The BBC weather forecast came closer to getting the start of today right. They forecast sunny spells from day break until about now. There was at least one sunny spell, but mostly it was hints of the sun trying to peep through gaps in the clouds. One very curious thing is that both forecasts, BBC and The Met Office, assigned a high probability for rain at 8am. The Met Office said a 40% chance, and said it would rain. The BBC gave it a 55% chance, but said the main feature would be sunny spells. Everyone seems to agree that it will be cloudy soon, and that at around 5pm it will start to rain. That rain may well continue through until 7am tomorrow morning. Then there may be 4  or 5 hours without rain until the rain starts again. Today may finish at 8° C, but tomorrow may see the temperature rise to 11° C - that's mild enough for no coat and t-shirt (except when it is pissing down with rain).

   One of the first things I did yesterday was to log on to Amazon to arrange to return the two scam external hard drives. The process is quite simple, and as I filled in the details I got the idea in my head that they won't even check the items. They will just be chucked into a pile of electronic waste.  What I do hope is that my, or probably many other returns, triggers them into checking the customer reviews of these external drives. When I checked I found there were 3 or 4 sellers all offering identical devices, and all have attracted very bad reviews. One reviewer had sent in a picture showing what was inside - just like I did. It would be good if Amazon could track the source of these items, and punish the sellers somehow.

  The return process included getting a picture of a label to print out that included bar codes and the like that charged the postage back to Amazon. Fortunately those two drives, even in their original packing, were small enough to fit in a jiffy bag small enough to go into a post box, and so I didn't have to worry about going in a Post Office or anything. It was all rather convenient considering that the Post Box is just 30ft away from the mini supermarket I wanted to go to anyway.

  It didn't feel all that good walking to the mini supermarket. The sunshine was nice, except it was in my eyes all the way to the main road. It did feel hot on my black t-shirt, but the air was cold enough to almost numb my fingers, and make my eyes water (and then my nose to drip). The worst thing is that my legs felt very stiff. This was not the trouble I had a fortnight, or so ago which was actual pain from my right knee down to my ankle. This was just a stiffness that felt uncomfortable, and tiring to overcome.

  Having posted my Jiffy Bag, I went into the mini supermarket to buy a few definite things, like some fruit, and a couple of bottles of Diet Coke. I also looked around for anything else of interest. I noted that there are less and less cans of Polish beer on the shelves. I'm glad I bought two of each, and stashed them away, while they were still available. I actually bought an English, and a Scottish beer. I had it in mind to buy another olive loaf, but I couldn't see any, and opted for quite a large (but not one of the huge ones they do) crusty loaf. In support of that I also bought a couple of tubs of spicy humus, and a baloney sausage.

  I wasn't really sure what baloney was. It is a name often used in American writing, and I assumed it is some sort of pork stuff as favoured by some of the more eastern European immigrants there. The baloney I bought was a bit like spam, but it was pork and chicken instead of pork and ham. It turned out to be neither nice or nasty. It made for a pleasant sandwich, but I don't think I shall be repeating the experiment again. That shop does have other exotic "sausages" that I will try some day. (When I say sausages I mean in shape rather than "bangers").

  After getting home I had my baloney sandwich, and also used some of the bread as a scoop for the spicy humus. It didn't strike me as a sensible thing even as I ate it. It made me feel quite tired, and maybe even very slightly bloated.  It was past midday at that point, and I would have liked to have laid down and had a snooze, but I had things to do. Mostly tidying up sort of things prior to another boozing session with Jodie. I also prepared, and started my dinner cooking. Then I laid down to read for a bit, and maybe have a snooze.

  Hardly any time seemed to pass before it was 3pm, and Jodie was ringing my doorbell soon after that. I did have a snooze, and only woke up a little while before Jodie arrived. I felt dreadful !  I would have loved to have turned over and gone back to sleep again. It wasn't until I had drunk several beers that I started to feel OK. As seems to be normal now, Jodie brought some beers that were almost ciders because of the amount of fruit in them. They were also very sour. It was a relief when we opened the beers I had bought earlier. Much to my amazement, Jodie was interested in them !

  It seemed like we drunk a lot of beer yesterday, but when I think about it in a more analytical sense, it wasn't that much. I think we drunk through 8 cans and bottles - or 4 each, and apart from one can, they were all half pint bottles/cans. So in total we probably drunk no more than 2 pints ! Admittedly some of them were strong pints, but still only 2 pints ! It would explain why I seemed to pee a lot less than I expected in the night.

  Jodie left in time for a slow walk to the station for the 7pm train. I got my dinner served up. It was grilled/roasted chicken thighs served with a mix of sprouts and runner beans. As far as I can recall I had no dessert after it. I think I may have been feeling some sort of guilt about all the bread I ate.  I watched a bit of TV while I ate, and then more after I had eaten, but not much. By 8pm I was feeling very tired, and it felt like I had a hangover coming on.

  I turned off the TV, and then laid on my bed to read. I had barely read a couple of pages when my eyes started to close. I put the book down, turned out the light, and I was soon fast asleep. I think it was only about 8.30pm at that point. It's hard to say if it was good or bad sleep. I can remember dreaming a lot, but nothing about the dreams, and I remember going for a pee maybe twice in the night. I also remember a few times when I had to adjust how much of the duvet was covering me, but it feels like there were very few times when I was awake for more than 5 or 10 minutes - until about 5am.

  By 5am I had probably got in just over 8 hours sleep, and it was hard staying asleep until I gave up trying at about 6am. That suited me because I wanted to be up and ready in time to go to Aldi at 8am. I can't say I felt that wonderful when I got up, but then again I can't pint to anything particularly negative. One things was very good - my blood glucose. I have no idea how, but it was just 7.2mmol/l. I didn't dare re-check it, and if it was fantasy, then I was quite happy living in fantasy land. After eating almost half a load, and too many Brie & Cranberry  crisps (another left over Xmas special offer !) plus drinking beer, I expected to get an even higher reading that the terrible 8.8mmol/l I read the previous morning.

  Having done my usual routine I seemed to waste a lot of time reading some tech news articles from last week before I went and had a shower. I had intended to wash my hair as well, but I felt I had left it too late to do that. At 8am, or very soon after, I went to Aldi. Once again my legs felt very stiff, and my right knee was complaining a bit too. I seem to be falling apart in this winter weather ! The funny things is that while my legs didn't seem to be working well, I seemed dto be walking faster than usual. Maybe my legs were complaining because I was over stressing them, or maybe it was just because Jupiter was in the fourth ascension, and Mars was in your anus....err, sorry, Uranus.

  Aldi still seems to have their usual selection of stuff. Maybe it helps that they obviously have a lot more control over their own brand stuff, and probably built up good stocks of non perishable, canned, or frozen stuff before the boarders with Europe closed just over a fortnight ago. My shop in there was pretty normal, and that meant buying at least one not that healthy comfort food. In this case it was a smoky bacon and mature cheddar quiche.  I had it for breakfast. It wasn't very nice. It would possibly have been better if it was hot. I had it cold. Maybe it was more the case that it failed to live up to my imagination rather than being not nice.

  That brings me to today, or the rest of today. There are a few things I definitely need to do, and basically they are housework - cleaning up the kitchen and kitchen sink, and also doing some laundry. I must admit that after eating that quiche I have little enthusiasm for housework, but it has to be done some time today. The other thing I have to do is to re-boot my computer after doing some upgrades recently. One upgrade will have rewritten the boot sequence, and I just know that it will try to boot from the wrong hard drive after the reboot. It is going to be an awful lot of kerfuffle to correct it, but at least I'll know what it is this time, and that will help to make it less of a disaster.