It has been grey all morning but apparently it is about to get even more grey very soon. The latest revision says there will be no rain today, but at 7pm, when rain was originally forecast, it is now predicted to be foggy with just mist at 8pm. From a freezing start, the temperature will very slowly rise to 4° C by the end of the day. Tomorrow may be completely dry, although with a 10% chance of rain at almost any time, but it will be a very grey day. The temperature will probably be the same profile as today.
 
  One of the things I forgot to mention yesterday concerned my latest repeat prescription. I probably mentioned I phoned the pharmacy to order my next repeat prescription on Tuesday, and expressed a lot of scepticism when told it would probably be ready for collection the next day. I was advised to phone in the morning, and to check it was ready. Predictably enough it wasn't ready when I phoned mid to late morning, but to my surprise I was told it would be ready to collect in the afternoon.

  I left it until about 4pm before taking a wander to the pharmacy. I hoped it would be fairly quiet in there at that time, and it was very quiet - I was their only customer. I noted that with no one in the shop, all the staff had their masks around their throats - ready to put on if needed. I didn't have a mask on, and so they didn't bother. I was only in the place for a few minutes because my prescription was packed in a carrier bag, and ready to take home. The timing was excellent because I needed one of the drugs yesterday morning having run out of it the day before.


  There is actually little to say about most of yesterday. The first thing I did of any note was to wash the door push plates that I had used paint stripper on to get rid of some of the smell of the paint stripper, and to remove any sticky residue. I knew that Jodie would complain about the smell, and would probably manage to get paint stripper on her very delicate hands. Whether the residue would actually do any harm in small quantities is debatable, but I know Jodie would panic about it if it happened.

  Apparently Jodie now thinks that out support bubble probably shouldn't meet inside, but neither of us fancied meeting outside for a several hours with the temperature so low.  It was almost cold enough to freeze our beer...well, not really, and it definitely wouldn't freeze some of the beer we were drinking.

  Yesterday afternoon we drank the last two very strong special Xmas beers. The Delirium Christmas ale that can be seen, out of focus, in the background of the picture was 10% alcohol. I thought it was very nice. The Bush Noel beer was 12%, and I thought it was great. In my opinion it was not that different to the Delirium, but Jodie did not like the Delirium. She did like the Bush Noel though. Her taste buds must be very different, and more refined than mine to say one was nasty, and one was good.

  I think most of the beers we drank were fairly strong, and of course at the end of the session I was in that happy place - slightly drunk, but not feeling ill. I was drunk enough to make a large order to a kebab shop. I can't remember the minimum order to qualify for a 20% discount, and I don't think paid much attention to the exact figure as I was ordering. I just ordered loads of stuff until I thought I had passed the minimum by a large safety margin.

  The order was delivered about 5 minutes later than the predicted time, but it seemed like an age to wait. In fact it was only an hour. The first thing I tucked into was something I have a treat at least twice a year - saveloy and chips. It wasn't quite as healthy as grilled meat with salad, but I was drunk, and so it didn't matter (at the time - it mattered this morning). That was part one. Part two was supposed to be just grilled meat and salad, but I found, and ate, a pitta bread under the meat and salad. The odd thing is that I think I ordered no pitta bread, and was initially surprised when I took the wrapping off to find a dry pitta bread outside the Styrofoam box. So no pitta bread mysteriously turned into two pieces !

  Despite it being new years eve, my evening was just like most of my evenings lately. I watched a bit of TV and went to bed at 9pm. I read for maybe an hour, and fell asleep soon after putting the book down. I'm not sure if I was woken by fireworks at midnight, or whether I just needed a pee - I often do around then anyway. The fireworks did slow me down getting to sleep, but I was probably asleep 20 minutes later.

  I seemed to sleep OK until about 4am. From then on I seemed to be in that annoying state of seeming to be half awake and half asleep for the next few hours. I have a feeling that I was probably dreaming a lot during that time, but I don't seem to recall any dreams. At some time I did think up an imaginary conversation, or perhaps series of statements rather than a conversation. It went something like this;- "How are you enjoying Brexit ?", "Oh it is exhilarating....in the same way as being on a rudderless ship in a storm !". You might gather from this that I think leaving the EU was one of the worst decisions the country has made in the last 1000 years.

  After a lot of patchy sleep I gave up trying to sleep once it had gone 7am. I got up feeling very lazy, and uninspired. I really didn't feel like doing anything. I suppose some of it was all part of a (thankfully) painless hangover. I got up and did my usual routine. Part of that revealed my blood glucose was up to 9.7mmol/l. That is very high, but it usually is on a Friday morning after boozing the afternoon before. Some of it is the booze, and some of it is often the booze making me ravenously hungry !

  I made things worse by having an unusual breakfast this morning. It was saveloy and chips. I thought it was going to be sausage and chips (equally bad for me). I am not confused about how I could have had two portions of saveloy and chips. I am sure I ordered just one. Maybe my finger slipped and I ordered two, and there is still a sausage and chips to clog my arteries at the bottom of the bag.

  After breakfast I would have started to write this, but I fancied just laying down, and reading while I digested breakfast. I probably read for almost an hour before I thought I ought to start the business of the day - mainly writing this - but before I got started I had a phone call from my weird friend Lee. It takes a lot of skill to stop his phone calls meandering off in all sorts of directions, and my skills are not quite good enough. Anyway, we finally got to the original point of the conversation before he wandered off in more seemingly random directions. An hour, or maybe more, later we finished the call, and I finally sat down to write this.

  Today I had to keep my wits about me because of the change of year. I think I have got all the new icons pointing to the right things, and got the dates for the pictures correct, but I would not be surprised if I got sloppy doing this before the month is out, and start making references to 2020 again. It seems to happen to most of us most years. With all that going on I can't be bothered to proof read this, and so you'll have to fill in the missing words, correct the dubious spelling and grammar all by yourselves !