Today's forecast has got off to a good start. There was some rain at 6am, and I think there was probably quite a few showers during the night - the garden won't need watering today ! At the moment the sky is very grey, and it looks like it is about to rain, but if the forecast continues to hold it shouldn't rain again until 2pm. From then on the rain may come in waves every alternate hour - maybe. Once again it is going to be a cool day, but I note that for one hour only the temperature could reach 19° C (at 5pm). It will mostly be 17 or 18° C. Tomorrow may be brighter than today, and could include a few sunny intervals. Unfortunately it could also feature some showers dotted through the day. The temperature will probably be similar to yesterday, and not that much different to the day before yesterday. Tomorrow should mark the end of the more awful days, and Saturday may be a nicer day, but still rather poor for summer.

  I thought I had made up my mind that yesterday was going to be such an awful day that I would stay in and do nothing all day. It didn't work out like that. The first thing I did was something I absolutely had to do regardless. It was to finish washing the bath towel that had been soaking in detergent since the previous morning. It was possibly my biggest bath towel,, and washing it by hand was hard work. That may have been a good thing because it got my body moving, and my circulation going, and it warmed me up - maybe too much.

  Time was a bit of a blur yesterday. Nothing with any time component happened, and so I hardly glanced at a clock all day - except as 6pm approached so I could put the TV on to watch Star Trek. This lack of time sense (for most of the day) meant that I have no idea when it was that I went out - something I didn't expect to do. At the time the rain had stopped, and the road outside seemed to have dried.

  I went out soon after having a hot shower, and a close shave. The shave was literally close, and I had it before getting in the shower. I tried out the 1mm shield on my shaver, and with my beard cut that low it was almost invisible from a distance. I'm not sure why I did it. Maybe it was a sort of half way point between shaving all the beard for a fresh start to another beard, and doing nothing. My hot shower, quite soon after hand washing the big bath towel left me feeling hot and sticky - not ideal when you want to be clean and fresh.

  I went to Poundstretcher, and I felt perfectly comfortable in a t-shirt with no coat. It was dry while I was out, and some moderately heavy rain fell as little as 10 minutes after I got home. There were a few specific things I was after - some cheap bleach, plants support sticks, a pale blue fitted sheet, and a couple of door mats. I got the first two, but not the second two. I also picked up a few other odds and sods while I was in there.

  There was one other thing I looked for, but couldn't find. It was Dettox, the spray on cleaner/disinfectant. I find it is excellent for cleaning stuff like paintwork. It cleans well without being foamy. I wanted it for one big job that I had a sudden urge to do. For the last 20+ years (possibly) there had been an old railway poster about a revised timetable on the old North London Line while works were taking place, on the door leading into my kitchen. It is a bit of a historic poster now because the line has changed a lot since it was printed, but it was looking old, dirty, and starting to fray at the edges.

  I took the poster down, and that just emphasised just how grubby that door was. The door faces into the back room/ dining room to be, and cleaning it would be part of the re-rehabilitation of that room. It took a fair bit of scrubbing, and now looks a lot cleaner, but probably needs another scrub to get rid a few discoloured parts of the door. On a day that seemed like it was going to be a very miserable day, it was starting to feel like I was doing useful stuff.

  It enthused me (possibly) to do more work in that back room. I did a litte more tidying, but came up with the problem that there was stuff I was reluctant to throw away (it was stuff I had held back when being, by my own standards, quite ruthless about throwing other stuff away). Nevertheless, I managed to compact some of it down, and managed to squeeze some bits into the completely full cupboard under the stairs - probably in the place where I should keep the hoover.

  The main thing I did was to hoover the carpet. That makes it sounds simple, but it was not. For a start I moved a rug from one side of the room to the other, and there was a lot of stuff under that rug. My limited tidying up had also revealed areas of carpet that hadn't seen the light of day for years. The worst thing, but also the most satisfying when it was done, was pulling loads of human hair (all mine except for some ancient cat hairs) out of the carpet. There are now bits of that carpet that don't look too bad now. In an ideal world I would buy new carpet, but I think that would be an unneeded strain on my budget. I think that some more intense hoovering, plus s couple of rugs to cover the worst bits, and it would look perfectly OK.

  I am trying to think what I ate yesterday. I can recall some naughty snacks, including one very, very naughty one. The latter was half a box of Toffifees (or some silly name like that) - basically a few poshly packaged toffees with bits of nuts in them, and a fudge topping. At least I think that describes them. I bought them from Poundstretcher when I thought the day may have been more miserable. They contained horrendous amounts of sugar, as "sweeties" do, and I still have 6 of the 12 to eat.

  I know that my dinner was grilled cod with salad followed by some apples. What I can't recall is if I had any formal sort of lunch. No, wait a minute....when did I have the nasty Lincolnshire sausages ? I think it probably was yesterday. Oh well, at least dinner was fairly wholesome. I haven't dared checked my weight this morning, but my blood glucose level was about average. It would be a bit much to hope that it would be below average, but to be average must be a good thing considering some of what I ate yesterday.

  I was asleep by 10pm last night. That is rapidly becoming my most popular time to get to sleep now. I slept OK for about three hours, but something odd must have happened in that time because I woke up, and discovered that my right wrist was very painful. It was like it had been sprained or something. I could not bear any weight on my palm because the pain in my wrist was very intense. Oddly enough it didn't hurt if I made a fist, and put pressure on that. The first test of both ways was actually when I went for a wee, and I was leaning towards the wall behind the toilet pan for better aim. Normally I would put my weight on my palms, but that hurt my right wrist, but with my hand in a fist shape it didn't.

  When I got back to sleep I think I had some bizarre dreams. I am not sure if bizarre is the right word because all that happened was possibly, but no segment seemed to follow on from the previous, although there was some sort of continuity of the scenery, or location. I don't think I can say that those dreams were either good or bad, although it would help in making a decision if I could remember more than a few odd scenes. I woke one or two more times in the early hours, and each time I was reminded that my wrist was sore even if it was just a minor twinge when pulling the empty due cover ove myself.

  It seem my bloody brain would have been quite happy if I had got up at 4am again, but I managed to convince it to let me go back to sleep until it was almost 6am. I have already mentioned my blood glucose was around average. The same could be said about my temperature and blood pressure. I guess I am sort of healthy apart from my wrist. It is giving me some mild pain even when just typing. Fortunately it gives no trouble at all, not even a minor twinge when doing some important stuff, and probably the most important of all is wiping my own bottom. Once upon a time, when I dislocated my elbow, I had to wipe left handed. It was really hard overcoming a lifetime of experience to use the "wrong" hand !

  I am unsure what I am going to do today. It may be dry, but it still looks bloody miserable outside. If I knew that Angela would be in the pub at lunchtime, and that I was welcome to drink with her, I would grit my teeth, and go for a walk today. Unless I hear from her I will not bother to walk that way. If I felt really masochistic I might be tempted to see what the river is doing in The River Pool Linear Park after the recent rain. That pretty much equates to seeing if I could get down to say hello to my favourite rocks.

  I think that what I am more likely to do today is to doing a bit more laundry, and to have another go at getting a replacement firewall up and running on more modern computer equipment. I might have a trial run at using Ipcop instead of Smoothwall. The latter is no longer supported, but Ipcop is, and so would be a better choice.