Today could be almost a repeat of yesterday, but reaching 22° C in the afternoon. This morning started at a mild 10° C according to my thermometers, but that is still pretty good. Unlike yesterday the morning has started off sunny, and full sunshine could continue until 1pm, and then we will only get sunny spells until full sunshine returns at 6pm through to sunset. It's hard to believe it, but tomorrow could feature full sunshine from sunrise to sunset, but the afternoon peak may still only be the same 22° C.

  I seemed to feel quite good yesterday, and that was a nice change. There was some mild negativity in the early evening, and some worse negativity at bedtime, but while the sun was shining it was really good. It was a shame that there was little sunshine in the afternoon.

  I didn't sound too positive about it at the end of my writing yesterday, but after I finished writing, and had a rest, the day warmed up nicely, and I became quite keen to go out and frolic in the sunshine. As I noted yesterday, I would be wearing the trainers I bought from Tesco a few weeks ago, but greatly improved by putting new laces in them. The old laces were waxy and sticky, and didn't allow any movement. The new laces did.

  Wearing essentially untested trainers was not the best time to do a timed test, but it was OK. One thing I wanted to do was to re-test and idea I had come across years ago (probably in New Scientist magazine). It was a very simple medical test, and is fully explained above. Basically, to pass the test I had to walk more than 365 metres in 6 minutes. The last time I did it was in 2020 (I think) and I managed something like 465 metres.

  Yesterday I only managed 414 metres. That was a bit of a drop, but less than feared, and it was still comfortably more than 365 metres. It did feel good to know I could still do it, although I have to admit I had walked almost right up to my limit for non stop walking, and I needed almost a full minute of rest - some of that time was to take a screenshot of the tracker on my mobile phone.

  After that short rest I carried on walking. I may have been happy to stop, but it was so nice out in the park, with warm sunshine on my back, that I decided to do the full walk all the way to Ladywell, and then walk back home on the other side of the park. As usual, I was starting to feel the first hints of angina coming on at Ladywell. Unlike last time I didn't stay on the level to rest on the platform at Ladywell station, but went up the slope to the road entrance, and rested there.
  I did not take many pictures yesterday, and on the outward part of the walk to Ladywell I only stopped to take one picture (although I did stop a couple more times for 15 or 20 seconds to check my phone). The picture above doesn't show the detail that would be ideal, but at the base of the thing that looks like a bush, is an old tree stump, maybe less than 6 inches high, and that is not a bush but new growth on the stump. It can be very hard to kill some trees. In maybe 20 years time will probably almost look like a regular tree.
  As part of my short rest at Ladywell, I did a sort of "selfie". It was proof I was out in shorts - a pair that I could not get into the last time I tried to use them (possibly last summer), and yesterday needed a belt to keep them up. The picture also shows the new trainers (but not the very newest) with their new laces that converted them from painful to just a little uncomfortable - and little enough to be frequently ignorable.

  There were a few places I stopped for half a minute or more. One was a slightly longer rest near weir at the back of Lewisham Hospital. There was a grey wagtail flitting around there, and I tried hard to get a picture of it. I don't think the Nikon Coolpix P500 was the best camera for it. It was too bright for the viewfinder on the back, and what looks like a through the lens viewfinder, but isn't, is too small to try and find things like a small bird quickly enough for a clear snap.

  The walk I did was extremely close to 1.3 miles. There are various little detours than might have lengthened it, such as going onto the platform at Ladywell station, but most options would only have added a tenth of a mile. Apart for the first 6 minutes of walking which I was doing against the clock for my walking test, I didn't try to go quickly, and yet somehow I managed to average just over 2 mph. That is a bit faster than last time.

  Maybe the new trainers enabled me to walk faster, or more likely it is all the small walks I have done lately are strengthening my leg muscles after allowing them to get very slack from lack of exercise for the last year. It is all rather pleasing, but the last bit of the walk was actually rather arduous. Maybe it was the last two tenths of a mile saw my legs start to ache, and even worse was the pain in my feet and ankles.

  I seemed to be doing so well until I hit a sort of barrier, and the discomfort and pain started to rise very fast. I almost limped through my front door, but I recovered quite quickly once indoors. The first thing I did was to make some lunch. I doubt it actually made any difference, but I thought I needed a more substantial lunch rather then deserved or even needed it. The need was as a buffer to another onslaught of beer in a Sunday afternoon beer tasting session. My lunch was twl ham, tomato, salad and mustard filled Ciabatta roll.

  Before I started eating (or drinking), but after I had stripped down to my underpants as part of changing into indoor clothes, I hopped on the scales. I had started the morning off at a fairly low weight. After the walk, which involved some light sweating (but not nearly enough to drip) the scales gave a marvellously low reading - equal to just one exceptionally low reading since the start of the year.

  Apart from a very quick today up, I had nothing special to do before Jodie arrived for the beer tasting session. I wanted to take a nap, but I spent some of the time copying all the days pictures to my PC, and selecting and editing those that I have used here. It was possibly past 2pm by then, and I thought that Jodie might be a bit early because she would have got to Catford a bit earlier than usual to have a mooch around the "last Sunday of the month" Catford Food Market.

  I don't know if she did go to the food market, but the new Aldi booklet thing the gave to me, with this weeks special offers suggests she did go food shopping in Aldi instead. The beer session was a typical Sunday session. We had good and bad beers, and Jodie lost interest in the wider world, including me, after an hour, and retreated to her phone. Ah well, at least I got an hour of conversation in.

  I did try a little bit not to get too drunk yesterday. When Jodie almost stopped drinking, and I got thirsty, I had two cans of just soft drinks. Some of the beers were quite strong, and so I did get a fair bit drunk. One of the beers, and it could have been one which was a strange bastard of a beer brewed with both malt and grape juice, was probably poisonous, and gave me quite a hangover by midnight !

  Another bad thing was that some of the beers were obviously quite sweet, and probably had a big effect on my blood glucose level this morning. Just to make things worse, there was another semi cock-up with Jodie meeting Alan. He would be late, and so Jodie had to stay about half an hour later than usual. Of course that meant I had another beer while waiting.

  Eventually Jodie left to get the train, and I could tuck into my dinner which I ate while watching some of a Robert Plant concert on Sky Arts. It was fairly good....in parts. My dinner was 4 chicken kiev variants. They were filled with cheese as well as herbs (but possibly no garlic). The chicken was obviously "mechanically recovered" chicken, and a sort of soft and squidgy case to to the filling. They were also fairly small, and so eating 4 of them was easy - particularly when having nothing to accompany them.

  I can't say those kievs were very nice. If anything that were quite bland rather than anything negative. However, they filled a hole, and I didn't seem to want to eat any more, and with hindsight that was probably a good thing. After eating I continued to watch some assorted stuff on TV, but at 9pm (or was it 9:30pm ?) I switched off and read in bed for a while - enough to reach the end of a chapter.

  I seemed to feel OK while reading, but when I turned the light out, and tried to go to sleep, I seemed to feel uncomfortable. I can't really say what the discomfort was apart from a bot of this and a bit of that. It was enough tol keep me awake - at least I think it did. Last night was a night when there were several times when I didn't think I was asleep, but only realised I had been asleep when I woke up.

  At about 11pm I thought I was heading to an acid indigestion situation. I did seem to start burping, and there were were hints of acid in it. I quietened that wit a couple of antacid tablet, and then tried for sleep again. I soon became aware of a typical hangover headache. I got up again, and took a couple of Paracetamol tablets. After about half an hour they seemed t to start to work. The headache started to fade away, and a few other mild aches that were part of the general discomfort, also faded.

  I seemed to be falling asleep at my computer, and went back to bed. I expected to go out like a light, but I lay there still seemingly unable to sleep. I can never be sure about it, but with hindsight it seem that at some time I was asleep and dreaming I was still awake.  I feel sure that happened again later in the night. I am fairly sure I had other dreams, but it feels like they were so bland there is nothing to remember.

  Until about 3am I did not seem to pee much. That seemed ominous, but mainly because I was relying on peeing enough to make me seem lighter when I got on the scales. Fortunately I did do a very big pee sometime shortly before day break, and after getting up I had a very big poo as well as a reasonable amount of pee. Sadly my weight had still risen by 600gm compared to yesterday morning - and a much more compared to my semi dehydrated state after my walk.

  Regardless of the amount I peed during the night, I was fairly sure that what I had eaten, and maybe more importantly what I had drunk in the late afternoon, meant my blood glucose measurement was not going to be as good this morning. Fortunately no reading was bad, and all were slightly on the low side of my typical readings. The Contour meter read 8.3mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter had the highest reading at 8.4mmol/l - which is less than my old target. Even the Sinocare meter was on my side this time with a reading of 8.1mmol/l - the lowest of them all for a change.

  Before totally leaving the subject of weight: I am just back from a trip to the toilet for mostly a pee, but also a bit more poo (the third lot this morning). Out of curiosity I got on the scales, and found that my weight was exactly what it was before I had breakfast. It seems I am back to baseline for the day. Also baseline, or pretty near it, is my blood pressure. On my first and only measurement I scored 104/41. It think that is worth being proud of.

  My basic plan for today is to get a bit more exercise in, but there are many variable to consider. While it would be sensible to use the same trainers that seemed to be mostly comfortable yesterday, I am tempted to wear the brand new trainers I got from Amazon just 4 days ago. I have done two short walks in them, and they seemed to be getting a bit more comfortable after that. Maybe I should wear them, and break them in a bit more. It would be sort of nice to have two pairs of comfortable trainers to choose from, and maybe an excuse to throw out an older, and now getting uncomfortable pair.

  Which ever pair of trainers I wear, I think I will opt to do another 6 minutes of walking test, and see if I can beat yesterday's 414 metres. I had thought that maybe I might walk through the linear park, maybe aiming for 3 miles in total, but I would be heading in the wrong direction for that, plus I will be wearing shorts again, and they are not good for walking through what is probably fast growing nettles on the river bank.

  The 6 minute walk takes me to the "curly whirly" bridge over the railway line in Ladywell Fields. If the newest trainers seem to be exceptionally uncomfortable I could give up and go back home. If not I could just go to Ladywell like yesterday, or I could cross the railway and have choice of routes. I shouldn't have been writing all this because I feel exhausted before I start. Some of it was because of my bad sleep last night. I should be OK once out in the fresh warm air, but I think I might have a short snooze next.