It is rare to wish for such things, but I am fairly happy about the rain forecast this afternoon. All the seeds I have put down in the garden need a good watering. Earlier this morning the sky was a slightly hazy blue, and promised a different outcome, but now the clouds are gathering, and it is getting dull outside. Today's temperature should reach 12° C by midday, but it will drop a degree or two once the rain starts at 2pm. It could be heavy rain for the first couple of hours, but light rain will follow until the end of the day. There will be more showers in the early hours of tomorrow morning, but there is hope for some sunny spells in the late morning, and during the afternoon. Once again the temperature should reach 12° C, albeit a bit later in the afternoon than today.

  There were a few things that were bad about yesterday, and some things that were good. The first bad was a text message from Michael to say he wouldn't be going shopping. He would normally go in his car, and would get me 6 bottles of Diet Coke. Not getting the Diet Coke was not the bad thing. The bad thing was that the reason he wasn't going shopping was that he was going to Hospital to see if he could get some medical aid for his distressed colon.

  He has had several treatment, an assortment of drugs, plus a couple of colonoscopies over the years, and his symptoms come and go. Apparently he is considered too old for another colonoscopy, although how that may impact any treatment is unexplained. I hope he got on OK at the hospital, and some better treatment is forthcoming. I'll try and see how he is later today.

  Apart from doing some washing up, and some early preparations for my dinner, I can't recall doing anything else apart from the main event of a (late) afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie. The good thing about it was that Jodie didn't spend as much time ignoring me in favour of her phone, and that we had some better tasting beers than is often the case. One beer that Jodie declined because she had had some recently, was a Romanian beer. It wasn't chilled when I drank it, and that may have been instrumental in it's smell and to a lesser extent it's taste. It had a slightly rubbery smell that was very much like cannabis !
  Last night's dinner was a variation on the Greek salad I had the night before. This time I remembered the long pickled chillies, although that were mainly for the sake of the photo. It was a nice dinner except for one important point. Those very dark lumps on the left of the plate are roasted chicken thighs, except in this case they are almost cremated chicken thighs. The time on my little oven got stuck just before the end of cooking, and instead of 40 minutes they got something closer to 2 hours of cooking. They were still sort of edible, but very crunchy !

  Jodie didn't leave until just gone 6.30pm, and so I didn't get to start my dinner until about 7pm, or an hour late. I did have "seconds" because I had made a lot more salad than seen on the plate in the photo above. The significance of this is that it was already a bit late when I finished dinner, and with nothing on TV, I was in bed not long after 8pm. Initially it was just to read, but just before 9.30pm I put the book down, turned out the light, and I was asleep not too long after that.

  I think I can report I slept well twice, but with an annoying period of insomnia between the two good bits of sleep. That insomnia lasted almost an hour, and it was mainly due to my mystery cold returning. I may have had a small, less than fever rise in temperature because I went from feeling cold to feeling hot, and then feeling about normal again. The main symptom was sneezing and lots of snot. It was probably an allergy, but why it only attacks me in the morning, or in last nights case at about 3.30am is a mystery.

   Since getting up this morning I have felt fine.This morning, despite not eating as carefully as I could, my blood glucose has dropped from 7.9mmol/l yesterday morning, to 7.8mmol/l. Going down is always a good thing, and if I had not eating or drunk one or more things I might have got it down to my self set target of 7.5mmol/l, and that would have been even better.

  It could be said that there are two main features today. The first is going to be the heavy, garden watering, rain - assuming the forecast is correct - but the BBC forecast agrees with the Met Office forecast today, and so it does seem an almost certainty. The other feature is waiting in on an Amazon delivery. Along with a few other things, I have ordered some new door handles, and latches/lock for the door into the dining room, and the door to the kitchen beyond that. I didn't need them to be locking, but if I am lucky the new mechanisms will line up with the old broken mechanisms, and they had keyholes.

  I don't think I'll start it today, but those doors need cleaning and painting before fitting the new door handles. In an ideal world I would strip them back to bare wood, but I think I will just give them a good scrub, and add another layer of paint to how ever many are already on the doors. I think what I am more likely to do today is more computer related stuff, but I may also spend a lot of time being extra lazy and just reading. It feels like that sort of day approaching !
  This was taken yesterday afternoon, and shows the miniature tulips in one of my hanging baskets. At least I think they are miniature tulips. Being all pale, they are quite underwhelming. I think that next year I shall use seeds suggested for hanging baskets - the type that are more colourful, and hang down around the basket. Hopefully the seeds for assorted flowers to attracts bees and butterflies, should start to grow once the miniature tulips have finished. They should be more colourful.