It comes as no surprise that this morning has started very murky, but maybe the surprise is that this morning it has been correctly forecast. One difference is that there could be some light rain before the sky clears, if indeed it does clear, by 1pm (the clue may come at midday when sunny spells are forecast). It is going to be a little cooler today, but 21° C should be nice in the sunshine. The balck bar with "Weather Warning" in it refers to tomorrow, or maybe the day after.  Tomorrow should start with sunny spells (yeah, we've heard that one before !), but there could be a few showers between them. The maximum temperature should be 22° C. From 9pm there could be thunderstorms. Curiously, the Met Office don't seem to have a weather warning, and don't seem to mention thunderstorms at all ! Their forecast says tomorrow night should be dry, and Sunday only mildly damp (the BBC say loads of thunderstorms).

   Yesterday featured an interesting paradox. It one respect it was an awful day, but this morning it turned out that what I thought was a disaster was actually a good thing, somehow. The bad was the result of boredom and frustration (a bit like most of life), and somehow, in ways I can't fully understand, that was also why it was good !

  My whole day yesterday, and by whole day I mean about 95% of it, was all about waiting for a delivery from Amazon. Of course I knew it would come no earlier than about 11.30am (I think that is the best ever), but just to stop me being too relaxed and happy the postman brought bad news. One letter was just a credit card statement. It was for less than I thought it would be, and while that should have been good, I feel it a great indignity to pay any bill. If I were rich, like Donald Trump, I would just ignore all the demands, and let my lawyers deal with it. Unfortunately I am not stinking rich - probably because I pay 99.9% of my bills on time.

  The other letter was some gloom from EDF energy. I knew that energy prices were rising in the winter. It is the traditional way they screw the little people by hitting them hardest when they need all that energy to keep warm. Yesterday's gloominess concerned gas prices. I have painlessly built up a large credit to help me get through a bad winter, but the dirty grasping hands of EDF still disgust me.

  An awful long time passed before I did any more than reading and eating. By my reckoning I had far too many snacks yesterday. Most, like the can of Scotch Broth soup I had for lunch were "mostly harmless", but I am sure other stuff should have had a bad affect on me. In particular the big bag of greasy "Frisps" (matchstick sized fried [probably] extruded mashed potato could not have been good for me. The occasional chunk of cheese, and palmful of salted peanuts can hardly be considered healthy eating.

  It was about 6pm when Michael popped around when he discovered I had been drinking the beer on the left. There was no official drinking session yesterday because Jodie was at a gig or something. I decided I would still have a few beers at about 5pm. Most of them were to be from the box of 12 Brewdog beers that Dik gave me for doing his band photos.

  In the box there were three cans of Elvis Juice (as pictured on the left). I declared it must be something to do with Elvis Costello, and indeed I have seen nothing to contradict that (although I have made a point of not looking too carefully). The thing is that I have never liked Elvis Presley, and find him rather revolting.

  Sadly Elvis was one of Michael's teen heroes, and so he hoped to taste some of the beer. He popped round, but I did not have a can in the fridge to chill. Rather than drink it warm he drank other stuff, but I have promised I'll keep a can in the fridge for next time. Oddly enough, considering it is grapefruit flavoured, it is not all that bad.

  Michael had plenty to say when he came around, and it was all about the trials and tribulations of caring for his dementia suffering wife. The latest "disaster" is he can't stand the idea of the carers giving his wife a bed bath. He feels sure they are all lesbians ! He wants me to order, from Amazon, some adult, all over wet wipes that he can use to clean her.

  I was not very happy with Amazon so I didn't do it last night, but I'll do it today sometime, and he can pay me the money for it later. I'll get them sent to his house, and let him suffer the trauma of waiting and waiting, and waiting.....

  I was cooking my dinner while Michael was here. He left just in time to get home in time to watch Star Trek: Voyager, but claimed he had lost interest in it the series lately. I am sure he watched it, but just wanted to stop me ribbing him about how he fancies Captain Janeway (the frumpy old trout). I had my dinner in the oven on the timer, but I still managed to dry out the lamb while leaving the sprouts slightly undercooked. Plus it was almost cold by the time I got to eat it.

  I threw caution to the wind and had a couple of bitter orange chocolate covered biscuits just so I could finish on something nice. They are a bit low in sugar, but I still thought that it was a foolish idea. The trouble was that by then I was feeling quite pissed off. That changed at about one minute to 8pm when my Amazon order finally arrived. It was in a just about small enough package to get through my very small letter box. I was rather worried that one of the small retail packs in the package rattled. I thought it was possibly broken, but it turned out to be a single tiny screw in a bubble in the packaging.  Had I known it would fit through my letter box I could have stopped fretting about it, and gone out or done other stuff.

  Once I had the two M2 sized solid state hard disks in my hands I could relax - and I did....or maybe I didn't. I still couldn't face going on Amazon's web site to order Michael's wet wipe things, but at least I was able to lie down and do some reading, and also to sit at my PC to catch up on a small backlog of technical news. I was feeling quite tired, but I resisted going to bed for some time so I felt I was back in control of my own life....or something like that.

  I think I was in bed and asleep before 10pm, and that is fairly typical. It seemed quite warm in my bedroom (23.7° C) almost all night. I suspect some of the warmth was filtering through the walls from my neighbours on both sides who both have central heating, and maybe keep their room temperatures quite high. I was able to comfortable go to sleep almost uncovered last night. I was like that most of the night except at around 3am when our body temperature is usually at it' s lowest. I stuck both and arm and a leg under the duvet for the next few hours.

  I seemed to sleep well last night, but for the umpteenth day in a row, I can seem to recall any of the dreams I had. I feel sure I had a long and very enjoyable dream some time in the night. I can remember thinking about it when I got up to go for a pee, and thinking it would be an interesting dream to describe, but not a single thing about it comes to mind now. It is rather annoying.

  I slept in late again this morning. With sunrise this morning being at 6.44am, and getting later day by day, I don't seem to feel inclined to get up in the dark. It was only just before 7am when I got up, and that might only have been because I needed a pee (although I wouldn't say there was any desperation about it). After that pee it was with great reluctance that I got on the scales. All I can think is that yesterday, although I thought I had eaten too much, I must have subconsciously been careful about what I ate. This morning, even with having a morning poo, I seemed to have last another 200gm !

  Even if I had lost weight it should have still been impossible to get any decent blood glucose readings, but I did. I scored three (light green) cherries ! The Contour meter read 7.5mmol/l, or spot on my current target. The GlucoRX meter was even better with a reading of 7.4mmol/l. Surely the Sinocare could not agree with the other two, but it did with another reading of 7.5mmol/l. It has been just a few days short of a month since I have had three low readings like this.

  Today is another enigma. I really have little idea what I shall do today - apart from a couple of essential. I didn't shower yesterday, and so that is an essential for today. I'll probably wash my hair at the same time. I have a few items of washing up in the sink, and I intend to clear that, and maybe give the work surfaces a wipe down. Incidently, it seems almost certain that my dripping thermostat gland on my water heater is now slowing down. It is possible it will self seal with limescale in another week, or at worst two.

  Maybe after midday, when the sun should be out, I might go to Savers and Poundstretcher. It would be useful to get a bottle of bleach after only buying Toilet Duck, and similar toilet cleaners for weeks. They claim to clear limescale, but bleach does a better job. If I am buying that I will undoubtedly buy other assorted stuff from both shops. I should spend some time putting one of my new M2 sized solid state disks to use, but somehow I feel in the wrong mood for that. Oh well, the PC one of those disks will end up in, was bought a good few months ago, and so there can't be much of a rush to do the work, but one day....