I've just refreshed the weather forecast hoping to see something a bit better than the screenshot above, and indeed things have improved....a bit ! The filthy grey clouds are now due to change to lighter clouds an hour earlier at 1pm instead of 2pm, and by 6 or 7pm the sky should be clear of all clouds for a while. Other than that, the screenshot above tells a fairly accurate picture of what a nasty day today will be. Tomorrow may bring good and bad. There will probably rain, some of it heavy from the earliest hours until, maybe, 9am. The afternoon may feature several hours of sunny spells before more rain falls. The best bit is that the afternoon temperature may reach 12° C. The wind may be fairly light tomorrow afternoon, and because of that those sunny spells may even feel warm.

  I made the mistake of saying I seemed to feel OK yesterday morning, but it was less good than that. By midday I found myself feeling bad, not terrible, not awful, but still sort of bad. I seemed to develop a selection of aches that individually would have been ignorable, and would have been ignorable in total if sufficiently distracted, but I felt bored and restless. That made the impact of even a small fleeting itch, or something else ordinarily of no consequence, feel much worse.

  I have to admit I was also feeling rather edgy as I waited with baited breath for my delivery of booze from Amazon. It didn't leave the depot until 10:45am, and so I knew it would not be arriving until later in the afternoon. I must admit I fooled myself into thinking that now the Xmas rush is fully over, the load on the delivery vans would be less, and that the delivery could turn up as early as 3pm. Of course it didn't.

  I never did get around to doing the one thing I intended to do yesterday morning - transferring the last part of the Horizon "Red Star In Orbit" documentary from VHS tape to digital file on (initially) my old PC. I left the gear all set up to do it, but I couldn't seem to raise the enthusiasm until it was too late. By about 2pm I realised I would have to pull my finger out, and clear the PC and VHS machine off the dining room table to make way for booze.

  Having finally got started, I found I got everything ready for a boozing session quite quickly. It wasn't too long after 3pm that Jodie turned up for another illegal drinking session. This time she brought only one very dubious beer - another sour fruity beer that featured a Japanese citrus fruit that I think was called a Zuma or something like that. The other two beers she brought over were nice. One was a Belgium beer called Golden Drak. It had a typical "Belgiummy" taste (which I am told is now an official beer taste).

  I think it was about 6pm before my delivery arrived. It was just in time for a "one for the road" before Jodie left, although to be accurate, it was actually nearly an hour before she left to get her train - it seems to get later and later ! The booze was Aquavit. It could be described as a caraway flavoured vodka, but it is more complex than that. I bought two bottles of it. Yesterday we had the weaker of the two, just 38%, but maybe next time I'll open the other which is 43.5%. It is rather nice !

  Once again I had not prepared any dinner for after the boozing session, and a few extra spirits on top of some strong beers, meant I was in no mood to start cooking. I didn't want to order a takeaway, and so I went down the pot noodle route. I had the last of the extra sized Pot Noodles that I had ordered in my last Star Bargains ordered, and I had two Pot Pastas (or whatever they call them). They were hot, semi filling, and terribly unhealthy.

  I ended up eating my dinner while watching old episodes of 'Allo, 'Allo. There were three episodes on last night, but I only watched two. After the second one ended, which was the last ever episode which ends with a sort of reunion 20 or 30 years after the end of WW2, I brushed my teeth and went to bed. I tried to read for a while, but I was feeling the booze, and pretty soon I put the book down, turned out the light, and fell asleep almost instantly.

  I wish I knew what time that was, but I have no idea. What I do know is that it felt like I had been sleeping for ages and ages when I woke up and saw that it was only eight minutes to Monday ! (11.52pm). From then onwards I had trouble getting asleep, and staying asleep. Some, maybe most of the problem was my hangover, but maybe only in the sense that it made existing things worse. I seemed to find all those lumps, bumps, and creases in the sheets and mattress that only come out on special days. I was too hot and too cold - sometimes at the same time !

  I probably did manage to sleep in a few blocks of several hours, but I also seemed to be awake a lot. There was probably one other problem that would only reveal itself later, and towards morning I was also on the edge of getting painful cramp in my lower legs. Fortunately I managed to get my legs in a better position before that excruciating vice like grip of a pain of cramp fully started.

  One problem, or maybe it was the opposite of a problem when looked at correctly, was that I wanted to get up early enough to go and getting some shopping from Aldi soon after they opened at 8am. I managed to get there at about 8.20am, and that was good enough. I could have got there earlier but I was held back by the need to go to the toilet three times. I remember going to the toilet yesterday morning, and thinking "that's not much". This morning I probably shifted a backlog in three sessions. No specific pain was obvious last night, but maybe some discomfort was adding to my sleeping problems.

  This morning I feel very tired, and I am going to limit my initial ambitions for the day to just laying on my bed, with the heating up, and a book in my hand until I feel like a snooze, or two snoozes, or three snoozes, or perhaps one really long snooze. Laying on my bed will probably make me ache more. I don't ache at the moment, probably thanks to my walk to and from Aldi. It was almost a nice walk - even when carrying the heavy shopping home again. The cold fresh air certainly woke me up, and cleared out some of the hangover fog from my brain.

  This morning was one of those shopping trips where you think you have bought a lot, and yet the cost was the lowest for quite some time. I made a point of not buying anything too naughty - or at least naughty with regard to sugar content. I was not surprised to see my blood glucose up at 8.8mmol/l this morning. Maybe that figure put a restraining hand on my purchases, although it was less than expected, and I have done far, far worse after an after noon boozing session.

  Well, January is now behind us, and February is only a short month. March should see some improvements in life. There is fair chance the weather will improve a lot by then, and there is even a chance that some of the covid restrictions could be lifted in March, but sadly the edicts on mask wearing may not be lifted until much later in the year. I'll still have to walk everywhere, but maybe by summer I can build my stamina up again, and try for 8 or even 10 mile walks.