There could be sunny spells today. One is currently forecast for 11am, and the other at 6pm. The one shown for 7am in the screenshot above, never happened. I have my doubts there will be any sunny spells today, but I would be very happy to be wrong. It seems like m0st of today will either be grey, or very grey ! At least it should be 21° C in the second half of the afternoon, and at worst there is only a 10% chance of rain today, and so it will probably stay dry. Just when it seems like we are diving headfirst into autumn tomorrow may buck the trend and it could be a day filled with sunny spells.

 
Maybe it was guilt about my blood glucose being high yesterday morning, or maybe it was the lure of lots of bright sunshine predicted in the weather forecast (while ignoring the horrible grey sky at the time I was plotting my day), but I felt, and gave into the urge for another walk yesterday.

  Walks on two consecutive days after being sedentary for so long may have been taking a chance. I thought it would be a bit easier on me if I avoided any hills, and took a stroll in the Linear Park. To a small extent that is still uphill. It has to be because rivers like to run downhill, and on the first leg I was walking upstream by the river. That does give the advantage of it being downhill on the way home - although it is such a gentle slope that it almost looks level.

  Once again I took my new (second hand, and actually a bit old) Nikon D80 camera with me. It was a more challenging environment, and I was testing the limits of the camera. It seemed to be a bit more limited than I had hoped for. The problem is that the Linear Park has few open spaces, and so many potential shots were in the shade of trees or other vegetation.

  In an attempt at a sort of compromise setting I ended up with some pictures being over exposed, and some under exposed. Even my best pictures look a bit crap. The answer may be to try saving the pictures as RAW files instead of jpeg. RAW files are easier/better for correcting exposure problems. The only trouble is they really eat up memory space, but it is something I will have to try.

  This grey wagtail was posing perfectly, but the picture is over exposed because I had left the shutter speed too low, and the aperture couldn't be made small enough for a better exposure. From my test shots the day before I knew the camera was not that good in low light. I didn't want to go completely "Auto" because that would often result in slow and blurry exposures. I set the shutter speed to about 1/125th, and let the camera take care of the rest of the settings. It turned out that a very fast, 1/500th, would have been about right, but the bird had flown by then.
  When I took this picture it came out very underexposed because this grey wagtail, with it's splendid yellow undercarriage, was in the deep shade of reeds and other vegetation in the smelly pond in the park. If I had set the shutter speed back to 1/125th it may have come out a lot better. The problem is that for pictures like this you have literally a second or two before the bird flies off. I am still getting to know the controls on the Nikon D80, and it can take me more than a few seconds to change settings.
  This is another picture where saving it as a RAW file might have been beneficial. That bright blue sky was very bright compared to the trees, and the picture is far too contrasty. I had to sacrifice the quality of the blue sky to allow any detail in the trees to be seen.

   Even thought I hadn't done anything like tackling walking up to the top of Blythe Hill, like I did the day before, I still felt weary when I got home. It was definitely nice to get my boots off, and have a sit down. Later I would have a lie down, but I was eager to see how some of the picture I took had come out. On the whole I think I did a terrible job, and most pictures should never see the light of day, but on the other hand, I was deliberately testing the limits of the camera. I think I have a better idea of how to drive it now, but only time will tell.

  One thing I wanted to avoid doing was to start eating when I got home. I think I did have a handful of peanuts, but I saved most of my eating until dinner time. Once I had checked how my pictures had come out I laid on my bed, and just like the day before, I read some pages from the book I am reading "Orbital Decay" by Allen Steel, and then dozed off for maybe an hour. To be honest I can't remember when I fell asleep, or when I woke up, but I knew dinner time was a lot closer !

  I was definitely feeling hungry, and I think I started my dinner a bit before my traditional time of 6pm. I started with two cans of soup, and I had considered just having soup and no more, but before heating the soup I had already put a couple of beef burgers in the mini oven/grill to cook. I had those burgers with some cornichons (mini gherkins) and some sliced jalapeños plus probably an over generous squirt of tomato sauce.

  After dinner I split my time between photo editing and watching TV. There was nothing that exciting on TV - except for one thing. It was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I wish I had watched it all because it was one of the very few really good episodes of that Star Trek series. It concerned Quark, the Ferengi, plus his brother, and son going through a time warp after an accident, and ending up in Roswell in 1948 - the year of the famous Roswell flying saucer incident. It was a very funny episode, and made funnier by the actors playing the American military really hamming it up like they were out of a comic book.
  There was one thing that made yesterday evening go more smoothly - booze ! I picked up this 6 pack in Aldi last Monday, and I promised Jodie I would only drink one each of the pairs of cans in there. She, of course, needs to try them for herself so she can enter them into her untappd.com website account. I think I have had the Pistonhead before, but I don't recall it being as nice as these were last night.

  I should have been set up for a good nights sleep - lots of exercise and then booze - but there was one factor that ruined my sleep. My bedroom temperature was in that dreadful area where it was too hot for the duvet, and too cold without it. I have no idea how many times I woke up either too hot or too cold. It was only after about 3am, maybe even 4am when my bedroom had cooled off enough to sleep under the duvet. I think it all conspired to give me bad dreams. Not actually nightmares, but some were like being trapped in a loop with the same ideas coming up over and over again.

  This morning I do not feel good, and the rather grey morning, with little hope for any sunshine today, just makes it all worse. That is a shame because I do have reason to celebrate. My eating control, and exercise yesterday, dropped my blood glucose down to 7.7mmol/l this morning. That has taken my rolling average down to 8.5mmol/l exactly. If I could do the same for the next 6 days I could get the lowest average for the month for a very long time.

  The only thing I have done so far to break it is to eat a plate of fish fingers. Usually they are pretty safe, particularly in the morning, but they might have set a precedent for the day. I'll just have to see, but it is going to be difficult trying to control my eating on a dull and boring day. This evening may not be so boring. Chain are playing in The Chatterton Arms tonight. I would like to go, but in practical terms it means getting a bus, although I could potentially walk from Bromley South station. There is also a fair chance that one or more people I find very irritating might be there. Even before Covid lockdown I used to try and avoid gigs in Bromley because those people depress me. I am think it will probably be a last minute decision if I go, or just stay home and enjoy myself with my own company.