So far today the weather has been a little better than shown in the forecast above. The latest revision shows 9 and 10am as featuring sunny spells. From 11am it could be lightly clouded over until a few more hours of sunny spells start at 6pm. From 9pm until the end of the day there is only a 40% chance of light rain in the latest revision to the forecast. I would not be surprised if reality had more sunny spells popping up during the day. If it is truly cloudy all afternoon then I guess the temperature will only reach the predicted 21° C. The current forecast for tomorrow shows that it will probably be dry with lots of sunny spells through the day, and the temperature in the region of 23° C for at least a few hours in the afternoon.
 
  One thing I forgot when writing my conclusion yesterday morning was that it was possible that Jodie may have said that she would prefer to have our Sunday boozing session on Saturday (yesterday). It turned out that she had indeed mentioned it when I sent her a message to confirm it. Her initial reply was "she didn't know", and would get back to me. I waited and waited until after midday she confessed she had had quite a session with others the previous night, had mixed her drinks, and was suffering from a bad hangover. She said that today would be better, but as I write this that is not confirmed.

  Yesterday I wrote I had this mad idea I might do a double hill walk, and clock up at least 3 miles, and possibly more then 4 miles if I had felt OK about the route I was thinking I might do. It seemed a great, if not slightly ambitious idea in the morning, but as the hours went past I became less and less enthusiastic about it. By the time Jodie got back to me to say she would not be seeing me, I had lost all enthusiasm, and resigned myself to spending the afternoon reading.


  I very much enjoyed just soaking up the pages from the book, but I began suffering from something I have to describe as guilt. There were two inspirations for my original idea of a long, and hilly walk. One was that the weather seemed like it was going to be very nice, particularly in the afternoon. The other was because I had scored such a high blood glucose reading in the morning. 10.1mmol/l is in the danger area, and I had to do all I could to try and get it down.

  I do seem to have managed to partly conquer hunger recently (and at some times further in the past), but bright warm weather, and some good distractions make it far easier. Yesterday I did lack any distractions except reading, but I did seem to do well fasting until about 3pm when my resolve started to crumble (but not give way).

  This worried me a little until I had a great revelation, or something like that. As a rule, if I haven't gone out by midday, I don't go out at all (except in pre-Covid times when I might go out to a gig, or just pub session, in the evening). I had to sort of stop and think about why I couldn't go out in the afternoon, and I couldn't think of a reason. Better than that, I did think of a good reason to go out.



  My new plan was to go for a walk in the Linear Park - perhaps just a few miles instead of the full 3 or more miles - and on the way back I could pop into the Sainsbury's local shop to buy some salads. This plan partly collapsed when I looked through the window of the shop on my way to the park instead of after returning from it. I spied that they still had some Italian cheese salads on the shelves. Usually I am lucky if I find one in there, but here I was looking at maybe 4 or 5 of them.

  I altered my plan to go into the shop there and then before some other bastard grabbed those salads. I did just that, and bought 3 Italian salads, and one classic salad. I didn't fancy walking through the park carrying a carrier bag, even a quite light one. Instead I decided I would walk through Ladywell Fields as far as the curly wurly footbridge over the railway, and go straight home from there. I was quite surprised to see it all added up to 1.6 miles. It was less than my usual, but it was still exercise.
  I hadn't intended to do any exploring of muddy river banks, or similar, and so I was just wearing some lightweight trainers (Converse Hi to be exact). It was a chance to see how an almost unworn pair I bought years ago would feel on a long walk. This was inspired by how painful my feet felt when I went to the gig outside the hairdresser in Lee at the end of May. I do find that those converse trainers, and I have tried a couple of pairs recently, seem to feel a bit uncomfortable from the start, but don't get any worse, and don't seem to leave my feet hurting at the end of the walk.

  The upshot of this is that I wasn't really equipped to investigate a few paths I hadn't seen before in a small secluded part of the park. I did venture a little way down one path when I noticed there was something in the bushes. It was the rather insanitary bed in the picture above. I can imagine some young kids making a den amongst the bushes here, and they probably wouldn't care about sitting on an old stained, and probably very damp bed. The big mystery is how they managed to drag it through the park, and into this semi secluded spot amongst the foliage.
  It was only a short walk (by my usual standards) but in the very warm feeling sunshine it did feel rather good. It felt good to get my supplies of salad (as pictured above). One very silly thing is that on the packaging it says each bowl is two portions. In my book, one portion is two bowls ! Before I took the picture above I was writing a note for my neighbour. She had worked some magic on my front garden. She had planted a couple of extra plants in the plant pots on the windowsill, and it was on my way out for my walk that I noticed there were two more plant pots on the ground, under the windowsill. It should have been easy writing that note, but when freshly inside after the walk in the hot sun, I became aware I was dripping sweat onto the writing paper. I had to dry my face off and do it again before popping it through her letter box.

  I think I might have had a handful of peanuts as a sort of breakfast yesterday morning, but nothing more until dinner time at 6pm. I must admit the salads were a temptation, but I was in the zone, as it were. I had past the point when I felt physically hungry, and I was able to wait patiently until 6pm for a dinner of two bowls of salad. One bowl was the classic salad, and I fortified that with some pickles and diced cheese. A little later I had some rice crackers with hot sliced pepperoni. I doubt I had any more than 1000 calories yesterday, and probably less.

  I didn't have any beer yesterday, but after dinner I had several glasses of whisky which in reality is almost zero calories despite what any official figure may say. That is because I only count food calories and not fuel calories. Good Welsh coal has millions of calories, and can power steam engines from one end of the land to the other, but I am very sure humans can't digest coal, and so in that sense it has zero calories. It is my belief that the same is true for distilled spirits.

  It was probably around 8pm and I started to feel a bit bored, but I had an idea. Probably a silly one because I knew what the outcome would be. I had heard from Sue that she was going to phone me at some time to tell me some gossip. I decided to phone Sue to hear about this gossip. It was more stuff about our friend Lee doing stupid stuff, but that topic quickly passed, and we talked about pubs, gig, music, Covid, our old operations, and all sorts of stuff. It always feels rude to cut Sue off in mid flow, but at 3.30am this morning I told her we had to finish the call so I could try and get some sleep.

  I think I have had little more than 2 hours sleep. Despite having so little sleep my brain insisted it was time to get up at around 7am, although I had woken up a couple of times before that. The funny thing is that I didn't really feel all that bad. A couple of hours later and I am feeling the effects. I have a light headache, and it feels like if I closed my eyes I would fall instantly asleep. In reality I would probably toss and turn before there was any chance of falling asleep. I shall test this once I have finished writing and uploaded this to my web server.

  One really great result of yesterday's part fasting, and eating little more than salad, is that my blood glucose was down to a very nice 7.3mmol/l this morning. That is even slightly below the target I have been trying to achieve of 7.5mmol/l. It is doubtful I can keep it that low for very long, and this afternoons boozing session, if it happens, could well mess it all up again one way or another. The funny thing is that I seemed to kill my morning hunger with a handful or peanuts - just like I did yesterday. I know my dinner could well be salads again, and so that should be fine. The only fly in the ointment is beers, and the desire to have something in my belly before hand to "mop them up". Time will tell.