I was definitely feeling better yesterday, and seemed to be over my alcoholic poisoning. The day before yesterday I did some light tidying up, and even did some hoovering. I didn't go quite that far yesterday, but I did do a little more tidying in the front room, although some of that tidying up is sort of reversible. What I really did was to resurrect a low priority project I had neglected for several months.

  The project was to transfer many old VHS tapes to digital files. I was using my old PC for that because the gizmo that does the analogue to digital conversion only really works with the Windows application for it. In theory it should work using Linux, and I have managed to get video through it, but I couldn't get the sound to work in the short time I played with it before I got bored.

  Yesterday I set up that old PC, plus VHS video machine in the living room, and did two more tape transfers. If it is a long tape, and one was, I can just leave it to get on with it. The first tape I did I thought was a documentary called "Conquest Of Space", but it took seconds to realise it was actually a fictional film, and a closer look at the box revealed it was made in 1954. I did end up watching some of it. It was good, but crap ! If they could have replaced the hysterical Americans with stiff upper lip, Spitfire pilots, it could have been a lot better.

  The second tape was a bigger surprise. I had already extracted it from the the shelves ready to be copied, but maybe I didn't really read the scribble I had written on it. Once upon a time I was a great fan of the band New England. (It helped that I knew the drummers brother). Originally they were a hard rock band, but changed to a shock rock band, and eventually lost their appeal. I had no idea they had done two TV appearances, although obviously I had recorded them myself. One was on The James Whale Show in 1992, and not too bad. The second was on the late lamented MTV Headbangers Ball in 1993. By then they had lost their appeal, although I may not have realised it then. It was still exciting seeing them on TV. These days I am not sure why I want to keep those recordings, but I suppose it is still a sort of reminder of better days, and maybe seeing them live was more exciting than on TV.

  At about 3.30pm Jodie arrived for another beer drinking session. Once again it was not a very exciting afternoon, but not quite as bad as last Friday. She still has her throaty cough, but feels better, plus she wasn't recovering from drinking 13.5% beer the night before. Unfortunately she was suffering from bringing a lot of food to cook in my microwave, and prepare for later use. That was a slow and tedious time. Then, of course, there was checking Instagram, and checking beers on Untappd.

  Fortunately I did manage to get a few words out of her, and we did try a few beers she (and I) had been reluctant to try last Friday. In particular were the two I had bought in Aldi last week. One was a plum flavoured porter. Jodie was not keen on it. I couldn't make up my mind about it. Every time I took a mouthful of it, it tasted different. The first mouthful had a nasty burnt toast sort of taste. On the second mouthful the bitterness seemed less, and a hint of plum came through. Subsequent mouthfuls were a bit of this and a bit of that. I drunk just over half the bottle, and I'll admit it went down OK, but I don't think I could make a habit of it.

  The second beer of interest was a toffee beer. Jodie almost like it, and I think "almost like it it" describes my feelings as well. It was sort of interesting, but somehow wrong. It was basically a (probably) pleasant ale flavoured with whatever it is that gives that "salted caramel" taste to ice cream and other stuff. I have a strong suspicion it is an artificial flavour, albeit a good one. The thing about it was that when ever I burped for the rest of the evening I could taste that salted caramel. I'm sure natural salted caramel wouldn't be like that.

  We finished yesterdays drinking session with one small whisky each. It was of the Indian whisky I had bough from Amazon. I think Jodie liked it a bit more than I did. I found it very dry, very astringent. It is hard to lean to love that. Maybe the other Indian whisky that Amazon listed, that was described as having a spicy taste, might have been nicer. With the whisky drunk, Jodie left to get the 6.24pm train.

  During the whole day I was very mindful of what I ate. I was determined to to not make my blood glucose worse. As usual the beer was an unknown quantity, and it was just a chance I had to take. As I mentioned yesterday, I had some fish for breakfast, and as intended it did lessen any hunger pains, but I did have two cans of Tesco Cream Of Chicken soup for lunch (and before the drinking). That stuff has the lowest sugar content of any soup I have ever found.

  Fortunately I didn't drink enough to veer me off the path of healthy eating. Although I must admit I did have three cans of soup for dinner. One of them was a chunky vegetable soup that had a slightly higher, but still fairly low, sugar content. Like the day before (I think) I ate my dinner while watching an old episode of Blakes Seven. I then watched a second episode before taking my book to bed. I think I was fast asleep by 11pm (or possibly 10pm).

  Maybe I wasn't actually "fast asleep". The cumulative effect of 5 cans of soup and some beers was the equivalent to consuming a lot of liquid. Until over halfway through the night I was waking up for a pee every 90 minutes or so ! One of the drugs I take, and I think it is Losartan K has a side effect of making me pee long after I have consumed the water that I will eventually be eliminating. It is a wonderful when coming back from the pub, and not bursting for a pee as I fumble the key in the front door lock, but maybe not such a good idea when all that peeing takes place in the night.

  When I got up at 7am I felt different in a way that is impossible to explain. It was just somehow a feeling of being better than usual, but for no obvious reason. My temperature was down a bit, although the difference between 34.9 and 35.2° C is hardly better than a random fluctuation. More significantly was that my blood glucose was down to 7.8mmol/l, and not far off my personal target of 7.5mmol/l. It is what I hoped for, and yet there is an element of doubt about it. While I could squeeze a little more blood out of the finger prick I checked it on my old meter. That said it was still 10.0mmol/l. I decided to ignore that because the test strips are now rather old now, and they do deteriorate once the seal has been broken on the container.

  Today is the first day in ages when I have at least a vague idea of what I might do today. I have already done the first thing - a shopping trip to Aldi. Once again it wasn't too bad because a woman with a trolley full of stuff had attracted the attention of staff, and although it hadn't officially opened, I started putting myself on the conveyor. Before I was halfway through a member of staff opened the checkout, and then things were normal.
  I did my best to be sensible about what I bought in Aldi, but I thought these "Lamb Tikka Masala Burgers" just had to be tried. I have a strong suspicion they will be pretty horrible, but.... Oh well, they appear to be low in sugar, and not that high in calories. The walk to Aldi was initially a bit stiff legged, but the walk back was OK, and maybe even good considering the load I was carrying. The total was possibly not that much different to usual, but the way I carried it was. I had three x 2.5l bottles of Diet Coke in my rucksack (very normal) and also 6 cans of soup in as well (not normal). As a result of putting the soup in the rucksack I managed to get everything else into one, rather heavy, shopping bag.

  Since then I have had breakfast of some coated (sort of breadcrumbs) cod. Once again the idea was that it would help stave off any hunger pains during the day. It is a shame it doesn't really do much for boredom hunger pains (or the similar hunger pains brought on when concentrating on a difficult/frustrating task). Once I have finished writing this I have some washing that is currently soaking.

   Hopefully I can get that on the washing line in time for it to get at least a couple of hours of sunshine to part dry in. I expect that it will need to fully dry indoors tonight.  For the rest of the day I want to spend a while doing another or more VHS to digital transfers. I might also get back to cataloguing my train photos, and while a bit unlikely, I could even do some gardening today.