08:30 BST

  This morning was another very cold start - just 8° C ! There has been full sunshine for the last couple of hours, but maybe the clouds will gather, and from 10am it will be just sunny spells. The sky is almost clear at the moment, and somehow the idea that it will get cloudy does not feel right, but I guess anything is possible. Once again the afternoon high will be just 16° C, but if the forecast turns out to be correct it will be under a grey sky, and that will probably feel cold. Tomorrow may start a bit warmer, if 10° C can ever be described as warm. The morning should see sunny spells, and the afternoon, full sunshine. That could take the afternoon up to 17° C. That may feel very nice in full sunshine.

    Yesterday was quite a good day, but it did have a sting in it's tail. It involved fresh air and some walking, and that made me feel very hungry. That was the sting, and I fell for it hook line and sinker ! It might possibly inspire something similar, but with less food today......or not !

  After I finished yesterday's writing I had my usual rest, and then I was going to have a shower. I ended up have a much simplified wash using a damp flannel on a few bits of me, but I did have quite a good shave. From then on I relied on fresh clothes and deodorant spray.

  I was definitely going to go out for some sort of walk, and I had one mad idea that I would walk all the way to New Beckenham station, and get the train back to Catford. That never happened. In fact the walk almost never happened at all. My guts felt a bit unstable, but after a few visits to the toilet they seemed to have calmed down. The only fly in the ointment was that I was concentrating on emptying my bowels, and not my bladder. That would have consequences.

  It seems fine to go out in t-shirt and shorts, and I felt perfectly comfortable with that. I took what I thought was my Nikon D3200 camera, but which I later found was actually my Cannon 600D. They look superficially similar, but the main factor was the lens. Apart from the actual fitting, I have identical lenses for both those cameras, and it was the lens that seemed to confuse me. The settings should have been a give away, but I can set those almost by sense of smell these days !

  Before I started out on the walk I had a precautionary spray of GTN (Glyceryl Trinitrate). I had only used that spray once I could feel angina pains coming on, or sometimes if I felt too short of breath. Using it before I started walking meant that I could (hopefully) stop the bad things before they started. The only silly thought was that I may have been wasting the precious spray. That is not really valid because it is on a "as needed" repeat prescription, and I only have to ask for another can. On the other hand there is also the thought that I don't really want to become too reliant on it, but maybe even that is silly.

  I started out walking to Catford Bridge station, and I spent a bit of time "train spotting" there. I don't think I got a photo of any train I didn't already have a good enough photo for. On the other hand, because I don't have a photographic memory, particularly regarding what photos I have taken before hand, it seems safest to photograph all trains, and see if there is anything I need when I get home.
  For some reason I thought that 707014 might be one train I did need a picture of, but when I was home I found I already had it, and had it in it's original South West Trains red livery, as well as the current dark blue Southeastern livery.

  After spending as much as half an hour at Catford Bridge I thought I ought to continue my walk. There was one thing bothering me, and it was that I had a feeling that I was going to need a pee sooner or later. The simple thing to do would have been to walk straight home again, but I came up with a sort of compromise - I would walk home the long way around. That meant walking through the south end of Ladywell Fields, cross the railway using the "curly wurly" bridge (wheeled vehicle friendly with ramps as well as steps), and then head home.

  I walked down the road on the other side of the station, passed the boarded up old ticket office (closed 30 or more years ago), and entered the park through the southernmost entrance. It was not long until I found my first photo subject.
  At first I thought these were crocuses that were flowering 6 months early. I should have got down on my knees for a good close up to help identify what it was. I have a feeling they might be some kind of orchid, but I say that with no sense of conviction.
  One thing I didn't do when taking this, and most pictures, was to pause the tracker on my phone. Not doing so makes it look like I was walking a lot slower than I really was. Any squirrel that poses has to have it's photo taken, and this was an unusual, and rather good pose.
  The same squirrel giving me an angry stare for clicking my camera at him (or her). I must say, that I have never noticed squirrels in the south end of the park before, but I saw quite a few.
  Another picture where I should have also got an extreme close up. I have no idea what this plant is. Previously I have only noticed it, or something very similar, in the River Pool Linear Park, but this was off a secluded path between the river and the railway. The red berries are like peas in a pod, and they do seem to be in some sort of pod. I assume they are inedible even if they do sort of look appealing.
  It was only by chance that I notice movement near the ground and I spotted this small butterfly a Speckled Wood Butterfly. It is a shame I could not get a better picture. Probably the best view would have been one that cast my shadow over it, and I doubt it would have stayed for another microsecond if it was suddenly in shadow.
  Another thing I saw was this new picnic table. There are a couple of others made from just wood in this secluded filed off the main track. This new one was obviously tried out by some posh people who didn't mind leaving a full bottle of M&S Gazpatcho on it. Maybe it was not what they thought they were buying, although I doubt it would have tasted much different to tomato drink.
  This squirrel was sitting on the path. As I got near it ran up a tree, and that sat there gloating at me because there was no chance I could catch it once it was in a tree. For this, and several other pictures, it was handy I had a 200mm zoom lens on my camera.

  Once I got to the footbridge over the railway (the "curly whirly" bridge) I had a choice. I could have extended my walk by going left towards Ladywell, and walked home from there, or I could turn right and head straight home. The building pressure in my bladder suggested going straight home, and that is what I did.
  Last picture, taken just before leaving the park was a bit sad. This pigeon was sitting in the grass, and it was hard to tell if it was just very tired, injured, and maybe dying. Even if it was a minor injury some predator would soon get it if it was unable to move quickly. One possibility is that it has lost one or both feet. I used to believe that the many pigeons you see with a missing foot had lost it because of some sort of anti pigeon gadgets on building, or maybe it was because they stand in their own poop for too long. The real reason is human hair. It gets wrapped around the feet and legs, and cuts of the blood circulation until the limb dies and falls off. Maybe this pigeon could not roost in a tree because it had no feet, and sitting in the grass to rest was all it can do.

  There is another possibility of why this pigeon is like this. We have had some strong winds, and it could be a racing pigeon that has been blown of course, and just needs to rest....although....it is still not a good place to rest, in the middle of a large patch of grass. I decided to give it plenty of space, and used the zoom lens to good advantage to keep as far away as possible.

  My entire walk was just 1.5 miles, but that was a little more than just home to Ladywell and back home again. As mentioned earlier I usually forgot to pause the tracker when I was taking pictures, and so my average speed of 1.57 mph looks rather low. I feel sure that some bit of the walk were at almost double that speed, but without evidence I have to just leave it at that low 1.57 mph.

  It was good to get home because by then my desire for a pee was getting a bit strong, although still short of desperate. Once I was indoors I went straight to the toilet, and when that was finished I went to my bedroom to strip out of my outdoor clothes. While I was stark naked I stepped on the scales, and what I saw was quite pleasing. I should have taken a picture, or recoded it somewhere, because over the course of the rest of the day I would ruin it !

   As much as it sounds like a contradiction, I was not ravenously hungry until after I had had a snack. There were several things I could have had, but two small bags of tomato flavour crisps (which were not very good) and a handful of peanuts was my instant gratification, and seemed to open the flood gates. That is not quite true, and it was more a cumulative thing that caused the damage, and not a flood at all.

  After the snack I transferred the pictures from the camera to my PC, and started selecting and editing. I think it was maybe toward the end of this process that I went down to the kitchen and extracted a half eaten tub of chocolate ice cream from the freeze. I knew this ice cream to contain Sodium Alginate, and that should, and maybe did stop the gut absorbing much of the sugar. With that idea in mind I ate the rest of the tub. That was probably a bad idea.

  Later in the evening I had a proper dinner of a Tesco ready meal. It was their idea of paella. It had been recommended by Michael, but I have a feeling I had tried one before that. last nights was very much as expected. It was nice, but nothing to get excited about. I must admit I scoffed the whole lot (I think it was a single portion, or if not it must have been for two midgets), and I did it without bothering to check the nutrition information. My only hope that all the rice was fairly safe as rice often is, but maybe not in this case.

  I watched a lot of TV last night. There was the news, a couple of Star Treks, and I think I watched both Have I Got News For You and QI. I definitely drank a very large whisky while watching those. It was 11pm when I went to bed, and it seemed too late to do any reading. It also seemed too late to get the heater thermostat adjusted for optimum results. I think I fell asleep very quickly, but by 2am (plus or minus an hour) I woke up feeling too cool, although not actually cold.

  I had a pee, and then quickly reset the thermostat to what I hoped was a better setting. It turned out not to be much better and that demanded more drastic action at about 5am. The trouble may have simply been that this morning was about the coldest morning we have had since the start of the year. So far since I started using the heater at night I have kept it on one single kilowatt, but this morning I switched to 2 kilowatts, and that definitely got my bedroom a lot warmer.

  One thing I did seem to do much of in the night was peeing - both in frequency and quantity. Could this mean my blood glucose was nice and low.. Not on your Nelly ! Yet it wasn't that bad. The Contour meter read 8.3mmol/l, and that is not that bad, but not low enough to be colour coded light green on my spreadsheet (that is for readings between 7.0 and 7.9mmol/l). The GlucoRX meter was actually a bit closer to light green at 8.1mmol/l. Evidently the Sodium Glutinate in the ice cream did help a lot to keep my blood glucose lower.

  My new meter, the GlucoFix, which is usually kind to me had a sort of backfire this morning. The first reading was 9.5mmol/l, and that was so different to the other two I knew it had to be wrong. I put in a fresh test strip. Made sure my finger was clean and squeezed out some fresh blood. This time it gave a far better reading of 8.4mmol/l - a figure I was far happier with.

  While my blood glucose was not that bad, I hoped my weight might not have been too bad as well. Initially it was bad, but while counting out my pills for the day I felt I could do another pee, and after that I weighed myself again. This time I had only put on 300gm. That is not too bad, but the aim was to lose, and not gain, at least 300gm. That was what the walk was all about. It is still coloured coded light blue on my spreadsheet, and that gives me two days of light blue after going below over three weeks of dark green (the next whole amount of kilograms higher).

  One of main reasons for the colour coding of my spreadsheet is so you can see at a glance the ups and downs. Although I don't have to show my spreadsheet to the nurse when I see her tomorrow, I shall show it to her to show that I can reduce my weight, and that getting the Mounjaro weight loss injections is just to grease the process (or something liken that). So far this year I have only lost approximately 4kg - comparing the worst to the current best of the year. Hopefully if Mounjaro works on me in the promised way, I may be able to double or treble that loss by the end of the year.

  Today is a another day when my health indicators, including my blood pressure (116/42) suggest that my health is fairly good(ish) again. The weather seems like it might be reasonably kind, and I may go for another walk. If I can start off with an empty bladder I might even walk further. The biggest trouble is that I don't really fancy a walk today. I'll have my usual rest, and follow that with a shower, and then I'll make a decision to go out, or do some cleaning up in the kitchen (at least do the washing up) or do something else.

P.S. My appointment with the nurse is at 9:40 tomorrow morning, and I will probably not finish writing tomorrow's piece until I am back home again - with news about how I got on at the surgery.