I'm not sure if it has finished raining as I write this. It is certainly looking very damp outside, and the idea that the sun will break through the thick and grey looking clouds seems unlikely, but even the last revision still says that there will be sunny spells from 9am to 1pm. After that the sky gets very grey again, and the next rain may fall from 4pm for at least 4 hours. One more revision to the forecast confirms my gut feeling. It is now thought it will stay gloomy until midday when we will be treated to a couple of hours of sunny spells. In those sunny spells it might feel warm with 14° C expected, and 15° C possible for a single hour at 2pm. Tomorrow is forecast to be like early versions of the forecast for today - sunshine and sunny spells in the morning, and rain from late afternoon, but it will be several degrees cooler.
  Yesterday was one of those days that was good in the morning, and almost bad in the afternoon. Yesterday brought the nice phone call from Angela, and the delivery of my Nikon Coolpix S6300 camera. I have a bit more to say about that camera later. At not long gone 10am, and catching me unawares by being so early, the postman delivered two more of the packages I was expecting. Both were Jimi Hendrix themed t-shirts.

  One other good/bad thing was going shopping in Tesco. That was good because I could stretch my legs doing something useful like stocking up my food supplies. It was bad in so much that there was almost nothing I could eat straight away. Apart from some fruit and nuts, I didn't buy any snacks, but I did buy some salmon based fishcakes. They were marked reduced price (with, to my surprise, a decent discount), and I had them for lunch.

  I also bought a couple of new hand towels. I didn't really need them beyond wanting some "different" hand towels to the ones I already have. The difference is that the new ones were blue. One is a light blue, and the other a darker blue. You may ask what is the significance of being blue ? The answer is none. It's just a change from the other hand towels I have. One other bad thing about going to Tesco was that I was rained on lightly going there, and rained on close to heavily on my way home !
  One other thing I bought in Tesco was this jar of "Dynamite" chilli flavoured Marmite. I was suckered in by seeing "Limited Edition" on the label. I didn't stop to remember that this "limited edition" was originally being sold 3 or 4 years ago, and I already have an empty (cleaned and washed) jar of it on my trophy shelf. Apart from already having tried it, the other annoying thing is that last time I could barely detect and chilli heat when I ate it.

  My afternoon was close to boring. By then the sky was very dark, and while not seeming to be very heavy, copious amounts of rain were falling. It gave a very depressing feeling.  I can't say I did it with any enthusiasm, but I resumed ripping more of my CD collection in the afternoon, and early evening. Rather than watch over it all the time, I would start a CD ripping, and then go and do something else - usually reading either a book or stuff on the internet except when I was having dinner. I took a longer break then, and soon after 7pm I ripped the last CD and closed the PC down that I was using (the one on the dining room table).

Newsflash 08:26am - against all odds, and against the later revision of the weather forecast, the sun is currently shining !
  I now have three Nikon Coolpix pocket sized cameras. The new (second hand) one, the S6300 is top left in this photo. To the right of it is an L29. I seem to recall that the man in the secondhand shop gave it to me, as well as a discount when buying a bigger, DSLR camera. It is good, but not great. It's special trick is that it is powered by ordinary AA cells, and so it can be "recharged" by any shop that sells AA cells if such a need arises. The bottom camera is a S3500, and I originally bought it, from a secondhand shop as a replacement for the first S6300 I bought. I gave away the first one to Patricia when she needed a decent camera 3 or 4 years ago. Sadly it wasn't a replacement for the S6300. It is slow and tries to complicate things with so called "intelligent settings". Maybe some of the weirder ones are useful, but generally they are very un-intelligent !
  It was quite gloomy when I took this picture, but the S6300 took it in it's stride, and the original picture looked bright and vibrant. In this shrunken version (shrunk to fit the page size) it loses something, and I think I may have been a bit too hasty sharpening it to try and make it look better in this small size. On reflection I don't think it needed anything done to it aprt from shrinking it. Anyway, it shows one of my flower baskets coming to life nicely.

  My dinner was a little more exotic than those recently. It was a casserole of diced beef with leek and sugar snap peas. The "exotic" ingredient was a very generous squirt of concentrated tomato purée. It is very rare that I use that because it is a big source of sugar (maybe just fructose from the tomatoes themselves, but still sugar). It gave the casserole (or stew ?) a lovely exotic red colour. It was quite nice too - rather better than the somewhat bland versions made with diced leg of lamb.

  I seemed to watch a fair bit of TV last night, but I did turn off the TV for half an hour while there was a gap in anything I considered worth watching. The last two programmes were an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister" (dating back to the Thatcher era, but still must as apt for the current loonies running the country), and an episode of QI. I think the later programme finished at 9.30pm, and then I went to bed to read for a while before trying for sleep.

  Last night was a terrible night. I just could not get comfortable. Depending on how I was laying in bed a random combination of shoulders, elbows, wrists, or bits of my chest would ache. At time I did wonder if it was something a bit more serious than just aches that might be afflicting me. I managed to get to sleep for an hour or two, but when I woke up, and then still couldn't get comfortable, I took a couple of Paracetamol. They helped, but not as much as I hoped. I had several periods of insomnia in the night, and the longest could have been a whole hour.

  I was up just before 7am this morning, and I still didn't feel very good. It is only now I think about it, that I wonder if many, or even most of these aches can be blamed on the cold and wet weather. In theory I am isolated from it when indoors, but I am reminded that my mum, and I think my grandmother too, would always complain of aches and stiffness in cold wet weather. Maybe it is more to do with the atmospheric pressure (low on cold wet days) that has some sort of effect.

  The good news is that despite that sweet tomato purée, and also a couple of sweet oranges I ate yesterday afternoon, my blood glucose reading hit another great low this morning. It was just 6.9mmol/l, and if taken under the proper conditions, would be diagnosed as not diabetic. Those proper conditions are something like fasting, consuming a pint of water with a measured amount of glucose in it, and reading taken an hour later (or something like that). I doubt I could get a low reading under those conditions, but 6.9mmol/l is bloody good for me !

  It is passed the time for parcel deliveries, but I am expecting another new t-shirt, and a very small and light memory card adapter in the post sometime. Either none or both could be delivered by the postman today. If it is the same postman who is standing in for my regular postman, who is on holiday, he could come soon after 10am, but if my regular postman is back, he could be here closer to 1pm.

  All this matters because I shall be seeing Angela at 1pm, and at some point I need to shave, wash my hair and shower, and obviously I don't want to be doing those things if the postman is going to be knocking at my door. Timing will be everything ! The other thing about going to meet Angela is that if the forecast can be believed, and after quite a few sunny spells that were not supposed to happen in the latest revision to the weather forecast, it is tricky to rely on the forecast, but if it is like I hope it will be, I could be walking through the park in the dry, with sunny spells and a temperature of up to 14 or 15° C. That is as good as nice and warm. Shane that the forecast says I will probably be leaving the pub under a dark grey cloud as the weather revs up to rain later this afternoon.