The latest revision to the weather forecast has dropped the sunny spells for 9am, although the sun is definitely trying the break through the clouds as I write this. It is currently bright enough to cast  faint shadows. As some sort of compensation for so few sunny spells, 1pm is now shown as full sunshine, but that is followed by a dull hour with a few random sunny spells during the afternoon/early evening. Once again it seems the best we can expect today is 18° C. Tomorrow is interesting ! Both forecasters predict 22° C, but while the BBC say there could be sunshine all day long, The Met Office say it was be dull all day long !

  Yesterday was one of those days that was both very good, and also rather bad. The bad was mostly a reflection of my current health, and the good was that I had a great time in the pub at lunchtime. It was so good that it deserved three pints of Guinness, and a double Jamesons.


  These two images have been combined with the first at the bottom - the first being my walk to the pub at 12:06. It is the slightly longer walk because I diverted to go into Lewisham hospital to see if I could find a copy of The Metro newspaper, which I did, and then to see if there was any activity in the vaccination centre. The latter was closed, but I did take a quick snap of the opening hours. What I didn't find was if they were doing any walk in service for the Covid jabs, or if it is all by appointment. The latter would be OK, but walk in would sort of suit me better.



   I managed to keep up an average of 2.648mph walking to the pub, and that seemed hard work. I had probably started out closer to 3mph, but I slowed down in the hospital. In fact I probably slowed down before I got to the hospital. I was not exactly out of breath, but it felt like I couldn't push myself to walk any faster. As it has been back to my heart bypass operation in 2013, it feels like my chest is not strong enough to draw in all the air I need, and that holds me back without actually getting breathless. Just stopping for 15 seconds seems to be enough to reset any slight lack of breath.

  It was fairly quiet in the pub in terms of customers, but that usually makes for a more interesting session with comments being made from one end of the pub to the other. Ayse, my favourite barmaid was on really good form. Some of the conversation turned to social media (she was trying to find the date of someone's birthday), and I mentioned that ages ago I had searched for Ayse in a famous social media website, and it produced thousands of possibilities. It might have been ten or fifteen minutes later that Ayse came over to my table to give me a slip of paper with her full name on it so I could find her more easily. I did.

  I was feeling good and happy as I walked home, but with three pints of Guinness, plus the double whiskey sloshing around inside me, it seemed even harder to walk home. As I crossed the bridge over the river I deliberately stopped to watch the river for a minute or two to recover from pushing myself fairly hard at that point. My average speed was only slightly less than the walk to the pub, but being more direct to home it was a slightly shorter walk. Both walks add up to 1.7 miles, and while that is a poor amount compared to what I should be capable of, it probably isn't so bad.

  Once I got home I made myself some late lunch (it was gone 3pm). I did get a bit carried away making sandwiches of salami and sliced tomato in Polish Sourdough bread. As I had said many times before, those bread slices are only half to 2/3rd the size of typical supermarket bread, but even so, three sandwiches, the last not having tomato in, was a fair sized lunch !

  The lunch made me feel a bit bloated, and it was nice to lay down and read before having a snooze. I was snoozing with no shirt on, and with no significant sunshine warming my bedroom, I woke up feeling very cold. It amplified all the upper body aches and pains I get. In particular my right elbow was very painful until I had moved enough to warm up a bit. It made me look forward to dinner, but that was still a few hours away, and although it was a hot meal, it was not a warming meal.

  I had my dinner while watching my usual broadcasts of Star Treks. It was nothing but well grilled pork belly strips with mustard, and a squirt of alleged low sugar tomato sauce on a couple of them. It was both nice and not nice. It would have been better with some vegetables, and more enjoyable if I was not still feeling a little bloated by those sandwiches. I would later realise that the bloated feeling was almost all just gas. During the first half of the night I was farting at Olympic levels !

  As seems normal now, I was in bed, and probably asleep not too long after 9pm. I can't make up my mind if I slept well or not. I don't recall any long periods of insomnia. I do remember feeling too hot and kicking the duvet partly aside, and then waking up an hour or two later feeling almost cold enough to be shivery. One very irritating things is that I do remember some very dynamic dreams, but as I write this I can't seem to remember anything about them.

  Maybe I have been distracted from remembering my dreams by thinking about why my blood glucose measurements were so high this morning. I feel sure I have eaten similar amounts of similar stuff in the past, and still had low readings. The high readings this morning were perhaps because I am fighting some sort of unrealised disease, or if I am just still broken hearted after Angela's wedding.

  This morning the highest reading I got was very close to the red line. It was 9.7mmol/l from my old (Nexus GlucoRX) meter. The next highest was 9.4mmol/l on my old (Bayer Contour) meter. The outlier was my new (Sino Care) meter, and that said 8.9mmol/l. That reading, if it wasn't obviously wrong, would be acceptable. Although 10.0mmol/l is the red line, and into the danger zone, too many readings above 9.0mmol/l can trigger some bad things sometimes. The big annoyance is that it doesn't feel like I can do much about these high readings but hope if it is some reason beyond my choices of food, it goes away by itself.

  Today could be a good day with the chance for it all to go wrong in the evening. I can be very lazy today apart from some time in the early afternoon when I'll need to be washed and dressed for when Michael drops off some bottles of diet Coke for me. Then at 4pm I expect to be meeting Michael and Kevin in The Catford Bridge Tavern. Kevin and myself want to test out the three beers from their recently re-installed hand pumps. The previous management got rid of the hand pumps because.....probably they were charging to much for mediocre beers that no one would pay for. Now the pub is actually owned/run by a brewery, The Portobello Brewery, they almost have to stock there cask beers, Some reports I have seen say they make very good cask beers !

  There is always the chance that Kevin and I will stay in the pub a bit longer than the "about two hours" that is maybe planned. Michael may go home as we stay for another one or two more beers, and then the shorts and ones for the road.... It could well be the sort of time when I make bad mistakes about eating. I expect I may splash out on another shish kebab takeaway. That is usually very good for my health, but it is added stress on my wallet !