So far, the forecast for today has been almost right. The change from heavy cloud to light cloud seems to have happened a bit early, and while the cloud cover is still 100% it is now slightly lighter than gloomy. Once again a rain free day is forecast. I hope that it more reliable than the forecast for yesterday. It is probably going to be quite a cool day with the temperature no higher than 8° C - and the latest revision says it won't hit 8° C until midnight ! Most of the day will be only 7° C. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be mostly heavily overcast, but dry. It may also be a bit warmer with much of the day predicted to be 11° C.
  Today marks the start of a new format for these pages - assuming the plan I am making up as I continue to write works. The basic idea is to try and keep the size of the monthly pages (i.e. January) down to a more sane size. To do this I have to try and only copy a précis of today's events to the monthly page, and then provide a link to a copy of each daily page with the full, long winded version.

 I had been hoping to meet Angela for lunch yesterday, but after I messaged her to say I would be in the pub, she quickly replied to say that she was meeting lover boy at lunchtime. It was something that I knew would be happening sooner or later, and I guess this time she could not say no. That left me feeling a little sad, but mostly it killed any enthusiasm to go out on a horribly overcast day for a bit of exercise. I must admit I was probably only going to walk by the shortest route to and from the pub had I gone out.

  It was fortunate that there were other things I could, and should do. These things were housework. They included washing a bath towel and hand towel. Doing some washing up that I had neglected for a few days, and a bit of tidying up. The tidying up included dumping an old LCD computer monitor in the black wheelie bin. It was a good monitor when it worked, but it had a most annoying intermittent fault that would make the display suddenly look very weird. I thought I had fixed a dry joint several times before, but the fault must have been elsewhere. Maybe the last repair was permanent, but I wasn't actually using it, and so in the bin it went.

  It was while putting it in the bin that a car started beeping at me. I didn't have my long distance glasses on, but a good long stare suggested it was my neighbour (from round the corner, near the corner shop) Michael. Once he wound the window down I was able to confirm it was him. He has just been driving past when he spotted me. He had to get some shopping, but suggested that maybe we could meet for a beer in a couple of hours.

  Micheal suggested 2.30pm, and I suggested he call me when he was ready, and I would meet him by the corner shop. We could then discuss where we would be going. At about 2.30pm the call came through, and I went to meet him. I suggested we go to The Black Cat, but Michael wasn't keen. We had to pop into Tesco first because Michael had forgotten to buy some ginger root on his earlier shopping treat. That put us close to The Black Cat, and we had a look through the window.

  It looked OK to me. It was fairly quiet, but not deserted. Michael said he preferred somewhere with a bit more life, and so we walked on to the Wetherspoons pub. That was full of life - mostly low life, but it was a Wetherspoons ! Unfortunately it had very few bar staff on duty, and after waiting for 10 minutes, with several people who had been waiting even longer, I announced (to Michael) that I was bored, and wanted to go elsewhere.

  One of Michael's other suggestion was The Ninth Life (once called The Black Horse And Harrow). We went there, and the service was much better, although the ambience, while rather different to the Wetherspoons, was not to my liking, but at least it wasn't repelling. We had two pints of beer in there before leaving. The most direct route home would take us past The Black Cat, and I suggested that if Michael fancied one more pint, or needed a wee, we could pop in there - which we did.

  We had one more pint of beer in there before I walked Michael back as far as the corner shop. It was fortunate (I think) that I had eaten some sausages at lunchtime to help line my stomach before I met Angela. Of course I didn't meet Angela, but I did have three unexpected pints of beer with Michael. The first pint was called Mary Christmas, and it was rather nice. The second pint was called Lambeth Walk, and it was a porter, although I think I would have called it a stout.
  I was slightly dubious about the Lambeth Walk. I expected it to be either quite good, or maybe not so nice. In fact it was horrible. It didn't mention it, but it had a very bitter coffee taste, and may have even used coffee in it's recipe. It was a good reminder of why I don't drink coffee ! The third pint, bought in The Black Cat, was surprisingly nice. I have never been keen on Youngs Beers (old style Winter Warmer excepted !!!), but "London Original" was very nice. I suppose that should have been predictable.

  It might say it was brewed by Youngs, but in reality it was (probably) brewed by Marstons who originally was supposed to have amalgamated with Youngs. As is usual, the bigger brewery smothered the smaller brewery, and the Youngs brewery in Wandsworth was shut down, and part demolished (maybe all demolished now). This beer was most probably brewed in Bedfordshire, and not London.

  There is a possibility that I am wrong. If the last bit of the old Wandsworth brewery still stands, it is possible they may have started some limited brewing there again, but the flavour of the beer suggests it was not brewed by any of the original staff from the Wandsworth brewery - it was too nice for that.

   I may have had sausages at lunchtime, but I was pretty hungry when I got home after out small pub crawl. I had pondered upon the idea of getting a takeaway before drinking, but the beer probably reinforced the idea. It felt a bit too early to make an order there and then, and I waited until 5.30pm before going on line. My choice, as is standard while I am on my diet, was shish kebab, and my intention was to not get carried away when ordering.

  My search for suitable sources of food on "Just Eat", guided by the Food Standards Agency web site, fell on "Hither Grill". I had not used them before. I was possibly put off by a £4 deliver fee for orders worth less than £12. That would not apply to me - particularly when I discovered they did one extra flavour of shish kebab. It was jerk chicken shish kebab, and it had to be tried. I ended up ordering lamb shish, chicken shish, jerk chicken shish, and also grilled wings. That took the order very comfortably, by a large margin, past £12 !

  My order turned up quite quickly, and came with a free bottle of undrinkable, full sugar, Sprite. That may have been because I was a new customer, or just a standard feature for expensive orders. I suspect that the portions of meat in my kebabs may have been bigger than usual because they wanted to impress a new customer. I am sure I've had that treatment from quite a few restaurants of various cuisines.

  The lamb shish seemed very good compared to some other places. The chicken shish was probably more typical. As usual I ate the meat and salad, and discarded the pitta bread - full of carbohydrates, plus it had soaked up most of any excess fat or oil. At that point I should have stopped eating, but the jerk chicken shish intrigued me, and I had to try it. I think I liked it - enough to definitely ordering another at some future date. I still had the grilled wings for dinner today - as the jerk chicken shish was intended to be.

  I washed my dinner down with some vodka, and soon felt quite tired. After watching to the end of Star Trek : Voyager I decided I would go to bed to do some reading.  I feel sure that I had turned out the light, and was fast asleep by, and maybe even before 9pm. My first 4 hours of sleep seemed very good. I even slept through most of the New Year's Eve fireworks. After that 4 hours of sleep I could not get back to sleep for something like 2 hours, but then I managed to get another 3 or 4 hours of sleep.

  One of the first things I did this morning was to ring the National Railcard help line. I was only 90% sure they would be taking calls on a bank holiday, but they were, and the speed of their answer caught me unaware ! Having been stymied by their website asking me to prove my age to renew a currently valid Senior Railcard, by any of three means - none of which I had - I resorted to try and do it by phone. It was a long process, and involved several waits with music on hold as the operator consulted his superiors, but finally it was done. I still had to prove my age by emailing the operator a picture of my birth certificate.

  Once that was saved on their system, which needed two tries, things became fairly straightforward. My order was taken, and paid by credit card. I was warned that it might take a bit longer than the usual 5 days to get the new card to me, but my card does not expire until the 9th, and even then I may not want to use the new card until a sunny days comes along. Getting that job done, which meant spending 40 minutes on the phone, and writing this (with a bit of ad hoc web design along the way) has taken me into the afternoon. Oh, there was another distraction from my friend Lee who kept me on the phone for a long time.

  I have no idea what I will be doing for the rest of the day. I ought to be going for a long walk to walk off some of the excess kebab from yesterday, but maybe it's not needed. My weight this morning wasn't too bad, and my blood glucose level was fair. On the other hand I feel I ought to do some sort of preparation for tomorrow. Tomorrow, at 11am, I have an appointment that was inflicted up on me, to see the hospital Dietician.

  The letter that came to tell me when and where the appointment was, also seemed to suggest that I would be put through the standard battery of tests - blood glucose, blood pressure, and weight - before seeing the Dietician. I can't do much about my blood pressure. It was will be high, probably very high, when taken in clinical surroundings, but at least I can show them 3 months worth of twice daily home readings that are much lower. I can do something about my blood glucose level by being very careful about what, and how much I eat. I can try and use some sort of will power today to try and keep that nice and low. If they do an Hba1c blood test, which checks the average blood glucose level over the last 2 to 3 months, it should come out very improved over the last one - I hope ! As for my weight. It has gone down since they last measured me, but I was hoping to have lost at least twice what I have actually lost. Oh well, by this time tomorrow it will all be over, and maybe 10 minutes later, this time tomorrow I will be having a drink with Angela.