It seems only the morning and early afternoon will be very wet today. From mid afternoon, maybe just a few hours before sunset, it may still be very dull, but dry. It is possible the temperature may briefly touch 13° C today. Both the weather forecasters I watch have a different idea about tomorrow's weather. The BBC say sunny spells in the morning and late afternoon, with white clouds between those time. The Met Office say there will be sunny spells in the middle of the day, but white clouds before and after.  Both forecasters agree that the highest temperature tomorrow could be just 11° C, and that for as little as a single hour, or for maybe three hours. I expect tomorrow will bring a very different forecast.

   Yesterday saw a departure from most days recently, and by recently I may mean since last July ! I did say I was going to try and go out while writing yesterday morning. It wasn't long after that I made up my mind to do so, and I was out unusually early for a medium length walk.
  My initial idea was to get a train to Clockhouse station, and then walk home. I decided I ought to also record the walk to the station. That was the 0.313 miles shown on the left of the two maps above. Unfortunately it seemed to be a struggle just to walk to the station. Now that was odd because it is little different to walking to Tesco, and that is usually easy. Maybe the difference is that for no particular reason I was rushing to get to the station, although my recorded speed of just 2.334 mph suggests I was taking it easy.

  Based on how I felt after just walking to the station, I decided I couldn't face a long walk, and almost talked myself into just doing some train spotting instead. Of course, because I was at a railway station I did that automatically anyway. Once sitting on the train, and having some time to think, I decided to go as far as New Beckenham station, take a few pictures, and then get the train back to Lower Sydenham, take a few more railway pictures, and then walk home.
  It was on New Beckenham station that I had my own version of "Brief Encounter" ! The young lady was curious about what I was taking pictures of. I said trains, and she replied to ask if I took pictures of steam trains. I said yes, but they are rare around these parts. She suggested I should take my camera up north where more steam trains ran. The only trouble with this brief encounter was that she seemed to be very drunk - at 11:08am ! After taking this very poor quality snap our train was approaching, and she wandered off to get on the back of the train (possibly for Catford Bridge).
  This unit, 465932, was on the front of the train we got. (You can see her in the background carrying the red bag). The main significance of this train is that 465932 was a new addition to my spreadsheet of train umbers and pictures. According to my spreadsheet I only have 6 missing train numbers, plus some unknowns, from the class 465 series. The unknowns are the 4652xx train units. Some were converted to 4659xx after being retrofitted with a first class area, and others might be in store, but it is hard to find out their exact state.
  For such a short trip on the railway it was pretty good that I managed a snap of yet another train for my spreadsheet. This time the sun was on the front of the train, and that made for a far better picture. This was at Lower Sydenham, the actual start of the long part of my walk. You can just see the train I had used from New Beckenham station departing towards Catford Bridge in the distance.
  This mural of a fox can be seen at the far end of the short road that is used as a car park outside Lower Sydenham station. I am sure I have seen the mural before, but now it looks more complete, more vibrant, or something. Maybe the older one had been defaced with graphiti, and the artist had painted it out, and improved on the original.
  Just to the right of the fox mural is a path that leads down to what could be considered the main road. I think it started out as path, possibly unpaved, through a strip of unused land about 15 to 20ft wide between the railway and the back of some hourses and playing fields. The original path, after being paved, became a mixed human and cycle path. Then, sometime before lockdown, a new path was constructed through the middle of the trees. The latest works have cleaned it up a bit, some new trees planted, and finally giving it all a name - Lower Sydenham Pocket Park.
  One trouble with my walk, most of which was through the River Pool Linear Park, is that the trees are the wrong type to give colourful autumn displays. The biggest show of red leaves were these trees behind the waste bins, next to The Railway Tavern pub at Lower Sydenham.
  On the riverbank, in the Linear park, I came across this lady feeding the ducks with grains and other suitable duck feed (i.e. not bread which is not good for them). She had a friend of a much older looking lady up on the path, and she told me they are there almost every day, and the duck now flock to her. Some are so tame that she hand feeds them, and they allow her to stroke them.
  It may not have been a long walk, but I was feeling quite weary by the time I emerged back in Catford. As can be seen, there were a lot of dark looking clouds blocking the sun, and seeming to cover a lot of the sky. They appeared in quite a short time, and fortunately went away in a similar short time, but for a while I did wonder if I was going to get wet.

  Despite the fatigue, and some interesting new pains, i detoured from the most direct route home to get some shopping in the mini supermarket on Catford Bridge. I had some particular things I wanted from there, although I didn't need those things yesterday. They were all vegetables - white and red cabbage, plus white and red onions. I also bought a loaf of zero sugar Polish bread, and just three packets of instant noodles.

  The best thing was that I noticed they had several types of zero sugar biscuits, and had one type I had never seen before - oaty biscuits. I also got some sugar free "breakfast bars" and some sugar free oreo style cookies. I am not totally convinced the latter are as sugar free as the label says, but I think they are OK provided I eat them sparingly.  I ended up carrying quite a heavy shopping bag home.

  It was a relief to get home. I am sure a 2.36 mile walk should not have been as painful as yesterdays, but on the other hand I was well out of practice, and it was the longest walk I had done since last July, and that was only just 3.1 miles. The "novelty pain" was a sort of combination of lower back and hip pain. Maybe i have now worn out one of my hip joints, and what seemed to be lower back pain was just pain seeping out from the hip.

  I had a sort of cross between a snack and lunch, and spent some time selecting and editing the photos I would be using from those I took while on my walk, and then I was most happy to lay down on my bed. I was going to read, but decided to shut my eyes instead. It wasn't long before I was snoozing. I couldn't snooze for too long because I had some important stuff to do.

  After my morning shower I left some laundry soaking in one of my big builders buckets. It was just a single t-shirt, two pairs of underpants, plus a pair of shorts. It was the latter that needed a bit of muscle power to wring out after the detergent, and between the three rinses, and finally after the fabric conditioner. The latter wringing out had to be very thorough in the hope nothing would drip when hung up to dry.

  I expected all the bending over the bath, all the wringing out, and all the other physical effort of doing that laundry, would not be kind to my existing aches and pains, but if anything it was beneficial. I did seem to feel less sore afterwards. After hanging the stuff up to dry on the clothes horse, it was almost time to turn my attention to dinner. It was to be another home made shish kebab.

  I already had the cabbage and onion salad prepared for it, but I diced up a couple of long thin green chillies (another purchase on my way home), and added those to the salad. the meat was to be lamb, and this time I was determined not to over cook it like I did to the beef the day before. I think I possibly cooked it to perfection. It was not dry, although it was still rather chewy. I think kebab shops probably use a different cut for their shish kebabs. The answer may be to buy the diced lamb from the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. The man who does the meat is almost certainly a Turk, and so should know what he is doing. It might came at a bad price though..or maybe not. I'll investigate.

  I was in bed early again last night, and I might have been asleep before 9pm. I had a both good and bad sleep. The bad was mostly on account of my dreams. They seemed very repetitive, with little change between repetitions.  They were symbolic of what I may be doing lunchtime, although hopefully the real thing will be more productive. In the dreams I was trying to copy stuff from one place to another on a PC. The only trouble is that I only seemed to be able to copy the icon and not the data. For some reason I was trying bigger fuses in the power supply to try and make it work. Of course it didn't.

  Some of my sleep was poor because of aches and pains, and some because of the temperature. I think it was early, or about 1am when I turned the heater on low. That helped a bit after an hour or two had passed. Nothing helped the aches from my legs except when at 3 or 4am I turned the heater on full. I was finally able to relax more, but even then I was awake just before 6am, and it seemed like time to get up.

  Yesterday I said I was constipated, and hadn't had a poo up to the time I had finished writing. Just after that I did go, but it seemed a very small amount. I have a feeling today could be very similar, although once I do start there could be no stopping ! The first good news was when I checked my blood glucose level. I had some doubts about what it would be. My combined snack and lunch yesterday seemed to be quite big, and I had 5 or 6 (alleged, and possibly so) zero sugar oat biscuits.

  As often seems the case, I got a bit of a spread of readings from my three meters, but the great thing is that they were all under 8.0mmol/l, and so all rather excellent. The worst was the Contour, or oldest meter. It read 7.8mmol/l. The newst, Sino care, meter was the next highest at 7.3mmol/l. Finally the Nexus, or older, meter gave a rather magnificent reading of just 7.1mmol/l. Tonight I might treat myself on the strength of these readings, but most on the fact that I don't have any meat to make a home made shish kebab tonight - unless I use sausages ! I may well order a shish kebab or two tonight.

  The main thing, perhaps the only thing on the menu today is lunchtime in The Jolly Farmers. It is possible it might be more than just the usual 60 to 90 minutes. If the rain stops I could be joined by Kevin. He will finally be bringing a hard disk, removed from a set top TV box, to see if I can read it on my Linux laptop. I can imagine it will be at least a three pints of Guinness job, and probably a few double Jameson whiskies before we leave today. It could be fun !