The forecast says this morning only features sunny spells, but they seem such long spells that I hardly noticed it was not full sunshine. Today, like yesterday, will be completely dry. This afternoon may reach 30° C ! It seems it will be a warm night too. Tomorrow may start with full sunshine, but it will turn to sunny spells during the morning, maybe at 10am. Tomorrow afternoon may only reach 26° C, and that for possibly only two hours.


  Despite what the weather forecast says, all three of my weather stations calculated that rain was due yesterday evening. At time there did seem to be a few dark clouds in the sky, but they were too small to bring the sort of rain that the gardens, and water supply need. It was sort of odd that all three of my different make "weather stations", using different out door and indoor sensors, should agree that it would rain. Maybe only a great big, mercury filled, screwed to the wall barometer can predict these things with some sort of accuracy.

  Yesterday could have been a mega busy day, but it was more like a holiday ! It was all because of a fault with the railway signalling system somewhere down the line from Shortlands (maybe it said near Swanley). It made getting to see The Life Of Brian in the Bromley Churchill Gardens a bit too messy, but there were other reasons too.

  Not being able to get a train was a real blow to my plans, and which were already frayed. The idea of getting a bus all the way to Bromley, carrying a big heavy back pack with cameras and lenses in it, was not appealing at all. That was not the only reason. Admittedly it was not the case by the time I would have left to go out, but I had not passed a large poo that I knew must have been on the way. I don't know if there are any toilet facilities in Churchill Gardens, and getting caught short could have been a disaster - possibly.

  On top of everything else I am still getting odd feeling from my heart, and I think it was yesterday that I mentioned that my blood pressure meter said it had detected some flutter from the heart. The last time I noticed that happening was in the months leading up to being diagnosed with a leaking heart valve. I fear I may have another, or the new, artificial heart valve, has started leaking. One oddity is when it becomes apparent. I have noted that I seem to feel OK when walking, and this morning I noted no ill effects when I came up the stairs from the kitchen with my breakfast. Very mildly straining on the toilet can trigger it though.

  Last night I had a second chance to go and see The Life Of Brian. They were playing in The Swan in West Wickham - a modestly easy pub to get to. The fear of my heart doing something weird was not the prime reason why I didn't go. It was that by then I had become far too relaxed to even considering stirring.

  Once I realised that the trains were mucked up I laid on my bed and and started reading, and I also had a nice snooze. I think there was some relief involved because by then I had done the poo I knew I needed, but more than that was that I had no deadlines, and no need to do anything at all. I could relax at Olympic levels ! And I did ! There was one more positive aspect, and also one that slightly tipped the balance - I was expecting a delivery from Amazon. I originally hoped that Amazon would do their very late deliveries, and I might be home from Bromley before they arrived.

  Being home I did not have to worry about missing the delivery, although I did have to be careful about snoozing. Eventually I got an estimated delivery time, and although I knew it was only a very rough estimate, it gave me a pretty good idea when I could snooze, and when to stay alert. Like many Amazon deliveries it was nothing that an extra day or two waiting would have made any difference (apart from the tendency to want to fondle the shiny stuff as soon as possible.

  In my package were a few spare USB-C to USB-C charging leads, and a couple of them had a built in lightshow. The latter being pointless once you've seen it enough times. There were also a couple of high power phone chargers. I think both can communicate with the phone and deliver the charge the phone thinks it needs. I am not sure it does the batteries any good to charge so fast, but there are times when a fast charge is very desirable - like 10 minutes before you are due out for the day !

  One oddity of my relaxed day was that I ate both good and bad at the same time. I seemed to eat more ice cream than should be good for me. My dinner was some roasted, salt and chilli covered pork belly strips with roast potatoes. I should have included some green stuff, and so it was even more unhealthy than it sounds. The flavoured pork belly strips were not as nice as expected, but I don't regret trying them. Other stuff I ate during the day was a couple of portions of ice cream, and some crisps. Some of those crisps were actually Quavers, and they are mostly air, and have a very low sugar content.

  As mentioned above, I had a second chance to see The Life Of Brian in the evening, but by then I was far too relaxed to even consider going out. I watched some TV, and was in bed reading by 10pm. I must admit that time is a guess, and so is the idea that I was fast asleep by 11pm, but I doubt these guess are that inaccurate. Had I gone to West Wickham, to see The Life Of Brian playing, I would not have got home until gone 11pm, and then I may well have been eating chicken and chips because I would not have had my dinner before I went out.

  I generally slept well last night, but with a few exceptions. I woke up at about 2am for a pee, and while having that I heard noises from the garden. I went into the spare room to have a look at the garden. With very little light I could see hardly any detail, but what I did see was similar to what I expected. I expected to see one fox, but I saw too apparently chasing each other in a sort of mating ritual. One of them must have been the vixen that the dog fox excavated a new earth for. During the autumn I may see the first of the cubs.

  One other thing I saw at about 2am was what might have been a laser, or possibly just a very narrow beam of white light. My guess is that it could have been coming from the top of the big Canary Wharf building. A Xmas light show on the building has happened several times in the past, and maybe they are testing/planning something for this Xmas. My first thought was that it could have been coming from the Observatory at Greenwich. Back around the turn of the century that was emitting a powerful green laser along the line of the Prime meridian. It was quite impressive when seen from north of the observatory, but could not be seen from home.

  I recall having a few dreams last night. Only fragments of one dream have left any describable memory. In the dream I was carrying a bin line filled with rubbish, and had been told to put it in a big waste bin behind an old factory building. I knew the place well, and in the dream I had visited it many times because one of my dad's friends worked there, and I used to visit him.

  In fact the factory type building was just my imagination, but the friend of my dad was real. After dad died my mum arranged for me to visit him, and hang out in his TV repair shop during the school holidays. I had an unnofficial title of "van boy", and I would accompany him when he went out to do TV repairs in people's homes. My "job" was the guard the van, and make it look occupied if any traffic wardens came along (they had only just been invented at the time I was doing this). I don't think I ever did anything to earn any wages, but at the end of the week I think I was given maybe 10 shillings.

  That friend of my dad never worked in the factory like building in the dream, but I saw him in there, and he did not look much older despite maybe 60 years having passed. He must be long dead now. The factory type place seemed different to how I thought I remembered it in the dream, and it no longer had the single black wheelie rubbish bin I was looking for in the yard. I saw some people who I assumed worked there, and one of them was a vicar ! When I asked them where the rubbish bin was they pointed me to a brick bunker that was full of rubbish. I tossed the bin liner into it, and then I seemed to wake up.

  This morning I still have not had a poo, and that is even after having some breakfast of hot noodles which usually seems to get things moving. However, despite not pooing, I seem to have lost 500gm since yesterday. That is rather pleasing as well as surprising because I hardly followed any sort of known weight loss diet yesterday. My blood glucose does reflect some of the high sugar stuff I ate, but it is not that bad, and in fact 8.1, 8.6 and 8.8mmol/l readings are quite acceptable.

  My blood pressure is very normal this morning, although it did take three attempts at taking it. The first attempt gave an error because the cuff was not on correctly. That caused my blood pressure to go up a little bit, and so I gave it two minutes before I tried the third time. This time I got a reading of 124/76 with a pulse rate of 77bpm. The pulse rate seems very consistent these days, but I am sure it should be lower. The diastolic pressure of 76 may be a tad high, but nothing I am going to worry about.

  The main event today should be a beer tasting session with Jodie later this afternoon. Prior to that I need a shower. Ideally I would like a snooze, and then a shopping trip to Tesco, but as I type these words I see the afternoon has just started (just gone midday), and I doubt I will have time to go to Tesco. That is a sort of shame because I could have tried to buy stuff that is super healthy to eat to offset the bad effects of the beers I shall be drinking. Oh well, you can't win them all.