The main thing on the agenda yesterday was to have a lunchtime drink with Angela, but there was also another almost important thing, and that was the visit the pharmacy to pick up my latest repeat prescription for the next 2 months. I also washed a double duvet cover before doing almost anything else, and hung it on the washing line to dry by just before 8.30am. It was bone dry after drying in sunshine when I brought it in at about 5pm.

  It was so nice that I made a determined effort to get out early to take the scenic route to the pub where I met Angela. It was just after midday when I left, and the first thing I did was to forget to turn on the tracker until I was almost a tenth of a mile from home. That did not make that much difference, but it would have made the map neater, although I can't deny that 2.3 miles sounds better than 2.2 miles !

  One of my objectives was to pick up a copy of The Metro so I could start doing the crosswords in it if I arrived at the pub a bit earlier. A very quick through it convinced me I didn't buy it for the news content. To get a copy of The Metro I headed for Catford Bridge station.

  From Catford Bridge station I could then walk through 7/8ths of Ladywell Fields with camera in hand for any interesting photo opportunities. My camera of choice yesterday was my Nikon Coolpix L29. It hasn't had a lot of outdoor use, and I decided it was due for a walk. If I recall correctly it cost about £25 in a secondhand shop, and it was a bargain !

  Funnily enough, this picture was actually taken using my mobile phone. It shows my first long view across the fist section of park. I took it on the phone so I could send it to Angela to show how nice it was outside, and to tell her I was on my way.
  Looking to the left of where I took the first picture I took this picture to represent all the fruit trees that were also mostly in full bloom. Some were still to blossom. Most of the trees are either varieties of apple or pear, but I think there are other fruit trees among them.
 For most of the river the water is very clear - as you can see by the ducks feet. A later picture shows the weir, and it is very murky there.
  Another picture to mainly show how there were still some fluffy clouds in the sky. I can't be sure now, but I think it was the northern side of the sky, where my camera is pointing, where most of the clouds were, and that left the southern half of the sky, where the sun was, mostly clear, and unobstructed.
  It was difficult to get a picture that covers all the facets of this scene. The photo was taken from the bridge that connects the park to the grounds of Lewisham Hospital. In the foreground is a weir, and it is doing one of it's jobs by collecting debris that has been washed down the river. It also helps to aerate the water to keep it fresher. This one also has a third purpose, and that is to raise the water enough to push some of it through the man made stream that winds through the northernmost field in the park. In that respect it has failed because that man made stream is dry.

  The weir has caught loads and loads of fallen wood that came down in the big storm we had a month or two ago. Unfortunately that has severely reduced the flow at the surface of the river as it approached the weir. It is not easy to see from this picture that the last 30ft of the river before the weir is covered by a scummy layer of small debris like leaves and stuff. It looks really unpleasant, but I would guess there is clear water below it, and the fish are probably not bothered by it, although they may find the weir hard to pass when it is so clogged.

  I arrived at the pub with just enough time to do about 4 clues in the crossword before Angela arrived. There were no special highlights about our meeting worth mentioning this time, but like always, it was a warm and friendly hour together, and we parted with a good warm hug outside her office. There was one slight diversion from normality - I gave Angela a very quick peck on the end of her nose. For reasons I only now understand (she was teased by her brother), she is sensitive about her nose. To me it is a perfectly normal nose - not to big, not too small, and just the right shape. That quick peck on the end of her nose was my way of saying it is a nice nose.

  After we said goodbye I almost forgot that my next destination was not home, but the pharmacy. I was supposed to be picking up my next repeat prescription. I phone in the request on Monday, and Wednesday afternoon was the agreed time for it to be collected. When I got there I found that half of my drugs were out of stock, and so the prescription hadn't been made up, and nor had the out of stock drugs been ordered. They promised to order them in time to be collected on Friday (tomorrow) morning.

  My feet were feeling sore when I got home. I had opted for a lightweight pair of summer shoes. I remembered the last time I wore them I had done a slightly longer walk, and it included going to the top of Hilly Fields. It was quite a demanding walk, and the soles of my feet were really sore, and I am not sure why. It was the same yesterday, and once again it was the soles of my feet that hurt. It felt good to sit down and take the weight off my feet.

  I tried an experiment yesterday. I reversed lunch and dinner. It was because the coating on the fish I was having was known to include some sugar, and the idea was to get it out of the way earlier in the day to give a long time for it to be processed before I checked my blood glucose this morning. I had that fish with salad, and that salad included quite a few very sweet baby tomatoes as well.

  I had that dinner at nearly 3pm, and so I had my evening meal late too. It was to be just soup, but after one can of soup I decided to open on of my mystery cans. It is from a range made in Romania (I think), and bought from The Metro Food Centre. It is not an export food, and so there is not a word of English on the can. There are 4 very similar looking products, and so far the best one, and it is rather good, is smoky bacon with giant beans in sauce. Last night's can was almost described by the picture on it if I had studied it a bit closer. It was a couple of chicken wings (or possibly duck) in peas and sauce. It was sort of nice, but not as good as the beans and smoky bacon.

  After my normal fare of an episode of The Prisoner, and an episode of The Simpsons, I was almost ready for bed, but 7.30pm felt a bit too early. One extra diversion was to go online, and pay my credit card bill. It didn't seem to be much, and so I then stayed on line and ordered a 1TB solid state hard disk from Amazon. I intend to put that in my laptop. With luck I can copy the root and home partitions from the existing hard disk, and all I will have to do then is re-install the boot menu - which is now usually easy using my Rescatux bootable CD. The SSD (solid state disk) drive should be faster than the current "spinning rust" disk, and with luck the power consumption may be lower, and extend the battery life.

  Last night was the second night that I went to bed with no heating on. This time I held out until 3am this morning before I turned the heater on low. Once again there was a bit of a battle between it being too hot under the duvet, and too cold for any bit of my body (except face) left outside the duvet. A bit of extra warmth in my bedroom allowed me to leave a leg or arm (often both) outside the duvet. The temperature was quite low this morning (just over 4° C at 6am), and I put the heater on full blast at 6am, and then went back to bed until 7am.

  On the whole I slept reasonably well last night. I seem to recall some assorted dreams, but only part of one sticks in my memory because it is so ludicrous. I can't remember how it started, or even how it ended, if indeed it had any form of ending. The middle bit was quite weird enough ! In this dream I had two packs of smoked mackerel stored in my belly. I hadn't swallowed them - they were just sort of in that area. I dreamed I was looking forward to eating one, but I didn't know how I was going to get them out without being cut open. I'm sure some of the dream was about wondering how they had got there in the first place !

  I am pleased to so that my blood glucose dropped again, but it was only 0.1 again. It had dropped from 8.9mmol/l to 8.8mmol/l. As I said yesterday, any drop is a good thing, but it is a bit annoying it wasn't a bigger drop. I have a suspicion that can of chicken (or duck) wing in peas may have had more sugar in it that I hoped for. My feet are still a bit sore this morning, but generally I feel OK.

  I have had a very lazy sort of morning, and with a few interruptions along the way, writing all this has taken a long time. It is now close to midday, and the next thing I desperately need to do is to have a shower. In little more than three hours Jodie will be here for a Thursday beer tasting session. I probably ought to be a little restrained in what I drink, and also eat today because I am fermenting a mad idea for a day out on the trains tomorrow. More about that if it is going to happen, tomorrow morning.