The difference between the Met Office forecast, and the Meteogroup forecast (via the BBC) is profound. Meteogroup reckon there could be light rain showers almost all day, and from the look of the clouds I think their prediction may be closer to reality. There was certainly no heavy rain at 6am this morning. In fact I think it was gone 7a, when the forst light rain fell. The most recent revision to the Met Office forecast now says light rain between 6am and 9am. They reckon it will be dry after that. The BBC still say non stop light rain from morning to 6pm. Both forecasters agree that today will reach 21° C again.  Both forecasters say tomorrow will start sunny, but that it will cloud over at 1pm. The temperature might be a degree less than today despite the sunshine.

  I didn't feel good yesterday. On further reflection I think I now blame it on three things. Firstly I may have had a hangover. It was not of the painful variety, but just that feeling of the weight of the world pressing down on you. I've just remembered, I did have a light headache in the morning, and so there was some pain, but it was light, and just faded away at some unremembered time. The second thing was some sort of digestive complaint. I am not sure what to call it. It was like constipation in a way except I did seem to go quite normally in the morning. I think it was the double Iceland curry ready meals that decided to make a quick exit around lunchtime. Although it had caused no discomfort as such, I did feel lighter after I had been to the toilet.

  Probably the final thing....No, I've got that wrong. There were two final things, although in some ways related. There was the traditional Sunday blues, and the overcast weather blues. No individual thing was particularly bad, but the combination of four things (at the latest count) seemed to be enough to leave me feeling listless. By midday I was getting bored being bored, and after that late visit to the toilet I decided I had to do something. I had been assuming that I wouldn't be doing anything outside because of the weather, but with very little rain, and at least two 3 minute sunny periods, I went out into the garden to do some work out there.
  I got the inspiration for my main project when cutting the lawn the previous day, although I had been contemplating it in a way ever since I started to rehabilitate my garden.It was to use all the old bricks in the garden to make a border separating the lawn from the flower bed on the left. As well as laying the bricks into a narrow trench, I also did a lot more weeding of this bit of flower bed. The lens on the camera I used has made it look like the bricks are curved. In reality they are in a straight line, parallel to the fence.
  One thing I noticed yesterday was that one of my tomato plants had a few flowers on it. This was the self seeded tomato plant that grew all by itself from a tomato that fell off last year's tomato plants. On the whole last years tomato plants were a learning exercise rather than useful. There were so many growing in such a small space that they just choked each other. I couldn't even see the few tiny tomatoes that they produced. At least this plant is growing solo, and I can try and give it more care this year.
  Like last year's tomato plants, the plants in the middle pot have grown from a couple of tomatoes that had been kept too long, and gone squishy. They need transplanting to thin them out - and I would do it later.

  The pictures above don't capture all the work I did. Laying the brick border seemed a bit like hard work (by my own standards) but I also did a lot of weeding too. I really don't know how long I was working, but it could have been slightly over an hour. All I do know was that I was sweating when I came back indoors. A little bit of it was heat from the sun. I think it came out twice while I was out, but only for short periods of time. Most of it was just from hard work - particularly when bent over, reaching to the ground, but that would be more of a problem later.

  After I had cooled off a bit I made some lunch. It turned out that it was actually Sunday dinner despite being no more than a grilled smoked mackerel salad. I think I chased it down with a couple of small apples - unless I had the apples later in the afternoon. After eating I lay down for half an hour, maybe a full hours. I read for much of that time, but I also had a short snooze (I wanted a long snooze). I  seemed to get bored far too soon, and once again I went into the garden.
  If you'll ignore the close up of the side of my thumb in the top right of this picture......(I was using a different camera with the lens really close to the top left hand edge).... The second thing I did was to transplant 4 young tomato plants into 2 new pots (2 in each). Prior to this I moved the log that can be seen in the background, and levelled off the earth ready to receive the two pots. Part of the levelling off included partly filled the entrance to the foxes Earth. I left a small gap, that can be seen under the bottom of the fence in case a fox needs to dig itself out. I am pretty sure it, or at least this entrance, is no longer in use because it has been choked with weeds for ages now. The extra sticks are a lame attempt to stop cats or foxes deciding that nice fresh new earth in the pot would make an excellent litter tray !
  Across the other side of the garden I spent a fair time pulling up weeds in the other flower bed. I would not be surprised if that loose soil, where I pulled the weeds up in clumps in places, has cat poo in it this morning ! Part of the reason for the extra weeding was because I wanted to transplant some nasturtiums from a root choked small wooden planter directly into the ground. They look a bit wilted in this photo, but they should perk up soon, and maybe did so overnight. The only other bit of work I did was to continue my battle to keep the ivy at the bottom of the garden in check, and hopefully ever reducing as I pull out more and more root.

  After that second session in the garden I was noticing some negative effects. I don't think spending so much time bent over was doing me much good. I was feeling mildly wheezy where my chest was compressed. I think I also managed to pull a muscle in my chest (or popped a rib, or whatever). It was my usual complaint of a sore rib cage that pops up every so often. Fortunately a couple of Ibuprofen tablets provided fairly fast relief, and in a few hours I was feeling almost normal.

  "Almost normal", but not quite, and I can't really explain why. The most peculiar thing is that I didn't really want to eat any dinner, and yet I did feel sort of hungry. I guess that hunger may have just been habit rather than reality. There was probably also a touch of wanting to eat something exciting, but not having anything exciting that was quick and easy to cook. In the end I decided I may as well have a couple of cans of soup. Soup is not exactly exciting stuff, but if you don't have it very often it has a certain novelty value.

  I had a can of Minestrone soup, and a can of Oxtail soup - both chosen for their low sugar content. With the addition of a bit of chilli sauce, smoked chilli sauce for the oxtail soup, they were very enjoyable, and seemed to hi the spot. In theory it was a low sugar, and low calorie meal, although with hindsight I am not so certain. I was going to slump into studied inaction after my soup dinner, but there was a bit of research I wanted to do.

  There are several local(ish) breweries, and specialist beer shops, that do beer deliveries, and I wanted to see what was available. The first thing that reared it's head was that most of the beer that can be delivered is not cheap. I couldn't do a side by side comparison but it felt like a lot of the beer (bottled or canned) was almost double the price of beer form Aldi or Tesco. On the other hand, getting it delivered to my door (for free if the order was big enough) was a good plus point, and more variety was another plus point. I reckon I will order some beers sooner or later, and maybe even today.

  I wasn't 100% comfortable when I went to bed, but I didn't seem to have much trouble getting to sleep, or even staying asleep until about 4am when my sleep became a bit patchy. I think at 4am I was noticing a few aching muscles from my gardening efforts that I had not noticed before going to bed. None seem that bad, and I don't think they would deter me from doing anything except some really heavy work - but really heavy work is a deterrent in itself !

  All my health indicators are all good this morning except my weight. My blood glucose is down to 7.8mmol/l. It's not as low as I would like, but under 8.0, and so not too bad. My weight is a bit vague this morning, and might have gone up a 100gm, or maybe it is stable. My blood pressure was very slightly lower than usual, but I expect all my doctors and nurses would say that is good.
  When I look out of the window I think that maybe the BBC's Meteogroup weather forecast has got it right this morning. Earlier this morning I didn't think the garden would get a decent watering from maybe just one short rain shower, even if it was a heavy shower, but it seems to have been raining non stop for well over an hour now, and some of it has been quite heavy. From the look of the heavy grey clouds that are low in the sky, it is not going to give up raining any time soon ! This puts some limits on what I might do today.

  I could go for a walk, but I would probably be stupid to do so. Even wearing my thinnest rain jacket, almost a cagoule, I would end up wetter on the inside from sweat. If I walked in just a t-shirt it might not feel too bad, and possibly even nice for a very short time, but a wet t-shirt would be just the thing to set my cranky rib cage muscles/ligaments/tendons/bone on edge (usually) the next day. Probably the sensible thing to do is to do nothing but keep an eye on the rain. Maybe if there is a break in the rain I could do some more garden related stuff. Failing that I am sure I can find loads of things indoors to do. It is finding the enthusiasm for some of them that might be tricky.