The funny thing is that it is the BBC who usually predict non existent thunderstorms. The BBC don't predict a thunderstorm at 4pm, and now, neither does the Met Office. After a sunny morning, and afternoon, there could still be light rain at 6pm - both forecasters now agree on this, and that suggests it may happen. Today's temperature should rise to a maximum of 21° C. Tomorrow will be a dull day, with a chance of rain later in the day. It will be cooler than today. The warmest hours may only reach 18° C. Wednesday may be the start of a run of wet days.

   Yesterday was a moderately productive day, but I never took advantage of the sunshine and warmth outside. Indoors didn't always seem to feel as warm as the outside, or inside, temperature should have felt, or at least seemed like it should have felt.

  I found I didn't seem to be in a rush to do anything yesterday morning, and it was well gone 11am when I stopped being lazy, and went to shampoo my hair, and have a shower. In an ideal world I would have done nothing for maybe 30 to 60 minutes so I could cool down after a hot shower, and boiling my head with the hair dryer. I probably only gave it little more than 15 minutes before I got dressed and went shopping in Tesco.

  I was dressed in shorts and t-shirt, and while much of me actually felt very slightly cool, my head still felt hot as I did a fairly brisk walk to Tesco. That walk felt OK, but later, while going past the freezers in Tesco it did feel chilly, and the cold air did seem to irritate my chest in a sort of pre-angina sort of way.

  I was unusually careful about what I bought in Tesco, and one reason for that is that I never spotted any reduced price stuff that tempted me. Much of what I bought was more cherry tomatoes, a bag of mixed aromatic baby leaves, and two ready made salads. The other thing which took up quite a bit of space in my shopping basket was many packets of instant noodles.After my breakfast, yesterday morning, I only had one packet of instant noodles left (although I still had maybe 10 of the instant noodles in pots).

  The heaviest weight I had to carry home was 4 two litre bottles of sugar free cola in my rucksack. Partly because of that weight my walk home was not so good. I think I managed to keep up a fair walking pace, but probably not as fast as walking to Tesco. I didn't get any angina pain, but it felt like I was about to get it. I find it hard to describe exactly what it was that I felt, but there was a sort of feeling that if I pushed myself just a tiny bit harder it would start to get uncomfortable.

  It felt good to get home and relieve myself of the weight of the shopping. I put all the food away, and didn't touch any of it. I had bought a few things, like a couple of tubs of cream cheese, that I could have had with rice crackers, but I decided I would grit my teeth, and tray to fast until dinner time - like I did the day before. I didn't fully achieve it this time, and I did have a small quantity of salted peanuts, and some sugar free, rather small, choc chip cookies when the desire for munchies got too much.

  Earlier on, after my shower, I put the towel I had dried myself with into soak in detergent. I had quite a nice rest, which I almost felt I deserved after my shopping trip, before I went back to that towel. I must have given it about 6 to 8 rinses, wringing it out until almost dry, between each rinse, and still the water continued to be foamy. I then stopped and did other stuff before going back to the towel, and I gave it another 4 rinses before I got bored, and the rinse water was starting to look moderately clear of any foam.

  I can't remember what time it was when I hung up that towel to dry. It seemed too late in the afternoon, and while it was quite bright, the sunshine didn't seem strong enough to bake the towel dry if it was on the washing line. I decided to dry it on the clothes horse, with a desk fan blowing at it. It was still bright daylight, maybe around 8pm when I locked up downstairs, and at that time the towel was almost dry. I took it upstairs and let it completely dry hanging on the banisters overnight.

  The stuff I did before and after finishing that washing was some video editing. It seemed that I didn't have any more episodes of Secrets Of The London Underground to edit (although I think there are probably quite a few on the thumb drive still plugged into the TV). I did edit and store three episodes of The Avengers, plus I deleted one episode that I had already edited and stored on my archive hard disks.
  One smaller task I had done at some time in the afternoon was to do the washing up, including the glass bowl pictured above with my dinner in it. I also washed up all the beer glasses from last Thursday. They had been rinsed out after the drinking, but I washed them properly, and left them to dry on a tea towel on the kitchen table - which I had also given a scrub down earlier, and put out fresh bar towels on it.

  My dinner was similar to the salad I had had the previous night. Some small differences were that I used less onion and red cabbage, and more cherry tomatoes. Tomatoes, even small cherry tomatoes can be an almost potent source of sugar, but I had bought new tomatoes, and so used the rest of the previous bag. There were more than I felt that safe with, but I didn't want to mix a few older tomatoes with the newer tomatoes. I also added two small, sweet mini bell peppers.

  There was nothing to watch on TV last night, and so I watched a couple of old episodes of Yes Prime Minister. It was barely 8.30pm when I was ready for bed. I can't be sure, but I think I may have been asleep before 9pm, and the last time my eyes were open it still seemed to be light enough outside to be seen through the curtains. One moment I was awake, and it seemed the next moment it was about 1.30am this morning.

  I can remember nothing from that four and maybe half an hour sleep. What followed was a few hours of insomnia. As far as I can recall, I was comfortable, and my mind was mostly blank, but I just did not seem to want to fall asleep. It is possible that I did get some short periods of sleep at that time, but I don't seem to remember any. It was getting close to 4am before I seemed to fall into a deep, but not dreamless sleep.

  If it wasn't for the jumps in continuity, it was like I had one very long dream. Evidently it was lots of shorter dreams, but they all followed a sort of story line. The basic story line was that I was going for a job interview at a company who did video stuff. I think I was a day late for the interview, but I didn't seem to care, and hadn't even dressed for an interview. I seemed to know exactly where the company was located, and I approached it from the rear of the place. Since I had last been there no security fences had been installed, and I had to ask another business if I could go through their place to get to the front.

  Once out the front I headed for the entrance of the video company. They were housed, like the business I had had toi walk through, in an old warehouse converted to workshops. Outside the entrance I was met by a cheerful young woman who seemed to recognise me as the interviewee for a new job, and took me inside. I was shown into a room, and told I would have to watch a (presumed) health and safety video before anything else.

  I was then left alone with a few people who obviously worked there, and some talked to me as if they assumed I had been given the job. One said to forget about the video because it was only common sense stuff I would probably have seen many times before. He said to come through to the workshop, which I did, but he didn't hang around to show me anything. A bit later another man came and talked to me, and I felt sure he was actually the boss. He handed me a piece of equipment, and asked if I could find out what was probably wrong with it.

  I quickly identified that it had an over heating problem, and found there was a heat sensor in it that I decided to replace from spares in drawers around the bench I was working at. It initially seemed to work, and when the man who seemed to be the manager returned, I told him what I had done. He said it was a good attempt, but they had already ruled it out, and that they thought it was actually a cooling fan getting stuck.

  I investigated further, and it did seem that there was a dead spot on the cooling fan where it couldn't start if it was stopped on the dead spot. I didn't get as far as replacing it before someone asking if I had heard that the man who I thought was boos, actually was the boss, and he had just died. A little later I was approached by the young woman I had first seen. I was not sure if she was a member of HR, or the bosses secretary, or possibly both.

  She told me that she thought that the boss definitely wanted to hire me, but with him dying it had all got a bit complicated. She realised that I had already put in almost a full days work, and said that I would definitely be paid for that regardless, but she/they would be in touch later if I was going to be hired or not. There was more to that dream, but those are the fairly easy to explain bits. In a way it was a sort of happy dream. I seemed to think the location/travelling was OK, and the work suited me.

  It was about 6.15am when I woke up, and despite the hours of insomnia, I seemed to feel OK. One thing I forgot to mention was a feeling of hunger while I was suffering from insomnia. I don't think that was enough to keep me awake, but I suppose it is one possibility. In one respect it was a good sort of feeling. As well as a reason to hope that my blood glucose readings might be good, I also hoped I might have lost a bit of weigh after several days of eating carefully.

  I had lost weight, and my weight has come down a few kg now to a level last seen during my very healthy days of loads of walking during lockdown on 2020. My blood glucose was good, but still disappointing. I hoped it might be lower, but the Contour meter read 7.7mmol/l. That is pretty good, but not excellent. The GlucoRX meter read 8.1mmol/l and that was definitely disappointing. The Sinocare meter agreed with the Contour meter with a reading of 7.7mmol/l - good but not great !

  Today there are two things I think I need to do. One is to phone up to make an appointment with the vampires, under the eaves of the group practice building, to give a blood sample for diabetes purposes. The nurse has been waiting patiently since the start of the year for the results ! The other thing it to phone the cardiology department at the hospital to confirm that I have an appointment for 28th May 2025. I guess it is possible, but they did say they wanted to see me again in about 3 months, and I suspect it could be 28th May this month, and is to do with the blood samples I gave after seeing the Cardiologist on the 15th.

  That should still leave some of this morning, and several hours of the afternoon (assuming it does get wet towards the end of the afternoon) when I could go out and get a bit of sunshine. I have been thinking that maybe a slow walk alongside the River Thames (maybe the north bank), where there is plenty to photograph (always a good reason to stop and get my breath back). Maybe I might go somewhere local, or maybe I might do something silly like housework instead !


  Two pictures found on my phone that I must have taken while drunk last Thursday ! At the top is Alan and Jodie. The bottom picture is of Mark taking a picture of me.









2318 words today