The weather forecast has changed a bit since I took the screenshot above. Everything is the same until late afternoon/early evening when both the BBC and Met Office predict a thunderstorm ! It could happen around 5 or 6pm. Before and after that it should be sunny, or at least sunny spells. The temperature should peak at 27° C.  Both the BBC and met Office agree that tomorrow should see 26° C, but the BBC say it will be a very sunny day, while he Met Office say just a scattering of sunny spells through the day.
  Yesterday was quite a hectic day. Everything changed when Angela messaged me at just gone 10am to say she couldn't get to a pub for a Wednesday lunchtime drink. I relaxed after that, and considered what I should do yesterday. I considered the idea of going for a walk, or even doing a few train rides  for some train photography.

  One thing I had to take into consideration was that Angela hinted she might come here this afternoon to join in the beer tasting session, and what could be a very low key birthday party for me. I decided I could more usefully use my time doing some of the housework that I thought I would have to try and cram in today. I started off by doing some laundry, and for the first time in years I managed to get it all on the line to dry by midday (actually it was about 10 past midday !).
  I'm not sure why I need to show a picture of a single t-shirt and five pairs of underpants on the line..... Maybe it is so if I look back at this page in the winter I can marvel at how warm and sunny it must have been today. Alternatively it could serve as a future reminder that I used to do stuff like this.....or something.

  With the washing done, and hanging on the line to dry, I slowly started what would end up as frantic bit of housework. I started by tidying up the front room. It was not easy because I had stuff scattered everywhere - empty cardboard boxes from past Amazon and beer orders, plus piles of VHS tapes where I had been experimenting with copying them to my old set top DVD recorder. There was other stuff too, but I got the main area of the room clear, and then got the hoover out.
  It doesn't bear close scrutiny, but this is the front room after tidying and hoovering. It looks good to me, but only by comparison with what it was like. I could have stopped there, but I then hoovered the dining room, and then went on to hoover the hall and the bottom half of the stairs. By then I was feeling rather hot. I was wearing some rubber gloves while doing the hoovering, and also some dusting and stuff, and when I took them off my hands were dripping with sweat !

  I took a little time out for a breather, but in a way I still didn't stop working. I went into the garden for some fresh air, and had a good look around. I haven't seen a rat since I stopped feeding the birds, but close inspection showed at least 4 possible holes used by rats. One looked to definitely be in use for a rat to go from my garden into my neighbours garden. There was a second one that looked slightly possible as a second one.

  I grabbed a couple of cans of expanding foam, and plugged those two holes. On the other side of the garden I am sure I identified two holes leading into the old foxes earth. I emptied almost a whole can of foam down that one, and the rest of the can in a second hole. I hope the foam would also have plugged a sort of burrow just under the fence. It felt quite satisfying to have done that, and will hopefully be appreciated by the young lady next door.

  The final thing I did before going back into lazy mode, was to give the dining room table's "wipe clean" PVC tablecloth a good scrub with some bacteria killing kitchen surface wipes. That seemed enough for one day. The plan was to hoover the second half of the stairs, plus the upstairs landing today. That may still happen, but the need has now been reduced. One other incidental thing I did was to dig out another couple of my old pairs of shorts.

  There were a couple of pairs of shorts I had not tried on so far this summer. Both of them I had a feeling were at best a tricky fit, and at worst didn't fit at all. It seems that yesterday both seemed to fit well enough - albeit a bit tight. One of them is only secured at the top with a popper button. I seem to remember I didn't like to wear that pair because just breathing out was enough to pop open the popper ! Yesterday it seemed nearly secure. I think it would be OK with a good belt, and so I ordered a couple of nice and strong (hopefully) leather belts from Amazon. They could be here later today because the bastards only offered next day delivery with a big chunk of extra postage. I would have preferred a longer wait with free delivery.

  I started yesterday with my blood glucose high, but back in a sane area. I decided to eat normally to see what would happen this time. My breakfast was a bowl of instant noodles. My lunch was 5 or 6 Tesco cooked from frozen pork sausages served with nothing except mustard. My dinner was a chicken salad, where salad just meant a pile of salad leaves (with some dressing on them) and nothing else. During the day, in several snacks I did have some salted peanuts, and also a chunk of cheese - so it was not really healthy eating yesterday.

  I could almost copy and paste what I said yesterday about the evening. It was the three usual Star Treks, but then there was a change. I watched "Secrets Of The London Underground". The peculiar thing is that I couldn't remember seeing the first half before, but I definitely remembered the second half. It finished quite late, around 9pm if I recall correctly. There was another episode being shown after it, but I elected to go to bed.

  One thing I did before I got too relaxed was to take a couple of Paracetamol tablets because I could feel some aches coming on from doing all the hoovering - I don't do enough hoovering to keep the muscles used in good working order ! Perhaps the Paracetamol helped me to relax during the half hour or so I was reading in bed because I think I fell asleep quite quickly after putting the book down and turning out the light.

  In some ways last night's sleep was a lot like the night before. I spent little time awake, and maybe I didn't even wake as many times in the night as the previous night.  What was similar is how I seemed to sleep for 2 or 3, and maybe one lot of 4 hours with no realisation of time passing. I was amazed to see the clock had advanced so many hours without me noticing anything. My last bit of sleep was particularly good in that respect.

   It is often when my sleep is the lightest, and easily disturbed. I woke up at maybe 4.30am. It was just about full daylight when I went for a pee. I got back to bed, and expected to not get back to sleep easily, and then maybe wake up as little as half an hour later. I couldn't believe it when I opened my eyes to find the clock saying it was 6.10am. I have a feeling that if I had turned over I could have fallen asleep and slept another half hour, or even a full hour.

  This morning I have a fair few things to do, but now less than expected, and it seemed prudent to get up at 6.10am. As is my usual routine I checked my blood glucose reading. I was hoping it might possibly be under 9.0mmol/l, but I was prepared for a worse reading. I don't think I was prepared for the lowest reading I have had this month, although I have had a bit lower in the previous few months. It was just 7.7mmol/l. I celebrated by having a medium sized packet of chilli flavour instant noodles.

  It was a few minutes before 8am when I got a phone call from Angela. She wished me a very happy birthday, and then apologised that she was expecting another delivery of stuff for her kitchen refurbishment today, and can't make it today, although there if the delivery is early enough there is still a minute possibility she could still get here late, but I am working on the principle she won't be coming here.

  In some ways it could be a good thing. I am not enjoying out Thursday afternoon beer tasting session recently. I have come to realise it is almost no longer a social thing. Jodie just wants to drink weird beers (some of which I am not sure are actually beers). She often just stays glued to her phone half the time. Michael can sometimes just get too talkative, and often lectures too much about what sort of music he thinks I should like. Oh well, at least at the end of it I am usually drunk.

  With hardly any chance at all of Angela appearing today, I can move any more intended hoovering to the bottom of my list. The top thing on the list is to go to the pharmacy, and hopefully collect  my complete repeat prescription. I shall be cross if they leave anything out again. If I have time I may go shopping in Tesco, but I could rely on Michael picking me up some bottles of Diet Coke, and leave it until tomorrow to stock up on salad leaves and healthy stuff like that.