08:43 BST

  It is still medium grey today, and it seems it could be some time before the sun breaks through the murk - if it ever does ! The overnight cloud kept some of the warmth in, and this morning started off at about 20° C instead of the forecast 17° C. This afternoon may well reach the forecast 27° C, but it all makes all the blathering on the news last night about an extended heatwave seem completely wrong. Tomorrow may feature full sunshine from dawn to dusk, and the temperature may even reach the forecast 29° C. So still not quite a heatwave (30° C and over by my personal rules).

  Yesterday was a fair day. There were not great excitements, but it seemed mostly pleasant, and maybe because of that I almost took care of what I ate, but in reality I probably took some bad decisions. One thing I want to do today is to not say as much as usual.

  I have no idea why, but this morning (although maybe it started last night) I have the feeling that I have been blathering far too much when writing these pages. Maybe it is because I have recently had a lot of pictures to pad things out. Today I have a selection of pictures, and I'll use them to describe a chunk of my day. I may not have many, or indeed any pictures from today, and I'll probably resort to blathering a lot....or maybe not. The quicker I can finish writing, the greater the chance of getting out to do stuff.
  I think we can take it as read that I got up, wrote some stuff, had a shower and washed my hair, and then went out to walk through the park to get to The Jolly Farmers. I got to the point where I usually take my first breather. It is the first bridge over the river. I very often see a robin on or near the bridge, and yesterday I had the idea that it comes out to see me. Last night I came up with the idea that it thinks my metallic blue, pocket sized Nikon camera, could be another bird or some sort of threat that needs investigating. I was about 3ft away (maybe 4ft) when I took this nicely posed picture.
  When I reached Ladywell station, where I grab a couple of copies of The Metro, I stop for a minute or often more, to get my breath back, and to wait for the next train to see if it is anything worth photographing. The above train was worth photographing. It is 376001, the first of this class of train, and it is in the new blue Southeastern livery. I have pictures of all 36 class 376 trains in their original white livery, and I am now trying to get them all in blue livery. It is slow progress now I tend to walk to and from the pub instead of getting a train as I was doing so until I found that if I took it easy I could still walk, and even slightly enjoy it.
  Everything was normal when I arrived at the pub, but minutes later it lost it's lights (except for emergency lights). It wasn't a general power failure because the till, fridges, under bar lights, and beer dispensing apparatus were still powered. The pub remained open, and continues to serve drinks. It was obvious it was the lighting circuit that had failed, although the juke box, and the big gaming machine seemed to have no power. I would not have expected those to be on the lighting circuits.

  The fuse boxes were checked and no fuse seemed to have been tripped (presumably resettable circuit breakers). I was never quite sure, but I had a feeling I had seen at least one light flash brighter just before were were plunged into twilight. I know that many cheap Chinese made lightbulbs are right on their limits at 230V, and I have had a couple fail here. They were cheap and cheerful bulbs bought from Amazon. It is possible that a power spike may have blown one or two, but it seems unlikely it would take out so many lights and the other stuff.

  I was sitting under one of the emergency lights, and it was very close to being just light enough to read the bigger print in my copy of The Metro.  I ended up using the torch function on my phone to read the paper, and attempt the crossword. It was another session where I ended up reading most of the paper because it was too hard to concentrate on solving any crossword clues. I did manage over half of the quick crossword, but that is all. After my usual two pints of Guinness I headed out into the light again.
  I saw a couple of rats in or near the river yesterday. It should have been bright and sunny, but it was already starting to get cloudy, and that didn't leave much light for a fast shutter speed on my camera. This rat is suffering from some motion blur, but it still shows it to be an unusually light coloured rat. It is not that different fur colour to a golden hamster. It almost makes it look cute!
  Like the robin that had alighted on the parapet of the bridge over the river, this pigeon seemed to be waiting for me to take it's picture. It too was on the parapet, and it allowed me to get to less than arms length from it to get this unusually sharp picture.

  I definitely seem to be getting the hang of walking with rest breaks now. Of course the secret is not only the rest breaks, but remembering to pause the tracker while resting. Most rest breaks are probably around a minute on average, although I take a much longer rest when I reach Ladywell station on the walk to the pub. That is because it involves using two staircases, and the break is to prepare for going up them.

  With the tracker paused when resting, my average walking speed was a fair 2.517 mph. The walk home was slower, just 2.165 mph. I stopped to take more pictures (including two very blurred pictures of another rat) and didn't always pause the tracker every time. I have noticed that all the practice I am getting is making it easier to stop less times for short rests. I am not even sure I needed to stop every time I did on the walk home.

   When I got home I felt hungry, although not really starving hungry. I decided to make a couple of small sandwiches using the small loaf of sliced gluten free bread I had bought the day before. The only problem was that the bread was fast disintegrating. It was obvious that gluten is the glue that holds the bread together, and without it, it was just crumbling. I had enough for two small beef and horseradish sandwiches.

  After my sandwiches I prepared the pictures I have used today, and then I had a lie down. I didn't think I felt as tired as I often am after walking to and from the pub, but I still ended up having a semi long snooze. When I woke up it was only an hour until dinner time. I had a variety of choices for my dinner. I had a few chilled ready meals in the fridge, and several frozen ready meals in the freezer, but I had a completely different idea.

  I wanted a way of trying to use up more of that gluten free loaf. I was not sure what would happen if I tried to toast the bits it had crumbled into. I thought that maybe I might toast the bits and then melt cheese on them. What I actually did was to put a handful of crumbles into a bowl, and pour the content of small tins of fish on them - some in flavoured olive oil, and some in a sort of tomato sauce.

  It made for a fairly nice dinner, although not one I would want too frequently. I also had two more parts to me dinner. One was a Caesar salad, and the other was a small amount of vanilla ice cream. I ate while watching the BBC 6 O'clock news. They spent a lot of time blathering on about how hot is was - except that it wasn't that hot. They did admit there were thunderstorms somewhere in the London area at around 4pm, but still insisted it was a sunny day while it was very grey outside my windows.

  With not many distractions I could concentrate on watching Star Trek: The New Generation, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Neither were particularly good episodes, and it would have taken very little to distract me from them. At 9pm I would have watched Have I Got News For You, except that was not until 10pm last night. 9pm was time for QI, but it did not look like a good episode, and I turned off before it got started.

  I read in bed for a while, and then I went to sleep. I don't remember much about my sleep, and so i assume I slept well. Maybe by 8pm I felt like that the air outside was starting to feel almost chilly, or would be when trying to sleep, I had shut the window, and closed the curtain before I even considered trying for sleep. It did make the my bedroom a bit warm, and so I slept with the desk fan on it's lowest setting during the night.

  I can't seem to remember any dreams, but I do have hazy memories of getting up to pee in the night. After getting up, at just gone 7am this morning, I had not only a pee, but a substantial poo as well. I then dared weigh myself. I found I had put on a whole 100gm. A later pee and poo, may have shown that I had lost 100gm, but I had eaten by then, and so it didn't count.

  I didn't think my blood glucose would be all that good this morning. I knew that the gluten free bread was fairly low in sugar, but the flavoured sauces in the small tins of fish seemed to contain rather a lot of sugar for some unknown reason. The first reading was using the Contour meter, and it was incredibly good - just 6.9mmol/l. The other three meter showed higher figures. The GlucoRX meter, 8.2mmol/l. The Contour Plus meter, 8.6mmol/l, and the new GlucoFix meter read 8.3mmol/l. it is surprising that all meters, except the Contour meter, broadly agreed with each other. They showed my blood glucose was acceptable, but not good.

  I have already done most of one of the important jobs for today - washing up a lot of stuff sitting in the kitchen sink. Of course now I have one more thing to to wash up - the bowl I had my instant noodle breakfast in. The next thing I have to do is to do the dozen or so rinses of a small hand towel that I left soaking in detergent last night. Once that is done I can have a simple shower.

  If I have the time and inclination I will go to Aldi today. There is only one thing I really need, and it is doubtful if they have any. That is new and exciting beers. My beer fridges are almost empty, and I need to order more beers, but maybe I can find something new in Aldi. There will always be other stuff I will buy from there - if I actually get there.

  The main event today will be the usual beer tasting with Jodie and Michael. With luck Jodie will bring a beer or two with here - not that they would be the sort of stuff I enjoy - but she can drink them, and I'll be quite happy drinking several cans of Guinness. Another little job for today will be to order, for delivery, some new beers !