The screenshot above shows white cloud for this time of the morning, but when I look out my window I see a very grey sky. It is almost as if the sun has forgotten to rise this morning. It seems unlikely, but sunny spells are predicted for 9 and 10am, plus 6 and 7pm. The rest of the day is described as "cloudy". That doesn't specify the colour of the clouds. The chart shows them as white, but like this morning they could be a dirty grey colour. Maybe the only slightly good thing today will be the temperature which is predicted to be 22° C. Maybe tomorrow will save us from thinking Autumn is here already. There could be a lot of sunny spells, and even full hours of sunshine, but the temperature will only be 22° C again.


  I didn't mention it yesterday because I didn't expect it to last, but I was suffering from constipation yesterday, and although I didn't feel uncomfortable in any significant way, it did make me not want to go out - just in case ! To my surprise, I still had a fairly productive day, even if it was a bit boring.

  One obviously productive thing I did was to hand wash a bath towel. Unfortunately I was a bit tardy, and didn't get it on the washing line until gone 1pm (maybe closer to 2pm). Four or five hours later the sky was tending towards looking black, and I brought the towel in still quite damp. I hung it on a clothes horse indoors, and this morning it is dry.

  I spent the rest of the day (mostly except the evening) doing a worthwhile, and needed, albeit boring job. It was the continuation of my desire to get rid of a huge pile of archive recordable CDs and DVDs. Strictly speaking some weren't archives, but they still had stuff on that I wanted to save. Some had old radio recordings made from the short lived BBC7 DAB service. Being able to get a digital recording direct from a digital radio transmission was a delightful idea, and I accumulated quite a large collection of old BBC radio comedy.

  I thought I had collected most of it together on a pair (master and slave) of external hard disk, but I seemed to find quite a few recordings on CD of DVD backup. I think they were mostly recordings I hadn't got around to "topping and tailing" - cutting the start and finish to just the limits of the programme without announcements and trailers and stuff, although for some programmes it was useful to include the introduction because it often included a bit of history about the programme.

  These programmes, as well as some video recordings, not only had to be copied over to the master and slave hard disks, but had to be saved in the right place. That often slowed things down a bit. Of course copying 4.7GB data from a less than perfect DVD-R disk to an external hard drive can take quite a long time. Fortunately most optical disks copied perfectly, but a few had missing bits of data - which was a shame, but probably expected for 20 year disks that hadn't exactly been handled with kid gloves. I hope the hard disk copies have as good a lifetime, but to help that I always have the two, master and slave, copies.

  On such a slow moving day the temptation to eat can be very strong, and a couple of times I gave into the desire to do so, but I did try and be very careful about what I ate. The only thing I thought I would regret was a big bowl of Kimchi flavoured instant noodles early in the afternoon. I suppose I could call it lunch, but I had a bowl of black beans with herbs and dressing for lunch. I had hoped that both bowls of hot instant noodles would have the effect of stirring up my bowels. It can often happen if they need stirring up, but nothing happened yesterday.

  I could have continued copying backup CD/DVDs into the evening, but I opted to watch TV instead. By channel hopping I found a few interesting programmes to watch. One was about Kent beaches. It was originally broadcast a few years ago when the beaches were still protected by EU pollution laws, and so were not sewage covered like now. Some of the programme was quite interesting, although it was slightly depressing to think that I haven't done any seaside explorations at all this year. With autumn almost upon us it doesn't seem like I'll be heading to the coast this year.

  There's not a lot to say about my sleep last night. Most of it was good, although by 4am I was feeling a bit cool. I dragged the empty duvet cover over me, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Maybe one little job today will be to put the duvet in the cover. The BBC forecast, the more pessimistic of the two I keep an eye on, says that it will be just 14° C at 4am tomorrow morning, and I think that justifies the full duvet experience. It could be as low as 19° C at 9pm tonight, and maybe I might even start the night under the duvet !

  I had a few dreams last night that I can almost remember, but only one is notable because of the strangeness of it. In the dream I had gone to the toilet in the middle of the night. This could be remembered reality except for one very strange thing. As I sat on the toilet a thunderstorm was going on outside. The real oddity was that the lighning appeared to be from below me, although still outside. Every time there was a clap of thunder I seemed to feel the pressure wave coming up from inside the pan.

  Last night was not a sweaty night, and so I dared to check my blood glucose without drinking any water to re-hydrate myself. I was following a sort of plan to eat the probable worst things early in the day, and safer stuff in the evening, but I was still surprised that my blood glucose reading had dropped to a very nice 8.3mmol/l. One reading doesn't make a trend, but in my fevered imagination my readings will be dropping back to those much better readings prior to the summer heatwave.

  This just leaves the question of what I am going to do today. Two paragraphs ago I nipped out to feed the birds, The sinister grey sky made it feel like it was about to rain. If I do any washing today I think I will have to dry it indoors. I may do a few things, but keep my fingers crossed that tomorrow may be a better day for drying more washing on the line. Today's grey sky makes me feel like I won't do any outdoor activities today, but that's OK because as yet I am still constipated. I am staring to pass a fair bit of gas, and maybe that is a good sign of something about to happen. I may even be getting other hints that something could be astir. If something does happen, ideally a lot, and the sky does eventually lighten up I guess I could force myself to go for a short walk in the park or something.