As I write this the sky is blue, and the sun is shining, and it is very chilly ! It seems the forecast for today has got off to a good start. This morning it hasn't been cold enough for a frost, but at just 5° C it was only a few degrees away. I think it was a little under 5° C when I checked my thermometer. It seems that with the possible exception of 1pm, when there may only be sunny spells, the whole of today's daylight hours will feature non stop sunshine. That will still only raise the temperature to 8° C ! The sky may stay partly clear tonight, and that means tomorrow will start even colder. 4° C is predicted now, but maybe tomorrow's reality could be a frosty start. The morning is predicted to be cloudy (or lightly overcast as I apparently incorrectly call it). Most of the afternoon will feature grey clouds, and will be officially overcast, and after dark it will probably rain.

 
  Yesterday was a very depressing day. With the cold, and the grey skies, yesterday was very, very unexciting ! I felt no incentive to do anything. It felt so crap that this morning I have to constantly remind myself that yesterday was not a Sunday. Sundays usually being dull and depressing days. The one very positive thing I did was to get up early enough to go shopping in Aldi while it was still very quiet, soon after they opened.

  It was probably a mistake to have the breaded fish I ate for breakfast. As I mentioned yesterday morning, that fish was half price because it was on it's use by date, and it did smell a bit "fishy" when I opened the packet. My initial idea was to have half of it for breakfast. With hindsight I realise I should have had all the fish for dinner. Having all that fish in the morning just left me feeling very sluggish. That was the last thing I wanted to feel on a grim day like yesterday.

  Through the course of the day I did try and be careful of what I ate with mixed success. One thing in particular turned out to be delicious enough to eat rather more than I should. It was some cheese I had bought in the morning. It was a seasonal special - although I am not sure what season it really matched. It was Red Leicester cheese with mango chutney in it. I got through too much of it on barbecue flavoured rice crackers. I didn't check, but I assume the mango chutney would have introduced a lot of sugar into the cheese.

  It wasn't until 2 or even 3pm that I made a start on doing something useful. I recorded more, quite a lot more VHS tape sourced video to my spare computer for later processing. I also made a start at converting, and editing one previous recording to a more compact mp4 file. That was an episode of Raw Power from 1991. The editing was a bit of top and tailing, plus removing the ad breaks in it.

  The recordings I transferred yesterday started with the 2nd Secret Policeman's Ball - a comedy concert in aid of Amnesty International. That was funny enough that I sat down and actually watched it as it was converted to digital. There is a slight problem doing that in as much as the sound gets very slightly delayed in monitoring mode. The playback of the recorded file is fine....at least I think it is.

  Despite a bit of amusement, and some hours of doing something useful, I still felt very depressed yesterday. It was typical Seasonal Affected Depression - known as SAD. Last winter the vitamin D tablets I was taking seemed to work well at fighting it, but this winter, with the ravages of Covid lockdown, and the knock on effects of that, is taking a lot of fighting, and I am losing the battle on many days. Not seeing Angela for getting on for a year has also taken it's toll. Our lunchtime drinks were hardly the love story of the decade, but seemed to give me comfort than frustration most of the time. She may be a lost cause, but I still like her rather a lot !

  During the afternoon I was very tempted to open up a couple of bottles of strong winter beer that I am theoretically saving until closer to Xmas. I resisted that temptation, but I did have several large whiskies from late afternoon on to mid evening. I even had a large Jack Daniels Fireball (or whatever they call the version infused with cinnamon). The latter was another source of excess sugar, as was the dark chocolate I had for dessert after my dinner of two unhealthy, but very tasty, ready meals.

  One of those ready meals needed to be cooked in my microwave, but to add to my depression was the fact that my Microwave is now very close to the end of it's life. It has always been an annoying microwave oven because of it's electronic timer. That needs a keypad, and so all functions are controlled by the keypad. My guess is that condensation has got inside the keypad, and random things can now happen. At first I started to notice that the display would display "OFF" no matter what you did. Cycling the power (by pulling the mains plug out, and then plugging it in again) seemed to cure that for a while.

  Yesterday I started hearing a beeping noise while sitting in the dining room, and at first I couldn't work out was was bleeping. After a while I found it was coming from the microwave in the kitchen. The "express" setting was going through all it's option one by one - and bleeping on every change. Even a reboot didn't seem to cure it, but fortunately I found that if I timed it correctly I could start it off cooking before the express functions started to scroll through by themselves. I noted that once my ready was cooked the whole oven had presumably warmed up enough to dry off the condensation, and when I left it, it was behaving itself.

  Being a weekday I was able to watch two episodes of Star Trek, but because of the mood I was in I didn't really watch them diligently. I often wandered downstairs to keep an eye on the VHS tape that was being recorded onto my spare PC, or I would spend a bit of time reading a website. After Star Trek I watched one of the infuriating "Abandoned Engineering" documentary programmes. They are infuriating because of all the stupid pre-speculation they do before actually explaining what really happened - between long drone shots showing the places from all angles - many times over. The interesting bits of a 1 hour programme could be edited down to a 10 minute programme without losing a single iota of information - and would be a damn sight better for it !

  I read in bed for a while, but I think I was fast asleep by, and possibly before 10pm. It was almost half past midnight when I woke up next, and it was a strange sort of time ! I woke up feeling really comfortable - except for one thing. That one thing was a mild desire for a pee. I was feeling so comfortable, no aches or pain, numb fingers, cramping muscles, and a very nice temperature, that I was tempted to try and go straight back to sleep, but I knew if I didn't go for a pee the idea would nag me until I did. Plus what was a mild desire then could become much more desirable in an hour or so.

  After my pee I got back into bed, and tried to get back into the exact position that seemed so comfortable before I got out of bed. I spent what seemed like a long time, but was probably no more than 2 minutes, maybe less, moving an inch this way, or an inch that way. Trying my feet pointing a few degrees this way, or a few degrees that way. Plus other small wriggles. Finally I seemed to feel comfortable, and I was just about to go to sleep when a stray hair tickled my nose. I brushed that away, had another wiggle, and tried again. Then I realised my mouth felt dry, and I wanted to cough. I had to spoil it all by reaching out for a drink to wet my mouth and throat. It felt like a long time, maybe 20 minutes plus, but was probably far less in reality before I got to sleep again. I had a similar battle a few hours later.

  This morning I woke up feeling fairly OK, and maybe somewhat relieved to wake from a dream that can only be described as annoying. In the dream I was visiting someone who had a common interest in cameras, but who turned out to be boring in the extreme. He also had a very strange toilet in his house. The toilet pan was up so high that I had to stand on tip-toe to pee in it. I couldn't work out any way that anyone could do any more than pee in it. Waking up was much more preferable to facing what would have been a long train journey without having fully relieved myself in that weird toilet.

  I was also happy to know that the forecast said that today would be sunny. That is very cheery even if it is going to be very cold outside. The only bad thing this morning is my blood glucose. I knew it was going to be quite high after some of the stuff I ate and drank. It was 9.1mmol/l, and while that in itself, provided it only happens rarely, is not too much to worry about, it does get my monthly average for December off to a very bad start. It will need a lot of work to get that average down by the end of the year, and it is possibly one of the worst months to do it.

  My main plan for today was to go out for a walk in the sunshine, and maybe I might still do that, but there are some complications. I am expecting a delivery, hopefully a big box of beer, to arrive between 11.36 and 12.36. That, by itself, would not be a big problem, but I think it possible that I might also get an Amazon delivery today, and that could come at an unknown time. The only clue will be what time it leaves the Dartford depot. Many of their drivers seem to be lazy bastards who don't get on the road until 11am, and then don't get to Catford until mid to late afternoon (and sometimes even mid to late evening !). I do know the parcel arrived at the Dartford depot at 9.32pm last night, and so it could arrive today, and maybe I will get stuck in waiting for it.