Today may not be perfectly dry, but most of it should be dry, and there will be some sunshine, although the latest revision to the forecast paints a slightly different pattern to that shown in the early version (above). As a for instance, 10am is now shown as just cloudy, and the next sunny spells will be at 11am. The light shower is moved forward from 11am to midday. I expect reality will make up it's own mind about when these things may, or may not happen - for instance it is sunny right now, and has been for nearly an hour. This afternoon should reach 12° C, and that should feel OK in any sunshine. Tomorrow will be a little cooler, and the morning will likely feature rain. Some of it could be heavy rain.

  The dominating thing yesterday was waiting for an Amazon delivery. It really shouldn't have been that dominating because I knew it was unlikely to arrive until later afternoon at the earliest. It was also the case that nothing in the delivery was anything I was desperately waiting for, although it is always a thrill to receive a packet or two. I knew I would be safe popping out for some shopping in the morning.

  The temperature had reached about it's highest of 12° C when I went out, just after midday, and the wind seemed light. I was comfortable enough just walking to Tesco without a coat on, and just a short sleeved t-shirt. I will admit it was a bit marginal going there, but it was fine coming back with enough heavy shopping to warm me up. I must admit that is strange way of putting it, but carrying the extra load does warm me up.

  There were several things on my shopping list, and I think I got them all, and nothing else - possibly for the first time in living memory. Top of the list was some bottles of Diet Coke. I also wanted some more salad stuff, including some radishes. Now I think about it, I'll admit I did forget the spring onions, but I still had one biggish one left from the last time I bought some. Lower on the list were a couple of bags of bird seed for the bird table.

  The last thing was a bit optional. I wanted another high wattage, ~15W, LED light bulb, and a spare, to replace the cheap and nasty Chinese one on my dining room. I bought a pack of 5 13W lightbulbs from Amazon maybe 2 years ago (but possibly 3 or 4). They were some unknown Chinese make, and their lifetimes were in the regions of maybe 6 months or less. So much for 20,000 hours lifetime !

  In Tesco I found they did two types of 15W (eqv to 100W filament lamps, or so they claim). One was an own brand, ,and the other was branded Philips. They looked to be identical. I bought two Tesco, and one Philips. The only mild annoyance is they only had "warm white" which give the appearance of a slightly underun filament lamp. I would have preferred "daylight" for it's much whiter colour. If I was actually dining with someone in the dining room than the warm white would be better, but for working, and checking the colour of beer, daylight would be better.

 By 12:29pm my packages were reported to have arrived at the local depot in Dartford at something like 4am, but they still had not left the depot. If I had waited an extra minute before checking I would have found they were leaving the depot right then. It still meant that I could expect a very late delivery. (By contrast, drivers for other delivery firms would have done their entire deliveries by then, and would be in the pub having their first pint....maybe).

 I knew it was going to be a long wait. An hour or two later the delivery time had been revised to show between 6.45pm, and 8.45pm. The actual delivery time was  earlier at about 6.30pm. It meant I had a whole lot of time to wait - 6 full hours of it ! I started off by having a rest. I lay on my bed, and read until I had a short snooze. That was fine except it was starting to cool from the peak temperature of the day, and I had the heating on very low. I woke up feeling frozen !

  It was time for some hot lunch. It was probably the impending rain, but I felt extra hungry at breakfast, and had two bowls of instant noodles. I felt extra hungry at lunchtime and had two cans of soup - and neither was very low sugar, although both were close to low sugar. It was while I was "cooking" the soup in the microwave that I had an idea for later in the afternoon, and the first bit of the plan was to put some heating on in the front room.

  With the front room feeling just less than chilly I got to work on the Lenovo PC I had bought from Amazon for £49. I felt it should be a good PC, but it seemed to fight me all the way. The previous time I had played with it I had changed some BIOS settings, and that allowed me to boot Windows XP on it. Yesterday I wanted to try a new Linux distribution I had read about, and downloaded. It was MX Linux. The only trouble I had with it was the hard disk. I don't think that the Lenovo hardware properly supports 3TB hard disks, and I ended up only using about 2.5TB of the hard disk space.

   Once it was happy with the hard disk, it installed beautifully. MX linux standard desktop is XFCE, which I am very familiar with. Other Desktops are available. Once I had done the full installation I began all my usual customisations of the desktop - essentially to make it look almost like Windows XP ! (It's a sort of long running personal joke). I installed all my favourite apps including two that are actually apps for the KDE desktop. One of those apps is "Kaffeine". It is a media player, and more importantly it is TV app as well. It make using a DVB - T USB dongle easy to use, and I even watched most of an episode of The Professionals on it.

  After doing about all I wanted to do with MX Linux I still had time to waste, and so I rebooted into Windows XP. I intended to add the service packs, and also the Lenovo provided drivers. It got as far as the Windows starting screen, and suddenly it rebooted. Upon starting again I got the message that it failed to start - which was bloody obvious. It was obvious that installing Linux MX had somehow corrupted Windows. My suspicion actually falls on the problems I had been having with the hard disk rather than the MX installer.

  I now face an interesting decision, or a choice of decisions. I could try and repair Windows, and it does offer to try it itself. Neither has ever worked for me before. If I opt to reinstall Windows I will have to reinstall the boot menu because Windows always wipes those out on installation. I could just ignore Windows and carry on using Linux, but there is one more possibility, and it is one that depends on my patience, and maybe another rainy day. I could put a small hard disk in the computer and start from scratch. It is probably the sensible idea, it also has the advantage that I would still have the hard disk with a good copy of MX Linux on it, and I could put that back if I get bored with going through the whole installing windows, and then installing MX Linux all over again.

  I had a three part dinner last night - which I must admit was rather extravagant. Part one was a slight variant of a Greek salad I had the previous two nights - mainly by the addition of some watercress and radishes. Part two was correctly roasted chicken thighs  - correctly as in not incinerated ! Part three was the last couple of oranges I had bought from Aldi. Maybe waiting for much of the week to pass made them a bit more mellow, and peeling them was merely tedious instead of very tedious, but the peeling had to wait because there was a ring at my doorbell.

  To my surprise it was my Amazon delivery - almost an hour earlier than I expected. I had new toys to play with....sort of. One item was no more than a tape measure, and another was a steel tape measure as favoured by builders and the like. Both deserved a few minutes fondling. The main items were door handles and a door lock. I thought I had ordered two door locks, but it seems I only ordered one. It was exactly as expected, and so at least that was OK.

  I definitely ordered and got two sets of door handles - enough for two doors. They are levers rather than door knobs, and they look exactly like I hoped for, but there was one non obvious thing I don't like. They are designed to be screwed one each side of the door, with a latch embedded in the door itself. In that configuration they don't need a screw to hold the square bar that goes through the door because there is nowhere it can go. If used with a surface mounted lock and latch one side can't be screwed to the door.

  I will either have to drill a hole through the lever and square bar, or forget using them and buy something else.  I could use them on other doors, and so they wouldn't be wasted. I think I'll see how easy it is to drill one, and make a decision based on how well that goes.

  There was one more item that was delivered, and it was a bottle of whisky from the Orkney islands. I have yet to try it. Finally there was also a delivery by the postman in the morning of an item ordered from Amazon. It was a pack of window striker plates. They are the "wedges" that the latch on most modern types of windows ends up on. After many years the plastic gets brittle and fall out. The new ones are easy to fit, but they are fairly stiff, and need to be tapped into place with a very light hammer, or other item.

  The curious thing about those striker plates is that I had no idea what they were called, how they fitted, and whether I wanted to replace the bits of cardboard standing in for the missing ones. Then I got a text message from Aleemah asking what they are called. I didn't know, but she said she would seek advice elsewhere because she wanted to change all hers because the plastic had turned yellow. Ten minutes later Allemah sent another text message to say what they were called. I looked them up on Amazon, and ordered enough for my windows plus some spares. I fitted them yesterday morning.

  I had one of those nights that was really good until it wasn't. After two long periods of sleep I woke up at about 3.30am, and it seemed to take an hour before I got back to sleep. In the time until I got up I had a very long and rambling dream. In my dream I was staying in a big country house with a woman. I don't know who she was, but in dreamland we were obviously close, and I think the big country house was a family home. The dream had lots of "episodes" - obviously short dreams, but the theme continued. There was a curious mix of the very formal, and very informal in the house. It is hard to remember any particular things, but one did stand out. At a big formal dinner one of the ladies, with very long legs, decided she would eat naked except for a lace collar. That should have been exciting, but in the context it seemed mundane.

  I ate more than usual yesterday, and I finished my dinner with two sweet and juicy oranges that I ate fairly late in the evening. It is no wonder that my blood glucose was up again this morning. It was 8.2mmol/l, and in the grand scheme of things wasn't too bad, but I still hope to get it down to 7.5mmol/l as a target, or if not, then at least under 8.0mmol/l. Maybe I will do better today.

  I feel OK this morning - at least in one sense, but in another I feel sort of odd. The latest update to the forecast has dropped the possible shower at 1pm, and the afternoon should feature lots of sunny spells, and it should feel warm in the sunshine with the air temperature reaching 12° C. That should mean I go for a walk, but I don't really feel in the mood for a walk at the moment. If I do go for a walk it is more likely to be to Wickes to look at door handles. This evening I could go to a gig, but the one I am thinking of will be in The Elm Tree in Elmers End. It is simplicity to get to - just 9 minutes on the train from Catford Bridge, but I really don't like the place. It can get just as rammed full as The Partridge, and there will most probably be a few people there I don't want to see. I might stay in and order some shish kebabs instead.