The forecast has been revised at least once since I took the screenshot above, The main change is that the rain, that started early in the morning will continue to fall, possibly non stop, until 6pm tomorrow. The earlier version of the forecast said 7pm ! Sometimes the rain will be heavy, and sometimes light, and just for 2pm today, it will only be drizzle. It was just 4° C this morning, but it will creep up to 8° C in the afternoon, and then the temperature may only dip to 7° C for an hour or two in the late evening before going back up to 8° C again. It will slowly start to fall again in the early hours of tomorrow morning until it is down to just 3° C as the last rain falls tomorrow evening. Needless to say, it is very unlikely there will be any clues that the sun is still alight in the next 48 hours, and maybe for days after that !

   As I mentioned yesterday morning, there was the potential to go out for a late afternoon walk yesterday, but as I also said, by the afternoon most of my enthusiasm has drained away (although my actual words were that I would either be too busy, or too relaxed). Even if I did have the enthusiasm I didn't have the sunshine. The revised forecast for clear blue skies and bright sunshine was "fake news". As I described at the top of the page, the closest we got to sunshine were some bright hazy patches in thin parts of the clouds (probably where one thin cloud was not overlapped by several thicker clouds).

  Maybe I had some or premonition that there would be no sunshine much earlier than the reality of it, and so started thinking of other things to do. At first that was a bit of reading, and a short snooze. As I also mentioned yesterday morning, my breakfast, eating the last bit of olive bread with cheese on it, left me feeling sort of tired or weary, and while I don't think I really intended to snooze so soon after getting up, it just seemed so easy to do. I put the book down, closed my eyes, and I was asleep. I probably didn't sleep for more than 10 minutes, but I wasn't timing it, and if some said it was for an hour I couldn't disagree with them.

  After waking up I decided on action ! Minor action, but still action, and no exclamation point after it. I started a job I had been meaning to do all year. I don't know when it was exactly, but winter is near enough, when the fan heater I was using in my bedroom burnt out. I had a good idea what the fault was, and had a good idea how I could fix it. I thought that it was the switch that selects between off - fan only - 1kw - 2kw that had melted/burnt. It was actually a faulty crimp on one of the wires going to the switch that had overheated. That heat releases acids from the plastic insulation, and the acid dissolves the wire going to the crimp connector.

  Unfortunately the heat had also damaged the switch, although I didn't realise this until I tested the heater after replacing the burnt wire. For added safety I soldered the wires and crimp after crimping. This was partly because I haven't got the proper tool for those crimps here, but also I don't trust them when high currents are involved. After re-assembling the heater I plugged it in, and tried it. Everything worked except the "low" setting. I suppose you could say the high setting didn't work either because only one of the 1kw elements was switched in. It still makes it a useful heater. It is only on the very coldest days, or when I want to raise the temperature fast, that I tend to use these heaters on the 2kw setting. Most of the time just 1kw keeps a room warm.

  It was no surprise that there was all sort of fluff and dust inside the heater when I opened it up. You couldn't really expect anything else when the air intake is just a few inches off the carpet. It was time to get the hoover out to suck all the dust and fluff out of the heaters innards. While I had the hoover out I also hoovered the dining room carpet, the hall and the stairs. By the time I had finished that I was sweating. That was my exercise for the day !

  The rest of the day seemed to fly by after I had put my tools away, and cleaned up. It is hard to say where all the time went yesterday afternoon. I probably spent a fair time catching up with tech news on https://www.theregister.com/, but I did do a few other little minor jobs too. One such "minor job" wasn't a job really. It was to take a picture, and send it to my friend Patricia who is stuck in Argentina because of Covid. She should have spent last summer in Europe, as usual, and had to endure the Argentinian winter instead of summer here.
  As well as some news and stuff, I couldn't resist bitching about the weather ! Not only are we in the middle of winter, while Argentina, being in the southern hemisphere, is enjoying the delights of summer, but our weather was not as expected. I took the above picture at 14.47 - as near as dammit to 3pm when the Met Office forecast was still telling us that there would be clear skies and bright sunshine ! I think I should demand my money back !

  There was one other thing I wanted to tell Patricia - something that made me happy, if not a little mystified. Out of the blue I got a text message yesterday afternoon. It was from Angela. She told me she had just had her first Covid vaccination. She works in a hospital, and so was a priority case. She was obviously overjoyed about it, and I felt honoured that she should choose me to tell first....I don't know that I was the first, but it seemed to feel that way. It was another demonstration that there is still a strange bond between us. I try not to think about it as hope for the future, it's not realistic, but on the other hand there is nothing else to hope for in these grim times.

  Another thing that took a little time was preparing dinner. It was rather more sophisticated than shoving a ready meal into the microwave. I had two bit of preparation to do first. One was to prepare some sprouts for a good cooking...not boiled to a soggy mash as my mum used to cook them (yuck !) but just slightly soft. The other bit of preparation was to slice up some pre-baked potatoes. I had microwave baked them a day or two previously, but decided my dinner was quite big enough without them.

  Those baked potatoes were not fully cooked, and that was handy because I had a cunning plan. I sliced them up onto a baking tray, sprinkled on some salt and pepper, and then added some lumps of butter before roasting it until the top of the most of the potatoes were crispy. As hoped, they turned out to be very tasty. Part one of my dinner was those baked and roasted potatoes with the sprouts. I stirred in a generous amount of instant beef gravy mix into the water the sprouts had boiled in, and was able to cover everything with gravy.

  To be honest, that was enough for a dinner, but I also cooked a couple of cheese and bacon crispbakes. I had bought them half price from Aldi on Monday. They were on their use by date then, and I thought it might be wise to not leave them in the fridge for yet another day. The chances are that they would probably have kept for many more days, but two days of large portions of sprouts was causing enough turmoil in my bowels ! One other thing I had with those crispbakes was a good squirt of some Heinz hot chilli tomato sauce. I think I could just detect there were some cool chillies in it. I shan't waste my money on any more of that !

  Another reason for not eating the crispbakes, even if I did, was that I had already planned to eat some fruit for a dessert. I had two big juicy, and sweet oranges as well as a nectarine. I think it bas those two oranges that took me over the top of my sugar allowance for the day, as I shall explain soon. During the day I also had a very naughty snack - well several, actually. I knew it was foolish, but not all the reasons why it was foolish to buy a big bag of roast turkey and stuffing flavour maize snacks that were being sold off in Aldi for, if I recall correctly for just 49p for what was closer to a small sack than a big bag !

  On the plus side, apart from a high fat content, those maize snacks were mostly air, not fresh air, but stinky air, and so the nutritional information claimed they were low in calories and sugars. I am not so sure though. The worst thing about them is the artificial flavouring. It does taste nice(ish), but the smell of the freshly opened bag reminds me of old cat pee on an old carpet.  The smell seems to linger to. Maybe it was dust on my beard, but I kept getting this horrid smell long after I had stopped eating them. Somehow it didn't stop me going back to the bag every now and then for another big munching session.

  I seemed to get a lot of sleep last night, but it probably wasn't all good sleep because I remember dreaming a lot. I seemed to fall asleep fairly easily, although it was far from instant. I woke a few times in the night for a pee, and then I woke at around 5.30am (I think). It didn't seem I would get back to sleep after that, and it almost didn't feel like it was worth trying when I would be getting up in the next half an hour or so........then suddenly it was gone 8am !

  Many of my dreams seemed to be about being in hospital - which is a bit worrying. Although hospital seemed to be a common theme, there seemed to be little continuity between these dreams. Although I don't think any dream included actually going to hospital, the "back story" was that I had gone there for something simple, like an eye test, but maybe some delay meant they sent me to bed to wait. I was in a rather old fashioned ward that contained something like 20 or more beds. The ceiling had lots of sky lights.

  Those skylights made the next event, a thunderstorm, quite exciting. Unfortunately one skylight leaked - a lot, and it was directly over my bed. Somehow I was able to rock and jerk the bed, to move it, without getting out of bed, away from the leak. I think I was in the same place when there was a patients revolt. One man wanted his dinner at 7.15pm instead of 7pm, and we all agreed with him !

  One bit of my hospital visit was most frustrating, Before I could have my test, or treatment, or whatever, I had to fill out a questionnaire. The trouble was that I hardly understood it. Some questions seemed to be in a foreign language - so foreign that many words seemed to be just random letter. On other pages there were spaces for answers, but no questions.  One or more pages had maps on them with questions such as what is the distance between two points that weren't even on the map.

  Rain made a second appearance in these hospital dreams. I was going out for a fag, and bumped into quite a few people on a stair case who had lit up there rather than go out. The silly thing is that it was raining in the staircase, and yet at the bottom there was a large concrete structure, like a floor of a multi storey car park, that was perfectly dry. I went out there, but I don't recall lighting up a fag. As I walked around I noticed there were several second hand record shops, and one was a specialist place that traded mostly in rarities. As I passed I heard the shopkeeper saying he had the 1963 and 1964 pressings, but the customer asked if he had one of the Australian pressings of whatever the record was.

  I am quite surprised I can remember so much of last night's dreams. It still makes me think that the last hours of my sleep were very light, although though the very last 90 minutes, or however long it was, was like pure oblivion. I would say I woke up feeling good after such a long sleep, but there is always something to spoil it. This morning it was some lower back pain. Maybe it was a hangover from hoovering, or more likely from sleeping in some awkward position.

  With 36 hours or more of rain to look forward to, any outdoor activities are off the menu - except maybe for one.  I am contemplating going to the mini supermarket on Catford bridge to buy a few things - some beer and some selected foods. I have to be careful with foods today because the baked and roasted potatoes, the sweet fruit, and possibly the maize snacks have all conspired to raise my blood glucose to 8.8mmol/l this morning. I sort of expected it, but it is not good. Being in all day, and bored and depressed as the grey light filters through the rain, and into my window, makes it all the more difficult to eat sensibly.