If I had relied on yesterday's prediction for today I may as well have stayed in bed, but overnight everything has changed. There will be sunny spells today after all. The sun is actually shining no. Thanks to the seasons moving on, it looks high enough in the sky today that it might just clear the top of the houses for the next hour or so as it moves around the sky. The screenshot above was of the 5am version of the forecast, but just before I started writing I checked for an update, and the latest revision is less optimistic about how many hours will feature sunny spells. For instance, it is now predicted that there will be no sun at all at 10am and midday. On the plus side the hours of sunny spells now finish at 3pm, and 4pm is predicted to be pure sunshine. The temperature predictions haven't changed, and by late afternoon it could actually be warm ! Tomorrow, which was once predicted to be like today is going to be more like today was predicted to be yesterday (confused? you should be !) It will be a couple of degrees cooler, and could feature a splash of rain, but there might be a few sunny spells late in the afternoon.

  Not counting food, only one thing of significance happened yesterday, and it was the phone I made to try and help Sue with her myriad computer problems. It was far less stressful than I thought it would be, and that was mostly due to her problems being less severe than I had been lead to believe. She does have some problems still to sort out, but the one that was driving her mad was that she could not get he new iPhone to do what she wanted - principally to get it to connect to facebook.

  One of her big problems is that she has forgotten many of her passwords, and even which email addresses are active, and which are used for what. It probably took a couple of hours, but by trying to guide her in the right direction ( by pure guesswork) she found she could access facebook, and I had sent her a test message to the email address she appears to have linked to facebook.

 In all it was a mammoth 4 hour phone conversation during which I consumed quite a few large whiskies to take the pain away.... The last two hours included other stuff that phones and computers, and it was sort of nice chatting about this and that. In many ways Sue is a bigger gasbag than Lee, but at least she sticks to the point instead of wandering off topic, and adding all sorts of information that seems pointless to me. For instance he seems to feel the need to explain the geneology, complete with full names, over the previous 5 generations of the man who sold him a packet of fags in his corner shops...and of course the man is his mate because he has bought two other things from there.

  It was getting close to 6pm when I got off the phone to Sue. I had barely 10 minutes to prepare my dinner before switching on the TV to watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. My dinner cooked while watching TV, and I only checked it during commercial breaks. I started off with lean diced beef, and brown mushrooms. The original idea was to add some green vegetables, and give it another 10 minutes in the microwave, but I had given it enough time for the beef to be fully cooked, although not enough for it to get more tender.

  I had popped down to the kitchen during another commercial break, and I should have added those vegetable, but the whiskey in my blood made me lazy, and hungry, and incautious. One of the things I had added to the Star Bargains order that was delivered on Thursday was some packets of instant mash (with cheese and onion). I am not sure why I ordered it - I guess it seemed like a useful thing to stash at the back of the cupboard for the future, but the future came early. Instead of green vegetables I added more and more instant potato to the gravy until it was thickened to a good mashed potato consistency. That was a whole packet, and apparently a serving for 3 or 4.

  Apart from the beef being slightly tough, but not unpleasantly so, it was a truly delicious dinner. The best I've had in ages. Of course like most nice things it exacts it's revenge later. Part one of the revenge is that I felt over stuffed for the rest of the evening, and into the night. It couldn't have been my dinner causing a lot of wind so quickly, but I did suffer from a lot of wind as I first lay in bed. I had to get up and go and do a small poo. That seemed to calm things down enough to get to sleep.

  A couple of hours later (or less) I woke up at around 1am needing to have another poo as well as a wee. There is no particular reason for it apart from rarity, but it somehow feel wrong to be sitting on the toilet when you should be sleeping. Anyhow, the deed was done (quite a big deed !), and I felt a lot more comfortable. I don't think I slept all that well for the rest of the night, but I can't think why I think that. I don't think I can remember being awake for any time beyond that needed for one, maybe two, quick wees, and I seemed to wake again around 6am feeling sort of refreshed.

  As usual, one of the first things I did was to check my blood glucose. I knew it would be high after that mashed potato, and there was also the matter of having some savoury rice, and some noodles during the day. It was probably remarkable that it was only 9.4mmol/l. On the plus side it was the right side of 10mmol/l, the level where it becomes dangerous. On the negative side it was still way too high.

  The rest of me had probably already detected the improved weather before it happened, and was feeling quite reasonable. I would have hoped for better than "quite reasonable" because today is an obvious day for a nice walk. In theory, provided I am patient enough to not go out until, say, 1pm, I shouldn't even need a coat, but I will probably still wear my sleeveless denim jacket. I will be happy to just do my usual 3 miles, but I would like to extend that to 4 miles if I can, and even 5 miles if a miracle happens.