The sky is very slightly misty at the moment, but there are no proper clouds, and the sun is shining. At the moment the sunshine is very slightly diffuse, but soon it should be going full strength until the start of the evening. At around 6pm the clouds are predicted to return. For a few hours we should still get sunny spells, but the last hour of daylight may be cloudy enough to hide the sun completely (according to the latest revision of the forecast). The latest prediction says today will only reach 27° C. Most of tomorrow will be sunny, but some of the afternoon may only feature sunny spells, and the maximum temperature may only be 25° C.

   Yesterday was generally good, although it had one bad spot. It was after I had washed and dressed, and was just about to go out shopping in Aldi. My mouth felt a bit dry after brushing my teeth, and I thought I would have a quick mouthful of Diet Coke before going out. I took a gulp and immediately started choking. I thought it was because it had fizzed up, and I was trying to breath the bubbles. I had two choices - spit the drink onto the carpet or my bed, or back into the glass I had just taken the drink from. I chose the glass.

  That was not the end of the story. I was still coughing like I had terminal Covid, and I had to wait at least 15 minutes before I dared make a move. Before doing so I looked in the glass and saw what was the original trouble. I seemed to have coughed up a fur ball like a cat, except my fur ball seemed to be made for a strand or two of my own hair. I can only imagine that while I was brushing my hair a stray strand had somehow ended up in my glass of Diet Coke.

  The worst problem was that all the coughing had left my throat very sensitive, and anything could trigger more coughing. Even a few specks of dust when biting into something like a biscuit. Fortunately I managed to do all my shopping with no more than an occasional "ahem" type cough, and not the hacking cough I had when I first tried to breath Diet Coke ! It was a fairly pleasant walk to Aldi.

  It wasn't all that bad walking back from Aldi weighed down with shopping. For instance, in my rucksack I had three 2.25 litre bottles of Diet Coke, and two 250ml (?) bottles of balsamic salad dressing. After a seemingly long wait, they have finally got my favourite balsamic dressing in again. It's why I bought two bottles of it.  I even bought two ready made salads to use it on - but didn't !

  While walking back with a heavy rucksack, and two only medium loaded shopping bags, seemed easy enough, it did seem to be hot work. The outside temperature was probably just over 20° C, and the clouds made it feel humid. I was dripping when I got home. I had to cool off for a good 20 minutes or more before I tackled my next job. It was to hand wash a medium sized bath towel, a single t-shirt, and several pairs of underpants.

  As I was doing that I noticed a few very small patches of blue sky between the clouds, and they were getting bigger. In the middle of hanging the stuff on the line to dry we had the first brief sunny spell. Until that moment it looked like it could turn to rain despite what the forecast said. Fortunately the sunny spells got longer and longer, and in a few more hours they had merged into one 6 or 7 hour sunny spells. When I took my washing in not much more than a few hours after hanging it on the line, it as bone dry, and feeling hot.

  Once again I had to rest to cool off after doing that washing by hand. Manhandling a wet bath towel can be quite taxing - specially when wring it out by hand. Fortunately I was cool-ish and dry when Jodie arrived for another Thursday afternoon beer tasting session. I think only one beer we had, a mango rice flavour beer, was pretty horrible in my opinion. Of course Jodie thought the horrible sour taste and soupy texture was wonderful !

  We were joined by Alan, Jodie's boyfriend (although I don't think she approves of calling him a boyfriend) for the last half an hour. He brought me a present of a CD recorded by The Ferrets. They were once known as Ferdinand's Northern Ferrets, and I even have some video of them I shot when using that name. Now they are simple The Ferrets, and they have had a CD made to showcase themselves. I don't think they will ever be signed to a record label, but the do draw fairly big crowds on the pub circuits covering old punk songs. It seems Alan was part of the process to make the CD.

  My lunch had been a salad with "red Thai" flavoured chicken chunks. It was rather nice. I also had several assorted snacks including some "Mini Cheddar" biscuits that I had bought out of curiosity. One was pizza flavour (calling it oregano flavour would probably have been more accurate), and the other was burger flavour. I think I only had one 25gm bag of each, but I did eat other stuff too.

  My dinner was another salad. For dinner it was a ham salad, and it was a bit bland. It was also not very filling, or not satisfying. It was hard not to have other stuff afterwards. I think I managed to only have a couple of slices of cheese, but there was possibly more to it than that. After dinner I watched another episode of "Secrets Of The London Underground". It is both a very interesting programme, but also quite irritating. The male presenter, Tim Dunn, comes across as a bit of a wanker (there is no other way to put it).

  The programme ended at 9pm, and I was feeling quite tired. I read in bed for maybe 10 minutes before putting the book down, and trying for sleep. One hindrance to sleep was that my throat was still very sensitive, and anything could trigger a cough. Fortunately I didn't seem to cough much, and I can't remember coughing during the night. I think I had a fairly good nights sleep, although it didn't always seem to be so.

  I have a vague memory of waking at around 1am and thinking I was getting terrible sleep. Maybe that was just a dream because later it was obvious that at the very latest, sleeping from 10pm until 1am, or at least three hours of sleep, wasn't a bad start, and in fact is quite typical for me these days. I think my next period of sleep may have been as long as three hours as well. The next bit of sleep was possibly a bit less than 2 hours, but the next bit was just over 2 hours - and that surprised me.

  Prior to that last period of sleep it was already daylight, and I wondered if I would ever get back to sleep. Evidently I did, and for much longer than anticipated, or even desired. In theory I feel wonderfully rested this morning, but I have my doubts. I also wonder if I might have a cold, or even the Omicron variant of Covid. I guess nothing extra aches this morning, and that probably rules out Covid, but my throat is still occasionally a bit tickly, and every now and then I need a little cough. It seems my lungs are still functioning well according to my Pulse Oximeter. It says that my blood oxygen level is still 98% without doing anything to boost it (what could be called breathing exercises). Also, my blood pressure is good.

  Even my blood glucose is improved a bit compared to the previous two days - and that is after drinking enough beer to get very mildly tipsy. This morning it is 8.7mmol/l, or just over my typical average. With luck I will improve on that tomorrow morning, but there could be a problem. What I would like to do today is to go out on my Freedom Pass Quest again. I still want to do the 4 northern termini of The Metropolitan Line.

  The trouble is that it would not be good travelling on trains if I am going to keep on coughing. To make matter worse, the more I think about it, the more I seem to be developing a sore throat. Sometimes it seems I am never going to get to the four northern ends of The Metropolitan Line. There is one thing I will 97% definitely do, and that is do to a bit more laundry so I can hang it in the hot sunshine to dry.  I might go for a long walk in the park where coughing will matter less, or I might do some PC based stuff while gargling with whisky !