The forecast for today paints a nasty picture, but the forecast is ever changing. The latest revision shows sunny spells for 10am. It has been bright, and sometimes sunny for the last couple of hours. The heavy rain shown in the early morning screenshot above has now changed from heavy to light, although thunderstorms are still shown. I must admit I find it hard to interpret the weather symbol on the left. It suggests that there will be sunshine, dark clouds, light rain, and thunderbolts all at the same time !  While all this is going on, or not going on, the temperature should climb to a peak of 20° C today. At the moment the forecast for tomorrow shows loads of sunshine in the morning, but just a few sunny spells in the afternoon. It should stay dry, and the temperature may hit 22° C.

  The one thing I thought I would do yesterday - changing the machine heads on my guitar - I didn't do. For some reason I couldn't raise the enthusiasm. That is odd because it should be an interesting, and educational job. Not getting enough sleep was probably the reason for my lack of enthusiasm. I wasn't actually yawning tired, but I definitely had no sparkle (I don't think I've had any sparkle for a long time now !).

  After trying some intensive resting I found myself getting bored doing that. The solution was to go for a short walk. It was only to Poundland, and it did involve "retail therapy". There were a few things I did want to get there, although none were urgent as such. One such thing was disposable paper plates. I guess I am very lazy when I resort to using a paper plate for such things as cheese and rice crackers. One positive aspect (probably) is that the paper plates are smaller than my usual plates, and so the portions look bigger while being smaller (possibly).

  One other thing I was looking out for, and did get, was some A4 sized document wallets. I find they are very handy for keeping sets of assorted documents together. I had one serendipitous find in the store - Carex hand cleaner without the pump. I believe that the idea was that you would transfer the pump from an old bottle to the new, but I hadn't noticed any without pumps for ages. The plain blue Carex hand cleaner (soap, not alcohol sanitizer) is something I once hated, but now like for one simple, but stupid reason. It may have been last year some time when one morning I had a nasty high blood glucose reading. I knew my hands were a bit sweaty, and I wondered if that was causing a false reading. I gave my hands a good clean with that Carex, and checked my blood again - instant drop to a more friendly blood glucose reading. I do it every morning now, but it does make me wonder how I got away with it in the past.

  One trouble with Poundland is all the sweets and stuff they sell in there. I was almost tempted to treat myself, but I resisted that except for one 6 pack of tiny packets of Cheesies in 3 different flavours. They are so dry that it is not tempting to eat more than a bag or two at a time. I did eat two of the (25gm ?) bags, but no more.

  Yesterday afternoon was warm, bright, and even featured some sunny spells. Until it happened I believed the weather forecast that painted a far worse picture. Had I known that the weather was going to be that good I could have gone for a walk, or more usefully done a bit of laundry, and dried it on the washing line. I rather doubt that will be possible today, particularly when heavy rain is now falling, according to the latest revision to the forecast. It is just a shame that nobody told the sun to go in, and the pavements to get wet. Even the clouds don't look like rain clouds, although they are starting to pile up.

  My dinner was interesting last night. It was a chicken stew I had cooked a couple of days ago. After cooking it, and not wanting to eat it, I kept it in the pyrex dish with lid, and made a point of not lifting the lid. I would then give it 10 minutes in the microwave to boil it several times during the day. I hoped this would kill any bacteria that might start to grow, and it seems that theory worked. I had no negative reaction to is, and the chicken was really tenderised after all that cooking. The only negative thing is that it wasn't all that nice. I had originally intended to load it with more vegetables, but didn't. Some potato in it would probably have been good, but I rarely eat potatoes.

  A strange thing happened when I went to bed. I had been on my bed reading for at least half an hour, but eventually I put the book down, turned out the light, and then turned over, ready to go to sleep. At that point I had what can only be described as a hot flush. I suddenly felt hot all over, and my face started sweating profusely. I'm guessing it was some sor of semi lethal medical condition, but I have no idea what...probably cancer or something. I had to turn on the fan, and wait until I felt cold again. That didn't take too long, but it all interrupted my sleep again.

  As I slept, or not, it felt like I had had another poor night's sleep, but on reflection it might not have been that bad. I think I probably had some quite long chunks of sleep. It was just that the periods when I was awake seemed to last a long time...or maybe they didn't. Maybe it just felt that way because it seemed to take a long time to find a comfortable position. One curious thing is that the only dream I can remember was not the dream itself, but thinking about the dream during one of those periods when I was awake, or maybe that was a dream too.

  The dream I remember thinking about concerned an intelligent building, although "intelligent" may be making too strong a case. The building had DNA as part of it's construction, and so was sort of alive, and it didn't like being encroached by other buildings. It fought any other building getting too close, although the way it did it is unclear in the extreme. I think the idea for the dream came from reading about how Lewisham, in fact the entire borough of Lewisham, is gradually disappearing under ever dense housing.

  This morning my blood glucose was down to 8.4mmol/l. That is not ideal, but good enough, and just a little lower than my monthly average for this month (so far). With the average of the last two months being about 8.5mmol/l I decided now would be a good time to give the blood samples the nurse hoped I would give in March ! I feel sure that the walk in service hasn't been resumed at my local vampire den, and so this morning I finally phoned the appointment hot line. I was 56th in the queue, and I gave up for today.

  So far this morning I have had a shave, a shampoo, and a shower. I've fed the birds, and tried calling for an appointment with the vampires. Now I am writing this. I have no immediate plans once I have finished this writing, but around lunchtime I intend to go for a walk in the park that could take a longer route, but will end up in the Jolly Farmers pub where I hope to meet Angela. She gave a tentative yes when I mentioned it yesterday, but I wouldn't blame her if she was reluctant to go out in a thunderstorm (if we do get one). I am going to try and enjoy it if it is pouring with rain when I go out - it is the actual going out, rather than the being out in rain that is the hard part !