08:52 BST

  There is some sunshine this morning, but much of the sky looks more white than blue, and the sunshine is quite intermittent. Maybe the sky will clear to give the full sunshine forecast, but maybe only until 1pm when rain is forecast. It is now only shown as light rain, but I am sure that yesterday it was predicted it might be heavier - Possibly with one of the BBC's speciality - thunderstorms that never seem to happen. The temperature may briefly touch 24° C today, but perhaps only at 4pm.  Tomorrow may see 26° C, and there may be sunny spells or full sunshine all day long. There could be some rain in the evening tomorrow.

   Yesterday was a far better day than any recently. For one thing the weather was a lot better, but also because I had some useful achievements, and made new discoveries.....well, sort of. The only negative thing was that I failed to achieve what I hoped for.

  As I wrote yesterday, I was feeling fairly uncomfortable with constipation during most of the morning. I did go once, but it seemed insufficient, and I was still feeling uncomfortable later, although once life became more interesting, more pleasantly distracting, I could mostly ignore the feeling that I was bunged up. Other than that, I had a pretty typical Wednesday morning. I wrote, rested, and then washed my hair and had a shower.

  It was probably only after I had washed my hair, and had a shower (in quite warm water) that I noticed that the humidity was high. I couldn't seem to cool down fast enough after the shower, and I seemed to be sweating as fast as I dried myself. I can understand why people leap into a cold tub after a sauna, although I can't understand how the body can stand the shock of that.

  It had been my intention to force myself to walk to the pub, but when it came to it I didn't need forcing at all. I seemed to be feeling quite good for walking. What I did do was to try and force myself to walk just a little bit slower. My theory was that if I walked slower I would need to spend less time taking the short breaks I have to do these days, and so end up walking at a higher average speed.
  That might sound like a contradiction, but it worked as expected. On the walk to the pub I detoured via Ladywell station to pick up two copies of The Metro. My average speed was just a smidgin (0.009) under 2mph. I think last week it was around 1.8mph because I was stopping more frequently. If I had paused the tracker every time I stopped for as little as a few seconds, it is possible my average speed may also have been 2mph, and possibly higher.
  One short rest period I did take was to take this photo of a starling with a big juicy caterpillar in it's beak. I wondered if it would be taking the caterpillar back to some chicks in a nest nearby. I can't really recall seeing many, or indeed any starlings in the park before yesterday. They seem far more common near the main road outside Catford Bridge station for some reason.
  I arrived at Ladywell station just in time to grab a snap of the fourth class 376 train I have photographed in it's new blue livery. It has just left Ladywell station, and heading ultimately to Charing Cross. The light was better when it had gone under the road bridge, and I took the picture using a fair bit of zoom. That is 4 out of 36, and just 32 to go before the complete set - and I have a full set of them in their original white livery.


 While having a minute or two rest, with my walk tracker on pause, I happened to notice the information screen on platform 2, the "Down" platform. It was announcing that the next train was only 5 coaches long, and at the bottom of the display that it was a "City Beam" (aka class 707) train. These usually run as two 5 car units couples together. I have never seen a single 5 car train out on it's own before, although it could be easily done.

  I had less than a minute to wait before the train arrived, and as I suspected it was a 10 car train. Everything else on the display was correct. It was a City beam train, and it was on time to within possibly a few tens of seconds (although I suppose it depends on how you time it - either from the moment the front of the train enters the platform, or when the train is stationary, and even maybe when it has unlocked it's doors ???

  I'm not really a gardener, and don't seem to have any natural talents in that area, and so in my ignorance I thought that the best time for roses had already passed, but it seems I was wrong....maybe. It might depend on how they are pruned after the first flowering. I do know that some flowers should be removed after they are past their best to encourage new flowers. Maybe the gardeners of the St Mary Therapeutic Garden are very skilled in their duties. This purple rose, and many more on the bush, was looking splendid yesterday.
  The next bush along featured some dark pink roses, and as can be seen in the background, they are still opening from new buds. I also saw white, yellow, and some other pink roses, but the two I have pictures seemed the most splendid.
  This picture may seem ugly after the last two, but it contains some interesting information. The main item is the full sized shopping trolley that is almost completely submerged in the river. As far as I can tell it is of the sort where the handle is about waist height, and so the water must be over 3 ft deep (maybe 4 ft). Most of the river has shallow water, but on the outside of some bends, as this was, the water can be surprisingly deep. The other interesting thing is that there is a shaft of sunshine coming through the overhanging trees, and it is lighting up the river bed. To see that through 3 or 3 feet of water is a strong indication of just how clean the river is these days.

  I arrived at the pub to find that there were a small group of men who were very loud, and Ayse (my favourite barmaid) described it as chaotic (or something like that). It was no bother, and I sat down to read my Metro (I gave the second copy to Ayse) and try to do the crosswords. At first I was still aware of a constipated sort of feeling, but that seemed to fade away after a while. Maybe some of it was wind. Fortunately I expelled the wind in the park where it quickly got blown away.

  It almost feels like a home from home in the pub now, and it seemed a shame when I knew it was wise to leave. I had had my usual two pints of Guinness, read everything except the adverts and style and showbiz pages of The Metro, and made fairly good progress in the quick crossword. There were about 4 clues I just could not solve, and I was not 100% sure what I had written was correct. My mind was definitely not in the right state to solve a single cryptic crossword clue !

  I said my goodbyes, and walked out into fierce sunshine. After the dim interior of the pub, it was rather dazzling for a few moments. It was partly thanks to my newest Adidas trainers, and a lot to do with slowly strengthening my walking muscles, that the walk to the pub did not feel particularly taxing. I tried to limit my walking speed on the way home, and to some extent I did, but I still found myself pausing for a short while at every footbridge over the river. That would have reduced my average walking speed because I didn't bother to pause the tracker for those short rests.

  I partly made up for it when I found my legs and ankles were not getting so tired as I neared home. On some bad days I might stop for something like 30 seconds 3 or 4 times in the last quarter of a mile. Yesterday I managed to force myself through the mild discomfort, and do it almost non stop (although I did take advantage of waiting for a passing car when crossing the road outside the park).

  In theory, my high blood glucose should have meant I would have lacked energy, but I did not feel completely bushwhacked when I got home. I was quite happy to hang around making some lunch in the kitchen. There were other things I could have had, and maybe better, safer, things I could have had for lunch, but I opted for more instant noodles. They were not the zero sugar instant noodles, but modestly low sugar, and I though being fairly low calories was important.

  I would have expected to want a lie down after eating lunch, and maybe even more so after a hot lunch. I didn't, and seemed OK to transfer pictures from phones and Nikon camera to my PC. I then selected and edited all the pictures I decided to use today. Only after that did I have lie down, but not for long. It was probably the bright and warm sunshine, but I just didn't seem to feel knackered yesterday afternoon.

  At around 4pm I had a small afternoon snack of.....something. I think that something may have just been a handful of salted peanuts. I watched a bit of TV and read some stuff on the internet, and then, just before 6pm I got my dinner prepared to eat while watching the 6 O'clock news. It was a very simple dinner - maybe 16 rice crackers and a pack of shallot flavoured meat paté.

   In theory it was a very low sugar meal, although high in other stuff that may not be particularly good for me - stuff like saturated fats and cholesterol. I thought it low sugar enough to have a far from sweet apple, and a very ripe, and so quite sweet pear for dessert (plus the chunk of cheese to lessen the acidity of the apple). Unfortunately it didn't work as well as hoped when I checked my blood glucose this morning - although it did work a bit.

  By 9pm it was still very light outside, but I chose not to bother searching for TV entertainment, but to go to bed to read for half an hour. I'm not sure it was as long as 30 minutes, and I am sure it was 9:20pm when I turned the light out. It didn't seem to take long to fall asleep, but only for a couple of hours. I think it was no more than 2 hours later that I woke up. It seemed to be more that I was feeling a bit cold despite the thermometer saying it was only about half a degree less than my comfortable temperature.

  Of course I also had a pee before going back to bed, and trying to sleep with the duvet partly covering some of me. That didn't work because I was then feeling too warm. maybe it was around 3am that I decided I would put the heater on low, and to quite struggling with the duvet. I really have got out of practice of sleeping covered up, although in previous summers I would do away with the duvet and just cover myself with no more than a sheet.

  I woke up what I thought was too early to get up again, and just about managed to go to sleep for another 40 minutes or so. Even before getting up I was aware of feeling quite constipated again. This didn't seem surprising after thinking I had not passed enough poo the yesterday. I was worried it wasn't going to happen again today, and it didn't happen when I had my official first pee of the morning.

  On the basis that the amount poo I imagined I hadn't passed must have weighed at least a few hundred grams, I seemed to do well to be only 100gm heavier this morning. Had I waited until I had done at least a small, but compact poo, plus some more pee, and was able to weigh myself before I had breakfast (of one large packet of instant noodles) I may have actually registered a loss off 200 or even 300 grams this morning......well, we can all dream !

  My blood glucose did not drop as low as hoped this morning, and the Sinocare meter was as bad as ever. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that is pretty good. The GlucoRX meter read 8.5mmol/l, and that is OK, although considering what I think I ate yesterday, I had hoped for lower readings than these. As I said, the Sinocare was still being a nuisance by saying my blood glucose was 9.0mmol/l, but on reflection, although it is another colour coded pink on my speadsheet, it is not that bad...well not awful bad.....less than terrible !

  The plan for today was, and maybe still is, to get washed and dressed in time to go out to Tesco before the rain starts. I have a strong desire to get lots of salad stuff even if today may not be anything like summer (except for the temperature). I had hoped I would be able to get out, and back again in just a t-shirts and shorts with no worry about getting wet. That should still be possible. The Met Office shows no rain at all today, and the BBC now says there will be two hours of light rain starting at 2pm (instead of 1pm). Later this afternoon I hope to be tasting some new beers (and a few old ones) with Jodie and Michael.