Today almost repeats yesterday's weather. It is a fresh start, just 14° C, but non stop sunshine from a blue sky should raise the temperature to 26° C by early afternoon. One change is that the temperature will not fall away as much tonight. Tomorrow morning could start a couple of degrees less cool at around 16° C, but once again non stop sunshine will raise the temperature to an expected 26° C. It may be that the first chink in this run of good weather may happen at 8pm tomorrow, and which is currently shown as just sunny spells. Saturday may be cooler with cloudy skies, and Sunday could see some rain. What is more definite it that the current forecast for Saturday and Sunday will be changed a lot by Saturday morning !   I finished writing yesterday by saying I wish I was able to "go" - referring to some mild constipation. Not long after that I did go, although not as much as I expected, but at least I felt OK. I think I would have been OK to go out to meet Angela if she were available, but she was far too busy at home keeping an eye of the builder(s) doing up her kitchen. She sent me several progress report pictures during the morning, and I got the impression that the builder(s) were/was taking extra care to try and keep the workplace, Angela's kitchen, fairly clean.

  Meanwhile, back at my home, I decided I had plenty of time to go to Tesco and top up my salad making supplies. I also bought some things that were far too tempting. I have no idea why, but it seems my brain was fixated on some quiche. The big mistake was being unable to decide between cheese and onion, and Quiche Lorraine flavours. I bought one of each, and so had two I had to eat when I really shouldn't have eaten either.
  The great thing yesterday was finding Tesco reduced salt and sugar tomato ketchup back on the shelves after a long wait. This stuff, which tastes good, has a fraction of the sugar that Heinz low sugar ketchup has, and tastes far better. Like all Heinz stuff now, it is the American owners who dictate the recipes, and their recipes call for huge amounts of cheap corn fructose syrup because Americans are all addicted to sugar. At least that is how it appears to me, but I can't quote any evidence for this theory.

  Anyway, I bought two bottles of the Tesco ketchup, and doing so reminded me to seek out Tesco frozen sausages. I had forgot to look for them the previous time I was in Tesco. I have to admit they were only about a yard along the freezer from where I first checked. Also in my shopping basket were two 2 litre bottles of lime flavoured Diet Coke. It's curious stuff. I like it a lot in small doses, but after a couple of glasses I stick the rest back in the fridge for another day. One thing I should have left in the fridge, mine or Tesco's, was a small tub of double chocolate ice cream. It was from my favourite low calorie/sugar brand, Oppo, but it is probably the flavour with the most sugar in it.

  After getting home with my shopping I had ideas about going to The Jolly Farmers for a couple of pints of Guinness, but I was feeling quite hot after carrying my shopping. I decided I couldn't be bothered to go out again. At that point it was not a lot after 11am. I waited until it was very close to midday before eating my lunch. It was the cheese and onion quiche. I must say I mostly enjoyed it, but that thought was spoiled a bit by the idea that it was probably not good for me.

  I contemplated getting the strimmer out to finally getting around to cutting the meadow high grass and weeds which is supposed to be my lawn. I decided I couldn't be bothered to do more stuff in the hot sun, and eventually settled for a simpler task. Having been satisfied with my transfer of a VHS recording of the 1972 film "The Death Line" into an mp4 file, I decided I would copy some more old VHS recordings.

  One I definitely wanted to copy was a documentary about land based pirate radio in the year 2000. It was of little interest to me because my interest in pirate radio was waning fast in 2000, and besides which, it was all about the stations that played stuff I personally would not give air time to - a cultural thing well past my imagination. However I know someone who would probably be interested in it.

  I managed a near perfect transfer of the documentary, and even managed to make cutting out the commercial break in the middle seamless. I also attempted to copy a short (approx 10 minute) promo film by Sky Television intended for shops and salesmen at the start of their service. When I worked in the trade we would often acquire these things from the retail outlets to re-use as test tapes. I also copied some clips from news programmes about railway news.

  The latter two appeared to have been copied to the recordable DVD disk perfectly, but every time I tried to convert them to mp4 files they would get permanently stuck at approximately the halfway point. I am sure that one of them did manage to play to the end when fast forwarded in the VLC video player on my PC - but it only managed it once ! I think there are two possibilities for a problem with that DVD recorder. One is that the laser in it is weak, and the "writing" of the disk is too faint, and the other is that somehow it is not following the proper specification of a DVD, although I can't think how.

  I spent some of the afternoon editing the mp4 file ripped from the DVD that came out OK, and more of the afternoon trying to read the tracks that evidently couldn't be read. In the end I gave up. Maybe the new internal DVD drive for my PC may have more luck when the drive finally arrives from China, but the next thing I will try some day is to re-record those VHS tapes that failed, and see if that improves things.

  Considering how little I achieved yesterday afternoon, it still seemed like the afternoon passed quite quickly, and that it was time for the usual Star Treks and dinner. My dinner was an interesting experiment. I tried to make something closer to the salad you get with kebabs - lots of cabbage and onion. I diced up a lump of red cabbage, and two small red onions, plus one green bell pepper. I seasoned it all with a sprinkle of salt, some mixed herbs and a splash of olive oil.

  I ate that salad with some ready cooked and sliced flavoured chicken breast. It was strangely nice, but I was not so keen on the onion after taste. I gave my teeth, and tongue a good brushing, and still the onion taste persisted. There was nothing for it but to take a big chance on eating the double chocolate ice cream I had bought in Tesco in the morning. It certainly was very nice, and it 95% did the trick of killing/washing down the onion residue.

  As seems to be the case until maybe the autumn tv schedules, there was nothing on TV for me after Star Trek: Voyager, and I turned the TV off. I read a little and pottered about on the internet before reading a little more. It was barely sunset when I turned out the light, and was soon fast asleep. Like the night before, I intended to drink as much as I could of a 2 litre bottle of chilled tap water, both before and during the night.

  I never managed that much. What seemed to be the legacy of not completely curing my constipation, and then stuffing down all the cabbage and onion, meant I was not feeling comfortable when I went to bed. I did a very small poo before going to bed, and passed a lot of wind before and after that. The bloat made it hard to force down much more than a litre of tap water.

  Despite all that I seemed to sleep mostly OK. I seem to have become acclimatised to the warmer weather now, and slept without resorting to use a fan, although until the last hour of sleep I didn't really use the duvet. I definitely had some dreams last night, and I feel a couple were very pleasant. I was just about to describe one or the other, but now I realise I have forgotten so much about those dreams that there is nothing left to describe.

  The bad news this morning is that my blood glucose is back up to 9.1mmol/l. That is only very slightly bad, but still annoying, although the annoyance is allowing myself to eat stuff that I should have known better than to eat. The cheese and onion quiche for lunch may have been OK if it was the only bad thing I ate. It may not be obvious, but the two small red onions that were part of my dinner could easily have had a lot of natural sugar in them - like most root vegetables. The double chocolate ice cream was an obvious candidate for being bad, although maybe if it was the only bad thing I might have gotten away with it. If I had been able to drink more water I might have got a lower reading.

  There are two important events today. At some time, and my best guess is around 1pm, I should get the beers delivered that we (Jodie and I) ordered on Sunday. They were going to be delivered yesterday, but before I knew I wouldn't be seeing Angela, I had the delivered delayed until today. Now I am waiting for the notification that they have left the depot, and a one hour window when they will be delivered. That is quite important for deciding when to have a shower for instance. Hopefully it will be early enough to get some beers in the fridge to chill before we start to drink them later this afternoon.