Once again the weather forecast for yesterday was far too pessimistic. Instead of continuous rain with occasional thunderstorms, a lot of yesterday was actually quite nice. There was some heavy rain, and I did hear a couple of peals of thunder, but from about 5pm it was like a rather cold summers day. There were long dry periods featuring sunny spells before that as well. If it had only been considerably more than 16° C I might have described it as a mostly good day..
       

  At the moment it is rather cold after a clear night, but the entire sky is blue, and there is plenty of warm sunshine - except the sun is still a bit low in the sky, and it is having a hard time to warm anything up. I'm still using the BBC forecast because the Met Office forecast does not display nicely on my screen, but I have checked it. It is slightly more optimistic than the BBC forecast. It still shows 11am to 2pm as having almost black clouds, but only shows light rain for 1 and 2pm. As can be seen above, The BBC is predicting thundery showers this afternoon. I am wondering if today will be more like yesterday. There is one difference - today might reach a glorious 17° C - a whole degree less cold than yesterday.  Incidently, the BBC forecast has just been revised, and now only shows thunderstorms for 11am, and then the rest of the day until 5pm to be light rain. There will only be a short break until more light rain in the evening. Tomorrow is looking fairly gloomy, and partly wet, but the temperature may be up another degree to 19° C for just 2 hours at 4 and 5pm.
 
   It was nice to be able to relax for a lot of yesterday. I had no pressing problems, or indeed any real problems at all apart from well moaned about health problems, but even those health problems didn't spoil anything until late afternoon, or maybe early evening.

  Apart from writing my electronic diary (what you are reading now) I didn't do a single thing of note, apart from occasionally shivering, yesterday morning. I might have had a snooze as if that counts for anything, but I definitely read a short chapter or two from the book I am reading, "Friday" by Robert Heinlein. I guess even quietly reading for my own amusement counts as something.

  At about midday I had some lunch. It was just rice crackers with mostly some crab pate, which was sort of nice, but not great, and the rest with jalapeño enhanced cream cheese. At 1pm I thought I had better have a shower. If it hadn't been so cold I would have washed my hair too. I think it was about then when I heard the only peal of thunder, and it wasn't during the very heaviest rain.

  At 2pm I did a quick tidy up  ready for an afternoon drinking session with Jodie. In anticipation of Jodie arriving during rain, I thought I had better put some heating on in the dining room. I found just a single kilowatt from a fan heater got the room feeling very comfortable - unlike the rest of my house, and in particular my bedroom. That needed a bit of heat, definitely so while resting on my bed, but I was reluctant to give any more money than essential to the grasping hands of EDF energy !

  Jodie did indeed arrive during some rain, albeit fairly light rain, and the warmth of the dining room was appreciated. Jodie had actually arrived a little earlier than usual, and that was because she missed her train by a single minute. They are only every half hour on a Sunday, but there was a 54 bus at the station ready to go, and she got that. The roads were quiet, and she must have made good progress to Catford and got off at the bus stop by Aldi where she went to buy some beers and some lunch for herself. I suspect that in this case the bus was faster than the train.

  Once again Jodie was not in a big beer drinking mood, and we nearly started of with a 2.5% "Radler" (lemon flavoured beer). I'm glad we didn't because I am not a great fan of radlers. What we started with was sort of nice, but hardly "beer". It was a cherry pie based beer, It was thick, almost like a milkshake, and the best bit was it was not a sour beer. It was quite drinkable, but maybe best in small quantities.

  I don't think we had any outrageous beers, although there were one or two I only wanted a quick taste before committing myself to half the can. While we were drinking we were keeping an eye on the weather forecasts. Jodie thought that heavy rain would resume at 6pm, and decided to leave early while it was still dry. She got the 5.42 train to Clockhouse statation where she met Alan in The Three Hounds bar a short walk from the station.

  Once that was planned I nipped into the kitchen to prepare my dinner. It was basically a couple of quarter pounder burgers grilled with some baby plum tomatoes (rescued from a ready made salad that had been in the fridge too long, and the salad was well past it's best), and some baby potatoes I had boiled earlier in the day. Once cooked I added some coleslaw, but that may have been a mistake. I enjoyed eating with bright sunshine outside, and no rain.
  None of the predicted rain fell in the evening. At just after 9pm I took this picture showing mostly clear blue sky, and a few streaks of cloud glowing orange/red from the setting sun (in fact In think it had set, but was still lighting up the higher altitudes). The whole evening was just like a very cool summer's evening.

  My entertainment last night was to watch two Star Trek movies. They were the first and third movies made feature Star Trek: The New Generation with Captain Picard at the helm. I think that both might have been edited to fit TV schedules, but they were enjoyable enough. The curious things is that one looked very familiar, but I couldn't remember all of the story line. I almost wonder if it was actually a two part TV series edited together to make one long film.

  The second film ended in time to switch channels to watch a one or two year old repeat of Have I Got News For You. Once again it was an episode I mostly remembered, but mostly with hindsight, and so it was still enjoyable. That finished at 10pm, and I headed straight to bed, and after a bit of reading, disaster ! Once again, just before I turned over to go to sleep I started to suffer chest pains.

  Once again those pains were very ambiguous. The location of the core of the pain seemed to be a few inches to the right of the more usual place, and although it expanded a bit, it didn't seem to spread far. I feel fairly sure that last nights pain, and maybe many previous times, was to do with the scar tissue and stuff from my operation in 2013. One clue is that I did have a smaller, but more intense pain in my throat.. Another clue is that the usual cures for heartburn didn't seem to help, and my blood pressure was only slightly high, but still in the "normal" zone.

  I had no option but to get up again, and sit at my desk chair while trying to find some amusement on my computer, and taking the usual remedies. Maybe a couple of antacid tablets may have helped, but it seems the pain started to fade even before I took them. After about an hour I was pain free again, and able to go to bed, and more importantly, to get to sleep, That must have been almost 1am in the morning. So much for an early night !

   Apart from getting up to pee a couple of times, I seemed to sleep quite well. I even had a couple of what I seem to think were some enjoyable dreams, but it seems I have forgotten them all. That is a shame because I somehow know that one was quite inventive despite not being able to remember anything about it. All that comes to mind was some of yesterday's dream, but I think only the parts I was able to write about yesterday.

  Despite only getting about 6 hours sleep, I got up at about my usual time this morning. My main feeling was how cold it was (and still is) this morning. I think I broke all records putting on long lounge pants and a t-shirt this morning. The good news for me is that the first thing I did was to have a poo as well as a pee straight after getting up. I feel strongly there is still more to come, but my weight, although a few hundred grams higher, seemed quite reasonable when I got on the scales. Another pee, and maybe another poo may have resulted in a small drop of weight instead of a very small gain.

  I should feel sure of that fact even though it often seems a wrong assumption based on lower blood glucose readings. This morning all three readings were in the light green area - but only just. The Contour meter read 7.8mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 7.5mmol/l, and that is spot on my current target. The Sinocare meter read a bit higher at 7.9mmol/l - only just low enough to be in the light green area. My blood pressure was a tiny bit high this morning because I had to stop my relaxation and change the batteries in the blood pressure meter. Still, 110/53 is still in the "optimum" area.

  Today......just what am I going to do today. If the current blue sky, and bright sunshine were to continue I might be tempted to try a short walk somewhere, or maybe even a train ride, but the sky is already starting to cloud over, and besides which, I think I have forgotten how to go for a walk, but mostly what is the point when it is going to hurt. I wish there was some progress with the Cardiology department at tracking the source of this pain. The trouble is that I think I am considered low priority, and the recent hacking of the pathology laboratory company has probably caused a great deal of turmoil in most local hospitals. (see https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/05/qilin_impacts_patient/)

  If I can get out before any rain falls, I may get to the shops. I would like to get another packet of soluble aspirin from Savers, and once in the shop I expect there will be other things I would see and buy. After Savers I would probably cross the way to go an have a hunt in Poundstretcher, and spend far more money than intended in there too....but only if I can go out when it is not raining, and of course get home again in the dry. Other than that there is always my book to read !