The latest update to the weather forecast hasn't changed anything to the early morning screenshot above except reducing the time at 28° C to just two hours instead of three. It still means today is going to be a very hot day, and there is hotter to come !  Tomorrow the full sunshine may only last until 4pm when clouds start to fill the sky. After 5pm there may be no sign of the sun, but the temperature may have reached 30° C. There is no warnings of it, but all that heat trapped under the clouds could trigger a thunderstorm.

  It's hard to describe whether yesterday was a good and productive day, or something else. It was probably something else. Obviously my day was tempered by the terrible night's sleep I had.  I suspect I probably felt that I should have felt more tired than I seemed to be. Initially there was just one thing I wanted to do, and I wondered if it might be the only thing I might do.
  That one thing was to do a bit more laundry. It was only two items, but they needed a special wash. I had been using the red face flannel as a mop for my face when I was sweating. It didn't really feel it, but it was obviously getting a bit greasy. I had been using the towel as a protector for my pillow on hot sweaty nights, and it had probably soaked up a lot of grease. I first left both items soak in bio detergent. I could have just used that for the wash, but I don't like the way it smells. After soaking for a couple of hours I rinsed the bio detergent out, and then did a full wash with normal detergent, three rinses, and then fabric conditioner.

  My timing was by pure luck just like the other day. While I was actually doing the washing it was dull outside, but the sun broke through again just as I was hanging the towel and flannel on the washing line. It was around this time, or maybe a bit earlier, that I could hear a strange wailing wafting through the air. I had a suspicion that it was a Muslin call to prayer, or even the prayers themselves. I speculated whether the Mosque, half a mile up the road, near Lewisham Hospital had installed a new 50kw PA system.

  There was another possibility that didn't bear thinking about, but one that needed investigating. It was on Tuesday, when I walked through the park, to meet Angela for a drink, that I photographed a still packed up fairground ride in the park. I wondered what it was doing there because I could find no adverts, or whatever, about any events taking place in the park. After a wait to cool off after doing the laundry, I put on my boots and took a walk.

  One of the first unusual things I saw was a police van parked under the shade of the trees on the edge of the park. There were 3 or 4 bored looking coppers waiting by it. The next anomaly was small groups of people leaving the park, and all the women had coverings over the top of their heads, but not full face coverings.

  As I walked through the park I next came to the basketball courts. There was a couple of dozen young women, once again with headscarves or more on their heads playing basketball. Evidently their particular version of the Muslim religion is a bit more easy going than the ultra conservatives of, for instance, Saudi Arabia.

  Once I had crossed the river I could see that the football field was covered with family groups sitting in large family groups. Most were on the periphery of the field taking advantage of the shade under the trees. The sun was feeling very fierce yesterday afternoon ! Finally, beyond the tennis courts I could see the fun fair.
  This was the rear of the funfair. It didn't look as if there were many using it.
  This was the view from just inside the Ladywell Road entrance. It was plainly obvious that something was going on, but there were no posters to be seen, and a brief search on the internet, including the Lewisham Council website revealed nothing. I can imagine it was only advertised inside local Mosques, or by word of mouth. That seems a bit strange considering it is a public park.
  I felt a bit uneasy using my camera around all those crowds of people - particularly when there would be women in the shot. I really don't know the taboos about these things. I did take this one more snap of the ride that I had photographed last Tuesday  before it had been unpacked and powered up.

  I saw very few people using any of the fairground stuff, and if that was the case the operators would be doing it at a loss, but I came up with another theory. I suspect that the fairground operators had been hired for a fixed fee by the Mosque to give free rides. There was nothing to say that it was restricted to Muslims, but there was a sort of feeling that it was.

  I only walked 1.34 miles, but apart from a few stops to take pictures, I was generally walking quite fast. At least I thought I was, but the average speed was only reported as 2.755mph, and that is not very fast. Nevertheless, I was happy to get home because I was feeling like I had walked double or even treble the distance. For the rest of the day I did very little. The best bit was the long snooze I had in the afternoon.

  That snooze was fairly late in the afternoon. It was 1.47pm when I started walking, and when I got back I wanted to "develop" the pictures I had taken. I had used my old Nikon D80 camera, and I am not always happy with the pictures it takes, and I wondered if the pictures were usable. They all were usable, but I always seem to need to alter the brightness of the picture by boosting the mid tones a bit. There is a technical term for this, and it is to do with the "gamma" of the picture. I suspect the gamma of the digital encoding in the camera is not set right, but it is possible it is set correctly for typical natural lighting in Japan where Nikon Cameras are made.

  I don't know what time my snooze started, but I think it was about 4pm when I woke up. I wanted some sort of snack, and I think I had some Hula Hoops. While down in the kitchen I started cooking some pork belly strips so I could give them a nice long cook to crisp up the fat on them. It was a mistake to start cooking them so early. The smell really triggered me, and I barely made it to 5.45pm before I started my dinner of pork belly served with mustard and more hula hoops.
  I started the first of three bottles of beer to wash my dinner down. I drank them in the order they are pictures from left to right. The Tribute Pale Ale was a fairly traditional ale, and was nice. The next one, the Mena Dhu stouts was not so good. It seemed too bitter considering it was supposed to be made with six different malts. The Saltaire Triple Choc beer was exceptionally nice. The problem with all these beers, in ascending order, was that they contained a fair bit of sugar. Ales seemed to be stopped from fermenting before all the sugar is converted to alcohol. Having them in the evening had the predicted results in the morning.

  Last night was another terrible night. I felt not only hot and sticky, but I was suffering from random aches again, and I just couldn't seem to find a comfortable position to sleep. On top of that I didn't seem to feel sleepy - which seems ridiculous after a very poor night the night before. I obviously did get some sleep, and it improved as the night wore on, but I only know this because after thrashing around for what seemed like ages, I would suddenly realised that the clock had moved on an hour or two.

  It's hard to say how much sleep I did get last night. Maybe it was as much as four hours, possibly more, but perhaps it was enough. I tried to do what I did yesterday morning, which was to go back to bed and get another hour or two of sleep. I managed that yesterday, but not this morning. I do not feel great this morning, but there is nothing in particular I can point to as an example of why I don't feel good.

  One thing that is bad, and yet rarely causes any feeling at all, is my blood glucose. The Hula Hoops I ate yesterday can share a small portion of the blame, but I think those beers can take the lion's share for my blood glucose passing the threshold into the danger zone. This morning it was 10.3mmol/l. I suspect it will soon drop if I can manage to fast for a lot of today. I am unlikely to be able to fast beyond the afternoon because I think beer will be involved.

  I think Jodie said it is this coming Thursday when she said she may not be able to make our usual Thursday beer tasting session. If so then that means that she will probably be over this afternoon for our Sunday beer tasting session. I shall be planning my day based on that assumption. There is one other thing that might happen today, and that is an Amazon delivery. Originally it was predicted to happen tomorrow - which would have mucked my day up - but this morning I saw that it arrived at my local Dartford delivery depot at 4.34am this morning. That means it will probably be delivered sometime between mid afternoon and late tonight.