it. The interesting thing is my legs. They are not free of aches, but somehow the rather mild aches seem appropriate after that walk. So everything is basically OK except for one thing.

  That one thing is my blood glucose. I deluded myself into thinking that walk would have helped it to go down a bit, but the liquorice, the potato, and the beer have all conspired to make it go up - a lot. It was 9.5mmol/l, and that is far too high, although still below the notional 10 that marks the start of the danger area. It is a good lesson on why 8.5mmol/l is still too high because it leaves no room for "accidents" (or more likely stupidity - which sums up yesterday).

  There is no chance of walking that excess off today. As I look out my window the weather is positively foul. The sky is dark, and although I can't see the rain falling past my windows, I can see it splashing into all the puddles on the road. Today I shall be staying in, and I have a feeling it is going to be a sedate day. It is going to be murderous trying to ignore food under these conditions. I will just have to be very careful about what I eat rather than how much I eat. What I need now is some good news to cheer me up, but I can't think of why there should be any good news on a day like today.