07:55 BST

  Yesterday's forecast for today included one or more thunderstorms. This morning the thunderstorms have vanished from the forecast, but a lot of light rain remains. As I write this I can see lots of small blue patches of sky, and while it is not sunny right now, the idea of sunny spells seems very feasible - until 3pm when the first rain may fall. It may continue to rain until past sunset, but even during this time it is possible we may get glimpses of sunshine. It is going to be a cool day with the temperature only reaching 21° C. Tomorrow could be similar to today, but the temperature will only reach a cool 19° C.

  I think I was surprised that yesterday was mostly, but not wholly, a good day. The best bit of the day only lasted 46 minutes, and most of it will be told in pictures, but the echoes of that did last a fair while longer. Ultimately it was tiring, but doing nothing more was OK under the circumstances.

  I was very unsure what I would do yesterday even as I was writing about what may happen. It was quite odd how when it came down to it I became more and more enthusiastic about it, and for reasons unknown, my health was suddenly good enough for the idea swirling around in my mind. I was still a bit reluctant while I had my post writing rest, and when I had a shower. I was so uncertain even then that I made a bad mistake of putting some washing in to soak on the misguided idea that I would have plenty of time, energy and enthusiasm to finish the job in the afternoon.
  The sky was not looking nice once I had finished washing, had dried myself, and got dressed. In fact it was looking positively threatening ! Despite that I seemed to have an urge to go out and stretch my legs and sanity. I had thought of a route that I estimated to be no more than a mile, and it seemed possible that it might not start to rain until I was home again. I was wrong on both estimates.
  The start of my walk took me to the top of the "curly whirly" foot (cycle and pram) bridge over the railway in the park. I had a short, maybe 30 seconds, breather before I walked to the top of the bridge, and I am not sure I needed to. However I definitely needed a breather at the top, and I made good use of it by waiting for the next train (which was actually about a 4 or 5 minute wait). That first train was Networker 465013. I seem to have pictures of nearly all class 465 trains, and so taking more is pointless.....except these trains are slowly being sent away for scrap, and a few extra pictures may be nice.
  The first picture was of 465013 approaching the bridge after leaving Ladywell Station. This picture shows the rear of the train and unit 465192 after it had gone under the bridge, and was heading to Catford Bridge station. There was a slight flaw in my idea, and it was that under such a gloomy sky these, and most of my photos look rather dull and flat.
  After the bridge I effectively reversed my direction of walk, and I was headed towards Catford Bridge. It was when I first felt some light rain on my face. by the time I had reached the railway bridge that takes the Catford Loop Line (from Catford station) over the park, I was very glad for the shelter that bridge could provide. In this picture the misty background is fine rain that could be seen being blown in waves across the field in the background.
  This was my favourite picture of this outing. It does not look so good when shrunk down to fit on this page, but if you click on the picture it should open in a new tab in a much bigger format. It looks sort of grain, but that is just individual drops of rain caught using a very fast shutter, and that, plus the muted colours make it seem like an oil painting to my eyes.
  I didn't wait until the rain stopped or I would have been there for hours, but the heaviest rain only lasted 5 or 10 minutes. After that it was more like drizzle - still enough to get me, and my Nikon D3200 camera quite wet. Fortunately like most "serious" cameras (more enthusiast than professional) it is listed as being "splash proof" and no harm was done. Meanwhile, this white dog found a way to get even wetter, and was enjoying it. It was waiting for it's owner to get to the bridge, and then would find a way back up to the path.
  As I got to the Catford Bridge end of the park I passed the orchard. The last time I was there, maybe a couple of months ago, most of the trees had fruit on them. Some were ripe, and some still had to wait some time until ripe. I checked every tree as best I could, but I could only find one fruit, a pear still on a tree. With no sunshine to light up one side, and being high up I could not get a better angle than with the bright (by comparison) sky behind it, it did not make for a good picture. I had to force it to show some green instead of a black blob hanging from the tree.
  At the south end of the park is another pair of Tennis Courts. I get the impression, but only from very occasionally passing them, they are less busing that the Tennis Courts at the Ladywell end of the park. These two were gamely playing on in the rain.
  I was sheltering from the rain under the railway arch at the exit from the park (or one of them), and I was in the right place at the right time to get this snap of a postman, and his cart, out in the rain. It is not the postman who delivers to my house, but like him, this one also favours wearing shorts. I was wearing shorts too, and like my postman mentioned to me, the thing about shorts is that in the rain your legs dry a lot quicker than material would. it is indeed true. I was aware my t-shirt (the only thing I was wearing on my top) was wet, but I never noticed the rain on my legs.

  Despite the rain, or maybe partly because of it, I enjoyed this walk a lot more than I expected to. It was 1.366 miles - a bit longer than the "about a mile" I predicted. My average walking speed was not that good at just 1.762 mph. I did pause the tracker for any lengthy stop, but I didn't bother for shorter stops to take photos (for instance). Had I paused every time I stopped to take a picture (and there were more than shown here) my average speed might have been over 2 mph.

  It was actually better to take it slower because there were very few, maybe just one time when I had to stop to take a breather. That made it more enjoyable, and it also gives me hope that if I do manage to get myself out into the countryside, or to the seaside, for a longer walk, I should be able to enjoy that too. Maybe more so if there is some nice bright and warm sunshine (but maybe not hot until, and if, I get my heart valve fixed).

  I did have one extra period of rest when I did a bit of shopping in the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. It was one of my objectives for this walk. Another was to pick up a copy of The Metro when I was at Catford Bridge station. It was all the more stupid that I forgot to do that despite actually standing by the papers while waiting to take a picture of a train (that wasn't even a good picture of a train I didn't need to photograph).


   While passing The Catford Bridge Tavern I saw this sandwich board outside declaring "The Battle Of The Bands". A big pub like The Catford Bridge Tavern ought to have live music in it, but it has never managed to draw enough punters in to make it worthwhile. The few bands they have had over the years have been unknown in the local area, and so the audiences, and hence the beer sales, have been quite light.

  I have been told they did something like this last year, and it was rubbish. With some help from others I have found something about two of the bands, Garcia, and Crushing Dolls. Both may be worth watching, and I think I am going to try and go to have a look, and take some snaps with my big, professional Nikon camera + flash gun (because it will probably be very dark in there).

  When I finally reached home I did not feel all that bad at all. Usually just the walk from the little supermarket to home comes close to my limits for non stop walking, but not this time. The best reason for getting home was to get to the toilet. I most definitely needed a pee ! After that I stripped off everything except my underpants and weighed myself. I can't remember the figure, but it did seem to be encouraging even if not wonderful. I the re-dressed in indoor clothes, suitable for slobbing about.

  If I recall correctly (unlikely) I did not feel particularly hungry at this point, but I did have stuff I had just bought that I wanted to try, and so I ended up eating more than was ideal. I had bought a small pot of red pepper with chilli flavoured humus, and I ate all of it by scooping it out on rice crackers. I had also bought some sliced salami, and I had all that small pack on rice crackers with added sliced, pickled, jalapeños.

  After I had eaten, and washed my hands, I transferred all the pictures taken earlier to my PC, and then selected and edited the best. Some pictures needed a lot of work to bring out details in the gloomy shadows, or even just general gloom. For such a foul day I was rather happy with the results, but I did find it tiring, and once I had finished I laid down to read, and ended up snoozing for what might have been a full hour.

  At around 5pm I was semi alert again, and at that point I should have gone to finish washing the clothes I had left soaking since getting out of the shower. I did consider it for a few seconds, but swiftly decided I just didn't feel like it. I guess I was coming down from the earlier high of the walk. It was a bit stupid, but I was also increasingly looking forward to eating again. I managed to hold myself in check until 6pm.

  I watched the BBC 6 O'clock news while eating a "Cajun chicken" ready meal. It was actually quite nice, but it didn't seem to take long before I had cleared the plate (or actually the plastic container it came in). I knew it was a bad idea (it seems it wasn't) to have a dessert of ice cream, and once again, because I was getting near the bottom of the tub, I ate the whole lot - approximately a serving and a half by the size I try to call a single serving.

  From then on it was TV until 10pm. I read in bed for a bit, but I think I was probably fast asleep by 10:30pm. It was another night when I woke up at about 1am (possibly 2am) and couldn't get back to sleep again for an hour. I am not sure why I had had that insomnia. It seemed to start as just being unable to get comfortable in bed after coming back from having a pee, but for some of the time I did seem to feel wide awake.

  I think I may have had several dreams in the last hours of sleep, but only fragments of one seem to have left any memories. In this one part remembered dream I seemed to live in a fairly big house that had a left and right front door. The door on the right was for "best". I seemed to have had a party, and the door on the left was used, and the latched was locked off. I had to remember to reset that so it could lock when I had said goodbye to the last guest.

  I then went indoors and noticed that next door had a bonfire going in their back garden. I have no idea of the significance of that, if indeed it had any significance. I feel sure some time passed before I decided it was time for bed. I said good night to my younger sister who was doing something in one of the back rooms. She said to hold on a minute, and she too would go to bed, and I could turn out all the lights at the bottom of the house.

  At this point something ultra weird happened. I saw my sister start going up the stairs, and she was followed by an identical twin who had not existed until that time. Both had exactly the same face, but were wearing different clothes. I have a feeling I was not surprised by this in the dream, and all the surprise happened after the dream had ended, seconds later, as I was waking up. I could not imagine what it might mean - if indeed it meant anything at all.

  There was good and bad news when I got up. As usual I went for a pee, and then weighed myself. I did not like the results. About 15 or 20 minutes later I went to the toilet again, and this time I did a bit more pee, and also a medium small poo. I ten weighed myself again. It seems that my ravenous appetite after the walk was probably responsible for putting on weight, instead of taking it off. I was 600gm heavier than yesterday morning !

  Now the odd thing is that my blood glucose measurements were not only close to each other, but fairly good too. The Contour meter read 7.2mmol/l, and I was very happy with that. The GlucoRX meter read a bit higher at 7.6mmol/l, but still pretty good. The Contour Plus Meter did not go off the deep end this morning, and it's reading of 7.9mmol/l was almost very good. The new GlucoFix meter excelled itself with a wonderful reading of 6.7mmol/l. I think I am learning to love that new meter even if it is inaccurate - but at least it is wrong in the right direction !

  After my usual post writing rest I had to do something about the laundry I have left soaking. I very much doubt I will be able to finish it because I want to have the full shave, shampoo and shower this morning, and still have time to relax before another walk in the park. This time my goal is The Jolly Farmers for my usual two pints of Guinness before walking home again. It is possible I will be walking home in the rain, but that may not be so bad. There is less of a possibility that there could be rain as I walk to the pub. It may be a slightly shorter walk because I am going to see if I can get the copies of The Metro from the hospital. If they don't have any it will be an even longer walk as I have to detour to Ladywell station.