This morning there is a lot of thin light cloud, but it seems the sun has not failed to find a path through it so far this morning. Maybe by 3pm the cloud will be thick enough to completely block the sun for 3 or 4 hours. The afternoon temperature should still rise to a comfortably warm 24° C (for just one hour at 4pm), it will stay dry all day. Tonight coud get fairly cold with just 14° C shown for 3am tomorrow. By 6am tomorrow, it may be just 13° C. Tomorrow may be a lot cooler than recently, and although there should be sunshine and sunny spells, the afternoon temperature may peak at just 22° C, but like today, it should be a dry day. We may have to wait until Monday the 27th for the first fall of rain.

  I am not sure how to describe yesterday, but I guess falling back on the vague "good and bad" probably sums my day up. I guess the first half of the day was the good bit, and the evening the main bad bit, but there were other bad bits during the day !

  One of the really good bits yesterday was that my bathtub was free of laundry (in my big and very heavy when full, builders bucket). It meant I could have a much longed for shower. I also washed my hair. Feeling all fresh and fragrant meant I could finally go shopping in Tesco. I wore my cheap new Chinese trainers for the walk to and from Tesco, and for a short walk like that they seemed fine. I suspect that I will only ever wear them now for short walks like to the shops and back. It was a valuable lesson when I wore them last Sunday when I was out doing my rail photography.

  I managed to exercise quite good discipline when shopping in Tesco. I didn't really buy anything outrageous, aka bad for my health. One of the worst things may have been some part roasted potatoes. I saw them while rummaging in the freezers looking for sweet potato chips. Sweet potato chips are much healthier for diabetics and the like - compared to ordinary potato chips. I saw the frozen roast potatoes and suddenly had a strong yearning for them. Maybe that is tied in with having a bigger electric oven now - one that has room to roast a whole chicken (something I must try one day).

  I guess top of my shopping list was bottles of Diet Coke, and I stuffed 4 two litre bottles of it in my rucksack. I also bought some ready prepared fruit for a bit of extra fibre in my diet. I bought two big bags of Twiglets, and a big bag of some equivalent to Wotsits (maybe they were Wotsits, but had a Tesco name) - both are noted to have a very low sugar content. My most restrained purchase was just a single triple pack of cheese sandwiches. The truth is that I hoped there might have been some reduced priced sandwiches on the reduced price shelf, but there was non, and I could not be bothered to go back to the main sandwich shelves.

  Walking home with a heavy rucksack, and a single, semi heavy, shopping bag, was no problem, although I do prefer to carry two equally weighted shopping bags to balance me. A single heavy bag has been known to try and twist my chest, and cause chest pains. I had none of that yesterday. Once I was home I put my shopping away, and then sat down to enjoy my triple cheese sandwich pack.

  After that I almost rested. The first thing that stopped me resting was a letter that came in the post. It was my Tesco credit card bill, and it was huge !! I think that over the last month I was a bit too free with buying stuff from Aliexpress, and I have to reign myself in for a while now, and this is despite a need to spend more money soon. I will explain that further down the page.

  One purchase from Aliexpress was delivered just before 5pm, and that disturbed my rest. I got a notification saying to expect it between 16:29 and 18:29and so 5pm was probably quite reasonable for that estimate. The contents of my delivery were two identical tin plate style mini posters (about A4 size) as shown on the left.

  I am not sure why I wanted such crap, and even less sure why I thought it might be good to buy two. I suppose the first thing was that it was a joke that only lasted for 10 minutes. The other thing is that somehow the style reminded my of the picture of the queen on a Sex Pistols album sleeve. Anyway, I have two now, and one is going up in the dining/beer tasting room. Maybe the other is a spare in case someone says they really like it, and I can give them the spare. That seems unlikely, but you never know.

  For my dinner I cooked 4 sausage from a pack of 8 that I found on the reduced price shelf, and some sweet potato chips. I had barely got started eating it when my phone rang. It was my friend Sue - someone I had not spoken with for a long time. I thought I had better answer it and see what was going on.

  As usual, a phone call from Sue can last hours and hours and hours !! I was particularly dismayed that she had started to investigate her medical problem by consulting the most dubious doctor on the planet (and possibly several other planets) a so called AI (artificial intelligence). They had a bad reputation for "hallucinating" some information, and are ill advised for amateur use. An article I read recently said that doctors are now seeing patients who can spout complete garbage having consulted things like Google's AI. On the other hand, the same doctors admit they are using it more as a sort of reminder service. The difference is that it jogs their memory of stuff they have already learned, and they know enough to sort out the useful information from complete fantasy.

  One of the consequences of Sue's super long phone call is that it discharged my phone battery down to just 20%. On a new phone that would be of no great consequence, but I've known for some time now that my phone battery is on it's last legs. It has been on charge since last night, and only now, almost 12 hours later, is it showing 100% charged. I think I need to either get a new battery put in my phone, or to get a new phone. The third option is to put the SIM card into my Honor 200 phone - a phone I bought as a replacement to the Huawei P30 Pro phone which is my everyday phone.

  I never made the switch when I got the Honor phone because it's interface is a bit weird. It is a button-less phone, and that includes no on screen buttons. It is all controlled by swiping. I have got used to it now, and it is the phone I use for recording the maps and statistics of my now infrequent walks. There is a much to like about it, but also much to hate - mostly the hateful user interface.

  After getting off the phone from Sue I did not go to bed straight away, as I thought I might do. Instead I got on the internet, and checked options for getting a new battery fitted to my Huawei phone. It is not really a job I would want to do, or even could do at home, although getting a new battery would be simple enough. It seems the back of the phone is held on by thermal glue, and the battery is held in using the same glue. The phone has to be put on a heating mat until the glue softens, and then the back can be levered off, and the battery removed and the new one fitted.

  Huawei do have authorised service shops, and they can replace the battery for a fixed fee of £59 (If I understood it correctly, which at that time of night may not be accurate. I think there are additional charges for delivery charges if sent in for repair, or I could take it to the nearest shop. The nearest that is open is in Wimbledon. There is, or was one in Victoria, but that is apparently closed at the moment. At the shops they can do the job while you wait - probably quite a long wait, but that is only if it is a quiet day.

  Getting a new battery in the phone would extend the phones life by many years, but the catch is that the Huawei P30 Pro cannot connect to 5G networks. The reason I bought the Honor 200 phone was partly because it can connect to 5G networks, and I wanted to test it. I must admit that the times when a faster connection, and I've seen faster connections on that phone than my home broadband, would be very useful are very rare.

  The other thing I investigated last night was getting a new phone - possibly a "refurbished" phone. I did see one that tickled my fancy - a Xiaomi Redmi Note 15 (https://www.amazon.co.uk/XIAOMI-15-Pro-5G-Smartphone/dp/B0FXBJ8JBM/ref=sr_1_2?th=1), and at £249 is seems to be a fair price. The fly in the ointment is that I have been heavily over using my credit card, and maybe I should not be able to afford that right now, but......

  It was gone midnight, and possibly after 1am before I went to sleep last night. It meant a bit of a lie in this morning, but I guess I feel OK now......on the other hand..... My weight seems to have gone up a lot since yesterday, and I don't think I can blame it on the 456ml (approx one pint) can of St Miguel lager I had last night, although I suspect that takes the blame for something. I don't seem to feel very bloated this morning. Until just now (between this and the previous paragraph) I was constipated, but no longer. Unfortunately the amount I think I passed seems about right for what I thought, or intended to be, not much food eaten yesterday.

  My blood glucose, despite precautions (like snacking on Twiglets) my blood glucose is not good this morning. The average of all three readings was 9.8mmol/l - rather high, but at least just under the red line at 10.0mmol/l. I guess I should take comfort that it I think there have been 8 or 9 higher averages so far this month. I had to umm and err a bit, but I thought that a single instant noodle pot would be safe for breakfast provided I took a lot of care today.

  I think I had better try and go for a walk around the park today. There is also the reason that I am curious about what is happening in the park where they have been drilling bore holes and stuff to check to see if they can install a huge heat pump to heat the hospital without having to burn oil (or whatever) is used in the hospital heating system. I have a few things from China heading this way, but I don't think they will be delivered for a few more days yet, and so I am free to spend as long as I want wandering around, although I have a feeling a walk to Ladywell and back is all I am likely to want to do once I get started. In the hugely unlikely event that I want to walk further, for some sort of masochistic reason, I could always carry on walking to the top of the local mountain, hilly fields !