The weather forecast for today looks very similar to the forecast for yesterday, even down to the prediction of rain at 11am. Yesterday the rain didn't fall at 11am, but in random very light showers through the afternoon. I think there was some slightly more substantial rain in the early hours of this morning, The chances of seeing any sunshine today seem slim in the extreme, and that means another cold feeling day - just 20° C (I know that would be luxury in January, but this is August, high summer supposedly). The cloud cover tomorrow may be lighter, but still covering 100% of the sky, and maybe that will help the temperature rise to 21° C.

  My plans to fast until dinnertime fell by the wayside as early as midday yesterday. I had two cans of soup, and then a bit later I had two cheese and tomato (and basil) wholemeal rolls. I took it on trust that those wholemeal rolls had no added sugar, but now I am not so sure - particularly when I found that Aldi's wholemeal rolls did seem to have sugar in them. At dinner time I had two fish and chorizo fishcake type things. On the whole it was not a lot for the day, but it wasn't good enough.

  There was just one positive thing I did yesterday, but it didn't convince me to do one other positive thing. The one positive thing was to go to Poundstretcher to buy a heap more bird feed. While I was in there I also bought a couple of bottles of bleach, and a couple more solar powered garden lights. I should have resisted the latter because I have no more good places to "plant" them. It would be better if I saw some fence hung lamps, I have plenty of fence to hang them on.
  It was last Friday when I went to see the vampires to give a couple of test tubes of blood for blood tests. As I remarked later on Friday morning, it was an almost perfect painless experience. The phlebotomist just slid the needle in with practised ease, and I hardly felt it break the skin. However, I am still on blood thinners (I thought I was only supposed to be on them for a year after my hospital stay in 2019, but they appear in every repeat prescription). My thin blood means I bruise very easily. I took the above picture yesterday afternoon when I judged the area had reached peak colourfulness, and it seems I judged correctly because this morning it is already fading, and maybe be gone before another 24 hours have passed.

  Last night was notable for being the first night in the supposed middle of summer when I slept under my winter duvet for just about the whole night. It seems I slept better for it, or maybe I just needed to wee less in the night, but I did seem to wake less than usual. I still seemed to dream a lot, and while I can't remember any fine details, the dreams I do remember all seemed to feature 2-motion selectors - the mainstay of telephone exchanges until electronics too over.

  In what I think was the first "episode" in a series of dreams, I don't think I was working in a telephone exchange. It was like I was just passing by when I saw someone puzzling over a problem with what was known as a pre-2000 2 motion selector, typically used in telephone exchanges built before WW2. In real life I spent many years doing maintenance on those switches, and in the dream I recognized the problem instantly, and with a few subtle mechanical tweaks I cure the problem.

  Following dreams concerned what at the time were considered more modern switches known as 2000, and even later, 4000 type. I don't really know where I was for these dreams, but they concerned building the mechanical parts of the switches using spares that had been in my toolbox for years after I stopped working in telephone exchanges. One very curious aspect of the dream was that I appreciated how elegant the 4000 type was compared to the earlier 2000 type, more than when I actually used to work on them in real life.

  Although I never did manage to fast until dinnertime yesterday, I thought my eating was controlled enough to see a drop in my blood glucose this morning. Sadly it wasn't, and this morning it was exactly the same as yesterday morning - a rather too high 9.4mmol/l. I guess I should try harder today, but it is going to be really difficult under the depressing thick grey sky - as difficult as it was yesterday. It will mean putting a coat on, which feels wrong for August, but maybe I might try and do that rehearsal of walking between Maze Hill station and The Pelton Arms that I would like to do on Saturday evening. I checked it on Google maps yesterday, and although the idea that it is a generally flat walk is obviously wrong, it reckons it is just a 0.4 mile walk. That is less than the walk from here to Catford station (platform 2 !), but I always find the walk to Catford station to be quite arduous for some reason (even when it is the start of a far longer walk).