Against all expectations today will probably be dry - except for the mud and puddles left by the rain through the night. It is even possible that this afternoon may be bright grey. It would seem we can expect 100% cloud cover all day, but the thickest cloud will probably be over by 2pm. According the latest revision to the forecast there remains a 20% chance of rain until this afternoon when it will drop to 10%. Over on BBC, with their Meteogroup weather forecast, the early prediction was for rain most of the day, with a weather warning issued warning of rain and possibly snow over greater London. The weather warning remains, but the later forecasts show no rain as per the Met Office forecast above. Both agree that today is going to be very cold, and it is indeed cold enough that any rain could fall as sleep or snow. Today's maximum temperature will be just 5° C. Tomorrow may see 100% light grey cloud all day, and a 10% chance of rain at any time. Once again the maximum temperature may be just 5° C.
    It was hard to not be too affected by the negative affects of the weather, but I definitely felt a lot better than the previous day. The dull grey weather still meant it took me some time to get motivated, but I got moving eventually. I finished a backlog of washing up, and I finally did the hoovering I was going to do the previous day (and I think possibly the day before that).

  Before starting on the hoovering I gave the dining room table a good polish. I'm not sure why I actually used polish instead of soap and water. The top is glass, and just needs cleaning, although it does need buffing after to avoid any mysterious streaks. With the table done I switched on the hoover, and gave the dining room a good hoovering, the front room a medium hoovering, and the hall and stairs a moderate hoovering. All I had to do then was to wait for Jodie to arrive.

  I guess I felt OK enough that I could have done some upstairs hoovering as well. I left the hoover parked in the spare bedroom, and maybe I'll use it today. Other than that I filled in the time reading, and ordering more beer ! It started off as curiosity as to what special Xmas/Winter ales/beers might be available, and ended up ordering some. One small pack of 4 bottles are definitely Xmas ales. A 12 pack is only packaged in a decorated cardboard crate, but maybe the final contents, which were not specifically listed, might include a seasonal beer or two.

  Jodie is a "funny" woman. She turned her nose up at beer I know she liked because she is hooked on a website called untapped. The website is a social media website for beer drinkers, and is probably better explained here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untappd. Being an addict of this web site means she is always looking for beers she has never tried before so she send in a picture, and rate the beer for the benefit of her drinking chums - most of which are virtual, but some she does see in person at pubs (Covid restrictions permitting).

  Another annoying thing is that she is doing stuff on her phone so much that she ignores the beer she is reporting. That results in my glass being empty while she is only halfway through hers. I then have to try and be patient and wait for her to catch up. I frequently end up opening another bottle of something she doesn't want to drink, and drink that while I am waiting.

  A few weeks back Jodie commented that she had noticed that https://www.beermerchants.com/ were offering a crate of Hacker Pschor beer, and that she liked beer from that brewery. I ordered a crate of it, but when I offered any of the bottles to Jodie I just kept getting the response "No, had that already". It is a good thing that I seem to remember liking it too because I now have 12 bottles of it to drink myself !

  Jodie missed her train, and got here half an hour late, but she did get an earlier train to go home - only 10 minutes earlier though ! I hadn't cooked anything for dinner last night, and maybe that was because I had a sort of yearning for something different. I resorted to an Indian takeaway. It was a big order, and so I have more for dinner tonight, and should still have enough for a fair dinner tomorrow night too.

  The curious thing was that I seemed fully satisfied with a fairly small dinner of a lamb biryani and a side dish of chilli chick peas. I did eat a lump of cheese at the end of the meal to cool off some of the lingering fierce chilli taste. After eating I retired to my bedroom, and had a flick around the TV channels. Nothing grabbed my attention, and so I effectively went to bed soon after 8pm. I read for a while, but I think I may have been asleep before 9pm.

  My sleep was pretty good until I had a certain dream. The dream is hard to describe because my memory of it is so patchy, but it ended, at least I think it ended, with the possible challenge of being asked to explain "the birds and the bees" to a friends daughter. I have absolutely no idea where this idea sprang from, but it's effect was interesting. I started to consider how I might go about such a task if I had to do it for real.

  I never did reach any real conclusions, but I seemed to spend a lot of time thinking about it. It seemed like I did this while awake, but some of the repetitions suggest that I was actually dreaming most of it. Even if I was awake, I was probably awake for less time than it seemed. I expect the reality was that I was may have started thinking about it when awake, but continued it as a dream after falling asleep. That wouldn't be quite lucid dreaming, but sort of close to it.

  Probably in the belief that I had spent some time awake during the night, I didn't want to get up when I woke up at daybreak (I think) this morning. I tried to go back to sleep, but evidently I had had sufficient sleep. I guess I didn't feel too bad when I woke up. I was a little concerned that I might have caught a nasty because last night I seemed to be coughing a lot, but that was quite probably a short term effect of that rather fierce chilli and chick pea side dish.

  The worst thing wrong with me this morning is my very high blood glucose level. I am not happy that it was 9.5mmol/l, but at least I can blame it on the rice and the beer I consumed yesterday. I also ate one or two other little things that would have been ignorable by themselves, but not when the other stuff was added. Ideally I should fast until dinner time, but on a cold day like today there is no chance that is going to happen. I'll just have to be a bit selective about what I eat, and hope that blood glucose level does not go up any higher. I would be happy if it went down to below 9mmol/l tomorrow morning.

  I have already said that I may get the hoover out again today to hoover upstairs. I can't say the idea exhilarates me, but there is a fair chance it will happen. I really have no idea what else might be on my agenda today. I do have a sort of curiosity about what it would be like to go out on even a short walk with my warmest coat on. I am pretty certain that I wouldn't get fat without getting unpleasantly hot and sweaty under the coat, and a cold blue nose and tingling fingers outside the coat. I guess the secret would be to walk very slowly, but that would be boring. If I do go for a walk it will be a spur of the moment thing.