It seems to be almost a regular thing during this period of unseasonal weather, there were more sunny spells than forecast. Admittedly they were sparse in the afternoon, and there were a few hours when it got quite dull, but then the peep out from behind the clouds again. The later morning revisions of the forecast predicted the maximum temperature might reach 20° C, but I saw 22° C on my thermometers, and took a picture to prove it (shown in the main body of today's electronic diary).
       

  The forecast today has been revised a lot in the last couple of hours. The latest revision now says that the current sunshine will be finished by 10am, and then it should stay dry, but with many very dull hours until 5pm. From then it will be sunny until sunset. The maximum temperature is shown as 18° C. The BBC predict light showers at midday and 1pm, but it should be dry for the rest of the day. Once the rain has finished it should be bright-ish until the sun breaks through at 5pm. They only predict 17° C for today. Tomorrow should see sunshine in the morning, but none in the afternoon, and the temperature similar to today.

   Yesterday's highlight was getting the dripping mixer tap in the kitchen replaced with a new, and hopefully higher quality mixer tap. I am happy to say that despite being pissed, at 9am, Lee managed to get it right the first time. Even this morning I see no sign of leaks.
  The new shiny mixer tap makes the background look quite grubby, and that was after I did a bit of cleaning. I missed a bit of the sink, and the tiles and window frame behind the mixer tap look really grubby. As I said, the job went OK, but maybe only because I forbid Lee to start making other "improvements" to the pipework - like altering the cold take off to the disused washing machine. I had to tell him most sternly that all I wanted done was to have the mixer tap replaced !

  After I finished writing I felt in a sort of mellow, or lazy, or relieved mood - probably a mix of all three. With an hour to 90 minute gap in writing as I oversaw what Lee was doing, it was almost midday when I finished writing. I didn't have my usual 30 minute or more period of quiet relaxation once my writing was finished. I had little more than 10 to 15 minutes before I had a quick shower.

  Once clean and fragrant I put on outdoor clothes, and headed out to Tesco. I particularly wanted to get in several spare bottles of Diet Coke, and also some things like ready made salads. I also bought a couple of naughty things - small tubs of ice cream, and maybe they are not as naughty as I once thought, although I still felt I had to be careful how and when I ate them.

  Once I got home I put my shopping away, and had my lunch. It was a 330ml (I think) tub of Tesco's "roasted pistachio" ice cream. The nutritional information said it had less sugar in than some other flavours, but it still seemed like a huge amount. If it had been as naughty as it seemed, I would have been quite annoyed because while it was nice, it was not as wonderful as expected. Curiously enough, one thing it seemed to lack was any intense sweetness. That seemed like it was good, and later on it would be the case that it was good,

  After my shower I left two t-shirts and 4 or 5 pairs of underpants soaking in detergent. I didn't want to continue that job so soon after eating, plus there was another reason to wait. I was waiting for DPD to deliver what I correctly identified as a camera battery before it was delivered. The battery had come all the way from France, and it wasn't until DPD sent me a text message the previous evening, with a link to their tracking website that I knew for certain that it was the battery I had ordered from Amazon. Their tracking information stopped at the point the seller had dropped it at what I assume was a local post office.

  The battery was actually for a little high definition Sony Camcorder that I had bought at a second hand shop years ago. To be honest it doesn't do a lot more than a modern mobile phone, but it does have optional manual settings for many things - including setting the sound level - which is handy. I felt it was time that I tried to make some use of it, but while it is small and light (not always a great thing for camera stability) I already seem to carry too much to gigs.

  With a new battery, that is even bigger than the other one I have, I really must make better use of it - even if it is to take it on some walks, and maybe set it up by the river to video the water flowing by, and in some places I know, loads of loud bird song. One current niggle with it is that an internal battery that saves the time/date/settings when no main battery is connected, seems to have gone completely flat, and I have to set the time and date every time I put the battery in it. In Sony's online help pages they suggest leaving the charger plugged into the camcorder may re-charge the back-up battery, and they suggest leaving it on charge for at least 24 hours. I hope that does revive it.

  The new battery arrived at approx 2.30pm, and once I took it out of the packaging I put it straight on charge. I think it took over 5 hours to be completely charged, but it does have about 4 times the capacity of the "standard" battery originally supplied with the camcorder. With that final thing done I could relax - but not for long. I still had the laundry that was soaking to finish.  Once I started I kept wanting to split the job in two because I was sure it would be too much like hard work, but it didn't seem to be so bad doing it all in the one session.

  One problem doing that laundry was that it generated a fair bit of sweat. Some of it may have been attributable to a very high blood glucose spike because of the ice cream I ate earlier, but some of it was that it was warm outside, and I was working by an open window. My outside thermometers agreed that without any significant sunshine (although there were occasional sunny spells) it was 22.0° C. As can be seen in the picture on the left, it was 23.3° C in my bedroom. The odd thing is that while being very sedate, maybe just quietly reading, it almost felt low enough for me to want to put the heater on. I did actually try that, an even with the heater on low I was soon feeling too warm.

  I guess you could call it guilt, but after eating that tub of ice cream, I decided to eat as little as possible for the rest of the day. I think it was mid afternoon when I had some crisps, and that was partly because they were already open since the previous day, and they needed to be eaten before they started to spoil. I also had a couple of small measures ( a palmful) of peanuts during the day, but my dinner was just two bits of "Mediterranean" flavour (or so it said on the packet) boneless chicken.

  After that very small dinner, and after the stupid TV programme I watched while eating (World War Weird) I did some reading. I didn't seem to feel sleepy, and so at 9pm I turned the TV on again, and watched an episode of The Avengers. I went to be when that finished at 10pm. As I tried to get comfortable I started to suffer from something that wasn't angina, and wasn't really heartburn, but was closest to heartburn. A couple of Rennies helped a little, but not completely. I sometimes wonder if on top of everything else, I have something like a stomach ulcer.

  I think I was fully asleep by 11pm, and I stayed asleep until about 1am when I needed a pee. It seemed to be a bit cool by then, and I turned the heater on low before I got back to bed. I don't know why I think it, but I think that when I got up for another pee an hour later, it was actually a dream. If it was it was the only dream I can remember. I later learnt that maybe I did not need to pee much during the night, although I feel sure I had one at around 4am, and again a smaller pee at 5.30am when it was more like I was getting up - until I saw sense, and forced myself back to sleep for another hour.

  When I really got up I did have another small pee, and then I checked my blood glucose and my weight. Both were nice and low. In fact my weight was surprisingly low. It was as if I had lost a full kilogram, and maybe a little more, in 24 hours. My blood glucose measurements scored me two dark green (under 7.0mmol/l) readings. The Contour meter read 6.9mmol/l, and the GlucoRX meter read 6.7mmol/l. Sadly the Sinocare meter read 7.1mmol/l - which is still nice and low, but only in the light green area. My blood pressure, on the first reading, was in the "optimum" area. So now worries there.

  All of today hangs around the desire to get to the top of Hilly Fields to watch a couple of bands, and strongly ignore at least one other ! Once upon a time (2020) I was walking from home to the very top of Hilly Fields, going down the other side, going around, and then over the top of Blythe Hill, and back to home all for fun. Today I will be getting the train to Ladywell, and a bus to near the top of Hilly Fields. I'll probably still have angina pains by the time I find the stage, but it shouldn't take long for it to settle down. I just hope that the crowds are not too thick to make finding good camera angles difficult.

   It could be worse for the headline band. They are Guns 2 Roses - a Guns and Roses tribute band, and allegedly extremely good. They played in The Fox And Firkin last Wednesday, and that is where Jodie saw them. That gig was priced at £12 for late entry tickets. Today it is all free, and so I can imagine they are going to have loads of fans there today.


 





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