08:19 BST

  Apart from some early morning drizzle, yesterday was a dry, and fairly bright day. Maybe it was the sunshine, or maybe it was the mild breeze, or maybe the predicted temperature of only 17° C was less than reality. In fact I just noticed a note I made yesterday that said later revisions of the forecast gave a high of 19° C. It is possible it was even higher than that.

  

  There were warnings for thunderstorms in the small hours of this morning. There was certainly a fair amount of rain, but I didn't hear any thunder. The latest revision to the forecast doesn't change anything to that shown above. Until 6pm there will be thick, dark clouds, but only a 10% chance of rain. At 6pm the clouds will thin, maybe the sun will peep through the clouds, and it will probably rain ! It definitely doesn't feel warm now, and even at the highest today, 17° C, it probably will still feel cool under the leaden sky. Tomorrow is currently not looking any better than today until early evening when there could be some sunny spells.

  Yesterday was a fairly busy day. The first thing I did when washed and dressed was to go shopping in Tesco. As I mentioned yesterday, I mainly wanted to get a few bottles of Diet Coke, but I bought more than that, although half of that was bird seed and not for me. I was extremely careful about what I bought for myself. My original intention was just to get a pack of bacon, and a bag of mixed salad leaves for another bacon and lettuce dinner.

  I also bought a couple of items from the reduced price shelves. One item was some Danish blue cheese. I am looking forward to having some of that on rice cakes - possibly today. Another thing was a Greek inspired orzo salad sort of thing. I ended up eating that last night because it said the sugar content was very low. The final reduced price thing was a pack of mini Scotch egg type things. I was surprised at how low the declared sugar content was, although with hindsight I wonder if that was per mini Scotch egg. I also ate that last night as well.

  The next thing I did was to hand wash two towels. One was a hand towel, and the other was small, or medium, sized bath towel. The odd thing is that I thought my very high blood glucose would make me feel tired and weak, but in reality it felt fairly easy hand washing those towels....although, having said that, I decided against giving those towels extra rinses. After my normal three rinses when doing any hand laundry, I thought I had done the bare minimum, and that had to be good enough.

  The main dish of the day was a fairly long walk - fairly long compared to anything I have done since mid April.  I didn't really make it a conscious decision, but I sort of set myself a minimum target of 2 miles. Beyond that it was open ended. Having started off walking through the linear park there were loads of places I could have set as the point where I would turn around. Alternatively I could have walked all the way to Clock House station (slightly further at 3.37 miles), and caught the train back to Catford Bridge - except I couldn't because there were no trains running. I just went as far as the bow string bridge in the Linear Park, crossed it, and made my way home again.
  One of the first things I saw on this walk was these gates that allow access to the railway line for maintenance crews, and emergency services. Although there were no passenger trains running there could still have been trains carrying materials for whatever engineering works were taking place, and it is possible the live rail was still powered. There was no railway personnel  in sight, and the gates were still wide open on my way home after my walk, Any kids, or vandals could just walk straight off the road and onto the railway lines.
  I spotted reason to stay well clear of The Catford Bridge Tavern on the 17th June. In my prejudiced view this is the sort of entertainment that usually ends with a fight, sometimes a stabbing, and in rare cases, even a shooting. I would be wary of even passing the place on my way back from the station.
  I wish I had taken one of my DSLR cameras, with a zoom lens, yesterday. Maybe I would have done so if I had predicted this egret  was going to be on the river. The trouble with egrets is that their brilliant white feathers always come out over exposed if the camera, like mine, was on full automatic. It would help if you could get a lot closer so the bird more fully filled the frame, but they seem very shy. If I had my Nikon D3200 and 300mm lens I could have got a fair close up, but more importantly I could have set a very fast shutter speed so there was little motion blur caused by camera shake at high zoom levels, and I could have turned the expose down so the white feathers weren't over exposed. I think I will take the Nikon out on the next sunny day !
  It is obvious this is a path, but it in not an official path, and that is why, several months later, this fallen tree has not been cleared away from the path. I am definitely not a limbo dancer, and doubly so when carrying a moderately expensive camera, but I did manage to get under it without embarrassing myself.
  When I first saw this flower I thought it was apple blossom. There is an apple tree, that has small apples on it in the autumn, about where I took this snap, but on closer examination I saw it was a dog rose (at least I think that is what it is). There are quite a few of them in various parts of the park.

  The curious thing about my walk was some of it was slightly painful, with creaking joints and the like, but somehow it didn't feel tiring. My legs did seem tired, but when called on to, for instance, walk up a steep slope on the river bank, or even walk up the steps from Catford Bridge station up to the bridge itself, I didn't seem to have any difficulty at all. It was partly because of this, but also for another reason, that I diverted to pop into the Sainsbury's local by Catford station.

  I particularly wanted some bottled water, but I also got three of their ready made salads - because they were there (I think the better ones usually sell out early on a normal morning). It was good to get home, and get my boots off, but I did little else until I had drunk a pint or water I had left chilling in the fridge, and then started on one of the bottles of water bought from Sainsbury's. I didn't realise it at the time, but it was sparkling water. That made it nice to drink, but obviously it couldn't be gulped down like still water.

  The reason for the water was an experiment. In the past, if I had tried to check my blood glucose after a long walk I usually got a silly high reading because I was part dehydrated. After a pint and a half of water, and a short wait for it to percolate through my body, I checked my blood glucose. In the morning it had been a very unholy 11.2mmol/l. After my walk it had come down to a more reasonable 9.0mmol/l. That was still a bit high, but I suspect it might have been lower if I had given a bit more time for the water to get into my bloodstream.

  Regardless of it still being rather high, it seemed a good enough drop to break my fast with a couple of the Sainsbury's salads. I had the goats cheese and beetroot, plus the "mediteranean style" salad. The latter was pure salad with no cheese, meat or beans. It did come with a honey and pepper dressing, but it was only a tiny sachet. Having eaten I went through the pictures I had taken, and selected and edited the ones I have used here.

  I could finally put my feet up and fully relax for a while, but not for all that long because it was fairly late in the afternoon, and I couldn't stop thinking about dinner. I read for a while, and then I think I had a short snooze. A flick around the TV channels showed there was nothing to grab my attention all evening, and so I decided I would watch my recordings of the extremely good ITV adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I watched two almost one hour episodes last night.

  I was feeling hungry after my rather light lunch, albeit a late lunch, and I bright my dinner forward to not that long after 6pm. It was another salad. It consisted of flame grilled chicken chunks on mixed lettuce leaves, but with a slight twist compared to how I last had it. The chicken was a few days after it's best before date, and I thought I could smell a very, very slight hint of it starting to go off. I decided that if it did have some bugs growing on it I would kill them off by cooking the cooked chicken in the oven for 20 minutes with a splash of oil and soy sauce.

  It turned out to be a lot nicer than the fresh product. While I was waiting for the chicken to cook I ate the Greek style Orzo salad as a little starter. Maybe an hour after dinner, and while watching the second Sherlock Holmes recording, I ate the mini Scotch eggs. I have to say they were a disappointment. There was nothing wrong with them except they just didn't seem very exciting. Looks can sometimes be deceiving.

  It was still light when I went to bed, and with sunset last night at 9.10pm, I guess it probably wasn't much before 9pm. I read for a while, and then tried to go to sleep. I expected to fall asleep in minutes, but I guess it was possibly more than 30 minutes. There was one strange oddity last night. The night before, when my blood glucose was very high, and when that usually means a pot of peeing in the night, or indeed at any other time, I didn't seem to pee much at all. Last night I was sometime waking up after only an hour for another pee. It seems like I didn't get a very good sleep at all last night, although, having said that, I probably did get a full 8 hours even if some of those hours were a bit lumpy.

  After all that peeing I feared my blood glucose was still very high. I was wrong. It was actually very nice and low at just 7.6mmol/l, and just 1/10th higher than my self set target (which I rarely, if ever, reach). That was good news, and I accidently allowed myself double instant noodles for breakfast. The "accident" was forgetting that I had intended to use up the rather crappy Koo-Lee noodles first. I started on a pack of Vifon tomato flavoured noodles, and then decided I would have some Koo-Lee noodles as well.

  Today, weather wise, looks to be total crap. It does not enthuse me to do anything at all, and maybe I won't do anything. If I did do something it might be to go to Elstree & Borehamwood station - because I can, and because it is as far as my Freedom pass will take me on the Thameslink line. It will all be a balancing act between the negative points of the weather, and the positive points of the novelty factor. One other negative factor is the change required at Blackfriars station.  It is a 25 minute wait for the next train. I seem to be putting myself off before I've started....