By my reckoning the temperature at 8am was close to 16° C, and so not as cool as the forecast says. At the moment we are having a sunny spell, and that blows the Met Office forecast out of the window. Their latest revision has even taken away the single sunny spells at 3pm as shown above. The BBC forecast is more cheerful with sunny spells until 2pm, and more in the last couple of hours before sunset. The Met Office say a high of 20° C, but the BBC say 21° C. Both forecasters agree that tomorrow may feature many sunny spells, and an afternoon temperature of 23° C.

   The general theme of yesterday was waiting - waiting for deliveries. I actually had 4 deliveries yesterday. Two deliveries were originally estimated to arrive today, and it was handy they arrived yesterday. One delivery came via Royal Mail - delivered by my usual postman who knows how to squeeze stuff through my small letter box.


  The first delivery arrived fairly early, and it was of a box of assorted beers that I had ordered from The House Of Trembling Madness (yes, that is their real trading name). It was delivered by Parcelforce, and the nice driver warned me it was a heavy box. I must admit I didn't find it that heavy. It only had about 20 cans of beer in it, although they were all larger sized 500ml cans. maybe the shape and size of the box were just right to make it feel easy to pick up and carry - or I am stronger than the driver who carried it from the van to my front door stop. He took the now obligatory picture to prove he had delivered it safely, and the picture appeared on the Parcel Force tracking web site.




  The next delivery came via APC Overnight, and was a small tabletop fridge. It was a far bulkier box, but no heavier than the beer. Unpacking it took a bit more effort, but was still easy to do. Slicing up all the cardboard packaging to go into the recycling wheelie bin took a bit of effort. I decided I would put it under the small beer chiller in the dining room, and the two go OK together. One big difference is that the new fridge is a proper fridge with compressor, and a mini ice box inside the main larder. I probably took a stupid chance by plugging it in straight away, but it did seem like it had been kept upright in the delivery van, and it definitely had after I unpacked it. Happily it did work perfectly first time, although it wasn't until I bother to flick through the manual that I saw that the thermostat needed to turned to maximum cold to free ice cubes.

  This was the new fridge this morning. It is loaded with beers, and although it doesn't seem to look that way in this photo, it does take quite a lot of beers - 19 of the 20 in yesterday's delivery, plus some from previous shopping - the latter all stored in the door. There is a small space under the small ice box section that has a drip tray, and is ideal to store little cans of slimline tonic. If there is one negative thing about this fridge is that the compressor does make a sort of audible purring noise, and that might be distracting, but time will tell. The whole thing, including delivery, cost just £89.99.

  The other two deliveries were of memory cards - both normal sized and micro sized. I must admit that I didn't have an instant need for any of them, but I may prematurely replace the 64GB memory card in my newest Nikon camera (the D610). The card in it at the moment seems to have some sort of problem. In any 100 pictures one of them may be corrupt, and show as "file not recognised".

  I really do not want to go, but in 10 days time it is Angela's wedding, and it sounds like she will be relying on me for some good photos. I guess that means I have to go. My Nikon D610 has two card slots, and they can be used in several ways. At the moment I have the second card set as an overflow if the first card is full. Another option, which would be safer for something as important as a wedding, is to make the second card a backup of the first. I'll use that option with a brand new pair of cards. For gig photography I take so many "spare" pictures that losing a few is not (usually) a disaster.

  The two big deliveries arrived mid morning, and fortunately both Parcelforce, and APC Overnight, eventually gave estimated time slots for delivery. I bided my time waiting for them by reading stuff on my PC as the time came closer, and laying on my bed reading while there was at least an hour to go before the earliest delivery time. I didn't, and in fact couldn't be bothered to do anything constructive during that time. Once the fridge arrived I was busy unpacking it, setting it up, and loading it with beer - and then I had a snooze.

  The next delivery came via the postman, and he managed to slip it through my letterbox. It was a nice surprise because I wasn't expecting it (according to Amazon's estimate) until today. I still had to wait for the second part of that order which was once again originally estimated to be today, but once I saw it was at the Dartford depot in the early hours of yesterday morning I knew it would arrive yesterday. Amazon eventually sent an email saying it was out for delivery "by 9pm" which is as good as stupid.

  Knowing that delivery would probably be after mid afternoon, at the earliest, I finally did something semi productive. I transferred another of Jodie's old radio tapes to my PC for storage as mp3 files. As I have mentioned before, that process only needs some attention at the beginning and end. The end bit takes a bit of extra time when it is a 2 hour programme because I like to edit out the gap as the auto-reverse on the tape player switches to play the second half of the tape.

  One thing I didn't do yesterday (until the evening) was to eat much. Admittedly I did have a double portion of instant noodles for breakfast. maybe that breakfast was responsible for a few anomalies later, but I guess it will forever be a mystery. The only substantial snack I had as my late lunch was 4 rices cakes with a thing slice of ready sliced Edam cheese on it. I held back on anything more because I planned a more substantial dinner.

  My delivery from, and by Amazon arrived earlier than expected at about 3.50pm. With that in my grubby hand I could afford to completely relax - except I still had to keep an eye on the tape being transferred to the dining room PC. It wouldn't be a disaster, but it would be a big annoyance if the tape auto-reversed again because of the annoyance of finding where the auto-reverse was and deleting the unwanted copy of the start of the tape playing again.

  My cunning plan for dinner was all the fault of a message from Just Eat offering a 20% discount on orders yesterday. I could have cooked up a nice sage dinner, but I fancied a shish kebab takeaway. Shish kebabs almost seem to have a positive effect on my blood glucose readings - positive in a negative direction when less is good. This time I opted for what I thought was the healthier option - chicken shish kebabs that should have less fat than lamb shish kebabs.

  At 9pm I was ready for bed, at least I thought I was. I did go to bed soon after 9pm, but initially I just relaxed by reading the book I am currently reading - "Greybeard" by Brian Aldis. While I was distracted by the book I thought I felt fine, but as soon as I tried for sleep I became aware of assorted minor aches, but enough of them to be very distracting from sleep. One "ache" was sort of heartburn, but it turned out to be slightly more sinister.

  I did finally get to sleep for maybe as long as an hour, but I woke up again feeling uncomfortable in a different way. The heartburn had changed to a stomach ache, and the stomach ache changed into the need to go to the toilet. If there is one thing I dislike it is having to do a poo after midnight, and doubly so when that poo is of a nature that makes it seem like you have a stomach upset that is going to need more visits to the toilet. After going back to bed I did get up again because I thought I needed the toilet again, but it was a false alarm. I was actually starting to feel moderately OK, and got back to sleep.

  One other thing about last night's sleep was that it was cool enough to not need a fan on. In fact while visiting the toilet, where the window was half open, I realised that it was getting quite cool outside, and there was enough wind to stir the moderately heavy curtains in my bedroom. Before going back to bed I closed my bedroom window. After that I seemed to sleep well, but when I woke at 6am I decided to go back to sleep to catch up on missed sleep. It was almost 7.30am when I woke up and got up.

  The idea that I might have need a second visit to the toilet in the night was not that wrong. As soon as I sat on the toilet after getting up I needed almost zero effort to "go". It is noteworthy that since than I have been twice more. It is like I have, or had, a mild stomach upset, Based on the direction of travel I think it was something I ate much earlier than the shish kebabs. What ever it was seems to have spoiled a good run of low blood glucose readings. Both meters gave similar readings this morning. The new meter said 8.9mmol/l, which is acceptable, but the old meter was right on the edge at 9.0mmol/l. There have been times when I was happy with 9.0mmol/l, but after nearly a fortnight of really nice readings it was annoying to buck the trend.

  There is just one thing happening today, and being a Wednesday it is to go to The Jolly Farmers for a couple of pints of Guinness and doing the crossword. before that I need to wash my hair and have a shower, and afterwards I can be almost very lazy except for preparing and getting my dinner cooking. Tonight it should be a diced beef stew/casserole with cabbage, and some sort of chilli addition (I have some never-tried-before chilli paste to try). Hopefully, if I have had a stomach bug, it will be all over today, and tomorrow I will get a lower blood glucose reading (fingers crossed).