The early forecast for today (as above) showed that the afternoon would feature lots of sunny spells. Rather sadly the latest revision only shows sunny spells for midday, 3pm and 4pm. The only recompense is that we now might have three hours at 11° C. Today should be dry, or mostly dry, but 11am is now shown as having dark cloud with a 10% chance of rain. It is possible that tomorrow may feature a lot of sunny spells, and an afternoon temperature of 10° C.
 
   There were a lot of positives yesterday, but almost inevitably there were some negatives. Some were as simple as nice sunny weather spoiled by a chilly breeze. The undeniably good were some important achievements. One thing I didn't achieve was to finish washing a small bath towel. This morning it is sitting in freezing cold detergent, and should be one of the first things I tackle this morning.


  The greatest achievement yesterday was to do my first exercise this year ! I didn't fancy tackling a long walk, but I did extend a simple walk to Ladywell and back by heading home via the small unnamed park at the end of Slagrove Road. I claim it was a 1.7 mile walk, but I can't prove it because my phone, with the "Simply Walking" tracking app kept stopping the app.  The problem is, or hopefully was, the phone being too clever while being too stupid.

  After the second time I took the phone out my pocket, and found the app had stopped I delved into the settings to turn off all the so called clever bits. The phone could be taken out of the lock screen by tapping on the screen in some ways, and even by shaking it. I turned all that off, and hopefully it will stay locked when in my pocket. There have been times when I have taken it out of my pocket and found some unwanted app open on it.  Yesterday was a big wake up call to get those annoying settings changed.

  Unfortunately I only managed to record three bits of my walk, and those with gaps between them. My only recourse was to use my photo editor to stitch the three bits together, and then draw in the missing track. I obviously had to guess the length of the missing pieces, but I think my estimate of 1.7 miles is very close to the real distance.

  They say that the moon is usually visible in the day sky if you know where to look for it, but yesterday, while looking very pale, it was quite obvious as I started my walk.
  I didn't have to go more than 100ft into the park before I saw my first parakeet in a god enough pose to snap with my Canon 600D camera with 300mm telephoto lens attached.
  The view to the north was not as clear as to the south. The intensity of the sunshine on my back is easy to see from the depth of my shadow. Unfortunately the wind seemed to blow away any warmth the sun might deliver - except to my arms. They were feeling hot and sweaty when I got home again.
  One thing I was very happy to see was that as had been promised as early as late last summer, the work has finally been done to clear the inlet and outlet of the man made stream that is fed by the river, and does a loop across whet was once the northern playing fields. By the outlet there were a whole bunch of people standing on the bridge by it, and some were dressed for working on the river. I suspect that yesterday saw the end of the work.
  I did my best to do some bird spotting, but I am just too slow to snap and small birds, but the bigger ones tend to be more relaxed. This is a moorhen in the river. There were quite a few some way from the river as the forage for food. I think the moorhens almost matched the amount of ducks.
  This red seat looks like a miniature made from lolly sticks, but it is full sized. It looks across Slagrove Road to the small unnamed park there.
  The ring necked parakeets nest in holes in trees. I would suggest that inside that hole there are chicks, and I would further suggest they have crapped all over the tail feathers of this bird !
  It was purely by chance that I looked up and saw this robin perched on the twig in the shade of a big shrub. The original picture looked a bit flat, and quite dark. I had to do some photo editing to get it looking reasonably OK. It was the only small bird I managed to snap, and it was just within a few hundred yards of home.

  One of the significant things about this walk is that I did it with no painkillers at all. It was an experiment to see if I was starting to suffer from angina again, or just the cold doing bad things to me. I had only walked about a third of the entire walk when I felt some chest pain, but it was not over the heart, but to the left - roughly under my left breast. That convinced me it was just the scar tissue, from my bypass operation, that was what was complaining. It would come and go through the walk.

  At times, that ache was joined by a an ache that was partly in my neck, but mostly in my right shoulder. The two pains were a bit like Angina, but prior to my heart bypass they would sort of join up, and spread further. This time they didn't, although when I was getting close to home the pain under my left breast did spread further across my chest. I suspect that if I had eaten a more substantial breakfast, and taken Ibuprofen, the chest pains could have been joined by heartburn, and the combined pains would be very similar, but not exactly the same, as a heart attack.

  I think that if it had been warm enough to not need a thick coat, I would possibly have extended the walk even further. My legs and feet seemed not to suffer at all during the walk, However it felt good to get home, and to get my coat off. While I had felt generally cold, my arms had been lightly sweating. When I took my coat off I left the sleeves inside out so they could dry. When I put the coat on the inside of the sleeves felt cold, damp, and nasty from the last time I was out (going to the gig on Sunday afternoon).

  I had to use a lot of will power, drawn from somewhere unknown, to resist having any lunch. Instead I got straight on selecting the more interesting photos, and doing any needed editing (mostly just straightening up, cropping, and scaling them to a usable size). There were actually more reasonable photos than I have used in the diary. I also had to take a bit of time out to do some washing up, and then start to prepare, and half cook my dinner.

  I would have like to completely relax, and probably have a snooze, but I was awaiting on Amazon to deliver a very small packet. It was 4 rubber eyepieces for Nikon camera viewfinders. As usual the Amazon tracking started by saying "by 9pm", but after a time it started giving more useful information. I think the last was "between 4.15pm and 8.15pm". It was actually delivered at about 6pm.

  With my packet delivered I added the vegetables, just white cabbage and a couple of shallots, to my dinner, and then gave it all another microwave zapping to finish cooking it. I ate it while watching an episode of Star Trek: The New Generation. It was an episode that easily demonstrated that Patrick Stewart (playing Captain Picard) was a far, far better actor than William Shatner (Captain Kirk in the original series). That made it one of the more enjoyable episodes. I could have watched Star Trek: Voyager by switching channels afterwards, but Voyager was not my favourite series and I watched an old episode of The Simpsons on Channel 4+1 instead.

  After a small break I watched an episode of QI, but when that finished at 9pm I went to bed. I read for a while, and it is possible I was asleep by 10pm. I think it was around 3am that I had a short period of insomnia where I could not work out if I was hot or cold. It was a bit earlier than recently, but I turned the heater up full, and in the end it was warm enough to partly kick aside the duvet.

  I know I had some dreams last night, and there was one in particular I thought definitely worth recounting and commenting on, but is seems to have complete faded from my memory now. Getting to sleep earlier meant that I could get up earlier this morning, although I will admit I did my best to stay in bed, ideally sleeping, but eventually it became obvious that I would just have to get up. The process was speed up by first a few small cramps in my legs started, and then it started building up to a really painful cramp in one leg. I got out of bed very quickly once I felt that start.

  Only eating a small bowl of instant noodles, skipping lunch, and then a dinner that was at least 50% white cabbage, had a rather good effect on my blood glucose this morning. I expect the exercise helped too. This morning I saw a figure I haven't seen in ages . It was just 6.5mmol/l. I was very tempted to finally eat the chunk of Madeira cake I have in the cupboard (assuming it is still edible possible a year after it's best before date), but while it was very tempting, I thought I would see if I could start February with a nice low blood glucose reading tomorrow morning.

  My actions today are constrained by the expectation of two package deliveries today - one big, and the other very small. The big one will be my latest, rather extravagant, beer order. I have already been notified to expect it between 14:46 and 15:46. That rules out any frollicking in any sunshine we might possibly see this afternoon. The small packet is being delivered by Amazon, and like yesterday, it will probably arrive very late in the afternoon, or more likely some time in the evening.

  With all that in mind, I think my plans are to finish washing the small bath towel I left in soak yesterday, and then possibly have a quick shower, although as I am not going anywhere I might just have a flick around with a wet flannel. Mostly I will relax, and try not to think about food except for when I start to cook tonight's dinner. I think it will be lamb and cabbage, and possible some cauliflower.