Thunderstorms were forecast for the early hours of this morning. There was some rain, but I heard no thunder. It should have just finished raining as I write this, but since sunrise it has been bright with sunny spells. The next chance of rain is at 4pm, but it is only a 31% chance, and so will probably stay dry. It seems like it might be another nice day. Once again, thunderstorms are forecast for 4am tomorrow morning. Maybe they will happen this time. The current forecast for tomorrow shows lots of rain in the morning. Some may be very heavy, and there could be some thunder and lightning. From 2pm sunny spells may return for the rest of tomorrow.

  Yesterday was quite a good day. I had my first walk in the park for what seems like, and probably was, ages. I didn't have any washing cluttering up the bath, and so I could wash my hair, and have a shower. On top of everything else it was warm, but not hot, and sunny - sunny enough that I wore my Panama sun hat when I went out.

  I guess I was principally going out to meet Margaret, and give her a USB lead to go with the camera I gave her. I have to admit that I am not finding Margaret so interesting these days, and if I hadn't wanted to give her the USB lead I probably would not have bothered to go out. On the other hand I was looking for some sort of reason to go for a walk, and I guess Margaret provided it.

  As usual, when we haven't just bumped into each other while walking in the park, I met her on the bench seat that overlooks the river. I did think of taking my new 500mm zoom lens with me, but it is so heavy and unwieldy that I opted for a much lighter 200mm zoom lens on my lightweight Nikon D3200 camera. There were a couple of shots I attempted that the bigger zoom lens might have made work.
  It was only a few days ago that I had a flyer through my letter box from Lewisham Council to say a new bike hutch was going to be installed around the corner. I was quite surprised to see it was already there when I started walking to the park. I do not see the need for the hutches. All the houses around it are terraced houses with back gardens, and people could keep their bikes in the back garden, or even as I did back in approx 1968, in the hall between the front door and stairs. I guess that is less possible where some these small houses have been converted to have up to 6 micro flats in them.
  Just a reminder of what green grass looks like. I am unsure why sports places are exempt from the hosepipe ban, but they are, and the Ladywell Arena is liberally watered every day or two. I would have thought it would get enough water from athletes sweat.
  One of the joys of sitting down watching the river for a couple of hours, is to see all sorts of wildlife. I got a fair snap of this water rat paddling in the river. Later on I saw it (or another similar rat) happily swimming in a deeper bit of the river.
  It is actually an ugly dog, but on first glance it could be mistaken for a hippo in the river. It looks like the poor thing has a shock collar around it's neck, and so any time the owner wants to discipline the dog it can have a quite large jolt of high voltage applied to it's neck.
  It probably should not have been surprising, but I saw this robin on the exposed rocks and pebbles mid stream. I guess it may have found small water creatures in between the rocks for it's supper.

  I think I stayed sitting with Margaret by the river for a couple of hours, but after that I got a bit bored. I made my excuses and left. My excuse was that I was feeling peckish, and although it was getting on for 4pm, I wanted some lunch. In fact I kept thinking of the Tesco triple pack of cheese sandwiches waiting for me in the fridge.

  The walk to the seat by the river is probably a little less than the walk to the entrance of the hospital. Apart from having to walk over the "curly wurly" bridge over the railway, I found the walk to be quite reasonable considering how out of practise I was. I didn't head home at full speed, but I didn't hang around either. It was nice to get home and demolish the triple pack of sandwiches. Once I had done that I started my dinner cooking. I cooked a whole pack of Tesco Cumberland sausages (I think it was a pack of 8).

  While they cooked I transferred the pictures I had taken to my PC, and then selected what seemed to be the best (although all looked a bit flat), and did the usual editing to straighten up the pictures, and shrink them down to fit on this page. That seemed to take long enough (probably about half an hour in total) and took me up to the time where I could turn on the TV to watch an old Star Trek: The New Generation episode on the Legend channel. It was not a good episode, and I kept getting distracted by other stuff.

 At 6pm my sausages had finished cooking, and had cooled enough to eat without burning myself. I only had 4 of the 8, and I will probably have the other 4 for dinner tonight. I had them with low sugar baked beans. Even with some plain Vanilla ice cream as a dessert, it turned out to be a very low sugar meal.

  After more TV I headed to bed by about 10pm. I was feeling quite sleepy by then, and I didn't fancy reading for long, although I did read a few pages of my next book - Isaac Asimov's first book of the original classic Foundation series. Having finished was the the prequel the night before, I was curious to see what the continuity was like considering the prequel was written 20 or more years after the first book of the original trilogy was written. I did notice a slight change in writing style, but most of it seems to fall into place, and I look forward to reading the rest of the first book of the original trilogy for maybe the third or fourth time !

  I was probably fast asleep around 11pm, although I must admit that is a stab in the dark. I have no idea what the actual time was. I seemed to have an uneventful night apart from waking up earlier in the morning than I liked, and once again going back to bed for an hour or two.

  This morning it seems despite some care, and a bit of exercise, I have actually gained 200gm. That is not much, but it is going in the wrong direction. On the the other hand, my blood glucose was pretty good this morning. The average of the three readings was 6,57mmol/l, and only one day this month has it been lower, and then only by a tiny amount - it was 6.50mmol/l. It seems odd that I evidently had eaten really healthily in terms of my blood glucose, and yet I have gained a little weight.

  Several things are happening today. I have almost finished writing in plenty of time to have a shower. At midday I am expecting a phone call from the Hospital's Enterology department for a pre-assessment for my double dose of trouble (Gastroscopy and Colonoscopy) on the 9th next month. By 1pm I hope to be in The Jolly Farmers where I will be having a session with Kevin - hopefully a not too long and not too mad session. We may be joined by Jodie, and there is an almost zero chance we could see Ayse. I sent her a message via Messenger to say I would be there at 1pm, and that it would be good if she could drop by for maybe as little 5 minutes to give me an update on her partner who has been treated for stomach cancer.

  And right now, I must bring this to a close so I can have a shower, and then get ready for my appointment-by-phone with the hospital. After that I can take a walk in the park to the pub.