I almost wrote that the forecast was spot on this morning, and indeed the BBC forecast was. The Met Office forecast, in the screenshot above, did get the very dark clouds and heavy rain right, but forgot to predict the thunder. The worst of the storm seems to have been a small distance away, and may be moving further away. I haven't noticed any flashes of lightning, but there have been plenty of deep rolling peals of thunder. The Met Office have now added hail to their prediction for 8am. Both forecasters agree that by mid morning it should start to brighten up, and the afternoon could be warm and sunny. 23 or 24° C is predicted. Tomorrow could be sunny with an afternoon high of 25° C.   Yesterday featured some hard work, although as I'll explain a bit later, it didn't last much longer than an hour, and was almost certainly less than 2 hours - although the actual start time, and final finish time are rather vague. The rest of the day is rather vague too, and it included several attempts to have a snooze - which I think all failed.

  You could say my day started started with a walk to the pharmacy to order my next repeat prescription. That went OK, and they agreed that I can pick it up on Thursday when I use up the last of at least one of the drugs I am on. Of course before that I had a shower and made myself look presentable before I went out.

 Maybe less so on the walk to the pharmacy, but definitely walking home again, I felt curiously good. Nothing seemed to ache, and in theory i should have been able to enjoy a longer walk, but for reasons I can't explain, or even think of, I didn't fancy going out for a walk. I just preferred to lie on my bed, read a little, try and snooze, and generally let some ideas percolate through my head. It may have taken an hour, perhaps two, but I decided I was going to do some more garden tidying up work.
  This "before" picture shows the garden before I started working. The weed infested grass is over a foot high in most places, and even higher in a few spots. It isn't the clearest picture to show it, but the the garden is gradually submerging beneath assorted weeds and grasses. It was the garden path I tackled first and last - first with the strimmer, and lastly using a hoe.

  Some of the more succulent weeds really splattered when strimmed. In one case the splatter seemed to reach as high as my mouth, and although none really entered my mouth, I could still sort of taste it - YUCK !  I was working in hot sunshine, and it wasn't long before I was really sweating. I had trouble with that getting in my eyes to increase my discomfort, and yet in a sort of masochistic way I was enjoying the work - probably because I could see i was making a big difference.
  By the time I was finished the sun had moved around a fair bit. Although it is half in shade, this picture shows the now 90% clear garden path. In the not too distant future, if it is to be worthwhile, I need to use a trowel or some tool to get the remaining clumps of grass out from between the paving stones.
  It is definitely a misnomer to call the area to the left of the path a lawn, but one day, if I worked at it, it could resemble a lawn. This picture lacks all definition - it is just a load of green upon more green. It is supposed to show that most of the grass and weeds in what can be called "the lawn area" is now no more than 3 or 4 inches high. What it doesn't show from this angle is the bald areas, and also the amount of pebbles and flints on the ground. My garden is full of pebbles, and I have a theory that the river that now runs half a mile way, once ran through what was to become, maybe a 1000 years later, my garden.

  One of the problems of trying to work out how long I was working in the garden is that there was no definite start. Before I started worked I gave the garden a good long hard stare to try and imagine what I might do. Then there is the difficulty of knowing when I stopped. Even after putting the strimmer away, I stopped to pull the occasional weed, and after a breather I gave the garden path, plus the path from the back door, another sweep.

  The very final thing I did was to put on a t-shirt (not easy when all hot and sticky), and then, after brushing the outside of the brown, garden waste wheelie bin, I wheeled it through the house, and parked it out the front. It is not going to be emptied until the bin men come on Thursday, but I had been chatting to the girl next door, and she said she had a load of weeds and stuff to dispose of. The bin is only half full, and I invited her to use it to dispose of her garden waste before it is emptied.

  During the rest of the afternoon I rested and cooled off. I read for a while, and I may have had a snooze. I definitely closed my eyes, and I think I may have dozed off, but whether for 2 minutes or an hour is a mystery. What I do know is that I was surprised when it was suddenly 5pm, and time for the first of three Star Treks. It was also time to think about dinner.  I had only had a snack-like lunch of cheese on rice cakes with some kimchi on it. The kimchi may have been a bad mistake for reasons I'll come to soon.

  My dinner was a whole bag of watercress, spinach and some other salad leaf, with some precooked chicken chunks, a small amount of coleslaw plus some cold new potatoes cooked with rosemary. In theory it should have been a very safe meal, but the chicken did have some sort of flavouring that could have had sugar in it. The coleslaw may not have been completely safe, and potatoes can be very variable.

  There was a Have I Got News For You on last night, but it wasn't until well gone 9pm, and I was in bed before that. Before going to bed i took a couple of Paracetamol in case the assorted gardening induced aches spoiled my sleep. Maybe they helped me to sleep in a general way too. I can't swear to it, but I think I was asleep before it was dark outside. On the whole I slept well. The temperature was neither too high, nor too low, and that helped a lot. My only complaint is waking up too early (around 5am), and not being able to get more deep sleep. I did manage to doze off a few times, but probably woke 10 minutes later.

  I knew there were a few doubts about what I ate yesterday, but I was shocked when I checked my blood glucose reading. It was a whopping 10.8mmol/l - well into the danger zone. I didn't think I became dehydrated during the night. I drank over a litre overnight, and that should have been enough. I can't recall eating anything with overt amounts of sugar in it. I am keeping my fingers crossed it was an erroneous reading. Maybe I am back to blaming the test strips again. I am now on the last 4 or 5 test strips in the cannister, and maybe that is relevant somehow.

  Maybe it was the influence of the weather - which was pretty foul - that made me ignore my best advice, and to have some breakfast as I normally do. I had a bowl of spicy instant noodles, and they were very nice. I added to the spiciness with some more kimchi despite knowing that malt is one ingredient in the little jar of kimchi I was trying. Incidently, this kimchi seemed to be the same as the last I bought - maybe it was the same, but I think the bottle label was different. I think I'll now give up trying kimchi. It seemed a good idea to test it, but I am somewhat underwhelmed by it. It, plus the other spicy stuff in the instant noodles, did have a profound affect on me. It was like someone turning on a sprinkler. I instantly started some heavy sweating, and it's only an hour or so later that I have cooled down.

  A quick note on the weather. When I woke up at 5am it was light outside, and although I was judging it mostly from a few chinks in the curtains, it looked fairly bright. An hoor later and it was like sunset had arrived. It was really dark outside, and that is when the heaviest rain fell, and in the distance the thunder boomed. Right now it is a lot brighter, and there even seemed to be a few rays of sunshine filtering through a gap in the thick clouds. The BBC reckons there could still be a couple of hours of light rain, but the Met Office say it is all over for the day, and that sunny spells, and even full sunshine is on it's way.

  Once again I have no plans for today beyond a few vague ideas and some fantasy ideas. I am almost wondering if I might dare to do some more work in the garden today. I'll have to wait several hours until it dries up a bit, but maybe I could do some weed pulling. The more I think about it, the more appealing it seems, but my enthusiasm is slightly tempered by some aches and pains left over from yesterday. If I don't do anything in the garden I would like to grab a camera, and go out and take a few snaps, but whether that might be scenery or trains is another possible problem to solve.

  One quick note about my new, back lit, keyboard. This is the second morning I have used it to do do a lot of writing, and I don't think I like it. I can imagine it would be OK with a trained touch typist with dainty fingers, but my fat fingers are forever making mistakes. At this rate I'll soon wear out the backspace key ! Maybe tomorrow I'll try out the more clunky Poundland keyboard, and see if it is as flimsy as I think it is.