The BBC are currently a nice cheerful forecast with loads of sunny spells. The Met Office is far less cheery as the screenshot above shows. The copper coloured sunrise suggests this forecast is going to be a lot closer to reality. After updating both forecasts the BBC has changed every sunny spell to grey clouds. The Met Office is holding out for 11am, and only 11am to feature sunny spells. It also keeps the periods of grey clouds. I expect the time of them will shuffle around during the day. The afternoon temperature remains at 15° C (the BBC says 16° C). Tomorrow may see 16° C, and sunny spells through the afternoon.

  With all day sunny spells, it was difficult for yesterday to be a bad day, although it did have it's disappointments. One very small disappointment was not seeing Angela, but it was very small because I didn't really expect to see her - just a few high hopes that came to nothing.

  It was the change from impossible to very unlikely to see Angela that inspired me to do the full works in the morning - shave, shampoo, and shower. I don't think I had washed at all the day before, because I was not expecting to see anyone, and it did feel good to be clean again. I seemed to have plenty of time yesterday morning, possibly because I had so little to write about yesterday morning. Although looking back at what I wrote yesterday seemed to show a lot more writing than I thought I had written.

  Somehow I still seemed to have a lot of time in the morning, and I used some of it to cool down after my shower and shampoo. I had decided the hot water was getting a little bit cool, and turned the gas up until it was fairly hot. Being under that hot water, and then blow drying my hair left me feeling rather warm, and almost an hour to cool down was called for. It was about 12:15 when I took a wander to the station. I got a copy of The Metro, and the chance to try the camera in my new phone out in sunshine.
  This was the first real test of my phone camera in "Pro" mode. I set it to a fixed fast shutter speed, and allowed the phone to adjust the ISO (sensitivity) setting for the correct exposure. The fast shutter speed meant that the train is frozen, and the image sharp despite the train still moving fairly fast halfway down the platform where it will stop. I was rather pleased with this first test.
  This was an even more severe test. This class 376 train has just entered Ladywell station at almost full line speed, and yet the train is still sharply photographed. My new phone is definitely usable for occasional train photography, but the camera loses it's setting if left unused for 10 or so minutes. For any serious train photography I'll still with a DSLR camera. However, and someone famous (David Bailey ?) once said, the best camera for the job is the one you have with you.
  I resisted the temptation to improve the contrast on this picture that looks towards the Ladywell Road entrance to the park. To the naked eye the shadow in the foreground seemed to be a bit deeper, but the shadow of the trees middle left seems to be almost black. The picture still seems a bit flat though. It is possible I caught the view too early before a passing cloud had fully cleared the sun, or the other way around.
 I am sure the camera had reverted to fully automatic when I took this snap of a squirrel. When zoomed in on the original picture there was lots of detail of the squirrels fur to be seen. I could have cropped the image a lot more for the equivalent close up, but I thought I would try and keep it just a shrunken version of the original (shrunken to fit on this page). I would not say the phone camera was good for this sort of thing, and a camera with an optical zoom lens would be far more appropriate.
  Was it last week, or the week before that I showed a picture of scaffolding up around St Mary's church in Ladywell (and almost next door to the pub). The purpose of it is now clearer. What may be the nave of the church (or whatever it is called) is now covered with a tin roof. It seems that the main exercise is to replace or seriously repair that section of roof. Note the bright sunshine and deep blue sky - some of yesterday was really lovely, other bit were merely lovely.

  I seemed to have spent a lot of time playing with my phone camera, and I didn't arrive at the pub until just before 1pm. It was a pleasant lunchtime even without Angela, and I feel it is going to be a regular part of my week even if there is no Angela. I had my usual two pints of Guinness, finished the quick crossword, and half the cryptic crossword, plus there was the usual banter going on with the very few people in there, and Asia, the barmaid.

  The first real disappointment came after leaving the pub. On Monday I had ordered my next repeat prescription, and I was heading to the pharmacy to pick it up. It turned out that "next door" (the surgery) had not released the next prescription - or that is what I was told. Two things are possible. The first is that the pharmacy had not got around to making up the prescription, and were just blaming the surgery.

  The other possibility could have been my fault. It was a couple of weeks ago that I got a phone call out of the blue from one of the doctors at the surgery to discuss my medication. It only took a minute or two to agree I was having no problems with my current medication. I then distracted the doctor by asking is there was anything notable in the results of the blood and urine tests that had been done a few weeks previously. It was then that he told me that my liver function was excellent - which rather surprised me.

   He also said my blood glucose control seemed very good, and everything else was looking good too. Maybe at the end of that he forgot to authorise continuing repeat prescriptions. Whatever the real reason, I have to go back to the pharmacy today, probably just after lunchtime, to see if the repeat prescription has been released, and/or the pharmacy has bagged it all up ready to take away. I seem to have a feeling that it could be another wasted journey.

  When I got home I decided on a snack of rice cakes and corned beef. I was trying out what I think are some new rice cakes I bought from Aldi. They were chilli flavoured. I feel I have seen them before somewhere, but not in Aldi. Anyway, they turned out to be really nice. They were very light, and very crisp. They were so good that after eating 4 of them I went back down to the kitchen, and had another 4, but this time with cheese on.

  I don't know if it was the Guinness, the walk, the fresh air, or even the rice cakes, but I felt really tired yesterday afternoon. I transferred the pictures from my phone to my PC. Took a quick look at them, and then laid on my bed to read. I had barely read a single page before I put the book down and fell asleep. I slept for just over an hour, or so I estimate, and there was only about half an hour daylight left when I woke up.
  As the sun set there was a little bit of red on the undersides of the streaks of clouds to the west. It was not terribly dramatic, but I was hoping it was heralding a better day than the reality today. As I write this the sky seems to be uniformly grey. I note that the final hope of one hour of sunny spells at 11am has now disappeared from the forecast in the latest revision.

  I think that maybe a double helping of rice cakes tipped me in the direction of guilt, and my desire for dinner was reduced a bit last night. I still had a sort of dinner because the core of it was already cooked. I had given some pork belly strips, the better kind bought from Tesco, and not Aldi, the grilling of their life. The rind was just about vitrified, and most of the fat had been driven off (and pored away). There was still enough fat left to keep them moist and scrumptious.

  My dinner was just going to be those pork strips, although originally I was going to cook some vegetables to go with them. It was probably not a lot more than half an hour later that I started to think that maybe the pork strips were a bit rich without anything else to water them down. It was than that I threw caution to the wind, and ate the last two of the 4 pack of oranges I had bought from Aldi a on Monday.

  I thought I was still feeling tired, and I was in bed before 9pm. Unfortunately it seemed to take ages to get to sleep, and mostly it was because I was feeling too hot to get comfortable under the duvet. For the first time I was afflicted with that problem through the whole night. I am wondering if I had some sort of fever or something because I kept feeling sweaty under the duvet, but shivery without it.  It felt/feels like I had a really bad night.

  Somehow I still managed to have what I think of as a lay in, although it seems to be becoming normal now that I don't get up until 7am. The very first thing I did was to check my temperature. At 35.5° C it was a little higher than typical, and yet still a long way away from a fever. After a visit to the toilet, and scrubbing my hands to get rid of any sweat that might contaminate the test, I checked my blood glucose. After the late evening oranges I was expecting the worst, but I was astonished to get a reading of just 7.8mmol/l.

   On my spreadsheet I colour that light green. Figure starting with 8, which until recently were most common, I leave uncoloured. Readings starting with an 9 I colour with amber, and the very occasional reading starting with a 10 I colour red - red for danger. A reading in the green has been a luxury for a long time, although I seem to be getting a lot of them this month. They have taken my running average for the month down to 8.27 mmol/l. Only two other months have been this low. I guess I am doing something right even if I feel really crap recently.

  There are two things on the agenda today. The first I have already mention, another visit to the pharmacy. The second should be a beer tasting session with Jodie, and maybe Michael this afternoon. It would be good if Michael can make it so I can give him his early Xmas present - my old Huawei phone. He is in desperate need of a new phone. His old one is full to the brim of stuff, and it is held together with duct tape. My old phone should store more than his old one, and apart from a very fine crack on the screen, that is not visible unless you hold the phone at the right angle to the light, is in near perfect condition.