I note the forecast has been revised to show sunny spells this morning - a feature not shown on the earlier forecast above. There are a few times today when the chances of precipitation may hit 10%, but no rain is actually forecast. Today could actually be a fairly nice day. There seems to be just a mild breeze, and it makes the current temperature of about 20° C feel pleasant. Later on the temperature may peak at 22° C. With a bit of sunshine that could feel nice. Tomorrow could be overcast, but dry until late afternoon when the sun could break through. That may raise the temperature to a warm 24° C.

  I have already written about not feeling very good yesterday morning, and the story continues - I didn't feel very good for the rest of the day, but maybe I didn't feel quite so bas as evening approached. It all really depended on what I was doing. Sitting at my desk, reading or writing on my PC would seem make my chest ache more. I guess I was sort of scrunching all the ribs and stuff because of not being able to keep a very stiff backed, upright posture for too long.

  Not doing more physical stuff is often the enemy of many of my aches and pains. Sitting at my PC for too long can not only affect my chest, but it makes me knees more stiff and painful. It's best not to think of repetitive strain injury on my right wrist, and other consequences of typing and stuff ! To break the day up a bit I washed a few t-shirts and underwear yesterday. It was too wet to hang them outside, but they should have dried OK indoors with a fan on them to stir up the air. (I haven't checked them this morning, but I assume they are bone dry now).

  The one thing I didn't do yesterday was to take out time to lay on my bed to read and snooze. It's the first time that hasn't happened for ages (not counting rare days when I am out). It was both annoying and good that there were a few interesting programmes on TV last night, and they went on longer than I wanted. I think it was extended versions of QI and Have I got News For You that kept me glued to the PC until later than I preferred. Of course when I say I was glued to the TV that is not 100% correct. Both programmes, and Start Trek - Deep Space Nine before them, are on channels that show commercials, and during the commercials I checked emails and stuff on the internet.

  I think it was 11pm when I turned off the TV and went to bed. Before trying for sleep I read for a while before falling asleep quite easily. I think I found a position that managed to satisfy the conflicting demands of keeping my right arm, and my chest both comfortable for long enough to go to sleep. Maybe I slept like that a lot because both my right arm, including the often painful right shoulder, seem to be much improved this morning.

  I remember having one dream in the first hours of my sleep that was rather novel. It had hardly any action, and it was mostly thinking about how I might go about designing a synchronous, three phase, power inverter that could be connected directly to the grid, and paying particular attention to gate turn off time of the power mosfets that did the switching in an H-bridge configuration. Had it ever been built, and connected to the grid (straight up a pylon in my dream) I think it would have been a case of hit the switches, and run like hell before all hell was let loose !

  I can't remember if it was 2 or 3am that I woke up with a barely noticeable discomfort. The bigger clue was the amount of farting I was doing. A visit to the toilet was most productive, and the one 10 minutes later possibly even more productive. Despite the inconvenience of it in the middle of the night it was a good thing. Yesterday I had beans for lunch, and bacon, sprouts, and chestnuts for dinner. Sooner or later something had to give - and it did - unless there is more to come later.

  This morning it feel like I had a reasonable amount of sleep, and many of my traditional aches and pains seem fairly minor, but not actually gone. When I gave the toilet bowl a good scrub a bit earlier, my right shoulder, and some assorted muscles in my right arm complained a lot ! My chest has not really complained of anything yet this morning. With the amount of sunny intervals we are getting at the moment, it might have been a nice day to go out, but I am not completely sure I could trust my guts. It is possible the sprouts are still to come....

  The rights and wrongs of my guts are now neither here nor there. I have a better reason to stay in today. I am now expecting an order from Amazon today. I thought I had timed it to arrive on Friday, but apparently it has left the depot in Dartford, and is on it's way even as I type this. The last few deliveries have arrived after 5pm, but once they were before 4pm. Maybe it will be early today as well...but probably not.

  I guess it is rather irrational to get excited about a delivery, but I do anyway. None of the items I ordered have an immediate use, and so it wouldn't really matter if they came next week instead of today - except for perhaps one item. That one item is a mini tripod that might be useful for my trail cameras. Another item could also be used in the trail cameras - non-rechargeable 1.5V AA lithium batteries. They are most wonderful things - their lifetime must be at least 5 times the very best alkaline batteries, and they will work at full voltage in the coldest of a winter night. The final item in today's delivery is Isopropyl Alcohol spray. A cleaner I discovered to be so useful at work, and now so useful at home. It's great for getting greasy fingerprints off photographic negatives.

  I haven't done anything with them yet, but I checked the memory cards in the trail cameras earlier. At first I thought it was just more cat footage, but the fox appears a few times, although neither the cats or the fox have entered the fox earth. It makes me wonder if there is another inhabitant in there. Having two trail camera getting two views of the same action can be very useful. From one angle I am sure it shows the fox having a slight limp - most probably "my" fox. The other angle shows very clearly that it is a male fox !!

  Editing a video of last night's garden action will be one task for today. Another is to design (or slap together) an August page for this website. This year seems to be flying past so quickly, and it feels I have done so little that is memorable. Maybe next week I'll finally get to Southminster, and I can tick another destination off my (imaginary) railway stations to visit list.

  Before commenting on today's weather I thought I ought to re-check it, but the forecast doesn't seem to have changed much since I took this screenshot at about 8am. For once that silly symbol of the rain drop, black cloud, and rays of sunshine seems to be appropriate. We have just had a short but moderately heavy shower, and now the sun has come out. Maybe this pattern will continue until sunset, and then there will be a few hours of drizzle. It is about the forecast 20° C, but there is some gusty wind that can make it feel rather cool when it is blowing. No rain is forecast to fall tomorrow, although the prediction does say there could be a 10 to 19% chance of "precipitation" for much of the day. There could be sunny intervals, but not until the afternoon. The afternoon temperature could be 23° C - a bit warmer than today, and potentially nice when the sun comes out - assuming it does.

  I didn't feel very good yesterday morning, and it was a challenge to convince myself to do anything. I thought, rightly or wrongly, that too much idleness was a potential cause of many of my aches and pains. So I pushed myself to do more - not always with good results. One of the first things I did was to wash the double duvet cover that I had taken off my bed after weeks of use in some of the sweatiest weather known to man ! To improve the wash I turned the water heater up to scalding. After the actual wash phase I turned the temperature back down to cool.

  One of the oddities I find about washing stuff by hand is that while it is hard work, sometimes very hard, it can sometimes make some of my aches and pains feel better. That is mostly so for when my chest is having a flare up. I'm not so sure it was so helpful this time, but I certainly didn't feel worse after washing that double duvet cover. At least I don't think I did. I did the wash in two stages - leaving the duvet cover soaking in detergent for a fair time before going back to do three rinses, and then treating it with fabric conditioner. I seem to think it was quite late before I got it hanging on the line, but in the warm afternoon it was bone dry by mid evening.
  You can tell the sun was out, and shining almost onto the lens from a very high angle - it's shows the dust motes on the lens as the bright circles of light on the photo. While I was out in the garden with a camera I checked the foxes earth.
  I think I mentioned yesterday, or the day before, that it had been unsealed. The first sign was that some of the soil had been dug out, but the rubble I had put in there was still intact. During the night most of the rubble had been dug out, and I was thinking along the lines that maybe a mummy fox was going to move in.
  It would seem that only a fox could have dug all that rubble out, but it might be possible that a cat could have done it too if, for instance, it was trying to get to a rat. I must admit that although it might have possibly been a cat, a fox is the most likely culprit. During the previous week the foxes had been making a lot of noise at night, and I saw several chasing each other around. It is possible it was some sort of territorial dispute, but it reminded me a lot of mating time - which is usually in winter. Maybe it is not just a coincidence that the night time hullabaloo finished a day or two before the old entrance of the earth was dug out again.

  I think it must have been almost 4pm when I finally went out for a walk. I couldn't bring myself to just go for an almost aimless walk just because it might make me feel better, but eventually I decided that what I should do was to walk to Cash Busters - the second hand/ pawn broking shop. I wanted to see if they had any old VHS machines to replace my broken one. It seems that one day I will have to get my concentration and place and repair the old one because the man in the shop said he hasn't had one in for ages now. I remember seeing one in there much earlier in the year (possibly even late last year) and thinking maybe I ought to buy it as a spare. I wish I had now.

  I wasn't attempting to break any records as I walked to the shop, and probably because I was empty handed, I think I walked back a bit slower - maybe 6 minutes there, and 7 minutes back. On the way I did call in the corner shop to buy some pop and a couple of magazines. I don't think the walk made me feel any better, but fortunately it didn't make me feel any worse - except for while I was actually walking. I didn't really enjoy the walk, and it felt mildly uncomfortable to do it.

  Once I was home again  I could have a lie down and do some reading, but that didn't last long. Maybe it was a delayed positive effect of the walk, or maybe just a stray cosmic ray striking a certain neuron in my brain, but I had the urge to wash the rest of the bed linen I had taken off my bed a day or two earlier. It was helpful that the double duvet cover was already dry, and I could take it in to leave room on the line for the sheet and pillow cases. They were rather simpler to wash than the double duvet cover, and I had them hanging on the line in time to watch the 6pm news on TV.

  The news was typically a disaster area - stupid politicians trying to do things they don't understand lead by stupid people. I predict it won't be long before the IRA, who are already doing low level activity in Northern Ireland, start a terrorist campaign in London as a result of our wonderful prime minister, and his zombie advisers tinkering with the Irish border as part of his bumbling about with Brexit. Some of thought that Brexit would be a complete disaster with Theresa May at the helm. With Boris Johnson it is going to be a clusterfuck with bells on.

 One little treat, or diversion, if you can call it either, was to try some peach flavoured, zero sugar, Coca Cola. I had bought a 4 pack when I was shopping in Aldi recently. I thought it was high time I sampled one. Hmmmm, it is not nasty, but it is also not very exciting. 5 out of 10 for effort, but I don't think I will be buying any more, although I will finish the other three.

  After giving up on watching TV - rather later than I imagined somehow - I retired to bed to continue reading from the new magazines I had bought. I was actually reading Fortean Times, but only "shorts", and I didn't have to try and concentrate on the long articles. It was not my intention, but it did mean it was easy to put the magazine down, and go to sleep - which I did rather easily no later than midnight.

  It was too cool outside to leave the window open, and only just not too warm inside to need a fan on when I went to sleep. I didn't have a single drop of booze last night, and yet I still fell asleep easily, and mostly stayed asleep. Even the few  time I think I got up to pee were dreamlike. I am sure I had some dreams, possibly nice dreams, but all memory of them has now evaporated. Whether I had a good sleep is open to debate.

  For a lot of the morning I felt really bad, and it is difficult to describe why. Maybe if it were easy I would tell a doctor about it. Many bits of me ached. That included many parts of my chest, my elbows and upper arms, my right wrist, my upper and lower back, and assorted places around my belly. Many pains were/are only evident when making certain movements - but not always the same movement - almost all are very mild pains that taken individually would be generally ignorable, but together add up to misery. I suspect that most of the pains in my torso are some sort of cancer eating away at my insides. I wouldn't mind if they did the decent thing and ate away at the fat tissues first !

  I ended up having a very busy morning. Last night I put out my trail cameras to find out what was going on in my garden at night. One of cameras slipped on it's mount, and the lop sided video was not very useful - although it did give me a fair idea of what was happening. The other camera had a much better view, but there was a problem with the memory card in it. It somehow got corrupted, and my Linux PC just said there was an unidentified partition on it. Now the peculiar thing is that Linux can be very tolerant of odd formatting, but it was definitely no go.

  One thing that gave me hope was that the camera itself still seemed to be able to play it's own recordings. So next I tried plugging in a USB lead, but Linux just recognised that as an external drive with that same unidentified partition on it. I tried using a photo recovery app that had worked wonders on some hard disks, but it didn't seem to find any media for some reason (although I may have not fed it the correct parameters with hindsight). The next thing was to get out my laptop, and boot it into Windows XP (instead of Linux Mint).

  Windows recognised the partition, and showed the DCIM directory on the card, but would not let me read it. The next step was to do a disk check, and while it seemed to almost lock up the laptop, it did seem to work, and I finally, after rebooting, I was able to recover 12 good video files. These showed no sign of a fox, but plenty of activity from a cat. At one point the cat does some digging, and it made me wonder if it was this, or another cat that had dug out teh entrance of the foxes earth again. It would have been hard work moving some of the bigger chunks of rubble, but maybe not impossible if they were just rolled rather than picked up.

  It seemed to get quite chilly in the night, and the forecast temperature of 15° C at 6am may have been optimistic (but was probably right). As I write this there should be full strength sunshine, but there are some clouds in the sky that occasionally block the sunshine. It is still bright out though, and maybe we will get some long periods of sunshine today - as the forecast promises. As the afternoon comes to the end the temperature should peak at 25° C. Tomorrow could see the temperature drop back to something similar to yesterday, and while there could be some sunny spells, it seems that light showers will dominate.

  There were three things I suggested I might do yesterday, and it turned out that I did all three - and just about nothing else. One thing was to change the linen on my bed. I have to confess that it should have been done ages ago, but it is done now, and maybe if the temperature doesn't go over 25° C the current sheet and duvet cover might last a bit longer than those I changed - they had to endure the temperature hitting 36° C. That was not a dry night !

  Another thing I thought I might do, and did do, was to go shopping in Aldi. Before going I felt so rotten that I thought I was on death's door, but the walk there, and back, carrying my shopping, felt perfectly normal. That was all the more surprising considering I decided to test a pair of trainers I had long neglected because I thought they were uncomfortable. What might have made a difference yesterday was wearing thinner socks with them. They still felt a bit stiff, and maybe a little tight in some areas, but they didn't actually hurt - which is probably the best you can hope for.

  As I went around Aldi I seemed to have chicken on my mind, and I bought several packs of chicken. It was almost all I bought except for some ready prepared fruit, and lots of drink. As well as a twin pack of Diet Coke I bought a 6 pack of Aldi's diet lemonade cans, and I was suckered into buying a 4 pack of peach flavoured, sugar free, Coca Cola. The latter was out of curiosity. I have yet to try a can - maybe because I have doubts that it will be that nice.

  I also bought just one 500ml tub of frozen Greek yoghurt flavoured with papaya and mango (or two fruits that didn't sound very Greek to me). I don't know if it was originally intended to be, but it became my treat for going out when I didn't feel well enough to go out (but evidently was). It was probably at the ideal temperature when I tucked into it after getting home - just starting to melt, but still mostly solid. Being frozen yoghurt it was supposed to be low calorie, but I sort of doubt that, and I am very sure that it was far from low sugar. I didn't dare look at the nutritional values, but I am sure I could feel my pancreas creaking under the load after eating it.

  Before eating the ice cream I started cooking some (alleged) BBQ flavoured/marinated bits of chicken. I only had room for the legs in my mini oven, and I cooked the thighs in the microwave. Both ways seemed to produce similar results, but maybe the microwaved chicken tasted better because I had overcooked it.  One thing is for sure, whichever way I cooked it the chicken shrunk a lot. It must have been really pumped up with extra water and fat while being prepared for sale. Perhaps that worked to my advantage in as much as it kept my total food intake down. Until much later in the evening I had only eaten the chicken and the ice cream.

  I had slept quite well during the night - thanks to the more comfortable temperature - but that didn't stop me snoozing for as long as  could yesterday afternoon. It was surprising I found the enthusiasm to go out last night. Somehow I did find that enthusiasm, and enough of it to overcome some reluctance to go for reasons apart from not feeling that good. Those extra reasons for being reluctant to go were all about people I would rather not see there.

There are three people who particularly irritate me, and keep my away from gigs in and around Bromley, and none were all that likely to go to Stretchy's Open Mic, but another who I wasn't keen to see, had already indicated that she would probably go. That person was Jenni who I fell out with after the stupid kerfuffle about the picture taken at the Bromley Beer Festival which included her daughters friend - who was not a child, but very much acted like one. To be honest I was not sure who was avoiding who, but it turned out that Jenni seemed to be avoiding me more than I was avoiding her. The final evidence was that her dog, Willow, was also avoiding me despite me having dog treats in my camera bag.
  The picture above makes it look like the venue was almost deserted, but the turn out was actually quite good. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy that much of it. There was the obvious difficulty of keeping my distance from Jenni, but that was minor compared to some the "entertainment". There was a man with a Ukulele who started with the novel idea of singing the Sex Pistol's "Pretty Vacant". By itself it was amusing enough to have some value, but another three songs accompanied by ukelele was more than I could stand.

  The ukelele man was followed by a slimy man singing crap songs to a backing track on his laptop. It is not an uncommon thing these days, although an iPhone is probably more common than a laptop. I think I hated every song he sung - not because his singing was bad, and not because he was singing karaoke style, but purely for the hateful songs he sung. He was followed by Rob Todd, and thankfully he was playing an acoustic guitar. Many of the songs he sings do not go well with Rob's playing style on an electric guitar - even less so when he uses an effects pedal that boosts the treble, and adds distortion. It can sound a terrible !

  After Rob had finished I said a few goodbyes and left almost an hour early. Avoiding Jenni was depressing me, and whether connected in some way, I was also starting to feel physically uncomfortable. I am still going through a mild, but annoying, costochondritus flare up. It is hard to describe because there was no actual pain, but my chest felt tender. Later on, while in bed, I turned over in bed and it was like all my ribs popped one by one in very quick succession. Even that didn't hurt, but it does feel bloody weird. Unfortunately the pain sometimes comes hours later.

  Apart from my chest I also seemed to be developing a bit of a stiff back. Once again it was not exactly painful, but seemed to be a warning that it could be (fortunately nothing came of it). Finally I had a very vague stomach ache. That was a sort of dull ache that was not exactly from my belly, but in that general area. It was probably my pancreas about to explode after the amount of sugar I have consumed recently. Once I started walking to the bus stop I felt a bit better, and I felt mostly OK (by comparison) all the way home.

  When I got home I didn't feel particularly hungry, and so I avoided all temptations of the fried chicken shops (for instance), but I still felt like eating something. I had sort of prepared for this, and maybe I was just following an earlier plan like an automaton. Nevertheless, the ready prepared melon, and ready prepared fruit salad went down nicely - helped by a large whisky - something else I rarely drink if I have drunk sufficient Guinness (which I didn't after my early departure).

  After eating I went to bed, but initially I just read because I didn't feel sleepy. I think I read one short story before I put the book down, and fell into what I think was a deep sleep. I can't be perfectly sure about it, but I think I slept solidly from midnight to 4.30am this morning, and maybe I only woke then because I was starting to feel a bit cool. For some reason I couldn't get back to sleep then, and so I got up and copied all the pictures I had taken to my PC, and did the usual selecting and editing. I had only taken 29 pictures in total, and so there weren't many to go through.

  The last thing I did was a very simple "top and tail" editing of a video I had shot on my phone. I left my PC crunching that, and went back to bed around 5.30am. It was light by then, and at first I didn't think I would be able to fall asleep again, and maybe for the first hour I didn't sleep, but suddenly I was waking up from what felt like  long dream, and another couple of hours seemed to have passed without me noticing (except for the dream time).

  This morning the usual bits hurt, and my chest seems very volatile. I am having to be careful with my posture as I write this to avoid inflaming it. I am in three minds about what to do today. I feel like going back to bed again, but that would probably be unneeded, and a waste of time. What I probably ought to do is to go out and have a good walk to stretch my legs. It should be warm and sunny today, and ideal for a nice walk. On the other hand I have the stinking bed linen taken from my bed yesterday, and today would be excellent drying weather if I were to start washing it. I have no idea what I will do at the moment. I guess I'll have to reveal the outcome tomorrow.

  It is, or was a fairly cool morning. The morning is running out now as I write this, and the temperature is very slowly rising. Maybe it will reach 21° C by mid afternoon, and that will be the highest it will go today. Today doesn't seem quite as dull as yesterday, and yet the cloud cover seems complete. There is a small chance that we will see some sunny intervals as the afternoon gives way to the evening. Meanwhile, the latest revision says that for the next hour or two (as I write this) there is a 17 to 19% chance of some rain ! Summer should resume tomorrow with lots of sunshine, and 25° C.

  I felt extremely un-motivated yesterday. It was a combination of the grey skies and rain, plus I wasn't feeling all that good. I couldn't quite put my finger on why I didn't feel good until later in the afternoon. Until that revelation came I hardly did anything at all. About he best I did was to prepare another video taken of The Entourage Band. It required little work from me, and after 10 to 15 minutes it was time to let the computer munch through the binary digits for 30 minutes or so. I spent much of my time just laying on my bed mostly reading. I tried to snooze, but couldn't seem to fall asleep.

  I'm not sure what time it was in the afternoon that I became aware of a pain in my lower guts. I went to the toilet, and 5 minutes later I thought my troubles were over, but I was wrong. It wasn't long before there was some serious rumblings and gurglings from my belly, and another visit to the toilet seemed prudent. 10 minutes later much had passed, and I thought I would feel better, and to a limited extent I did, but that was not the end of the story.

  I remember having some doubts about some potato salad that I had no room for in the fridge on the hottest day ever ! The day before yesterday I cautiously opened it, and sniffed it. It seemed perfectly OK, and maybe it was, but I still blame it for what was obviously food poisoning yesterday. It was bad enough that I went to feeling quite warm to almost, but not actually, shivery for a short while. I had one more visit to the toilet, which was more like a usual visit, before I felt basically OK.

  I was quite wary about what I ate yesterday, but I was in no mood to actually fast - even if that may have been the sensible thing to do. Instead, I had two unusual elements in my arsenal - or cupboard and fridge. I had bought a pint of milk, and a packet of strawberry flavour Jaffa cakes (as well as packets of lemon and lime, plus standard orange Jaffa cakes). My late lunch, and later afternoon snacks were of milk and cookies. I had a more substantial dinner, but I resisted the temptation of covering it with chilli sauce. After that I started on some neat whisky to help kill off any bugs in my system (possibly). I had also felt good enough to start going through the pictures I had taken on Friday night.
  I had tried to take pictures without using flash at first, but much of the light was behind the band, and it was generally of one strong colour. I did manage a few semi-reasonable snaps, but using flash made things a lot easier.
  Kornelia can be a most expressive singer ! I have a theory that before becoming a singer she had some experience in the theatre, and so likes dressing up for gigs. She also decorates her face, and it can look good, but it was so hot and sticky in the pub that her face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and her decorations slowly slid off her face !

  I have no idea why they put those little sunbeams around the clouds on forecasts. Many are shown today, and so far it has seemed that the chance of seeing a single sunbeam is close to zero. Outdoors (but not indoors) it has been a fairly cool morning - barely making 18° C despite the forecast saying 19° C. The forecast is 100% right about the rain. I am not aware of it being very heavy at any time, but it is certainly persistent. I don't think it has stopped for the last 3 hours. Maybe we will get a respite for a few hours around 6pm. I am unsure how low the temperature fell in the night, but for the first time in about 3 days it became too cool to sleep with the fans on. The highest temperature today is predicted to be 20° C, and that will help the interior of the house to cool down after it's roasting on Thursday, and to become more comfortable.

  The weather forecast is very volatile at the moment. When checking about tomorrow I see that the latest for today is that the temperature may only reach 19° C, and that until 9pm, when the rain may finally stop, the only respite from the rain could be at 7pm, and only 7pm. Tomorrow will be slightly warmer. The current prediction is for 21° C. There will be a small residual chance of rain, but the day is predicted to be dry. Unfortunately it will still be overcast, with almost no chance of seeing any sunshine. Monday could see some sunshine, but after that there might be several more rainy days.
  It still felt very hot and sticky indoors, and wet and sticky outdoors yesterday. It wasn't an ideal situation to do anything, and I almost didn't, but although it would mean drying everything indoors, I decided I would do some laundry. I cranked up the water temperature to high because I wanted to re-wash the towel that I had used as a pillow protector when I was sweating a lot on hot nights. I also had a white t-short that had what I think may have been a curry stain on it, plus another t-shirt that had got soaked with sweat. On top of that I had some underwear to wash.

  I let it all soak in frazzling hot water for an hour or two before doing the rinsing and conditioning in cooler water. Before putting in in the wash I gave the curry stains on the white t-shirt a good spray with "Vanish". I think that helped, but I am wondering if I will ever get that t-shirt pure white again. Maybe I will, after many such washes, but for mthe moment I just have to live with it being better than before.

  That laundry was about the only thing I did during most of the day. For some odd reason, I don't think I even ate much - which is sort of odd, although I didn't eat nothing at all ! Mostly I was just very lazy. I tried to catch up with some of my lost sleep, but I don't recall getting any more sleep than the occasional 10 minute snooze. I have to admit that for much of the time I was not watching the clock, or caring about the time, and maybe I did have a longer sleep without realising it.

  The only bit of clock watching I did was to do with going out in the evening. I think it was around 6.30pm that I had a second shower to freshen myself up, and to wash my hair.  I intended to leave home a little after 8pm, and by then I was feeling almost fresh, and almost dry. The only thing I didn't have was any great enthusiasm. It felt like an unneeded chore to go out, and yet I knew I would probably enjoy myself to some extent or another.

  The band I was going to see were The Entourage Band, and they were playing in The Ladywell Tavern. There were potentially several ways of getting there, but walking through the park seemed like the nicest option. I set out walking quite fast. There was no reason to walk fast, but I can't seem to walk slowly, although I probably could have walked a little bit slower - and benefited from it too. It is about 0.8 miles from home to the Ladywell end of the park. I don't know if it was the thick humid air, but I felt knackered when I got that far. From there to the pub takes the distance up to a figure that must be close to a full mile. I have no idea how fast I walked, but I think the walk took about 20 minutes, and that equates to about 3mph - which seems to be my average for all but short walks.

  When I arrived at the pub I was almost dripping, but I don't think it was just me on this occasion. My blood temperature probably went up a notch when I found that Guinness cost £5.05 there.  Some places still manage to charge just under £4 (maybe £3.95), and the average seems to be about £4.50. I could stomach £5 exactly because it makes getting change from a £20 note tidy, but that added 5p was annoying !

  I was highly fortunate to grab a seat near a stand alone air conditioner, and so suffered less than others. Ashio, the drummer was on his second t-shirt and second bandanna after setting up his drum kit. Meanwhile, Kornelia, the singer, had the glitter and stuff she likes to put on her face, sliding off as her face became wet with sweat.

  After thinking it was a chore going out to see the band I did, as I knew I would, find myself enjoying the gig. Maybe not enough to stay to the very end, but quite close to it. I later heard that the gig stopped at exactly 11pm, closing time. I left not long before that to get the 10.55 train from Ladywell station. I had decided that I didn't really want to walk through the park after dark while carrying over £1000 worth of photographic gear. Getting the train would save me from that, and save 10 to 15 minutes of walking.

  Not having to walk so far was very welcome because the moment I stepped out of the pub my feet started to ache. They didn't ache walking to the pub, nor while I was in the pub, but within 5 paces from pub it felt like I had walked 5 miles on them. That was a bit weird. I had one little mini adventure at Ladywell station. As I walked up one side of the footbridge, to get the the other platform, a fox was walking up the other side. We met at the top, near the far side (from my perspective). The fox didn't panic, and was seemed quite relaxed, but wouldn't pass me even when I stepped to the side to give it as much space as possible. It casually walked back down the stairs, and went through the fence to wait for me to pass. Once I had walk a few tens of feet down the platform it came back through the fence, and walked over the bridge. It is rather amazing that the foxes have learned to use the bridge. The bridge is only 20ft from the ramp, at the end of the platform, down to track level, and it could cross that way, but it chooses the safer route.

  I was home again at 11:05pm, and I had a treat waiting for me. I could have got a takeaway from the fried chicken shop, and I could even have bought fish and chips from the shop I passed on the way from the pub to the station, but I had pre-cooked a couple of steaks before going out. I just needed to heat them up, and I served then with some coleslaw. They were nice, but I didn't seem to enjoy them at the level I hoped to.

  It was probably about midnight, or maybe a little later, that I went to bed. It still felt very hot and sticky in my bedroom, and so I had the fans on - one pointed at my chest and face, and the small fan blowing over my feet and lower legs. I fell asleep easily enough like that, but at 2 or 3am it seemed that my room had cooled of a fair bit, and I turned off the big fan. Maybe an hour later I woke up and my legs were feeling too cold, so I turned off the small fan. I guess I had a pretty disturbed night, and didn't get enough quality sleep.

  Maybe that lack of sleep doesn't matter because the cold grey light, and all the rain outside does not inspire me to do anything. I predict I will be spending a fair time today laying on my bed reading, and snoozing. I am in a quandary about tonight. There is a performance, at The British Oak pub, by Back To The Fray, but it seems it will not feature Miranda on vocals. It might be nice to pop in to see Brain Bath on guitar, but without Miranda I am not sure if I can be bothered.

  I am forgetting that I have a load of pictures that I took last night. I will be spending a good few hours processing them, and thus less time reading and snoozing. I also shot two videos last night. One was on my big camera, and so might be a bit better, but one was shot on my Huawei P20 Lite mobile phone, and it is one thing it does rather well. Here's The Entourage band covering The Red Hot Chillie Pepper's "Under The Bridge".

  It is taking forever to cool down indoors, but outside it almost feels chilly right now. This morning's forecast has started off right, but I find it hard to believe that there will be a single sunny interval at 10am... Although when I look at the sky I can see a few small blue patches. At the moment the rain continues to fall, and there is more thunder coming from the distance. Maybe the afternoon will feature sunny spells, and maybe it won't. It seems likely that the afternoon temperature  will hit 27° C, but it won't be that high for long. The temperature will gradually drop until sunset. That is when the rain is forecast to return, and that is predicted to cool the air quite quickly. It could be (or I hope it will be) quite a fresh night with the temperature falling to 19° C just after midnight. Tomorrow is predicted to be wet all day, and only 20° C maximum. Sunday will start off wet, but the latest prediction is that the rain will stop during the morning, and the rest of the day will feature sunny spells.
  It was already very hot when I went out to buy the last bit of shopping in preparation for Patricia's visit.  After that I sat back, and tried to stay cool while waiting for Patricia. She arrived earlier than expected (although she did give me progress reports along the way, and her arrival was not a surprise). Originally I expected her about 2pm, but she arrived an hour earlier. She had had to do the last bit of the journey on a 185 bus, and I am told it was like an oven in it.

  I had kept the window closed, and the curtain drawn in the living room, and with two fan running, it felt quite cool in there. A chilled can of ready mix gin and tonic, in glasses I had left in the freezer for an hour, provided a nice cool drink for Patricia. After Patricia had checked her mail, and told me all her news, she inspected my garden. I was almost stunned to find there had been a shower while we were indoors, and that it was only just finishing while we were outside.

  It is only 3 or 4 weeks ago that Patricia stayed here for a while, and yet she said the garden looked completely different. The potato plants were one thing that was very different, but maybe I had cleared a lot more in those 3 or 4 weeks. The work is still far from over, but now it has changed from a small amount of big stuff to a big amount of small stuff. Of course there is still one very big job to consider, and probably do, and that is to convert the middle of the garden back to lawn. I'll need to try and remove the roots of a lot more root, remove a lot of the big pebbles, and assorted rubble, and try and level it out before planting some grass seed. Maybe, just maybe, I'll have a lawn next year, and all the bloody maintenance that will need !

  It was so nice to see Patricia again, and to spend a couple of hours with her, but ultimately she had some bad news. Here partners mum, who lives in Wales, is quite sick (terminally so I think), and Patricia has decided it would be better to stay with, and support her partner rather than stay in London. One deciding factor is that the interpreting job she thought she would do was cancelled, and so the real reason to stay in London had gone. She may be able to visit again for an hour or two, depending on timing, when they come through London to go to Stanstead Airport (I think) for their flight back to Italy. There is also a chance of another flying visit in September when they travel to Argentina for our winter (Argentina's summer) via one of the London airports.

  After Patricia left I didn't have much time to get myself ready to go out for my Thursday drink - not that I needed much preparation apart from a change of trousers, and a fresh t-short. I still somehow managed to leave it until the last minute before leaving to walk to the station. In fact it was after the last minute for any normal day, and many minutes late on a fiercely hot day. It was probably lucky that I had drunk a can and a half of gin and tonic before making a mad dash to the station. On a record breaking hot day I managed about my fastest walk to the station ever.

  In one respect that was not unsurprising. I have done some of my longest walks ever on some of the hottest days - although none recently. The difference is that I have been feeling very sub par recently. Assorted bits seem to ache more these days, and I've been going through a flare up of what may, or may not be Costochondritus. The reality was that after my mad dash in the full afternoon super heat, I arrived at the station in plenty of time (further aided by the train being a couple of minutes late), and apart from sweating a lot, I felt perfectly OK. Maybe I even felt good - sort of exhilarated !

  I arrived at the pub 10 minutes early of the special earlier time of 4pm - suggested as a way of better securing a table on what might have been a very busy afternoon/evening in the pub. In reality the pub was not busy at all. After a couple of pints I started to keep a close eye on the train times. There were lots of cancellations because of speed restrictions caused by the very hot weather. Thameslink trains seemed to have less trouble with the rails south of London, and most of the cancellations were caused by lack of rolling stock. Lots of their trains were trapped north of London by failed overhead wiring. I didn't hear of any problems on the third rail network, although there could have been some. but I most definitely heard of overhead wire failures on almost all routes out of London to the north.

  I was just finishing my third pint when I noted that in between a load of cancellations there was one train running, and I decided to get that one. It was still 20 minutes away, and so I had an extra half pint before going to the station. I think it was a wise move because the next train might have been as much as 90 minutes later (although one might have slipped through while I wasn't paying attention).

  The new class 700 trains that Thameslink use do have air conditioning, but the temperature is never set very low. So you never feel anything near the shivers when getting on a train. It did feel sort of comfortable on the 9 minute ride back from Shortlands, but I never really felt I was being cooled down until we got to Catford. When the doors opened at Catford it was like being hit in the face with a hot, wet towel. The air seemed thick and hot. Although I could hear distant thunder as I waited for the train at Shortlands, there was no rain, but the first rain started to fall soon after I got on the train. At Catford, as well as the hot sticky air, it was raining, and instead of it being refreshing, it was like being under a hot shower !

  It was only a 20ft diversion to check the Sainsburys local store by the station to see if they had any of their salad left. They did, but not the very nice Greek salads. So I popped in a bought a couple of salads, plus a few reduced price items. Once again the reductions were far more generous than Tesco usually manages. After that bit of shopping I made very swift progress walking home. Most of the walk was in the dry, but I was dripping with sweat when I got indoors. It should have felt wonderful to strip off, but my bedroom was about 32° C, and I didn't really stop sweating until this morning !

  I had an assortment of stuff for dinner, and watched a bit of TV. Dinner included a reduced price ham and egg salad from Sainsburys. I've never tried one from them before, and for some reason it was in a completely different aisle to the other salads - it was with the ready made sandwiches. I also had a rather nice 500ml tub of ice cream. It didn't seem to cool me down as much as I hoped, but it was very nice.

  The heat and the booze, not that I had a lot of booze, took it's toll on me, and by 8.30pm I felt very tired. I brushed my teeth and lay on my bed. I tried to sleep, and maybe I did for a few minutes here and there, but it seemed that for a full hour, or more, I just lay on my bed unable to sleep in the heat. At some time in the evening, and I think it might have been around 10pm, a little bit of a breeze sprung up, and it pushed some very slightly fresher air in to my bedroom. I doubt it dropped the temperature more than a degree though, but it did give hope, and maybe it was enough to get me to sleep for a few hours. I was awake again just after midnight, and probably every 2 or 3 hours through the night. At midnight the breeze had gone, but there were tantalising hints that it was cooling down outside, but my bedroom still retained much of it's daytime heat.

 As I write this my thermometer says it is 23° C outside, but it is still 27° C inside my bedroom - and that is with all the upstairs windows open. ... I've just popped downstairs to open the living room window, and now I am sure I can feel some cooler air beginning to circulate. It was while opening the window downstairs that i noticed how quiet it was outside. I can hear the occasional car, sometimes only in a nearby road, but no one seems to be walking about. Perhaps everyone is catching up on several days of lost sleep - quite a good idea, and one I may do.

  This morning I don't think I feel quite as bad as I feel on many mornings, but I still don't feel very good. It makes me wonder how I could have rushed about so much yesterday without feeling any negative effects - maybe I am feeling those negative effects now.  And so on to Today.... With Patricia not staying I have no need to do some of the bits of housework I was going to do. Some of them were very little things like changing the shower curtains. The 99p shop grade shower curtains I put up 6 weeks ago are every bit as good as you might expect - although I wouldn't expect the printed pattern on them to start to wash off ! Changing them to fresh 99p shop shower curtains would be easy now I have installed proper support wires for them, but I shan't bother changing them now until the unlikely prospect of anyone else but me wanting to use my shower until maybe next summer if Patricia stays in London for a week or two.

  If think my entire plans for today end up as trying to raise the energy and enthusiasm to go to a gig tonight. Tonight's gig is interesting in that it is so close, and yet involves a long(ish) walk there and back. The Entourage Band are playing in The Ladywell Tavern. There are a couple of rather circular and indirect bus routes there, but the simplest way is to walk through the park. If it is not raining, and not too humid, it might even be a nice walk. The walk back in the dark may be interesting !

  Today records may be broken ! The is a hot plume of air coming to us all the way from Africa, and it is predicted that some places may see the temperature exceed the highest ever recorded figure of 38.5° C. Maybe in Catford it will be a little less - just 36° C, but apparently that will feel like 42° C ! I have just re-checked the forecast, and there has been a development in the last few hours !
  It seems the latest prediction is that it will be 38° C, and I have expanded the information for 4pm when it will be hottest. It shows that the temperature will feel like the 42° C that I mentioned. By midnight there could be some thunderstorms, and maybe they will help to cool things down a bit. Tomorrow could end up more than 10° C cooler than today, and will probably see more rain, but also some sunny intervals. The weekend could almost feel cold compared to today - maybe just 22° C, and dull, overcast and wet - maybe.

  There were a few things I should have done yesterday, and a few things I wanted to do. One of them was to go back to the pharmacy to complain that once again my repeat prescription was incomplete. The paper work clearly stated that I should have both low dosage aspirin, and a drug called Empagflozine, but neither were in the bag of drugs when I checked it. I should have rushed back there first thing in the morning, but it seemed too hot to be rushing around, and so when the need arises I will just buy some 75mg low dosage aspirin, and just do without the drug that helps keep my blood glucose level a bit lower - mainly on days when my sugar consumption goes us, such as yesterday !

  I did go to Tesco at about midday, and it felt good and bad. It seems to be taking quite a long time to get over the effects that hard work in the garden does to me. The last time I was out there I tried not to stress myself too much, but I hadn't recovered from the time before that, and that time was when I had a fight with the tree root, and it won. My chest is still very volatile after that, and silly things can trigger off the odd unpleasant twinge. Just stepping down from my front door step caused a little bolt of pain centred around the top of my left man boob. Walking into the car park by Tesco means doing a little sort of wiggle in an otherwise straight line walk, and that set off a few aches. These aches are generally short lived, but there were more, and cumulatively they spoilt what should have been a pleasant walk.

  Whether I can blame those little bursts of pain for forgetting two important things is open to conjecture. I was 50% buying stuff for Patricia's visit, and while I remembered the Jaffa cakes, I totally forgot the milk and fresh orange juice. I did buy some more salad for me, and so cold sliced meat to go with it. I managed to make an error there though. I was sure I picked up a packet of sliced corned beef, but I seemed to have sliced roast beef - rather poor quality sliced beef I discovered when I ate it !

  Another mental aberration was to buy two pots of ice cream. One of them claims to be low(er) calorie, but both probably contain far more sugar than is good for me. To eat those while not having a drug that helps my body deal with excess sugar was not the most sensible idea, but I did it anyway, and yesterday afternoon I enjoyed one of those tubs. Maybe I'll be eating the other sometime later today.

  I only managed one particular bit of tidying up yesterday, and it was to clear away the VHS player, VHS cassettes, and my Samsung camcorder that I had been using for VHS to mp4 video transfers. Before clearing it away I had a go at getting out the VHS tape that had become stuck in the machine, and preventing me from doing any more transfers. Almost 20 years ago when I used to do that sort of thing for a living, and more importantly I could call on the experience of several well practiced engineers, such a job would have been easy.

  Yesterday, in the heat, and without a proper bench to work on, I gave up really quickly, and with the screws I had taken out in a plastic bag shoved into the mechanism, and with the lid of the machine just resting on top, I shoved it under the TV for another day. I might give up completely if I find another VHS video recorder in a second hand shop somewhere - for little more than £10 !

  I spent the rest of the day just dripping. Actually I did do more than nothing. I watered my potato plants, and I did some cooking...sort of. Lunch was a salad with too much potato salad on it, and what should have been corned beef, but it turned out to be poor quality sliced beef. Obviously none of that needed cooking, but my dinner did ! Dinner was another bowl of Brussels sprouts. This time I made no pretence of them being a side dish to some meat, like I did they day before. Last night I just had sprouts, glazed with some butter, and nothing else.

  Of course they didn't really fill me up, and it wasn't long after that I had some savoury biscuits with cream cheese on, and not long after that, some German salami. I don't think there is anyway I can pretend that was a three part healthy meal ! I washed it all down with chilled water. I have two empty 2l drink bottles I fill with tap water, and keep in then fridge. In this heat they don't stay chilled for long when taken out of the fridge, but for a while the water is delightful to glug down.

  I lay on my bed, with the fan blowing over me, reading last night. I wasn't paying too much attention to the time, but I think it was before 11pm that I put the book down, and fell asleep. Two hours later I woke up almost feeling like I had enough sleep. I didn't feel particularly uncomfortable, although I was rather sticky, but the fan blowing on me seemed to stop me overheating, and there seemed no reason why I shouldn't get back to sleep, but sleep would not come.

 Between 2am and 3am I gave up trying to sleep. I turned on my bedside lamp, picked up my book, and started reading again. After an hours reading I tried for sleep again, and managed to fall asleep. I don't think it was good sleep though, and then at 5am the dustbin men turned up for the first of three visits - one for general waste, one for recyclable waste, and one for kitchen and garden waste. From about 5am to gone 7am it felt like I just had my eyes shut rather than sleeping. I guess I probably was asleep a lot of the time, but it didn't feel like it.

  This morning I don't feel all that good, but at least I have some distractions later. I think sleeping with the fan blowing across my body has left me with a few stiff muscles, and not enough sleep has left me feeling edgy. Then there is my my edgy chest with it's creaks, and pops, plus little pains here and there. One good thing is that my right shoulder still seems to be fairly free of pain, but my right elbow is a bit stiff and sore. In short, this body of mine is wearing out.

  Today's distractions from the aches and pains include another shopping trip to Tesco to buy milk and orange juice. A short visit from Patricia - probably between 2 and 3am. She will be off to Wales with her partner after seeing me, but she should be back in a day or two to stay for 3 or 4 days. After Patricia leaves I will be making an early start to get to Shortlands for an even earlier Thursday drink than normal. We are meeting at 4pm today, and if it is not full of screaming kids, we may be drinking in the garden.
  Yesterday afternoon I looked out of the kitchen window, and although I didn't have my glasses on, I could see what looked like grey fur under the last bit of uncleared garden (except for the thin strip along the back fence). My first thought was that it was my fox come back, and that maybe it was hurt and had tried to get back down the hole I had blocked off. I had seen evidence that a half hearted attempt had been made to dig it out again. I grabbed my camera, and cautiously approached. Once I was about 5ft away I could see that it was just the Siamese cat that often visits my garden. It probably wanted to shelter from the sun down in the fox's earth, and it was possibly who had tried to re-open it. I don't think a fox would have stopped at the small pieces of rubble I had tossed down there.

  There is gap in my screenshots of the forecast between 2am and 9am this morning, and that misses out on what really happened. The forecast for yesterday included a single rain drop for 2am this morning. It was a bit more than that. I was woken up sometime between 1am and 2am by a peal of thunder. It wasn't from nearby, and a bit later I saw a single flash of distant lightning that was so far off that I never heard any thunder. As a thunderstorm it was underwhelming, but there was quite a lot of rain - enough that I don't need to water my potato plants this morning. The weather forecast for today includes a helpful weather warning warning of thunderstorms from 2am to as late as 9am. I am sure there is some spacial names for warnings that are issued after what they are warning about.

 At the moment the sky is not perfectly blue because of some very high cloud that makes the sky look very pale, but the sun is shining, and it is going to heat things up to 31° C - which is actually 1° less than yesterday. So, another very nice, but sticky day coming up. There are no warning of any rain or thunderstorms tonight, but the heat could brew something up. It is tomorrow when the temperature will really peak. 37° C is the predicted peak afternoon temperature. Now that is HOT ! Needless to say, it is predicted to be a very sunny day. After tomorrow things will calm down, and Saturday could even see some rain.
  Still on the subject of weather (well there was a lot of it yesterday), I think records may have been broken yesterday. According to the forecast the highest temperatures may have happened after I took these pictures at 3.30pm yesterday. My small red writing that shows the location of the sensors may look a bit indistinct, but the important reading is the one that says 31.4° C. That was the temperature in my bedroom where I spent a lot of yesterday. I can't swear that is the highest ever temperature I've recorded there, but if not, it must be very close. It was certainly very sticky, and it made the 25.9° C in the downstairs back room feel quite cool ! I have to add that I kept my bedroom curtains closed to keep the sunshine out, and make it even hotter !

  I didn't do that much yesterday. It was too hot most of the time, but I did go out before midday to the pharmacy. I was going to order my next repeat prescription, but found it had been done automatically, and was ready for collection. As seems almost usual, they had missed two of the drugs I need, and I have to go back there this morning to sort it out again. After visiting the pharmacy I walked a circular route back home via Poundstretcher in Catford Mews. I am increasingly realising that some of the stuff they sell is actually cheaper than the 99p of £1 of the respectively named shops. My only disappointment was that they didn't have the 46p a bottle bleach that I wanted more of, and I had to buy branded Domestos for 89p.

  I was quite glad to get home again after buying stuff in Poundstretcher. I liked walking in the hot sunshine, but I was feeling some after effects of doing garden clearance the day before. It also didn't help that I had put on some shoes that were not comfortable - probably because of the heat. It was nice to get home and relax in the shade. I couldn't completely relax because I had to water my potato plants. They were starting to wilt in the heat.

  I took the picture on the left in the morning before the potato plants started to wilt in the heat. The last picture I took of a potato plant flower was a bit out of focus, but this one is sharp. As I mentioned yesterday, I think that after flowering the flower head will just shrivel up and fall off rather than produce a small green fruit - very much like a mini tomato, but poisonous.

  Watering the potato plants was just about the last thing of any note that I did yesterday. I never heard back from Angela when I sent a text message to her about the idea of meeting in the park for an ice cold vodka. I guess she has never forgiven me for totally blanking her and lover boy in The Catford Constitutional Club earlier in the year. I think that is more likely than the possibility that she was not at work, and was with lover boy, and so could not reply to me.

  My other plan to go to Southminster, and the Mangapps Farm railway museum, also came to nothing. When it came down to it I was not feeling up to it. It was partly because of the after effects of the work I did in the garden, but there as another factor that was worse. That other factor was a feeling of being bloated, and it turned out that I was. I was suffering from a condition related to constipation, but rather different in as much as I didn't even consider it could be like that until it was all over. It was like I hadn't been to the toilet enough the previous day, and maybe even the day before that. During the morning I went to the toilet perfectly normally, but three times spaced about an hour apart. After that I felt almost thin, and more comfortable. Although by then it was too late on the day to capitalise on it.


  Although my next medication review date is now next year, I am still taking my blood pressure twice a day - when I remember to do it. My morning reading, actually taken just after midday, was nice and low, but some said that blood pressure goes down in hot weather. I don't think I had ever noticed that before. Someone suggested it would soon go up after drinking some cold beer.

  I had a nice hot dinner last night. It was boneless, and skinless spicy chicken, and Brussels sprouts. It may sound an odd combination, but it was very nice. It was partly invented to use up some frozen sprouts to free up space in my overloaded freezer. I find I like sprouts now that I could have had nothing but sprouts for dinner - albeit cooked with a laze of butter so they were not too healthy !

  After dinner I opened an icy cold can of Stella Artois lager, and it went down nicely. It was then that I took my evening blood pressure reading. As can be seen in the photo on the left, it was even lower !


 This picture, on the left, is what I had after my Brussels sprouts and spicy chicken - more Brussels sprouts

  With or without spicy food, it was a very hot, sticky evening, and I spent some of it watching TV, and when that became boring I started reading. All this time my bedroom was still close to 30° C, and it was still about 25° C this morning ! As 11pm approached I felt tired enough to try for sleep. I had the fan on, and last night it didn't chill, but cooled me enough that I was able to get to sleep quite quickly - which surprised me.

  I was woken up again, not by wanting to wee, but by thunder. I think, but I can't be sure, that the first part of the peel of thunder was incorporated into a dream, and it took a moment for me to realise what I was hearing when I woke up. It was almost over by that time, and it feels sort of weird that it was so instantly recognisable as thunder, and not an explosion, or something.

  Having woken up I went for a pee more by habit than need. I had probably sweated out most of the beer I had drunk earlier. During that time I saw just one very distant flash of lightning, but heard no more thunder. Feeling happy that the garden was being watered, I was soon back to sleep.

  Considering how hot and sticky it was, I seemed to sleep reasonably well, and I am sure I frequently have worse nights even when it is not anywhere near as hot. This morning I feel in an undecided state. Writing about sleep has left me yawning like I haven't slept for a fortnight, and I feel tempted to go back to bed, but I must resist that. I am getting into a state of mind where I am thinking it is too hot to do anything, and that is wrong.

  I have had some definite timing from Patricia, but still with a bit of an unknown. Her flight definitely arrives tomorrow, and she definitely wants to see me early in the afternoon to pick up her new bank card that was sent here after she want back to Italy at the end of June.  She will not be staying here at first because she and her partner will be going to Wales first. She will leave him there, and come to stay here a day or two later, but I am not sure which day.

  My house is basically presentable for her quick visit, but I probably ought to get some milk (for coffee) and some Jaffa cakes in. I want to do a fair bit more housework before she actually stays here, and that could be from Saturday. It will be cooler by then - Friday may be 10° C cooler than tomorrow, but still very warm, and Saturday only 22°  (possibly with rain). I still feel I ought to try and get some of the hoovering done as soon as possible. In today's heat it will be a very sticky job, and on tomorrow morning it will be worse ! The best thing would be to go out, and keep moving. Maybe I will, and maybe I won't.

  There was a very pink sunrise this morning. That would usually mean bad weather, but I think the nasty bit passed to the west of us. The forecast for today may change a bit during the day, but essentially it is going to be a very hot, and very sunny day. The temperature may hit 32° C, and there is more to come after today.
  It is Thursday when it will really sizzle - if the forecast holds. The screenshot above is how Thursday was predicted last night. The air temperature could be 35° C, and the humidity will make that feel like 42° C ! Now that is HOT !!

  Yesterday was my last chance to get anything done before it got too hot. At least that was the idea, but by midday any hard work had me dripping in sweat. The original idea was to get some of the housework done that I wanted to do before Patricia comes back to stay for a few days. All I managed to do was to make up the spare bed, and that was because I got sort of sidetracked. At midday I was toiling under the midday sun in the garden !


  I'm not really sure what I expected to do in the garden yesterday, but I ended up doing quite a lot - even though I only half filled the brown wheelie bin. The first thing I did was to continue trying to get a small tree stump out of the ground. It was the one that nearly broke me last time. It tried again this time, but this time I applied a bit more thought, and less brute strength. I dug out enough soil around the roots until I could use my loppers to cut through the thickest roots. The smaller ones put up a fair amount of resistance, but I got it out - and not before time. It was still trying to sprout even when cut down and half out of the ground !

 After that little triumph I went on to clear another square yard of weeds. It was the area around the entrance to the fox's earth. Since the fox with the injured leg had recovered, and moved on, the earth has been disused, and the entrance was getting clogged with weeds and brambles. It seemed like a good time to fill it in. I started by raking most of the weeds up, and cutting the brambles before tossing in some assorted rubble, and covering it with soil.

  In the hot sunshine it was hard work, and I was dripping everywhere, but I still hadn't finished. I did my best to pull up as many roots as possible in the recently cleared areas. Some of those root systems were very deep or long. I think it was probably the nettles that seemed to go everywhere underground, but some may have been bramble roots, and some may have been other things.

  I did have one problem doing that weeding job. I'm not sure if it was a minor inner ear problem (possibly wax), or low blood pressure, but I am currently suffering from occasional light headedness, or maybe dizzyness. For the last few nights if I turned over in bed too fast it would occasionally take the world a second or two to catch up with my eyes. I think that is an inner ear problem. Bending over to pull up roots made me feel slightly light headed from time to time. I speculate that that was a low blood pressure problem (although I suppose it could have been a high blood pressure problem, or something completely different). The good thing is that I still managed to pull out an awful lot of roots, and the ground is one step closer to maybe become a lawn again.
  Maybe when it is cooler, sometime next week, I will tackle the area right by the back fence. There is still quite a lot of work to do there even though it seems to be quite a small area. There is also the little clump by the left hand fence to clear - but not totally clear. Growing amongst that knot of vegetation is what might be a wild rose. I had a wild rose or two growing in my garden 25 to 30 years ago, but by the right hand fence. This plant looks similar, and I want to try and leave it intact when I clear that area.

  Over the other side of the garden, off the right hand edge of the photo, my potato plants continue to grow strongly. I think they have all had flowers on them, but the first flowers have essentially shrivelled up, as the book says normally happens, and I don't think I'll be seeing any fruits on them. However, with luck, a good crop of spuds will be developing underground. I must watch out for any spuds that come to the surface, and cover them before they go green. The only problem there is that the foliage is so thick that it is difficult to see the base of the plants.

  When I came in from the garden I was very sweaty, and slightly muddy in places where dry soil had got on the sweat. It was all rather unpleasant, and made a shower I had later very satisfying. Before showering I wanted to cool off a bit, and it seemed the perfect excuse to have some (alleged) low(er) calorie ice cream. I guess it probably was lower calorie because while it was still cold and still fairly tasty, it's texture was not what you expect ice cream to be like. A small tub of it cooled me off just enough to go and have a shower - a hot shower ! I must adjust the temperate before I have a shower this morning. I think "just tepid" would be suitable for today. I'm not sure I am bold enough to go for cold.

  After my shower I lay on my bed, read for a bit, and then had my afternoon snooze. Before I could relax enough to snooze I needed to take some painkillers. I had jarred my chest again, and although it didn't feel like it at first, I had probably jarred it even more than last time. It was later on, after the Paracetamol was wearing off that my chest became particularly painful. Not all of it though. The pain was concentrated along 2 or 3 inches of my sternum, and unusually it actually felt sore to touch there. It was probably my imagination, but it felt like there was a crack in my sternum.

  It used to feel like that soon after I did some sort of damage just a week or so after coming out of hospital from my quad heart bypass operation. My doctor(s) assured me that it was impossible to have cracked open my sternum, and that it was just soft tissue damage that would clear up after a month or two. That was back in September 2013. I am pretty certain that they sliced my sternum in two to open up my chest, and I still think that I managed to partly undo whatever the surgeon used to stick it back together. Of course no one will believe that possible, and so 6 years later I continue to suffer.

  Paracetamol is not perfect, but it does reduce the discomfort a lot. Ibuprofen is the better choice because it reduces the painful inflammation. A couple of Ibuprofen tablets left me comfortable for the rest of the evening, and even into the night, although I might be inclined to take a couple this morning. I have felt a few twinges that will probably be fine if I nip it in the bud now.

  On the whole I slept reasonably well last night. It was rather warm and sticky when I first went to bed, and I slept for an hour or two with the fan on, but that started to feel a bit chilly. During the night the temperature seemed to drop faster, and lower than the forecast said it would, and I felt cool enough to partly cover myself sometime after 4am. My sleep was rudely interrupted by what I assume was a police helicopter buzzing around above the neighbourhood at 5am. I didn't really get back to sleep properly after that left half an hour later. One thing I did notice while trying to spot the helicopter. was that the inside of the window that swings outwards in my bedroom was covered in condensation. It can't have been that warm out there.

  The day is now warming up fast, and I might end up doing one of two things. I have just sent a text message to Angela to see if she wants to meet for an ice cold vodka in the park at lunchtime. I am not holding my breath that I will even get a reply. If I don't hear from Angela then I may well go on my expedition to Southminster and the Mangapps Farm Railway museum today.

  Today starts almost bad, but at the end it should be very good. This morning the forecast says the day starts overcast, and indeed it is, but every now and then the sun almost makes it through a gap in the clouds. The first "official" sunny periods are not due until 3pm, according to the latest revision of the forecast, by late afternoon the clouds should have dispersed to give non stop sunshine until sunset. It is going to be a very warm day, and some say quite a humid day. The afternoon temperature will peak at 27° C, but in the next few days it is going to get much warmer. Tomorrow should be hotter, and then it gets hotter still. On Thursday the temperature could hit 34° C, but that is the day Patricia arrives from Italy, and will be bringing slightly cooler, and more cloudy weather with her.
  Yesterday went very quickly despite not really doing much, or at least doing very little that required any physical effort. Mostly I rested my body, but I did hand wash a few items in the morning, and hung them on the line outside to dry. I think there was just a tiny bit of damp left on the waist band of a pair of underpants, but everything else seemed bone dry when I brought it in at around 6pm.

  It was between finishing that laundry, and starting a small opened ended project mid afternoon that I did least of all. I even had a nice snooze...at least I think I did. As usual I was paying no attention to the clocks, and I could have slept for 5 minutes or a couple of hours. I suspect it was a full hour, and maybe more. I probably woke up feeling bored, and had to make a decision about what to do. One of the things I had to do when moving the chest of drawers around the day before was to move a box of old VHS tapes that I thought I might try and transfer to mp4 video files before disposing of the tapes.

  Late yesterday afternoon seemed a good time to make a start on this work. The basic procedure was to use my Samsung MiniDV camcorder as a converter between analogue and digital video. That camcorder was an "official" grey import bought from Currys, and unlike almost all camcorders didn't have the external record function disabled to get around the extra tax/duty charged on video recorders. I had to record the video from my old VHS player in real time onto the camcorder.

  Once the recording was made I could then transfer the digital video from the camcorder to my PC for further editing (usually just trimming the ends of the recording to the actual start and end of the programme). That transfer also had to be done in real time. The quality of the transfers is usually really good, and seemingly always better than various ways of recording direct onto my PC. It helps that my VHS machine was a top quality machine even if it came out of a skip with the front panel with most of the controls on it missing ! Unfortunately it has developed a mechanical fault that means using it can be tricky !

  I managed to transfer two short tapes before the VHS machine took exception to a possibly broken cassette, and seized up, but the two short recording, 12 minutes and 15 minutes, would occupy my PC for much of the rest of the evening. The transcoding from DV files to mp4 files took place at slower than real time ! I think there are several reasons for this. I expect it would go a lot faster if my PC had more RAM in it. I have a suspicion that the encoder algorithm is a slow one, and I ought to look into how to use a different one. I can remember how slow mp3 encoding used to be on one of my old PCs (20 years ago ?) until I tried a newer encoder. The speed up was about 5 times - maybe more.

   It would possibly help if I installed a newer version of the operating system on my PC. The current installation dates back to spring 2014, and it has only been turned off for occasional maintenance since then (not including a very occasional re-start when something very weird has happened). Tradition has it that a Windows PC would be on it's knees after 5 years of use, but this one, with Linux Mint 17.3 as it's operating system plods along really nicely most of the time. The most recent release is 19.1, and sooner or later I will bite the bullet and install it.

  The final mp4 versions of the tapes look good, although the colours on the first look a bit wishy washy. That is unfortunate because the tape I chose to transfer first was a nice short, 12 minute, advert for the Minolta C1E camcorder. It was a VHS tape stuck to the front of a magazine back in 1987. It showed what seemed to be quite an advanced VHS-C camcorder about the size of two housebricks, and probably weighing almost as much. How technology has moved on ! Many high end mobile phones could do most of what that camcorder could do, and probably cost less too - an awful lot less when 1987 prices are translated to modern prices !

  The second tape lasted 15 minutes, and was a promotional tape for Thameslink 2000 - the grand scheme of 1988 to revolutionise the Thameslink rail service. What was predicted for the year 2000 mostly became a reality about 15 years late, although a few minor turned out to be different to the original plan. Much was made about how great the interchange with Crossrail would be at Farringdon. Crossrail is now called the Elizabeth Line, and is close to being finished. It could open any time in the next 10 years.

  That Thameslink tape finished rendering to an mp4 video file just before I went to bed. I got on my bed, and read for a while, but well before midnight, and possibly before 11pm, I was fast asleep. On the whole I slept well last night for the first 5 or so hours, and then thrashed around a lot for another 2 or 3 hours. I had been sleeping on top of my bed, but by sunrise it was feeling a bit cool, but maybe not cool enough to get under the duvet (or not all of me). The next few nights could see it getting too warm to sleep without the fan on !

  This morning I can't work out how I feel. I know my chest feels a bit edgy. I do remember it crunching once or twice in the night, and so it continues to be sensitive, and ready to ache after making a wrong movement. I think the rest of me feels no worse than usual. I feel like I am on the cusp where it feels like doing anything, such as taking a walk, would be too much like hard work, and would be initially uncomfortable, but would actually make things a lot better in the long run.

  It remains to be seen what I do today, but one thing may guide my decisions. At this time I am unsure what day Patricia will be coming to stay for another 4 or 5 days. If I recall correctly her flight from Italy is on the 25th, but she will be with her partner, and they will initially be going to his family in Wales. I think the plan is to leave him there, and for Patricia to come here a day or two later. Although my house and her room is basically ready for her, I should do some basic housework, and make up the bed and stuff before her arrival. After today it is going to get uncomfortably hot to push a hoover around, and do the other stuff, and so I probably ought to try and get it all done today while the temperature is less fierce. Maybe tomorrow I will go out in the blazing sun for my walk around a little bit of Essex when I visit Southminster, Mangapps Farm railway museum, and Burnham On Crouch.

  It certainly feel fresh this morning, cooler than the 17 or 18° C forecast, but I think the forecast is probably right. At the moment there is little more than some very thin, very high cloud adding some milky streaks to a fairly blue sky, and sometimes the sunshine is a little hazy, but it seems more like "sunshine" than "sunny intervals". The latest revision of the forecast says we will lose any sunshine from 11am right through to 5pm when sunny intervals will resume. I have a suspicion that the earlier forecast, as in the screenshot above, may come closer to reality, but we will just have to wait and see. One other change in the latest revision is that the afternoon temperature is now thought to be just 22° C instead of 23° C. Tomorrow may start overcast, but that should quickly give way to sunny intervals, and just sunshine for the last 4 hours of daylight. It could be quite a warm day with 27° C predicted.
  I did not feel terribly enthusiastic yesterday morning, and I struggled to really do anything at first. While I initially thought I didn't feel that bad, I noted that while towelling myself dry after washing me and my hair, my right elbow was more sore than I thought, and the inflammation, or whatever it is, appeared to be making the muscles that attach to the bone either side of the elbow were sore too. This is becoming a far too frequent occurrence. Fortunately there is a partial cure that involves Ibuprofen and some form of exercise.

  In yesterday's case, that exercise was to do some laundry by hand. I washed two small towels, and small tablecloth, and two tea towels. I did this around midday, and during the time the sky almost went black. I made mental preparations to hang it all up indoors to dry, but by the time I had finished the sun was out, and much of the sky was blue. So I hung it all on the line outside, and it was as good as dry by 6 or 7pm.

  That almost sudden change from a dark sky, with a shower of rain, to blue sky and sunshine had an unexpected outcome. It was a painful outcome because it distracted me from a lesson I had learned a day or two previously, and had managed to follow when drunk, and when bleary eyed in the middle of the night. It all concerns the extra shelf I added to the bookshelves at the top of the stairs. They mean unlearning what I had been doing for the last 30 years.
  It is best described using the diagram above. When moving from the bedrooms to the bathroom I would take one long stride across the landing at the top of the stairs. I would aim for the middle of the passage to the bathroom. Now I have to aim to the left, where the spare toilet rolls are, if I want to avoid clipping the corner of the new bookshelf. Failure to do so is very painful, and draws blood. I thought doing it once was a good enough lesson, but yesterday I did it again !
  This picture of my back was difficult to take, and the relevant bit is out of focus, but it still shows damage to my back from scraping it on the corner of the bookshelf. The slightly higher scrape has almost healed, but the one half an inch below shows fresh blood seeping out. I have now used some white duct tape, which matches the white Contiboard nicely, to cover the offending corner. It will still hurt if I scrape across it, but it shouldn't be sharp enough to draw blood. Since my second lesson I have been most careful, even when crossing at speed, and maybe I am getting close to being able to do it without thinking.

  With the washing hanging on the line, and the corner of the bookshelf covered with three layers of duct tape, I took a rest, and that rest turned into a long siesta. I enjoy an afternoon nap, but sometimes it feels like more than just a mere nap. I am unsure how long I was asleep for, but it may have been a couple of hours. I woke up feeling like I was wasting the day. I hadn't really planned to do anything in particular in the afternoon, but I thought I might pop out to Iceland and/or Tesco to get a few bits - some of which would have been to make a more enticing dinner.

  I didn't get to go out because I started on a small bit of a project, and ended up getting close to completing it. Ignoring a few minor details, I did complete a full phase of it.  It all concerned my long term project to rehabilitate my back room, and get it into a state where it could be used as a dining room again. At the moment it is more like a tip. One phase of it was to move a chest of drawers through a right angle, and park in the alcove next to the chimney breast. I had already done a fair amount of preparation for it, and I think I expected I would do some more preparation, in small stages, before attempting to move the chest of drawer. Yesterday I did the whole thing !
  It was hot sweaty work, and it involved emptying the hoover twice ! At the end I had the chest of drawers safely tucked into the corner, and that left room for a spare armchair to be moved from the front room into the back room. So now I have more room in the front room. At this rate I will have enough room to manoeuvre in the front room to risk painting it - something that Angela thought would be a good idea. It is a shame she is unlikely to ever see it if I do it. Maybe without her influence it will never happen.
  When I had finished all my hard work I retired to my bedroom for a lie down, but when I got up there I realised there was something stuck to my foot. It was the item in the picture above. It is a microcontroller - an all in one chip low power computer. They were never powerful enough for use in even a simple "home computer", but this particular one was very popular in all sorts of control units, and in things like CD player and TVs - although the latter would probably use a version with the program on an internal ROM (read only memory), and only need 28 pins instead of 40. Quite how it got to where it was that I trod on it is anyone's guess. I think I have another couple of them somewhere - probably taken from some old junk I was dismantling for spares or something.

  All the heavy lifting I did was not without it's consequences. Perhaps the worst was later in the night when trying to sleep, but I was feeling the effects quite early in the evening, and that did two things. The first was that I no longer fancied going out to a gig. The one I was going to was nothing great, and while I would have liked to take a few pictures, I didn't feel I was missing out on much.

  The second was maybe more a consequence of the first. If I wasn't going out then I could have proper dinner at the proper time. I hadn't really planned for that except for a vague idea that I would pick something up if I went out shopping - which I didn't. It was another extravagance, but I ordered a Chinese takeaway. It was very slow arriving. The web page initially suggested 30 to 50 minutes delivery time, but the prediction when the order was accepted was a full hour, and that actual delivery time was almost 90 minutes later. I think it was probably still worth it because it was very tasty - plus, as usual, I have enough for a second meal today. In fact it could be a small lunch and a small dinner.

  After a few hours of watching TV I went to bed, but it took ages to get to sleep. While watching TV my eyes were starting to droop, and I was expecting to fall asleep very quickly, but from the moment I got into bed I felt wide awake. I don't think it was caused by multiple sources of discomfort, but they couldn't have helped. For the first time since I had done it I could feel how sore my back was where I had scraped it. At the time it had been a couple of seconds of agony that seemed to subside to nothing in the space of a few minutes.

  My back was one specific and easily understood sore spot, but everything else was much more general, and individually very low level, but the cumulative effect was enough to make relaxing very difficult. All those tiny little aches and stiffnesses were the result of manhandling the chest of drawers and armchair. Most were built on well known areas of difficulty, and the worst of these was my chest. No matter what position or side I used to lay in bed, some part of my chest would ache.

  This morning there is a tiny little bit of a possibility that something happened to my chest that I mentioned quite recently. Some, what I shall call an anti-strain, may have reset the damage I did recently while doing garden clearance. It would not be the first time that some reason for discomfort has been popped back into place, and once that particular discomfort has settled down, my chest is as good as gold until next time. It is too early to say if this has happened, but my chest does seem to feel less clicky and poppy so far.

  It was not long after 10pm when I went to bed, and it must have been as late as 2am before I got any meaningful sleep. Even then I was only managing to stay asleep for about an hour. Everytime I woke up I would find a new pain, or a hand had gone to sleep after laying on my arm or something. Gradually my sleeps got a bit longer, and the last period might have lasted for almost three hours, and seemed close to normal. I had quite a variety of now all but forgotten dreams. My overall impression was that they were mostly happy sort of dreams. One was definitely erotic, but mostly they were about things like the happier aspects of being at work - although as I write that down it starts to sound unlikely, but with no actual memory of the content of the dream I just have to go along with the overall impression that they were more inclined towards nice and not nasty.

  I am still probably under the influence of some Paracetamol that I took sometime in the night, and it does feel that my usual aches, pains and stiffness are not that bad this morning. I have already mentioned that my chest, which is best calmed down with Ibuprofen, and not Paracetamol, is feeling almost benign this morning. I guess this means I should feel fit enough to go and ruin it all again by doing something like some more garden clearance.

  I have no specific plans for today, and being a Sunday it is tradition that it should be a very boring, and pointless day, and yet... Maybe I will do some garden clearance, and maybe I will go to Iceland and Tesco. (I am definitely missing Jalapeno cream cheese in a squeezy tube, and that means I will have to go to Iceland sooner or later). I suspect I will be having a long siesta this afternoon, and once that it over I can get down to the serious business of moaning about what a terrible dull and boring time Sunday afternoon and evening is !

  So far this morning we have had zero thunderstorms, and here weren't any in the night either. There was some rain in the night, and my garden won't need watering today. At the moment it is dry, and like yesterday the sun is trying to shine between gaps in a rather cloudy sky. Some clouds look a bit dark and heavy, but most don't look like rain clouds - at least I don't think they do.The latest revision of the forecast says there should just be grey skies now, and no thunderstorms. The forecasters are still holding out their hopes for a thunderstorm at 11am, but once that is out of the way they still seem to think there will be sunny periods for most of the rest of the daylight hours. At the moment it is about as warm as it was yesterday afternoon, and this afternoon the temperature should peak at a warmer 23° C. Tomorrow sees the slow start to some very hot days next week. Tomorrow is currently thought to be only as warm as today, but there could be sunny spells all day long.
  Yesterday was a very uninspiring day. I was tempted to go for a walk in the park just to stretch my legs, and to go even if it were raining. I even thought it could be fun to walk in the rain - provided it was a short walk, and never far from home. In the end I just never got around to it. Maybe I was waiting to see if the hints that there may be some sunshine, and those sunny intervals never happened.

  I only did one thing of note yesterday, and that was to wash a towel. I had to - it had been soaking in detergent for 24 hours in an attempt to loosen a nasty greasy stain. I should probably have sprayed it with Vanish before putting in in the wash, or I should have turned the water temperature up to scalding to help loosen the grease. I did neither. The actual grease in question came from sweat where I had been using the towel as a pillow protector during some of the very hot nights we had recently (except in this weather they seem to have been ages ago).

  I dried the towel indoors using a fan to speed the drying. The greasy area is fortunately not so visible now it is dry, but I have a cunning plan. Now it is washed and dry I am currently using it as hand towel in the bathroom. I am unsure of the exact date, but in about a weeks time Patricia will be back to stay for a few days, and I'll put a fresh towel in the bathroom, and I'll be washing the greasy towel again in maybe 5 days times - which is a fairly short time for my bathroom towels when only I am using it. Visitors have the pleasure of a freshly washed towel in the bathroom.

  I wasted much of the day just reading and resting, although the emphasis was more on reading, and a lot of that was online. On most days I just don't have the time to read all the web pages that I once followed diligently when at work. This morning I still have two more news stories from The Register to read, and those two may be of little interest, and I may just skip through them. I also finished reading the Arthur C. Clarke book I had been reading. It was another book of short stories, and most have appeared in many anthologies, but sometimes in slightly different versions. The last story in the book was a story I had read comparatively recently, but the version I was reading was the full version where a dozen or so pages provided a setting for a shorter version. Once I had read far enough into that story to confirm that I knew the rest of it I declared the whole book to have been read. I still have another 4 Arthur C. Clarke books to read/re-read before I move on to another author - possibly Isaac Asimov.

  My evening posed a small dilemma, or maybe it didn't because I think I had made up my mind after studying the weather forecast. Basically I had two choices - Going to see Chain in a pub I don't really like, and possibly travelling in rain, and maybe even during a thunderstorm, or fiery habenero sausages and assorted canned beers from Aldi.

  By early evening I didn't even consider seeing Chain as a possibility, and cooked the sausages. I would like to say they were absolutely heavenly, but I would only go as far as saying they were good, and if they turn up again in Aldi, sometime in the future, I would buy another pack, but I won't be getting any more the next time I go shopping in Aldi.

  The beers were very enjoyable, and one in particular stood out as being rather different, and maybe only for one 330ml can, was very nice. It is the beer pictures on the left - William Brothers "Robus" grapefruit IPA. I come across, and quite like quite a few beers that us (I think) Challenger hops. Those hops impart a citrus taste that I liken to the taste of grapefruit. Most of my Thursday drinking partners do not like the taste, and they probably would not like the taste of Robus. I never bothered to do any research, such as reading what may be written on the tin (although there is another in the fridge that I could check), but my taste buds seem to tell me that in this case the taste of grapefruit is from the addition of real grapefruit juice to the beer.

  The strange thing is that I don't like grapefruit as a fruit. I find it far too bitter in most cases, but it does seem to go with beer. It is also strange that some of the beers I prefer to pass over, like bitters brewed by Youngs and Shepherd Neame, seem too bitter for my palate. There is no accounting for taste...or something.

  Anyway, I enjoyed my sausages and beer, and as I let the sausages settle down I watched some TV (and drank more beer). TV was not awful last night - which was a bit weird. They even showed Wallace And Gromit after the 6pm and London news. There is usually some old rubbish on at that time. I watched Deep Space Nine while it was on - even though Deep Space Nine is back in the doldrums again - It never was the best part of the Star Trek canon.

  I then watched a repeat (from November 2017) of Have I Got News For You, and that was followed by a repeat of QI (both on Dave). The start of QI was good, but maybe 10 minutes in I realised I could remember most of it from the last time it was repeated. I was feeling tired by then, and switched the TV off to go to bed. As is sometimes the case a thought popped up in my head to distract me.

  I was thinking that next week we have some very nice days forecast, and I ought to do something with at least one of those days (maybe 2 if I take both easy). I have an old unfulfilled desire to visit Burnham-On-Crouch, and Southminster railway stations. Burnham-On-Crouch is like a very small, very toned down version of Southend - a seaside resort that is actually on a muddy river bank instead of on the sea. I don't think it has been thought of as a seaside resort since Victorian times, but remnants remain including a small pier. The "front" (or muddy river bank) is about a quauter of a mile from the railway station.

  Southminster station is almost in the middle of nowhere - as is Southminster village - and it is a terminus station that may be deserving of be photographed. I think it has already been modernised/stripped of any charm, but maybe a few bits remain. It would be little more than 2 miles to walk from Southminster station, unfortunately probably by roads rather than foot paths, to Burnham On Crouch station. The interesting thing is that the walk passes the Mangapps Farm railway museum - a wholly artificial small railway network built to show off some old rolling stock and other memorabilia. I had always believed it be completely inaccessible with using a car, but 15 minutes spent studying a map last night showed otherwise.

  I finally went to bed feeling almost excited about this future day out, but it didn't seem to stop me falling asleep quite quickly - or at least I can't seem to remember anything after my head hit the pillow. I seemed to sleep well, but I have memories of dreaming a lot, although I can't recall what part of the night I was having these dreams. Maybe I didn't sleep well because I was most reluctant to get up this morning, and tried for more and more sleep. Maybe it is because I feel I might feel bored for a lot of today. Eventually I could sleep no longer, and got up...or at least out of bed.

  Today my first great plan is to wash and dress !! After that it is all rather hazy. I think I might end up doing some odd little jobs, although it is impossible to predict what they may be - one job may trigger an idea for another. The only slightly definite thing that I may do is to pop along to The Mitre in Greenwich for an hour or two so I can at least say I have been to one gig this weekend, and to take some snaps of Out The Box who are playing there.

  As you can plainly see, it is now pouring with rain, and even the very latest forecast says there is a 99% chance of rain.
  This is a picture of reality taken at 9am. You can see the damp patches on the shed roof towards the bottom of the centre of the picture. Those damp patches suggest there was some rain earlier in the night, but no rain seems to have fallen in the last few hours. As I write this the sky does look rather grey, but somehow the sun has found a gap in the clouds, and is shining enough to cast deep, but slightly fuzzy shadows ! This seems to leave the weather forecast in tatters, but I expects elements of it to be right. There is quite enough rain forecast, including the possibility of some thunder and lightning after midnight, that some rain is bound to fall. The bad thing at the moment is the temperature.

 It is supposed to be 16° C at the moment, but after having the window open all night, I feel freezing ! I am writing this with long lounge pants on instead of shorts, and I have a t-shirt on. I can't remember the last time I had to wear a t-shirt indoors because I felt cold. Eventually the temperature should rise to 20° C, and it should feel more comfortable. Tomorrow it could rise to a more pleasant 23° C, and there might be some more sunshine, but there may be rain in the morning. Some of it may be heavy enough for an occasional flash of lightning, and peal of thunder. If the forecast has any validity we could see a nice sunny and dry afternoon and evening. After tomorrow we may see the return to proper warm summer weather.

  It's all change today, but it may not turn out as bad as it looks. By now my garden should be well watered, but it still looks dry. I think there was some of the predicted drizzle, but not much, and while the sky looks quite threatening at the moment, it is not raining now as it should be. Maybe there will be less rain that this forecast predicts...In fact the latest prediction shows no rain from 10am onwards, and even moves the first sunny periods up to 1pm. I don't think even the latest forecast can be trusted, but I live in hope that it will be dry and bright from about 3pm until 7pm - so I can go out unencumbered with a coat. It's probably not going to be quite as warm today, but maybe only a degree less than yesterday. It is tomorrow when the temperature will be dropping a lot. Much of tomorrow may be less than 20° C, but late in the afternoon/early evening, when there is the possibility of heavy rain, and maybe even thunder storms, it might reach 21° C.

  Today is forecast to be a slightly better version of what yesterday was supposed to be, but wasn't. I fear today could also not be as good as the forecast predicts. As I write this it is supposed to be sunny, and in a way it is, but it is really attenuated sunshine. There is a lot of high cloud that is making the sky look a very pale blue, and it is filtering the sunshine, making it look rather hazy. Maybe the sky will clear later, and we will get the full strength sunshine we deserve - and we deserve it a lot because the next few days look to be pretty horrible and wet. Tomorrow in particular could end up hot and steamy.

  What started yesterday afternoon is forecast to continue in economy size today ! There is bright sunshine as I type this, and the latest revision of the forecast says this should continue for the rest of the day. By mid afternoon the temperature should rise to a nice and warm 25° C. Tomorrow should be broadly the same as today, but occasionally a few passing clouds will mean a few hours will only see sunny intervals. The temperature should also reach 25° C. It all goes wrong on Thursday - a day when the clouds will do the job of watering my garden - maybe a lot !

  Today has started off feeling very fresh. I haven't checked, but I can quite believe it is just 14° C now. Eventually the temperature will climb to 21° C, the same as yesterday, and like yesterday, after it being dull and miserable, the sun might finally break through around 5pm. Tomorrow may be very different. Lots of sunshine is forecast, and the temperature should rise to 25° C.

  This morning's forecast may have over estimated the amount of rain that would fall. It definitely did rain, but I didn't notice any heavy rain. Right now it is very overcast, and the forecast says it will stay this way until the end of the afternoon. However, the area of sky where the sun should be right now, is very bright. Maybe not enough to cast a shadow, but it suggests that the idea of the sun bursting through sometime this morning is not absolutely impossible. I can remember back in April or May when the idea of 21° C seemed like luxury, but it almost feels rather cool at this time of year - particularly with no sunshine. Maybe it will feel better if there are some sunny intervals late this afternoon. Tomorrow is going to be a dry, but colder version of today. The morning may start at just 13° C, and an overcast morning, and afternoon, will only allow the temperature to rise very slowly until it reaches a brief peak of 21° C, but 19°  or 20° C ia going to be more typical for the middle of the day.

  I do wonder if the weather forecast are correct, but issued for the wrong days. The forecast for today, as in the screenshot above, seems to show roughly what yesterday's weather was like. At the moment we should be having sunny intervals, and maybe there was an hour or so ago, but right now it is overcast, and feeling quite fresh. My thermometers all agree it is about 20° C, which doesn't sound that fresh, and seems to be an hour early according to the time scale of the forecast. It seems we have to endure an overcast sky until at least 5pm (or 6pm if everything is out by an hour), and at 7pm, in among some potential sunny periods, it may rain. The afternoon temperature may be 23° C, and with the humidity seeming to be lower today, it may be less sticky than yesterday (not sticky at all would be a good thing). Tomorrow is forecast to be much cooler, 16 or 17° until later in the afternoon, almost early evening, when 21° C might be reached. It is forecast to be very dull until around 5 or 6pm when a few sunny spells might happen.

  The forecast for today looks more how yesterday turned out, although the sunshine was a bit earlier in the day. The sun has been shining, with occasional interruptions, all morning, and lots of the sky was blue. As I look out the window now I can see some very dark looking clouds floating around. Maybe they are too small to bring a shower, but as I write this one has passed in front of the sun, and it is now quite gloomy. If the forecast is write, and sometimes it does get close to it, sometimes, it should be gloriously sunny from about 4pm, and the temperature will be up to 24° C by then. Tomorrow may not be so nice. After some sunny spells in the morning it will be gloomy until the end of the afternoon, and the current forecast says there could be a splash of light rain at 7pm. The max temperature may be a degree lower than the last two days - just 23° C.

  The latest revision to the forecast is very similar to the screenshot above, but now it says there will be sunny intervals all through the day. The temperature profile is the same shape, but now it is thought that the temperature will peak at 25° C. I expect tomorrow will feel similar to today, but it may be a degree or two cooler, and start a bit duller. In compensation there could be some hours of non stop sunshine at the end of the day, but I expect that the forecast tomorrow morning will tell a completely different story.

  The most recent revision to the weather forecast correctly shows that it is nasty and overcast at the moment, but also dangles the carrot of hope that the sun may eventually break through the thick grey soup of the current sky later. It also warns of a shower at 4pm. That could be good with the temperature up at around 25° C, but it makes me wonder if it is going to be light rain or a thunderstorm in that warmth. Tomorrow is currently thought to have a sunny morning, and a sunny late afternoon, and a sunless early and mid afternoon. The temperature could be 24° C at best. It is currently looking like there will be no high summer days for the rest of this month. Sunny spells are all that is on offer for as far ahead as the current forecast goes (with is the 23rd July). Fortunately the forecasts for more than 12 hours ahead are usually completely wrong. Maybe it will snow !

  I've refreshed the weather web page many times, but it hasn't significantly changed from the early morning screenshot above. It is going to be a dull and gloomy day with a very small hope of a glimpse of sunshine just before the sun sets. From late afternoon there is a small - 9 or 10% - chance of rain, but no actual rain is predicted. This morning felt a bit cool, but the 21° C forecast for this afternoon should feel comfortable even if it doesn't actually feel warm in the sunless gloom. Actually it is not that gloomy, but it is a bit gloomy as I wrote this. Tomorrow is also predicted to be overcast, and once again no rain is shown as falling, but there is up to a 19% of it happening (?????). Even without any sunshine until possibly very late afternoon, the 25° C should feel warm, and probably sticky too.

  The latest revision to the forecast says the sunny spells we are currently enjoying may now last to 1pm, and after several hours of overcast skies, will return again by 6pm...maybe. It should be a little warmer today, 21° C, but under a grey sky it still might feel cooler than it was in the sunshine yesterday. Tomorrow could be very similar to today, at least as far as the temperature goes, but the current forecast shows no sunshine until a possible sunny spell just before sunset.

  The forecast says light rain followed by drizzle, but in reality I would describe both as drizzle. It is a wet start to the day, but that means I don't have to water the garden, and because the rain should be stopping soon it is forgiveable. The rest of the day will just be overcast, heavy at first, and lighter later on, but there seems there might be a chance of a few sunny spells in the last few hours before sunset. At best it is going top be 19° C, and probably feeling fresh as a result. Tomorrow should see the temperature back up to 20 or 21° C, and probably sunny periods through the day.

  The forecast for today seems to be getting better and worse ! Yesterday the forecast for today said it would basically be a rather gloomy day, but this morning was bright and sunny. We are now in the sunny periods part of the morning, but the amount of sunshine seems quite generous so far. The latest revision of the forecast now says these sunny periods could last until 1pm. The bad news is that the rain, which I don't think existed in yesterday's version of the forecast, has been brought forward to start at 9pm, and will continue into the small hours of tomorrow. Most of tomorrow will be dull, but it is possible there may be some very late afternoon sunshine. Today's temperature may be 22° C, but tomorrow it will probably be no more than 20° C.

  Today should have all the attributes of yesterday - clear blue skies, and hot sunshine - but it could be two degrees warmer. It might only last for a short period of time, but the temperature should hit 27° C today. By contrast, tomorrow could almost be a nasty sort of day. Some sunny spells are expected in the early morning, but by this time tomorrow it could be getting overcast, and the rest of the day will be dull. Not only dull, but much cooler - maybe 22° C at best. Sunday will be even worse - the temperature may only just hit 20° C. The day will be very dull, and there is a very small, but creditable chance of rain in the morning. Of course by the time we reach Sunday the forecast could have, and probably will have changed out of all recognition.

  It is not going to be as good as it was at the end of June, but today sees the start of another mini heatwave. Today should see nothing but blue skies, and glorious sunshine. It should push the temperature up to 25° C. Tomorrow will be almost the same except the temperature may hit 26° C. After tomorrow things get back to what is supposed to be "normal" - just sunny spells and 21° C - although this does assume that any forecast more than 20 minutes in advance of reality can ever predict reality.

  This morning seems nice enough. There is a lot of blue sky with fluffy clouds. Of course as I wrote those words a fluffy cloud has just sat in front of the sun, and it is now rather dull - perhaps only for a few minutes. Today is not forecast to be particularly warm, but it is going to get there earlier. It seems fairly mild at the moment, and by midday it should be 20° C. By 3pm it is supposed to max out at 21° C. The sad thing is that from midday the forecast says we will lose the sunshine for 4 hours, but after that sunny periods re-start, and they should get longer until there is non stop sunshine from 6pm until sunset. That sets the scene for tomorrow. The forecast for tomorrow has gone through many ups and downs over the last week or so, but the latest forecast is one of the ups - sunshine all day, and 25° C !

  Today will be similar to yesterday, but maybe a bit more extreme. This morning is bright and sunny, but of the forecast holds, and the latest revision doesn't suggest it will, the afternoon is going to be rather dull, but there could be some sunny intervals in the evening. The latest forecast revision shows several more hours at 21° C than the screenshot above. Some extra cloud tonight may help keep the temperature dropping so low as last night. Tomorrow follows the pattern of today and the day before, but each day seems to have fewer sunny spells, or intervals. Thursday may see a return to weather that seems appropriate for July - hot and sunny !

  I was expecting today to be similar to yesterday, and the latest revision to the forecast moves in that direction, but it seems there will be nothing better than sunny spells through the day, and the maximum temperature is going to be a couple of degrees less. The maximum today may be just 21° C, but at least it should be a perfectly dry day. Oddly enough, the latest forecast for tomorrow is almost exactly the same as the earlier forecast for today in the screenshot above.