Monday 6th April 2020

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Monday 6th April 2020

08:37 BST

Yesterday was like a summers day. The sun was out all day, the temperature rose to 20° C, and the breeze was light.

Today was supposed to start with rain, but the first rain has only just started, and it may only be less than an hours worth of drizzle. The latest revision to the forecast actually shows drizzle for 11am, but by midday we might get sunny spells that last until the end of the day. The afternoon temperature should reach 17° C. Tomorrow should see the return of sunshine except for the last few hours of daylight which will only feature sunny spells. The afternoon temperature should be back to a very pleasant 19° C.

Yesterday was the sunniest and hottest day of the year - so far - and I missed the best of it. The reason I missed it is because I had to wait in for a delivery from Amazon that I was actually expecting today. It didn't arrive until about 5pm, and by then it seemed too late to go out for the long walk in the hot sunshine that I had been looking forward to. Perhaps I wouldn't have enjoyed the walk because my left heel, that I seemed to bruise on my walk on Saturday, was still fairly sore yesterday. It would probably have been OK when wearing my proper walking boots, but I ended up resting it for an extra day.

Yesterday was one of those days where I seemed to be quite busy, but I am not sure why. I did end up doing some quite useful stuff, but it feel unlikely that it used up that much time. It certainly didn't include any snoozes because I didn't want to miss that ring on my doorbell to say my parcel had arrived. It also didn't include much time for eating either. I think I had "brunch" rather than breakfast or lunch. It was simply some grilled bacon - grilled on top of some sliced white onion. I thought the two might go well together, but somehow they didn't.

The main thing I did yesterday was to take the glass top off the dining table, and clean and polish both sides of it. I don't know how I managed it, but I missed a small area. That was mildly annoying, but it does provide an interesting contrast of how filthy it was before I cleaned the rest of it. With the glass top set aside, I could remove the stand (or legs, or whatever) for cleaning - possibly a job for today - and start to clean the carpet under where the table was standing.

I knew what to expect, but it was worse that thought - a lot of old mouse droppings. I thought I had cleared out the worst last year, but with the table out of the way it was obvious there was still a lot under some stuff that had fallen behind the table. After throwing away some contaminated stuff, including an OS map (which was annoying - I love my map collection), and giving the carpet a triple hoovering, it all looks fairly clean again - or it did until I moved a set of plastic drawers. A mouse or two had got under those drawers, and not only were there more mouse dropping, but a lot of blue husks. The blue was supposed to be the poison on mouse bait grains. Maybe it worked eventually, but the amount there suggested it wasn't a very effective poison.

It felt satisfying to have done that cleaning up, and there was an added bonus. I found my old Philips flash gun. I knew it had to be in that area somewhere. Having found it I had to give it a very good clean using isopropol alcohol to remove a film of nicotine, plus other greasy dirt, and almost certainly "mouse by products". With the outside cleaned I then had to clean the inside - specifically the battery compartment where the 20+ year old batteries were starting to leak. Amazingly that had caused little corrosion, and I managed to clean it up quite well. There are still a few green spots where they are difficult to get at, but the batteries now make good contact.

That flash gun is fairly sophisticated, in a primitive sort of way. It is designed for manual setting in conjunction with a manually set camera - it pre-dates digital camera by many years. One useful feature is that it is able to quench a flash early, and so not discharge the storage capacitor completely. This means it is possible to take several pictures in quick succession without waiting for it to charge again. I tried it on my old Canon EOS 300D digital camera, and after a few shots to get the feel of it, I found it to be perfectly usable. I now seem to have four flashguns in good working order - and nowhere to take photos until the lockdown ends, and the pubs re-open.

Last night I had my last kebab dinner for a while. I may consider some alternative takeaway during the week, but I am going to give kebabs a rest for now. Last night it was the "special chicken kebab". As well as the grilled chicken there was grill peppers, tomatoes and mushroom. I didn't fancy eating all of it cold on this occasion, and I picked out the grilled meat and vegetables, and gave them a couple of minutes in the microwave before adding the cold salad on top of the now hot meat and vegetables. It was rather better than eating it cold.

It was about 9pm last night when I sent Angela a message that said "sending you a cyber hug and cuddle. Sleep well, and sweet dreams". It transpired that she didn't read it until this morning. It was maybe 10pm when I took a book to bed, and read for half an hour or so. I then went through the silly process of thrashing about seemingly unable to get to sleep for what felt like ages, but may have been less than 20 minutes. After 3 and a bit hours of solid seeming sleep I woke up, and then it seemed to take an hour to get back to sleep again.

At around daybreak I got up, and did most of my usual routine, and maybe if it had been sunny I might have stayed up, but I went back to bed. It didn't happen very quickly, but I fell asleep again for some unknown time. My timing for waking up must have been controlled by the supernatural because a few minutes after waking up, and blinking the sleep out of my eyes, my phone started to ring. It was Angela.

Angela didn't mention my message from the previous night, but it seemed to have a good effect. Angela was walking to work, and we spoke for 10 or so minutes while she walked. There was a warmth in her voice that I had not heard for a while. It was wonderful to talk to her, and it lifted my spirits a lot. It also lifted my spirits to hear a bit of inside information from the hospital where Angela works. Although she could not quote any particular numbers, one way they are keeping their spirit up in the hospital is to circulate details of their successes. If the news is still presenting very negative figures, hospital admissions, and deaths, they get to hear more useful stuff in hospital - stuff like discharge rates. Obviously there are deaths, but it would seem that they are discharging loads of recovered people each day.

This morning any opinion is biassed because of hearing from Angela, but I do seem to feel quite good. My temperature remains very stable - after 5 days of reading approx every three hours during the day, it would be easy to spot an anomaly. My blood glucose seems to be going down again, and I have had some nice low readings before dinner time (and also an hour or so after dinner). Now that pollen levels are being shown as medium to high, when everyone else suffers, my hay fever seems to be in retreat. Even my left heel feels like it is 97% healed this morning. Overall I feel pretty good.

I have had many plans for today, but I am unsure what I will actually do. The first plans were based on earlier weather forecasts that said there would be rain for most of the morning. I thought that maybe that would make the queues outside Tesco short enough to make queuing to get in less annoying. Although we have had some drizzle, we have not had enough rain for that plan to be workable. I may still go and have a look. Plan B was to go for a walk in the park, and this time try to get to 2 metres away from Angela if she is in the park at lunchtime. Having now spoken to Angela, I feel less need to do that, but maybe tomorrow, when it should be warm and sunny, I might go for it. I definitely need to get to a shop to buy more Diet Coke, and I might combine it with a walk in the park. Before all that I need a wash. I was interrupted writing this by another rambling call from Lee, and it is now very late in the morning, and I still have not had a shower !