As usual, the BBC weather forecast says it will be sunny nearly all day. The Met Office say a sunny morning, and a dull afternoon. The latest update says 11am will only feature clouds, and then there will be just 2 hours of sunny spells before it becomes dull again until early evening. Actually, in this case "dull" may mean bright but no actual sunshine). Despite the headline figure of 32° C, the maximum shown on the chart is now just 29° C. That could be at 2pm, and then it will cool off by a few degrees. It will still be a hot(ish) day. Tomorrow's headline icon is cloudy, but the current chart says that from 10am to sunset there will be sunny spells. The temperature may peak at 26° C, but generally tomorrow may be an almost cool feeling day.

   Off to a very late start this morning. It is not because I got up late, although it was maybe half an hour later than usual, but it is more that I have put off writing this because I can't think what to say to make my day seem interesting. The fact is, I did very little yesterday because I felt too hot and sticky.

  I did have a full shower, shave and shampoo in the morning, and I then started to wash the bath towel and a couple of white t-shirts. I got as far as soaking them in detergent, but I was feeling so sticky that I couldn't pull my rubber gloves onto my hands. That washing is still soaking in it's bucket of detergent now, and I will have to force myself to finish it if I want a shower today - which I do.

  I did do one productive thing yesterday, and it was something I had been meaning to get started for ages. It all started when Jodie and boyfriend Alan were rehabilitating her mum and dad's house after they both died. When Jodie moved out she left loads of her stuff their, and during the clean up they retrieved a bag of cassette tapes stored under Jodie's old bed, and they were sort of damp and musty.

  Leaving them to dry out here for several months was probably a very sensible thing to do even if not done intentionally. Those tapes were all old radio programmes that Jodie had recorded for Radio Argus in the mid 1990s. I don't think Jodie even has a tape player to play them on these days, and I was curious to see what they sounded like (they were recorded in my radio studio).

  I started transferring the first side of one tape a week or two ago. It was most annoying because I couldn't hear what I was recording. Quite why it wasn't enabled by default, and why the option to switch monitoring on was almost hidden amongst other options that had little to do with sound, is a complete mystery....or maybe it wasn't. Having turned on monitoring I found the program would seem to crash in the first minute of use. In fact I learned later that it didn't crash, but somehow jumped out of record mode.

  Once I had learned these little annoyances I was able to transfer 5 sides (= 5 hours) of the cassettes to mp3 files. In doing so I listened to some of Jodie's programmes, and they seemed a lot better than I thought they were. I guess I am old enough to just remember, and be influenced by the very slick presentations of the old offshore radio pirates. I guess I could describe Jodie's presentation as more "intellectual". She came across as really knowing her music - which was often rather different to the usual fare played on the radio.

  I didn't listen to all Jodie's tapes. A lot of the time I was quietly reading on my bed while the tapes were playing into the dining room PC.  I really can't seem to say if I snoozed much yesterday. I know I wanted to, but it was difficult with sweat running into my eyes !  It makes me wonder why I had a hot lunch. It was a pile of grilled fish fingers. I've always been dubious about fish fingers. In the past I have always associated a rise of blood glucose after eating them, and this time I scrutinised the packet very carefully looking for sugar. I believed it might be added to the breadcrumbs the fish is coated with. I thought they might add sugar to make those breadcrumbs more golden and crispy, but the packet listed no sugar at all.

  I remember a few snacks through the day - a handful of peanuts, a chunk of cheese, and even some sugar free biscuits. I think I might have been tempted to eat something more substantial, but the heat put me off it. When it came to dinner I didn't fancy the diced lamb I had cooked read for vegetables to be added for a lamb stew. I left that covered in the microwave, and went for a simpler dinner. I had a single portion of instant noodles, and followed that a little bit later with a tub of my favourite low calorie and low sugar ice cream.

  Maybe it would have been more sensible to have just had the ice cream on a hot and sticky night. I didn't find anything to watch on TV last night, but I still did not go to bed until gone 9pm. I took 3 bottles of frozen tap water, and 3 bottles of chilled tap water to bed with me. The frozen bottles would soon thaw out once out of the cool bag, and the chilled water was warm after being out for little more than 10 minutes.

  They all helped me feel a bit cooler during a very hot night. It was 31° C in my bedroom when I went to bed, and still 27° C when I got up this morning. Of course guzzling lots of water made me wake up for a pee now and then, but I also woke up a few times in the night for other reasons - mostly unknown, but a couple of time it was to turn my sweat soaked pillows round. I think I wish I had drunk a bit more water in the night because I wonder if I was a bit dehydrated by the morning.

  My blood glucose readings were good, but I hoped that they might have been a bit lower, and maybe some more water during the night might have helped. The new meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that being below my typical average was probably very good. The old meter read 8.7mmol/l. That is quite a difference to the new meter. Both used the same bead of blood, and in a perfect world the readings would the same, but I think those meters are sensitive to temperature.

  Apart from finishing washing the bath towel and t-shirts, I am not sure what I am going to do today. There are no trains between Hayes (Kent) and Lewisham because of engineering works today, and so Jodie won't be visiting for any beer tasting. As such I don't need to wash, but I think I will anyway. I may go out to the shops, but I feel a very lazy day coming on. Maybe the most I might do is push buttons on a cassette player today.