The weather has changed a lot overnight. Yesterday's prediction was for another day of sunny spells today, but come the day, it has changed to be mostly dull until late afternoon. The BBC forecast even suggested a spot of rain this morning, and there could be some truth in that. I went into the garden at about 8am, and I thought I felt one or two drops of very light rain hit my face. Nothing noticeable has fallen so far, but looking out towards the road it does look that sort of grey that comes before, during, or after a shower. Today was always going to be a little cooler than yesterday, but now it is probably going to be a whole 5 degrees cooler, just 23° C. If the forecast for tomorrow can be believed, it will be a very sunny day, but the temperature may only reach 20° C.

  Yesterday was a day that was mostly good, had a very bad, or annoying end, but a fair night. Actually it might have been a good night. I had already decided not to go out walking for a fourth consecutive day. I had a few things to do at home, and I fancied resting my feet. I wasn't idle though...well not all the time. Instead of giving my leg muscles a workout, I gave my arms a workout. It started with washing a hand towel, and a medium sized bath towel.

  Towels can get very heavy when saturated with water ! I washed those two, and hung them out on the line to dry. At this time of year the sun never gets to shine on the washing line, and with not much wind they were still very slightly damp when I brought them in to finish drying sometime around 4 or 5pm. The reason for bringing them in then was because I needed the line for another item of laundry.

  That other time was a big bath towel. It was bloody heavy when wet, and impossible to wring out by hand. I did my best to wring it out between washes and rinses (and conditioner), but ultimately it needed to hang outside because it was still dripping when I hung it up to dry. By this morning I could still wring some water out of the bottom of the towel. With a small possibility of rain I brought it in to dry indoors assisted with a fan blowing on it.


  I threatened to do some sun bathing in yesterday morning's writing, and I did it ! As I said I would do I used a shower curtain as a ground sheet, and put a big towel over it. It was the towel I hand washed later in the day.

  It wasn't a 100% success for a few reasons. The principle reason was that the sun is now low enough in the sky that only the far end of the garden is not in the shadow of the roof of my hose (plus, of course, the house itself).  I think when I started sun bathing the sun only fell on me from the waist upwards.

  There was another sort of problem related to the first. Even through the towel, and shower curtain, it was obvious that the ground was still cold and damp because it only sees the sun for a few hours each day that the sun is out (at this time of year). It didn't feel cold (and damp) enough to make it uncomfortable as such, but it wasn't the warm feeling I hoped for.

  I think I, or my top half, lay in the sun for almost 20 minutes, but in that time I was starting to lose the sun. It didn't help that the shadow of the downpipe breather, or whatever it is called, passed right over me in the 20 minutes. The sun, when it was on me, felt nice and warm, but I think it would have taken a lot longer than 20 minutes to burn in it.

 This screenshot from my garden camera gives an idea of the shadow cast by the roof of the house. The plants on the right were getting some sunshine because the sun wasn't shadowed by the lower roof, but very little of the top of the lawn is getting any sunshine. (Incidently, my garden camera has a lousy clock, and the onscreen display is at least an hour slow. It is supposed to update itself to internet time, but that facility is a casualty of crap Chinese software).
  One thing to add to my sunbathing story... I was most reluctant to park my head further towards the back of the lawn, so I could have got a little more sun, because there was something I didn't want to lay under - a big spiders web with a big spiky legged spider sitting in it. I felt I had pushed my tolerance to the limit by laying about 2 foot from it !
  While I had my camera out to take pictures of spiders I took this close up snap of one of the golden yellow flowers at the back of my garden. As I said yesterday, it was only the day before yesterday that I found out what they were called. They are California Poppys, and once I saw the name I remembered what was on the seed packet. That confirmed their identity.
  This is a close up on one of my campanulas. Maybe it is the weather, but it seems most of the seeds I planted didn't really do much until summer was nearly over. They are all flowering well now, but I had originally thought that they should have flowered in spring. I'm sure that is what the packet(s) said, but I must have misread them, or just mis-remembered what I had read.

  I think I have described all the salient events of the day leading up to dinnertime, and it seems like I didn't really do much, and yet the time seemed to fly by. Oh, there was one other brief interlude I forgot. At about 2.30pm Michael, my neighbour from round the corner, delivered four 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke for me. I feel guilty about letting him buy it for me when for want of a mask I could buy it myself, but Michael seems quite happy to do it every now and then. He said it gives him a great excuse to go by car instead of walking to Tesco, and then carry a big bag home of his own stuff.

  I had a sort of plan for eating yesterday that turned out better than I thought it would. I ate very little during the day. I might have eaten nothing, but I couldn't resist a little nibble. I think all I ate were some rice crackers with some red pesto as a dip. Of course the pesto added a lot of oil to an otherwise oil free cracker, but in the grand scheme of things it was mostly benign.

  I'm not sure when it was that I decided on a takeaway for dinner. I went back to kebabs because they seem to be safe - provided they are shish kebabs. I deliberately ordered one doner kebab, and of course that contains oily/greasy "mystery meat". It was actually drier than expected, but I guess it still had enough grease to feel more filling. Last night I just had the one kebab, and nothing more. Tonight I have a choice of two in the fridge, and maybe I might only eat one of them.

  My evening was quite relaxed. After the second episode of Star Trek I slowly retired to bed to read for a while. I had brushed my teeth so I could just turn out the light, and go to sleep anytime I fancied it. Before I actually tried for sleep I needed another wee. I got halfway to the toilet when I saw a little grey shape dart across the hall, and dodge behind the bathroom door. It seems the mouse from the kitchen, having had it's easy source of food taken away, is exploring for more.

  Hopefully it will find very little to eat, and will either die, or move on. Seeing that mouse woke me right up. The first thing I did was to turn on the lights, and clean and set a couple of mousetraps. I put one either side of the door jamb into my bedroom. I do not want a mouse in my bedroom when I am trying to sleep. There was no way I was going to get to sleep easily after that excitement, and so I poured a very large whisky, and spent an hour or more reading stuff on the internet.

  I think it got to nearly 1am,  I had consumed several more very large whiskies, and I still didn't feel ready for bed again. I decided that I would phone Sue. For anyone else it was a very unsociable time to call someone, but Sue is a night owl, and sure enough she was awake and evidently keen to answer my call. The last time I spoke to her she hung up on me because I dared to suggest that the solution to some of the problems she had at the time was to spend her money wisely, and not on inessentials.

   Last night, or should I say this morning, Sue was more than happy to talk to me because she needed to tax my brains. She "inherited! a computer that is described as a "Hackingtosh". It runs Apple's OSX operating system, but not on Apple hardware. Sue is not very good at driving it, and had managed to fill the hard disk to the point where the computer was choking. She didn't know how to delete stuff to make space on it. Ultimately she will need to move some stuff to an external hard disk - which she already has, but doesn't know how to use it.

  Like many Apple users she has no concept of the filing system of directories (or folders) and files. I had to somehow talk her through what to do - which wasn't easy when I only have a passing acquaintance with OSX - the Mac operating system. After many hours we managed to free up 6GB of disk space. Ideally she will need to free up more than 32GB because she will be filling up the 32GB memory card in her camera, but 6GB was enough to unchoke the thing, and allowed her to upload some photos and videos to Facebook (sometime after I had hung up, and gone to bed).

  We ended the call just as it was starting to get light. Since then I have only managed to get about an hours sleep. I sort of feel OK-ish at the moment, but that lack of sleep is going to effect me later. I may end up having a lazy day with lots of snoozing instead of my original plan to go out for a long-ish walk today. The good and bad news is that my eating regime yesterday has lowered my blood glucose to a very acceptable 7.1mmol/l. I have no complaints about that at all. Unfortunately I seem to have put on 400, or even 500 grams. It is clutching at straws, but I hope that my weight is just running out of phase with my blood glucose, and will drop a lot by tomorrow morning. Hmmmm, maybe.