I had a lazy morning, and I was pretty lazy for the first few hours of the afternoon yesterday. It wasn't until Jodie arrived for the Thursday beer session that I had to sit up and pay attention. Most of the beer we had (actually lagers) were OK. None were horrible, and maybe a couple were better than the rest. The reason that some seemed to be merely OK, and rather similar to each other is that they were all brewed in the same brewery.

  There seemed a good possibility that they were actually from different batches of the same beer. They were all commissioned by The Bier Company for their World Cup football selection. There were 24 beers in the pack, and each was to represent the countries competing for this world cup thingy. Maybe half were actually imported from the country they represented, but the rest were made "in the style of....". At least 6 of the lagers were brewed by The Black Isle brewery, and the differences between them were small enough to be accounted for by being from different batches, or even from the top, middle and bottom of the kegs they did their final maturation in.

  I think it was about 6.30pm when Mark came to pick Jodie up to go for a drink, and food elsewhere. Mark stayed long enough for one 0% alcohol beer, and it was nice to have some adult conversation with him. A little of 7pm He and Jodie left, and I was able to prepare my dinner. I had done some preparation in advance. I wanted to use up some precooked, flavoured chicken slices that were a little beyond their use by date. The smelled basically OK, but I gave them a 20 minute roasting in my mini oven.

  I gave that chicken a good sprinkle of chilli sauce before I roasted it. The chilli sauce gave the chicken a sort of spicy taste, but it didn't seem to make it hot tasting. The only problem is that my roasting went on a bit too long, and some of the chicken really dried out, and became tough - almost leathery. I had it was a pile of salad leaves, tomatoes and some sliced mini peppers. It was nice enough, and apart from the tomatoes, it was low enough in sugars to compensate for some of the beers I drank.

  i didn't do much in the evening except watch an episode of QI, and then read in bed. Once it started to get dark I turned out the lights to go to sleep. Sleep was a bit slow coming, but once asleep I seemed to sleep well until sometime around 2am. Just like the night before I had started to feel a bit cool, and so I turned on the heater, and also just like the night before, I seemed to sleep soundly until it was time to get up. Another comparison with the night before is that I woke around 6am, but after a wee I went back to bed for another of those famous 5 minutes that turned into 90 minutes again.

  This morning my blood glucose seems to be running quite stably at 8.5mmol/l (the same as yesterday, and little different to the previous couple of days). It is a bit too high for comfort, and I ought to try and get it back into the sevens again. To do that means less food and more exercise - neither of which I find very appealing at the moment. It is possible I will only do two types of exercise today.

  I have already done. It was just a short walk to Poundstretcher where I bought more bird feed, and some odds and end for myself. Among those odds and ends were a couple of cheep and cheerful solar powered garden lights. It wasn't until I went to "plant" them in the garden that I realised I had no idea where they should go, or what I was trying to achieve with them. That is a bit silly because I have already planned to buy some better solar powered garden lights. Poundstretcher did have some solar powered spot lamps. They were three times the price, but probably emit more usable illumination.

  Apart from the fact they would  probably not have lasted long, they would have been more useful when the fox cubs were in the garden every night. I think I can see that some of the solar powered lights will work better if I ever get some decent flower beds established. Working towards that could potentially be a third form of exercise, but the second is just doing some laundry by hand. I hope the weather continues as it has today so I stand a chance of it drying on the line today.