08:15 BST

  There had been some rain when I opened the curtains this morning, and I have to admit the sky looks like there could be another shower soon, but at the moment it seems dry outside. The Met Office forecast for today is different to the BBC forecast (above). The significant thing is that it shows no thunderstorms, but it does show the first rain falling at 1pm, and after 2pm it could get quite heavy at times. By 3pm the sky may get lighter, but there will still be heavy rain. It forecasts the rain will stop an hour earlier than the BBC at 9pm. Both forecasters agree the maximum temperature today will be just 16° C. Tomorrow could see 17° C. It should start bright and sunny, but the afternoon will be dull until there are sunny spells in the evening. After tomorrow the weather should get warmer and sunnier for a week or more.

  I find I don't have a lot of good things to say about yesterday. I had quite a few disappointments. A lot of the day was the boring waiting game - waiting for an Amazon delivery. It should have brought a lot of joy, but it actually brought frustration.

  Yesterday morning was probably the same as many other mornings.  I wrote about the day before, plus some notes about the night and the morning, and then had my usual rest. One thing of note is that I had another packet of Korean chicken in black bean sauce instant noodles. This time I added a little less water - about the right amount on this second attempt. I would have thought that would make it even more fiery, but it was almost tame. No burning mouth, and no breaking out into a fierce sweat.

  I think it was still raining as I started my rest, and possible still raining when I was ready to do stuff. I had no essential reasons to go out, although I had been hoping I might nip out to the shops. I decided that I would not venture out into the rain, and in another hour or two it was possible my Amazon delivery would arrive. Instead of having a shower, I put quite a lot of laundry in to soak in detergent.

  I have to admit I had one ready made roll, and one ready made wrap waiting for me in the fridge (both bought the day before from the reduced price shelf in Tesco), and I was looking forward to eating them a bit more intently than was probably good for me. Once I had put the laundry in to soak it was just about midday, and that seemed late enough for lunch. I think that by then the rain had stopped, and we had the first sunny spells. If I could have had a shower at that point I could have gone out shopping, but with a big bucket of laundry in the bathtub I could do nothing.

  The ham and cheese roll (mini sub) was nice, but in a sort of bland way. The wrap, filled with chicken and some sort of unknown sauce and some vegetables, was more healthy than the roll, and it was rather nice too. If such things were sold at half price I would want to have more of them, but the full price seems just too extravagant for my tastes. I was just about to have another rest after finishing eating when there was a mild thump from downstairs.

  It was a mail delivery, and it included quite a few items. The spam message from Sun Life went straight into the bin. Another item was my latest bills from EDF energy. Both my gas and electric are now in credit, although there is not much credit on the electricity bill. There were three letters for Patricia, and I heard from her recently. She may visit me in September, but I expect it will be a flying visit and there will be no time to go through her ever increasing pile of letters. Most are bank statements that she doesn't even need because she does it all on line from wherever she is in the world.

  One other thing in the post was a small item ordered form Amazon - a packet of screen protectors for my new phone, that would be delivered a lot later at the end of the afternoon. I would later find they were not for my phone, but for an almost identical phone that didn't have the suffix "Smart" at the end of the model number. This was the first of several disappointments coming later.

  I can't say I did much for most of the afternoon. I did almost finish the laundry, but stopped with it in the last rinse water. I thought I would have time to do the last, "fabric conditioner" stage a bit later, but I ended up being distracted very little by TV, and then a lot more by the arrival of my Amazon delivery. It was earlier than I had estimated - about 4.45pm instead of possibly as late as 7pm (and occasionally even later).

  The most important item, because it was the most expensive (£132) was my new (spare) mobile phone. I gave it a brief look at, but put it on charge while I checked out what was a surprisingly large box of printer inks, 6 full sets of them, for my Canon Pixma printer. I put a new set of inks in the printer, and tried a test print. It showed that several colours were not printing. In fact it was hardly any better than with the old ink cartridges in it.

  To cut a long story short, I began to realise that the cartridges, unlike some makes, do not have the printing nozzle on them. The cartridge just feeds ink to it's nozzle, and it was the nozzle itself that was clogged with dried ink. I have no idea how to clean those nozzles, or even if it is possible. There is hope that eventually the new ink will slowly soften the dried ink. A test print this morning showed that the black ink is now almost working, but the magenta ink is still clogged. Later today I will do a lot more test prints to see if all the nozzles clear.

  My new (spare) phone is an Honor 200 5G Smart. The suffix "Smart" is very important because without it you order the wrong size screen protectors, and protective case - and I did ! The most annoying thing about the phone is the way the screen works. To clear an app you have to swipe left from the middle of the right hand edge of the screen. Once you get used it it, it is not that mad, but clearly still insane. I got used to it fairly quick once I discovered you can do that.

  The second major bother is that the whole point of the new phone is that it can work on the 5G frequencies/protocols. Unfortunately there seems to be no 5G service here, although I did see the indicator flash up 5G very briefly when hanging out the bathroom window.  For a lot of last year Smarty, a subdivision of 3 kept messaging me saying my old phone needed retiring because I would get far faster downloads using a 5G phone.

  Maybe a short walk will bring in a nice 5G signal, and I will eventually get those faster download speeds. With this phone I can't even switch down to 3G that seemed to have a better service than 4G. The 4G service from Smarty is so bad that my download speed is often little more than an old dial up modem. Fortunately the 4G service from giffgaff, as used on my everyday mobile phone, is usually pretty good.
  The picture above was taken at 8:17pm on my new phone. In such miserable light it seems the camera can work well. It is not as versatile as the camera in my main phone, the Hauwei P30 pro. There are options I have yet to explore, and maybe there are things still to be discovered. It was not long before I took this picture that I discovered I could set the picture aspect ratio to 16:9 instead of 4:3. The real hard test will be to see what it can do with moving trains. Maybe I might use it for some local train photography, but I'll stick to a DSLR camera for any train spotting outings.

  I was still fiddling around with the phone even while I was in bed, but after the initial discovery I stopped for some dinner while phone continued to charge. I had a very simple dinner of ready to eat roast chicken breasts. Like I did the last time I bought some, I ate two, just using my fingers, but instead of putting blobs of pickle on each bite I put Kimchi on them. The Kimchi I bought from Tesco was rather disappointing compared to the jar I bought from Aldi (but only the Kimchi with chilli flavour).

  The good thing is that it should all have been low sugar and moderately low in Calories. I was going to top it off with some fruit, but even that can add a bit more sugar than is good for me. I had half a dozen sugar free, very small, chocolate chip cookies. I washed it all down with chilled tap water, and I was guzzling more of it during the evening. Our tap water is not so nice when it has been standing around for an hour or so, and so I had Diet Coke as my bed side drink.

  I watched both Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine last night, but there was too much to amuse me with the new phone, and doing test prints on my Canon printer to pay all that much attention to either programme. At 9pm I headed for bed. I mostly read in bed, but from time to time I would get curious, and try something on my new phone. I think it was just before 11pm when I put down book and phone, and turned out the light. It was another of those nights when I laid on my bed thinking that I would never get to sleep, and then maybe 10 minutes later I was snoring (and maybe I was literally snoring - who knows ?).

  I had a very typical night. I was waking up every 2 or 3 hours to pee, and it seemed like I was peeing a lot. It was another night when I almost remembered one dream,but that memory has now evaporated. The only notable thing about last night was waking at approx 4:45am. It was almost  light outside (and it was as light as some the greyest days we have had). It took me a few minutes to convince myself it was definitely not time to get up yet.

  I did get up just after 6am, and I was semi keen to go for a pee. I had expected I would have a poo, but that never happened. In one respect it didn't need to happen. I had obviously done enough pee that when I got on the scales I found my weight was exactly the same at the rather rare low weight I weighed on Thursday morning prior to going to see the nurse for my checkup. With care it is even possible that I might start to match some of the even lower weights I recorded back in 2021 when I was doing all my long distance walking. What I have to remember is that many, if not most of those not very much lower readings were taken after coming back from a long and sweaty walk, and when I was quite dehydrate.

  This morning my blood glucose readings average of all three meters was a little bit higher than the last few days, and yet the readings themselves were better. The Contour meter read 8.6mmol/l. That is fairly typical even if higher than I try and reach. The GlucoRX meter 8.1mmol/l, and that is semi good. The Sinocare meter read 8.9mmol/l. That is higher than the other two again, but not that much higher, and could still be called typical.

  I must admit I was hoping that today I might have seen a reading or two in the sevens (my self set target is 7.5mmol/l). I thought I had eaten carefully enough to achieve that. I wonder if it is possible I am slowly transitioning to type 1 diabetes, and will have to go on to become an insulin user. It would be ironic to do it just when I am managing to control my weight better, and presumably losing some belly fat - the prime cause of insulin resistance. It is only recently that I think I may have lost almost an inch around my waist, but the biggest reduction is, or so I kid myself, higher up. I probably delude myself that my belly bulge is less than it used to be.

   I have the vaguest of plans for today. One thing for sure is to finish the laundry I started yesterday, and get that hanging up to dry. I can then have a shower. After that I will check the weather. If there is no more than an occasional bit of light drizzle, I may go shopping. If there is no rain, and like right now, some sun squeezing through small gaps in the dark clouds, I may go for a walk in the park. That walk would give me a chance to check the tracking app on my new phone, and also to see if I can find any 5G signals out there ! It is highly unlikely, but I could go to a gig this evening.