There was some heavy rain yesterday, but not as much rain as forecast.  The morning started with some nice sunshine, but before the morning was over it clouded over, and the rest of the days was very dull. Rather than non stop light rain in the afternoon, as per the forecast, there were just passing showers. Much of the time it was almost dry until 6 or 7pm when we did have some very heavy rain for a while. None of the later forecast thunderstorms happened. The highest temperature was mid morning when it was 19° C.
       

  As I type this at least 50% of the sky is blue, and we have had some sunshine, and it did not appear in the forecast ! Nevertheless it does seem that it could cloud over this morning, and once again there will be possibloy just passing showers for most of the rest of the day. On the other hand I feel today is one of those days between different weathers, and it is impossible to predict what today's weather will really be like. For instance we could "borrow" some of tomorrow's weather which is forecast to be bright and cheery. Today the temperature may reach 20° C and tomorrow could see 23° C° C° C.
 
   Yesterday was a sort of good day, and it even ended well. Of course in terms of weather it was not a great day, but I still managed to do enough to keep me reasonably happy. I even went out in short sleeves in defiance of the weather forecast, but it was spitting with rain as I walked home again.

  After washing my hair, and a very much needed shower, I felt almost good yesterday morning. I wrote quite a lot yesterday, and so had a shower late in the morning. It was about 11.30am before I was ready to go out and have a mooch around Poundstretcher. The walk to the store was sort of pleasant, although it was done under a grey sky. As noted above, the last bit of the walk home was done in very light rain - so light that it was easy to see each raindrop hit the ground.

  There was nothing I really needed from Poundstretcher, but there were a few things I knew I would buy if I saw them. Mostly they were food items. In an ideal world that food would have a long life, but much of the food sold cheap by Poundstretcher is close to it's use by date, and although marked as such, some of it is past it's sell by date. Nevertheless I find it useful to keep a stock of instant noodles in their own individual pots.
  For instance I bought two of these instant noodle pots. They claim to be "authentic Chinese style" noodles, but I had one yesterday, and I couldn't taste a single flavour that reminded me of anything Chinese, and the picture on the label looked nothing like the contents of the pot when made up. Oh well, they seemed nice enough. They also seem to be like a big portion, but I think they were only 85gms - my breakfast this morning was a 100gm packet of instant noodles.

  I also bought another half dozen pots of some ramen style instant noodles, and another four pots of instant mashed potato (just add boiling water). I have only even tried one of those mashed potato pots before, and it seemed quite good, but I gave one to Jodie to try after she kept looking at them. I am expecting her to start stealing more of them every time she visits.

  Other stuff I bought were a couple of 6 packs of crisps, some spare Paracetamol, and some Duck toilet cleaner. I had never seen Lavender scented Toilet Duck before, and so I bought two bottles. There were a few other odds and sods I bought, including some alleged low sugar content (but not zero) biscuits. Then it was time to walk home. I felt a sort of hint of moisture in the air as soon as I came out into the open air from the multi storey car park. By the time I reached home there were as many as 5 drops of rain falling every second - not even enough to dampen my t-shirt.

  After putting my shopping away I had a snack/lunch of crisps and biscuits. That might sound like a very unhealthy meal, and I knew it was, but there was one good thing about it - it scared me from eating anything as bad for the rest of the day. That did actually work quite well, and the results this morning were interesting.  After eating I did my usual thing of laying down on my bed to read, and to almost have a snooze.

  I am not sure if I did snooze or not, but I now I had put the book down and had closed my eyes when I after a while I was disturbed by the sound of something dropping through my letter box. I expected it to be another flyer/menu for a for a takeaway. I seem to be getting a few of them lately, and they all extol the virtues of collection rather than delivery. The last offered 30% off for collection instead of delivery. I can imagine that many places are getting fed up being extorted by the likes of Just Eat, or Uber Eats.

  Anyway, it was not a flyer but a letter that came through my door. It was from the Premium Bonds, and confirmation of my recent win. Unlike the email (or was it a txt message ?) it said the size of the win. I knew it was not a large amount because, as per my original instructions, the win had been invested to buy more Premium Bonds. However, it is possibly the biggest win I have ever had - a whole £100 ! I think I once had a £75 win, but I still wait for the £100,000 win that I must surely get one day !

  In the afternoon I finished a job I had started after my my morning shower when I left some laundry soaking in detergent. It was two t-shirts, a pair of lounge pants plus some underwear. It was a moderate, going on large amount to deal with, but yesterday I felt like I could do it all in one go, and I did. I had it all hanging up to dry by about 3.30pm. I then resumed reading, but after an hour I wanted to take a break, and wondered what was on TV later.

  What I discovered was that there was already a Star Trek being shown on the Sky mega adverts channel (or in this case, Sky Mix). I never seemed to notice before yesterday afternoon that they are now showing four Star Treks, one after the other - The New Generation, Enterprise, Deep Space None, and Voyager. While they were there I might as well watch them. I missed most of the New Generation episode, but it was an early one, and that series seemed to take a while to settle down and become enjoyable.

  Star Trek: Enterprise was the best of the four, and I enjoyed that. It was early in the start of that series, and a little rough around the edges, but at least it was one of the individual stories, and not the rather tedious change from series to serial that seasons 2 and 3 became. Towards the end of it I was feeling a bit hungry. In the last advert break before the end I went down to the kitchen and made up the so called Chinese style instant noodles (as per the picture further up the page).

  Apart from a small handful of peanuts a little later, That was all I had for a quite early dinner for the rest of the evening. I dutifully (what ?) watched Star Trek:Deep Space Nine as much as I could, but it was a terrible episode all about those bloody Bajoran prophets and the scheming woman who was their high priest (or whatever, Kai ?). Deep Space Nine did have some good episodes but I really hate all that religious bollocks.

  Next up was Star trek: Voyager, and it was a really terrible episode dominated by a simpering Captain Janeway, and featuring another story hashed up and featuring a recent adversary who should have been left light years behind, never to be shown again. I watched it all, and hated 97% of it ! .... Oh, just remembered, I only watched half of Deep Space Nine because I tuned to Channel 4 to watch an episode of The Simpsons.

  Star Trek: Voyager finished at 8pm, and I could have stayed up to watch QIXL on Dave, but my thoughts turned to to bed.  Before I actually went to bed there were a few things I had to, or wanted to do, before I went to bed. One was to give the stainless steel draining board another treatment of white vinegar before I shut down and locked up downstairs.

  It was prior to getting the mixing tap on the sink changed that I cleared the area around the sink. With the draining board clear of some stuff that had probably been on it for years, I could see how stained it was, and those stains were almost all just limescale from the hard water here. They were not so bad as to warrant going out to get some strong acid, and I thought I would try white vinegar first.

  The first application made a very nice difference, but some stains were a bit stubborn. A week or two I bought the bottle of white vinegar pictures on the left. What it does not show is that it has a spray nozzle. It is now my habit to give the draining board, which I am trying to keep clear of stuff, a spray of white vinegar. The last thing I did was to spray it before I turned out the light, and went up to bed. This morning the draining board is in almost showroom condition.

  One of my hopes last night was that having my dinner so early, and it being quite a small dinner, I would not have any acid indigestion/heartburn when I went to bed. That wish was 97% fulfilled. I did feel a minor twinge of the start of some probable chest pain, but nothing that stopped me falling asleep - although I didn't fall asleep nearly as fast as I hoped might be the case. I think it could have been as late as 10pm before I fell into a fairly deep sleep (I think it was probably deep sleep). One delay in getting to sleep was that I am now very near the end of the book I am reading, and I had to force myself to put it down before I read the last chapter or two.

  Like the night before, I did seem to wake up to pee a bit more frequently than I should, although, thinking back, some of those times could actually have been dreams. They do seem to be a bit like dreamy memories. The only actual dreams I had seemed to be about trying to solve a crossword puzzle. I only have a vague recollection of solving less than a quarter of it. One curious thing is that I am sure it was not one dream, but several, although it did see that I somehow remember the answers I had entered in previous dreams. I am sure it was not one long dream because I am sure I got up to pee in the middle of it !

  I woke up for a pee at just after 5am, and before I got back into bed I turned the heater on low because it was feeling a bit chilly when not under the duvet (although it was probably OK once I became acclimatised to it). I think I finally got up at about 6.50am. I am not really sure how I felt. I know it was not good, but than again I didn't seem to feel all that bad. One thing I think I probably was, was slightly dehydrated. This was not entirely unexpected because going for a pee every time I wake up in the night has become a habit rather than a need.

  The clue that I was slightly dehydrated was when I weighed myself I seemed to have lost a whole kilogram since the morning before. It was marvellous seeing the scales reading so low, but I am sure it was not real - just the same as my blood glucose readings were not real - probably !

  The Contour meter read 7.8mmol/l, and while good, I thought it was a bit higher considering how little I had eaten yesterday. The GlucoRX meter read even higher, a less good 8.2mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter was even worse at 8.5mmol/l. These readings are not actually too bad, but I was hoping for far better this morning - and my reduced weight could not be 100% dehydration. At least through all this doubt my blood pressure remains "Optimum" (better than normal), although a tiny weeny bit higher than some mornings. It was 106/47, and remained exactly that on a second attempt, although on the second attempt my pulse rate dropped from 54 to 53 !

  Today is yet another day when I have no idea what I am doing....well almost nothing. I know I will have a shower, and after that I will leave just a very few more items from the laundry basket to soak in detergent to be finished a bit later on. one thing I forgot to mention earlier is that I wore my new Tesco trainers to Poundstretcher yesterday. They were not as comfortable as hoped for, but they showed promised to be very comfortable once worn in. I would like to take them out for another walk today, but it all depends on how the weather seems, and how I feel.