Apart from the first and last hour of the forecast, today should feature full sunshine, and that should raise the afternoon temperature to 31° C. It seems we will have a hot and dry day. Tomorrow may feature full sunshine all day long, but contrary to earlier forecasts, when something like 34° C was predicted, the latest prediction for tomorrow is only 29° C.

  Yesterday was quite a good day, but it also brought hardships because of my very high, and getting dangerous, blood glucose. Trying to fast was the worst hardship. I did manage to get myself out for a walk in the park, and that may have helped a bit, but not enough.

  It was a bit annoying to get up and find I had to fast to help get my blood glucose down to more sane figures. It was not helped by knowing I had lots of yummy food in the fridge and cupboard, that I was looking forward to. Fortunately most of it should have a shelf life or at least a few days, and much of it far longer (like the ice cream I bought and dare not eat at the moment).

  Oh well, I suppose I was looking for a good reason to go out and stretch my legs, and that is what I did, but first of all I had to have a shower and wash my hair. I supposed I didn't have to, but I did feel a bit more human, and more civilised after it. The downside was that after my shower I put some laundry in to soak in one of my big buckets in the bath. Of course I never got around to finishing the job, despite limiting how much had to be done, and it is blocking the bath this morning. One of my first jobs will be to finish that job.....or go out for a walk protected only by a squirt of deodorant !

  I imagined two things yesterday. One was that I was going to feel OK for a much longer walk than I actually did, and the other was that I would feel so tired and aching that I would barely be able to finish what I started. Reality, as it often does, came down in the middle of the two, and apart from one ache I seemed to be quite OK. I have to admit it was not really a taxing walk - just home to Ladywell and back.
  Of course I took a camera with me - my Nikon D3200 - and although I did not see a lot to photograph, I did take half a dozen snaps that I thought worth showing here. This first picture is of a tree that is just inside the park. It seems to have a very strange top. Depending on imagination, sobriety, and many other factors, if you let your eyes relax you can see different things at the top of the tree. I think one of my first things I saw was a fish leaping over the tree. I can still sort of imagine that even in the cold light of the morning. The other thing, which I can't seem to picture now, is a dinosaur sitting in the tree.
  One early discovery was this posh looking, but now with a very saggy bottom, chair. It was sitting behind a tree, and not easily visible unless you crossed the grass, and was walking along the fence by the river. It is possible the chair has been fly-tipped, but I would have thought if the chair is as expensive as it seems to be to me, it would have been worth getting mended. My other, very left wing, theory, is that it had been left behind from a porno film shoot. Don't ask me why I should think that !!!!
  Don't ask me what this shrub is with it's spiky purple flowers. I know it is common on the river bank, and I should try and look it up, but I would probably forget the name by the time I wanted to use it again. I ave also no idea what type of bee is collecting nectar from the flour. All I know is that it has orange stripes instead on yellow.

  I have just spent 2 minutes researching bees, and with a 15% probability I am going to say it is a miner bee. You can make up your minds by having a look here (but beware, some of it is about North American bees) https://chartfarosh.com/bee-identification-chart/ - there are many other websites to check if you are so inclined.
  Another unknown ! Apart from the yellow face, and long and slim beak, this could be a crow stretching it's wings, and possibly drying them if it had been washing in the river. It is not a great picture, but when I examined the original it seemed the bird does not have webbed feet, and so not a bid that swims in the river (see, or lake). The long thin beak does suggest it might probe in sediment of shingle for small molluscs. I just wish I could have got a picture of it from the other side so it was better lit by the sun. I was almost shooting into the sun, albeit hidden by the trees, when I took this snap.
  One problem of not going to the park on a very regular basis (almost once a day a few years ago) is that you miss changes taking place. I was surprised to see that there were barriers around the first bit of almost level ground by the Ladywell Road entrance to the park. Initially this was a mystery, but once I knew what it was all about, it made sense. The last picture in this series explains it all.....well, mostly.
  I take no joy from this view, it's not my thing at all, but basically it seems the skate park, mostly used by kids on BMX bikes, and not skates or skateboards, is being refurbished. A week or two, whenever it was I last walked through the park, the whole enclosure had been stripped bare, but now it seems the ramps and stuff are being re-instated, and in a safer way. The main change is the two big ramps at either end now have a back wall, with a rail to hold on to. The original design allowed you to fall off the back. I can imagine that a few injuries persuaded the council to make it safer. Shame really - many, many years ago, when I was a kid with a 20" wheel bike (hand built by my dad) it was the danger of some things that made it exciting !
  This banner on some fencing around an area near the kiddies play park, probably explains what is happening best. I am not sure if "geothermal heating" is very exact. I thought that was where they drilled holes thousands of feet deep to find hot rocks, and circulated water through them. In this case what they are doing is like a fridge in reverse. They will extract a small amount of heat from the water a couple of hundred feet below the surface, and then like a fridge, it will be compressed to come out hotter (like the evaporator on the back of most fridges). Ultimately they could end up freezing the subsurface water, but if there is enough circulating down there then that would never happen. It feels amazing that they can extract enough heat to heat he whole of Lewisham Hospital, but seems their aim.

  I was out for just 5 minutes short of an hour (a fact that I did not realise until well after I got home, or I might have walked extra to bring it up to a nice neat full hour). In that time I only covered 1.428 miles at a very poor 1.554 mph. On the other hand, it was probably a good distance because I didn't suffer any bad aches and pains. The worst thing was like I had a bit of grit in my left shoe, just under the middle of the foot. When I got home I checked, and that was a tiny bit of chaff. I don't know why that felt so bad (although it was still several notches less than being bad enough to stop and take my shoe off outside).

  When I got home I felt ravenous. I had deliberately skipped any form of breakfast because my blood glucose was so high. It was still very high, but improved when I checked after getting home. I considered I had done my best, and gave in to eat a triple pack of Tesco assorted cheese sandwiches. They should have been delicious, but I will admit my pleasure was spoiled by some guilt. Had I not eaten I don't think I would have felt comfortable enough to have gone through the pictures I took, and selected those I would edit to show here.

  After eating I started on the photos, but with only 7 to do (plus the tracking data showing my time, distance and speed) it was not that long before I was laying on my bed deeply relaxing - which translates into snoozing ! It was at this time I should have gone back to the laundry I had left soaking, but while it may not have been a long walk, it still left me feeling I didn't want any more "exercise" yesterday.

  The next trauma was dinner time. There were many things I could eat, and many I would have really loved to eat, but I still had to do my best to eat sensibly enough to try and get my blood glucose down to something more sane. I had to rule out the ice cream I wanted to eat, as well as some Angela cake that I really should not have bought in the first place. What I did eat was some German "frikkadelen" meat balls - grilled and served with a good squirt of (alleged) Heinz zero sugar tomato ketchup. Somewhere in all this eating I also finished off a half eaten packet of beef and horseradish flavour crisps. If the packet was not already open, there was a tiny chance I might have resisted opening those crisps.

  Writing about food is making me feel hungry. Just to rub salt in the wound, I can smell frying bacon on the breeze. It could be coming from a neighbour, or possibly the school kitchen just the other side of the road from me !

  I think I can dismiss most of yesterday evening by saying I watched TV, and didn't eat any more. Once again I can't remember when I turned the TV off, and went to bed. I had thought I could spend half an hour reading in bed, but it was very obvious I was feeling too sleepy for that. I turned out the light, and a minute later I had turned off being awake ! I think I can remember getting up once or twice for a pee, and I have patchy memories of a dream.

  The dream was set in a pub which might have been in Catford, although for some reason I think was actually in Southend. I was in the pub with maybe no more than 3 or 4 friends, although one I would not call a friend in real life - she was just someone I often see at gigs. We were sitting at a table, and the friend who is not actually a friend, got out her purse and started rummaging through the coins in it. She said we need some chilli flavour "Whotsits", but she could only afford one small bag. I gave her a pound note (possibly a £10 note), and told to go and buy enough for everyone.

  There was a bit more to that dream, or maybe it was another dream set in the same, or a similar pub. I had my camera with me, and I was about to take some pictures, from a distance using one of my bigger zoom lenses, of someone I know interviewing someone, a musician, I sort of knew. By the time I got my camera out of the bag, put the right lens on, and turned the camera on, they had disappeared, and it looked like I was trying to take pictures of two men who had sat in their place.

  Those two men did not seem happy, and I felt I had to explain I wanted to take pictures of the two people who were sitting where they were. They grudgingly said that they did remember my real subjects, but they had gone through a nearby door to another part of the pun because it was quieter there.

  I suppose I am lucky to have remembered that much dream. Even as I was describing it I could feel the memory slipping away. I don't even remember getting, and eating my chilli flavour Whotsits ! I think one or both dreams happened after I had got up at about 4.30am for a pee, and because it was fairly light outside, struggled to get back to sleep again.

  When I got up properly I went for a pee, and tried to have a poo. It felt like, and still feels like I need only a small pee, and it is quite annoying. The good news, and it is the only good bit of news, is that I seemed to have lost 400gm of weight since yesterday morning. That is quite disappointing considering I was trying to reduce how much I ate, and avoiding the worst things I could eat.

  The next disappointment was when I checked my blood glucose. I did manage to squeeze about half a dose of Mounjaro out yesterday, and I hoped that would see me good for today, but not yet. This morning two of my blood glucose readings are only on the edge of danger, and the other is as bad as the day before. I got readings of 10.5 (awful), 9.4 and 9.4mmol/l. The latter two readings might have been almost OK if they had been a one off reading, but as part of a series it is obvious I have to try even harder to get my blood glucose down again. Once again I am skipping breakfast, and the more I think about it, the more ravenous I feel.

  Today I really ought to force myself out for an even longer walk, but there is a catch, or maybe it is a double catch. I am unsure if it is going to be today, but Yodel should be delivering another package from China. Unfortunately their web site only carries very limited information. It mostly pushes me to install an app on my phone which I will not do. I can't see why they can't provide the information I need on their web site. At the moment it says my package has left Hatfield - which is not exactly local, but seems to be where it is leaving for delivery. Apparently, "We'll give you a 2 hour delivery window on the morning of your delivery". The morning is nearly over, but Evri say the same, and if they do notify me, it can be in the middle of the afternoon. I feel reluctant to go out today until I get better information about my delivery. If it is coming from Hatfield, approximately 44km away, it may not arrive until early evening. In the meantime, I still have washing soaking in it's big bucket, cluttering up the bathtub. Perhaps finishing that laundry will be my only achievement today.