The recent revision to today's forecast is to move the sunny spells to 9am (or now as I write this). There was some nice sunshine maybe half an hour ago, but since then the sun has been hidden behind a cloud. Large parts of the sky are currently blue, but there still seems to be enough cloud around, although mostly to the east, to mess up the idea of non stop sunshine. From midday the BBC (Meteogroup( forecast agrees that there will be non stop sunshine until about 5pm, and so I guess that today is going to be sunny even if at the moment it isn't. Both forecasters agree that this afternoon will be 10° C, and that should feel nice in the sunshine if the wind is light. The Met office suggests that just one hour could be 11° C today ! Tomorrow is predicted to be back to grey all day, but the temperature will still make it to 10° C by about 3pm....maybe.

   I'm trying to think if I did any more than mentally prepare myself for an afternoon's boozing. I did do a little light tidying up, and I started, but didn't finish a bit of laundry. At around midday I cooked some "Feck" sausages. I thought I had some of this brand of sausages a year or three ago, and thought there was something good about them. I'm sure that one of their claims is that they are gluten free. Well that did nothing for me except to make my stomach feel odd - sort of like when you are building up to vomit. Fortunately that never happened, and plenty of booze numbed my gut.
  One thing I didn't do yesterday was to clear the dining room table of the PC and VHS recorder that I had set up to do Sue's VHS to digital video transfer. (The VHS machine is the silver box under the computer monitor). We just had to drink around it, and to be honest it was no trouble at all.

  Jodie arrived on time, just after 3pm for our boozing session. As usual she brought some very dubious beers with her. Once upon a time I was the only one who liked some of the beers that we had in The Shortlands Tavern that used hops that gave the beer a sort of hint of grapefruit taste. It seems that some of the weird "craft brewers" have taken this idea to extremes, and are brewing beers that would strip the enamel off your bath tub ! Unfortunately Jodie enjoys many of them, although there was one that even she remarked as being on the limit of her tolerance.

  The beer pictured on the left was possibly one of the nicest beers we had. It came via my neighbour Michael, and in turn he got it from his next door neighbour. His neighbour had been in Germany, and had to spend a fortnight in quarantine. The beer from the Waldhaus brewery was not intended for export, and so the label was in 100% indecipherable German ! I gave Michael one of my German beers in return for it.

  I didn't enjoy the start of our boozing session.  As I wrote further up the page, the sausages I had for lunch, and as a "stomach liner" had left me feeling sort of queasy. Then there was Jodie's extra sour beers, but eventually the alcohol started to numb my stomach and brain. From then on it was a nice session.

  Despite attempts to make it earlier, Jodie still ended up getting the train just before 7pm. It is sort of lucky that she allows herself plenty of time to walk to the station, and so I was able to see the last 20 minutes or so of Star Trek:Deep Space Nine. The trouble is that it didn't make much sense without knowing how it started.

  I was acutely aware that I could easily eat some naughty stuff after boozing, and being aware of it meant that I was able to fight off at least 50% of the temptation. My dinner started off very simple, but became more complex. I was going to have just soup, but one "soup" was actually a can of cheap and nasty (except it is actually quite tasty) "stewed steak". I looked at it just before I put it in the microwave, and a voice said "that needs peas in it". I added a small can of marrowfat peas in it before zapping it all in the microwave.

  It might have looked a mess, and the "steak" seemed to include bits of sinew or skin that you would normally see in pet food, but with the addition of some hot pepper sauce, I found it to be delicious. Maybe the booze helped ! Part two was actually a can of soup - chunky beef soup - once again with added hot pepper sauce. I am probably addicted to that hot pepper sauce, and normal food probably tastes bland, but so what....

  Last night was another night of strange dreams. The first was about being at a friends house, and being snowed in. All I can add to that vague memory is that the house was somewhere in a Croydon direction, but apparently on the 54 bus route. I only know this because the friend announced that the last 54 had gone. That only mattered because of the snow. I had actually got there on a bicycle (which I never actually saw in the dream). I don't know who the friend was. He seemed to be a mix of two other people I know.

  Another dream was about being in prison for shooting someone with a shotgun that I grabbed from nowhere when a madman threatened me with a rifle. The prison I was in was evidently a very, very open prison because it seemed to have buses and trains running through it ! My main concern was about the parlous state of the prison plumbing. I was trying to find somewhere to wee. I woke up very soon after after that bit of the dream started, and of course I wanted to go for a wee.

  This morning I felt typically creaky and stiff, although maybe not the worst I have felt. Maybe the light hangover was masking some of it. The good news, but only good by a whisker, is that my blood glucose has dropped from 9.2mmol/ yesterday, to 9.1mmol/l this morning. That ain't great, but at least it is an improvement. I could potentially improve on that a lot today. It may not be actually warm, but it would feel good walking under a blue sky, and the sun would probably make it warm enough for bare arms.

   I might have walked a bit further today, but I won't be walking at all. Unless she lets me (and herself) down again, Sue should be coming over this afternoon to do this VHS to (ultimately) DVD video transfer. I will be very annoyed if she lets me down again - particularly because I will be missing out on what should be good walking weather. This time she will be getting a few messages and a phone call to try and gee her up, although the phone call could be dangerous. It can be harder getting Sue off the phone than it is to get Lee off the bloody phone.
  On the whole these beers were nice beers, but the real significance of this picture is that it was taken (or the individual shots that it is composed of) exactly a year ago today. It marks the last time I was in a pub under "normal" conditions. I didn't bother when the pubs opened for a while with ridiculous regulations because it just wouldn't have felt like a pub. It is possible, under very strict circumstances, that I may visit a pub when they once again partly open in April. Those strict circumstances are that the pub should be almost deserted, not bother about walking through it with no mask, the weather being fair enough to survive a session in the garden, and it should have Angela in it. I think I know a pub where these conditions may be met !