The sky looked very clear when the sky first lit up, but since then it has clouded over, and the clouds look worryingly grey. The latest revision to the forecast acknowledges that it is dull grey right now, but optimistically suggests the sun will break through to give some sunny spells soon. I have my doubts. The latest revision has extended the dull period at 3pm from just one hour, shown in the early forecast above, to three hours, and the last hour at 5pm is predicted to be dark grey. The last two hours before the sun sets may feature sunny spells. Of course with the forecast changing like this it is obvious that the true story of today's weather may seem very different tomorrow. I suspect the forecasters are hedging their bets for tomorrow. The prediction for tomorrow is just a random jumble of cloudy spells, and sunny spells through the day. Like today, it should stay dry, but it may be one degree cooler than today's 21° C. 

  Just like the morning, a week and a half ago, when I gave my blood samples, my appointment with the nurse yesterday morning seemed to be important enough to influence the rest of the day. In other words, I felt I had almost done enough for one day. It was actually a bit more complex than that. As I mentioned yesterday morning, I didn't sleep well during the night, and then I had to get up early. Being able to be lazy allowed me to be lazy, and grab a few snoozes.

  It must have been almost 2pm before I decided to stretch my legs with a walk to Poundland. I had been meaning to go for over a week, but nothing I wanted was essential, and so I kept putting it off, or I was otherwise busy. Yesterday I bought a lot of stuff, and among it all was whatever I had been meaning to get, although I'm not really sure what that was now. One of the purposes of going to Poundland was to see if they had any bird feed. They did, and although I am not so sure it was any cheaper than Poundstretcher, or even Aldi, I bought a good selection for those hungry bastards to fight over on my bird table (who ever knew that pigeons fought each other quite viciously).

  Among the other stuff I bought were a couple of things I really shouldn't have bought. They were a 6 pack of crisps, and a packet of 6 chocolate macaroon. In moderation the crisps are not that bad, but.... The Chocolate macaroons must have been loaded with sugar, and I didn't even dare look at the nutritional information on the packet. Buying more solar powered garden lights was a sign of madness, but at £1 each they were hard to resist, and they actually looked really good when lit up last night.

  I had fish fingers for breakfast, and I know they are relatively safe. Later on I had at least one cheese and tomato sandwich. I think I had two, but I can't think how I would do that when the centre of he loaf is almost all air bubble. The one sandwich I definitely had I cut the slices of bread off the other end of the loaf. I am fairly sure I couldn't cut another slice off with the entire centre of the slice being a big hole !

  Just to make everything worse I ate two packets of crisps, all the chocolate macaroons, and washed it all down with one sweet lager and two big bottles of strong Fullers ale. I decided to be a bit more sensible when it came to dinnertime. I just had two cans of lentil soup. On the other hand, it wasn't that sensible because I ate the last two chocolate macaroons as a dessert after the soup.
  I mustn't forget I did do one other constructive thing yesterday. I noticed that the basil I had bought from Tesco on Monday (or was it mid week, last week ?), and had put into water to try and keep it fresher, was sprouting roots. Yesterday I cleared out one of my disused plant pots, filled it with compost, and planted those basil shoots. I have protected them by putting (hopefully) enough sticks around them to stop a cat trying to sleep in the pot, or a fox pooing in it. I don't know how long it will take, but I am hoping that until the frost gets at the basil plants, I will have a good supply of fresh leaves on tap.
  If I had been really dedicated I would also have done some weeding yesterday. The main subject of the picture above is the poppy plant. It still has some buds to open and flower, but it seems to carefully regulate itself. A new flower doesn't open until the previous one is dropping it's petals. I am hoping, probably foolishly, that the big plant almost in front of the poppy is a sunflower. There were sunflower seeds among the seeds I just threw onto what is more cats toilet than flower bed, but one day... I can see many weeds growing there, but there are small plants growing that I can't identify as weeds. They probably are weeds, but maybe they are flowers. Whether they can grow and flower this late in the season is something I'll have to find out when, and if it happens.

  Although I had quite a few snoozes yesterday, some were very short, and I still felt like getting to bed a bit earlier than usual, although "usual" doesn't have much meaning lately. I don't know if it was needed, but I took the precaution of taking a couple of paracetamol tablets before going to bed. Perhaps they did help because I seemed to sleep well for the first half of the night, and maybe a bit longer. It was probably 4am when I started sleeping very moderately badly. At 6am I was woken up by my phone. It was a message from Patricia to say that she had safely flown from Argentina to Italy where she is intending to buy a flat. It was good to hear from her, but it did disturb my sleep.

  This morning was another morning when I dreaded to check my blood glucose. To my astonishment, after eating and drinking all sorts of bad things, the measurement was only 8.5mmol/l - exactly my monthly average, and considered good by the nurse at the surgery. I now have dark suspicions that it may be one of those delayed things, and I'll get the super high reading tomorrow !

  I have already had some fish fingers for breakfast, and now I have to make some sort of decision about what I will eat, or how I will eat for the rest of the day. My gut feeling is that I ought to try and fast until dinnertime, and then just have more soup instead of something more substantial. That could be possible if I go out today. When I saw last night's weather prediction for today I was a lot more enthusiastic about going out than I am now. When I look out the window I just see pillows of low cloud, and many of the clouds look ugly grey. This does not fill me with any enthusiasm to go out !