After a fairly warm night, with the temperature possibly not dipping below 20° C, we now face full sunshine and 33° C this afternoon. Once again it will be a "tropical night" with temperature still above 20° C at daybreak tomorrow. The forecast says it will be 25° C at midnight tonight ! The early morning tomorrow may feature full sunshine, but most of tomorrow will only see sunny spells. It will be a bit cooler with tomorrow afternoon only reaching 26° C. Tomorrow's afternoon humidity may be around 50%, and I think that will feel less sweaty. It may be a nice day tomorrow even if there is less sunshine. Like yesterday, and today, tomorrow will see no rain, but next Tuesday (18th August) may see the first rain in weeks.

  It is already late in the morning as I write this, and so I am going to try and be as brief as possible today. It is useful that only a couple of notable things happened yesterday, and I can explain those very briefly.

  The first thing that didn't happen yesterday was any notification about the delivery of my latest beer order. That was annoying, and as I write this it continues to be annoying. I guess it will be shipped sooner or later, but it does make me think that maybe I won't be using Left Field beer again.

  I gave in to myself, and looked for Hydrogen Alpha Line filters for my camera. At first I could not find the filter I saw was available from Aliexpress(dot com). What I did find was some expensive, and incredibly expensive filters. I am not doing calibrated lab tests, and so I have no need for those very expensive filters. I just want to take pretty pictures of the sun - ideally during an eclipse, but I am not sure if I will be alive for the next eclipse visible from Catford - no matter how partial. The filter I have ordered was £40 (including shipping). That seems to be more like my budget for something that may only be a brief novelty.

  Late yesterday afternoon/early evening we had a beer tastings session. It was just me, Jodie and Michael. Michael was his usual miserable self. Jodie was in good spirits because I printed out and shower her the list of beers I had ordered. One of them got her particularly excited, and quite a few of the others she had never seen or tried before. It seems I made a very good selection ! Now we just have to wait until they are delivered !

  As usual we finished drinking around 7pm. Once Jodie and Michael had left I tucked into my dinner. I had three "Southern Fried style" chicken breasts plus some fritters with sweetcorn, chilli and lime in them. They were nice-ish. The negative thing was that they were very stodgy. I had ice cream and some fruit for dessert - rather more ice cream than intended (it went down so nicely after those stodgy fritters).

  I did my usual of watching some TV, but less than usual, and I was in bed by 10pm last night. It was rather warm in my bedroom last night, and I left the fan running all night. I guess I must have slept well because I can't remember much about the night, although for some reason I believe I may not have slept well - which sounds like a contradiction, and I guess it is.

    Moving straight on to getting up.....I sort of got up later than usual, although I woke up at about the usual time. I had a pee when I got up, but despite including some fruit in my diet I have yet to have a poo. Like yesterday, I expect it will happen later in the morning. It is shame I didn't pass a huge poo because it may have made my weight a bit better.  This morning the scales say I have put on one whole kilogram since yesterday morning. I know I did not eat that healthily, but I did not think I strayed off the golden path that far !

  This morning the big paradox has reared it's head again. My weight is up, but my blood glucose readings are very good. I got readings of 7.7, 7.7 and 7.4mmol/l. That averages to 7.6mmol/l. I have had 4 readings that were lower this month, but it is still a very good reading.  My blood pressure is not bad this morning, although not quite ideal. It was 118/77 with a pulse rate of 76bpm.

  One thing that delayed me this morning was hearing Cous Couse, the cat previously referred to as "Fluffy Cat". I was minding my own business having a pee when I heard him "singing" to me. When I went to look out the back bedroom window I found him sitting on the windowsill. I might have ignored him, but he spotted me, and so I let him in. I walked him through the house, and down to the dining room where I gave him some treats. The treat in this case was catnip flavoured "Dreamies".

  He had some of those, and then a cat treat stick. I hoped he would settle down, and left him in his box with the window open, and the door closed. Usually, after he has been ignored for 5 minutes he goes out through the window - but not this time. I checked on him using a CCTV camera in the dining room and saw he was on the dining table, where he is not allowed, and had grabbed the packet of cat treats.

  He took them down to the floor where he attempted to open them (they were the individual sticks in a foil container with each treat in it's own "tube". I went back down to the dining room, and found he was making some progress at opening the packet. I doubt he would ever been able to extract a single stick, but I pulled out the one where his teeth had pierced it, and gave him the treat. I also gave him a few more catnip flavour Dreamies. That may have been my big mistake.

  After more catnip Cous Cous decided he was going to move in. He indicated that maybe ho might want to back out the upstairs bedroom window, but when I followed him up there he just wanted to roll around on the carpet up there. Then he followed me out and investigated my bedroom, and then gave the toilet a quick look. We then went downstairs and I asked if he would like to go out the front. He said no. We went into the dining room, and I picked him up to put him out the window. He just sat on the windowsill, and seemed like he was happy to stay there. I went back upstairs, closing the dining room door behind me. Eventually he got bored and wandered toward the garden path. I am unsure where he went after that. After that I was free to get my breakfast of one pot of instant noodles ready.

  Today is one of those days that will probably be best passed staying in, watching the blades of the fan going around. There is nothing I have to do, and nothing I want to do, although I do have a small amount of laundry soaking in one of my big buckets in the bathtub. I ought to get that job finished, and do it before I descend into professional level laziness. Maybe I might feel tempted for a small walk, perhaps just to the shops, or maybe in the park, later, and if I do I will definitely be wearing my Panama sun hat. It is going to be fierce out there !