Story completed

Cold and overcast again today and a good seven and a half hour's sleep, though not quite enough. By the time I had breakfast I began to feel light headed, as if I'd just woken up in the middle of the night. After saying Morning Prayer I fell asleep in the chair for another hour, and woke up feeling much better. In the meanwhile Clare had done most of the shared house cleaning chores, and left the vacuum cleaner in the lounge where I was asleep, to finish off the last room and empty it ready for next time. Somewhat revived, I started making a batch of bread dough. On this occasion it had a higher percentage of strong white flour in the mix as we'd run out of the kind we routinely use. It was interesting to feel the difference in handling this dough. It started out dry and difficult to knead together, but ended up smooth and sticky. 

Just after I'd started kneading, my mobile phone went off and it was Tim from the surgery checking how I am after my A&E crisis - the discharge letter landed in their in-tray this morning. I was pleased to report on my recovery and its manageable ups and downs. Just as pleased that my hands weren't sticky the way they usually are at the early stage. What a good idea to have a follow up phone call, so that I could report recovery is progressing and there's nothing to worry about. It saves them from having to book me in for a surgery visit (hopefully) to check my blood pressure and find nothing has changed. The same pattern now as when I was discharged with high systolic pressure after my gall bladder op. Same old remedy. Expect to recover more slowly than I presume, rest more, carry on as normal otherwise.

I made a lentil for lunch with celery carrot and onion grated and then cooked together in oil before adding in the half cooked lentils to finish off. Simple and quick to cook once you've passed prepared veg through a food processor. Cleaning the food processor takes time afterward unfortunately, but you can add all sorts of flavours to the mix, depending on what you fancy.

Lots more rain on the eastern Spanish coast today, as far as Barcelona. A big row has broken out between Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Carlos Mazon head of the Valencia & Alicante regional government, due to the slow local government response to extreme weather warnings given eight hours ahead. For all the weather data in hand, the complexity of the impact of such a fast and heavy deluge when it arrives is I suspect far harder to assess because of the random mix of environmental factors, just working out where and when the worst affected places will enter the crisis is impossible to predict with total accuracy.  This is what catastrophe theory tells us, I believe.

The bread was ready to be knocked back and put into baking tins by the time we'd eaten. It rose quickly and was out of the oven, cooked by three. We went for a circuit of the park, then I did another longer one on my own, and got back after it had got dark. After supper, I wrote for nearly three hours and completed my speculative account of my Grandpa's adventure to America, from which he returned to marry Grandma and make our family identity for what it is.