This morning has started with a clear blue sky and full sunshine. That makes it more believable that we really will get full sunshine from dawn to dusk today. The temperature may rise to a nice 23° C today (although The Met Office says it will only rise to 22° C). Tomorrow should be even warmer with the temperature peaking at 25° C, but late afternoon may only see sunny spells instead of full sunshine the rest of the time.

  It is hard to say if yesterday was a good or bad day. It terms of achieving anything I might have suggested I might do, it was a bad day. In terms of learning some stuff it was a mix of good and bad because I didn't learn all I wanted. The also good and bad thing is that the day seemed to slip by painlessly, but that could be said to be a waste of a good day.

  I had a late start yesterday, and that sort of put a spanner in the works. Although I managed to write a typical length piece yesterday, 2,199 words, it seemed to take a long time. I am sure there were some interruptions such as stopping to look something up, but I can't remember what they were. What I do remember is that I cheated. I said I started yesterday at 8:29am, but before I had got any further than the time I stopped to eat breakfast.

  The consequence of all this was that it was nearly midday before I had finished writing and uploaded it all to my web server. There was another small delay when I went online to check and pay my credit cards. I had my usual rest when I would usually be having lunch, and I had a snooze during that rest - which extended it by some unknown amount. It was certainly long enough for a simple dream.

   It ended, and possibly started, with me looking out the window at rain. That disorientated me a bit when I woke up because it seemed so real. It just seemed to simple to be a dream, but a second or two after waking up I realised it must have been a dream because there was bright sunshine coming through the windows, and not unexpectedly, the ground was bone dry.

  My rather late lunch (gone 1pm) was yet again based on two Ciabatta rolls. They seem to be my favourite now. I tried wholemeal rolls, but while nice, they often seemed to have a high sugar content (or at least they do now - I'm sure I started using them because they once had no added sugar). Just for a change I used cheese, sliced pickled onions and mixed salad leaves as a filling. That was good, but I think I'll mainly stick to beef and horseradish sauce. One day even that will get boring.

  Out of all the ideas I thought of to do something useful or enjoyable in the afternoon, none of those ideas included what I actually did. I got to thinking about a recent conversation with my postman. It started off with photography, and the postman reminded me about how his hobby, or one of them, was about taking pictures of planes, and how he visits of lot of airfields on open days or for flying displays.

  The subject of The RAF came up. I think he said that his dad had been in the RAF during the war, and I said so had mine. I remembered a few facts, and they were that my dad was a fan of the Shorts Sunderland Flying Boat - a very big, and extremely well regarded plane used by coastal command to patrol the Atlantic for U Boats and German boats. I spent a lot of time reading up about the Sunderland on the internet. I can imagine why my dad liked it so much. It was fairly safe compared to other war planes, and it was really well equipped with a tiny galley, a toilet and a couple of bunks.

  Another thing I remembered, although not until I had told the postman the completely wrong rank, was that the only rank I know my dad had was Warrant Officer (confirmed by one piece of documentation I have). I had to look that up, and the internet search threw up some meaningless pages. I finally an RAF web page that the rank in inverse order (which I thought a bit strange). It seems a Warrant Officer is as high as you can be promoted before you become what in everyday language could be called "Management". I can remember mum saying that he refused promotion beyond that because he wanted to stay with the "lads", and also because he was a hands on engineer and not a pen pusher.

  I am sure that some years ago I found some web pages where you could search for service personnel from WW2, and I did a search but turned up no mention of my dad. Yesterday, all I could find was places you had to sign up and subscribe to that might have some useful information. I have to rely on fading memories, and using modern knowledge to come up with some idea of what my did did inn the war.

  One thing I think I can remember dad saying is that he never flew over Germany, and maybe also that he was not allowed to fly over Germany. I can't recall him saying it, but more modern knowledge suggests his work, as a "wireless engineer" included working on, at the time, top secret radar. He probably knew too much to be allowed to fall into enemy hands, and yet I am sure he flew many missions as radio and radar operator in those Sunderland Flying Boats out over the Atlantic ocean. I think he may have mentioned that he was involved in initial tests of the very top secret "centimetric" (microwave) radar equipment for detecting surfacing German submarines.

  Other stuff I remember from my mum was that he was involved in setting up the first radar school for RAF users. One thing I know he was involved with was designing modifications to radar equipment. The one paper I have of his is the minutes of a meeting at the the facilities of EMI radio division where proposals were laid out to change the design of several pieces of radio equipment - and it includes part of real circuit diagrams. It does not mention radar by name, but does refer to something like "Equipment Indicating No 6" which is obviously a radar display unit.

  It is probably lucky I never did find more information because I suddenly realised it was gone 5pm. I had been glues to my computer all afternoon, and I almost felt very creaky at times when I had to get up to go for a pee. Maybe I might have felt worse, but I had decided to leave my bedroom window closed because I thought the breeze would be chilly like it was the day before. With the window closed the incoming sunshine warmed the room up to almost 27° C - almost. but not actually a little too warm. I thought it felt glorious and just what was needed when sitting still for so long.

  I guess I was really distracted during my searches because I don't think I stopped for any form of snack except for a small amount of peanuts from the bag in one of the drawers near my PC. The curious thing is that I didn't feel ravenous, and actually had a fairly light dinner. Part one was rice crackers and paté, and part two was fruit - one golden apple, one kiwi fruit, and one nectarine. The latter was starting to get ripe. The first one was very unripe inside.

  I watched a lot of TV last night. There was Star Trek the original series and an episode from Voyager. I watched a lot of the BBC 6 O'clock news. When Voyager finished I watched one of those annoying "Abandoned Engineering" programmes. Only one or two of the presenters kept up the old style of making it all seem mysterious and spooky, although all would take their time describing the actually uses of these old buildings.

  Next I watched an up-to-date episode of Have I Got News For You on BBC1, and then turned over to watch half an episode of QI and another, padded out with interminable adverts to one hour, old edition of Have I Got News For You on Dave. I had been thinking I should have an early night last night, but all that TV finished at 11pm. I went to bed and read for a bit, but it was not long before I put the book down, turned out the light and thought "it doesn't feel like I am going to get to sleep soon", and 10 seconds later I was fast asleep.

  Before turning out the light I noticed that my left foot, ankle and the bottom of my legs looked a bit puffy. That would have been water retention, and I guess it was because I hadn't been out stretching my legs during the day. It meant that waking up every 2 or 3 hours was actually welcome last night, and sure enough that puffiness seemed to have gone when I got up.

  I can only remember one dream from last night. It was a variation on a theme - the theme was being old and ready to retire, or after retiring. I think in this dream I was retired, but I seemed to have gone back to college, although it could have been university or something. The first bit I remember is going into a classroom/lecture room after the summer holiday. Another student asked me if I had finished the summer assignment ?

  I said I made good progress on the first day, but by the second I could remember nothing about the subject. I think I may have bodged something together because I had something to hand in later. I said that when I handed it in I would hand in my resignation, but stay for the exams. I said that I felt I could pass the exam(s), but I was not worried about my grade, and any pass would be good enough. Someone else said that considering my age (I think I may have been 80 years old in this part of the dream) I would probably be offered an honorary degree because I couldn't live much longer !

  The day before yesterday I suggested I might be constipated, even if there was no discomfort. Evidently I was because yesterday I went about 5 times during the day, but each time it was only a small amount. This morning I thought I was going to have another day where nothing was stirring. Fortunately I did pass a bit of poo when I had my first of the morning pee. When I weighed myself I found I had lost a little bit. Once again, after counting out my drugs for the day I had another pee, and another poo. So before eating any breakfast changed anything, I can say I managed to lose 300gm yesterday. I now need to lose 1.8kg to get back to my lowest weight so far this year.

  My blood glucose is pretty good this morning, although it could be better (maybe if I had not eaten the ice cream I forgot to mention earlier). It was one of those fairly rare days when the Contour and GlucoRX meter both agreed with each other, and this morning both read a good 7.6mmol/l. This morning the Sinocare meter went off at a tangent with a much higher reading of 8.3mmol/l, although in the grand scheme of things even that is not too bad.

  Now is the time for the usual question: "what am I going to do today?". I think today is going to be hot enough to demand that I should go out and get some exercise. As usual I don't really feel like it right now. However, one thing I did while watch TV was to re-lace (for the second time) my new wide fitting trainers. The first laces I put on were quite thick, and while the action of fitting new laces allowed some movement to help a better fit around my foot, they still didn't slip through they eyelets easily. The latest laces are plain white, and do slip nicely.

  Obviously those trainers need a test drive. It could be as little as a walk to the station and back to pick up a copy of The Metro......err, except The Metro isn't published on a Saturday. That rules out that idea. I am wondering if I might go for a few train rides, and do some train photography. That would suit the idea of walking a fair distance but in small increments with long rests in between. I still want to take a ride on one of South West Railway's new class 701 trains while they should still be in good condition. Being on that part of the railway would also give probable opportunities to get get possible new class 455 pictures to add to my big spreadsheet. I think I need to see how the trains are running in various places before reaching some sort of decision.