The latest revision to the forecast looks a bit better than the screenshot above. This morning is now shown as being sunny, and once the sun rises above the houses to the east, it may well be sunny. Sunshine is supposed to give way to just sunny spells at 11am, but the nasty grey clouds shown in the screenshot above are now predicted to be light coloured clouds. The highest chance of rain today is just 10%, and the chances are it will stay dry, and it may be possible that the BBC forecast that shows sunny spells extending until at least 1pm maybe turn out right. The afternoon temperature may just be a very chilly 5° C, and by midnight it could drop to just 3° C. The start and end of tomorrow, Xmas day, could be less than 4° C, but lots of sunshine could raise the afternoon temperature to 5° C.
 
   Yesterday was another day when very little happened. Once again I scraped enough bits and pieces together to do some laundry. It was a bigger load then the previous day, although of course that was one single, but very heavy when wet, large bath towel. Yesterday also included a towel, but just a small hand towel plus a face flannel. I have to admit that yesterday was a day when I couldn't be bothered to have a shower, and so I used the face flannel to freshen up the worst bits, and dried myself off with the hand towel. It seemed wise to throw those in with the t-short and some underwear that I washed.

  I was going to say that they main thing on my mind yesterday was to try and control what I ate, but that makes it sound far more disciplined than it actually was. It is probably more true to say that when I was so bored I sometimes turned to snacking, I was aware that I ought to be a bit careful. This morning it seems I could have done better, but it worked.

  I just couldn't raise the enthusiasm to go out yesterday. That is a bit of a shame because although it was rather dull, at least it was dry, and being a Wednesday I could have seen The Friends Of The River Pool volunteers working to improve the the river and park. That would have provided a bit of entertainment and some photo opportunities. All I did was stay in reading and snoozing. I did spend quite a long time in front of my PC downloading some stuff that I probably should not have.
   This was the north sky at 2.15pm. The clouds are breaking up, and there were blue patches of sky to be seen. The thing that is not obvious in this photo is that there was a bit of sunshine at this time. The sun was low down on the left of this picture, and the sunshine would have been most obvious on the roofs of the houses that can't be seen on the right of the picture. I should have aimed the camera there even if half the picture would have been of the side of next doors house.
  Here's the scene to the west, 45 minutes after the previous picture was taken. This one, taken at 3pm, or an hour before sunset (approx) shows the sun already very low in the sky, but peeping out above a bank of clouds. The sun was lighting up the top of the flats to the south of here, and I expect people to the east of here were bathed in nice sunshine. I can imagine the top of Mountsfield Park catching that sunshine nicely.

  At the moment we are in that awkward, puberty like, time for sunrise and sunset. Despite passing the winter solstice 3 days ago, sunrise was actually later this morning compared to yesterday, and sunset was at the same time. On the last day of the year, 31st December, sunrise will be another minute later, but sunset will be 6 minutes later, and happen at 2 minutes past 4pm - adding another 5 minutes to the daylight hours. From then on the increase will be around 2 minutes a day - at least that is what my dad used to say, and I think I have checked that is about right.

  My dinner time was a bit later than 6pm last night, but only by about half an hour. It was because I had indulged in a snack of rice crackers and cheese late in the afternoon (another symptom of winter boredom). I had a relatively simple dinner of grilled beefburgers with sugar snap peas. I assume the latter don't literally have (natural) sugar in them. I probably ought to check their sugar content. I really shouldn't have, after having such a sedate day, but I had a tub of low calorie ice cream for dessert.

  I really can't believe it, but after another sedate day, that features at least one snooze, I slept really well again last night. That is, of course, "really well" by my current standards, and not the "really well" of, say, 40 years ago when I would go out like a light, and then the next thing I knew was that 8 hours had passed almost unnoticed. I did have one dream that seemed to re-occur several times. It was the theme that re-occured rather than the actual details. It was part inspired by the scifi technology in the book I have been reading.

  The dream involved a tunnel mouth bored through a brick wall using a sort of disintegrater ray.  I think there were often three of these tunnel mouths in a line. Dreams of tunnels are supposed to be erotic in nature, but I can't remember anything erotic happening. What did happen is that the last dream seemed to melt into a strange reality as I woke up. For reasons unknown I was thinking along the lines of topography - the study of surfaces, or something like that.

  My reasoning was that a circular tunnel only presented one internal face - it was, in effect, a circular wall. A tunnel built with a triangular cross section would have three internal faces. A square cross section tunnel would have 4 faces, and so on, but a tunnel with two faces would be impossible unless the rules were bent a bit. Two arcs meeting at top and bottom, like these brackets, (), could be considered a tunnel with two interior faces, but that somehow feels like cheating, plus there is no simple name for a cross section like that - that I am aware of !

  This morning I feel moderately OK. The sun is now definitely shining, and if it were to continue, and I was free to do so, I reckon I could drag myself out for a walk. I am by no means free of the usual aches and pains, particularly things like my knees, but none are very notable this morning. All my health readings seem good, or OK this morning. The most important one, my blood glucose level has come down from 8.7mmol/l yesterday morning*, to 8.0mmol/l this morning. That is a decent drop, but if I had been more careful yesterday, I could have got it down to a much better level.

* I seem to have incorrectly written my blood glucose as 8.3mmol/l yesterday, but my spreadsheet, the master record of my readings, says 8.7mmol/l for yesterday.

  Today, being a Thursday, is beer drinking day ! This afternoon we will consume some strong winter ales to celebrate the trains and buses not running tomorrow (or something like that), and terrible stuff on TV tomorrow. I have no idea who "we" will be, but I do have some 0% beer here if Michael wants to break Boris' diktak of no households mixing while we are in tier 4.