This afternoon may not actually be dull, but the latest revisions to both the BBC and Met Office forecasts show any sunshine finishing around midday. That is a shame for reasons I'll explain later. Sunny spells should re-appear later in the afternoon. The Met Office currently says only for 5pm, and the BBC say 7 and 8pm. It will be better than mild, but maybe a tiny bit short on warm with the afternoon temperature reaching 17° C. There are two very different views on tomorrow's weather. The Met Office say it will be almost the reverse of today - a dull start and finish, but sunny spells in the middle. The BBC are more generous with their sunny spells - they start from daybreak, and continue to 2pm. From 5pm they predict 3 hours of light showers. The temperature tomorrow may be a degree higher, or it may be the same as today.

  Everything hung on my beer delivery yesterday. I didn't do much until it arrived. It's arrival was a bit later than expected, but still within the estimated delivery time. However, by the time I had opened the two boxes up, and checked my order, and then started stuffing some of the beers into my two fridges, it seemed to be gone 2pm, and it had passed that undefined time between "lets do something", and "Can't be bothered now".

  One event in the morning should not be forgotten. I had my first shower since laying down a couple of layers of overlapping strong duct tape over the crack in the bath. One good thing to know was that before I could put the strips of duct tape down I had to dry and clean the area I was going to stick it. The actual good thing was that there was still a puddle of water over the crack, and while it possibly opened up when I was standing on it, it was evident at other times that it was not leaking, That being so, the duct tap adds and extra layer of protection provided I don't stand on that spot when showering. At least with the duct there it is easy to see where to avoid.

  The anticipation of the beer delivery somehow made me feel hungry, and before the beers arrived I put a 6 pack of sausages in the mini oven/grill to cook. The original, and possibly made idea was to eat three, and slice the other three up to put in the salad I was planning to eat for dinner. That almost happened but I had an idea that 4 sausages would make a better lunch (eaten by themselves except for some brown sauce). I ended up eating the last two about an hour later !

  My main "amusement" yesterday afternoon was going through yet more loose recordable CDs and DVDs. There was one in particular that took up most of the time. It was a DVD of mp3 music files burnt for me by one of my old workmates. I had completely forgotten about it, and that was probably because that workmates musical tastes were a bit different to mine, although there was some sort of overlap. I had to copy the contents of the DVD (data disk) twice - once to my master hard disk of music, and again to my slave/backup hard disk - and I had to copy all the music, by band name initial, to individual sub folders. It was slightly slow and tedious, but maybe not as bad as having to listen to so many albums to see if I actually like any of it !

  I had two other diversions in the afternoon. The earlier one came about after doing some washing up in the kitchen. While doing that I noticed a nice red and black butterfly flittering around in the back garden. Sadly, by the time I had dried my hands, and rushed up stairs to grab a camera, it had gone, but I took a few snaps anyway.
  The trouble with this picture is that it doesn't show what it should be showing. I did a close up because I could, but what was needed was a long shot to show this dandelion flower was on a stem at least a foot and a half tall. I assume it needed to push up past a lot of low lying plants that would shade it from the sun. It was odd because many dandelions flower very close to the ground.
 I couldn't find any butterflies, but there were quite a few bees around, and contrary to what many say, they were not feasting on dandelions but these blue flowered "false nettles" (I don't know their correct name). It is easier to see zoomed in on the original large image, but you can just see the bee with it proboscis poked inside the central hole on the flowers, and evidently where all the nectar is to be found.
  I was using my Canon EOS 1200D camera for these pictures. I had the shutter set of 1/1000th of a second. This picture could have been better if it was set to 1/2000th of a second to hopefully freeze the motion of the bees wings. I could have done it because there was plenty of light in the sunny garden. I haven't really practiced taking pictures of bees before, or at least not bees in flight, but maybe I should try taking a few more with maybe the highest shutter speed the camera has. I'm still slightly pleased with this shot.

  The next diversion came later in the afternoon, not long before dinner time, and it was inspired by a section of the BBC's advance weather forecast. Of course the advance forecast has an almost zero chance of being correct, but we can but hope.
   This is the best guess of the expected weather for later this month, as made by the BBC (or more correctly, Meteo Group who they buy their forecasts from). Friday 26th and Saturday 27th could be rather delicious - if they happen. They will demand the wearing of shorts...probably. I decided I should check my shorts. I took the top for pairs of shorts out of their storage box. Three pairs are an easy fit, but one pair, and sadly the best quality pair, was too tight to do up. That pair has always been very marginal, and I seem to remembered it was only later in the summer that I had managed to lose just enough weight to wear them, and so the fact that I can't wear them now is no bother. On the other hand, if I could just pull the top button a mere half inch, and possibly less, toward the top buttonhole, I could wear these shorts. I did try pulling harder, but my right shoulder was fighting back painfully !

  My dinner was as originally predicted, a cheese salad featuring two types of cheese - cheddar and feta. It was a very tarst salad, but like many salad, or maybe only those with a vinaigrette dressing, it needed something to top it off. I was drinking Guinness last night (4x 440ml cans of it) but I needed something different. That turned out to be a small bowl of instant noodles.

  I watched, or part watched the usual Star Treks yesterday evening, and then turned the TV off until 9pm to watch Have I Got News For You. That finished at 10pm, and I then went to read in bed for a while. I was very close to the end of a short story by John Wyndham - famous for things like The Day Of The Triffid, and The Midwhich Cuckoo. I was reading them from a bookcontaining a small selection of his short SciFi stories, but the story I was reading couldn't really be called science fiction.

  I'm not entirely sure it was even fiction. It may not have been an actual account of a real event, but I am sure it sums up things that have really happened in one degree or another. It concerned a 22 year old Irish woman who lived in a house without electricity in the wilds of Southern Ireland. She is invited to take part in a television contest with the lure of winning £500. She enters, wins it, and catches the eye of a TV producer who has a friend in the movie business.

  Apparently even under the duress of the contest she display a certain poise and beauty, and maybe other things that the producer thinks would be good qualities for a movie actress. She is introduced to the head of a London based film company, and that puts her on her way to a twisted adventure. She is sent, expenses paid, to a sort of actress school in Italy, where she is taught about make up, and stuff. She is also given voice coaching, and finally a diet and exercises to do.

  She does all this with 30 other young woman who come from different places with different accents, looks and sizes. A few months later they all take a flight back to London where they are to take part in auditions. There were potential parts for many of them based on their characteristics before they went to the school. Unfortunately, on their return it is found that all the schooling, diet and exercises, etc. has turned them all into virtual clones of Gina Lollobrigida (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Lollobrigida) who was Italy's most famous actress at the time, and all their special individualities have been erased.

  That story seemed to crop up, in one form or another, in many of my dreams last night. I am sure some of the dreams were just rehearsing what I was going to write here this morning. I was tired enough, maybe aided by four cans of Guinness, to fall asleep very quickly after I finished the story and put the book down. I sleep both good and badly. I think it was around 3am when I woke up feeling cold, and with my chest aching. I can only guess that I had rolled onto my right side while feeling cold, and had irritated my funny ribs and scar tissue or whatever.

  I eventually had to take a couple of Ibuprofen tablets to calm my chest down, but after that I seemed to sleep OK, although at about 5am I had to resort to turning the fan heater on full because I was still feeling a bit cold. One oddity was that I seemed to wake up only once or twice because I needed to pee. That might have meant a low blood glucose level, but it didn't.

  I don't know whether to blame the sausages, or the late evening bowl of instant noodles for yet another very high blood glucose reading. This morning it was back up to 9.8mmol/l. That is perilously close to the red line at 10.0mmol/l. I think I could be getting despondent that I am losing control of my blood glucose. My running average for this month is only 9.0mmol/l, so I guess I don't have to panic just yet, but it feels like the day is coming closer.

  Being a Wednesday, the highlight today is going to the pub at lunchtime. The only fly in the ointment is the likely delivery of a parcel from Amazon. It arrived at "the final delivery station" (Dartford) at 4:15am this morning, and usually that would mean it will be out for delivery some time this afternoon - even if the tracking page still says by 9pm tomorrow. It is highly unlikely it could get here before 3pm, but it has been known.

   I guess I had better stick to just 2 pints of Guinness today. There will be no Angela again today. She is having re-wiring done starting today. The only other unknown is whether I dare o ware a pair of shorts today. The BBC have now extended their sunny spells until 2pm, but the Met Office insist the sunny spells will finish at midday. Maybe today is not the right day for shorts.