07:49 BST

  It it rather dull, so far this morning, but the temperature is still around 22° C. The sun should break through sooner or later, and this afternoon should (or could) see non stop sunshine until sunset. That could take the afternoon temperature up to 29° C.  Tomorrow may see full sunshine from dawn to dusk, and the temperature may reach 32° C. The day after could be the same, but Wednesday may see some rain.

  Yesterday was another not very productive day, and some of that was Evri's fault, but more about that later. I can't seem to remember why I ended up having a very lazy day. All I do know is that I did manage to do one important thing, and also some photo editing.

  My day started off pretty normally yesterday. I wrote yesterday's 2,402 words (I seem to be getting wordier and wordier), and then I had my usual rest. It was probably during that rest that I got 4 emails from my sister in Devon. They were in response to my email to her with some general news, and asking if she had a better quality picture of the one I recently showed of myself, my sister and mum in the caravan park in Leysdown where we stayed for a week, two years running in 1966 or 1967.

 All my sister could do was to take a picture of the picture (firmly glued in a scrapbook) using her iPad. It was basically a good copy, but it needed some work to straighten it up, and to correct some Trapezium distortion where it was taken at a bit of an angle. I also improved the contrast, and sharpened it up a bit.

  I think it looks pretty good now, and considering it was probably taken on an ancient Koday "Box Brownie" camera, pretty excellent. Those old cameras had (in my opinion) hard to use viewfinder. It was a tiny window at the top of the camera you looked down. The exposure time was fixed, and possibly slower than 1/100th of a second. The only control was a slider that changed the aperture from small for bright daylight pictures, and bigger for overcast daylight pictures. Indoor photography pushed the limits of the slow film used (although there may have been faster films available from specialist shops.

  The picture shows me, my younger sister, and my mum around a water tap on the caravan site at Leysdown. I am sure we were washing cockles harvested from the muddy sand. I can remember a very gritty dinner of cockle sandwiches. The amazing thing is that no one suffered a gut upset !


  The previous picture I had seen before, but only a very low quality (photocopier quality) version. This picture I had no idea existed until it arrived by email yesterday morning. Once again it was a picture of a picture taken with an iPad, and  had to do some work to get it looking nice.

  It shows my mum and dad, and behind them is the old Bedford Dormobile that my dad drove. It was not exactly a family car, and the important thing about it was that the back was big enough for some of the big TVs and things like Radiograms that my dad used to repair in his shop in Forest Hill.

  I knew that van quite intimately. When first bought, second hand, it was my job to climb underneath and use a wire brush to clean all the rust off the underside. I would then treat it with Jenolight, a rust remover, and then paint it all with bitumen paint.

  This was all done over a series of Sunday mornings, parked up on the hard standing outside the shop. I really enjoyed those sessions, and I even had my own blue boiler suit that matched my dad's and kept my clothes clean.


  I also did what I could to help when my dad bought a semi refurbished engine block, and replaced the poor engine with a far better one. It was probably after all that hard work that the van was considered reliable enough for runs to the coast. 50 miles to Leysdown seemed an awful long way to me. We did have one minor breakdown, but it was only a flat tyre, and my dad, possibly with the help of one of my older brothers, or maybe just my mum, repaired it at the side of the road. It was probably a good thing that it was not a tubeless tyre, and just needed a rubber patch on the inner tube.



  Another picture I never knew existed was this one. It shows my dad, my mum, and younger sister sitting in the back garden of where we used to live. That whole terrace of houses was demolished to make way for the multi-storey car park next to the Tesco store in Catford.

  One observation made by a friend was that my dad was wearing a shirt and tie to sit out in the garden. I think that the angle of the sun suggests it was late afternoon, and that it was possible it was a specially posed picture soon after my dad came home for work. I don't recall my dad wearing a tie when indoors, but than again I have no special memory of him indoors after all these years.

  The other thing about this picture is that there is a possibility that I was the cameraman. The way the main subjects are not in the centre is a possible indicator it was me. On the other hand it is also possible I might have been on the right of my mum and younger sister, and the photo was so badly framed that I was outside the frame !




  I could not claim to be a great photo editor, but I am quite pleased with my work doing several simple things (simple if you know how) to get these pictures looking as good as they do, and I think for pictures taken with a very simple camera in the mid 1960s they are very good, and more so when considering how they reached me - as pictures of the pictures taken on an iPad. I must also acknowledge the skill of the man who developed the negatives, and then printed the pictures. It would have taken much care when they started off from a camera with no real exposure control.

  After another rest I tackled the job that had been waiting for me overnight - a big bucketful of laundry that was in it's first rinse water. As I think I mentioned yesterday, it consisted of one pair of lounge pants, and a lot of underpants. yesterday I counted them. There were 8 pairs of underpants, and while wringing out one pair of underpants is easy, bending down 8 times to pluck them out of the rinse water (and at the end the fabric conditioner) takes it's toll.

   I should have finished the job in one continuous go, but once again I had to stop to go to the toilet in the middle of it. Having taken off my rubber gloves, and then washed my hands after the toilet, I took the opportunity to read a few pages from my book. Fortunately it was still quite early, and the sun was not fully out. I think it was as I was hanging it all on the washing line that the sun broke through full blast, and quite a few hours later I would bring that washing in, sun baked dry.

  At some earlier time in this narrative I had some lunch. I think it was around 1pm. It was a fairly safe lunch, or would have been if I had shown a bit of restraint. It was rice crackers with two very small pots of fish pâté. One was smoked mackerel, and the other was crab. Both were "sort of" nice. It was the second time I had the smoked mackerel pâté, and I find it nice, but I wish the pot was a bit bigger. The crab pâté was bought out of curiosity. I suppose it was nice, but it was not very nice. If there was anything bad about it, it was that it was underwhelming. I also ate more rice crackers to scoop up some tomato and chilli "whipped cheese". I suspect that was probably fairly unhealthy.

  As 6pm approached it felt like time for dinner. There were several possibilities in the fridge, and I chose a Tesco ready meal of "Chinese style" chicken in black bean sauce with egg fried rice. It was not bad, but not good either. The rice was sort of gritty, and the black bean sauce didn't taste very "beany" like a real Chinese takeaway. The only good thing is that I did not eat it until it had cooled down a fair bit.

  I had been sent a message saying my next Aliexpress package would be delivered by Evri between 4 and 6pm. I decided to eat after it was delivered. I waited and waited until it was about 6:20pm before I ate my dinner. I then waited and waited and waited. It was 8:14pm before I got a message from Evri saying that my packet would not be delivered that day. There was no reason given, and no apology given. I was not happy about that, and it felt like I had wasted the whole evening. I had some naughty comfort food, and ruined my blood glucose readings this morning.

  By 9pm I was ready for bed, but by then it was very hot and stuffy in my bedroom. That didn't seem to matter, and I fell asleep very quickly, but only for about an hour or maybe 90 minutes. I woke up slightly needing a pee, which I had, and then I had to start changing a few things before trying for sleep again. I was using a fan, but I worried that would chill me too much, and decided for natural ventilation and no fan.

  That almost worked until I heard a very loud noise outside. It sounded like someone had had a red hot poler up their bottom, but I think it was actually a fox, possibly interrupted while seeing to Mrs fox, and having to uncouple faster than desirable to flee from a group of people coming down the road. After that it was quiet again. After midnight it seemed to have cooled down outside, although it was still very hot in my bedroom even with the window open.

  There were several times I woke up for a small pee, and each time it seemed like I would not get to sleep again, and every time the next thing I knew was that I was waking up again maybe a couple of hours later. I'm not sure if it was good sleep, but it was definitely sleep, and as far as I can recall, it was almost dreamless sleep. I do feel sure that I did have several dreams, but none seem to have left any more than a slight blur on the picture of my night.

  Yesterday I mentioned that I had taken a laxative tablet in the morning, instead of the recommended "before bed". It definitely worked later in the day yesterday, and it seems it is still working this morning. I had a poo as well as a pee when I first got up, and then weighed myself. it was quite pleasing. I seemed to be 700gm lighter this morning, and I had not only crossed the threshold to the next full number of kg down, but had done it with plenty to spare.

  I have had breakfast since, and the other two visits to the toilet don't count today when it come to my weight. With luck, and with possibly more care than I can manage, they may cont towards tomorrows weight. meanwhile I am feeling fairly empty, but maybe not fully empty yet. It is possible that in the next half hour I may find myself back on the toilet again.

  It sounds like my blood glucose should be nice and low this morning. Maybe it would have been if I had not had my late night snack. It might even have been lower if I had not had the "Chinese style" ready meal. The nutritional info on it said the sugar content was medium low, but I have my doubts. My readings were all high this morning. The Contour meter read 9.6mmol/l, and that is far too near the read line at 10.0mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 9.0mmol/l, and while a fair bit lower, it is above my self imposed limit, or actually just on it. The Sinocare meter read high as usual, but at least 9.8mmol/l is still below the red line, and this time not a lot higher than  the Contour meter.

  I was forced to get up, or at least to get decent earlier than I might on a Sunday. At 7:11am I got a message to say my Aliexpress packet, that should have been delivered yesterday, would be delivered this morning. It was, but not until towards the end of the estimated delivery time. It was just before 9am when it was delivered. it was 50 spare test strips for my new Contour Plus meter - which I have not get yet.

  The Contour Plus meter is scheduled to be delivered by Royal Mail on Tuesday morning. There was a warning that the Contour Plus test strips are incompatible with the ordinary Contour meter. Of course I had to check that for myself, and it is true. The meter throws an error code 4, one I have never seen before, and the pattern of the connector at the end of the strip is slightly different. The one thing I hope for now is that the new meter, when it arrives, starts off in English because I think the manual will be entirely in Chinese !

  Once I have finished writing this I will have a rest, and then I look forward to having a good shower, and washing my hair. I didn't wash at all yesterday, and after a hot and sticky night, I feel disgusting. What happens after that is a sort of mystery.  I am expecting a parcel delivery from Amazon, and as usual it will probably be late in the afternoon, if not very late in the afternoon or even mid evening. That should leave me time to either go shopping in Tesco, or to go for a walk. A walk would probably be beneficial, and maybe even enjoyable if the sun comes out properly.  There is still a lot of cloud in the sky, but for the first time the sun seems to be shining now.
  I finish with a poor quality picture taken yesterday afternoon through my less than clean kitchen window. (It is now considerably cleaner). This blurry image shows a mouse, identical to those I have caught in my kitchen, on a plant, probably eating new flower buds. I think the plant it is on is what is often referred to as a false nettle - which may give some idea of the scale of things. The mouse is probably only about 2 inches long, plus another 2 inches for it's tail.