08:07 BST

  It was nice shirt sleeve weather yesterday. The sun was out for most of the time, and the afternoon temperature was about 16° C, or maybe a little bit higher. Unfortunately there was a bit of wind that could chill when channelled between houses, and when on the shaded side of the road, but generally it was nice.

  

  The BBC (Meteogroup) forecast is being a bit more pessimistic by suggesting that most of today will only feature sunny spells, but as can be seen above, the Met Office reckon that most of today will feature full sunshine. Both forecasters give an afternoon temperature at 16° C. It seems today will be just like yesterday - which was nice. Unfortunately, tomorrow sees the return of rather less pleasant weather. It may only be a couple of degrees cooler than today, but with no sunshine predicted for tomorrow, it will feel a lot colder - particularly indoors where I rely on the sun to warm my front, south facing, rooms up.

  With one caveat, yesterday was a very enjoyable day. During the morning I hand washed a couple of t-shirts, and maybe 6 pairs of underpants. I hung them all on the line to dry in the sunshine (although it took at last a couple of hours for the sun to move around enough to shine on them). I brought all that washing in, bone dry, at about 5pm. Of course that wasn't the highlight of the day.

  The highlight of the day was meeting Angela in the pub at lunchtime. I left to walk through the park early enough to take a longer walk than I did. Unfortunately I think it was the very light grey Converse trainers I was wearing that made walking seem like hard work. Those trainers were not actually uncomfortable, but maybe they were still stiff after hardly being used in the few years that I have owned them. Maybe they have almost no use because they are so stiff.

  I chose a more direct route to the pub, but I didn't get there very early because I did stop a few times to take pictures. The whole park is now erupting with flowers. There are almost no "ornamental" flowers in the park, but loads of what could be called wild flowers. I have never seen such a dense amount of bluebells on the river bank before. In fact I am not sure if I can recall any bluebells on the the river bank before.
  I now find myself wondering how, if this is the first time they have appeared there, how did they get there ? I have to believe they are propagated by seeds, maybe blown in the wind, but I thought that they were grown from bulbs. I can't believe the company who looks after the park would have had loads of men all over the river bank planting bulbs.
  First of all I couldn't think of the colour to describe these flowers, but than someone answered my query as to what they are by saying that they were just lilac bluebells. It does seem odd that there is just this one isolated stand of lilac bluebells, Maybe like some plants like hydrangeas, their colour is influenced by soil chemistry. Perhaps there is something like an old torch battery leaking chemicals into the soil by these lilac bluebells. Apparently blue bells are not always blue and can even be grey ! More info here - https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/bluebell
  I had to ask what this plant was as well. Apparently it is Green Alkanet. It is related to forget-me-not, and also comfrey - a name that will pop up in a paragraph down the page. It is quite pretty, but could actually be called a weed that can take over a damp and shady garden. I don't think it is something I want in my garden !

  I think I got to the pub about 10 minutes before Angela. She came in looking fine, and the good news was that the "trapped nerve-like" pain in her neck was much better, although sadly not fully gone. I took along a small tub of comfrey cream, that I had originally bought to help a stiff and painful shoulder, and gave it to Angela to try. She immediately rubbed some on the sore area of her neck. I also gave her a box of Ibuprofen and a box of Paracetamol which she gratefully took (and rewarded me with a quick cuddle).

  I guess that many don't keep a stock of painkillers because they don't need them, but with my dodgy chest, with it's occasionally aching scar tissue, and wonky ribs, plus pains from my knees and other joints when doing long walks, I always make sure I have plenty at home. One thing I have never considered before, and I am not sure why, is that comfrey cream can also be good for knee pain (read the link I gave in the previous paragraph).

  Angela was in a very good mood, and it was one of those occasions when I felt very close to her, and she to me. It was an occasion when we were conspiring together to attend the same gigs. Whitestar are playing a gig in The Coach And Horses, Beckenham, on Saturday, and because it is an early start (8pm), we both fancied the idea of going. Angela will be going with lover boy, but urged me still to come "to keep her company".

  There was a further piece of information that made the idea of keeping her company more pertinent. In a few weeks time lover boy will be depping (deputising) as drummer for Whitestar, and I would guess he will be studying the drumming for Whitestar at The Coach And Horses, and mostly ignoring Angela. She definitely says I should come when lover boy is actually drumming because he will definitely be ignoring her (apart from watching her to see if she gets chatted up).

  I think it was 2 minutes past 2pm when we left the pub, and it was with Angela complaining she could stay there all afternoon because she was so happy and relaxed, but she knew she had to get back to work. I walked her back to her office, and we had a very warm, but brief hug before she went in, and I walked to the Tesco Express on the hight street. I particularly wanted some Diet Coke, but of course I didn't stop there.

  The other thing I also wanted was some salad leaves. I bought two bags - one of "assorted leaves" and the other of wild rocket. I also bought some blue stilton cheese because I fancied some of it on rice cakes with some of those assorted salad leaves. I probably shouldn't have bough the pack of spicy chicken mini fillets, although the nutritional information placed the sugar content in the green. One final thing, and one I should definitely not have bought, was a pack of chicken and feta Greek style sandwiches. They were made with white bread, and had an unacceptable sugar content. I was suckered in because of the reduced price sticker on it. I should have read that properly before I bought it. It was a very tiny reduction - a bit of a con really.

  With two pints of Guinness in me I was, or my legs were feeling even more tired as I walked to Tesco Express. Carrying two 2l bottles of Diet Coke, and the other stuff I had bought, made the last bit of the walk to home feeling really hard work. It was great to get back home, and put my feet up - and eat that naughty sandwich. Later in the afternoon I had quite a few stilton and salad on rice cakes as a sort of snack.  I'm not sure if it was the cheese, or the salad leaves, or probably a combination of the two, but it was really delicious, and I ended up eating more than intended.

  It is a good thing that the rice cakes, and the salad leaves are almost blameless, although the stilton would have been less so, but still not too bad in terms of sugar content. I think those spicy chicken mini fillets were the second major source of sugar yesterday. I had those mini fillets with the rest of the assorted salad leaves, and nothing else....apart from a very liberal amount of mayonnaise !

  It was soon after I had eaten (or was it just before) that I sent Angela a massage to say how good it was to see her, and not to worry about today. This morning, at 8am, Angela was due to have a physiotherapy session in the hospital. I think she was worried about it, but only expressed that worry as fearing she wouldn't be able to get up in time for it. Considering it would be taking place no more than a few hundred yards from where she works, with an official start time of 8am, I couldn't see that getting there would be the problem.

  A few hours later, while I was watching QI on TV, Angela send me a message. We exchanged a lot of information, and I did my best to re-assure her over the course of about half an hour.  It would have been easier and quicker to have done it by voice instead of text, but I guess text does give you the chance to consider your answers, and try and get the spelling and grammar right before hitting the send button.

  I guess I was doing something right because Angela added a few off topic messages that started with her saying I was a good friend, and then moved on to me being her best and only true friend. Finally there was a "I love you" followed by several kisses. I know that Angela had had several vodkas by then, but I choose to believe it was acting like a truth serum. It is sad, for both of us in my biassed opinion, that she is so anchored to lover boy.

  Despite feeling so tired earlier on, even after quite a long snooze in the afternoon (at least I think it lasted for quite some time) I didn't feel ready for sleep until it seemed to be getting late last night. I read for some time before going to sleep. I'll take a guess that it could have been as late at 11pm. It was another night when I seemed to sleep well, and another night when I can remember dreaming a lot, but can't remember almost anything about those dreams.

  I do remember almost like a snapshot of one dream. I have no memory of the body of the dream, and so I can't really provide any context to the 2 seconds that does stick in my memory, albeit in a very hazy sort of way. It seemed to be an advert, maybe in a magazine, for the "new" GPO lightweight plastic phone (I guess it was the final prototype before the mass production of what was known as the 706 phone). The thing is, the advert was "sexed up" by having a model wearing a fishnet body stocking in the background. It was obviously very artistically photographed because nothing was revealed that would drag my attention away from the phone - unless of course I am some sort of pervert who finds phones sexy !!!

  The legacy of that naughty sandwich, and those mini chicken fillets, was revealed this morning. My blood glucose had gone up to 8.8mmol/l. That is not specifically that bad, but really annoying after a couple of days of nice and low readings. It is my own fault, and the ironic thing is that while it was pleasant, I can't say I really enjoyed that pack of sandwiches. To salvage something from it I can say that it was a test of my tolerance of cucumber. It does seem my taste buds are almost back to normal after some were killed by Covid 2 years ago. I could certainly tolerate the cucumber in the sandwiches, and maybe I might have even enjoyed it a tiny bit.

  The main event today is a Thursday afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie, and possibly Alan and/or Michael (although the chances of Michael joining us are very slim still). Before than, but after I have had a shower, I will be taking advantage of the warm dry weather to do some more washing, and get it on the line to dry. I will probably just do one single item - a pair of jeans. They are a very loose fit, and I have no fears about them shrinking, although experience suggests that only happens in a very hot machine wash. Hand washing a pair of jeans is going to take some muscle power, and that is why I may only do the one item, but possibly I could go on to do a few t-shirts and more underwear, but I rather doubt it.