My outside thermometer said that the temperature was more than the 2° C originally forecast, but the latest revision says that we are now only just about to reach the lowest temperature, 2° C, in about half an hour as I write this. The afternoon temperature is going to be a chilly 6° C again. Today will feature clouds - lots of them, and at the moment there seems no chance of the sun breaking through. The afternoon clod is predicted to be heavier, and although none is shown, there remains a 10% chance of rain for much of today. Tomorrow brings no joy - it is probably going to be near identical to today.

  It felt that nearly all yesterday was dictated by waiting for my beer delivery. The Yodel web site confirmed it was out for delivery from around 10am, but provided no more information....well, no more until I found their other tracking page ! Quite why they need two different web pages to show tracking details is a mystery best left to the Gods who may understand this sort of thing.

  I think it was getting on for 5pm when I discovered the other web page, and that said my delivery would happen sometime between 5.15 and 7.15pm. It also eventually showed a map of where the driver was in relation to me, and from then on I could track where he was. He took a very weird route. He even seemed to be going the wrong way up a one way road. The other thing I learned was that when counting the amount of "drops" before the driver reached me, 2 boxes to the same address counts as 2 drops.

  The driver seemed to take a very erratic route to get to me. At one point he seemed to have driven into Tesco in the shopping centre, but he was probably in the access road above the store. Sometimes he would seem to be very close, and then go further away. Eventually he was delivering just down the road from me, according to the tracking information, but in the real world he was knocking on my door. It was probably not much later than 5.30pm when my beer arrived.
  There were 12 bottles of different beers from the Samuel Smiths brewery, and 12 assorted beers from Germany. The supplier, https://www.realalestore.co.uk/, helpfully provide tasting notes for all the beers. It is a nice touch, and sort of interesting, but I can't say I agree with many of their ideas of what the beers taste like. It is all down to individual taste. Some of the beers that Jodie has brought over in the past have had really amazing reviews, using all sorts of flowery language, but I have found them to be horrid !

  Until I finally found when I could expect the beer delivery I felt I had to stay on high alert. That meant no relaxing on my bed, reading a book in case I dropped off to sleep - as I frequently do when reading. In some ways it was like being back at work. I spent hours reading stuff of the internet - just like I did when work was slack. At one point I was spurred into action, and I can't quite recall what the stimulus for it was.

  I ended up doing two jobs while I had my tools out, Admittedly the second job was so simple it took little more than 5 minutes. For ages I have had a 99p shop over-the-door coat hook on my front room door. It was a clever idea, but it did stop the door fully closing. I had my electric drill, and a sturdy pair of pliers, out for the main job, and I used the pliers to snap off the over-the-door hook, and then drilled a few holes to screw the hook to the door itself.

  The main job was to finally get around to repairing the broken dining room chair. I had to make a sort of P shaped bracket to replace a failed weld on the chair. I had sorted out a strip of fairly strong aluminium weeks ago, and yesterday I bent it into shape, drilled a few holes, and hopefully made a strong repair to the chair. I think all surviving three chairs have now had their failed welds replaced by my home made brackets, and some have survived for years. Hopefully my now one will also survive for years.

  About the only other thing I did yesterday was to eat. I was mostly careful about what I ate, although the Rye bread with Marmite on it was a bit experimental. My dinner ended up as quite a big meal although there was not much in it. It was just chicken thighs, shallot onions, tenderleaf broccoli, sugar snap peas and thick gravy with added curry powder. It was the gravy that made it so big. I may have overdone the amount of gravy granules I added because it was stiff enough to stand a spoon in....well, maybe not quite that thick, but thick enough to be considered as part of the meal rather than just something for the other food to swim in.

  After that meal, a rather delicious meal even of I say so myself, I had a dessert of two large navel oranges. They could have been the straw that broke the camels back - as I shall explain when I get to this morning. I have to admit those oranges weren't quite as good as I hoped. They didn't seem to be as juicy as expected. Maybe they had been in storage a bit too long, and were starting to dry out.

  With all the waiting for the beer I ended up having dinner late again - about 7pm. That meant it was barely 90 minutes before I was in bed, and not much longer before I was asleep. It was one of those nights where I wondered if I was sleeping well or not. It seems like every time I woke up in the night I was awake for a long time, and yet whole lumps of hours went by unnoticed because of sleep. I guess I got my full 8 hours, and maybe even a bit spare.

  This morning I felt about as creaky as normal. It is not ideal, but I suppose that is just life. Perhaps if I had not eaten those two navel oranges last night I would have got a better reading than 8.5mmol/l when I checked my blood glucose. It was an improvement on yesterday morning, and in that respect it was good, but I can't wait for warm sunny days when I hope to bring the average down to 7.5mmol/l or less.

  I have two main plans for today. at 10.20am I am getting my rather late 'flu jab. I turned down last October's offer because I didn't want to wear a mask, plus the precautions I was taking to avoid Covid would also protect me from the 'flu, but now I have had to wear a mask twice, I might as well have it done. There are no trains on the Mid Kent Line tomorrow, and Jodie asked if she could bring our Sunday boozing session forward to this afternoon. I said yes, and so this afternoon we will get through a few of the beers in my new delivery. I still have some older beers to use, and so I doubt we will open more than 3 or perhaps 4 of the 24 beers that arrived yesterday.
  Finally a mystery object !  Actually anyone who worked in a government building prior to (approx) 1980 may have come across "White Windsor" soap. Age has browned these examples found in the back of a kitchen drawer. They are from a bag of them given to me as a house warming present by the cleaner of the building I was working in when I first moved to my current house in November 1983 (Actually I think it was the last day of October).