This morning started fairly cool, just 15° C, but it was dry with some quite long sunny spells. By midday it may cloud over, and we could have light rain until 9pm. The afternoon will only reach 21° C - almost cool by recent standards. Once again it will probably be quite a cool feeling night. 6am tomorrow could be just 13° C. Tomorrow may be dry with sunny spells all day, but the afternoon may only reach 20° C. 

  Yesterday was not unpleasant, but it was not very exciting either. I think the dull weather, and the occasional rain dampened my enthusiasm to do much, but I did manage two things. One was useful (in a way) and the other was not losing any weight, which was annoying.


  One thing I did do yesterday, and which should have been a prelude to other stuff that I didn't do, was to have a shower. It was the first time I had the opportunity to test some new shower gel. As pictured on the left it was made by Nivea, and was Vanilla Pecan Praline flavour (or strictly speaking, scented because I didn't, and wouldn't actually taste it !). As a body cleaner it seemed no better or worse than any other, but that smell ! It was not something to use if you wanted to avoid the temptation to want to eat sweet and very unhealthy foods. I would say it was also probably dangerous to use if you planned to mingle among any sweet toothed cannibals.

  Having got my body clean I probably should have washed my hair (which I would usually do first), but I either felt it didn't need washing, or I could not be bothered to wash it. Now I was clean and fragrant (very temptingly fragrant - possibly) I could have done several things. A bit of shopping might have been the first choice, but even a simple walk in the park might have happened, and nearly did, but maybe it looked too cool and damp outside. Maybe 24 hours earlier, or maybe even a few days earlier, I felt like a walk inn the rain could be not just exciting, but enjoyable too. It is surprising how quickly that idea vanished !

  One thing I started was some more laundry. I noticed I had accumulated a small pile of underwear and one or two t-shirts that just needed a simple wash - detergent, three rinses, and fabric conditioner. Like happens almost every time these days, I started the job, but couldn't find the enthusiasm to finish it. This time I could not even blame it on being too hot for manual labour, too soon after eating, or even having mega important stuff that had to be done first. Like so many times in the past (and no doubt the future too) I just ended up blocking the bath until I can finish the job.


  I have described the situation so many time, and this time I thought I would take a picture to illustrate it. The picture is looking down on about 2/3rds of my bath. The big blue bucket is my washing soaking in detergent. On the left is a dark brown bucket that will be filled with clean water for the first rinse. Of particular note is the area between the buckets. It does not look very nice, but it is the fibre glass patch I put over the big split in the middle of the bath tub. It may not look so good, but it has both strengthened the very soft feeling middle of the bathtub, and completely cured the leak. I think I had intended to get some grey coloured epoxy resin to skim over the fibre glass, and that if I had managed to do an excellent job, may have made the repair not stick out like a sore thumb. I am not worried about the look, I am just happy that my repair worked well, and may extend the life of the bathtub until the end of my life.

  I spent some of the afternoon going through a collection of 120 snaps taken of one band at Petts Wood Calling. Of course these pictures should have been dealt with weeks ago, but I guess I got a bit bored after so many pictures taken in such a short time (Chattfest and Petts Wood Calling were only a couple of weeks apart). It was all made worse by the fact that I was not a great fan of some of the bands on at Petts Wood Calling. The pictures I worked on yesterday were of "Harvey Hatch" - a band put together by a sound engineer/stage hand called Harvey.

  Now the problem with Harvey is that his day job is with Mental Health, although I am not sure in what capacity. Some of his between songs banter, and many of his songs were about Mental Health problems. I have to admit it all had the opposite effect to that I think he intended. I found it all immensely depressing, and I wandered off for a Guinness at the pub down the road about halfway through his set. After one pint of Guinness, I left the pub, and on the road outside I bumped into someone I knew by face, but not by name. We had a very long chat about music, bands and stuff including some mutual acquaintances.  We chatted so long that I missed most of the next band's set. That was partly by design because they were a Chas And Dave tribute band, and I hated the originals, and the parody of them was even worse.

  I took some good, but maybe not magnificent photos of "Harvey Hatch", but it was a matter of completeness when uploaded to Petts Wood Calling (I have to earn my back stage pass somehow). I couldn't be bothered to do any small version to show here.

  My dinner was mostly some part cooked, and ready to finish cooking, chicken wings. I thought it worth seeing if they were any good or not. They were OK, but I feel no inclination to buy any more. I topped them off with some ice cream, and at some point I had a couple of small packets of know very low sugar crisp like snacks.

  When I had finished dinner I put the bones on a disposable plate, and also scooped the jelly that had formed from the juices while cooking, onto the plate as well. I put it outside for the fox. He, or maybe she, looks a bit thin, and I expected him or her to appear quite quite quickly, although I don't know where it was hiding, but I assumed it was probably not far away.

  A little while later I looked out the window to see if it had been touched, and indeed it had. It was being eaten by a rat !!!  Fortunately the rat could only drag way one or two small bones, and there was still a fair bit left for when the fox appeared half an hour later. It might have been possible that the fox ate the rat too. I did once hear what might have been a rat complaining that a fox was trying to eat it !

  Last night was the same old story - TV until I got bored, and went to bed to read for half an hour or so. It was a bit later than usual, and I think it was midnight when I put the book down. I was soon asleep, and I presume it was later in the morning I had a dream that was a right mix of people, work places and other places. I was obviously at work in the dream. The work premises seemed to be two adjacent terraced houses with no connecting doors between them.

  The house on the left seemed to have some sort of canteen in it. The task I wanted to do meant going from one house to the other. In the second house was a computer. I am unsure if it was actually mine, but I wanted to make a back up of all it's date for safety reasons. It seemed the only way to do it was to use a dial up modem to copy the data to some online storage. I insisted on backing up the whole hard disk so that if the hard disk failed it could be cloned from the back up. It was only a small hard disk, and that was probably all that was needed because I think the PC was pre-Windows, and just running DOS. I knew it would take many hours to back it up on a dial up connection, and I left it running. It was about then that I woke up.

  Yesterday morning I had very good results when I deliberately added a lot of fruit to my diet. I think I made a point of eating some fruit yesterday, and this morning I can't say I had any hint of any constipation, but neither did I have the complete opposite. I still had a very good clear out though. I am not sure it was a complete clear out, and it feels like there could still be something in the "pipeline". The amazing thing is despite two mornings when I appeared to have a good clear out, I had gained weight when I checked yesterday morning, and this morning I weigh 100gm more than yesterday. I know I probably had too many snacks, but I find it hard to believe I was that out of control.

  On the other hand, my blood glucose readings have ranged between excellent and quite good. I got readings of 7.1mmol/l (rather good), 6.5mmol/l (extremely good), and 8.3mmol/l (sort of average). The average of all three is 7.3mmol/l, and I can see only one reading a tiny bit lower so far this month, and no average that low for the whole of July. I know that the Ozemic injections are helping, but I couldn't have eaten that wildly yesterday with those results. So why is my weight going in the wrong direction.

  This morning I think I will skip breakfast, but I will have to have some lunch. That may well be a packet or two of instant noodles. I need to "line my stomach" for this afternoon's beer tasting session with Jodie and Michael, and possibly others. Sadly the beer I ordered has not been delivered. Their excuse is that a couple of the beers they were offering, and that I ordered, have not been delivered to them. It seems a bit naughty to advertise and sell beers they don't actually have in stock. Hopefully it will all work out in the end, any maybe the end will be that this is the last time I order beers from Left Field Beers (dot com).