08:05 BST

  It finally rained yesterday. There was a very light shower just after midday, and some more substantial rain sometime between 5pm and 7pm. Against all expectations, there was some blue sky, and even a bit of sunshine too in the afternoon. All my instruments said the temperature reached 19 or 20° C, and it did feel a lot warmer than the 15° C in the forecast.

  

  Today should be starting with bright sunshine, but there is enough light cloud to make the sunshine very hazy and indistinct. Both The Met Office and The BBC (Meteogroup) say today should at least feature sunny spells with the BBC saying they should last all day. Curiously enough, in the latest revisions, the BBC have cut all the sunny spells out of the middle of the day, while the Met Office has added 3pm to their predictions of sunny spells. Both agree that today should reach 20° C, and if the sun is out it should feel very warm, and almost, but not quite, hot ! The Met Office say only tomorrow morning will feature sunny spells, and the afternoon will be dull. There might even be rain at the end of the day, but the temperature could peak at 20° C. Oddly enough, the BBC forecast for tomorrow broadly agrees with this.

  Yesterday, which was a good day, was divided into two halves. The first half included another shopping trip to Tesco. It seems I have learned a valuable lesson - there is no need to load up a shopping trolley to go through the checkouts at Tesco, and that means I can buy a lot less, but more frequently. That is particularly handy when I inevitably forget something the first time.

  Yesterday's shopping trip only involved a few things. There were some bottles of pop, bird seed, and some toilet paper. I noticed that Tesco were selling a well known brand for just over £7 for a pack of 9. I thought that was ridiculously expensive, and so yesterday I checked out Tesco own brand toilet paper. They had a variety of the stuff in pack of 9, and it basically duplicated what Aldi had to offer. I couldn't remember what Aldi charged, but I now know it was £2.99, and the identical stuff (even down to the packaging, and much of the writing on the package) from Tesco was £3.30. I guess that 31p makes very little difference, but now I know I shall restrict my toilet paper buying from Aldi, although at some point, maybe even today, I might see what Savers offers.

  I think I only bought one human edible thing from Tesco, and inevitably it was something I saw on the reduce price shelves. It was actually half price, and that softens the blow a bit. it was a little tub containing about half a dozen chorizo croquets. They contained minced chorizo sausage surrounded by potato, and rolled in breadcrumbs. They seemed pleasant enough, but the could probably have been improved if warmed up first. The catch was that I think they contained a lot of sugar. I scoffed them as a quick lunch before going for a walk in the park to get to the pub to meet Angela.
  I noticed that the Mandarin ducks are back on the river. I saw two males, but no females so I don't know how long the males will hang around.
  I don't think I noticed how blue the sky looks in this picture. The subject of my photos was actually the trees covered in white blossom. I am not sure what type of trees these are, but I never noticed any reaction to their pollen. It seems I am mainly allergic to pollen from very early flowering tree like cherry trees. I took this, and the next picture on the way home after the pub, and apart from turning round to take this photograph I would have been looking the other way where it was still looking cloudy, but the shadows on the ground do strongly suggest the sun was out at full strength at least while I took the photo.
  I always seem to forget that this blue tree or shrub is a Californian Lilac until someone jogs my memory. It is not in the park, but over the fence in someone's back garden. It is a curious thing. It looks so wrong, and yet it looks good.

  There was no Kevin waiting to ambush me outside the pub, and so I has Angela all to myself again this week. It was fantastic to see Angela, and it cheered me up no end, and yet there wasn't the normal spark between us. Of course normal is hard to define. On a line between lovers and very close friends, yesterday was more towards the very close friends end, and yet after the drink, and outside Angela's office, we did have a very warm hug before going our own ways. Angela's parting words was about how much she enjoyed our Wednesday meetings.

  Back at home I had little to do except wait for two parcel deliveries. Before going out I knew that DPD were due to deliver a pack of 12 bottles of hot Caribbean pepper sauce between 4.30 and 5.30pm, and their estimated are usually quite precise. They arrived at approximately 5pm.  The first delivery was from Amazon, and was some new bedroom curtains. They arrived at about 3.20pm, and that was only 5 minutes later than their earliest estimate. They dodn't seem nearly as good at estimating delivery times as DPD and several other courier companies.

  While waiting I was tempted to eat more than I should, but I only had two small plates of rice cakes, salad leaves and cheese. As I may have said before, they have a very low sugar content, although the fats from the cheese are guaranteed to fur up my arteries. While waiting for my deliveries I didn't want to relax by laying on my bed reading because it would be too tempting to have a snooze. I spent much of the time just reading stuff off the internet. Finally the second delivery was made, and I could relax. I lay on my bed, read a few pages from a book, and then I had a snooze of unknown length.

  I was awake again in plenty of time to think about dinner, but before dinner I decided to see what I could do with my new bedroom curtains. I had the problem that they were for a bay window, and what I really wanted were curtains made to have hooks added to run along curtain rails, but I couldn't find any. What I actually ordered were curtains with big silver rings on them to be hung on curtain roads.  I did consider bending some aluminium tubing I have laying around, and making my own custom curtain rails, but then I wondered if I could use the old hooks through the big metal rings...
  I seems I can put the hooks through the metal rings ! I don't know how long they will last because those hooks are bent out beyond their normal amount, but with luck they will last years, but if they do start to fail it should give me plenty of time to make or buy some sort of curtain rod for a bay window. The new curtains look nice, or even wonderful after the ragged curtains they replaced. It felt a bit weird, but not bothersome, for them to block out all light last night, although it as obvious when it was daylight this morning.

  I felt I should make a little bit of effort at being careful what I ate for dinner last night. Apart from those chorizo croquets, which I had forgotten about until this morning, I thought I had eaten pretty safely all day, and I wanted to keep it that way when I had dinner. I had high hopes of an extra low blood glucose reading this morning. I was going to have two cans of soup last night, but at the last moment I replaced one of the soups with a can of East European style smoked sausage in baked beans. I thought they were relatively safe, but maybe not, or not when eaten late in the evening.

  I felt fairly accomplished when I went to bed last night. I read for maybe half an hour before turning the light out. Earlier I had watched two episodes of QI, and so it was later than usual. I think it was about 11pm when I went to sleep, and it seemed to happen really fast. There was one unusual thing about last night, and it was between 1 and 2am. I think it was almost force of habit that I woke up thinking I needed a pee. For the first time in absolute ages I thought about it, and how I actually felt, and decided it was nothing urgent, and went back to sleep again.

  I woke up again at about 3.30am, and this time I did get up for a pee, but even that didn't seem to be that urgent. The trouble was that it seemed to take over an hour to get back to sleep again after that, and I don't really know why. I was only slightly uncomfortable, and I have gone to sleep when I've been far more uncomfortable. I can't even remember what I was thinking about during that hour - at least not in ant detail. I am sure I was dreaming about robots, and that would have been inspired by the book I am currently reading. I feel sure I wasn't thinking about my dreams all the time in that hour awake.

  Even when I did fall asleep I didn't seem to sleep long because I was awake again just after 5am. Once again I felt I needed a pee, but there seemed no great urgency to it when I got to the toilet. I think it more likely I was beginning to think that I needed a poo - I only went once yesterday, and it didn't feel nearly enough. I did feel slightly uncomfortable when I walked to the pub. Anyway, I managed to get to sleep again, and it was just after 7am when I woke up, and got up.

  I was very disappointed with my blood glucose reading this morning. 8.6mmol/l is not terribly high, but I though I might even get a reading under 8.0 this morning. Either what I ate had more sugar in than I realised, or maybe it was a result of being constipated for most of yesterday. I am not convinced I have done nearly enough, but I have been twice this morning already, and I remain convinced there is more to come.

  As I write this it is gone 9am, and the sun hasn't really broken through the clouds yet. There is hazy brightness, but it doesn't seem to be casting much of a shadow. However i can now see a lot of blue sky, and so it looks like sunshine is very likely. In an ideal world I should be doing something with the sunshine, and indeed I intend to, but only to dry some washing. I don't feel I can go out and frolic in the sunshine on a day like today. Today, being a Thursday, should see a beer tasting session with Jodie this afternoon, and I don't want to feel tired and knackered for that. It seems I will be staying in today unless I go to Savers to buy a few odds and ends like more vitamin pills, some bleach, and to check, and maybe even buy some toilet paper from there is it matches or betters Aldi's prices.