The latest revision to today's weather forecast has reduced the hours of sunshine this morning. It seems nice and sunny as I write this, but now it seems it might end at 10am. Starting at 3pm it will all go horribly wrong, although the heavy rain shown for 3pm above has been reduced to light rain in the latest revision. The heavy rain is now predicted at 5pm. After that the rain will be lighter, and may fizzle out after a few hours. The afternoon temperature could still reach 10° C for a few hours, but with the supporting sunshine gone it wouldn't feel good. Every hour tomorrow is just shown as "cloudy". It seems there is no chance of any sunshine, and only a 10% chance of rain at worst. On the plus side it could be 11° C for quite a few hours in the afternoon.
  Before leaving the subject of the weather, this picture was supposed to show the hail yesterday afternoon. It was taken at 4.30pm. I wasted vital minutes looking out into the back garden when the rain sounded heavy before I realised it was hail that was falling. Then I had to grab a camera, and decide where to take the picture. I was not going to go out into the rain and hail. and so the view through the front room window seemed best. The white hail should have shown up nicely on the dark grey wheelie bin lid, but you'll have to imagine it because it was all over, and the last was melting away before I could take the picture. All you cans see is a sort of grittiness on the top of the wheelie bin as the last bits melt.

  Apart from the brief excitement of the hail, yesterday was almost another boring day, and yet I did have a few achievements that meant the day was not totally wasted. One ephemeral thing was finishing the book I was reading. I read through a fair bit during the day, and finished the book while reading in bed in the late evening. More concrete things was doing two lots of laundry.

  The first lot was of stuff I had been wearing - a t-shirt, lounge pants and a couple of pairs of underpants. That doesn't sound much, but I guess that was all it was unless there is something I have forgotten. The second lot of laundry was definitely a much lighter load. It was the continuation of my plan to get my tea towels clean and fresh. I had only got the three tea towels out of a drawer in the kitchen a few days ago, and they seemed musty. I guess they had probably been in that drawer, untouched, for as many as 5 years. Washing them could have been fairly light work, but once again I think I gave them at least 5 rinses to try and rinse out the last of the detergent. I think I succeeded. I had to get the other clothes horse out to dry them on in the front room.
  Another light job, or almost light, was instigated when I realised I had all the ingredient to clean up, and fill my old Zippo lighter. I came across it during my general tidying up. It was a lighter I very rarely used because it needed constant filling compared to a simple gas lighter. I had a can of Brasso, and I had a can of petrol. The latter was actually bought from the Pound shop as solvent to help remove some old stickers. After a bit of "elbow grease" the brass came up nice and shiny, and a good squirt of petrol had it lighting on the first spin of the flint wheel.

  I got my Zippo lighter as the result of smoking through thousands of Benson & Hedges fags. They went through a phase of putting coupon in the packs, and a sufficient amount could be exchanged for stuff in Argos (whose only branch was inside another shop in Lewisham. This must have been in the late 1980s. A Zippo lighter was about the "cheapest" thing they had, and I handed over my 3" high stack of coupons for it. I used it a few times, but it was soon consigned to a drawer, and that is where it will probably end up again soon.

  At some time during the afternoon I got an email from Just Eat, who I haven't used for at least a couple of months now, with a 20% off voucher code. Just as they hoped, the idea of this burrowed deep inside my brain, and as time passed I decided that it might be nice to have a nice kebab again. At about 5.30pm I went to the Just Eat website, and had a look at kebab options. I found somewhere I hadn't tried before, and they seemed to have scored a 4 on "Scores On The Door". I sometimes wonder if some of the places get high marks by bribery. Maybe I wondered about that a bit more last night.

  The restaurant was doing 10% off for orders over £20, and I would still get the 20% discount on top of that. I ordered 2 medium chicken, and 2 medium lamb shish kebabs. Last night I ate the lamb shish kebabs. Medium size was not that big, and as usual I didn't eat the pitta bread. It didn't seem like a big meal, but I felt strangely bloated afterwards. I watched three episodes of Red Dwarf (series 10) before, during, and mostly after I had eaten. After the third episode I decided to give up on TV, and slowly head to bed.

  As I prepared to go to bed, having a wee, and brushing my teeth I still felt a bit bloated, but worst of all was that my chest was acting up. Even doing simple things like reaching for the tube of toothpaste would make my ribs click and pop. I am unclear how it may have been influenced by the bloated feeling I had, but I suspect it was. Maybe the weight of my belly was pulling down at my ribs. On the other hand my feeling of bloat had other causes than my belly being stuffed.

  I went to bed feeling a bit uncomfortable, but I was OK reading the last two chapters of the books I pictured here a day or two ago. There was a bit more to read than I anticipated, and my eyelids were drooping towards the end. It wasn't much later than 9pm (if I recall correctly - which I am beginning to doubt) that I put the book down, and I seemed to fall asleep very quickly. I woke up again just after midnight feeling bad.

  My chest was aching a fair bit, and superficially it felt a bit like it did when I decided to walk to Lewisham Hospital A&E to get some cheat pains checked back in July 2019. Last night I hoped I had reasons to not think it was another mild heart attack. The clicking and popping from my chest earlier was one good clue, and there was a fair possibility that the kebabs could be giving me some heart burn. Some antacids would calm down any heartburn, and some Ibuprofen should have calmed down the pain from the inflamed ligaments between my ribs (the cause of the popping and clicking). They both helped but not enough.

  It was almost 3am when I decided to take stock of what was happening, and take some measurements of my health. My Pulse Oximeter confirmed I was getting plenty of oxygen in my bloodstream, and my blood pressure was probably a bit lower than it might have been for when I am stressed - a systolic pressure of 148mmhg on my first attempt, and down to 125mmhg after I relaxed enough. It wasn't a proper diagnosis, but it satisfied me it wasn't my heart this time. The real reason for everything would soon become apparent.

  The bloated feeling turned out to be another case of a stomach upset. At 4am I got the correct signal and went to the toilet. That felt a lot better. Rather than try to get back to sleep I decided to read for a while to relax my brains and stuff. I read for maybe half an hour, and then turned the light out. I lay there feeling mostly, but not perfectly OK. I soon became aware of wind brewing, and 5 minutes or so later I let go what I thought was wind, but it was a lot wetter than that....

  I then made a panic run to the toilet where I released the rest of the pressure in a fairly explosive release. After cleaning up I went back to bed feeling so much better. The only trouble was I had to change the bottom sheet before I could lie down in bed. I can't remember how many years it has been since the last time that happened ! Having changed the sheet I got back to bed, but I still seemed to hear a few gurgles from deep inside me. Fortunately they came to nothing because I soon fell into a deep sleep.

  It was during that short time between laying down, and going to sleep that I suddenly realised what might be causing this ongoing stomach upset. It had had the runs to some extent or another for the previous 3, or 4 (5?) days. I was handed a clue that couldn't really have been a clue during that final explosive outburst. It seemed like there was a sort of fishy smell embedded in the stench. That made me think of the cod liver oil capsules I take. I reasoned there was not enough oil to "colour" my farts, but there was something else.... That something else was that one of my bottles of cod live oil capsules had gone "funny", There was possibly less than a fortnights worth of capsules left, and they had taken on a sort of dusty/frosty appearance. I now believe that was a microbial growth on the geletine capsule, and was a good candidate to cause these ongoing stomach upsets. I threw the rest of the capsules away, and open another lot. It could take a few days, and maybe even more to purge my system of this naughty microbe, and so there may not be an instant correlation between those capsules and the runs.

  After being awake for so many hours in the night I would not expect to feel that wonderful this morning, but I think I feel better than expected. The really good thing is that having purged my entire digestive system (well, sort of) my blood glucose has come right down to 7.7mmol/l - just slightly higher than my self imposed target, but still very acceptable. I wonder if I can keep it that low for a while ? Probably not today because booze will be involved.

  It was exactly one year ago today, if you ignore some inconvenient hours, that I went to my last two gigs. Strictly speaking it was only one gig because the first band I was going to seem Beyond Driven, were going to start too late, and I wanted to move on to another pub to see a Chain gig before they started, but I did get a snap of them during a sound check.
  Beyond Driven were playing in The Lord Holmesdale pub, and it should only have been a half mile walk or so to The Chatterton Arms where Chain were playing. I can't remember the exact time now, but I think it was the end of February/beginning of March when I went down with Covid - 19. I had all the symptoms except the deep lung infection - maybe because of the vitamin D I was taking. I had the other classic symptom of loss of taste and smell quite a few weeks later. One year ago I thought I was over the infection except for some lingering joint ache. It made the walk to the next pub seem like hard work, and I was also a bit short of breath when I got there. It took a good 15 minutes before I felt OK again.
  Once I was able to relax I enjoyed the gig, but I think I left a bit earlier than I needed to. It was probably just after the very last song, and I only managed to say goodbye to a few people on my way out. The next big anniversary will be on the 19th this month. That was the day of my last visit to a pub - a Thursday session. I think I took the following Monday as the first date of my lockdown count at the top of the page.

  My activities for today are fairly well laid out for me. Once I have finished writing here, and have uploaded all the bits to my web server, I shall have a nice soapy shower. After that I have more laundry to do - a certain dirty sheet ! I'm not sure if I will try and do the whole of that bit of laundering in one go, but at some point I should be able to lay back and relax, and hopefully have time for a short snooze. Later today is another boozing session. I am not sure it is wise after having such an inflamed digestive tract, but I'll do it anyway !
  The book I started reading in the middle of the night, and which I shall probably read more pages from later today, is number 2 in the books above - Bill The Galactic Hero on The Planet Of Robot Slaves. The book took weeks to arrive from America, and the postage cost more than the book, but at least I now have the full set. The only trouble I have now is that once I have read book 2 I will have to put them all on the shelf for at least a couple of years before I can actually read them in the correct order. Each book is a complete read in itself, but there is a history line running through the entire set. It should be noted these are not great literary works of art. They are sort of stupid, and basically just for fun. What more could you ask for !