Today we return to a string of rainy days, although it's  not looking like today will really be a rainy day. The BBC forecast said the rain would be only this morning, but it is currently dry. The Met Office only shows rain for mid afternoon, but in the latest revision that is downgraded to just 2 hours of light rain. I suspect there could be more sunshine today than forecast, and indeed the BBC forecast does show sunny spells for much of the day. The temperature will peak at 22° C around midday, and the rest of the afternoon may only be 20° C. Both forecasters make a similar forecast for tomorrow: Sunny spells in the morning, and remaining fairly bright in the afternoon, but there will probably be showers from mid afternoon until early evening. The highest temperature may be around midday again, and it is currently predicted to be just 21° C.

  Yesterday was a day when so little happened I can almost describe it in this one paragraph. It was a day when I didn't really do anything noteworthy. I just pottered around now and then, and filled in the long gaps by reading both from book or online. I can't seem to remember if I had a snooze at any time, but I probably had one or two.

  One thing I did do was to resist eating anything that bad. I can only remember having the last half of a bag of microchipsticks for lunch. I probably had a very small handful of peanuts at some time. I think it was between 4 and 5pm that I had a snack of 4 rice cakes with salad and cheese on them. A couple of hours later I almost had the same thing for dinner, but I put ham on the salad and rice cakes instead of cheese.

  Being a week day yesterday I was able to watch my usual three Star Trek episodes, but with one small difference. last night's Star Trek: Voyager was failing to capture my interest, and I switched channels to watch Star Trek: Deep Space 9.  Even that was not the greatest of episodes, but then again most of the Deep Space Nine episodes were very turgid, The episodes featuring the Bajoran religion were usually crap. The episodes featuring the Ferengi were probably the best ones.

  After Star Trek I read some more, but I was in bed before sunset, and I think I was asleep before sunset too, or in other words, probably around 9pm. I then had, I think, the longest period of sleep I have had in years, maybe over 10 years. The next thing I was aware of was the clock saying it was just before 2.30am. I had had almost enough sleep for the night, but I went on to have a lot more.

  After that first awakening I woke up every couple of hours as usual, but it wasn't until just gone 7am that I woke up and got up - maybe an hour later than usual. That was a lot of sleep, and it seemed I needed it for whatever reason. That seemed unlikely after having the whole day where I could have snoozed to my hearts content. In the latter half of the night I did have some dreams.

  It almost seemed like it was one long dream, but somehow it was easy to tell that it was a series of dreamlets that seemed to continue a basic narrative, but usually the setting, or people, and often both would change. I was with people I would rather never see these days in the real world. The whole set of dreams could almost be said to be set in the past, but some of the technology wasn't.

  The core of these dreams was set in a large hall where something like an amateur radio junk sale was taking place, but this one was rather different because although it wasn't named in the dream, I knew it to vbe organised by The British Amateur TV Club. One "old but modern" piece of equipment I remember looking at was a VHS video recorder with a PC attached to it so that different options it was capable of could be turned on. On the PC was a long list of countries it could be set to be used in. One was Peru, and the only difference to the UK was some slight differences in the timing of the video signal. I can remember being fascinated that such a universal thing could have such differences in the small detail.

  I was about to say that every dream has it's share of nastiness, but that is surely a gross exaggeration.  This series of dreams ended in an annoying way rather than anything scary. I was getting frustrated by everyone being very slow, and I wanted to get home. To do that I needed the same lift I had used to get there. Eventually the time came to walk back to the car. As we walked down the main road, to where the car was parked, I could see The Catford Bridge Tavern just over the hump of the bridge of the railway. I realised I could have been home hours earlier if I had just left the place and walked home.

  I think I woke up at just past 6am, but thought I would just lay there for a "few minutes". The next thing I knew was that it was past 7am. I suspect I might have been mildly dehydrated when I checked my blood glucose reading because it was a bit higher than expected. Fortunately 8.7mmol/l on the new meter, and 8.8mmol/l on the old is not much above my typical average, and well below the red line (10.0mmol/l).

  If it was a bit brighter I might have been tempted to go for a walk today. It was a lot brighter earlier, but looks dull out now. I think what I will do is go out for two shopping trips today. One trip will be to Tesco. There are a few things I want from there, but I also want to redeem a voucher. Back in early spring Tesco made a tempting offer - deposit at least three lots of at least £20 a time into my Tesco savings bank account, and get 500 Clubcard points for doing so.

  A week ago I got an email with a barcode in it for the 500 points. Unfortunately it didn't work. That was annoying but no disaster. Yesterday I got another email saying that Tesco were sorry that nobodies bar codes worked, and her was another one that should work. Obviously I am very curious to see if the new one works, and combined with needing a few items, albeit none essential, is a good enough excuse to go there today.

  The second shopping trip will be to Savers and Poundstretcher. I find it useful to do one after the other because they are opposite each other, and I rarely buy enough to need more than my rucksack and a small shopping bag for anything that can't be stuffed into the rucksack. Top of my shopping list are some bottles of nice smelling toilet cleaner (the Bloo floral flavour is nice). They are considerably cheaper than elsewhere from Savers.

  I have got one other little job to do this morning..... A few days ago I was sure I saw movement when I walked into the kitchen. It was all over in the blink of an eye, and I couldn't be sure it wasn't just my reflection on a shiny bit of the microwave oven. Yesterday I had some big bluebottles in the kitchen. It made me think that there must be a piece of dropped food.....or a dead mouse, for instance....that they had been breeding in, but I couldn't see anything, although I didn't get down of my hands and knees to look under the sink and similar places. This morning I found a dead mouse in one of the traps in the kitchen. I feel sure it wasn't there yesterday. It was quite small and very thin looking. It is possible there is another that has starved to death hidden away somewhere. I have been very careful not to leave any accessible food around in the kitchen (except for an unprotected onion and red cabbage). The job this morning is to put the corpse out onto the bird table in case a magpie or crow fancies a tasty snack.