There was one big difference between the Met Office forecast (the screenshot above) and the BBC's Meteogroup forecast. The BBC reckoned it would be raining at 6 and 7am, and it was ! The Met Office just said it would be overcast. Neither admit that the sun almost peeped through the clouds at about 10am, but only for a few minutes, and the sun never managed to get any better than a bright and hazy disk. It looks like there has been a shower a short time ago, and the latest revision to the forecast does show a 10% risk of rain at any time today. There are times when the cloud is forecast to be quite light, and although not shown, maybe it is possible we might have a sunny spell at some time. What seems very definite is that it is going to be an even colder day than yesterday. The latest revision says the temperature will go no higher than 5° C today. Tomorrow will be a degree or two even colder, and the morning may be dominated by mist. The afternoon might be dry, but overcast.
  At this point I am happy to confirm that my fears about the smoked haddock I ate yesterday morning, that seemed perilously close to going off, had no bad effect. Well, not on me, but even this morning the kitchen has a fishy smell in it. It is a good thing that these days, to keep the dining room a bit warmer I tend to keep the door into it, and the door into the kitchen closed. Without that the whole house would small like a fishmongers stall !

  I had almost talked myself out of going for a walk before I had even finished writing yesterday. One reason, some fears of my guts being upset by the dubious fish, was a fair reason in my opinion, but others less so. Later in the day I had another reason to go out for a short walk suggested, and I wanted to, and didn't want to. One excuse not to turned out to be very prophetic. I'll explain in due course.

  Apart from washing just two items, a t-shirt, and what could be described as pyjama bottoms (used as such, but not actually pyjama bottoms), I had a mostly lazy morning, and early afternoon. I sometimes think my brain knows more than it lets me know, because despite my high blood glucose level in the morning, I ended up eating a lunch I didn't think I could get away with. It was a plate of fruit - some of it tasted rather sweet, and that seemed like something I shouldn't be eating.

  It was around lunchtime that I received an email from my friend Kevin. He drew my attention to a special train that would be going through Catford. It was a Xmas luncheon special using the British Pullman Carriages (Orient Express style), and possibly steam hauled. It was too late to see it pass on it's outward journey towards Dover, but the return journey would scheduled to pass through Catford at 15:52.

  That would be an interesting time to try and photograph a train passing through at speed. The sun would just be setting, and so it would be very dim, but I could probably have managed it using one of my largest aperture lenses with a high ISO setting. If I got the angle right I could also have had a sunset in the background. If it worked it could have been a nice picture, but I missed the opportunity because I was dozing off on my bed, and hadn't realised the time. I am glad I missed it for a quite good reason (in my very biassed opinion).

  I knew that I would be expecting a delivery from Amazon yesterday, and I expected it to arrive very late like the delivery the day before (the festive crate of beers). Both deliveries left the Dartford depot at almost midday, and the beers arrived at around 7pm (if I recall correctly). That meant that I could probably have ducked out for some photography for half an hour or so, but it turned out that I couldn't !

  While semi dozing on my bed the train went through Catford, and at about the same time my doorbell rung. It was my delivery. It was just one single bottle of Fireball. I had been wanting to buy some of this ever since I first tried it in a Wetherspoons pub, but I never saw anywhere stocking it.

  I only found it on Amazon by chance when it popped up while looking for beers. I expected it to be seriously expensive, but it was actually quite cheap (for certain values of "cheap"). I think it may have only been £16 or so for a 70cl bottle.

  As soon as it arrived I had to give it a taste, and was rewarded with the warm glowing taste that I remembered. A little later, after dinner, I did a taste comparison with Jack Daniels "Tennessee Fire" - also a cinnamon infused whiskey. The jack Daniels is nice, but by comparison to Fireball it was like a supermarket own brand, possibly a "value" product. Same taste - sort of, but a bit watered down, and tasting like it used end of life ingredients.

  Before dinner, and before my tasting session, I finally managed to get myself together to do some computing experimentation. I am still trying to get my spare (and ultimately, primary) web server built using the little mini-pc I pulled out of a skip. I tried several Linux distributions on it, and for each one I managed to get the web server working with ease, although the latest versions make it hard work to have a customised error (404 - web page not found) page. I could live with that, but then there was a problem with the ftp (file transfer program) I wanted to use.

  Installing the ftp server was always easy, but configuring it by hand is a pain in the arse. Fortunately there is a nice graphical user interface program to configure it, but that always raised two problems. For some Linux distributions it is not available because of a compatibility program. If it can be installed it always crashed with a segmentation fault on starting. I have seen complaints about this by searching the internet, but not a way to cure the problem.

  It was after having a shot of Jack Daniels, and a shot of Fireball that I suddenly realised something. The graphical, point and click program works perfectly well on the server that is currently running on an old Toshiba laptop, and had always worked on it's predecessors. I suddenly realised that on old equipment I would be using a 32 bit operating system. The mini-pc has a 64 bit processor in it, and I keep trying 64 bit operating systems on it. There is no reason why I shouldn't use a 32 bit operating system. If I were to clone the hard disk in the laptop it would probably all work OK without having to configuring anything, but I want to start from scratch, and that is what I will probably do today.

  I did worry that my dinner might be a bit big, and somehow contain too much sugar. It was the last third of the Indian takeaway I had ordered a couple of days previously. Last nights dinner was a tandoori mixed grill, and salad. It was small than I thought it would be once I saw it on the plate, and I decided I would eat the bombay aloo and mixed vegetable curries too. I had been pondering having them for breakfast or lunch today. Eating them all together last night probably made for a more balanced meal.

  There was very little on TV to keep me amused last night, I did watch an Oasis concert, but I can't say I enjoyed it. Oasis have done some good, even brilliant tunes, but in my opinion they are best listened to in small doses. I thought I was feeling a bit sleepy, and so didn't watch anything more, and went to bed to read a chapter or two. At 9pm I turned out the light, and nothing happened. I tried a few different positions in bed, but none seemed to make me feel relaxed. I thought I may as well turn the light back on, and read for another hour. That seemed to work, but it still took some time to fall asleep.

  Last night was another night where my sleep seemed to be dominated by a dream, or more likely, dreams on a common theme. That might have been OK, but I can't recall ever having some a boring dream (or run of dreams). Almost nothing happened in those dreams. They were all centred on a sort of "Docu-Drama" - except there was no typical documentary commentary, and no drama. Some of it was like raw film off the camera waiting to be edited, and a sound tack added.

  The core of the dreams was about a road, or highway through a jungle. The road surface looked like cheese for some weird reason. No cars or lorries ran on it because it seemed like the ends of it were not connected to any other roads. There were people in these dreams, but I can't recall interacting with them. In many ways it was like I was watching something on TV, or possibly was just a technician working on a film set.

  The only small segment that is easy to describe (although maybe not understand as dream material) was like a video metaphor for boredom. It was  fixed camera shot of a window that was slightly offset to the right, and sharply in focus. To the left of the shot, and badly out of focus, was the right third of a TV screen showing what was probably a porn film, but all you could see was this blurred image of a man's face above a woman's face, and some indeterminate movement. This seemed to last for about 15 seconds, and then the scene changed (or more likely I had another dream).

  I think I woke up feeling a bit confused, or maybe disappointed that I seemed to have had some of the most boring dreams ever. Other than that, I felt reasonably OK, and evidently I was slightly healthier than the previous day. My blood glucose level was down to just 7.4mmol/l. I was expecting it to be higher than the previous day's 7.9, and closer to the horrendous 9.8 the day before that ! Those cinnamon liqueurs seemed to have a lot of sugar in them, as did the all the fruit I had earlier, but it seems I was wrong again !

  That low(ish) blood glucose reading gives me a bit more leeway when it comes to eating today. I think the worst thing I might have today is mashed potato. I have a large baking potato that is so deformed that it is impossible to clean without cutting it up. I think that is a good reason to make some mashed potato to have with some roast chicken thighs. I'll probably have some sprouts with the chicken as well.

  I declare it too cold and damp to go out today, and so I shall have to amuse myself by staying in. So far today I have already washed my hair, and had a shower. Plus I have already ascertained that a Linux Mint 18.3 Xfce 32 bit edition boots from a live DVD in my mini PC. Hopefully I can prove my theory that the ftp admin program works OK on a 32 bit system. Doing that, a bit of reading, some eating, and perhaps a bit of TV, should see me through the day. Tomorrow morning it will be time for an early start to go shopping in Aldi very soon after they open at 8am.