I'm not sure which weather forecaster came
closest to reality yesterday. The morning was
generally bright, and was often quite sunny. Those
long sunny spells continued into the afternoon,
but the quality of light changed sometime after
4pm. It still seemed bright, with a fair bit of
blue sky when looking out my south facing front
windows, but the view to the north, out the back
windows was very different. There was thick black
cloud, and it wasn't long before some distant
peels of thunder could be heard. Then the rain
started. It wasn't too bad at first, but by 6pm
the rain was coming down in torrents. That them
turned into pea sized (big marrowfat pea sized)
hail. Two hours later there were still patches of
unmelted hail to be seen. Not long after that the
sky cleared again. I have a feeling the
temperature may not have risen as high as the
forecast 14° C, or if it did it may have been for
a quite short time. I could have been as low as
10° C for some of the afternoon/early evening.
This morning
has started with clear blue skies and
bright sunshine, and after a cool
night the temperature is starting to
rise. It is what is happening next
that is open to speculation. Both the
weather forecasts I check say it will
be another wet afternoon, but the Met
Office predict the first rain will
fall at midday, and the BBC say 1pm.
Both forecasters, in their latest
revisions, say the rain will not be
very heavy. The BBC say the afternoon
temperature could peak at 15° C. The
Met Office say only 14° C. It is
currently looking like tomorrow will
be slightly wetter than today, but
probably a similar temperature.
The first event of note
yesterday was going shopping in Aldi
just after 8am, but I wrote about that
yesterday. The next physical thing I
did was to hand wash some laundry. It
would have been nice to dry it on the
line, but the rotten weather meant
that I had to dry it in doors. I
decided not to waste any electricity
by using a heater. At this time of
year the heaters should be packed away
until November, but the one in my
bedroom still gets loads of use.
I didn't really do much after I
had hung the washing up to dry. I lay
on my bed quietly reading for a fair
time until it was time to investigate
the change of light outside. It was
still sunny in my bedroom, but at the
back of the house I could only see
black clouds. I also heard a few
distant rumbles of thunder. I'm sure
this was around 4pm. The peak of the
coming storm was about 6pm according
to the time stamp on a bit of video I
shot.
If I
had continued shooting for
another minute I would have
caught the hail pounding
down, but I only wanted a
very short clip to send to
Argentina so my friend
Patricia could see what
lovely weather we were
having.
Two
hours later I noticed that there
was still some hailstones on the
pavement across the road, but the
easiest ones to take a snap of
where on the seat of a broken
chair in the garden. Considering
we should be almost in summer
weather now, those hailstones took
well over 2 hours, perhaps even
three, before they melted.
Once I had had my dinner,
slightly later than 6pm because of
the storm, I put out some more dog
food for the fox cubs. This time I
spread it out a lot more to try
and give them all an equal chances
to get some. I didn't actually see
them emerge from their earth to
eat it, but it was gone by this
morning. Some may have been eaten
by a rat. I did see two rats, yes
two of the bloody things, emerge
from the foxes earth, or maybe
from a side tunnel next to it, and
one took a sniff at the dog food.
My dinner was the beef stew
with beans and mushrooms I had
originally cooked for the night
before. It was nice, but I thought
it needed more chilli in it. I had
a dessert after it, and that may
not have been a good idea. It was
some sugar free chocolate that has
a lot less sugar than normal
chocolate, but not a zero amount.
It seems I can't get away with
these low amounts of sugar in this
that and the other when I have a
very sedentary day.
I seemed to have a very
good sleep last night. As usual, I
woke up 3, maybe 4 times in the
night, but it seems that every
time my head hit the pillow I was
asleep again within seconds. I
recall having a complex series of
dreams during the night. They
started off on a weird concept,
and then got stranger still. The
first bit of dream was set on a
sandy bit of coast with a very
nearby sandy island. For reasons
unknown, I was trying to set up a
telephone network using 5 old
rotary dial phones. I was trying
to tune the bells so they would
only ring when they received the
correct ringing frequency. This
was I didn't have a proper
telephone exchange to connect them
two.
Later dreams seemed to be
dreams about the first dream. In
one I realised what I was trying
to do could never work. I can't
remember any real details about
later dreams, but I am sure they
were more dreams about earlier
dreams. These dreams, apart from
being weird, as all dreams tend to
be, were neither good nor bad.
They weren't even entertaining.
Sometimes you can remember some
sort of inspiration for dreams,
but I can't for these dreams.
This morning my blood
glucose is up again to 9.6mmol/l.
A sort of pattern is starting to
emerge. It seems that my
subconscious is better at
selecting my food than is my
conscious mind. Yesterday I was
making a point of erring on the
side of caution, but having
selected stuff known to be low
sugar I probably ate too much of
it. Of course not getting exercise
yesterday, and very little for the
whole month, is not doing me any
good.
I did have a plan to go to
Tesco early this morning, but I
couldn't raise the enthusiasm for
that. I will try and raise the
enthusiasm to go out for a short
walk today. My plan is to walk to
Ladywell, and contrive to pass The
Jolly Farmer pub just before 1pm.
If it is open I will send a
message to Angela and ask if she
fancies a drink. The chances are
that it will be pouring with rain
before than, and I will be dashing
home, but if not I'll find that
Angela is working from home today.
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