The sky is blue, and the sun is shining, and it has been this way for an hour or two this morning. Unfortunately, if the forecast turns out to be right, the sunshine will finish soon after 10am. It should stay dull, but dry until 3pm (according to the latest revision), and from then on it will get wet. Mostly it will be light rain, but heavy rain is predicted from 10pm. To make it all seem worse the afternoon temperature may only rise to 12° C. The highest temperature for tomorrow is predicted to be a chilly 10° C, and that is after a sunny morning. The afternoon will probably be rather wet, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow to get a better prediction for tomorrow, and by late morning the forecast may finally predict what has already happened in the early morning.
 
  Yesterday couldn't really be described as busy, but it was quite productive. I did three significant things. The first was I finally got to go shopping in Tesco. As I mentioned yesterday, before I could go to Tesco I had to clear the bathtub so I could have a shower. The bathtub was blocked by my two big washing buckets, and one of them had freezing cold laundry in detergent in it.

  Things seemed very slow yesterday morning, and in the end I didn't have a shower. I just had what is known (by some) as a "cat lick" wash - the smellier places washed with a flannel ! So, mostly clean, and deodorised, I set off to Tesco without a coat. We had had quite a few sunny spells, and I chanced my luck that I would feel fine with bare arms and a t-shirt. It was cool, but not uncomfortable going to Tesco, but....

  As seems normal now, I was 90% very disciplined about what I bought in Tesco, but I did buy a few naughty things from the reduced price shelves. One such thing is pictured on the left - a Ginsters "Bombay" potato and spinach pasty.  I ate it as part of my lunch, and it wasn't bad. It may have been a bit better if heated in an oven for 10 minutes or so, but I don't think it would ever be really nice.

  I also bought two "Tuna crunch" rolls from the reduced price shelf. I would normally avoid them because most Tesco sandwiches seem to have a very high sugar content, particularly if made with white bread. I hoped that by eating them early enough in the day I would get away with it, and it seems I did. They were definitely very nice.

  One thing I didn't buy, although I did find, and note the price, was air fryers. They only had a single model, and it was Tesco branded. It's normal price was £56, but there was a Clubcard discount down to £49. I want to try an air fryer one day, and I guess it is going to be one of these. I was almost considering buying one today, but if I go to Tesco there is other stuff it would be useful to buy - stuff like stock cubes and more of that Smoked Chipotle Paste I first bought and tried a week or so ago.

  I guess I would find other stuff to buy if I went there today, and it would include another bottle of Haig whisky - currently discounted from £28 to just £17 when bought with a Clubcard. I bought one yesterday, and it feels like an offer than needs to be taken advantage of. you can never have too much whisky for those long and lonely nights - as the poets might say.

  While walking home from Tesco I caught what might have been the last rain of the day. It was a quite brief (one or two minutes) and quite light shower. I'll admit it was worrying when it first started, but I am not sure if those raindrops even managed to soak through my t-shirt. I was definitely dry by the time I was home. After putting my shopping away I had my lunch. I don't think it was completely innocent, but maybe it was nice enough to enjoy without worrying too much.

  At this time I can't seem to remember if I had finished my laundry, and had hung it up to dry before going out to Tesco. The best answer I can come up with is probably. Somehow there wouldn't seem to be not enough time in the afternoon if I was still doing that laundry for me to do a second load in the afternoon. That second load was a single t-shirt, a face flannel, a hand towel, and a single pair of underpants.

  It felt good to have got two lots of laundry done in a single day, but that and the shopping were almost the only things I did, or at least physical things. One other thing I did was look back at some of my photography from 10 years ago, and to decided to reselect and edit those photos using The Gimp photo/image editor which I may not have used in the past, or was not so practised in using it.

  The pictures I chose to re-edit were taken in July 2014, and were taken with my Canon SX40 "bridge camera". The first lot of pictures were taken with a fair bit of natural light filtering through the windows of the room, and generally those pictures just needed some mild touching up. The later pictures were taken with a mix of artificial light with some help from the built in flash on the camera. They presented a lot more problems. The camera automatically selected a slower shutter speed in the low light, and motion blur was a big problem (and basically unresolvable). Overall I was pretty happy with what that Canon SX40 camera achieved, and I still use it occasionally for outdoor photography where there is plenty of light.
  Here's a picture taken with my Canon Powershot SX40 camera at 9.30am this morning. It has plenty of detail - which is a sort of surprised because it was taken through a less than clean window pane ! It has also rendered that lovely blue sky really well. With it's x35 optical zoom lens it hasn't quite so much zoom as my Nikon P500, but there is little in it. I probably should use it more when, for instance, out doing train photography on bright days. It would be good for trips to the seaside as well.

  I finally ate, and almost enjoyed my lamb and white cabbage stew last night. The only bad thing is that I had been very over generous with the cabbage. I was trying rather too hard to use the last of the cabbage when in reality there could have been enough for two meals. I ended up throwing away quite a bit of cooked cabbage. I ate it while watching TV. I watched a far bit of TV last night. As well as the assorted Star Treks, I watched QI and that was followed by two editions of Have I Got News For You. The last one didn't finish to 11pm, and I was later to bed.

  I also missed out on reading time last night - which was sort of silly when I have just had three new books delivered, and I am expecting two more - one of which will probably be delivered today. I think I fell asleep very soon after going to bed, and once again I seemed to sleep very well. I can only remember waking up for long enough to go for a pee (maybe 2 or 3 times), and fell asleep again soon after my head hit the pillow.

  I know I had loads of dreams, but they seemed very disjointed, and there seemed nothing long enough to describe any plot or story. One thing they seemed to have in common was moving around. Sometime it was walking, and at other times on buses, tubes and trains. For some reason I think a lot of this happened in West London, and maybe Acton seemed to pop up in one dream. One bit of dream appeared to be set in Catford, and was notable because one (or more) bus route(s) used blue coloured buses.

  Despite my nice but probably naughty lunch of Tesco sandwiches, and the potato and spinach pasty, my blood glucose was right down to slightly less than typical average at 8.3mmol/l. That is good, and gives a tiny bit opf leeway when it comes to eating today. I will try not to take advantage of that, but you never know......

  Apart from a non urgent desire to go to Tesco again today, I have no other plans. If I believed that the afternoon would be dry, and ideally sunny, I would have like to go out to take a few pictures with a camera, and I think it would have to be my Canon SX40 on this occasion (if it happens). Of course the biggest potential fly in the ointment is the possibility of a parcel deliver today. At 4.17am this morning it was apparently at the delivery depot, and it should soon leave there. I think the web page for Hermes/Evri includes a map so I can see where the driver is once he leaves the depot.
  I took this, and the next two pictures, on my way to the gig last Friday night, and completely forgot about them for a few days. This dense stand of daffodils is in front of a small block of flats a few minutes down the road from me.
  This dense patch of tulips is just a few feet from the previous picture of daffodils.
  Another 10ft away from the tulips is this second dense stand of daffodils. I took these pictures using my mobile phone, and it did a good job, maybe even a very good job considering the flowers were in the shade of the block of flats, and the sun was very low in the sky at 7.23pm. It was rather dull, and that is reflected in the picture. I tried to brighten them, but only a tiny bit of brightening turn the daffodils into yellow blobs with no detail.
  These tulips (and dandelions) are in my own back garden. It is a shame about the weeds, but they still look nice. It is not so easy to see from this angle, but there are maybe 10 more buds waiting to erupt soon.