Today is going to be another sunny day, and it will be slightly warmer than yesterday with the afternoon temperature reaching 14° C. It helps that this morning was a degree or two higher than recent mornings. Tomorrow will see far less sunshine as it starts to get cloudy. In consequence it will be a cooler day. Paradoxically, the day after, Monday may see the temperature rise a degree despite the possibility of hardly any sunshine, perhaps none at all all day.

    For reasons I'll try and explain later, I didn't write anything yesterday, and now I have to rack my brains to try and remember if I did anything of note on Thursday. I guess there were two things of note. The first was that as I had suggested when writing on Thursday morning, I did go to Poundstretcher. I specifically wanted some bird feeding kit, but of course I bought much more. The bird feeding kit that I bought was a tube thing, with perches, filled with grains for small birds. Ideally it should be hung up, but for the moment it is sitting on my bird table.

  The other thing was similar, but it was a wire mesh filled with peanuts. I did hang that one from the side of my bird table. As I write this I have only seen three different types of birds on my bird table - crows, magpies, and just this morning, a pigeon. I think the pigeon was able to get a few seeds from the small bird feeder, but probably mostly ate the dried grubs on the bird table. I do wonder if I will ever get any small birds feeding on my bird table. When I look around there are very few trees in the gardens either side, or behind my garden.

  The afternoon drinking session with Jodie was good and bad. As is now usual, the beers she brought with her were horrible and really sour. The beers I offered sort of matched them because I wanted to hurry up and get rid of them so I could enjoy the nicer ones I have ready for a future session or two. One beer came in a completely different category.....
  I guess I was getting a bit drunk, but also had a dry glass as I waited for Jodie to catch up. I decided I would open a very old bottle of beer. It was the Norfolk Lavender beer pictured above. I bought it at one of the last Catford Beer Festivals (the real ones held in the Lewisham Concert Hall). I would guess it was at least 15 years old. It still had a little bit of fizz when I opened it, and so I was sure it wouldn't have turned vinegary. I found it had a very gentle taste with no hint left of the lavender in it. It did have a very heavy sediment in the bottom ! I can't say it was enjoyable, but it was drinkable.
  This is a picture souvenir of my shopping trip to Poundstretcher. Before Covid these disposable gloves were around  £1 a packet (and possibly as little as 80p). The laws of supply and demand, sometimes known as profiteering, mean the price has been jacked up to the absurd. It is all the more silly when a few shelves away they were selling twin packs of non disposable rubber gloves for £1. The disposable ones used to be really handy for emptying the cats litter tray, and were still useful for some jobs like metal polishing, but now I just wash non disposable gloves for re-use. It is probably more environmentally sound.

  Getting a bit drunk on Thursday afternoon affected my eating in a negative way. It wasn't terrible, but it was enough to raise my previous couple of really good blood glucose reading to 8.7mmol/l yesterday morning. That wasn't terribly bad, but it was annoying to see it go up. It didn't matter in the least for what I did yesterday morning - except to me. Yesterday morning I went for my second Covid jab. I have now had the full treatment, and I should be immune to Covid now.


  I made the stupid mistake of not pausing my tracker when I went in to get my jab, and as usual, it got terrible confused when it lost the GPS signal, and reckoned I had walked over a mile. The true figure was probably between 0.5 and 0.6 miles. This is relevant because after my jab I set out on a long walk. I didn't realise how long it was going to be.

  On the left is the trace of where I went. If I include the walk to the hospital where I had the covid jab, I think I can comfortably say it was a 5 mile walk. What I can't say is that it was a comfortable walk. I felt a bit creaky from the minute I left my front door. I don't think it helped that it was only 3 or 4° C as I walked through the park.

  I walk to the hospital with my coat done up, but after I left there I left my coat open because the sun was really heating up the back of my black (faux) leather coat. With my back feeling hot, and my chest feeling cold it wasn't long before my war wounds (operation scars - mostly internal) started to complain.

  There were a few places where the scenery was a big enough distraction to over ride how bad I was feeling. This "scenery" was of a rather special type. On this occasion my mission was more than some useful exercise, but a specific photography session. I had been asked by an old friend who runs http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/ if I could get him some snaps of where the old Lewisham station used to be before the current station was built as a junction station for the new line to Catford Bridge (and beyond) in the late 1800s. I think 3 of my pictures will feature in the Lewisham entry on the web site.
  This bridge over Lewisham Road was my main objective. The current entrance to Lewisham station is well beyond the left hand edge of this picture. The platforms were extended for 12 car trains, and now finish on the bridge. The platforms for the old station started approximately where the current platforms end. The entrance to the old station was on the right hand side of the bridge.
  This view taken from under the bridge would be of great interest to rivet counters ! Of particular note is that it is easy to see how the width of the bridge has been extended by a more lightweight construction just to support the platform extensions. This is the view looking towards the current station, The entrance to the old station would be somewhere behind the camera.
  One of those oddities in life is that the bridge in the previous pictures was over Lewisham Road, but this picture is of what was once Lewisham Road station, and it is probably a good half mile from Lewisham Road, and had no connection with the current or old Lewisham station. It was on the line that went from Nunhead to Greenwich Park station. That line was closed in 1917 (or thereabouts), and almost all traces of it have disappeared from beyond where it used to cross the main line to Lewisham.

  It was diverted where it meets the main line, and connects to it. For a long time it was only ever used for freight, but now the regular Dartford To Victoria, via Lewisham, services go past the old Lewisham station many times a day.  The old booking office was used as a scout hut after closure, and then sometime later it was used by a salvage company who sell all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff from it. In real life it is easily recognisable as an old style railway station - in my picture a little less so.
  This was a picture I had been intending to take as soon as the leaves had fallen from the trees, and not after they were already growing well ! It was also a photo that would have been much better it taken sometime after midday, possibly even towards sunset, when the back, or trackside view of the old Lewisham Road station would have been lit better. Instead it was in shadow with the sun shining straight into my camera lens when I took this photo yesterday morning.

  Lewisham Road station was at the top of a hill, and I was feeling tired before I walk up there. Walking home after taking the last picture was a painful slog. My legs were really aching, and from time to time my chest hurt too. The latter was often triggered by turning to look either way when crossing roads. It felt so good to get home, or so I thought. In practice I might have been able to take the weight off my feet, but I felt shattered.

  I hoped some lunch would help, and I cooked some fish fingers, and a couple of fish burgers (actually just sort of square fish fingers). It may be that what would have helped more effectively would have been something stodgier and loaded with carbohydrates, but the fish seemed like the more blood glucose level friendly food. After that I should have been able to write yesterday's blog/diary, but I just couldn't face it.

  At dinner time I just had a couple of cans of chunky beef and vegetable soup. I also ate some sugar free (or no added sugar) chocolate biscuits. I had had a deliver of a selection of Gullom sugar free/no added sugar biscuits in the afternoon, and while they are not perfect, they are fairly safe. After dinner, and an episode of Star Trek, I would probably have gone to bed, but there were things on TV I wanted to watch.

  They were two programmes on Sky Arts that followed each other. The first as about about John Lennon doing his solo, and Plastic Ono Band stuff. That was interesting, and the story of making the classic Who album, "The Who Sell Out"  was also very interesting/entertaining. After the latter finished I went to bed, and fell asleep almost instantly. I remember very little about my sleep apart from dreams that seemed to be about being in Belgium, and drinking Belgium beer !

  This morning I don't seem to have any special problems that can't be explained by a long walk, and drinking rather a lot of vodka last night (mainly because I was feeling quite depressed). As yet I seem to be suffering no side effects from my 2nd Covid jab - unlike the 1st when it was like I had 'flu and other stuff the next day. I can't say I feel very exuberant this morning, and I foresee a lazy day happening.

  One of the last things I did before I fell asleep last night was to chew on 4 Settlers antacid tablets because I felt a bit acidy. I am not sure why, but I checked their ingredients. They are chock full of sugar. I never realised that before, and I shall choose something better next time. Taking those 4 tablets was probably enough to spoil my blood glucose this morning. It had dropped from 8.7mmol/l to 8.6mmol/l, but I had hoped for more - ,particularly after that long walk.

  I can say the idea of going for a walk in the sunshine fills me with enthusiasm this morning. If I do anything today it is more likely to be gardening, but I am rather constrained with what I can do out there now the fox cubs are treating the whole garden as their territory, and will dig up any loose earth. I might still give the grass a strimming, but I feel any great improvement will have to be done after the fox cubs start to move away from the vixen in a month or two.

  The only footnote to add to this is about how depressed I felt yesterday afternoon and evening. Feeling very tired was probably at the root of it, but I couldn't help feeling that the Covid vaccination was useless. Being fully vaccinated almost changes nothing. If I was going to catch and die from Covid it would probably have happened last year. In that respect I wonder was it all worth it. Even when fully vaccinated nothing changes for me. The only worthwhile change is when the government lifts all restrictions, and the way they like controlling the population you sometimes wonder if they will ever relinquish the hold they have on us now. Servalan (From Blake's Seven) would be proud of Boris now !