The BBC were at it again - predicting a thunderstorm this morning - but have now backtracked to just some light rain between 10am and 1pm. The Met Office, whose early morning forecast can be seen in the screenshot above, now says just light rain between midday and 2pm. They still say it is going to be very dull until about mid afternoon. Both forecasters say it will be a cool day with a maximum temperature of 18° C (Met Office), or 17° C (BBC). This is a lot like the forecast for yesterday, and that turned out to be almost 100% wrong. Fingers crossed today's forecast is just useless pessimism. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be brighter, with some sunny spells, but also a few scattered light showers. It could be a little warmer at 19 or 20° C.

  Yesterday was a good, but very tiring day. It initially seemed like it could be a real drudge of a day, but that was based on the weather forecast promising a dull and wet day. As I explained at the top of the page, by midday day it was rapidly turning in a sunny summer's day.
  I took this picture from the back bedroom window at 10:44am. It was nice and sunny while the weather forecast still said black clouds. The clouds were actually breaking up, and looking fluffier with blue patches among them. I never realised it would gat far, far better than this in the next hour or so, and at times the sky was almost clear blue from horizon to horizon. The other thing I didn't believe was that the grass in the park could be dry and firm after the deluge it got the previous day.

  Soon after taking the picture of the sky I left home to walk into the park to see what the "Fun, Food 'N' Folk" event in the park was going to be all about. As I probably said yesterday, the main attractions were the birds of prey display, the live stage, and .....  errr, probably not much more ! The live stage looked a bit crappy, and I feel fairly sure there was not a thing I would be interested in on it, although I only sampled its dubious delights a few times during the day.
  As hoped, the birds of prey display was good. One huge annoyance is that the picture above, of one of three owls they had, came out so well just using my mobile phone camera. I think it might be better than the pictures I took using my Canon 600D DSLR camera. On the other hand there were other pictures, particularly those using a lot of zoom, that could only be taken on the Canon. I've only briefly glanced through those photos, and I know there were quite a few duds in among them.

  After wandering around, seeing what there was to see (nothing else of any great interest) I found myself outside The Jolly Farmers pub at 5 minutes to opening time (midday). I was first through the door, and Ayse, my favourite barmaid was surprised to see me - although I am sure I told her I probably would see her when I was in there on Wednesday, and after she confirmed she was working on Sunday.

  I was followed in less than a minute later by another drinker, and for the duration of drinking my pint of Guinness we were the only two in the pub. Three woman came in just as I was leaving. I suspect the pub would be a fair bit busy in the next hour. Meanwhile, I took a stroll in the park again, and too a few more photos before walking home. My legs felt terribly tired and mildly aching once I picked my pace up.

  I even had to stop for a few seconds a couple of times because I felt knackered. I was very glad to get home, and have a sit down. I had a light lunch of a couple of Scotch Eggs like I had the day before. Then it was a matter of waiting until I could work out a plan with Jodie. She was coming over for a Sunday beer tasting session, but I suggested we meet at Ladywell so she could see the birds of prey, and have a look around as we walked back home.

  It was evident that a couple of Scotch Eggs were the almost complete cure for my fatigue and bits of my legs aching. I reached Ladywell station far faster than I estimated, and decided to wait on the platform at Ladywell station. I was on the wrong platform for Jodie's London bound train, and suggested she walk over the footbridge to where I was waiting. She replied (by text) that she didn't like the footbridge (for no special reason), and would head towards teh cafe in the park where we had originally agreed to meet.

  I had enough time to take a snap of the front and back of her train before I rushed towards the park. As far as I cans see Jodie didn't even go up the steps to the top of the road bridge, but followed the little approach road to the main road, and then up and over the road bridge across the railway. When I first spotted her she was about at the top of the road bridge. Now the peculiar thing, or the next peculiar thing I suppose, is that I did a very fast walk up the slope from the platform to the entrance of the park, and like the walk there had been faster then expected, I definitely somehow had my second breath and went up that slope at full speed, and felt pretty good at the top.

  Jodie was not impressed with the stalls in the park. She thought I had suggested there could be suitable food for her, although what I thought I had said was that while there were many stall selling food, I didn't think she would like any of them. The live stage just had someone singing calypso songs to the West Indian stall holders, and very few West Indian people in the crowd. I think the organisers had judged the demographic of the visitors very wrong.

  The only highlight for Jodie (and me) was the birds birds of prey display. She got her phone out and took several pictures of each of them. She later said that she might have even put on the leather glove and allowed a bird to perch on her hand. What put her off, and it was a very valid point, was that the one glove had experienced the nasty sticky fingers of loads of kids. Yuck !

 I am not sure what prompted it, apart from the possibility of getting some lunch, but Jodie suggested we next visit The Catford Constitutional Club (the new one in the old Argos shop), and investigate their roof garden. I don't think Jodie realised how far it was to walk there. We could have got a bus two stops from outside Lewisham Hospital, but she said we may as well just walk it. I knew it would be a much longer walk than Jodie thought it to be.

  Jodie is not a fast walker, and often stops to fiddle with her phone. That meant I felt reasonably OK for the entire walk, but I definitely didn't fancy walking up the three flights of stairs to the roof garden before I had a sit down. Jodie agreed, and we had one drink at the street level bar. Then we tackled those long flights of stairs. The last flight was only 5 or 6 steps, and before I realised that I thought I had reached my limit. I felt knackered in the extreme, but after waiting a few seconds for Jodie to catch up, I was up those steps, through the roof bar, and into the roof top garden.

  It was interesting being on top of a building you never dreamed you would ever see the top of, and in a couple of directions there were interesting views, although only one direction could be loosely described as scenic. One thing that spoiled it a lot for me was having to get my Guinness in a plastic glass. It was not a thin thing, but had an almost glass feel to it. Unfortunately it seemed like it was contaminated by something - possibly something from a diswasher. It tainted the Guinness and I couldn't force myself to drink more than half a pint. I "watered" a flower tub with the rest.

  With our second beers finished we walked home, and started on a couple of beers. One was described as an IPA, but seemed almost like a lager - a reasonable tasting one. The second was also a pale coloured beer, but I didn't like it. While drinking, Jodie had some lunch of a pot noodle, some salad leaves and some cheese. I washed down the nasty beer with some Stella Artois - some of which I shared with Jodie. After just two and a bit beers it was time for Jodie to leave and get the train to meet Alan, her boyfriend.

  I felt more than ready to have my dinner. It was a cold chicken shish kebab, a spare from my takeaway the previous night. For some reason I also had a bowl of Kimchi flavour instant noodles. A flick around the TV channels only showed one thing (sort of) worth watching. It was a James Bond movie, and I was starting to feel so tired that I can't even remember the name of it, but I do remember the villain was Zorin and his plan to flood silicon valley.

  After I had eaten I should have started going through the pictures I too on my big camera. I did get as far as copying them from the camera to my PC, and I did have a very brief flick through some of them, but I felt too tired to do anything with them. Once the film finished I brushed my teeth and went to bed. That was about 8.30pm (I think). It took longer to get to sleep than I expected, but I was still probably asleep around 9pm.

  I don't think I slept well last night. It was too hot or too cold, and I seemed to need to pee a lot. The latter seemed a bit odd, and strongly suggested my blood glucose might be a bit high. That seemed unlikely because I had done loads of exercise, and apart from having the bowl or instant noodles as part of my dinner, I thought I had probably eaten less than the previous day.

  Yesterday morning my blood glucose reading was very nice and low. Against all logic, it turned out that this morning my blood glucose was annoyingly, although fortunately not dangerously, high. The new meter said 9.5mmol/l, and the old meter said 9.2mmol/l. Despite these fairly high readings I still had a bowl of instant noodles for breakfast. It was just a small packet of (Polish) beetroot flavoured noodles, and it did a fine job of quenching the after taste of the cod liver oil capsules I had taken.

  There are two things I will do today (I hope) and one thing I won't do. I think it unwise to go shopping in Aldi because i probably don't need any food temptations while my blood glucose (and incidentally my weight too) is high. I already have stuff to make it worse, and that I will probably have to eat today. One thing I will definitely do is go through yesterday's pictures to slect the best and process them in my picture editor. The other thing I will probably do is to do a bit of laundry. Unless the weather changes like it did yesterday, it is not forecast to be a day when I can dry anything outside, and I'll have to dry a few things on the clothes horse.