The Met Office predicted heavy rain at daybreak, and there was. It then went on to predict mostly light rain, and even an occasional dry hour, until 9pm when very heavy rain could resume. On the other hand, the BBC forecast (in the screenshot above) shows not a single pause in the rain, and while most of it is shown as light rain, every single hour includes a Thunderstorm ! There were even thunderstorms forecast from midnight last night to 7am this morning, and yet I heard and saw nothing. As I type this, the rain seems to have stopped, and I could almost imagine it is brightening up a bit. Maybe the only bit of the forecast we can rely on, and agreed by both the BBC and the Met Office, is that the temperature will peak at 19° C mid afternoon. Tomorrow is shown as mostly wet, but only light rain, and there may be sunny spells from mid afternoon. Of course it wouldn't be a BBC forecast without one thunderstorm, and they reckon it will be at 6am tomorrow.

   Yesterday featured a small disaster of my own making, but I almost recovered from it by this morning. Another "disaster" that I have been meaning to post a follow up to is regarding the leak from the thermostat on my water heater. I am happy to say that the drip once a second, or possibly even faster for part of day one, is now down to drip about every 7 seconds. It could be a week or less now until the leak if once again sealed by limescale.

   After my usual rest/lazy period after I finished writing yesterday, I had a shower so I was clean and fragrant when I went out shopping to Aldi. At the end of my shower I put some clothing in to soak (in one of my big builders buckets) in detergent. I would get back to that laundry quite late in the afternoon. Once I was dry and dressed, I soon headed out to Aldi to get a bit of shopping.

  It was almost a pleasant walk to Aldi. I decided to measure it so I could quote it with some authority. I tried to keep up a typical pace - not rushing, nor dawdling. At the screenshot from my phone (on the left) shows, I kept up an average of 2.44mph. Once upon a time I would usually manage about 3mph, and so while I was slower, I was not a great deal slower.

  Along the way I stopped for 10 or 20 seconds to say good morning to a neighbour, and I had a few roads to cross. Each road crossed may have taken perhaps 5 or 6 seconds as I made sure I was not about to walk in front of a car or something. If I could claim that the delays added up to the 35 seconds shown as part of the time it took, it would bump up my speed to about 2.7mph, and so even closer to my once average speed of 3mph.


    The significance of all this is that it puts some real figures on my current endurance before the onset of angina pains. By the time I got to Aldi, and I didn't give in by slowing as I got near, I was just starting to feel a bit bad. Another 100 feet and I could have been in a fair bit of pain instead of mild pain that was starting to spread out across my chest, and up my neck. For longer walks I would probably have tried to slow down a bit after maybe 4 minutes, and then I would be stopping for anything from 30 seconds to several minutes, to recover before walking for a few more minutes.

  It was in Aldi that I had my main disaster of the day, or maybe it was the build up to a disaster after I got home. In simple terms I bought more than I could safely store. I knew there were a few frozen things I would have to store in the fridge, rather than freezer. In particular they were a couple of frozen ready meals that have probably thawed by this morning, but there was one item that I could not even store in the fridge....

  One the whole I was fairly selective about what I bought in Aldi. I went in there with just two particular things on an imagined shopping list. One was a couple of their alleged calorie controlled, and hopefully sugar controlled ready meals. The other was some beers. I must admit that as of this morning, I have still not read the small print to see if those ready meals were as safe I hope them to be.

  I bought several cans of beers, and just one can may be of interest to Jodie - assuming she hasn't tried it before (which is unlikely). It is a Pineapple flavoured IPA. It sounds completely disgusting, and I hope Jodie will drink all of it (apart from a thimble sized taster for me). One good thing is that Aldi have got in some new instant noodles. They are described as "a taste of Asia", and I feel sure they were made in Birmingham or somewhere like that. I bought 4 packets of each of the two flavours. I tried one flavour for breakfast, and found it to be quite peppery, but fairly nice. I will buy more if that have any left the next time I am shopping in Aldi.

  There was more sunshine when I walked home from Aldi, and it seemed hot enough to get my damp with sweat (but not sweaty enough to actually drip). I probably walked slower because I was feeling hot (I was wearing a black t-short but no coat). Maybe I had slowed down just enough to offset the shopping I was carrying, and so I only felt about as bad I had when I reached Aldi, when I reached home.

  It was after i got home that the wheels were set in motion for my disaster. I decided that I would have a cheese salad for lunch, and I could not do a lot different because there was no room in the fridge for the ready made salad bowl. There was also not room at all for a pork and apple pie. One think that would have reduced the disaster would have been not to add the cheese, and so much mayonnaise to the salad. In that respect I did have a choice, but I had no choice by to cook and eat the pork and apple pie. That, plus a salad heaped with grated cheese, and very generous amount of mayonnaise, made for an unusually filling lunch.

  After my lunch I felt like, or was almost compelled to, have a nice lie down to read and snooze. There was no special reason why I couldn't make that last as long as I wanted, and including the snooze, I laid there for several hours - maybe more. It was getting on for 4pm before I went back to the laundry I had left soaking. It was not a huge amount - just 2 t-shirts and 4 pairs of underpants, but with a full stomach it seemed like hard work to finish it and hang it on the big clothes horse in the front room (with the desk fan blowing at it).

  By the time the laundry was hung up to dry it seemed like dinnertime was not far away. My dinner was also pre-ordained by the fact that one ingredient, some diced chicken, was on or past it's sell by date, and I didn't really want to leave it in the fridge any longer. (What I probably should have bought many years ago was a big freezer so that I could keep stuff like that chicken frozen until I really needed it). I grilled/roasted the chicken with some spices.

  Once the chicken was done, and had started to cool down I broke it up into smaller bits, and added it to a the second ready made salad I had bought. It seemed a bigger meal than I imagined, and the proof of it was that I had bad heartburn later in the evening - which was sort of surprising from what should have been generally safe stuff, although as already noted, I did sprinkle the chicken with a lot of herbs and spices before I cooked it.

  I watched a few episodes of the Saturday omnibus repeats of the already repeated The New Avengers. At 8pm I turned off the TV and retired to bed to read. I distinctly remember it was 8.54pm when I put the book down, turned off the light, and tried to sleep. It would be many hours before I slept properly, but I think I might have got an hours sleep before waking up again. I was suffering from two or more things, although all could probably be blamed on feeling stuff after my big lunch, and moderately big dinner.

  Maybe the chief symptom was heartburn, but I felt uncomfortable in other ways too. At one point I felt a bit too hot, and if I had not put it away, I might have turned my fan on.  The heartburn was particularly bad. It was not actually very strong, although strong enough a time, but it was it's persistance that was very wearing. A couple of Rennies, antacid tablets didn't seem to do anything at all. A swig of "Acidex" antacid slurry seemed to help a bit more, but it didn't last long.

  If anything that Acidex made me burp more, and each burp was still tasting of the chicken salad. I did wonder if I was going to get to the point of throwing up. Fortunately that didn't happen (although it could have brought a small improvement in some of my health measurements this morning). I think I may have fallen asleep once or twice, but that sleep didn't seem to last long.

  In the end I had to get up and sit at my PC desk. I did feel much better than when laying down. I sat at my desk, reading some odds and sods off the internet until gone 1am before I felt ready to try to sleep again, but by then I had taken another swig of "Acidex" I don't see how it could have made any useful difference, but the second swig was of the aniseed flavour instead of the peppermint flavour I had the first time.

  Once back in bed I seemed to get to sleep quite quickly, but I am unsure if I slept well. I seemed to wake up a lot, but I think that some of those times times might have actually been dreams of waking up because all I can remember of it seems like it was sort of shrouded with mist. I do remember one dream from earlier in the night. I was sort of re-enacting something I had read earlier. I was driving down a country road trying to escape from some pursuers. It seems that as I went around corners on two wheels I was acting it out for real - in so much as I was thrashing about from side to side in bed. That was really stirring up my heartburn. It may even have made it bad enough that I had to spend so much time sitting at my desk to recover from it.

  All I ate yesterday gave me reason to believe I would get terrible results this morning when I went through my health measurements. After a pee and poo I got on the scales, and I had, as expected, put on some weight......but it was not as bas as I feared. It was just 300gm, and that still left me in a good place to hopefully continue from - maybe even today if those ready meals from Aldi are as innocent as the bold headlines on the packet seem to claim.

  While my weight may have gone up a bit, my blood glucose has gone down. This morning I scored there (light green) cherries ! The Contour meter read a very good, maybe almost excellent, 7.1mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 7.2mmol/l, and that is also excellent. The Sinocare meter joined in with a goof 7.5mmol/l. Even my blood pressure may be a bit lower this morning with a first time reading of 102/47.

  Being as today is a Sunday I should normally be seeing Jodie this afternoon for a beer tasting session. At the moment the rain has stopped for some time now, and the road is starting to dry out, but even the far more optimistic Met Office forecast says it probably won't stay dry for long, although until 9pm when we might get heavy rain, only light showers are forecast, and 1pm may even be a dry hour. If the Met Office is correct then Jodie might not be too averse to travelling, although if the BBC forecasts, with all it's thunderstorms is as much as 10% correct then there is no chance of Jodie going out,

  There is one other reason why I don't think I'll see Jodie today. There seems to be engineering work on the railway today, and there are no trains between Elmers End and Catford Bridge today. I am very sure Jodie will not want to get a bus under such unstable weather conditions. I could be wrong, but I am 97% sure I will have to find my own amusements today. They may not involve any beer, despite being at least one I bought from Aldi yesterday that may possibly be to my liking. It would be too easy for booze to swerve my eating intentions today. On the other hand, the grey skies could do that just as well !