The latest revision to the forecast has made a tiny improvement over the screenshot above. There will now be light cloud the whole day, and the darker clouds have now gone away...possibly. The reality might be that today might be like yesterday with blue skies and sunshine, but when I look out the window it seems more likely the official forecast will probably be correct. The only positive thing is that it could reach 8° C this afternoon. The only positive thing about it is that it will be 2° less cold than yesterday. Tomorrow may improve on that a lot with a prediction for 11° C and sunny spells in the afternoon.

  Yesterday was a Sunday, and Sunday's are rarely good days. Had I know the afternoon was going to be bright and sunny I could have made preparations to go for a walk. Mostly that would have meant eating the bare minimum in the morning - ideally nothing at all. Even if I met that precondition I might still have decided not to go out. The reason being is that the weather was still not right. The air temperature remained very cold, and that meant wearing a coat. The only coats I have that I could have worn are all dark coloured, and they would soak up the heat of the sun. I would be cooking inside while my fingers and face were like icicles. If I left my coat open I would be risking annoying my chest !

  I didn't really do anything worth mentioning last night. I didn't do any housework. I didn't do any DIY type things. I did make some headway reading the book I am finding hard work reading. The book is in several parts, and I finished part 1. Part 2 is where things should be interesting, and to some extent things are starting to get a bit lively, but it is all so trippy. I almost wonder if it was written under the influence of LSD, and that is why I find it so hard going.

  I thought I would show a picture of the book - something I should do more often. It was a split second decision to take the picture - literally after I type the full stop at the end of the previous paragraph - and I should have made a better job of taking the picture, but it shows what it needs to show. Incidently, as far as I can gather "Fool's Run" is a term for a hand of cards in poker. I am not a card player, and so the definition went in one ear and out the other.

  I passed some of the time yesterday by snoozing. It was a bit surprising that I seemed to fall asleep so easily after believing I got plenty of sleep the night before. Maybe my sleep was a bit more disturbed than I thought, or maybe my snoozes were a lot shorter than I realised. I must admit I have no idea of the duration of my snoozes, and I don't even know if I snoozed once, twice or three times. I think there was one time when I just closed my eyes and day dreamed without sleeping.

  It was a measure of my boredom that I had a rather big lunch. It was a couple of medium sized baked potatoes with some butter and cheese on them, plus a small can of beans and sausages. The beans and sausages were not of the more common type, such as those from Heinz, but they were Turkish (or Greek). They featured big beans, a very thin, not very tomato-ey sauce, and a very strange and unpleasant sausage. I had been waiting for probably a few months to try those beans, and now I am glad I didn't buy another can without testing the first. They are not recommended - or at least the particular make I tried is not recommended.
  Those stodgy potatoes needed something to wash them down, and I chose some beers. I drunk the beers pictured above from left to right. The Jever was one of those beers with a nice pre-taste and nasty and bitter after taste. The Fruh and Zot were pleasant, but nothing to get excited about, and I don't think I was terribly excited by the Kirin. The latter was actually brewed in the UK (I think) and so is probably nothing at all like stuff actually brewed in Japan.

  After my big lunch I kept dinner down to a small and simple meal. It was actually no more than a few well grilled pork belly strips with a bit of mustard. Despite being well grilled, too much in the case of the plain meat, they were still quite fatty, but I guess that was only to be expected. I think that one problem was that my little oven does not get hot enough, and that really spoils the flavour. Once upon a time I would oven cook pork belly strips until they were almost crispy, and yet still melt-in-the-mouth.
  I washed down that pork with Ouzo and Lemonade - a very big Ouzo and Lemonade ! It was delicious. I haven't had any Ouzo for ages, and I am so glad I ordered a bottle from Amazon some weeks ago. It was a nice night cap because it wasn't all that long after drinking it that I went to bed. Once again it was initially to read in bed, and I managed another complete chapter before putting the book down. I am around half way through the book now.

  It is all a bit vague now, but I think it must have been 10pm, or just a little later, when I fell asleep. I had some pretty weird dream. I prefer hard science fiction, and look down my nose at "fantasy" - the sort of thing involving magic and stuff, and yet that was what one of me dreams was about. It featured a very good looking, but evil witch, and a man who may have been Sherlock Holmes (a bit weird, but...). The witches power came from a magic 20p coin. She had apparently dropped it, and we were searching for it. I found the man, who might, or might not have been Sherlock Holmes, laying unconscious in the road, and he seemed to be pointing. I went to where he was pointing, and I could see the 20p coin semi hidden under a CDR disk in a plain plastic sleeve. I picked up the coin and examined it. It seemed to be made from plastic, and was oval. Someone said I had to keep it with me for ever to stop the witch getting it again. I am sure there was more to the story, but that is all I can remember.

  I had another interesting dream, but evidently not interesting enough to be remembered. All the dreams suggested I was often not in a very deep sleep, and thus not sleeping that well. The proof, or a suggestion of proof, of this is that I woke up needing a pee at the annoying time of 5.40am - annoying because I wanted to get up at 6am. After my wee I got back into bed to warm up again, and promptly fell asleep until 7am.

  The trouble with 7am is that it gave me very little time to get ready to go shopping. I like to leave just before 8am on Monday to get my weekly shopping from Aldi while it is very quiet in there. It was all a bit of a rush. I first did my usual health checks - which is mostly checking my blood glucose, and moaning about all my creaky joints. My blood glucose had only crept up from 8.5mmol/l to 8.6mmol/l. After gorging myself on two medium sized baked potatoes, and having half a dozen ginger biscuits as well, I was reading what reading I might get, but I am not going to panic about any reading less than 9mmol/l, although I really need to get it down to less than 8mmol/l.

  After having a shower, and getting dressed, I rushed to Aldi, and got there about 8.20am. It was still very quiet in there. In fact it was unusually quiet. There was only one checkout open, and the girl manning it was just about to go for a wander in the store before she saw me approaching, and quickly logged back into the till. I bought my usual selection of stuff. Much of it selected to be at least semi healthy, but I did buy a couple of naughty things for breakfast.

  Considering my blood glucose level they were very naughty, but only in as much as they contained a lot of pasta. In fact they were almost all pasta. One was pasta with spinach and pine nuts, and the other was pasta and cheese. I ate both for breakfast. Some claim pasta is not that bad for you but it is all carbohydrate, and enzymes in the digestive system convert carbohydrate into sugar - which is not good for me.

  The day remains dull, and even if it wasn't I would not be inclined to go for a walk after eating that breakfast. I think today promises to be another boring day unless, or until I find something useful to do. If it didn't feel so close to being winter I would be doing some gardening, but I haven't got any enthusiasm for that at all. I will probably do some stuff on my PC, but otherwise it could be another day of reading and snoozing.