The latest revision to the forecast is more pessimistic that than the early version in the screenshot above. It is likely that today will be almost a cooler duplicate of yesterday. As I write this the sky is very dark, and copious amounts of rain are falling. There might be a pause at 10am, but it won't be until midday that the clouds will get thin enough to allow a possible sunny spell now and then. Like yesterday, the last hour or so before sunset may feature a lot of blue sky, and some weak winter sunshine. For a few short occasions the temperature may hit 14° C, but 13° C is going to be more typical for this afternoon. It all gets worse tomorrow. Both the Met Office, and the BBC's forecasters have issued a weather warning for very heavy rain - mostly in the morning again. The temperature may struggle to reach 13° C.
 
  Yesterday was dominated by waiting for two deliveries, one of which was two items. Apart from the rain, and general crapulence of the weather, I would actually have been free to do anything in the morning, and up to almost the end of the afternoon. Amazingly enough it was Amazon who arrived first, and I think it was around 4pm. Yodel were unusually late. In the past I am sure they would arrive around lunchtime, but yesterday's delivery was at about 6pm.

  I was sort of productive yesterday, although only one job had a real tangible product. I did a medium sized wash. Of course I had no option but to burn some electricity in the front room to help dry the washing as it hung on the clothes horse. I only had the fan heater on low, 1kw, and after about 5 hours my washing was still damp in places. I guess this is normal, and I have been spoiled by stuff drying on the washing line in a few hours if it was breezy and sunny.

  I filled in many hours by doing more to my spreadsheet cataloguing all my best train pictures. I am actually getting close to the first end of this long job. The second end will be when I have gone back to the beginning to add links to all the pictures I didn't include the first time. That was because I don't think I even realised I could do that, and only started doing it when maybe two thirds through it. The third, and hopefully final ending will be when I start again (as in from my earliest pictures) and include all the old slam door trains in it. I think I will ignore steam locomotives because I have very few pictures of those, and wouldn't know how to categorise them.

  I tried to be mindful about what I was eating yesterday. In the previous couple of days I have pushed the limits, and almost got away with it. The trouble is that while my blood glucose has remained in a good or better area, I do seem to have put on almost a whole kilogram. I wasn't actually dieting yesterday, and I wasn't actually going only for very low sugar options, but I was mindful of both, and I think I did fairly well.

  While another Chinese takeaway would have been wonderful, and an Indian takeaway would be just as nice, and a kebab takeaway could actually have been healthy, it is a drain on my resources to pay for takeaways. It seems that even Chinese takeaways, that used to be quite cheap, are now quite expensive. So I cooked my own dinner, and it was a couple of smoked haddock fishcakes. I'm sure I had something after them, but I can't think what unless it was just the chunk of cheese that I do remember.
  One part of my Amazon delivery was these two books. I am sure that I have ready "Mostly Harmless" before, but I can't find it anywhere. Maybe I borrowed someone else's copy. Anyway, now I definitely have a copy. I also have "The Deeper Meaning Of Liff". I have never owned, or read "The Meaning Of Liff", but I have seen extracts, and while it is not a story, but a list, it does seem funny. I have ordered "The Meaning Of Liff", but it may not arrive until sometime in November.

  The other package from Amazon was important, but not exciting. It was a couple of replacement batteries for my Nikon Coolpix P500 camera - my favourite camera for something like trainspotting. The original Nikon battery is starting to bulge, and that is not a good thing for Lithium Ion batteries. I think it is time to dispose of it. I already had a cheap Chinese battery for it, but it got little use because I don't think the original batter ever went flat on me when out and about. Now I have three cheap Chinese batteries, and hopefully they will last the life of the camera.
  The second delivery was really rather remarkable. It was another beer based Advent calendar from Beerwulf. The truly remarkable thing about it is that it was delivered quite close to 24 hours after I had ordered it. I have to admit I couldn't resist a peak at some of the beers because there was no security on each cell of the box - just a simple tuck in flap. I have never heard of most of the beers before. I am sure Jodie will have seen many of them, but I am sure she will have a few surprises when we start on these beers in December.
  Weather lore says that a red sky at sunset heralds a nice day in the morning. Last night it got it wrong. As mentioned above, this morning is horrible, dull and wet. Maybe the afternoon will be better, but I am not holding my breath. I took this picture at 5.30pm, and the sun is already below the visible horizon. In an hour it would be dark outside, and the primitive part of my brain was saying it was time for bed. In consequence I missed two possible gigs last night.

  Of course I didn't actually go to bed until some hours after this. At 6pm I had my dinner, and then I washed it down with (I think) the last two bottles from the beer I ordered from the Fullers brewery in the spring or summer. One bottle was of ESB (extra special bitter) and the other was Golden Pride - a very strong, and very malty beer. This morning the glass felt quite sticky because of that sweet and sugary malt.

  I went to bed at around 9pm, or maybe a bit earlier because there seemed to be little on TV last night. I was probably asleep by 10pm. I had some dreams that were not very enjoyable, although not actually unpleasant. I probably got up to pee about the same amount of times as usual, and so it was not a great night, and neither was it a bad night, but somewhere between. Like yesterday morning, the great annoyance was waking up too early, and not being able to get back to sleep again.

  It was not long after 6am when I got up. It would still be dark outside for well over an hour, and with the really heavy clouds it was far from daylight even after sunrise (assuming it did, although I have yet to see it). Once I had had a pee, and washed my hands (of anything that my contaminate my finger prick's worth of blood) I checked my blood glucose. I was amazed, but very pleased to see it had dropped from yesterday's small peak to 7.6mmol/l. That is 0.1 over my personal target, but enough to drop my running average for the month to the lowest for the year. Unless I eat a whole chocolate cake today, it seems that with just one more day to go until the end of the month, I will finish on a record low for the month.

  I am now faced with the problem of what to do today. The dark and soggy look of the outside world makes me want to draw the curtains and ignore anything beyond these 4 walls. I don't feel in the mood to tackle some of the things I could be doing indoors today, although maybe the afternoon will be more inspiring. If it is I could get back to playing with Jodie's mum's old PCs. I doubt my sanity that I still want to get the oldest into a very slow, but usable state. The other PC will never be anything wonderful, but it could be potentially useful. It will need a good internal hoovering first judging by the dust in some of the air vents. In the meantime, there is always my train catalogue spreadsheet to get on with.