Maybe today the weather will earn it's amber extreme heat medal. This morning did start out a good degree higher than yesterday, and so there is more for the sun to build on. If the forecast is correct there will be three hours this afternoon at 31° C.  Tomorrow may see the temperature touch 33° C for possibly as little as a single hour. The day after will be the last day of amber warnings of extreme heat, and it is possible it will start to cool down before sunset with the clouds blocked by clouds from as early as 4pm. The day after that could feature a few hours of rain, or thunderstorms according to the more pessimistic BBC weather forecast.

   I think yesterday can be filed as a quite good day. It was a close run thing, but I think before midday I had finished two important tasks. I had washed two hand towel sized towels, and hung them on the line to dry. I also finished the selecting and editing of the final pictures taken at Petts Wood Calling.
  Just after hanging my washing on the line I grabbed a camera, and took a few pictures of the best of my garden. Most of my garden is parched and brown. The "lawn" will regenerate once we have a few rainy days, but most things are now dead. Almost the last to hang on are some weeds, and I guess they will really shoot up after some rain. However, I do still have some real flowers still in bloom, and it is these yellow flowers whose name I can't remember.
  These weeds are doing well, as is the patch of grass to the far left of the picture. Both share a little secret. The green grass is under the water dish on the bird feeder. Because that dish is always fouled by the pigeons I pour about 3 times as water as needed to fill it to help wash it a bit cleaner. All the excess water falls where that green grass is. I could, and probably should, get the hose out and water the garden, but apparently it is very important that the owner of the water company gets a quadruple inflation busting pay rise (or more), and the company shareholders need gigantic payouts. The end result is that water is just like fuel - far too expensive to waste on anything but essentials. Come the revolution.....
  These weeds, dotted here and there in the garden, have deep roots, and still manage to look green and to flower. I don't know their name, but someone suggested they be called fake forget-me-nots.

  I had a surprise in the early afternoon. It was a text message from Michael to say he was shopping in Tesco, and had room in his shopping trolley to get me 4 bottles of Diet Coke. I said yes please ! Not only was it very handy, but I guessed, and guessed rightly that it would mean Michael would join Jodie and me, and later on Alan too, for some beers in the afternoon.

  It was a good beer session, and we sampled some very tasty beers. A couple of them were very thick stouts. They were exceedingly nice, but I can imagine they devastated my blood glucose. I'm just working my way through a couple of pints of water at the moment to make sure I am re-hydrated before I check my blood glucose. Apart from those beers, most of what I ate would have given a good reading some months ago, but I am not sure that will be the case this morning.

  I started the day with a big bowl of instant noodles. For a pre-drinking lunch I had ham on rice cakes with some wild rocket and a quick squirt of mayo. My dinner was nothing more than 6 pork sausages, a bit of mustard, and some low sugar tomato ketchup. I think it must still be a very long term, maybe permanent, change to my taste buds after getting Covid 2 or 3 years ago, but I didn't enjoy those sausages, and it made eating them ultimately pointless. Of course it could have been that they were just crap Tesco sausages, but I don't think so.....maybe partly crap !

 QI, on Dave, was an episode it felt like I had seen not that long ago, and while it was quite a good episode I thought it would be good to try for an early night. I tried, but I failed. Being as it was still 30° C in my bedroom it was very a very sweaty night. Worse than that was the result of all my photo editing. All the mouse movements needed for that have given me repetitive strain injury, or something like that. My right wrist and elbow were quite painful in some positions.

  On top of all that I also had some very specific chest pains. It could have been heartburn, but I am not so sure. It was a stabbing pain right at the bottom of the sternum, and it only happened when I was laying on my left hand side, and then only when I moved my right arm in certain ways. It is not an unfamiliar pain, but prior to last night it has only ever happened when laying on my right hand side. The answer to it was to lay on my right hand side, but that felt so unnatural that it was hard to settle. Curiously enough, laying on my right hand side was always my favourite sleeping position, but that, or similar pains forced me to go to sleep laying on the opposite side, my left had side.

  It was mainly for the pain in my wrist and elbow that I ended up taking a couple of pain killers. I think it was almost midnight, 2 or more hours after going to bed, that I fell asleep, but I only realised when I woke up perhaps 90 minutes later, and realised I had been dreaming. In my dream I had a brand new door on my bathroom. It was easy to lock, and from the perspective of my real bathroom it would have been in the dividing wall between my house and next door !

  I seemed to wake many time in the night for assorted reasons. It was strange that few of them involved going for a pee. One time was to turn the fan off, and slightly open the curtains in the hope that some cooler night air might start to cool my bedroom down a bit - it did, but not much. The fan was maybe too good at appearing to cool me, but in doing so it seemed to be chilling me, and stiffening a few muscles.

  Considering how late I got to sleep, and the patchy sleep I had, I probably got up too early, but I just felt too uncomfortable to get back to sleep. Nothing actually hurt this morning, but it was an accumulation of some mild aches and stiff joints, and stuff like that. That was several hours ago now, and after drinking over 2 pints of chilled water, made another visit to the toilet (for one and twos !) I have just dared to check my blood glucose. It was either the extra water, or I was more careful about what I ate yesterday, plus those beers not being as sweet as they seemed, but this morning my blood glucose reading was a very good 8.1mmol/l. It hasn't been that low in ages !

  There is only one thing that could alter my plans for today (barring the unforeseen), and that is if I get a message to say a parcel is going to be delivered. It will be my new wide angle lens that I am hoping will fit my Nikon camera. The last tracking information, as of about half an hour ago, says it was at a National hub at 4am this morning. I think it now has to move to a local hub, and then can go out for delivery. I suspect it could be next Monday before it is delivered because Hermes don't appear to work at weekends.

  Assuming the unexpected, or unforseen, doesn't happen before hand, my plan today is to go out to visit the only recently opened Barking Riverside station - as well as Upminster and Rainham - all stations on my "explore the limits of my Freedom Pass quest".