Today should feature more sunshine than yesterday, and in the latest revision to the forecast, more sunshine than shown in the screenshot above. It is bright and sunny right now - which is shown in the latest revision of the forecast. If things proceed as per the forecast the sunshine will soon be replaced by sunny intervals until midday. There may well be more in the early evening, but the afternoon may be fairly dull. It should be a dry day, and the temperature will, once again, be neither hot or cold at 20° C. At the moment tomorrow is being shown as being the same as today.

   I started yesterday thinking I would not want to go out while the weather looked to be so dull - which was not an accurate forecast at the time. I only had a few vague ideas of what I might do, but they were only in error in so much as I underestimated what I would end up doing. One of the first things I did was to grab my waterproof camera and go and inspect my garden. It looked quite damp outside, and I thought it was raining. It was raining, but it was so light it was almost ignorable (although there had been more a bit earlier). I wasn't out in the garden for more than a few minutes before the sun came out, and it felt very warm on my bare back !
  The first thing I wanted to check were my nasturtiums that I had transplanted from a too small, root bound, box directly into the garden. They were a bit droopy the day before, but all the leaves were pointing in the right direction yesterday morning. Best of all was that they had not been dug up, and replaced with cat poo overnight !
  When I posted this picture elsewhere it was no less than Angela who put a name to these flowers. She said they were companulas, and that was good enough for me even though I do have doubts about it after doing an internet search. My flowers look subtly different to most pictures companulas. Never mind, they are my first big flowers in my garden.
  I was happy to see that my transplanted tomato plants were looking fit and healthy yesterday morning. The left hand one in the left hand pot was looking a bit droopy the previous day, but looks fine now.
  Assuming these are what they are supposed to be, I may be able to look forward to a crop of chillies later in the year. Before they get too established I may transplant one or two directly into the ground rather than keep them all in a pot.
  As I said earlier, the sun came out while I was in the garden. This long shot down the garden gives the impression that the garden is not looking too bad now. I am still hoping for more flowers to grown to give a bit more colour, and the lawn needs a lot more work to get it looking good, but I am getting there. My latest target is to get the garden looking lush next year. This year it is just going to have to be a bit patchy.

  There was one other thing I did before I came in from the garden, and that was to refill the long plant pot that the fox overturned, and emptied out everything in it. It is more suited to a windowsill, and that is where it is now. I filled it with compost, and planted a load of seeds in it. Some of the seeds were home grown seeds from the anemones with their small, but bright flower heads. Hopefully they will sprout, and hopefully they will thrive in a bigger pot - the first ones grew in a couple of old food containers that were far too small for them.

  After coming in from the garden I took a breather before thinking of the next thing to do. I never really came up with a coherent plan, but I did have an idea of how to get started. I was expecting a delivery from Amazon late in the day. It was for a pair of speakers, and a Blutooth  stand-alone transmitter or receiver. I had been thinking of buying another pair of Creative T15 speakers for the dining room. The first pair I bought for my TV (which has absolutely lousy built in speakers). They may never win awards from the HiFi fraternity, but they sound pretty good to my ears, and the built in Blutooth receiver can be handy when using my tablet as a music player.

  I checked the price of T15 speakers, and they seemed very expensive compared to how much I think I paid for my original pair. Creative also do T10 speakers which are basically the T15 without Blutooth, and they were half the price. I then found the standalone Blutooth transmitter/receiver, and noted that it was cheap enough (albeit on special, offer) that it was still far cheaper to buy that and the T10 speakers, and that is what I ordered.

  With those speakers, and the Blutooth gadget on their way I thought it was a good time to get around to mounting the power blocks that had been on my old PC desk in the dining room directly onto the wall. It just needed three holes drilled in the wall, plus wall plugs to mount each power block. Of course that drilling produced some dust, and the power blocks were looking very grubby. That set me off on a mission that left me sweating and feeling rather tired several hours later.

  It all started with getting the hoover out of the cupboard to suck up the drilling dust. With that done I turned my attention to the chest of drawers in the dining room. I had been sitting close to it while sitting on the floor drilling, and screwing in the screws. I noted how much dust there was on it. Out came a duster and can of polish, and the chest of drawers looked much better (provided you don't look too closely). I used the same duster on the power blocks I had mounted, and it turned out that the grubbiness wiped of easily.

  I then decided to hoover the whole floor of the dining room, and went on to do the hallway outside, and the front room too. It was particularly hard work in the dining room because I was still finding areas of matted hair in the carpet. I had started out rubbing the carpet with the rubber gloves I was wearing, but I seemed to be wearing out those gloves prematurely. I found a fairly stiff bristled scrubbing brush was just as effective. Of course no matter what method I used it meant lots of bending down to reach the carpet !

  When I had done as much hoovering as I could stomach I turned my attention to the door leading from the hall into the dining room. It was looking quite grubby, and the fanlight above the door was almost opaque with cigarette tar. It took a lot of scrubbing to get outside of the door clean (the inside will have to wait for another day), but the glass in the fanlight cleaned up easily, although the water in the bowl I was used turned deep brown. Like the door into the kitchen, the door into the dining room will need a second scrubbing because I missed a few stains.

  I can't remember quite when it was, but I had finished all my hard and sweaty work, and had time to cool off a bit when my Amazon parcel arrived. It was far earlier than I expected. I unpacked the box and drooled (as you do) at my shiny new purchases. I quickly set up the speakers, plugged in a walkman, pressed play, and had a listen. The sound was just right when played at low volume - and I have no desire to play anything much louder in the dining room. While I was getting the speakers set up I put the Blutooth gadget on charge.

  A bit later when the gadget had charged I tried it in receive mode to pick up music streamed from my tablet. It sounded just as good, identical as far as I could tell, as when I did the same with the T15 speakers. It seemed to be useful, but not essential because the tablet has a 3.5mm headphone socket. I tried plugging that directly into the speakers and the sound was rather nasty. It seems the tablet has a very poor quality amplifier in it. It seems that Blutooth gadget is not just a useful thing, but an essential thing !

  All too soon, but not before time, (even if that is a contradiction) it was almost dinner time. I had hardly eaten all day because I had been too busy. I wanted some different for dinner, and the answer was to cook the packet of Frikkadelan I had bought from Aldi over a week previously. I am sure I spelled the name wrong, but they are almost like a sort of German pork burger with herbs and onion. I gave them a good grilling, and had them with a small can of low sugar baked beans. It wasn't an amazing dinner, but it was pretty good.

  I first chased down dinner with a couple of small apples as a dessert. I then washed the apples down with a bottle of Adnams "Ghost Ship" beer. I'm not sure if I liked it or not. It was one of those beers that tastes nice while drinking it, but it leaves a rather unpleasant bitter taste in the mouth. I guess the thing to do is to not stop drinking it, but I only had the one bottle. I followed that by a can of Carling Black Label with a splash of lime in it.  That is the only booze I had yesterday.

  Talking of booze. I ordered two 12 x 500ml packs of beer from The Westerham brewery yesterday. It turned out to be a lot more expensive than I thought it would be. The first problem was that I seemed to be outside of their free delivery area. That added £9 for shipping, and then, maybe because selling retail is a recent service, all their prices are shown without VAT on them - which is usual for a manufacturer selling to the trade. The final bill made the beer not much cheaper than some pub prices, and definitely more than buying similar beers from Aldi - about £2.75 for a 500ml (approx 1 pint) bottle.

  I got an email from the brewery to confirm my order had been received, but I don't know if I can expect another to say it has been despatched, and when it might arrive. It would be handy of the courier company could send me a message to say when they expect to deliver it, but for the moment I am in the dark. I am confident it is coming, but I have no idea when. It is possible it could be today, and I suppose I had better wait in until it arrives - whatever day it is.

  There is nothing like doing hard work in the day to give a good nights sleep. The odd thing was that I didn't really feel sleep tired when I went to bed. I did feel sort of fatigued, but only slightly so after so many hours had passed since doing any hard work.  Maybe some of it was that good feeling you get when you have done something useful. It seemed to take some time before I fell asleep, but once asleep I slept rather well again. My only complaint is waking up too early.

  This morning I feel mostly OK if I ignore a few little aches from doing work I am not really practised at - although maybe there are hints I am starting to get more used to using muscles that have had little use. If I manage to keep it up, particularly some of the garden stuff (rather than hoovering !), I may build up those muscles in the same way that lots of walking has has changed my leg muscles. Unfortunately, while I may feel pretty good after making a few allowances, my measurements say I am not good. It could have been the beer, or the Frikkadelen, but my blood glucose is back up to 8 again this morning, and I seem to be a whole kilogram heavier !

  I am unsure what I am going to do today, but maybe I'll start one thing, and that will trigger another train of events. I guess the prime thing I will be doing is keeping an ear out for the doorbell in case my beer arrives. It could be tricky working in the garden because I could miss the doorbell. I guess I will probably be working indoors for much of today unless my beer arrives early today. Incidently, when the beer arrives some of it will be used for another boozing session with Jodie and Michael - possibly on Thursday. This time I think I will invite Angela to pop in on her way home from work for a large vodka. The chances of seeing her are probably slim in the extreme, but she definitely won't come over if not invited. It would be nice for to see the result of all my hard work because in a way it's original genesis was inspired by Angela even if I didn't start it until well after I stopped seeing her regularly.