The sky seems clear enough, as I write this, that the current sunny spell seems to be a very long spell, and could be mistaken for full sunshine. Admittedly, there does seem to be a lot of white cloud on the northern horizon. Maybe by 11am we will officially see full sunshine for 2 hours. By 2pm the temperature should have risen to 21° C, but from 3pm we may see light rain for the rest of the day (except 7pm which may see heavy rain). Some days ago the BBC were predicting thunderstorms today, but no longer. Ooops, just refreshed the forecast, and the BBC now say thunderstorms at 6pm. The BBC do love to predict thunderstorms that very rarely seem to happen. After some early morning drizzle, tomorrow morning may be mostly dry, but rain my return at 2pm. It should only be light rain, but it may last for the rest of the day. Tomorrow may only see a high of 18° C, but even that is not too bad.

  My preoccupation for a lot of yesterday was waiting for my parcel delivery from Aliexpress, being delivered by Evri. It was a mild annoyance (until it arrived) on a day that was not terribly dynamic, but did have a few good points, and one, almost expected, bad thing.

  I had intended to have a shower yesterday morning, but I decided I was unlikely to be near the public (or friends etc) and so could not be bothered. Actually, part of the reason was that I was keen to start some laundry - hand washing two hand towels. I put them in bio detergent to soak, but only for about 10 minutes (instead of overnight as happens on occasions). I was sort of keen to get the job done, although there was no special reason for it except until it was done I could not have a shower.

  I was so keen that after that 10 minutes (or something like that) of soaking, I started on the rest of the washing process. That started with lots of rubbing, massaging, squishing and similar to work the detergent into the fabric to wash the smells and stuff out. I then got as far as doing about 5 rinses (possibly 5 out of 12 at the end), before not exactly giving up, but taking a breather that never ended.

  My concentration was broken by two things. One was lunch. I had one, slightly stale, deli roll with corned beef and horseradish sauce. That roll was probably better described as getting dry and chewy rather than stale. I should have toasted it, and it would have been a lot nicer than it was, although apart from the chewiness it was still fairly nice. It may have been after that roll that I started on a bag of Liquorice Allsorts.

  I must admit I got rather carried away with those Liquorice Allsorts. By the end of the afternoon I had munched through the whole bag. I almost did it unconsciously. The trouble with that stupidity (and there is worse to come) is that they calories and sugar content of them is a bit high, and then there is the potential laxative effect of Liquorice. I still have not actually checked if my idea, possibly handed down from mum or dad, about the effect is real, but during the night I did get a strong hint that it is true.

  At 1pm I got the great distraction of my parcel being delivered, and now things to fondle.....well, not actually fondle, but you know..... This delivery contained quite an assortment of stuff - from electronic stuff, to clothing. On the clothing front, although not exactly clothing, were 6 pairs of flip flops - and all much cheaper than Amazon, and cheaper than Poundland (who charged £5 for the pair I bought there a month or two ago). I am currently testing one pair, and they seem quite comfortable. The others are to the same basic design, just different colours, and so should be just as comfortable. I should have enough flip flops to last me the next 5 or more years now.

  Also in the clothing department were some leather trouser belts. Once again they seem quite cheap, but identical to belts sold in Tesco (for example). The belts lead to a further diversion - digging out my shorts collection. It must have been 4 to 6 weeks ago I tested them all to see if any still fitted me, or maybe fitted me again. To take a single example, I have a pair of camouflage patterned shorts that I think I last wore in 2010 when I did a very long walk from Epping to Ongar. It was about 10 miles. Maybe a year or two later I could not fit into those same shorts - even with the use of tyre levers. They now seem to fit perfectly again, and with the added safety of one of the new belts, I may well start to wear them again if i am doing any country walks - which I hope to do this summer.

   All my other shorts, some of which seemed almost too small when I first bought them, now seem to fit well. It is odd that while my weight doesn't seem to have changed that much, it seems my shape has changed enough to make many clothes a far better fit since injecting Mounjaro. It definitely keeps good control of my blood glucose (particularly if I try to avoid too much sugary food). It sometimes seems to make me gain weight, but it definitely seems to change my size in a positive way (i.e. I seems to be smaller in at least a few dimensions).

  The electronic part of my delivery was a couple of external hard disk carriers. One good use of them is to use old 2.5 inch (in this case) hard disks to use as external, USB connected, back up disks, or for just carrying data around faster then an internet connection can do (although I really only used that facility when I was at work). I tested one, and it worked perfectly.

  There was one item I thought had not been sent until I fished out the wrapping from the waste bin, and found a mini video camera tucked in one corner. I knew I was taking a big chance on buying it, but at a cost of just £2.96 it was worth the risk. The device is completely useless unless you create an account on a Chinese cloud server, so that the video is sent there before being bounced back to me again. I did suspect that might be the case. I don't think I'll bother signing up for an alleged free account just for a toy. It may be possible to use the thing on a local connection - I will do some further research.

  As mentioned a bit up the page, I got carried away eating a bag of Liquorice Allsorts. it was just a couple here, and a couple there until I realised I had eaten the whole bag without realising it. That was madness, but what I did next was even worse madness. I signed into Amazon and ended up buying rather a lot of Liquorice Allsorts. I bought two 600gm jars, plus a gift set of all sorts of liquorice products. They are predicted to be delivered on Monday, but do Amazon deliver on a Monday ? And will I be in ?

  After that bit of madness I didn't really do anything special, and that includes not doing any more rinses of the two hand towels I was hand washing. I will have to finish that today. The next thing of note was preparing my dinner. It was going to be a very simple, and sort of healthy, dinner of roasted Mediterranean "style" vegetables made slightly less healthy by a pile of melted grated Cheddar on them. It was quite nice, but maybe the cheese didn't ruin the healthy effect enough, and I had a dessert of some ice cream.

  From 6pm I ate my dinner and watched the BBC 6 O'clock news. The news was followed by a very limited set of TV programmes until bed time. I think it may have been as late as 11pm when I went to bed. It was too late to read more than a page or two from the book, I am reading, before I tried for sleep. I can remember some mild discomfort from the gut area, but not enough to stop me falling asleep.

 At about 2am I was awake again wondering if it was such a clever idea to eat all that liquorice, with possible laxative qualities, and to eat a big pile of fibre containing vegetable. It started off with an internal rumbling, and then the passing of some wind. I sat on the toilet feeling quite uncomfortable, but after a while my bowels opened up like the gates of hell (or maybe something less dramatic).

  I should have felt much more comfortable after that, but there were "after shocks". Twice, or was it three times, I went back to bed, and as soon as I laid down there were more ominous rumbles from my guts. Then I would feel some pressure. I did not know what of the three states of matter, solid,liquid, or gaseous was trying to escape. It was safe to run back to the toilet, and I must have done that 3 or 4 times. I think I experienced all three states of matter, and I am glad I did not trust it to be just a fart, and let it go while in bed. That would have required new sheets !

  A thought did occur to me, actually several. Had I eaten a meal containing lots of extremely hit chillies, I might have produced the fourth state of matter - plasma, as generated in the sun, and fusion reactors. Another though was that it seemed like I had adequately proved the laxative effects of Liquorice, as well as heaps of fibre containing vegetables. In an ideal world it would be a lesson I would have learned well, but in reality, only learned until next time.

  I did finally get to feel comfortable enough in bed that I could let myself get back to sleep. After a time I had a dream, and the subject of that dream was  pooing - at least I think it was. It all seems very vague now. I think it was possibly set in a tent, or at least there was the idea that I would have to go outdoors if I needed the toilet. That all sounded very normal, but there was a weird thing about it. When I was going out to use the toilet (or maybe a hole in the ground) I had to take a think that was about the same size as a tablet computer with me. I remember it being just a tiny bit too big to fit in a generous sized inside jacket pocket. Somehow it seemed to be what I would pee and poo into. The only way that could work was if it used Star Trek "Transporter" technology so the waste would be sucked up and deposited in outer space (or something).

  When I got up this morning, fairly early considering I lost a couple of hours of sleep in the night, I weighed myself. I assumed that after all the poo I had passed in the night, I would weigh less, and that I would not need a poo this morning. All I can say is that I must have eaten far more than I can remember yesterday. This morning I seemed to have gained 900gm. Also, I have had two more, smaller than usual, poos this morning, and I am not convinced I am empty yet.

  My blood glucose was good this morning, and maybe could be described as very good considering all the Liquorice Allsorts I ate yesterday. My three meters read 7.8. 7.8.and 7.9mmol/l. It is unusual to get three readings all so close together, and all in the sevens - a very satisfactory number. The average of all three was 7.83mmol/l, and very close to the average for the whole month of April. My blood pressure is pretty good this morning at 122/60.

  I have to admit my bottom and guts feel sort of sore at the moment, and that does not make me want to go out today, or at least not yet. Before going out I have to finish washing (actually it is now at the rinsing stage) the two hand towels I started yesterday. A better reason for not going out just yet is that I may be expecting the delivery of the final bit of my last Aliexpress order. I am assuming that Evri deliver on a Saturday, but their web site does not seem to be very helpful in that respect. I was also trying to find out if it isn't delivered today or Sunday, then what about Monday - a bank holiday - and found no answers at all.

  Amazon say my Liquorice overload may be delivered on Monday, and so I assume they will be doing deliveries on the bank holiday Monday (May Day holiday).  I think things have become badly mis-timed. On Monday I intend to go to the Petts Wood May Fayre - but only to the live music stage. I can happily ignore all the singing and dancin' and all the other stuff, but an outdoor stage is always a great place for photography.......but is it ?  The usual place for the stage is, or was, the car park of The Daylight Inn pub. The stage there was nicely placed to catch the afternoon sun. This year the stage is placed at the end of of the road (that ends because of the railway line) and the bright sun will be behind the stage. The last time there was a stage there my camera caught some dreadful glare from the bright sun. Of course on Monday it may be dull and raining, and there will be no sun to worry about.