08:35 GMT

  Yesterday was cold and dry, and it was often bright and sunny. The morning started at 2° C, and the afternoon reach 6° C, but the sunshine made it feel warmer.   My thermometers said this morning started at 4° C, and maybe closer to 5° C. One thing the forecast got right is the rain. It is definitely wet now, and by midday we could see heavy rain. Today the highest temperature is forecast for 4pm when it may be a mere 8° C. It looks like the night, and tomorrow morning will be dry. There may even be sunny spells tomorrow morning. The afternoon high may be 9° C, but from 3pm light rain may resume.

  Yesterday was a very good day ! There were some negative aspects, but the positive easily outweighed them. The day included a walk and a hug...no, two hugs ! As usual this will expanded further down the page.

  Yesterday morning I seemed to feel fairly OK, although my weigh was up a bit, and my blood glucose was much too high (tickling the bottom edge of dangerous). The cure for some of these, and other things, was to go for a walk. It was cold out, but it was bright and sunny. It could have been a very pleasant walk, but although improving, my legs still felt stiff, and yesterday was the longest walk I had attempted since coming out of hospital - all the way to The Jolly Farmers pub.
   Despite the change of name to a singular Farmer we still call it by it's old name of Jolly Farmers ! As well as my legs feeling stiff, I also had some problems with stiff and painful ankles. That would come to the fore on the walk home. These aches and pains should ease as I exercise more to get all my leg muscles back into form after so many weeks laying on hospital beds.
  Once I arrived at the pub, and went in, an unusual thing happened that was rather wonderful. Ayse, my favourite barmaid (seen pulling a pint in the picture above) rushed out from behind the bar and gave me a very nice hug. I know that she was aware that I had a faulty heart valve before I went into hospital, but I am not sure if anyone (Kevin maybe) let her know I was in hospital for so long. She said I was looking great, and it was good to have me back in the pub.

  In racing to get to the good bit I have omitted the walk to the pub - as part described in pictures....
  It was bright and sunny, and I had my pocket sized Nikon camera with me. I was not sure I could walk non stop all the way to the pub. If I gritted my teeth I may have just made it, but it was easier to take a few short breaks to take a few pictures. One of the first things I saw when crossing the river was the famous "upside down" duck.
  I didn't have to go too far into the park before I saw my first signs of spring - these crocuses. The flowers have not opened yet, but they will very soon.
  Once I had walked far enough into the park I could get a clear view of the sky to the north. It was a lovely blue with a few fluffy clouds. Had it been 20° C or more warmer, it might have been a summers day.
  Sea (or maybe herring) gulls are a regular sight on the playing fields. Maybe they are colour blind and mistake the grass for sea, but there were a lot of gulls on it yesterday (this is just a single example). At time it sounds like being at the seaside.
  This picture of a sign by one of the hospital entrances was not taken with enough care, but it shows one important thing. In August I have an appointment with a Gastrologist in the Green Zone - a part of the hospital I have never visited before. I thought that maybe it might be a long walk through the hospital to find it, but it seems that if I cut through the car park entrance (that I used many times when I walked Angela back to her office) I can enter the Green Zone via the maternity entrance. That will mean not having to double back on myself if I was to go via the Orange zone.

  Back to the pub: I may have only been a a regular on a Wednesday, but I seemed to have earned the reputation of a "regular", and as such I recognise, and I am recognised by a selection of people in the pub. I know very few names, but it is nice to walk in and be greeted by "good afternoon" or similar, and to respond in kind. I sort of feel at home in there, and after the hug that Ayse gave me, it felt more than doubly good to be back.

  I decided to to be sensible and just have two pints of Guinness on this occasion. When buying my second pint I told Ayse to take for a brandy for herself to possibly drink later. She drank it a few minutes later. One of the things that somehow makes Ayse so endearing is her occasional rants. They are not nasty rants, and very rarely are ever aimed at anyone in the pub. I have no idea what she was ranting about to some men at the far end of the bar, but when she had finished I called her over towards where I was sitting at a table, and told her that one of the reasons I had walk to the pub was to hear her most entertaining rants. That earned me another hug. It must have been my lucky day (and I am sure was nothing to do with it be St Valentines day).

  If it wasn't for my ankles being really stiff and increasingly painful as I walked home, I could almost have danced home. The hugs were obviously the cherry on the cake, but the cake was delicious as it was. Despite feeling quite uncomfortable when I got home, I still felt on top of the world - and maybe 3/4rs of it was being able to walk there and back with no chest pains, and with only a few rests on the way.

 I used slightly different route to get to, and come home from the pub. Added together the whole walk, there and back, was roughly 1.5 miles. With practice, it should not be long before I can do that distance non stop, but I was glad to be able to sit down in the pub for a couple of hours.

  On the way to the pub I managed 1.9mph - which is pretty low. It might have been a fraction higher if I had paused the tracker every time I stopped for a short breather - although I did remember to do it when taking a few of the photos.

  Coming home I only managed a shameful 1.667mph. That was the result of the ankle pain. It was also a slightly longer walk because I walked a little north before I walked south to home. I wanted to see what was happening in the graveyard, and therapeutic gardens of St Mary's Church.
  In the grassy triangle between the river and paths, were a sea of snowdrops. This is a semi close up of a selection from the whole lawn which was covered with snowdrops.
  Seen on the river bank soon after I entered the park again was this female blackbird. They are often seen at ground level looking for food (probably worms or insects), and that is why I feel sure that this is a blackbird - even though it is a dull brown. Once again, I think that it is only the cock that is glossy black, but I must admit I have done no recent research to validate that idea.
  Here's the same bird from a better angle.
  One bird that blackbird hen could be mistaken for is a starling. Fortunately I saw a couple on the playing field, and was able to get a snap of one for comparison. Although the blackbird hen has some faint speckling, it is far more obvious on the starling. Both are a very similar size.

  I was very happy to get home and take the weight off my feet. I was also looking forward to some lunch. I had an "all day breakfast" pack of three sandwiches I was particularly looking forward to. It was great to finally sit down and eat them. I seem to have a slight gap in my memory at this point. I am pretty sure I had a lie down and a snooze after that slightly late lunch. If I didn't do that, I know it is what I had intended to do.

  Once I had rested enough I went back to the kitchen to prepare my dinner. I might also have had a couple of little Asian cakes (part of my order from the Asian food wholesaler). My dinner was to be "rustic" roasting root vegetables with three pork sausages. I did not trust the dodgy time on my mini oven, and used the timer on my mobile phone to keep track of the cooking time (plus I could see how long the cooking was without having to go into the kitchen to check).

  When dinner time came around (about 6pm) I tucked into my freshly cooked dinner. I must admit that while the root vegetables were done, as were the sausages, both would have been better if they had stayed in the oven for long enough to get a hint of charring. I'll probably have more of those roasted root vegetables tonight, and this time I will give them an extra 10 or 15 minutes.

  Not a lot happened after eating dinner. There was not a lot on TV, but I found a few things to watch until about 8.30pm. it felt late than that, and so I went to bed. I thought I should have felt tired, but it seems I was not as tired as I thought, and it took ages to fall asleep. I am unsure when it was when I fell into a deep sleep. I think I may have had a few brief periods of sleep before falling asleep properly.

  I know I woke up to go to the toilet several times of more during the night, but I can almost ignore those times. What I don't know was if I had any dreams.  have a very tantalising idea that I did have dreams, but none seems to have left a memory. I expected at least one to include a repeat of my hugs by Ayse, but sadly, if that was included in a dream, I have no memory of it.

  It all feel a bit vague, but I think I may have had an extra short sleep after first waking up this morning. I do remember that in the small hours I had one, or maybe two, quite large pees. I definitely had a large one after getting up. The good thing about these large pees was that when I weighed myself I found that I had only gained 100gm this morning, and that is such a small amount that I may have even lost that when I think I had a pee just before eating breakfast.

  My breakfast was two packets of instant noodles. My blood glucose, probably thanks to the walking yesterday, was much better than yesterday morning. This morning the best reading was 7.8mmol/l, or just a tad above my self set target. The other two meters read 8.1 and 8.6mmol/l, and that is not too bad. I thought it low enough to warrant a double help of instant noodles. One packet was rice noodles - rather thin, fairly transparent, and not very nice.

  I thought I had tried to avoid rice noodles when I made the big order with the Asian food wholesaler, but naybe I was letting some of the interesting flavours side track me. The one I had this morning was supposed to be seafood flavour, but I found it to be almost tasteless. The other pack was black garlic flavour (wheat) noodles. They were rather nice, but maybe only as an occasional distraction.

  Before I opened the curtains and saw what a disgusting, cold and wet day it was, I thought I would probably force myself out for at least a short walk today - possibly as short as to the local shops. The reality is there is no way I am going out in that icy cold rain of such a dull and miserable day. There are a few things I shall do instead.

  The trains are running today, and Jodie may brave the weather to join me for a beer tastings session this afternoon - although if it is going to be just Jodie I wonder if I can be bothered, but I guess I will. There are several things to do in preparation for the session. There is the usual ritual of washing and polishing the beer glasses, and maybe giving the kitchen surfaces a wipe down.

   More important is to try and get the old iMac computer working again to play some music. Last week I made some changes to give a bit more hard disk space to the operating system (MX Linux) because it was struggling to do updates. I seem to have made it non bootable. I think I can repair it using a facility called RescaTux - at least I hope I can, or it will mean re-installing the operating system. I had hoped to just upgrade it, but it is probably beyond that now.

   2,360 words today.