As can be seen in the forecast chart above, this morning was almost chilly at just 13° C, but the sky was blue, and it is warming up quite fast now. The met Office predicts the afternoon temperature should reach 26° C, and the BBC says even higher at 28° C. Tomorrow could be the same as today, although it may start a degree or two higher.
  I find it hard to describe yesterday. A few useful things happened, but then there seems to have been a lot of nothing happening. Oddly enough the nothing didn't seem to be boring so I guess I must have been gainfully employed doing something or another.

  What I can say is that I finished the laundry I had left in soak overnight. There were just three items - a hand towel, a pair of lounge pants, and a pair of underpants. The towel had needed a double wash, first with bio detergent, and then 4 rinses beforfe being washed with the other stuff in normal detergent. The extra wash was because the towel had loads of dried sweat on it after being used to protect my pillow at night.

  The other thing of note was doing some garden maintenance. I say maintenance, rather than "gardening" because a lot of it was to do with clearing/cleaning the path from the back door to the garden area. It had loads of moss growing on it, and all sorts of garden debris on it. It needed some scraping to get most of the moss off (I used the hoe for that), plus lots of intensive sweeping. It was all done under the midday sun, although the near the back door is always in the shade.

  I did do some limited weed pulling, and also cutting off the long stems of the Alliums that had finished flowering, and dropped their seeds. What I didn't do was to get the strimmer out and cut the patchy lumps of grass (and also some cereals thanks to the amount of spilled bird seed last year) back to a something that poorly resembles a lawn. After working in the hot sun for maybe approaching an hour (although I wasn't timing it) I felt too knackered to do more.

 
  One of the sadder aspects of yesterday was that I managed to take a snap of this magnificent poppy at 11.30am - before the sun hit it with the force of a flame thrower. It was self seeded, and seemed to appear almost over night. A few hours later it was drooping badly. I gave it a small amount of water, and later on I poured about a gallon of water around it's base. It continued to droop, and by the end of the day it seemed almost dead. I hoped it would perk up overnight, but while I haven't been outside for a closer look, I can't see any improvement from the kitchen window.

  Apart from laundry and garden work, about all I can say about the rest of the day is that I did some washing up, and I prepared a few meals. After working under the hot sun it would seem that the obvious choice was to have ice cream for lunch. I actually had 6 sausages - the last of a bag of frozen sausages. They were Richmond sausages, and to be honest they were not very good. I bought them because I thought that was what I bought last time, but it turns out that the last bag of frozen sausages were Tesco branded, and I have to say the Tesco sausages were much nicer.

  I still haven't managed to find an Tesco low salt/sugar tomato ketchup despite the notice I photographed in the store a few weeks back saying they were expecting new supplies on 7th June. As I mentioned yesterday (I think), I couldn't find any Tesco branded ketchup after everything was moved during the refit that is going on. It is only the Tesco brand ketchup that is truly low sugar. The Heinz low sugar version actually contains about the same amount of Sugar as Tesco's ordinary ketchup.

  What I did find was already at home in a box of assorted stuff part hidden under bottles of spices. It was a very small tub of concentrated tomato paste. I am sure it had heaps of natural sugars in it, and so I used it with great caution on the sausages I had for lunch. Maybe I should have mixed it with some vinegar to make it more ketchup like because by itself it didn't really do the job.

  After my lunch I don't think I ate anything, unless it was a small amount of peanuts, until I had my dinner. Dinner was a cheese salad - a very simple cheese salad. The cheese was ready cubed Feta like cheese (but maybe not actually Feta), and I was quite generous with it to avoid it getting lost in the whole bag of aromatic salad leaves which I had seasoned with some balsamic dressing. That was my entire dinner, although later on in the evening I did nibble on a chunk of cheese.

  TV has become most boring in the evening. I was still able to watch three lots of Star Treks, but from 8pm I could not find a single thing on that interested me. Once again I spent an hour or so reading before going to bed. Like the night before I took a 2 litre chilled bottle of tap water to bed to avoid getting dehydrated in the night. It was probably less important last night because it seemed to be almost cold in my bedroom in the small hours of this morning.

  Unlike the night before, I had great trouble getting to sleep. One reason was that I seemed to have more aches than usual. I guess I can blame my work in the garden for that. It made finding a comfortable position difficult. There was also a three way temperature problem. It was far too hot at the start of the night to sleep under the duvet, and yet it was not hot enough to need a fan blowing on me. In fact the fan felt chilly after a while, and probably made my aches worse.

  One odd thing about last night was that I can barely remember dreaming. Even when I can't remember a thing about my dreams, I usually can remember that I had dreams. This morning I just have a very faint hint that maybe I had a dream, but I can't even say what part of the night it may have happened. What wasn't a dream was that as midnight approached, and I don't think I had slept a wink, I took a couple of Paracetamols to help me sleep. I haven't had to do that for some time now. Thankfully it seemed to work.

  I definitely felt chilly during my last hour or two in bed, and while I soon seemed to overheat if I pulled the duvet over me, I did do just that to warm up for 5 minutes, and slept partly covered. After getting to sleep so late I was reluctant to get up when I did - about 6.30am. I had woken up even earlier than that, and managed to get back to sleep, but eventually I didn't seem to be able to sleep any more, and reluctantly got up.

  Like the night before, drinking lots of water through the night, meant my blood glucose reading was nice and low, In fact it was the same as yesterday, 7.8mmol/l. That is almost low enough to bring about some mild, very, very mild, weight loss, but I have not dared to get on the scales to see if anything has changed. Maybe I won't do that until, and if, it becomes obvious that my trouser belt is getting looser !

  One thing I did yesterday, during the evening, was to request a beer delivery I was expecting today to be delivered tomorrow instead. The DHL website made it really east to do, and now I feel free to enjoy a lunchtime with Angela is she is free to come out and play. There is some possible doubt about it even though she said that she wanted a Wednesday lunchtime meet with me some days ago. Angela sent me a picture of her freshly stripped kitchen ceiling. The plasterboard would have gone up yesterday, but I guess that will need painting, and it seems that is being done today.

  I've just heard from Angela, and she can't come out today. I could have had the beers delivered today, but it does mean I am now free to do something.... I am thinking of a bit of a walk that will end up at The Jolly Farmers. Of course everything hinges on the fact that I am going through another bout of something like constipation. I didn't go at all yesterday, and have yet to go today. It is probably because I have eaten comparatively little recently. I think I detect movement now, but it could be just wind. Unlike yesterday, maybe I am starting to feel a little uncomfortable, and so it would definitely be nice to "go".