Apart from a couple of hours that may see full sunshine, today may mostly see sunny spells. It will be warmer than yesterday with 24° C predicted. In the small hours on tomorrow there could be some light rain, although the forecast does show lightning for 2 and 3am, but with a slightly less than 50 % chance of it happening - so it may still stay dry. Tomorrow there is an 82% chance of rain at 6am, and so that will almost certainly happen. At 7am there could be a thunderstorm, but there is only a 67% of that - that is in the may/may not sort of area. The rest of yesterday may see sunny spells with a small chance of light rain at almost any time.

  Yesterday could be called a good day. I did three, and possibly four useful things. The key to it all was finishing the laundry soaking in a big bucket that was in the bath, and so stopped me having a shower.

  After I had showered I felt I could usefully go to Tesco to get some shopping in to help fill my empty shelves....well not actually empty - they just had the wrong things on them. I said I felt better yesterday morning (as in better than awful), and maybe that helped because my walk to and from Tesco was almost enjoyable (for some odd definitions of enjoyable).

  Once at Tesco I made a beeline to the sandwich shelves. I had a desire for a triple pack of cheese sandwiches (as in three different fillings). I don't know why I feel they are so important because while nice, they are nothing I get excited about. I guess the important thing is they are a consistent thing I can rely on enjoying. I bought that triple pack at full price, but I also bough a selection of sandwiches from the reduced price shelf.

  After filling my hand basket up with an assortment of stuff I found a staffed checkout with only one person in the queue. I had intended to buy some strong booze, and had taken along £12 worth of Club Card vouchers, but I must have forgotten to buy any booze. It meant my bill was unusually small yesterday.

  It was fairly late when I went to Tesco, and past 3pm when I got home again. I think I had one small packet of instant noodles for breakfast, and I was now looking forward to lunch - a rather late lunch. So late that by the time I had put my shopping away, and filled my face with the reduced price sandwiches I had bought, I was starting to think about dinner time ! I had one distraction to help delay dinner until 6pm, my usual time.
  About 4 gardens back from my house there is a garden with some sunflowers in it. They are not giant sunflowers, and I don't think they are related to them. They still look bright and cheery. They spread not by seeds, but by underground tubers (assuming they are the species I checked up on a summer or two ago). The chances are they could eventually spread through to my garden one day. The significant thing is that they made a good target for my new 500mm zoom lens. I have to say again, that lens is heavy, and trying to point it while semi squatting down to shoot through the bottom of the sash window in the beck bedroom was a precarious position !

  My dinner, coming so soon after my very late lunch, was smaller than it might have been, although not actually healthy. I had a steak pasty type thing, and two slices of gala pie (sliced pork pie with a hard boiled egg in it). I ate that with some plain salted hula hoop baked crisps while watching the 6pm news on The BBC.

  It was maybe a couple of hours later that it was dark outside, and out of my bedroom window I could see a big(ish) bright, almost full moon. It had to be another test of my new 500mm lens. Once again it was hard to hold that bloody heavy lens pointing in the right direction, and only by using a very fast (1/1000th of a second or less) shutter speed did I manage to get a reasonably sharp pictures.
  My photo shows it to be a fair bit less than full, but I was quite pleased with the picture, but I knew it could be better. If it is clear tonight, and I think it should be, I will have to drag my heavy duty Gilux tripod out to the road, and put the camera on that. In theory I should be able to take a picture that is sharp enough to be able to zoom in (electronically) to examine the craters a bit more closely. It is a shame that the lens needs 82mm filters, and my special x2000 neutral density filter that I used for the recent eclipse photos is the wrong size, as is the special hydrogen light filter. Maybe in the future I will buy 82mm filters for the 500mm zoom lens, but I think they will be very expensive - even ordered from China.

  Last night there was some of the usual evening entertainment on TV, but for some reason I finished early. I am unsure if TV got boring, or if I was just feeling tired. The third explanation, and probably the right one, is that I wanted to get in as much as an hour of reading before going to sleep. The current book I am reading is "Forward The Foundation" by Isaac Asimov. It is the second prequel to his Foundation series, and was the last book he wrote before his death.

  In this book Hari Seldon, the "hero" of the Foundation series, is in his seventies, and there is a continuing thread through the book where his various aches and pains of old age are mentioned. The interesting thing about it is that when Asimov wrote it he was in his seventies, and it is thought that his writing was in part, autobiographical. I can believe that. I am in my seventies now, and some of it sounds all too familiar !

  I think I put the book down between 11pm and midnight, and quickly fell asleep. I know I had some dreams, and I know they were inspired by what I had read, but in the cold light of day I can't remember a thing about the dreams beyong being sure I had them, and that they were influenced by stuff I had read.

  This morning I did not wake up so early, and so did not go back to bed after a visit to the toilet. Maybe it was because I did have a poo at that time. I also had two more poos before I started writing this. None were of any great significance, and I am not sure why at least two of them could have been done at the same time. By the time I had had the last one, and had an extra pee or two, my small weight gain had dropped to a very small loss, 100gm less than yesterday - not bad after a visit it Tesco, and eating some of the evidence !

  My blood glucose was OK this morning, but not as good as yesterday. The average of all three readings was 7.97mmol/l. It could have been lower still if one reading (which I double checked) wasn't higher than the other two. That high one was getting close to a bit too high at 8.9mmol/l. The other two both read 7.5mmol/l - spot on my self set target. My blood pressure is quite good this morning (119/70) although my pulse rate (80 bpm) seems like it is too high considering I am supposed to be at rest.

  So it is a Tuesday..... what am I going to do today ? At this point I have no definite plans. I keep saying it, but maybe, just maybe, today could be a day when I am going to go for a walk in the park. One other possible is to wash a bed sheet. I have to admit that after a sticky hot summer my bedding is getting a bit ripe. I barely notice it, but in the highly unlikely, probably impossible these days, event that I had a visitor in my bed it would probably send them running ! Hand washing a double fitted sheet is not too bad, but washing a double duvet cover is a bit taxing. I must admit now would be a good time to do it so I can dry it indoors without having to use any heating.