Wednesday 25th May 2022

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Wednesday 25th May 2022

08:07 BST

Imagine all the possible types of weather, take away snow, and what is left describes yesterday's weather. There was sunshine, rain, thunderclaps, grey skies and blue skies, and also some hail. The various revisions of both the Met Office and BBC forecasts got all the ingredients right, but only gave vague hints at what time there things might happen. It is notable that there seemed to be no lightning visible when all the thunderclaps happened. I infer from that, that the storm was actually some way off, and we only experienced the fringes of it. That might be an excuse for why the weather forecast were so erratic. They did get the temperature about right though. The afternoon was about 16° C.

The forecast has already changed, and now the light shower shown for 17:00 in the screenshot above, has been moved to midday. 17:00 is now shown as sunny spells. It seems possible that we might get away with no rain today, and that maybe we will get a brief glimpse of the sun. Of course the forecast is revised once an hour, and can change a lot with every iteration. One thing that is usually certain is the temperature and this afternoon may be 16° C with a brief excursion to 18° in the evening. Tomorrow could be warmer, 20° C, and there could be some sunny spells in the morning, and then again in the early evening.

I don't know why, but yesterday seemed like a fair day. There were lots of things to dislike, and the weather was at the top of the list, but somehow it never felt that bad. Maybe just going to Tesco was enough to make the day enjoyable, although it did bring it's own stresses. I did buy a few things, like bacon flavour potato salad, because it had to be tried, and I was worried that it, and maybe a few other things were not exactly good for me.

The rest of the day was just a waiting game. Amazon were still saying my parcel had been lost, and that if it didn't arrive by the 28th I should ask for a refund. Just an inch or two down the page was a link to updates, and upon clicking that I first saw that the entry for missing parcel had disappeared, and that it had left somewhere "up north" and was heading this way. Later in the day the headline still said missing, but the updates said it had arrived at Dartford - the local delivery depot for around here.

I didn't get the usual email warning to say that the parcel was out for delivery, but the updates revealed it had left Dartford at 11:50am. Experience suggested it could be here at 5pm, and that guess was only half an hour out from reality. My parcel was delivered at 4.30pm, and one of the seat pads was on my office chair, in front of my PC, 10 minutes later. I can confirm it is a lot more comfortable than the beaten up old pillow I had been using ! Meanwhile, as I write this, the tracking page says still not shipped, although the updates option does say delivered at 4.22pm. I think Amazon has two systems, and they are not talking to each other.

For the most of the day I was kept amused by eating and the weather. The worst bit of eating was a snack of sliced German sausages with the bacon flavoured potato salad I mentioned earlier. Very little time passed before I had the lunch I had planned earlier. It was a couple of bits of cod in breadcrumbs. That double meal did keep the hunger pains at bay until the evening, and oddly enough they were not that strong even then.

The weather was not exactly amusing. In fact it was fairly depressing, and yet there were enough sunny spells, even in the middle of a storm, to cheer me up. It was the total randomness of it that kept it amusing. The weather forecasters were struggling to keep up with all the changes, and so the forecasts were pretty useless. Sometimes it would look like this out of the back bedroom window....

...and sometimes it looked like this.....

These were both views to the north, and while there is a high degree of uncertainty about it, I think the peals of thunder I heard, some fairly loud, were from the north. It was odd that I never saw any lightning, but most of the time I was in a south facing room. Some of the thunderclaps happened when I could see large patches of blue sky to the south. I think the whole sky was looking very dark when we had some torrential rain, which included some hail in it, but strangely enough not accompanied by any thunder and lightning.

Here's half a minute of torrential rain. The hail is more obvious by the sound it makes as it hits the window. I still find it strange there was no thunder and lightning during this torrential downpour.

I did have one other delivery via Royal Mail yesterday. It was some short leads with a miniature coax plug on one end, and an inline socket for a standard TV aerial plug at the other. I had ordered them from Amazon some weeks ago. I had hoped they would have come a lot sooner, but soon after ordering them it became obvious they were coming straight from China - hence the reason they took so long to arrive.

There is always some uncertainty about such leads, and whether the types of connector are what you hope they are. Fortunately they were exactly what I wanted. They allowed me to plug a standard TV aerial plug, via the adapter lead, into a USB dongle digital TV receiver. I am now happy to say I can watch most TV channels on the PC on the dining table that is mostly there to play music. I even watched the last half hour of a Sherlock Holmes story on that PC yesterday afternoon.

Like the afternoon/evening before, I indulged in some cider yesterday evening. The strange thing is that I think the nicest cider was the "Rattler". Maybe it only seemed the nicest because I expected it to be very rough - which it wasn't. I can't remember which of the other two were best, but they were also nice, and far, far superior to what ever the disgusting ciders I tried to drink with Jodie 3 or 4 weeks ago. One of those two was voted to be a sink job. The other was almost bad enough to warrant pouring down the sink !

I had some concerns about the sugar content of the ciders, and also of the food I had eaten earlier in the day. It seemed just as well that I kept my dinner very simple. It was "chicken tikka flavoured" chunky chicken slices served on a bed of mixed lettuce leaves (with the usual generous amount of mayonnaise on it). While fairly healthy, it never seems to feel very filling. In consequence I snacked on some Twiglets while watching some TV last night.

There were a few thinks worth watching on TV last night. I started with The Simpsons at 7pm before turning the TV off until 8.30 when BBC4 were showing an episode of "Yes Prime Minister". When that finished I quickly switched over to Dave to catch the last 40 minutes of Have I Got News For You. By, or even slightly before, 10pm I was in bed. I tried to read for a while, but after reading 2 or 3 pages I reached the end of a chapter. I put the book down, turned out the light, and I fell asleep very quickly. It was almost as if the cider had enhanced the soporific effects of the lettuce leaves I had as part of my dinner.

On the whole, I slept well last night. The three bottles of cider should have meant that I got up to pee, more, but if I recall correctly, I just woke up for even bigger pees than usual ! I actually remember very little of the night, but I do remember a complex dream in the last few hours before I got up. I hardly remember any of the fine details of the dream, but I do remember the theme for part of it.

The dream was set in a sort of cross between a college and a workplace. It had a very large courtyard, and I had to cross it while it was being used as a set for a new James Bond film. It is no wonder such films cost millions to make if my dream came even close to reality. There were several hundred people - technicians, many camera operators, builders, scaffolders, and people doing unknown things on the set. Several large stages had been built, and each had a backdrop of a projection screen so any background could be projected on them. It was as if the actual real location being used had nothing to do with the actual film. It was all very fascinating, and while some were looking out for the film stars, I was more interested in the cameras and sound equipment. I guess I am just an anorak.

I think I woke up at about 5.30am, but I considered that to be too early. I seemed to have had a good sleep, and I didn't really believe I could get back to sleep........90 minutes later I woke up again and this time I did get up. As always, I was keen to know how much I had ruined my blood glucose level yesterday. I was rather surprised to see it had stayed exactly the same as the day before at a very good 7.3mmol/l. Evidently many ciders are safe to drink, and that if I eat any "naughty" things early enough in the day, the worst is over by the morning.

The main agenda today is meeting Angela in the pub for a lunch time drink. At least today it will probably be safe to walk through the park with just a light coat, and a raincoat will not be needed. Having said that, The Met Office still insisted there will be light rain at midday. That prediction has survived a few revisions, and so seems likely - except the BBC forecast says no rain at all !

I am expecting another parcel today (or maybe tomorrow), but it is being delivered by Royal Mail, and if I miss it, it is not too much trouble to walk, or a get a bus to the sorting office to pick it up there. Other than these two things, plus the usual ablutions and shave, I don't know what I will be doing for the rest of the day. Of course past experience says I'll come home from the pub, maybe have a snack or something, and then have an afternoon snooze !