I had three plans for yesterday in the morning. The first was to have a good shower, I had been very apprehensive about it because I thought I must have got sun burnt being out in the hot midday sun the day before. I hadn't felt any discomfort from any sun burn, but I hadn't realised how burnt the area above my right knee had got last Monday until I had a shower. The hot water felt like red hot lava as it fell on the burnt area. It turned out that I hadn't burnt the previous day, and while some slightly cooler water might have been nice, considering the warm weather, no areas of my body complained about that hot water.

  My second plan was to go to the corner shop to see if they had the latest New Scientist magazine in. They did, and it was far more convenient than having to walk all the way to the Sainsbury's Local shop near Catford station. I really missed the convenience of the corner shop while it was closed because of Covid-19 regulations. I did have a possible third plan, but I knew it was very tentative, and subject to a host of pros and cons. It was to go for a walk in the park, or even further afield. In the end I stayed in, and did some sweaty work at home.

  The first bit of sweaty work was hand washing some clothing. By 11am it seemed very unlikely that there would be a thunderstorm at midday - there was hardly a cloud in the sky. I put my washing out to dry just before midday. The revised forecast than suggested there might be a thunderstorm at 1pm, but there still was hardly a cloud in the sky. With the washing done I turned to my other current hobby - gardening. I shifted some soil around to make room for a few more pots.

  I think I filled two more 12 inch round pots with potting compost. I seeded them with spring onion seeds. That doesn't seem to be that much work. I am sure I filled one more pot with some flower seeds, but I can't seem to picture it. Maybe I was only considering doing the third pot. One thing I definitely considered for the future was to shift a lot of the cat litter infused (both grey clay, and red grit) mud, that is also full of rubble, from the area of the lawn nearest the house, and use it to raise the height of the path running down the garden. That path would seem to have subsided a lot over the years.

  It would be quite hard work, but that sticky, gritty soil might be ideal as a bed for the paving stones that make up the path. It will be quite hard work. First I'll have to lift the paving stones, and then shovel the top layer of the so far unused bit of lawn, over the where the path is. Then I'll have to tamp it all down, and try to get it level before putting the paving stones down again. I think I'll do it on a cooler day sometime in the future !

    I filled in a lot of the afternoon just reading New Scientist. There is a fascinating article in it about how Covid-19 is frequently not the respiratory tract illness that it was thought to be. The article says doctors reckon that it can cause 6 different versions of symptoms. These can include directly affecting the brain to cause depression. I'll have to read it again, and make notes before describing it any more, but there was one interesting thing that was worth remembering first time (although I still need to double check it). If I recall correctly it referred to something like I experienced. It suggested that those who suffered it as like a 3 day 'flu, complete with aching joints, and fever, would probably not suffer from other, more serious effects. I have heard many people say that like me, they had something very much like a bad case of 'flu, that only differed from 'flu by only lasting 3 or 4 days, and we all had it back in February. Since then no one has had any other bad symptoms, although many have noticed some minor effects on their health - minor enough to be ignored.
   By dinner time it was time to crack open a can or 4 of booze to (initially) wash down my dinner. I think I bought a 4 pack of these special 130 year anniversary cans of San Miguel lager from Tesco. San Miguel is one of those lagers that is neither good nor bad. It has a reasonable, but not exciting flavour. It's biggest downside is that it's sugar content may be a bit higher than some beers.

  My lunch had a been a triple pack of sausage egg and bacon sandwiches from Tesco. It was a bit of an extravagance, but it did serve as a good test subject for some Encona brand scotch bonnet, super hot, chilli sauce. I found it was definitely possible to put too much on a sandwich ! Dinner was a slightly more healthy grilled skinless chicken with sliced tomatoes (and a bit more hot chilli sauce !). In theory it should have been healthy, but maybe 4 cans of lager offset that. Maybe eating two Pink Lady apples as dessert was not a good idea.

  It was obvious it was cooling down a lot when it was time for bed. Last night I closed the window to stop it getting too cool. That left my bedroom feeling hot and stuffy. I got to sleep easily enough, but after a few hours I woke up feeling hot and sweaty. Rather than open the window I put the fan on low, and managed to fall asleep again. A few more hours passed and I woke up again feeling chilly this time. So I turned the fan off again. Once again I managed to get to sleep again, and when I woke up next time, sometime after 4am, I felt neither hot nor cold, but I felt really creaky where the fan had been blowing on my earlier.

  When I finally got up I didn't feel that great for many different reasons. The stiff joints eased up fairly quickly once I got moving, and I felt much better after a visit to the toilet (and don't think I went at all yesterday).  Alhough it didn't really have any bearing on how I was feeling, my blood glucose was annoyingly high this morning (9.0mmol/l). I think, as I suggested in an earlier paragraph, it was a combination of the two apples and 4 cans of sweet lager. To a limited extent it doesn't matter provided I have a good idea how it happened.

  Despite my aches and pans I went out relatively early this morning. Once I got moving I felt basically OK. My mission was to go to Aldi, and to hope that being early, and on a wet morning, it would be quiet, and it was. I was lucky that I could do the entire shopping trip during a lull in the rain. I was only after 2 items in Aldi. One item was a fixed want, and the other might have been different, but in the end was the same.


  I can't recall if it was the last time, or the time before, when I noticed Aldi were selling cases of Löwenbräu beer. It is ages since I have seen any, and I thought it time to reacquaint myself with it. I had an idea that I liked it. I even have a   Löwenbräu glass in my collection. I wanted to buy two packs so I could put each in it's own bag, and be balanced as I walked home. I considered buying a different beer, but while there were other to choose form, it seemed like they might be different weights (I think Carling might have been in packs of 18). Now I just hope I like Löwenbräu as much as I think I once did - and that it is not brewed in some northern beer factory to a different recipe !

  Before I sat down to write this I fancied some breakfast, and because it was a week after it's sell by date (possibly use by date) I treated myself to a steak. It was very tasty, and went down a treat. I was just starting to write when the phone rang. It was my friend who rambles on like some old codger - Lee. This morning was no exception. He wanted to ask me something, but went off on so many tangents that I doubt I ever got a chance to fully answer his question. He rambled on for maybe 2 hours.

 It is now almost 1pm, and obviously too late to speculate what I might do this morning because the morning has been and gone. Now I have to think what I am going to do this afternoon. Earlier on I did think I might go for an afternoon walk, but I am now thinking that is unlikely because I may not have time. I definitely want to re-read that New Scientist article about new findings for Covid-19. I'll either take some notes, or more likely get a high lighter pen out to mark the most interesting bits so I can explain them later to others.

  I think I'll let the garden look after itself today. If nothing else it has had a good enough watering from the rain. Earlier on I was looking at my front room/living room. I had been trying to keep it tidy, but I have left quite a few things laying around in there. I don't propose clearing it up, but to resume a rainy day project involving transferring old VHS tapes to digital. It is a long tedious process, and that is why I abandoned everything many weeks ago. Today might be a good day to try and digitise another tape.