Today is going to be wet - possibly very wet. It is also going to be really dull and gloomy at times. The only positive thing, even if it is almost irrelevant against the horrors of heavy rain and dank gloomy skies, is that for a few hours the temperature might reach 13° C, or a whole degree less cold than yesterday. The next few days may be similar to some degree or another, and it might not be until next Tuesday that the weather improves just a little bit.

    Yesterday was a very bland day. The weather did not encourage any outdoor options, and it didn't inspire me to do anything indoors either. I did do one physical thing because it couldn't be put off much longer. I hand washed a couple of t-shirts and some underwear, and had to dry them on a clothes horse in front of a heater. The only other things I did were eating and reading.

  Actually there were two other things I did, and they were both online shopping. First I went to the beer explorer web site to see what they offered. The first thing they offered was a web site so reliant on a multitude of power consuming scripts that I couldn't even get it to work on my main web browser with all it's script blocking turned on. Eventually I resorted to using the Chromium web browser, but only in an incognito window.

  Good websites, such as Amazon, don't need all the scripts brought in from all sorts of dubious places, and will work perfectly OK provided you allow scripts from Amazon itself. I guess Amazon have a host of experienced web designers who don't have to call on outside help.

  Those multitudes of scripts, many probably trying to profile me, were not the only thing wrong with the beer explorer. They do not deal with small quantities. So if you want one particular beer you have to buy a case of 12 of that beer. The alternative is their "worldwide explorer" collections of beer. They only offer 4 selections, and two of them were out of stock. I ordered the two which were in stock. I feel most of the beers will be very familiar, but there could be a few "rareties". If your order exceeds £100 you get free delivery, but my order was only £60, and I had to pay £4.99 delivery on it. I don't think I will using the beer explorer again.

  The other bit of online shopping was with Amazon. That was almost satisfactory, and the only thing that spoils it is if you search for one particular author in their book section they will interleave books that might be similar, or from authors who share part of the same name. It took a bit of time to winkle out the books I wanted from Ben Bova to try and complete my "Grand Tour" book collections - a series of stand alone stories that share a similar time line, and sometimes a few characters.

  It is possible that I might have got a bit carried away because I ended up ordering 9 books - and I still need more to complete my collection - Ben Bova was a very prolific writer ! He has also written a lot of other books, and some of those are mini series. Once upon a time Amazon started as just a book seller, but now they have expanded they stock on a few new books, and rely on outside sources for older books. I made a point of only buying books shipped from within England for speed of delivery, but oddly enough they can be subtly more expensive than those sourced in America.

  As boringly usual, I was trying to keep my sugar consumption low yesterday (that includes carbohydrates that the body converts into sugars). I may have relaxed my standards a bit though. It would have been great if I had a great distraction from food, and fasted until dinner time, but by midday I was depressed by the weather, and opted for some soup. I had two cans bought from Tesco, and both were lentil based. Both contained some tomato, and so the sugar content was medium low, and both were actually very tasty - even the one from those vegan extremists (possibly) "Plant Chef".

  My dinner was pretty safe. It was diced lean beef with some purple sprouting broccoli and pak choi. Both those vegetables had been in the fridge too long, and were on their last legs so it was good to use them up. The only trouble with that dinner is that I didn't enjoy it. The principle problem was that the beef seemed very tough. It would have been a lot better if it could have been cooked gently for maybe several hours. I think my only option would be to give it 5 minutes in the microwave many times over the course of the afternoon.

  If it wasn't for two interesting things on TV last night I would have had another very early night. The first was a documentary about the making of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" album. A lot of it was very familiar, but there was some stuff I had not seen before. One of the most interesting things was playback of the voices heard between tracks dry. In other words, the original speech before it had been moulded into the music. It sounded really strange. Quite boring really, but with the music it sounds so dramatic.

  The second programme, also on the Sky Art channel, was about the last weekend of John Lennon's life. I was not aware that just 2 days before he was shot he had done a long series of interviews with BBC radio's Andy Peebles. It was interesting. It was sad, but it was also annoying. Annoying because it didn't have any John Lennon music in it. In fact apart from some incidental music, there was no music at all. I don't know if the producers were too tight to pay royalties, or if someone like Yoko Ono banned them for using any of his music.

  I was really yawning when the John Lennon documentary finished at 10.30pm. Luckily I had brushed my teeth in an earlier commercial break, and I was able to go to bed the moment the programme ended. I think I might have read a few pages from the current book I am reading before turning out the light, and falling asleep almost instantly.  After that it was like huge chunks of time never existed. I woke up a few times in the night, and I didn't always think I had been asleep until I saw that many hours had passed.

  I know I dreamed a lot last night, or at least I think I know that I did. The trouble is that I don't seem to be able to remember any coherent storyline for those dreams. I just seem to remember a few snap shots that with no context are meaningless. The only dream that I think I would have liked to remember had some erotic overtures. It is probably double annoying that I can't remember any more than the theme to that dream. I don't even know if it last 2 seconds or 20 minutes !

  Oh well, I guess I am lucky to remember any dreams. Many don't. There was better news when I woke up. My blood glucose had dropped to just 9.1mmol/l - the lowest it has been for ages. Of course it is still way too high, but any improvement must be good. My blood glucose has zero bearing on how the rest of me feel, and this morning I didn't feel good. Like yesterday I seemed to be very creaky with an added sauce of back ache. It has mostly gone since being out of bed, and moving around, but I am not ready to run a marathon today !

  I'm not really expecting to do anything this morning. The grey light hurts my brain...or something. This afternoon will be different. It will be Sunday's boozing session brought forward to today. I am looking forward to it, and not looking forward to it. Some company and beer will be nice, but I feel like going into hibernation until a better day happens. SAD, or seasonally affected disorder is usually a winter time thing when the days are so short. It can be really debilitating for some. I like to think I am only medium affected by it even in the darkest winter days, but I guess I am just as much affected on much longer grey, wet and miserable days in May - doubly so when I think that by now we should be seeing the early signs of summer - much drier and warmer days. Today the weather is crap. Yesterday , and many days before it, and many days after today, will also be totally crap.