Today's forecast shows a big change compared to recent days. The sunshine will only last until just after midday, and the afternoon will be cloudy. There is still an amber warning for extreme heat, and 32° C is predicted. One change in the latest revision to the forecast is that 2pm is now shown with full sunshine, but at the moment it is predicted to by cloudy after 2pm. Another change to note is the yellow triangle for tomorrow instead of an amber triangle. That is a yellow warning for thunderstorms, and in the latest revision the icon for Monday has changed to falling rain. The temperature tomorrow will be a cooler 28° C, and the rain might start late in the afternoon. No actual times for a thunderstorm are shown.

  Yesterday was a strange day. It was like everything was in slow motion. I guess one factor for this was that I had a lot to say yesterday, including describing all the photos, and after a late start, I didn't finish writing until almost midday. From then on all my plans for the day were carried out late, and I suppose you could say in a leisurely way.


  It was a very sultry day as this picture of one of my thermometers shows. I suspected it was reading a bit high because the outside sensor is mounted on the wall outside where it rarely sees any but some early morning sunshine. By 6.21pm, when the picture was taken, it had been in the shade for maybe 9 hours, but there is a wall opposite that radiates some heat after being heated by the sunshine. I thought that might be enough to make the reading too high, but it agrees with the weather forecast, and two more outside sensors broadly agreed with it.

  The first actual work I did yesterday was to do some laundry. There wasn't all that much of it, just a couple of t-shirts and three pairs of underpants. I could have left it to today, but I thought it was probably good to not let it build up. It might have been 2pm before I hung it on the line to dry. As expected, it dried very quickly in the hot sun, but I didn't bother to bring it in until 6 or 7pm.  After doing that laundry, all by hand, I was feeling rather sticky, and a laid down on my bed to quietly read under the fan turned up to full blast. That felt good !



   It was nearly 4pm before I finally went out to get some shopping from Aldi. It was possibly madness to do it at about the hottest part of the day, but it didn't feel too bad at all. One curious thing was how cool it felt when I entered Aldi. I don't think they have a chiller above the entrance, but if they did it would surely affect the exit door which is right next to the entrance. What makes it very peculiar is that after that apparent sudden drop in temperature going in, there seemed to be no change to the temperature coming out of the store.

  I bought a fair amount of heavy stuff from Aldi - for instance 3 x 2.25l bottles of Diet Coke, a one litre bottle of fabric conditioner, and 4 cans of soup.  The big bag of bird feed peanuts, and fat balls were not particularly light either. It all had to be carried home. It is only 6 or 7 minute walk, but it was facing directly into the burning sun.  I admit I was dripping by the time I got home, but I didn't feel it was a stressful thing to do.
  Part of the reason for going to Aldi so late in the day was that I was waiting for a parcel to be delivered. The Hermes parcel tracking website is less informative than some other couriers, but still maybe better than Amazon's own couriers (although they seem to be improving). All I knew is that the parcel left the depot at 11:55am. The Parcel2Go website informed me that my parcel would arrive between 8am and 8pm. That was no help at all - particularly when I already knew it had not left the depot until 11:55am.
  The parcel was actually delivered around 3pm, and as the picture shows, my doubts about whether I had ordered a suitable lens for my particular camera proved to be wrong. The lens was not exactly what I thought I had ordered. I thought I had ordered a small range zoom lens - a 11 to 16mm lens (where the smaller the number, the wider the view). I think that maybe I thought that lens was too expensive, and opted for the slightly cheaper 10.5mm lens. I think I also expected it to be wide angle rather than fish eye, but that is fine, and maybe even good even if the uses are a bit limited.

  The best thing was that it worked on my Nikon D80 camera. That camera will operate lenses with an in built focus motor, but it was designed with the focus motor in the camera, and a protruding spigot engages with a small slot in the lens mount. When you know what to look for it is quite obvious. I sent an email to Fivercam, who I had ordered the lens from, to thank them, and to say that it worked perfectly on my camera, but also to tell them that they really should have mentioned it was a non motorised lens on the website. They responded very quickly to thank me, and to say they would amend their website. What they didn't do was to offer me any money back. Non motorised lenses are generally cheaper because their use is limited to older cameras. One the other hand, fish eye lenses are usually quite expensive so maybe I did get it at a good price. I will check their amended website soon to see if they have altered the price.

  I did a fair bit of resting yesterday, but I also spent a lot of time selecting and editing the train photos I had taken on my day out on Friday. It wasn't all the photos, but there were 25 trains I had previously not logged in my grand spreadsheet of train photos. Three of them were of the class 710 trains I mentioned yesterday. They are a very new fleet for London Overground, and I had to make a brand new sheet for them. My spreadsheet is now up to 80 pages (or sheets) for different types of train.

  I didn't eat that much yesterday considering the temptations of  shopping in Aldi. I think the only thing I had as a snack was a bag of "hickory smoked" mixed nuts. I ended up eating the whole bag because I was searching for the smoked taste. I suppose it was just me, but I thought they all tasted very bland - even for any type of mixed nuts. I can imagine some sort of scenario where someone had some very old nuts, and decided to sell them quickly by claiming they were hickory smoked....or something like that.

  I guess I am getting the hang of sleep in extreme heat.  Last night my bedroom was 30° C, and still 29° C when I got up. I used the fan on full all night, and that definitely helped. There was just one time when I seemed to be awake for half an hour, but that was at 2am this morning. I think I had originally fallen asleep quite quickly as early as 9.30pm. I don't really know if it was good sleep or not. I think there was only one part of the night where I had some weird and wonderful dreams.

  One such dream, or maybe the bit I remember, was set in a large room. The room was originally me bedroom, but was now the dining room in an Indian restaurant. When I went in there I found a pile of my old shoes/boots, and a pile of old t-shirts. Several of the shoes looked to be still in good condition, and was going to take them for re-use, but many had curry stains on them. Some even had splashed of curry on them that looked very unappealing ! The t-shirts were interesting because even as I was dreaming about them I was thinking I had some great t-shirts, but also that it was impossible that I could have had them. Like most dreams, it seemed to just fade out with no conclusion.

  This morning I have waited for two hours, and in that time drunk almost 2 pints of chilled water, before checking my blood glucose. The extra wait, and maybe the extra water has confirmed my theory that many of the high blood glucose readings on these hot days are caused by dehydration. I guess I have known that for some time now, but this morning was an excellent check on it. Yesterday I ate very typically by not eating anything known to have a high sugar content, and after rehydrating myself, my reading this morning is an excellent 8.0mmol/l.

  Until I did a double take, and realised it was a Sunday, I didn't have any particular plan for today, but being a Sunday it is probable that Jodie will be along this afternoon for some beer tasting. The likelihood of that happening is increased by the fact that the trains are running today. The curious thing is that I think there is engineering work affecting Charing Cross and Canon Street so the trains are diverted to Blackfriars. If there is time I might take a quick ride to Blackfriars and back, but I have a fair bit of housework to do before Jodie gets here - if she gets here.