Today's weather forecast seems very haphazard. The latest revision says it should have been sunny until recently. I was actually very nice and sunny between about 8 and 9am, but after that it got dull and cloudy. It is now 10am, and the latest revision to the forecast shows that very weird mix of of white cloud with the sun peeping out behind it, and heavy rain below it. This is labelled "Heavy Shower (day)". The reality is dark clouds and heavy rain as I write this. Coming up at 11am will be "Heavy Rain", and it may continue to midday. After there is supposed to be an hour of just white cloud, and then 4 hours of sunny spells. I have great doubts that it will be like this. During the day the temperature will start to fall from about 10° C now to 6° C by the end of the day. Tomorrow will see the process in reverse - starting at 6° C and rising to 11° C by very late evening. It may be a dry day, but the sky will be completely covered by white cloud.

  I really needed some exercise yesterday, and the weather forecast, although ultimately wrong, seemed to give the green light for a walk. I originally thought that I would have to wait until at late as midday to catch the promised sunny spells. At midday the temperature was forecast to be 11° C, and I thought that it might feel pleasant in the sunshine. I thought I would be comfortable wearing my sleeveless denim jacket.....

  The sky seem to start clearing a bit earlier earlier than forecast, and by 11.30am I was getting ready to go out, and I thought I did go out soon after that, but my "Simply Walking" phone app says it was 12:32 when I set out. Maybe I should have gone out earlier because the sunny spells barely lasted until the point when I was entering the River Pool Linear Park

  I have to admit that it felt rather cool for most of my walk, or at least my bare arms did. The other negative thing was that many parts of the park were very muddy - the path by the river, and the field on the east side of the river between the railway foot bridge and the bow string bridge. The railway foot bridge end of that field was still an absolute quagmire. It made part of the walk hard work.

 It was probably hard work because the care needed not to slip in the mud. That would have been bad enough in the field, but a slip by the river could have ended up as a fall into the river. The thing that seems very odd is that my speed on this walk actually seems to be a tiny bit faster than usual. I usually use 3 mph as my normal walking speed over medium distances, and on fairly level ground. Managing 2mph over some truly awful ground, and occasionally stopping to take photos, seems to be better than I would have imagined. It also explains why I was feeling fatigued when I got home.
  I had heard, probably from The Friends Of The River Pool, that new park benches were going to be installed at some time, and yesterday I found 4 new ones had very recently been installed. One was near the Catford Hill entrance, and the other three along the main path between The Bridge Of Doom, and the footbridge across the railway near the bottom of Winsford Road.
  I noticed a lot of vegetation clearance has been undertaken in The Vineries field. This allowed me to find what I have dubbed pond 3 of the 4 ponds that I was told existed there. This one is quite small, maybe just 4ft across, but at least it has water in it. I think it is fed by a pipe that carries the overflow from pond 2.
  This is pond 2. It often dries up, but it is getting a good flow of water through a pipe that lads a small stream under the path, and below the vegetation. It is bigger than pond 3, but not by much. The white area is froth. It is where the water flows into the pond, and it makes me think there is some contamination in the water - maybe natural, maybe not.
  This is pond one, and it is the biggest, and never seems to dry up. It is fed by a "French drain" - a drain below the bed of the little stream that runs along the edge of the Vineries area. I first learned of the name "French drain when I announced I could hear a gurgling sound, and the previous full stream seemed to disappear underground. Somewhere below the shingle of the stream bed must be a grill allowing the water to drop into a sump where it is lead through a pipe to this big pond. I could see the water entering the pond quite freely, but the level of the pond looked lower than usual. I presume this is because the channel connecting this pond to the next has been cleared of debris.
  I thought I saw these crocuses, heralding the first hints of spring, much nearer the bow string bridge, but judging by the sequence I took the pictures, it must have been earlier in my walk.
  New picnic tables had been promised, and finally table number 2 has been installed. This is by the path from the bottom of Winsford Road, and used to overlook "Lake Winsford", or the kiddies play area.
  This is where "Lake Winsford" used to be, but it looks like the drainage had been fixed, and the gigantic puddle has now shrunk to just a couple of small puddles either side of the path. Presumably as longer and drier days arrive they will dry up completely, and than the mud will be blown away (or maybe swept up). I wonder how it will fare next autumn if it is a wet one ?
  There were more signs of spring in the rough vegetation between the railway fence, and the unofficial very muddy path on the east side of the river. I am not sure what these flowers are. There were some white versions of the flowers nearby, and my first thought was that they may be rhododendrons, but now I think they are not.
  The camera has slightly over exposed the flower, but it is unmistakeably a daffodil, and it is the first I have seen open. Spring really is on the way ! This one was near the road in the grounds of St Dunstans College. I sent a copy of this photo to Patricia in Argentina. Out of all the things to see in London it was the "hosts of golden daffodils" near Horse Guards Parade that made Patricia fall in love with London when she first came here.

  As I approached home my legs were feeling a bit creaky, but I still basically felt OK until I got home, and sat down. I then felt deeply fatigued. I fought the fatigue while I sorted out the photos, and cooked myself some Lincolnshire sausages for a late lunch. After eating, and dealing with the photos I allowed myself to rest. I am unsure what time that was, but I am guessing it was about 4pm. It wasn't long before I was snoozing, and it was dark when I woke up.

  I had about half an hour to prepare my dinner for cooking if I was to have my dinner at my preferred time of 6pm. Fortunately I had decided I would have a very simple dinner of nothing more than chicken thighs and beansprouts cooked in chicken stock and a few flavourings. Before I ate it I checked my blood glucose level. It was a rather excellent 7.1mmol/l. I expected it to be higher after eating the sausages. It seemed low enough that I decided there and then to take a tub of low calorie/low sugar (or is it ?) ice cream out of the freezer to have for dessert after my very healthy dinner.

  I found it uncomfortable when I went to bed. My legs seemed to complain when I lay in certain positions. It was a case that anything comfortable for my legs seemed to be uncomfortable for something else. It made getting to sleep quite hard. My long snooze (90 minutes ?) didn't help matters either. I don't know when I finally got to sleep, but I think it was probably closer to 11pm than midnight.

  I slept OK for maybe 3 hours, and then I think my sleep became a lot more patchy. It seemed to feel like I was awake a lot, but with hindsight I now wonder if I was dreaming I was awake. The only thing about the dreams I know where dreams was just a common theme. They seemed to be about sausages, or specifically a variant of "pigs in blankets". My sausages were thin, but about the same length as an average rasher of bacon. It was because of that the bacon was wrapped around the sausage lengthways instead of the normal way pigs in blanket are wrapped in bacon. I have no idea how those dreams started or finished, but it felt like several contained this sausage motif. If Freud is to be believed it was some sort of sexual thing, but if so it wasn't enjoyable in that sense.

  Considering how little sleep I seemed to get, I seemed to run out of sleep before 6am this morning. It was hard trying to sleep from as early as 5am. By about 6.20am I threw in the towel, and got up.  I could feel some legacy of yesterday's walk in my legs, but nothing bad. Another legacy was a potential flare up from my chest again. That would have been the result of it being colder out than I thought it would feel. As yet it is not a full flare up - just some twinges telling me to take care, or some Ibuprofen.

  The really bad thing this morning was my blood glucose level...or was it ? When I first checked it I got a really high reading of something like 10.8mmol/l - well into the danger area. I couldn't understand how it could have gone so high after being so low before dinner. I was expecting a small raise after eating the ice cream, but nothing like that. In desperation I tried checking a pin prick of blood from my other hand. That said just 8.8mmol/l - a whole 2 points lower, and a just acceptable value (and the one I recorded).

  After I had had a shower I went for a little walk to the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. There were a few things I wanted from there, and it was a good excuse to find how my legs were doing... They were working fine except for being a bit stiff and sore. When I say they were working fine I really mean that were wo0rking as fast as usual. My whole body felt a bit creaky in some respects. It all felt exactly I now come to expect it to feel on a cold wet day. It wasn't wet then, it was actually sunny, but that didn't last long. The view outside my window as I write this is of a cold wet day, and it is getting colder hour by hour (fortunately only dropping to 6° C).

  At about 10.30am I had reason to pulls a few more muscles, and derived the means to overeat, or eat stuff that is not always good for my blood glucose (or weight). I had a delivery of the stuff I had ordered from Star Bargains. One big error was ordering 6 packets of a sort of baked crisp. They may be low in fat, but not low in anything else ! The box contained about 6 litres of assorted drinks, plus a small selection of canned food. In consequence it was bloody heavy when I had to lift it off the doorstep, and carry it into the dining room for unpacking.

  I final reason for ruining my diet in all sorts of bad ways is that it is Thursday, and Thursday is traditionally boozing day. I shall probably consume some sweet and delicious Belgium abbey beers again, but I do have some other less nice, and less naughty beers to drink. I dread to think what Jodie will bring over with her. It is possible she has ordered more Belgium beers. I'll have to wait and see what she brings this afternoon. Before all that I think I'd like a snooze.