Today may only reach 12° C instead of yesterday's 13° C, and it may not be quite as gloomy, but there seems to be little chance of seeing any sunshine today. Of course there was supposed to be no sunshine yesterday, but there was a little bit in the morning. It was also not supposed to rain, but it did. Maybe today will follow the forecast and stay dry. Tomorrow will be the next of a series of dull, but mild days. It may reach 12° C tomorrow, but perhaps only for an hour or two.





  As I finished writing yesterday I was still unsure if I would be going out or not. It was less than an hour later when I was actually heading out for a walk in the Linear Park. I did the minimum walk of just over 3 miles. I could have extended that to 4 miles, but I wasn't sure I would be comfortable doing that. With hindsight it would have been OK if I had done it, although it would be cutting it a bit fine weather wise - which I shall explain further down the page.

  The air temperature may have been 13° C, but there was enough breeze when in the open to make it feel a degree or two cooler, but I still only wore a t-shirt and my sleeveless denim jacket. After about a mile of semi-brisk walking. - ok, not really brisk at all, but not hanging around - I was developing a thin sheen of sweat on my brow. Not nearly enough to drip, but still sweat.

  I was quite surprised how muddy the park was. I know it rained yesterday, and although I wouldn't describe it as heavy, well not most of the time, I would describe it as persistent. I guess it was falling on mud from the previous days rain. It made it seem a bit too tricky to follow some paths - mainly paths down to the riverside - but the path alongside the river was passable OK



  I noted that building works were going on in the Tames Water pump enclosure. This is where water from two pipelines, fed from boreholes, is pumped along to the water treatment works a mile or so south of here (maybe closer to 2 miles). During the summer this compound was flooded because of a leaking pipe a few hundred years away. I don't know if that damaged one of the buildings in it, but one of the buildings that houses a pump (or two) appears to have been replaced with a slightly bigger building that looks a bit more permanent than the one it replaced.
  Thanks to the new steps that the Friends Of The River Pool have let into the riverbank, it is now easy to get down close to the waters edge, although there is still a drop of about 2 ft to water level. The bottom of the steps does give a good view of this land drain, or stream that empties into the river here. It should be clean water coming out of it into the river, but there was a definite whiff of sewage around this outlet.
  The last time I was here these steps had not been infilled with gravel (possibly dredged from the river - the Friends Of The river Pool make a point of using local resources where possible), Before that they looked very precarious, but now they are firm and solid.
  The bottom "landing" of the steps, and it is about 2ft above the water level. If it was warm and dry, and maybe if the river level was a bit lower, I would have chanced dropping down the last 2 ft, but the mud looked very slippery. Hopefully I'll be investigating this bit of river a bit closer next summer.
  The rain has filled up "Lake Winsford" again at the bottom of Winsford Road. This time there is a path on some boarding to the left of the red barriers. Off to the right hand side of the picture some new concrete hard standing has been put down. It seems to be part of the works going on at the pumping station. There looks to be bits of the old building, and some equipment from it waiting to be taken away from it.
  I have shown one or two of these signs before, but today I made a point of looking out for them all - but sadly not until I had already passed a few. No one knows what they are for, or who put them up. They are disks, maybe 6 or so inches across with these odd little logos on them attached about 12ft up some lampposts. The heart, with "Joy" written under it I snapped on the 17th of November.

  On my way back from the walk I called into the little corner supermarket on Catford Bridge to buy a few things. I principally wanted some "East European style" bread, and some Polish, or similar ham. Despite now thinking that too many bowls of instant noodles are not a good idea, I also bought quite a few packs of instant noodles. The other things I bought were pepper mustard, and hot chilli sauces.

  When I got home I realised that I was probably good to walk another mile, but that just meant I didn't rush to relax on my bed or something. The first thing I did was to make a ham sandwich using the bread i had bought.  It had  been sold at a reduced price because it was starting to get a bit dry. With hindsight it was not a good choice, but I have still made several nice sandwiches from it. I also had a couple of bowls of instant noodles a little later.

  Before I relaxed I went through all the pictures, and some video I had taken. The videos were rather crap - just me talking to camera, and I don't think they would be interesting here. Making the mosaic of the little lamppost signs probably took the most time. Once They were done I could lay on my bed, and read. After reading for 15 minutes or so, I ended up having a snooze. I am not sure how long it lasted, but I am sure I was only half asleep for the last 10 or 15 minutes. It seemed a shame when I had to get up and go and have a pee.

  After two bowls of instant noodles I thought I had better make dinners a bit lighter. I am not so sure it was. I had a can of Tesco, very low sugar, cream of chicken soup with a big hunk of dry bread to dip into it. It is quite rare that I do that, and maybe that made it very enjoyable this time. While eating I was watching the Sky Arts channel, and they were showing the making of "The Who Sell Out" album. I doesn't feel like it was more than 6 months, and probably less, since they last showed it. When it finished I was very tempted to go to bed, but that was at 7pm !

  I didn't go to bed them because I decided to start writing all the above (except today's weather). This, together with the pictures, and trying to write in basic English, using spellings and grammar approved of by some long forgotten English teacher, took around an hour, maybe more. (Note: English is not my native language. That is a sort of mumbled gibberish, with additional slurring after a few pints).

  When I did go to bed I did my usual thing or reading for 30 to 60 minutes. I think it may have only been 30 minutes last night, and I was asleep around 9pm. I slept well last night until about 3.30am when I seemed to suffer from almost an hour of insomnia. I came very close to getting up, or turning on the lights to read, but eventually I started to fall asleep again. By 6am I seemed to get back into a fairly deep sleep, although maybe not because it did feature a nice, but ultimately unfulfilled dream.

  The dream was about a woman whose name (an unusual name) I knew of in real life, but who looked quite different. I seemed to be very close to her, and there was a fair bit of hugging, but she kept disappearing. Before the dream faded away she suggested we go to The Sunflower pub (which I don't think I have ever heard of in real life). She went out the door to walk to the pub, and I was a couple of steps behind her, and once I was on the road there was no sign of her. When I got to the pub she wasn't there, but people who were with us before leaving the house were already there, and half way through their first pints. It wasn't a happy ending to a dream.

  It wasn't a happy start to the day either. It is probably because my dinner was just a single can of soup, and a chunk of bread, that I thought I hadn't eaten much yesterday, but when I stopped to think of all I ate through the day, maybe I had eaten a lot more. It included several sandwiches as well as two bowls of instant noodles. I also finished off a tube of Doner Kebab flavour Pringles.  There were more left in the tube than I thought, but it seemed messy to leave a tiny portion, plus a pile of crumbs, and so I ate the lot.

  The worst thing is that I ate those Pringles late in the evening (while writing the top half of this page), and I expect they contributed a lot to my annoyingly high blood glucose this morning. It was 9.5mmol/l, and edging closer to the danger line at 10.0mmol/l. I ought to be very careful what I eat today, and ideally go for another walk (not that yesterday's did a lot of good). The flaw in that plan is that I have already been for a walk - to Aldi and back, and of course I bought lots of exciting (sort of) stuff to eat. I have already had cod in breadcrumbs for breakfast !

  I really don't know what I am doing today. The walk to Aldi started out as hard work, but soon after the halfway point I began not to notice any discomfort walking there. Walking back was harder work because of the shopping I had bought, but even so it wasn't that bad, although I did feel very hot when I got back home. I'm not sure I can bring myself to go for a long walk today. It is only a degree cooler than yesterday, and maybe a little too cool for bare arms (yesterday was a bit marginal), and the sky is just as grim as yesterday (possibly grimmer as I write this). I think I'll be amusing myself indoors today, but you never know.....