Once again the day has started at about 11° C, and full sunshine. The forecast says the full sunshine should last until sunset. It should make the day another degree higher than yesterday with the temperature reaching 23° C for most of the afternoon. Tomorrow should be almost the same as today, but the afternoon temperature could be a fantastic 25° C. the day after could see 26° C !

  Strange as it may seem, I can't think of anything I didn't really like about yesterday. It was a day when I felt like I had been most productive - even if the main thing was just another walk, but it was a slightly longer walk. I even seemed to sleep better last night, at least in some respects.

  Once I had finished writing, had a short rest, and then had a shower, I was ready to go out, but it would be different to how I imagined it. One thing I had to do yesterday morning was to order my next repeat prescription. I tried phoning the pharmacy about 6 times, but they only had their answer phone on with the message that you can't record calls, and to try again later. In the end it seemed easier to walk to the pharmacy and do it in person.


  I thought I took it fairly easy walking to the pharmacy, but 2.5 mph doesn't look too bad. In the past I would be racing against the clock - because I could, and the walk would only be about 5 minutes. It wasn't planned, but I somehow managed to select the perfect speed to make the walk last 6 minutes - exactly !

  I quickly switch to kilometres, and took a screenshot. I had walked, seemingly without much effort, 413 metres, and once again I comfortably exceeded the 365 metre minimum, and so (apparently) have half the risk of dying in the next decade as those who can't manage it.




  After taking the screenshot I switched back to miles so it matches all my other walks. I also made the mistake of stopping the tracker instead of pausing it. I now have the two parts of my exercise recorded separately, but adding them together it comes to a total walk of 1.694 miles - a useful increase in my recent walks.

  The pharmacy didn't seem to be very busy, and so I don't know why they couldn't answer the phone. On the other hand there were two customers in front of me, and both seemed to be very slow customers. I had to wait patiently until I could say my piece, and get the confirmation I could pick up my prescription on Wednesday (probably on my way home from the pub.

  My plan was to walk to Ladywell station, where I could get a copy of The Metro (free newspaper), and than walk home again. There is a road around the corner that has three maple trees in it, and they were looking very colourful. I must admit I thought they only had red leaves in the autumn, but an internet search said that they often start with red leaves too. It might possibly depend on what the weather has been like before the leaves grow. Maybe it was because some of the earlier parts of this spring felt like autumn !

  For this walk I was wearing my shorts again. I was also wearing the new trainers I had bought from Amazon recently. In an attempt to make them seem more comfortable I used sticking plaster and surgical tape to cushion any bits known to get sore. I think I overdid the sticking plaster, and I am sure I made the experience more uncomfortable. There was no rubbing or pinching, but my whole foot seemed to be very stiff. I am wondering it those trainers may benefit from new laces like the other pair I have been trying to break in. It seemed to make them a bit more flexible.
  It seemed that my walk was more tree spotting than train spotting this time. It is a shame the camera cannot seem to capture the quite different colours that my eye could in this scene. The big tree at the back seemed to have a hint of yellow. The tree to the left in the foreground was quite a deep green, and the tree to the right in the foreground is another red maple tree.
  This tree is very odd. In the autumn it usually puts on a colourful display as the leaves start to fall. Yesterday it seemed to have red leaves on some branches and green leaves on others. I have my doubts about it being another maple tree. I did see mention during my internet search that some tree diseases can cause red leaves. Maybe that is the case here.

  It felt like I made good time walking to Ladywell station. I have to admit that I did wait for a few moments to "get my breath back" (although not literally) before leaving the park, and going over the road bridge to get to the main entrance to the station where the Metro newspapers are kept. I then went onto the platform to wait for the next train. It was really just an excuse to stand in the sun doing nothing. The train arrived, and it was nothing special.

  I crossed over the footbridge and checked the time of the next train on that side, and it would be nearly a 10 minute wait. I decided not to bother, and having seen it pass by when walking through the park, it was nothing special and I made the right decision to get walking again. The walk back from the station does not feature many photo opportunities, and I was almost hoping to do the walk non stop.

  That turned out to be pure wishful thinking. I was beginning to tire after only about 5 minutes, and I ended up stopping for a few seconds several times, and extending to about a couple of minutes as I was about to leave the park. My feet were aching a lot, as were my ankles and legs, and it was all muscular or joint pain. The sticking plasters on my feet kept them free of direct pain, but the muscles and joints were killing me as I turned into my own road.
  I still had my camera (the Canon EOS 600D) on and ready to use as I reached my front door, but before I went in I couldn't resist taking a paparazzi style long lens shot of my postman. I think that I have written that we share some simularities. Although he is slimmer and far, far fitter, he could also be called "stout". He enjoys photography using a DSLR camera, and he has also suffered from angina had bypass surgery. The latest thing I discovered a couple of days ago is that like me he refuses to use self checkouts in supermarkets.

  It was a relief to get indoors, but before I went upstairs to change into slouchy indoor clothes, I made up some lunch. It was two Ciabatta rolls filled with ham, mustard, salad leaves, and one of the rolls also had a very ripe sliced tomato in it. They were very nice, but first I stripped off down to my underpants, went for a quite small pee, and got on the scales. It was another very low weight - lower than the previous day !

  Considering my entire walk, including calling at the pharmacy, only took around an hour, I still felt like I had done enough for the whole day. The one thing I did do was to do the usual photo selecting and editing, and I felt very tired even when doing that. Unlike the previous day I did manage to have a lie down, and apart from reading more from my current book, I had quite a long snooze. It is rather good that in the current weather my bedroom stays warm enough in the sunshine, and I didn't wake us shivering as would have maybe a month ago.

  As 6pm approached I prepared my dinner. I have plenty of frozen stuff, but no unfrozen stuff for dinner. I could have got something out of the freezer, but I seem to be on a bit of a health kick recently, and so I decided that dinner would be just thinly sliced cheese on rice crackers. I did spoil things a bit by adding some rather sugary "sandwich pickle" in a small blob one each cracker.

  As I watched the BBC news it was not interesting enough to distract me from the idea that my dinner was not very filling - hardly at all in fact. I topped it up with one now quite ripe (after almost a fortnight) black plum, two now ripe nectarines and one small golden delicious apple. I seemed to have enough will power not to have the chunk of cheese I usually have with fruit. After the news I watched Star Trek: Voyager, and it was an episode I had not seen before, and was fairly good.

  Voyager finished at 8pm, and I started to make preparations to go to bed - which mostly meant brushing my teeth and after eating that fruit it was probably a good idea anyway. It would actually be another couple of hours before I would try to sleep. I spent a little time looking at the crosswords in The Metro. I almost finished the quick crossword. I gave up with just a couple of clues unsolved, and one was one of those annoying ones about an actor I had never heard of in a film I had also never heard of.

  It was around 10pm, after reading another chapter from my book, that I tried for sleep. With the lights out, and my attention turning inwards to myself, instead of outward, I began to realised that bits of me ached. I took a couple of Paracetamol tablets, and half an hour later I seemed comfortable, and easily tired enough to go to sleep. I had left the heater on low, and also with the thermostat set so it was just off. I feel sure it started up shortly before I fell asleep. It is fairly noisy these days, but I think that rattly fan is like some sort of weird soothing lullaby.

  It may have been around 1am when I woke up to find the thermostat had switched off again, and although the room temperature had probably only dropped 2 degrees, I seemed to feel cold. I got back to sleep with the duvet partly pulled over most of me. I probably woke up for a pee about the typical amount of times in the night, and I seemed to pee maybe very slightly less than typical.

  I had one dream that I thought I would remember enough details to describe, but my mind seems to be blank now. Maybe it was because I was concentrating on my health measurements. Peeing about a normal amount didn't give me much hope for my blood glucose level, but I hoped the exercise and very light dinner would have a useful good effect on my weight.

  When I finally got up, a little later than usual - nearly 7am. I had my usual first pee of the waking day, but it was only a bit later that I passed a tiny poo. The scales said I had lost 500gm, and that seemed rather good. I am now 3.8kg lighter than my very highest reading so far this year, and that super high reading was a one off. In more realistic terms it was possibly closer to 2.8kg, or just over 6lbs. That is not terribly impressive, but still useful.

  My blood glucose slightly good this morning. The Contour meter read 7.9mmol/l, and actually that is rather good. The GlucoRX meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that is only slightly good. The Sinocare meter read 8.1mmol/l. These readings may have been a lot better if I had not had all that sweet fruit last night. I might have done better to have had a bowl of instant noodles as part of my dinner, but all the fibre and stuff in the fruit would have been better in that respect.

  I don't feel like going for a long(ish) walk today, but I may go to the station to get a copy of The Metro. If that feels OK I might go further, but I think I ought to devote a bit of time today to doing a bit of housework - and maybe a bit of garden work. I ought to do a bit of laundry today, and it would be nice to hang it on the washing line to dry. Before I can hang it on the line I will need to get the strimmer out and cut a path through the nettles and other stuff clogging the garden path at a minimum ! Maybe I might strim more than that. It would be nice working topless in the warm sunshine !