All good things come to an end, even if it seems they have only just started. Today may be the last day of summer (or summer-like weather if you are pedantic), and the end is easy to see. Tonight may see rain, but before that there should be blue skies, and solid sunshine. The temperature should rise to 27° C. The day will/may end with rain, and the first hours of tomorrow may see some heavy rain. The rest of tomorrow my be dry, but sunshine will be in short supply, and the afternoon temperature will only be 22° C. That is still warm, but it is the start of the temperature falling a degree or two for the next week or so, and maybe more rain later in the week.

   Yesterday turned out very differently to how I imagined it. The one thing I did do that was planned was some laundry. It was just three items. One of which was a hand towel. I could have waited until I could have added a t-short or two, plus more underwear to the laundry pile, but I particularly wanted the towel to dry in the sunshine - towels, of course, are designed to hold water, and so need extra drying compared to a t-shirt.

  There was one unique problem with that hand towel that the sun couldn't cure. It has a stain on it that I thought was just sweat where I was using it on my pillow for far too long during the hottest and sweatiest night. I expected it to wash out after a wash or two, but it seems very stubborn. Yesterday I covered the stain with "Vanish stain remover", and let it soak for a few hours before doing the wash. If anything it made it worse. I am now wondering if it wasn't sweat but a curry stain. I don't know how curry could get on a towel, but curry stains are a bugger to get out.

  I had been mentally preparing myself to go for a walk in the park yesterday morning. I was just about to shift the plan up a gear when I got a phone call from Lee. As usual he had a lot to say about nothing ! I think he was on the phone for almost an hour, and I was losing the will to live, let along go out for a walk in the park. For the first time I was actually grateful to Lee for distracting me. Our call ended when my front doorbell rung.

  Without Lee's phone call I could possibly have been out when the man from some cheap and dodgy courier company call at my front door to hand me a parcel. It was my new (secondhand) Nikon D80 camera body. I had been wondering how long it would take to arrive. The company I ordered it from didn't send me an obvious message to say it was despatched, although I did get one curious email that added a long alphanumeric number to the order form. With hindsight it was probably a tracking number, although it most definitely didn't say what courier company it was for.
  As I tried to explain a week or so ago, I wanted a Nikon D80 for two reasons. The most important of which is that it was the last of the series of cameras that have a built in focus motor. The second reason was that it was cheap, and by cheap I mean £105 including P&P. When new it would have come with a basic lens, and been priced at around £1000. I specifically wanted a model with an in built focus motor so I could finally use a lens I must have bough 5 or 6 years ago.

  The lens can be seen in the picture above attached to the camera body. It is very big and heavy, and has a big and heavy specification to go with it. I can imagine it was north of £1000 when new. I initially bought it for £300 (if I recall correctly). When I got it home from Cash Converters I tried it on my Nikon D3200 camera, and it was great in most respects, but the autofocus didn't work. It was usable without, but hard work. I took it back to cash converters and offered them a deal. I either wanted a complete refund, or I said I would accept it as it was for half price. They agreed to the latter.

  Yesterday the lens met the camera body, and it all worked perfectly. It is a really brilliant lens because it has one feature that is not found on most zoom lenses. I can't remember the technical name for it, but constant aperture seems a fair description. Essentially the aperture, or sensitivity to light does not change when you change the zoom setting. As well as that, I think the focus point doesn't change either. It is a style of lens that is very common on mega expensive movie cameras so they can zoom in without having to manually change the aperture and focus. It is very rare for still cameras, and yet that is what this lens was designed for.

  I played around with the camera and lens for several hours yesterday, but it was all done indoors or in my back garden. There were a few rather unspectacular scenes I took snaps of, but nothing to show how good the lens is because once the picture is taken there is nothing to show how it was done. It is the potential ease of use that make it very special, but maybe only in some circumstances. It has a f2.8 aperture, and so can be used in slightly dim situations - better lit pub gigs is where I am mainly thinking of.

  That little bit of excitement made the afternoon fly by, and soon it was time for dinner. The day had started with my blood glucose very high, and I had wanted to eat little or nothing until dinnertime, but I was feeling almost very hungry a lot during the morning, and I ended up eating several handfuls of peanuts. At lunchtime I convinced myself that my last two wholemeal rolls had to be eaten before they got too stale. I had them with cheese and tomato, and they were starting to get dry so it they did have to be eaten.

  Then dinnertime came along, and I managed to convince myself that a couple of cans of soup would be quite enough. I did doubt the idea of having hot soup, with chilli sauce added,  on a hot evening, but it was nice to eat, and it didn't seem to have any bad effects at all.

  I'm sure that yesterday was hotter than the day before, but I felt fine when I went to bed. I didn't bother to cover a single inch of myself with the duvet, and slept well like that. In fact apart from the last few hours I seemed to sleep rather well. The last few hours were typical in that I would probably wake up when my body felt it had enough sleep, but my brain wanted more. I guess that is one good facet of being retired - not living by the clock. I was quite surprised that it was getting on for 8am when I woke for what felt like the tenth time since it got light. I do wonder if some of the times I thought I was awake it was actually a dream.

  Once again it seems I am able to control my blood glucose quite well. I would have liked it to have gone even lower, but 8.6mmol/l is very close to my monthly average for almost the entire year. The group practice nurse decreed this was "good control", and who am I to argue with her. I have doubts I will be able to get my blood glucose any lower by tomorrow morning because today might involve beer, and to a certain extent because there is a feeling that it is good enough as it is. That doesn't produce the same incentive as when you know you are heading into the danger area.

  I have just one plan for today, plus some preparation for that plan. I will be taking possibly no more than a short walk in the park to the pub where I hope to have a couple of pints of Guinness in the company of Angela. Before that I need a good scrub, and my hair most definitely needs a bloody good wash. It is close to being matted by sweat after the last couple of hot days.