The forecast sunshine doesn't seem to be happening yet, but maybe there is a detectable increase in brightness. Maybe the sun will break through soon, but even if it does it seems it won't last beyond 9am. It was quite chilly this morning, and at 4am it was only 4° C. We must have only just missed a frost. The best we can hope for today is 11° C. Both forecasters predict white cloud for most of the day. The BBC throws in a few random sunny spells through the day, and the Met Office seem to have taken a few away ! Tomorrow could be very similar to today.

   I am unsure whether to say yesterday was a good or bad day. I guess it was a bit of both. Until 4.40pm I was restricted in what I could do while waiting for my delivery from Amazon. I couldn't go out, or even have a decent snooze in case I missed the doorbell.

  For a while I was also waiting for some information about a Royal Mail delivery of the new lens for one of my Nikon cameras. A bit later in the day the tracking info was updated, and I saw my package had not travelled very far. It was still at a Super Hub close to where it had started it's journey, but it did say that it was expected to be delivered between 10am and 1pm today (if I recall correctly). This morning there is no estimate of a delivery time, and it had only got as far as Croydon, but hopefully it will be taken to Catford this morning, and maybe go straight out for delivery.

  Once again I can't go out until that parcel arrives. Yesterday I could probably have gone out in the morning if I had known the Royal Mail parcel was still so far away (the first useful update to the tracking didn't appear until late in the afternoon), and I knew that the Amazon delivery would never happen in the morning. For a long time their tracking web page was just saying the dreaded "by 9pm". That suddenly changed late in the afternoon, and it went from useless to "the driver is just 2 stops away from you".

  During all the waiting I managed to do a few useful things. I'll admit they didn't take much of my time, but doing a full back up of my entire /home directory of my PC took several hours - twice (two back up external USB hard disks for safety). It was a job that was well overdue by 3 or 4 months. I am pretty consistent at doing a back up of my photos and other images at the start of every month, but the entire /home directory should ideally also be done every months too - and it would be a lot quicker because there would be less changes made over the period of a single month.

  I also made backups of a few other bits of my PC, and it all mopped up more time. One non PC related task I started, and could have finished, was moving the buttons on the new full length leather coat Mark gave me on Thursday.

Real time update 08:39am: The sun is a bit hazy, but it has finally broken through the cloud.

  I had never tried stitching leather before, and had to rummage through my sewing box to find a nice stout needle. My first attempt was not terribly neat, but it was usable. My second attempt (second button) was a lot neater. At that point I tried the coat on again, and found that the buttons had moved far enough to make the tightest bit do-upable ! The only trouble was that I found I had moved the wrong buttons !

  It sort of looks like the coat could be done up on the left or right, but that is not the case. The buttons I had moved had no function except to maybe give a double breasted effect. I had to unpick all my stitching, and move the buttons on the other side. After a bit of practice I made a better job of the two I did. I got bored after that, but I will get back to the coat to finish the job probably today. There is no rush because I very much doubt I'll be using that coat until the cold winds of Autumn start to blow. By then I may have put the buttons back that are just for show.

  One thing I must do to that coat is give it a light sponge bath. I was told it had been hanging, unused in a kitchen for many years. It has picked up many kitchen smells, and it is not a nice smell. In fact the more I worked on it, the more unpleasant it seemed. It also has a sort of greasy feeling !  I think wiping it down with some dilute Fairy Liquid, and then just a plain damp sponge should do the trick.

  I didn't eat all that much yesterday, and that was because I was convinced that what I did eat was bad enough for me. My lunch was the other two cheese and onion pasties from the pack of 4 I had bought from Tesco with a reduced price sticker on them. Before I threw away the wrapper I checked the alleged sugar content, and maybe it was not quite as dreadful as I feared, but it was still not exactly ideal.

  My dinner was some well cooked (to leach out a lot of the fat) "salt and pepper" flavoured pork belly slices. I had them with nothing more than a sliced and roasted with the meat, leek. It was very nice, although I couldn't help feeling that half the amount of meat, plus some boiled new potatoes might have been better. I was worried about the sugar content of the leek. When roasted it does take on a sort of sweet taste. The amount of sugar that might have been involved in marinating those pork belly slices was also a worry.

  At least I was able to enjoy my dinner after the waiting for my Amazon delivery was over. It was not a very exciting order. Almost half of it was blood glucose test strips, 100 of each for my Contour, and Sinocare blood glucoe meters. I had also ordered a couple of cheap (around £5 each) USB SD card readers, and I spent maybe half an hour checking those out with both SD and Micro SD cards.

  The final thing in that order won't go to waste, but I've changed my mind about it since it was delivered. It is a 4TB 3.5" hard disk. My original idea was that I would install it in my PC to replace the 2TB had disk in it. My late thought was that it takes long enough to do a backup of a 2TB hard drive, and that maybe I should stick to 2TB, but offload some files to external hard drives to reduce the need for more storage on the PC itself.

  There were two back to back (except for irritating adverts) episodes of Secrets Of The London Underground on last night, and although they were both repeats I had seen before, they were a good enough distraction to end the day. The second one finished at 9pm, and I went straight to bed via the bathroom where I brushed my teeth. I then read in bed for 30 to 40 minutes.

  While laying on my bed reading I became aware that the greasy pork I had eaten earlier was repeating on me a bit, and I felt sure it was heading towards acid indigestion. I took a couple of antacid tablets as a precaution, and that seemed to work OK. I am not absolutely sure, but I think I was asleep around 10pm. I think I must have slept quite well last night. I remember getting up for quite a big pee just the once until much closer to getting up time.

  I don't seem to be able to remember dreaming at all last night. I am sure I must have, but they have not seemed to have left a single memory. Maybe that is a sign of good sleep. There might be another hint about that in so much is that I was almost ready to get up at 5am. I woke up then, and I don't think I got any deep sleep after that. It was more like I was snoozing, and waking up often to check the time. Once it had gone 6am I got up.

  One thing I did from mid evening last night was to switch over to drinking (initially) chilled water. I did that because I intended to drink quite a lot of it in the hope it would soften my bowel movements. It did seem to do that, but it was well over an hour after getting up before I knew I was not constipated. The only trouble is I am sure there should have been more to it. I expect I'll be going again before lunch time. I really want to somehow get back to getting it all over with early in the morning so I can do things like go out for early morning train rides and stuff.

  I was pleasantly surprised when I checked my blood glucose level this morning. I was convinced I would get readings possibly higher than yesterdays only just ok readings. In fact all three readings were nicely grouped, and moderately low. The Contour meter read 7.7mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 7.4mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter approximately agreed with the other two with a reading of 7.6mmol/l. This morning I seemed to be right on my current target. In the unlikely event I can keep this other, I will set a lower target for warmer days when I can hopefully get more exercise. That hangs on whatever happens when I see the Cardiologist in May.

  This morning I face another lot of waiting, but at least I have some confidence that my parcel, with new Nikon lens should arrive before the afternoon is very old (fingers crossed). Hmmmmm, just checked, and it doesn't appear to have left Croydon yet. It was my hope that it would arrive early enough to go for a walk in the park, or somewhere, to do some comparison shots with the lens it is replacing. I am having doubts that will happen today.

  One thing I may still be able to do, is to go out tonight. Chain are playing in The Railway pub, next door to Blackheath Railway station, and 45 second walk from the 54 bus stop (which will probably be how I get there). I really don't like the pub. The DJ/Jokebox/online music source plays terrible music, and it seems to be louder than the band sometimes. Communication with anyone in the pub is impossible, and by the times your ears have stopped ringing you have missed the bands first song or two. Also the clientèle seem like a load of yahoos, and the bar doesn't take cash, only cad (unless they have changed their minds now). You may wonder why I want to go, well so do I ! If I go it is my intention to stay for about half the first set, snap away, hoping for some good pictures, and then get the hell away from there !
        







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