The weather is going through a great flux, and the forecasts can't seem to keep up with it, plus the BBC (Meteogroup) and Met Office can't seem to agree about what will happen. The reality so far is similar to that shown in the screenshot above. The day started very bright despite a lot of the sky being cloudy. The very early sun is now rising almost exactly to the east, and I think (but have not proved it) that it can now shine directly on my outside thermometer for an hour or so before the thermometer is shaded again. Either that or it really was 12° C at about 8.30am. Neither forecaster was that generous !

  The curious thing is that the BBC say that the first sunny spells will be at 11am and midday. The Met Office say the first rain today will be at 11am and midday ! (Both according to the latest revisions to the forecast).  The BBC says the maximum temperature today will be 13° C, and the Met Office just 12° C.  The great unknown is when it will rain. In all probability it was rain for several hours.or more, sometime during the afternoon.  Both forecasters, although differing on the exact details, reckon tomorrow is going to be bright and quite wet with the temperature maybe as high as 13° C.

  I had, as predicted, a very lazy morning yesterday. Maybe my only achievement was to read several chapters of the book I was reading. By midday I thought it was high time I had a shower and washed my hair. After that, and drying my hair, I laid down to read some more, but I soon found my eyelids drooping. I gave into it, but only with the idea of having a very short snooze. It ended up a bit longer than that.

  I was woken up by a phone call from Lee. He had a lot to say, but very little was for me. For much of the call he was just saying what was on his mind, and what he was going to do. I just sat there bored stiff occasionally uttering a bland "yes" now and then. I was saved by someone at his front door. By then I had to rush around like a blue arse fly to get everything ready for another Sunday afternoon drinking session on a Saturday.


  I needn't have rushed as much as I did because Jodie arrived later than expected. She brought a fair few beers with her this time, and a couple of CDs. Four of the beers were "legacy brews" from one of her favoured Nordic brewers - I can't remember which brewery, but it was one that has a brewer who must be on LSD, and comes up with some really weird beers. The majority of them are very unpleasant, but these "legacy brews" were almost normal, and much more enjoyable.

  The CDs that Jodie brought over were awful. Fortunately one was just a 4 track EP, and was only 30% awful. It might have scored lower if it had been any longer than 4 tracks. It was something like Finnish death metal, but only something like that. The full CD was by a band called Klopikhana, and that was described as "Finnish Folk Metal". As well as any other reason to hate it, it contained a lot of accordion playing.

  I have read somewhere that the definition of a gentleman is one who can play the accordion, but doesn't !  That CD featured horrible music, horribly sung lyrics in a language I didn't understand a single word of, far too much (i.e. more than nothing) accordion, and the entire album seemed to last for about 8 hours. It deserves to be branded 150% awful !

   The saving grace was that some of the beers we drunk were nice, but another annoyance was that Jodie was drinking really slowly. I think I had two bottles of beer to myself as Jodie listened to her "music" while fiddling with her phone. Eventually we finished with a shot glass of whisky each, and then Jodie left to get the 6.58pm train home. I had made a point of cooking my dinner while we drank, and so I could eat my dinner straight after Jodie left.

  My dinner was some well cooked pork belly strips - cooked so the fat was crispy. I ate it will just two raw small bell peppers cut into small squares, and dressed with balsamic vinaigrette. My lunch had been just two cans of soup selected for it's low sugar content. One soup was Tesco pea and ham, and it was delicious. I must get some more someday. In theory that should have been enough for the day, but a bit later in the evening I ended up having some sliced Edam cheese with some thin sliced salami.

  That snack was rather unhealthy, although fairly low in sugar, and I ate it because I was bored with TV. The first bit of TV I watched was not boring. It was a black and white film set in about 1940, and concerned the evil foreigners stealing whole planes to discover their secrets. They used a sort of death ray that blew up the electrics in the plane. The hero of the film, or maybe the key part, was a very, very British secret agent, and in a way a bit silly. Being silly probably made the film more interesting, but I am sure the real point of the film was as wartime propaganda for the home audience to warn them of the real dangers of spies stealing secrets of our wartime equipment. (The equipment around which the film was centred was a supercharged aircraft engine).

  The TV that was boring, and induced me to eat, was a recording of an Eagles gig being shown by Sky Arts. The Eagles wrote and/or performed some good songs (but only some). I found the gig just could not capture my interest. In the end I gave up on it, brushed my teeth, and went to bed to read. I have no idea how long I read for. It was probably no more than an hour, and possibly less, but it was enough to finish the last book I was reading ("Titan" by Ben Bova). With the book finished I turned out the light, and I was soon asleep.

  I seemed to sleep OK, but it was a lot like the night before, and I did feel tired during the day as if I didn't get enough sleep. I guess some of this feeling that I need sleep is depression, or more simple, and less emotionally, boredom. I am definitely feeling a lot more board now I am reading about peoples going to pubs I can't get to, and having to endure all sorts of hardships to watch a gig there. I don't really want to go to those gigs as they are, and where they are, but it does make me look forward to when some sort of normality will return.

  I can't really remember any more about my dreams last night than I could remember about the dreams of the night before. Unlike the night before, I am pretty certain that none of last night's dreams featured any erotic moments, but if I can't remember I can't be sure. It would be most annoying if I did have a super erotic dream last night and caan't even remember it happening, let alone any details of it !

  The good news this morning is that despite eating a very naughty late night snack, and drinking lots of beer, my blood glucose is down to 8.9mmol/l. That is still bad, but much less bad than the readings earlier in the week. The puzzling thing is that though I was aware of what I was eating, I wasn't really trying that hard to reduce my sugar intake. It is possible that I have been fighting some sort of infection. That tends to raise blood glucose levels, but I can't put my finger on anything that I would regard as an infection. It may be a reaction to the Covid vaccinations.

  I don't think I can put much blame on my first Covid jab, but there was definitely a rise after the 2nd jab. That was the one that also made me very sleepy during the day. It is am interesting coincidence that as I become less sleepy my blood glucose does seem to be dropping....or maybe now my blood glucose is dropping a feel less sleepy during the day. There is no easy way to tell which side of the coin it is. All I can do is to hope that somehow I am getting my blood glucose under control.

  Maybe in June there will be some nice warm sunny weather, and that will entice me to get more exercise. That will help a lot. It doesn't seem like I will be doing any exercise today, although if the afternoon does end up dry for a while I might try and tidy up the garden. It looks like a dump at the moment - litter and other detritus all over the place. It is where the Vixen is doing her best to find food for the fox cubs.

  There is some news about the fox cubs. They are still not strong enough to leap over the fences, and I haven't seen them actually trying to do so yet, but I have noticed them looking up at the fences. Leaping fences is a skill they will have to learn at some point. The vixen makes it look so easy. They may not be able to get over the fences, but yesterday for what I think is the first time, they have managed to get under a fence. It is under the brand new fence at the bottom of the garden. It seemed like the other side of the fence was paved when I saw the new fence being erected, but somehow the cubs have burrowed under it, and I observed all the cubs disappearing under the fence yesterday evening (while it was still daylight). I haven't seen them yet this morning, and it is possible that they have dispersed now they are free of my garden. They didn't even appear when the vixen checked the garden at about 8am this morning - which is quite unusual. If they have gone I wish them well.

  As well as the weather there is another thing that will keep me sedentary - my books. Today I will start the next in the series (skipping one that I have not been able to get yet) Ben Bova's "Venus". It is slightly thinner that the last couple of his books, but I expect it will still give hours of entertainment. Then there are the 9 books in the series* that I have ordered, and should arrive for various sources in the next week or two. More great distractions from reality.

* Strictly speaking it is not a series, but they do share a similar chronology, and characters from previous books do pop up in later books. Ben Bova describes it as his grand tour of our solar system. He also writes books that stretch science a lot more to allow for travel beyond the solar system.