A lot of today will be very dull, but some hours will be merely ordinary dull ! I think the Weather Warning, in the screenshot above, is probably not pertinent to this locality, but rain is forecast to fall from 8pm, and from 11pm it may be heavy rain that continues until at least tomorrow morning. The highest temperature today will be 13° C in the early afternoon. The rain should lighten up at about 4am tomorrow, and maybe finally stop at 7am. Tomorrow afternoon could feature a lot of sunny spells, and the temperature could rise to 14° C by sunset.

    A return to less nice weather probably had a more psychological effect on me, with no particular physical effects. In saying that I am forgetting that a lot of the morning featured sunny spells, and I started to think of plans to get out, and into those sunny spells. It didn't happen !

  After having a shower I got dressed, and got my Canon 600D camera out to check it's batteries, and a few settings with the idea that I would go "somewhere" to take some pictures of spring flowers, train, and anything that moved. Before I did that I wanted to go into Tesco to see if they had any A23 (aka MN21) batteries for my front door bell push. The original idea was to buy just a pair of batteries (one for use now, and one for a spare), put them in my pocket, and then start my walk.

  I made one bad mistake - I put a large, strong, carrier bag in my pocket, and left my camera at home. Walking to Tesco was nice. It was bright and sunny, and the idea of a walk, maybe only a short one, seemed like it was a good idea. While I was in Tesco the sky seemed to get very cloudy, and suddenly the idea of a walk had no appeal. I was fairly sure it would be dry, but it was the sunshine I wanted.

  Having taken a big carrier bag to Tesco I knew I would be buying more than a couple of batteries. I decided I would buy more salad leaves, and also some more tomatoes - the type that were most probably artificially ripened, and so contained less sugars. After the salad section I used an unusual route to the cheese section. I passed some shelves I had never studied before. I came to the conclusion it was the stores very own "£1 shop".

  Most of the stuff is what I once used to buy from the late lamented 99p shop. One slight difference is that the price of stuff was usually at least £1.50, but it did seem to be better (low) quality. I bought a bottle opener and corkscrew tool that looked like it might survive for a fair time before something fell off. I also bought a new hair brush. My very similar brush had lost all the blobs on the end of each very sharp plastic bristles. It was nice to throw the old one away.

  As is stupidly normal, very stupid on a day when I was supposed to be fasting until dinner time, I bought something for lunch. It was a pair of Tesco "Finest" Scotch eggs. Before putting them in the basket I checked the traffic light colours nutritional information. I failed to check if it was per 100gm, per egg, or per bite, but the sugar content was shown as 0.7gm. That seemed low enough to probably be safe.

  When I got home I had a small job to do before tucking into my lunch. That job was to change the battery in the front door bell push. After it seemed to fail a few days ago I changed it to another of the wrong type I had in my battery drawer. The wrong type was a A27 battery that has the same voltage, but is little more than a millimetre smaller, and has to be wedged in with bits of cardboard to make contact. I suspect the one which failed may have just lost contact because it had shifted when the door was closed. The brand new A23 fitted like a glove, and with luck it could last 5 years or more.

  I was feeling starving even from when I was walking to Tesco, and my stomach was rumbling more as I contemplated eating those Scotch eggs. The chances of fasting seemed impossible. I enjoyed those Scotch eggs. By the time I had eaten them the sky was looking quite gloomy, and I lost all interest in doing anything else except laying on my bed reading, and ultimately having a light snooze.

  It was a little later that my new doorbell battery was christened (or lost it's virginity). The doorbell rang, and I struggled to pull a t-shirt on before I rushed down stairs to the front door. Who ever rang it was not very patient. There was no one there. I think it was a charity collector who had moved on a house or two. While I was up, dressed, and mobile, it seemed like a good time to start to prepare my dinner.

  The fist stage of that preparation was to grill some diced beef. I seasoned the beef with all sorts of herbs and spices before putting it in my mini oven/grill. I checked to see how it was doing after about 30 minutes, and decided to give it a bit longer. That meant turning the timer back. I now think that is the action which sometimes causes the timer to stick. My "bit longer" turned out to be more like an extra half an hour. I managed to rescue it before it was completely "crispy fried beef", but it was a bit crunchy.
  Just after 6pm I started my dinner - pictured above.  It was a salad based on iceberg lettuce - one of the things I had bought in Tesco earlier.  Also included was a lot of green coriander, a couple of tomatoes, a single big spring onion, and some chopped celery. I threw away the rest of the bag of celery because most of it was on the turn. It was quite a nice salad, but spoiled by the beef being too well cooked. On the other hand, it did seem that my added herbs and spices would have been great if the beef was not so tough and dry.

  TV was not terribly entertaining last night, and I ended up watching a few old recordings of The Avengers. One episode was "interesting". I knew that most of the ATV/ITC television productions were shot on film. It made it easier to sell to America, and besides which, portable TV recording hardly existed in the late 1960s. That one episode provided proof of the film origins - the quality was awful as if it was faulty film stock. I wonder if it was originally broadcast like that, or if, as I suspect, my recordings came from DVDs, they had to settle for any print they could get hold off to make sure they ad all the episodes.

  It took me a long time to get to sleep. This was partly because I had started a very minor job earlier in the evening. It was some simple camera maintenance. I topped the batteries up, and checked the date and time of the cameras internal clock. I also checked the lenses and cleaned any dust off them. On the whole it was about 5 minutes work with as much as a half hour wait while the batteries charged - some cameras or batteries seemed to discharge more than others when not in use. One camera, and I think it was my Canon SX40, seemed to have a battery that only needed 2 minutes charge to top it up - and that was after it hadn't been used for many months.

  One problem with that job was it made me want to use my cameras. Maybe gigs were not top of my desires, but it felt like I really wanted to take my Canon cameras for a walk. It kept me awake for some time after I expected to be fast asleep. I lay there imagining blue skies and sunshine, plus places I would like to take a camera to. I think it was around midnight before my brain shot up, and let me get to sleep.

  Once asleep I seemed to sleep very well. Even so, an extra 10 minutes in bed before getting up turned into a full two hours of sleep, and I got up extra late this morning. I had several bits of dream that all seemed to share the same setting. That setting was an old factory converted to individual workshops/workrooms - just like the first years in my last job were set in. That old place was more interesting than the bland industrial unit we moved to.

  The series of dreams were about moving, but only from one end of a corridor to the other end, and a bigger room. Some "episodes" of the dreams were very bland. One very bland thing I seem to recall was just carrying an armful of stuff down the corridor. One bit was more interesting, and it was about carrying a table. It was like an expanding dining room table, but maybe more industrial in quality.  I suggested that I would take one end of the fully expanded table, and a colleague could take the other end.

  He suggested it would be far easier if we folded it all up. That could have made sense, but there was a catch. When folded up it went all sort of floppy, and wanted to open up. When full opened up it all slotted into place as a very firm table top that was easy, albeit long and wide, to carry between the two of us.

  When I finally got up, after 8am, I checked my blood glucose readings with great apprehension. Yesterday morning they were unacceptably high. I hadn't fasted as I intended, and even worse I had had a few snacks during the day. As expected the readings were not as low as hoped for, but at least two of them were in the "normal" area. The Contour meter read 8.9mmol/l - normal, but higher than desired. The GlucoRX meter gave a far better 8.3mmol/l. Sadly the Sino Care meter read 9.5mmol/l. That is very high, and rather different to the other two. I should have tried it again, but I couldn't be bothered.

  It is very grey now, and will be until about 3pm, and then a few more hours later the rain will start to fall. It is definitely not a good day for outdoor photography, and not a good day to even go to the shops, let along going for a walk. That leaves me with nothing to do. I guess I could do a bit of laundry, and there is always constructing tonight's dinner. It will be another salad - possible chicken. Other than that I suspect I will have another unhealthy, sedentary and boring day.