09:02 BST

  Today is going to be dull and wet. Thundery showers are forecast by the BBC, but not by The Met Office, and so are unlikely to happen. However, there could be some very heavy rain this afternoon. Drizzle was forecast for 6am, but I think it is only now (9am) that we are seeing some light rain, and then only by noticing a few drops on the window. Maybe today might not be as wet as expected ! This afternoon will only see about 17° C, and in the rain that could feel quite cold. Tomorrow may only see 17° C again, but there should be less rain. The day may feature some sunny spells and some light rain or drizzle.

  I managed to do a little more than nothing yesterday, but it was a close cut thing. One oddity was that despite not eating that carefully, I seemed to lose some weight yesterday. It may have been a bit more if I had gone out for a walk as I intended to do.

  Yesterday's writing wasn't nearly as short as some times, but 1,698 words is below average. I had done so little worth commenting on during the previous day, that there was little to write about. I think I have more to say about yesterday, but not a lot more. Once I finished writing I had my usual rest, but it feels like it was shorter than some days. This was because I was hoping I might do something like going for a walk.

  I had a shower, but didn't wash my hair. I thought that if I went out there was a chance that I would get my hair washed my rain...well sort of. At that time I think it was still bright with frequent sunny spells, but I noticed the clouds were getting thicker. After my shower I put some laundry in to soak. It was a chance to try out some new detergent I had bought in Savers the day before (or the day before that).

  As I wrote yesterday, I was not sure if I should start any laundry if I was going out for a walk, because I might not feel I had the energy or enthusiasm for finishing the laundry if I started it (and I didn't want to leave the bath cluttered up with big buckets overnight because I definitely would want to have a shower this morning). I'm not sure what time this was, but I may have noticed that the full sunshine had changed to ever shorter sunny spells, and the sky was looking cloudy. It felt like it would rain even if the forecast said otherwise.

   I think I was fast coming to the idea that I would not be going out, and I started my laundry. The big-ish item in the wash was a new pair of shorts. I didn't like those shorts. For one thing they had no belt loops. The other things was that smelled funny. I was not sure if perhaps they were returns that had been washed before being put on sale again, or if they had been treated by something to repel water. They felt very rough, and sort of stiff, and that did suggest some sort of waterproof coating. Whichever it was, I wanted to wash them myself before using them.

  Other than that, there was one white t-shirt and one pair of underpants. I didn't dare add anything else than might discolour the white t-shirt. I think it was gone midday when the sky was looking quite threatening. By 1pm it started to rain. It was not heavy rain, but it was enough to make the road outside look completely wet. I think I made the right decision not to go out, although there were some brighter spells later, and there was no more rain after that single shower.

  Instead of going out in the rain I had some lunch. I know it involved ice cream, but I can't remember what else I had. It was probably a couple of small packets of crisps. After a short lie down I gritted my teeth, and went back to my laundry. Wringing out the shorts was hard to do, and it never felt like I could wring enough out of them. I took a short break after two rinses because I needed to go to the toilet. I then had a short rest before continuing.

  I wrung out the last rinse water before plunging everything into fabric conditioner. I hoped it would soften up the material of those shorts, but I don't think it did. They seem to be made out of very strange material. I am sure in the description of them it mentions "rip proof", and it is as if there is nylon thread in the weave, but that is just off the cuff guesswork.

  I could have gone out later, but I had completely lost any enthusiasm for fresh air by then. It made for a boring afternoon. The surprising thing is that it didn't seem to tempt me into snacking, although I did have a couple of very small handfuls of peanuts. The main part of my dinner was some "spicy" breadcrumb coated chicken with a sachet of very sugary looking sweet chilli sauce. The sweet chilli sauce added almost no flavour to the chicken, but did make it seem less dry.

  My dessert was some red Leicestershire cheese and two pears - one very ripe, and the other slightly ripe. The cheese was one of those cheeses that are dipped in wax. In theory, if the wax cover is complete and unbroken, the cheese should last for ages. That is why I will always grab quite an few when they are heavily reduced after Xmas (a typical time when they are on the shelves). The cheese I had yesterday had been reduced to something like 50p a year or two ago. It was actually still before it's best before date in 2026, but maybe they knew the wax coating was damaged. After removing the wax I found there was a green "rind" around the cheese. I cut that off, and the underlying cheese was fine.

  I spent the rest of the evening watching TV, with some channel hopping involved. I think it was around 11pm when I went to bed, but it may have been 10pm. I felt too tired to read in bed, but I did check the heater and thermostat because I knew this morning was going to be chilly. I think I woke up at around 2am and decided I might turn the thermostat up a tad, but generally I seemed to sleep well enough that it seemed like I could get up as early as 5am.

  I didn't get up that early, and did manage to get back to sleep for maybe an hour. It still felt too early to get up, but I did part get up - long enough to do my health readings and refreshed the weather forecasts ready to take screen shots to use here. I was quite surprised when I weighed myself because I thought I had eaten too much of the wrong things yesterday - even if I could not remember what they were.

  When I initially weighed myself it seemed like I had put on 100 or 200gm, and that was something like I expected. It was possibly an hour later that I went to the toilet again, and this time I not only had another pee, but a poo too. I had not had breakfast, and so I weighed myself, and this time I found I was 200gm lighter than yesterday morning. That seemed rather good. Even better was that I had lost a small amount every day for the last 5 days. That was after a slow rise. This morning I am back to where I was on 2nd of this month.

  My blood glucose was not as low as I wish for, but it was still quite good, and the average was 8.07mmol/l compared to 8.40mmol/l yesterday. The Contour meter read 8.0mmol/l, and that is neither good nor bad. The GlucoRX meter read 8.4mmol/l - still OK but not great. The new GlucoFix meter read a rather good 7.8mmol/l. I was quite happy with that. If I had taken more care when taking these readings, cleaning my finger of stale blood and squeezing out fresh for each reading, I may have got lower readings from the other two meters.

  Today I face a dilemma. I would like to go out for my usual walk to and from The Jolly Farmers, but the weather forecast predicts I could get wet going there, and possibly be completely drowned coming home again. I don't often let that stop me, but today there is an added problem - probably two problems. I am expecting a big delivery from Amazon today, and a smaller delivery coming via Royal Mail. The rain and the deliveries added together is a fair excuse not to go out. I can't make up my mind what I will do. If only I had some sort of estimate of when these deliveries might happen. Until recently may Amazon deliveries (by their own drivers) would take place in the evening, but lately I have noticed the Amazon van in the neighbourhood early in the afternoon. The postman will typically arrive at around 1pm. I think I am going to stay in today - unless I go to the pub after the deliveries have been made if it is very early afternoon.