Like yesterday, the Met Office forecast is adding more sunny spells to later revisions of their forecast. Meanwhile, over on the other channel, the BBC (Meteogroup) forecast continues to say it will be a generally dull day. Their forecast certainly describes the greyness I see outside my window at the moment, and it seems unlikely it will change any time soon. What both forecasters agree on is that today is going to be very warm. Both predict 25° C this afternoon. Another curiosity is that both forecasters divide tomorrow into two halves. The morning could be very dull, and the afternoon featuring plenty of sunny spells. The one difference is that the Met Office sunny afternoon may not start until 3pm. Tomorrow may, or may not, be as warm as today, but it depends on who you believe.

   I am happy to say that yesterday was a good day. It was mainly achieved on a combination of two things - more sunshine than expected, and seeing Angela when I thought I was in for a fortnight's wait until I saw her again. There was also my low blood glucose reading, and the bright sunny morning to set me off on the right foot.

  The first thing I did once I was shaved, shampooed, showered, hair dried, and dressed, was to go shopping in Tesco. I think I bought more bird food than food for me. Fully half the weight of my shopping bag was bird seed, and my rucksack was weighed down with 4 x 2l bottles of Diet Coke. Carrying all that lot back home was not trivial, but it wasn't that bad. The worst thing was that I felt rather hot and sweaty when I got home.

  It was fortunate that I was keeping to good time so I could relax for nearly an hour before walking through the park to the pub. It turned out that I had less time than I expected because another text message from Angela asked if I fancied getting to the pub a bit earlier. I said yes, and estimated that I could get there at 12:40 without too much of a rush. I actually got there closer to 12:35, but Angela didn't get there until 12:48 after a last minute phone call delayed her leaving her office.
  One of two mysteries when walking through the park - why was this hire bike left in the middle of the park, by the kiddies playground ? It was also unusual in that it was parked on it's stand instead of thrown into the bushes, or a similar fate. I suppose there is a small possibility that the kiddies playground was the actual destination of the rider, but somehow that seems unlikely.
  There were times yesterday when the weather was as dull as the forecast predicted, but when I took this picture was not one of those times. I would say that more of yesterday was like this than what the forecast predicted.
  This picture contains a mystery too. It was 2 weekends ago that there was some sort of event in the park that would have had fairground stuff, but I am sure there was nothing like this to be seen when I walked through the park last week. I have seen nothing about any "event" happening in the park this coming weekend, and yet it seems that something may be happening. A similar thing happened 5 or 6 years ago when I noticed stuff being set up as my train home after work passed through the park. That turned out to be Jimmy Mizen day, and as well as some (not really to my liking) live music there was an excellent beer tent. Kevin and I had to sample all their beers, and got pretty drunk !

  Angela was looking nice and summery when she walked in the pub.She had a light yellow blouse, and the usual trousers she wears at work. It was the first time I've seen her without a coat in absolute ages. We had a very nice slightly extended drink together (two and a half pints of Guinness on this special day). Angela is off work for a fortnight from today, and is going camping for a week of that.

  I think she is going to Bridport in Wales, and that is probably where she went before lockdown. It was on that last holiday that a crash in a kayak left her almost drowning in a fast flowing river. I made her promise not to drown this time ! It was a happy 75 minutes we spent together. It also featured some revelations. One was not actually new, but it was nice to hear it was still the case - I make her laugh !

  The other revelation came as we were saying goodbye outside her office. She told me she had managed to find a bucket with a lid on so she could "go" inside the tent rather than having to walk across an unlit field to the toilet block. I gather it is fully equipped camping ground with toilets and showers - rather different to when I was a Boy Scout for a couple of years at the very beginning of the 1960s.  We had to dig a latrine, and washing was no more than a flannel and a bowl of cold water !

  Angela won't be back at work now until the 18th, but she will be back at home in the middle of next week. It seems unlikely I will see her next week, and may have a fortnight wait to see her next time, but anything is possible. It was extremely nice that her parting words as I left her to walk home were "I love you". It is slightly sad that there is no way to capitalise on that why she is "officially" with lover boy. She is very loyal to him, but I frequently get the impression there is more love between us than between them.

  I was faced with having nothing to do all afternoon when I got home, but I felt very relaxed about it. I saw it as a good opportunity to do things like lay on my bed reading and snoozing, and I did do that. I also felt very peckish. I had a sort of late lunch, and then a few other things during the afternoon. One thing was to invent different reasons to eat a large packet of crisps. Maybe the worst idea was to use them as scoops to eat at least 75% of a medium sized tub of coleslaw.

  I would have the rest of that coleslaw on what should have been a fairly healthy dinner. It was basically two very well cooked beef burgers on a deep bed of lettuce (it was actually a whole Romaine lettuce cut into large pieces). It may have been less healthy than it could have been because of my very liberal dosing with some blue cheese salad dressing. I have still not checked the ingredients, but I suspect it may have a high sugar content.

  I had a pretty relaxed evening. I saw a few things on TV, but read when there was nothing on that I enjoyed. The last thing I watched was QI on Dave. That finished at 10pm, and I was in bed soon after that. I read until my eyelids were drooping, and then turned the light out. I seem to recall it took some time to get to sleep. I didn't seem to wake up many times in the night, but every time I did I found it hard to get back to sleep. On the whole, O don't think I got a good night's sleep.

  I can't remember what part of the night it was because it seems like it lasted for most of the night, but I had a curious dream. Curious because I can't think of a single thing that might have triggered it. On the whole it was a bit like a 1950s movie about the Royal Navy. In another way it was like a modern DVD where it is possible to select different camera angles. I think I probably dreamed similar sequences from different angles. I also seemed to have dream examining what had taken place in the dreams.

  I can't remember fine details, but the basic "script" for this movie/dream was that the captain of a ship had his eye on one of his junior officers (I don't know enough about Navy ranks to assign ranks to these people). It transpired that this junior had good reports about him, and the captain was thinking of promoting him to a very senior rank, but first he had to be tested. One other curious things is that although I saw all this through the Captain's eye, I somehow didn't think I was the captain.

  The captain was "played" by a very British officer - all stiff upper lip, but actually kind and considerate. It is easier to describe the climax of the dream because it explains what happened earlier. The captain called the junior officer to his cabin, and described how he had been deliberately nasty to him, and had probably come close to getting a bloody nose, but it was all to do with wanting to know how he reacted under pressure. It seems the junior officer had gritted his teeth, and didn't react badly. The captain said this was exactly what he was hoping because everything else pointed to a possible promotion to one rank below captain, and eventually to captain, and it was all because he demonstrated he could act act correctly under pressure. I guess that was a happy ending. I just wonder what inspired what was actually a long and complicated dream.

  I initially felt pretty crappy when I finally decided it was time to get up. It was nothing specially bad, just loads of very minor thing all at the same time. Many have faded away since.  Only one thing in particular was not good, and that was my blood glucose. I had a good idea that the big bag of crisps would not be good for me, and as I mentioned above, I have suspicions about the blue cheese salad dressing. Anyway, this morning my blood glucose was 9.0mmol/l. That is not terribly high, but it feels it because it starts with a 9. I would have probably said that 8.9 was not too bad, but just flipping the units to a 9 makes it instantly bad....but not terrible.

  Today I definitely want to go out. I had hopes I might do my trips to Amersham, Uxbridge, Chesham and Watford - all limits of my Freedom Pass - today, but one thing has appeared that may alter my plans too far to do those far away places. There is a gig, if you can call a bit of busking a gig, at London Bridge station today between midday and 2pm.
  Apparently it is all part of some sort of "busking week" or something, but the significant thing is that The Cazbar Duo, as they called themselves back in 2019 at the Petts Wood Xmas Fayre (as seen above) will be playing a two hour acoustic set somewhere in London Bridge station today, and I would like to get a few snaps of them, plus, probably, many more pictures of trains !