The forecast has been revised - a lot ! - since I took the screenshot above. The morning sunshine has been replaced with clouds, and the afternoon sunshine has been downgraded to sunny spells, and sunshine, that might, or might not, start at 1pm. The maximum temperature will still only be 12° C. That should be the temperature tomorrow as well, but tomorrow is forecast to be sunless with a mix of clouds that could sometimes be dark grey, and sometimes lighter shades of grey. It should stay dry again. The BBC weather forecast has some interesting, but possibly insane speculations that towards the end of the month we might see the afternoon temperature hit 17° C - rather more than the Met Office would even dream of.

   I deliberately waited until almost 1pm for the temperature to rise enough to go out with no coat yesterday. I did initially wonder if that was a good idea, but by the time I was heading home the sun felt hot on my back, and the air felt mild on my face. It didn't seem quite hot enough to kill a selection of stubborn aches and pains. These were mostly in my legs, but there was one brief time when I wondered of I was getting hints about the return of Angina. I guess it wasn't that because that tends to get worse, rather than better, if you keep on walking, and maybe even walking a bit faster to see what would happen.

  Between going shopping in Aldi, and going out for my walk, I did a lot of resting. I also had what I hoped was a light breakfast. If I could have only convinced myself that I was 100% definitely going for a walk, and maybe also that it was going to be a warm and sunny walk, I might have skipped breakfast.

  My breakfast was part good and part bad - Brie on oat cake biscuits. In theory, oat cakes are good for you in all sort of way, although I suspect many of them are imaginary. They are supposed to be very low sugar, but this morning I have reason to suspect that may not always be true in some circumstances.

  I also might have eaten something that I can't remember, that has given me really stinky wind - both last night, and this morning, even after two satisfying visits to the toilet. I am wondering if it is the long term revenge of that well-past-it's-use-by-date tinned haggis I ate the other day !

  I did make one attempt at getting out of a long walk. I sent a text message to Angela asking if she fancied sitting on her favourite park bench in the sunshine at lunchtime. It wasn't long before she replied to say that she had planned to go shopping yesterday lunchtime. I seem to recall that she often did this either on Monday or on Friday, and sometimes on both days. I had no choice but to go for a solitary walk in the park.
  One good thing is that most of the park has dried out now, and some of the steep slopes down to the water's edge are no longer slippery slides. I'm not sure if I have ever been down to the water's edge at this spot before, although it is probably only 20ft from where I slipped onto my arse in a deep pocket of stinging nettles last year ! This is a hundred or so feet downstream of the confluence of the two rivers, and looking downstream towards Catford.
  The main point of this photo is to show the blue sky, but the green ground is good two (and made brighter by the bright sunshine). It won't be long before these trees will burst out in green too.
  Some work was going on at the "Bridge Of Doom". Now that all the ice and snow have gone, and it is perfectly dry, it has been gritted to stop people slipping on it. This could be sensible or madness. If that grit is glued down it would need to be done when the bridge is bone dry, and so now is a sensible time. The only problem is that the grit doesn't seem to be glues down, and in which case it is madness. It is evident that the original idea was to do one side at a time - hence the orange barriers nailed to the bridge. One other thing to note is the white on blue sign saying "Cyclists Dismount". I have never seen a cyclist dismount or even slow down when going over the bridge. I have to confess I try to treat the bridge as if pedestrians have the main right of way, and then it comes a case of who backs down first.....
  I have known that these structures are for monitoring the depth of the river for a long time now, but I had no idea how they did it. I still don't know the complete details, but I came a bit closer yesterday. This one monitors the depth of just The River Pool, but closer to Catford there is another that monitors the depth of the combined rivers (Pool and Ravensbourne), and it was open with a couple of electricians working in it. They told me that there was a deep well under the hut, and it had a float in it that was connected to a measurement device.

  The missing bit of information was how the water in the well is connected to the river. My best guess is that the water seeps through the soil rather than being piped in. I think it explains the concrete walls and bottom of the river at this point. Presumably if the concrete was not there the water could easily undermine (side-mine ?) the well, and wash it away. I expect the full answer lies on the internet somewhere, but my hypothesis satisfies me for now.
  There is a part of the river that is a favourite for kids to play by, and in the river because it is really shallow here. It is just before the river flows under the bridge that is part of the footpath between the bottom of Winsford Road and the footbridge over the railway line. The bank is quite steep here, but with it looking dry I thought I would take a chance while it was quiet. My bigger concern was trying to get back up if it was very slippery. It was one of those slopes that looks much worse going up it compared to going down.

  I discovered there is a fair bit of path down there that I explored. I also found a shingle island in the middle of the channel. I didn't fancy trying it yesterday, but one day, when the water level has dropped a fair bit more, probably in summer, I shall attempt to leap across to it (or just walk in the water if shallow enough) and play "I'm king of the castle" on the island.....because I can !
  Yesterday I had a good reason to walk the the very end of the park. I wanted to have another look at the beehives there. I found that another two hives have been added since last week (or whenever it was).
  I am not exactly sure what is going on here. It looks like an old, maybe last years, honeycomb, that is being used to draw the bees into the new hive. The red things in the honeycomb are possibly bee grubs ready to metamorphose into adult bees.
  I think I showed a similar picture to this last week, but there was one difference, and that was the circumstances of taking the picture. With 4 hives, and it being warm and sunny, there were many more bees around. Once upon a time I would have shied away from doing it, but somehow I felt quite confident to walk into a cloud of bees to get this close up. My nerve almost glitched when a bee tried to land on my hair, but it was really only a touch and run. If it had got tangled I think I would have had the patience to let it find it's own way out, but I will admit it would be a bit nerve wracking !

  Having seen the bees I walked almost non stop back home. The only time I stopped for more than a few seconds was when I met a musician I know. He had just about made it over the railway footbridge into the park without collapsing. He suffers from bad COPD, but still can't quit smoking. It made me think about how I felt. My legs were aching from the moment I left home, and until I got home again. Normally they would loosen up after a mile or so. The thing that was most intriguing is that despite the discomfort, I was still able to walk up steep river banks with seemingly very little extra effort. It felt like it would be a struggle, but it wasn't. It was also interesting that I seemed to be breathing semi-deeply almost from the outset, and that hardly changed over the entire length of the walk. I'm not sure if I can remember the last time I was gasping for air. I always seem to throttle back before than happens, and I don't really know why.

  It was nice to get home again, and put my feet up - except I didn't actually put my feet up until a fair bit later. I shouldn't have done it, but I decided I wanted a snack before I started my photography "post production". Once again I hit the oat cakes in the mistaken belief they were perfectly innocent. This time I had corned beef and mustard on those oat cakes. Finally I was able to have a lie down, and literally put my feet up as I read for a bit, and I think I had a short snooze.
  I was wary about sleeping too much because I was, once again, expecting a delivery from Amazon. It was another box of beers. This time from The Hobsons Brewery. I had never heard of the brewery before, and I thought I would take a chance that they would be pleasant. On Thursday I will probably find the truth - bitter or bitter truth. It was after 7pm before they arrived. It still seemed a lot later than I would have desired, but at least it was better than after 9pm ! It all be a lot nicer if Amazon could give a better estimate of the delivery time - and one that doesn't keep changing every hour !

  The other major "thing" yesterday evening was trying out the Turkey Twizzlers I pictured yesterday. I was all excited about them, but with hindsight I can say that was a really stupid idea. They were not just disappointing, but actually getting close to slightly unpleasant. I had to drown them in high sugar tomato ketchup before I could eat them. They claimed to be sausage flavoured, but they were still very much like turkey - flavourless with an extremely artificial texture. The latter is not surprising considering they are made with slurrified turkey "bits". Oh well, I have satisfied my curiosity, and I now know to steer well clear of them in the future.

  I expected to fall asleep very quickly once I went to bed last night, but it seem to take ages before I fell asleep. I'm not even sure I slept that well even when I was sleeping, but it was probably better than I thought. Long periods of time went by unnoticed, and that is usually a good thing. I probably dreamed a lot, but I can only remember a few vague details from one dream. I seem to remember it more as a series of stills instead of a motion "picture".

  I dreamed that I was with my uncle, but in this dream he appeared to run a fish and chip shop instead of a greengrocer as in real life - or actually real like 40 (?) years ago before he died. The details are vague in the extreme, but there seemed to be a government plan to give free fish and chips to everyone in the neighbourhood. It might have been a local government plan, or even something weird like my uncle was doing it because of some weird religious thing. As I say, the detail are vague in the extreme. All I can really remember was that there were two other people there, and my uncle was wrapping up portion after portion of fish and chips ready to be walked to the near neighbourhood (maybe even just to the same road). The important things...well, fish and chips.....mmmmmm, fish and chips, drool !

  This morning I felt reasonably OK. I don't think I have any additional aches as a result of my walk, but the bad news is that my blood glucose has gone up to 9.1mmo/l. I was hoping it might even go down to under 8 after my walk, but evidently I underestimated the effect of the oat cakes, or I really over did the very sweet tomato ketchup I used to make the turkey twizzlers edible. I ought to either go on another long walk, or be extra careful about what I eat today. I have a feeling I might end up doing neither - although if the afternoon is bright and sunny I may revise that pessimistic prediction.

  What I am really hope for is so unlikely that I wonder why I am even considering the possibility. It is a message from Angela to say that she will be in the park today. If such a message should arise I am at least ready to go out - I've had a shower and washed my hair. There are two other things I should be doing today. One is to finish the small load of laundry that I started soaking in detergent straight after my shower. The other is to go online to Tesco bank and set the account up for online banking, and activate my new bank card. I really hate doing banking stuff - even when like this they are not taking any money from me, but making it easier to get money from them. I've been putting it off for some days now, but it has to be done sooner or later.