08:19 BST

  Once upon a time, like the day before yesterday, the forecast included some heavy showers for today, but the latest forecast (above) shows it to be a dry day, and a lot of it may be sunny. The flaw in this idea is that this morning, instead of blue skies and full sunshine, it is cloudy, and the sun has yet to breakthrough the clouds, although it is not very dull. The Met Office forecast shows sunny spells all morning and afternoon (but full sunshine at 8pm). I think this means it might rain today ! The BBC (above) predicts a high of 23° C, and the Met Office say 24° C. Tomorrow may be generally sunny with a high of 25° C.

   I had plans and ideas for yesterday, and in the extreme some were rather elaborate. I didn't do those, but I did do the simple version of the plan, and it seemed to be not too bad at all. It was a modestly long walk, and I hadn't walked that far since April of last year.

  I can't say I felt all that good yesterday morning. I had had quite a disturbed sleep, and that, combined with a light constipated feeling, meant I did not have much get up and go, and yet I was still fantasising about what I might do yesterday. Yesterday's writing ended with a description of quite an elaborate plan of a few short walks chained together, and some train and tram travel.

  After I finished writing I wanted to lie down and possibly have a snooze rather than go out anywhere. I had started writing earlier than usual, and although writing 2,976 words, I seemed to finish a tiny bit earlier too. It seemed I was in no rush, and I laid down on my bed to read for a bit, and I feel sure I had some sort of snooze, although whether it lasted 2 minutes or 20 minutes is something I can't answer.

  After my rest I went to the bathroom and washed my hair and had a shower. It was a cool, but not cold shower, and it seemed to liven me up a bit.  I felt determined to get out, but I still could not decide exactly what I was going to do. Fortunately my initial plan to walk through the River Pool Linear Park allowed many possible variations. I could have walked right through the park, and continued on to Lower Sydenham station, and from there I had quite a few options.

  I didn't feel I was quite ready for anything too ambitious, and I was not even sure I could comfortably achieve the simple option. That was to reprise a walk I have done many times in the past, and often as part of an exercise to build my leg muscles up, and maybe to loosen up a few joints It was to walk through the park as far as the Bow String Bridge, cross the bridge and return towards home on the other side of the river (as far as where the other side is inaccessible).
  I had only got as far as crossing Catford Bridge when I had to quickly get my camera out. Towards the south east I could see four Chinook military helicopters apparently flying in loose formation. It was as if they had just taken off quite recently, because less than a minute later they had grouped into two pairs of helicopters. My best guess is that they would soon be crossing Bromley to destination unknown.
  I saw loads of butterflies fluttering around on my walk, but only one posed for me. I once knew what type of butterfly this is, and presumably the information is still tucked away somewhere in my brain, but I just cannot seem to find it at this moment.
  There is a good spot to take a breather by the bow string bridge. In fact there are two good spots. One is looking at the river passing under the bridge, but there is also an entrance to the park there, and it gives a good view of the road that provides access to the small shopping centre at Lower Sydenham, and where some buses turn around, or park up at the end of their route. I spied this Chinese built (by BYD) single decker bus parked up waiting for when it would go to West Croydon a little bit later. It seems BYD have cornered the market for electric buses for London (and probably elsewhere). That is a good achievement if Transport For London still do the sort of thorough testing they did for the Routemaster buses back in the 1960s.
 As I walked back home there was not a lot to take more pictures of, but I did notice that I was getting great views of planes probably heading to Heathrow Airport. The lens I was using on my Canon EOS 600D camera was my Tamron lens that only goes up to 200mm of zoom. If I had taken a 300mm lens I may have managed to get more detailed pictures of the planes, but the couple I am showing here don't look too bad.
  This looks like a shorter version of the Virgin plane, but I think they are from the same manufacturer - probably Airbus. If they were modern planes made by Boeing they would probably be crashing rather than flying.
  A different sort of flyer - a worker bee, from a hive, caught just as it took off after gathering nectar from the blackberry flower in the foreground. I almost never manage to catch a bee in flight. This time I got lucky.
  I was on the home straight, passing the Catford Bridge Tavern when I spotted this sign just inside the door at the front of the pub. It is a bit silly, but it amused me !

  I was very surprised when I arrived home. I had walked 3.121 miles - the furthest I have walked for over a year, and managed to do it at 1.888mph. A lot of practice has got my average walking speed up as high as 2.2mph on a few occasions, but I thought 1.9mph (rounded up to a simpler figure) was not bad at all. At the start of the walk I deliberate kept my speed down to around 2mph. I helps to improve the distance I can walk before I have to take a brief rest.

  On the whole I was very pleased with this walk, and I am sure I can remember many times when I was first building up my walking distance, maybe 10 years ago or something like that, when at the end of the same walk I was completely thrashed. Yesterday I got home not feeling that bad at all. The (mostly) comfortable Adidas trainers helped a lot to stop my feet aching, but in past times my legs would feel a lot more tired.

  One of the first things I did when I got home was to strip off my outdoor clothes, and while in just underpants, I got on the scaled. I can't remember the exact figure, and I didn't record it, but it was possibly even a 100gms less than I achieved for the day I saw the nurse. Since then my weight went up a little bit, but not much, and I have done a fair job of controlling it. Seeing it yesterday afternoon may have given me a stronger reason to push it down a little more.

  I didn't seem to have to find more than a microscopic bit of will power to wait until dinner time before I had anything to eat. It may have also helped that I had had a slightly big breakfast. I did feel like a rest would be nice, but it took almost no power to ignore that, and get down to selecting and editing pictures. I had plenty to choose from, but a great deal of them were terrible pictures of bees, and out of a possible 12 only a couple were just about usable.

  Eventually I finished all the photo selecting and editing, and I could have a lie down, but not for long. There was stuff on TV I could possibly watch. One such thing was the third or fourth repeat of a documentary about the band Cream. Some of that was worth watching 2 or 3 times, but a 4th time was fast losing it's attraction. There was also a load of back to back repeats of Simpsons episodes, but I had possibly seen most of them during the week when.

  TV actually had very little attraction last night, but I watched something or another while I had my dinner. It was a very big salad that was 80% just salad leaves with some other salady type things, and some spam and egg slices. I am not sure why I bothered with the meat and egg because all the vegetable stuff was filling enough. It all seemed quite satisfying, and almost satisfying in size. I found a handful of peanuts topped it off nicely.

  One thing I did last night was to try and make an order with Amazon. Top of my wants list was a pair of cargo shorts - with one special requirement. I wanted the pockets on the legs to be on the side of the legs. My current pair only seem to have annoying small pockets, and they are on the front of my legs. If I put something like my small, pocket sized Nikon camera in one of those pockets it bangs against my knew as I walk. That is not a great idea !

  I selected a pair of cargo pants, and three other things, and then went to the checkout. Those bastards were quite happy to give me free delivery if I signed my life away to Amazon Prime. Otherwise each single item had a postage charge of at least £4.99 on it. I deleted the order in disgust. I then went to Premier Man who only seemed to have a smaller range, but I found a pair of shorts that are probably OK, and ordered them. I expected a delivery charge, and so paid it without being annoyed. I think there is a small chance it was less than Amazon wanted to charge me.

  I headed to bed quite early yesterday. I was intending to read for as much as an hour, and so going to bed before 8pm was not quite as bad as it sounds, but it was not long after 8pm when the fatigue of the walk caught up with me. I am unsure when I fell asleep. I think I may have got up again because I couldn't sleep, but my memory of it seems more like it was actually a dream.

  I do remember a very messy bit of memory about one dream I was having. What I think I remember was watching an episode of Top Gear (with the classic presenter line up of Clarkson, Hammond, and May), and for some reason they were covering the weather. They gave a very basic forecast, but then went off on a sort of tangent where they decided to prove that all our weather was all naturally controlled by one small place in either Greenland or Iceland. The idea was that there was some small geological feature that when hit by wind would set up resonances across the whole of the UK. At least I think it was something like that.

  It felt like I woke less in the night to pee, and that those pees were smaller than often. Even when I got up I didn't have a particularly big wee, and I did not have a poo either (although I did have one soon after dinner last night). However the magic of my walks was still in effect, and the scales said I had lost 700gm, and my weight was back to being colour coded blue on my weight spreadsheet. That has only happened 5 times this year, and with luck it will happen more frequently now. With even more luck it might go from light blue to dark blue, and possibly even purple !

  Even my blood glucose was pretty good this morning. Most of the reason was the very simple dinner I had last night, but I do wonder if my deliberate consumption of some naughty chocolate with my breakfast might have triggered my pancreas to work harder. The Contour meter gave a very good reading of 7.3mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter was not quite so excellent, but even 7.7mmol/l is very good. As I predicted, my blood glucose level has crossed the invisible line where the Sinocare meter is almost reading the same as the other two. 8.1mmol/l is not quite as good, but still very good for that meter.

  This morning I had a semi substantial breakfast. It was two Ciabatta rolls, cut in half and toasted, and then cheese added to be melted on top. To make then even more unhealthy I sprinkled crispy fried onions on one roll before I put the cheese on, and the other two halves I smeared with tomato chutney (that has a sugar content high enough for it to be called jam). They were pretty nice, and quite filling. My actual reason for this breakfast was to use up those last two rolls before they became stale.

  I did have a mad idea of going out for a walk to Ladywell and back before I had breakfast this morning. I didn't because my guts were feeling possibly unstable, but in some ways I wish I had because my breakfast has left me feeling sort of sleepy. I know a walk would be good for me, but as I sit here writing the end of today's piece, I can't imagine I am going to do it. However it is comparatively early still, and it might be possible before I get things ready for Jodie to arrive, and another beer tasting session. Controlling my appetite after that is going to be very tricky !