The latest revision to today's forecast has one improvement. Assuming it is accurate, although experience suggests otherwise, the only rain may now be much later, starting at 10pm, and there is only a 30% chance of that. So fat this morning there have been some lengthy sunny spells, but maybe they will finish at 11am instead of midday on the chart above. The afternoon should reach 20° C. There could be some sunny spells in the morning, but maybe a light shower in the middle of the afternoon.

  Yesterday was not a good day. I mentioned I felt rough yesterday morning, and it felt worse after I had finished writing. It is hard to say what it was, or even to fully describe the symptoms. Some of it was like hay fever, but without the runny nose - so it couldn't be that. My nose was definitely feeling stuffy, but not actually blocked, and the sort of internal swollen feeling extended as far as my throat. My throat was not sore, and only very occasionally tickly,  but it did sometime feel like it was swollen when I swallowed.

  I probably could have fought most of the symptoms with paracetamol, and suitable distractions, but I didn't feel in the right mood. I was starting to feel that the difficulties of travel, particularly the return walk from The Chatterton Arms to Bickley station, outweighed the enjoyment of being at Chatt Fest. On top of everything else, my knees were definitely feeling stiff after the walking, and also the standing around, the day before.

  I ended up feeling worse than maybe I really was because I just couldn't raise the enthusiasm to fight it. In consequence I ended up eating more than I should, or wanted to, and that contributed to the misery. However, I did manage to do one thing, and that was to select and edit the pictures I had taken of the last band I saw at Chatt Fest before I made my way home the hard way. The delay in doing that editing was good in one respect because it wasn't until I started that I found that the name of the band was The No Goes...or was it ? There was some hearsay that they might have been called The Hoxtons.
  This was the singer from The No Goes (Or maybe The Hoxtons). She had a good stage presence, and a good singing voice, but sadly here spoken voice has the thickest Scottish accent you can imagine. With the sound of the PA still ringing in my ears I couldn't understand a word she said !
There is not much I can say about this person except he plays a 6 string Gibson, Les Paul, electric guitar.
  Side view of the band.
  The best I could manage to get all the band in one picture, but as is so often the case the drummer is hidden at the back.

  After I had finished selecting and editing photos I did very little for the rest of the day. The whole day seems to be a bit of a blur. I can't really remember what I had for dinner, although I do know I finished it was half a bar of "no added sugar" milk chocolate. Having read through the last couple of paragraphs that I wrote here yesterday I can see it wasn't just forgetting what I had for dinner, but I also seemed to have forgotten to type a lot of words. You have to guess the meaning of a few sentences. I was suffering real brain fog as well as anything else.

  After dinner I watched, with no real enthusiasm, some stuff on TV, but turned the TV off early when I realised that one programme on Sky Arts I started to watch was a repeat from a few days ago. I then tried reading some stuff on my PC, but ultimately I ended up reading while laying on my bed. I was actually ready for bed, teeth brushed etc, at that point, and so when the time felt good I could turn the light out, and try to go to sleep.

  It was just about dark outside, and getting on for 10pm when I tried to get to sleep. I think I did manage to fall asleep fairly quickly, but I was awake again in only about an hour, and feeling confused because I expected it to be early next day instead of an hour later the same day. There seemed to be no good reason to wake up then, and several other times in the night. I think it was just because I was uncomfortable - an ache here, and ache there, and no position seemed completely comfortable last night.

  I may have got my full 8 hours sleep, but it doesn't really count like that when you keep waking up, even if sometimes it was for mere minutes. I know I had many dreams. They all seemed to share one thing in common - they were what I could describe as being very busy, and yet sometimes little was happening. I can describe these dreams because it would be like trying to describe what each extra was doing in a movie crowd scene.

  I woke up at 6am, and decided I want to try for more sleep. Before getting that sleep I took a couple of paracetamol because I ached here, there, and maybe everywhere. I woke up once more after about 20 minutes, and then again at 7am. That was about the time I wanted to get up. Almost the first thing I did was to check my blood glucose level. To my great surprise it was down from 8.6mmol/l yesterday to 8.3mmol/l this morning. I was fearing it would be a lot higher. My self set target is 7.5mmol/l, but 8.3mmol/l is good enough for now.

  After having a shower I felt a bit better, and I think the paracetamol tablets were starting to work (they always seem to take an hour or two). It was just after 8am when I set off to go shopping in Aldi. I was surprised how easy it felt walking there. Maybe that was just relative to how I expected it to feel, rather than truly easy, but on the other hand it didn't seem to need much effort to get to Aldi in a good time.

  I had left home later than I usually do, and it was almost 8.20am when I arrived at Aldi to find people queueing outside. It took me a few minutes to see a note posted outside the door to say they were opening at 8.30am this morning. It was probably a good 5 minutes, and perhaps closer to 10 minutes after that. It wasn't a very long wait, but it was very tedious. People approaching the store from the other direction would have seen what the day was, but it wasn't until I went in that I saw what was happening.

  My heart sunk when I saw they had ripped out all but two of the checkouts, and fitted self service checkouts. I hate those bloody things, and if they really want to to employ me to operate a checkout then they can bloody well pay me a wage to do it. Fortunately there were two manned checkouts when I had finished my shopping, but it may not foretell the future because at that point the self service checkouts were not yet in use.

  I didn't buy all that much today, and not much of it was particularly heavy, but walking home did feel a lot worse than walking to the store. Maybe it was the added weight of the depression brought about by the sight of those new self service checkouts. I just know that in the not too distant future I'll find one manned checkout open, and a queue halfway around the store. That will be my cue to abandon my trolley (with the £1 coin in it), and see what it's like in Tesco.

  Before I got too relaxed after coming home I did some laundry, and got it on the washing line to dry in whatever is left of today's sunshine - which seems to ne none at all as I write this. It was only a small amount of stuff - a hand towel, two t-shirts and some underwear. The towel automatically made it a bit hard work because towels become rather heavy when submerged in water, and are taxing to wring out by hand.

  As I come to the end of all I will write today, I am hoping I haven't left too many words out today, and that a lot of the grammar and spelling is close enough to English, as wot is spoken 'round 'ere. After that I have no grand plans, or even minor plans. I still feel a bit off colour, although not as bad as I thought I was yesterday, and I don't think I want to do much for the rest of the day. I might add that as well as checking my blood glucose, I have also checked a few other medical things. My temperature is up for this time of day, although 36.4° C is still well below normal (37.3° C), and and a lot lower than the trigger for Covid-19 (37.8° C). My blood pressure, on the second reading when I was a bit more relaxed, was 107/67, and that is nice and low, but only while I am fairly sedate). Finally, my Pulse Oximeter says I am getting a very healthy 98% partial oxygen pressure. I may feel crap, but it looks like I will live - which is the last thing you want to do when feeling crap.