After yesterday's heat it didn't cool down that much overnight, and this morning the temperature didn't go below about 16° C. Both forecasters, The Met Office and The BBC, have not changed a thing in their latest revisions. It seems today will be hot and sunny, although on a closer look, it does seem the Met Office have reduced their afternoon high to only 26° C, but the BBC still say 27° C. Tomorrow could be the same as today, but at 6am the temperature may have dropped to just 14° C.   Yesterday was quite a successful day, although the biggest success was really overnight, with the results of it being shown this morning. More on that later. One minor failure was to finish a small amount of laundry. For one thing it was rather too hot and sticky for manual work in the afternoon, and the threat of more rain, over what we had just after 2pm, meant that hanging washing on the line to dry might have been a futile thing to do.

  After I had a shower, somewhat earlier than some of the very tardy showers I have had recently, I started washing a hand towel. It was not any old towel, but the one that had been trying to protect my pillows from my night sweats. It had soaked up a lot of greasy sweat, and I decided to start off the wash by leaving it soaking in Bio detergent for some hours. With that done I was free to put on some clothes, and go shopping in Tesco.

  I am surprised I spent so much money in Tesco considering how small my initial shopping list was. The fact is it could have been even more if it weren't for the fact that Tesco are having a major refit. A week or two ago when I reported the place was like a maze with a centre area partitioned off from the rest of the store, I thought they were just doing some maintenance, but apparently not. It seems they were just making some room to enable things like big chillers to be moved around.

  The idea of replacing some of the older chillers was was fair enough, although I can't say I am keen on them now going higher rather than outwards, and the shelves being quite narrow. What pissed me off was that sometimes some similar products were now split in two different parts of the. I hope this is just a temporary measure while work continues, and it will all be back in logical places one day.

  This moving things around meant that I completely missed some things I would have bought, but maybe I might have spotted something I wanted that I would usually miss - although I can't think what. One notable thing was how quiet it was in the store. It was as if all the changes had scared shoppers away, and they were all in Aldi of Lidl. One benefit of this was that the queue for the customer services till was just one single man, and he was served within 30 seconds. I could finally ask if the still sold books of stamps. They did, and I bought 8 1st class stamps.
  I still have some quite old, gold coloured, 1st class stamps, but they are not valid since March this year. These barcoded (or more like QR coded) stamps are my first investment for sending out Xmas cards this coming Xmas. It is possible that I might have need of one for other purposes, but nothing is on the horizon.

  Yesterday morning my blood glucose was higher than desirable, but I suspected that reading, and the previous three, were somehow inaccurate. I was still wary of how high it might be, but that didn't stop me having an unusual lunch. It was a tub of the low calorie/sugar ice cream that previous experience suggests is compatible with my low sugar diet. I have to say that after coming home with heavy shopping, in the rather sultry heat, that ice cream went d9own a treat.

  I allowed 30 to 60 minutes for the ice cream to go down before tackling the towel I had left soaking for the previous few hours. I gave it 4 or 5 rinses, and I could have left it there, but I thought another wash would not do any harm, and I put it in with another couple of items I wanted to wash (light coloured stuff), and left it all to soak in detergent. As I remarked at the top of the page, it felt too hot and sticky for more manual labour, and the chances of rain yesterday were enough that this morning that washing is still soaking in detergent.

  I did do one other useful job yesterday, and it was sort of pleasing. It was a couple of days or more ago that I copied a VHS tape to recordable DVD, and then ripped it to a big mp4 file. Yesterday I set about editing that recording. The main feature, a 1972 film called The Death Line, featured some old scenes of the now disused (for passengers) Aldwych tube station. A lot of the film was rather dark, and sort of grainy. Some of it was "atmosphere" suitable for a horror movie, but I am surprised the BBC showed it like it was. As well as topping and tailing to movie I also made the brights brigher, and the darks darker. The extra dark helped to conceal some the noise and grain.

  I think my edited version looks a lot better, but later I found that not only was it once released on VHS tape, but it has also been released on DVD, and to my astonishment, on bluray too. It seemed like one of the B movies that is shown on TV once, and then forgotten for ever. Evidently I am not a fan of the genre, and didn't realise it is so popular. I would assume that the DVD, and more so the bluray, have benefited from modern digital methods of cleaning up the pictures. I don't feel any urge to buy a new copy of the DVD or Bluray, but if I see one in a second hand/charity shop. I may well spend a pound on it.

  There was a second recording on the VHS tape that I did not know I had made, but was of interest to me. I have no idea of the date, but late 1990s is possible, Carlton TV had a documentary series called "3D", and the documentary I recorded was about over crowding on train services, and showed loads of trains stored on military railway sites. It suggested these train should be put back into service. I agreed with the sentiment, but I know that many of the trains showed were of types that had been too unsafe to use because they had zero crash worthiness. Others had bad asbestos contamination. The good thing is that I was lucky to be able edit out any unwanted footage (the programme has several unrelated segments), and my edit now shows as a glitch-less whole.

  I probably had lots of spare time yesterday, but I have no idea how because the day seemed to just slip effortlessly by. before I knew it, it was time for Star Treks and dinner. However, before describing dinner I must make mention of a mid afternoon snack. One of the things I bought in Tesco was a small jar of Kimchi. Apart from Kimchi flavour instant noodles, I had never tried kimchi before. I believed it to be fiercely hot and spicy, but the contents of the jar I bought seemed mild, and there was not a lot of fermented cabbage in it. Most of it was spicy, and surprisingly sweet thin liquid. I scooped out the solid components, and had them on some thinly sliced beef. It was pleasant, but not exciting.

  Dinner involved more beef - corned beef ! Other than that, it included a whole bag of salad leaves, some French dressing, and half a small tub of coleslaw. Incidently, it was not low fat coleslaw because that has a higher sugar content than the ordinary type. That is something that is probably not obvious, and why I make a point of checking these things. It was actually a nice dinner, and as I learned much later, quite healthy.

  After dinner, and after the last Star Trek show had been shown on TV I couldn't think of much to do. That was just after 8pm, and only an hour and a quarter until sunset. I decided to just read on my bed until it started to get dusky outside, and then try for sleep. There was one thing I did before that, and it was to fetch a 2 litre, ex Diet Coke, bottle filled with tap water that I had left chilling in the fridge.

  I had a cunning plan. It was my belief that the high blood glucose readings I had been getting recently were caused by dehydration after long hot sticky nights. My sodden pillows were the easy clue about that. My plan was to keep very hydrated by consuming the full 2 litres of tap water during the night. I almost did consume it all, with maybe just a small cupful left this morning.

  I guess I am getting used to sleeping on the hot nights now, and generally I seemed to sleep OK last night. After drinking so much water it is no surprise that I needed to get up and wee a few times in the night, but no more so than most nights these days. At least one of my dreams seemed to have references to water in it, but all the details have long evaporated. The only thing I remember was the strange idea of having to land, as if it were a plane or helicopter, a cubical, water filled tent on top of another one. I can't seem recall any rhyme or reason for it.

  This morning I am very happy to say my plan to keep well hydrated through the night worked very well. This morning my blood glucose reading was a very good 7.8mmol/l. It sort of matches what I had hoped to achieve over the last few days by eating mostly known good stuff. I think, or at least I hope, that the full laboratory test on my blood would not be affected by periods of dehydration, and if I had to give a blood sample now, it would show a true average for the last few months, and it would be a low figure. Anyway, it seems I'll have to drink lots of water at night until the weather cools off a lot.

  I'm thinking of going out for a walk in today's sunshine. I can't make up my mind if I want to try and walk a long way, or to try some hill walks, or just to stretch my legs for an hour or so. I guess I'll just make it up as I go along. Looking further into the future, I have a horrible idea that the bee I ordered on Sunday is going to be delivered tomorrow. Tomorrow I want to see Angela for a drink at lunchtime. I now need to keep my fingers crossed that the beer will be delivered early in the morning. I think it usually is, but.......