This morning has started off nice, and the weather looks promising, but now the sunshine is forecast to give way to light cloud, and ultimately some rain in the early afternoon. The big change compared to yesterday is that the highest temperature, 9° C, will be reached by 11am, and then after midday it will start to cool off again. It is going to be another very cool, chilly, sort of day. Tomorrow is likely to be much greyer, and much wetter, but at least the temperature should reach 10° C.

   With my blood glucose so high yesterday morning I really had to force myself to go out for a walk yesterday. The sky was very unwelcoming, and if the temperature had not almost reached 13° C I doubt I would have gone out. It is possible the temperature may have even hit 14° C for a short while, but it still felt rather cool with no supporting sunshine.

  Not only was it still feeling cool, it was also damp, and I even encountered a very light shower while I was walking in the park. I think I blame the damp for my legs never really freeing up as I walked. I am accustomed to my legs being a bit stiff when I first start walking after being very sedate all morning, but yesterday they didn't improve, and may have got slightly worse.

  While my legs were feeling cold and damp my forehead was sweating, as was my chest - both on account of my blood glucose being too high. It did seem a bit strange to sweat when it was cold - particularly my chest. It wasn't a heavy sweat, but if I had been wearing a coat with sleeves I think my arms would get nasty and sticky. I was wearing my sleeveless denim jacket, and I had bare arms. Oddly enough they didn't feel any worse than very slightly cool. Ideally they would have been in sunshine, and the sunshine would have been gently topping up my tan - or at least making my arms less pasty white.

  As well as it being a bit depressing being under a grey sky, it was not good for photography - at least not with the camera I had with me. The sky may not have given off much light, but it was still photographically bright, and with automatic exposure it just made anything in front of the sky look like a silhouette.

  I really had to force this picture in my photo editor to show some detail in the bird. Initially the bird was just a black silhouette. I am still not sure if it was yellow coloured, or if that is just an artefact of pushing the brightness to extremes. The other thing about the lack of light on things is that my camera selected some long exposure times, and I missed getting some good small bird pictures because they all came out blurred.
  This picture is almost untouched, and shows the problem with that bright, but still murky grey sky. I can't even tell what sort of bird it was posing for me at the top of the tree. I think it was probably a crow, but it may have been a pigeon. Extreme enlargement, and extreme brightening did bring a few hints that it was no more than a pigeon.
  There was a dead shopping trolley, with it's wheels in the air, near my favourite rocks. If the bank didn't look so slippery I might have gone down to the water, and maybe have chanced walking out to the trolley to see if it could be pulled out of the river. It is a bit of a mystery how the trolley got there because there is no clear path to this bit of the river, but I guess if you are dedicated enough...
  At the far end of the park, and through the arch under the railway line, there is some land bordering both sides of the river that looks, or looked very unkempt. Yesterday I could see that some tidying up, and some new trees had been planted. There is no barrier to stop anyone just walking off the path, and so I went for a look around. I was quite surprised to see a pair of beehives (with room for more) in the middle of the land.
  After taking these pictures I started back on my walk when I met the owner of the hives. He claims the land is owned by some people who have some sort of bungalow on the other side of the public footpath. He sounded a bit like an East European, possibly Romanian. I wondered if he was part of a Romany Gypsy community who have decided to put down permanent roots. With his bushy beard and overalls he actually looked more Amish than Romanian. It seems he is spearheading the effort to beautify this bit of land, and his ultimate aim is to landscape it, but the beehives will remain an important part of of it. I shall keep an eye on progress in future.
  I have a strong urge to call this ragwort because of it's ragged look, but I really have no idea what flowers these are that are brightening up the waters edge by the bridge that carries the footpath from the end of Winsford Road to the footbridge over the railway. It is a shame that cameras often blur the difference between yellow and green, and this picture lacks the vibrancy that the naked eye sees. Once again the rather grey light didn't help.

  I guess it was a bit of masochism that pushed me to walk all the way to Lower Sydenham station. My legs were aching before I even left the park, but oddly enough they never seemed to get any worse, or better than when I first went out. All in all it was a painful experience, and I am rather glad I took some painkillers before I went out. It was good to get home, and take the weight off my feet. I thought that once my legs had rested I would feel OK, but until mid evening I felt dreadfully tired all over.

  I did my best to hold on for some time before breaking my fast, and having a sort of late lunch. I wanted to rehydrate myself, and warm up a bit before checking my blood glucose. I know from past experience it can seem very high when I first get back from these walks. In the end I had something to eat before I checked it. It was a simple, but probably too big a meal of low fat pate and wheat crackers. I made sure it was a bit more unhealthy by using generous amounts of Peri-Peri mayonnaise on each cracker.

  It was maybe an hour after eating that lunch that I checked my blood glucose, and it was much better compared to the morning. The morning reading was a very high 9.5, and the late afternoon reading was 8.9mmol/l. That latter reading was still rather high, but then again it might be considered low just one hour after eating. One of my problem in regulating my blood glucose is the long times it takes to change.

  My dinner was a special low everything dinner of little more than stewed lean beef with beansprouts. The "more" was white pepper, hot pepper sauce, and some soy sauce. It was as nice as expected, and I sometimes wonder why I don't have it more often. I followed it with some fruit - some (alleged) "ripe and ready to eat" Kiwi fruit. In my opinion they were still very firm, and rather tart. They were still nice, and being tart instead of sweet was probably a good thing.

  After dinner, and my usual two episodes of Star Trek I made a phone call to Sue to see about the VHS tape to digital video file transfer I am going to do for her. We agreed that she would come of this afternoon to do the video transfer. Making a full DVD production of it with menus and stuff will take a bit longer than the time I have allocated for today, but I might be able to do a quick menu-less DVD for her to take away.

  Sue can be worse than Lee at being a gas bag on the phone, and I think my intended short call went on for over an hour, but I still managed to read for a bit before falling asleep before 10pm (I think - actually a feel a bit vague about it). Last night was another night when I seemed to sleep well - as judged by many hours passing with no awareness of them. There was only one brief disturbance when I woke up feeling cold, and had to turn the heater up a bit. Compared the previous night it was a cold night.

  This morning I woke up bright and early....sort of. I was surprised that my legs didn't ache as I expected them to. There was a small legacy from yesterday's walk, but it is of no significance. This morning my blood glucose has dropped to 8.6mmol/l. That is a far more sane value, and quite a good drop, but still too high. I'm not sure of today is going to be a good day to try and get it down or not. Possibly not because I woke up feeling hungry, and I have already had a nibble.

  Today seems quite well mapped out. Once I am showered and dressed I need to make a decision. It is simply whether I am wasting time on the old PC I was playing with the day before yesterday, or should I throw it out. I suspect I will throw it out. I need to clear it off the dinning room table where I will be setting up my old PC that has the video capture device attached to it. While the even older PC is open I might as well take out the memory and hard disk, and hide it under other rubbish at the bottom of the wheelie bin.

  This afternoon, maybe as early as 1pm, I shall be spending my time with Sue doing the video transfer, and probably listening to all her tales of woe. It might still be nice to get a bit of company for a few hours, and hear some more tales of the outside would from a different perspective than Jodie's view of the world. I haven't interacted with anyone else for months and months so it should be a pleasant change.