It isn't shown in the original, or the later revision of the forecast, but it is currently sunny, and has been for an hour now. The sky looks slightly hazy, but I can still see it is blue, and I think this sunny spell may go on for a while yet. There are sunny spells forecast for midday and 1pm, but the rest of the day is supposed to be lightly cloudy until 8pm when the cloud will thicken up, and the chance of rain will increase to 10%. This afternoon should be a bit warmer with 13° C forecast. If by any chance it should still be sunny then, then it should feel quite nice unless it is too breezy. Tomorrow is looking very grey, but no rain is forecast (although it does say there is a 10% chance of rain for the whole day), and it should be 13° C.

  I finished writing yesterday saying that if I was ready in time I would try and get in a couple of miles of walking before meeting Angela in the pub at lunchtime (if she was available). Sometimes it seems that time just slips away, but yesterday morning I was ready to go out well before it was practical. If I had left as soon as I was ready I could have walked something like 5 miles, and arrived at the pub feeling knackered.

  I decided not to be too hasty, and waited until midday before going out. The good thing about that was that it gave me enough time to cool off after a hot shower, washing my hair, and blow drying it. That lot really cooks my head, and it takes a long time to cool off again.

  Before I set out I had been thinking of walking to Ladywell, and maybe having a walk around Ladywell and Crofton Park cemetery. I did contemplate walking up to Hilly Fields as an alternative, but at the last moment I thought I would tackle walking up to the top of Mountsfield Park. That can be quite taxing.

  As can be seen in this picture, it was a lovely day for walking. It was a bit cool, but I was perfectly comfortable with bare arms. At this point I am just before the steep bit (off to the right) that takes me to the very top of the hill.
  It feels almost obligatory to take a snap here of the view towards Upper Sydenham, or Crystal Palace as it is usually called. The BBC TV transmitter mast can be seen in the distance. I probably take this picture to prove I have reached the highest point or something. Of course it is also a good excuse to stop and take a few seconds breather.
  Mountsfield Park does have a few trees that display noce autumn colours. Here's a few with the skyscrapers around Canary Wharf as a backdrop.
  This white dove (or pigeon ?) and fat looking pigeon seem to be sharing a nest in the roof space of the park bandstand.
  Yesterday was the first time I got to see the final result of the rebuilding of the old cinema that used to stand on the corner of George Lane and Hither Green Lane. There was a planning stipulation that the outline of the old cinema must be preserved when the site was developed. The interior was stripped bare, and apart from the ground floor, it had flats built in it, but the ground floor was reserved for retail purposes. Yesterday I saw that it was now in use as a Cafe, Boulangerie and Patisserie. I didn't look inside, but it seemed to be busy, and there were some nice smells coming from the inside.
  My walk took me along Hither Green Lane until I cut through one of the alleys to take a short walk in Lewisham Park. The curious thing about that park is that Google Maps shows it as having a pond. Well it does, and it doesn't. For some strange reason there is a set of basketball hoops on a pole in a small depression in the ground. In summer it is bone dry, but when it has rained it fills up to become a pond. I snapped this crow wading in the pond, and it looks like it might have found a bit of bread left for the pigeons.

  I noted it was just about exactly 2 miles when I arrived at the pub. My timing was pretty good because I arrived just before 1pm, and Angela joined me 5 or 6 minutes after 1pm. We had a nice drink and chat together, and maybe there was some of the old warmth back. Angela certainly seemed happy. We talked of my health, and of her upcoming short holiday. She'll be spending that with lover boy (of course) in Seaford where lover boy has some old school friends.

  At 2pm I walked Angela back to work, and then continued on to home via the park. I didn't take the most direct route, and that added the final 0.8 miles of my walk. I felt quite tired when I got home, but I think the two pints of Guinness I had can take much of the blame for that. I also felt very hungry. I hadn't eaten anything since the night before, but once again the Guinness would have made the hunger worse. I had a couple of cans of soup to keep me going.

  After the soup I selected and edited the pictures I've used today. I used my old Canon Powershot SX40 camera for these pictures, and unlike the pictures I took the day before using my Nikon D80 camera, they needed very little work - just a bit of cropping and resizing mainly. The only problem with that Canon SX40 is that it does much prefer to focus on more distant things, and so rarely takes a good picture of something like a close up of a flower.

  With the photos done I could lay on my bed. I barely managed 1 page of the book I am reading before I fell asleep, and had a good snooze. Before I fell asleep the sun was shining through the window directly on to my bed, but when I woke up it had moved around enough to only hit part of the side wall of my bedroom. It was surprising how quickly it started to feel chilly with no sun, and I put the heater on low to compensate.  I think it was about 4pm when I woke up, and another half an hour later and the sun would have set.

  There was still 2 hours to go before dinner, and I snacked on a chunk of cheese and some salted peanuts. Eventually it was time for dinner, and I had oven cooked cod in batter with tinned peas. It was nice, but it didn't feel quite filling enough. I topped up with 4 oatcake type biscuits with cheese and sliced jalapeños. That either made me feel full, or those really rough oatcakes had hurt the inside of my mouth enough to stop me wanting to eat more.

  I wonder if someone had slipped me some drugs before I went to bed because my initial dreams were very strange. Strange by subject, and strange by the way so little happening could apparently take up so much time. It is hard to give a detailed description because there was so little detail to describe. The dream was about me, and an unseen friend or two, coming into possession of 5 bars of gold. I don't know how this happened - they were just of there.

  What was obvious is that who ever originally owned them would be worse to meet than the police. We wanted to hide those gold bars until the heat died down, but the only thing we could think of was to paint them green, and hide them in the long grass. That is essentially all there appeared to be of the dream, but it seemed like it lasted half an hour or more. It is quite possible it all happened in a few seconds, but it just seemed to go on and on.

  On the whole I seemed to sleep fairly well last night. I seemed to get up for a poe less often than usual, and I can't remember being awake for any more than a few minutes at any time. After getting up for a wee at 6am, and turning the heater up full blast, I attempted just another few minutes sleep, and got almost 90 minutes ! The annoying thing is that I think I felt worse after that extra 90 minutes than I seemed to before. Even "worse" wasn't actually that bad.

  Once again I hoped my blood glucose would be lower, but once again it was 8.8mmol/l, and once again that was not bad, but I was hoping for something nearer 8.0mmol/l (or less). I am not sure what to blame for it not going down. I think the tinned peas may have played their part, and maybe eating those oatcakes late in the evening didn't help. This morning I have recklessly eaten a couple of southern fried flavoured fish burgers (aka big square fish fingers).

  I now have a busy morning ahead of me. I need a shower, and then I need to clear the dining room table from the spread out debris of Jodie's mum's other old PC. That will take a bit of tidying up, and then I had better give the table a wipe down. If I have time after that I might go to the little multi ethnic supermarket on Catford Bridge for a loaf of crusty bread. My blood glucose was low when eating the last couple of loaves I got from there despite me thinking they should make it go up. Maybe I have got things backwards, and now I have to prove it one way or another. This afternoon should be a beer session with Michael and Jodie.

  As I finish writing this the sun is still shining in all defiance of the weather forecast as last revised at about 8am. I thought it worth looking to see if it had been revised to match reality, and it has - with some enthusiasm. Now and 11am are shown as full sunshine, and midday and 1pm as per the original forecast of sunny spells.

  I recently read that the Met Office has ordered a new super computer to improve their forecasts. As someone commented on that new item "if you have to look out the window to see what the weather is doing, it is not a forecast but a news report, and anything in the future is just guesswork". I look forward to this new super computer being able to look nearly half a day into the future to predict when the sun will come out at least an hour before it actually does come out !