Don't be fooled by the sunny spells predicted for midday. They are no longer predicted, but the light showers for 1pm are still shown in the latest revision to the forecast. It seem that most of today will be dull, with some very dull spells. It seems almost mild at the moment, and for a few hours it should reach 15° C. The 20% chance of rain for 9am has now been reduced to just 10%, and of course there is some light drizzle falling right now.  Tomorrow is currently shown as a mix of dull and very dull. It will be a little cooler than today - maybe just 13° C - but it might stay dry, or it might be like today with random light showers.

   Yesterday was a very routine Thursday. I described yesterday how I went to Tesco to get some shopping in the morning. After that I did very little until it was time for out Thursday afternoon beer session with Jodie and Michael. It was both good and not so good. The not so good was Michael insisting I ought to like a load of songs by artists I have never heard of. He has the unique talent of liking something on the first listen. I don't !

  Michael actually pays a subscription to what I have always thought was a service for gullible kids, but it seems old people like Spotify as well. It seems that they like being offered all sort of random stuff. I'm still old school - I hear new stuff exclusively on the radio. The flaw with that is that I gave up listening to the radio 20 years ago because it was soulless and boring. I do still occasionally discover "new" stuff on old magazine front cover compilation CDs from 10 or 20 years ago !

  Anyway, we did have a few nice beers, and at least one nasty one which Jodie pronounced to be wonderful, or words to that effect. It was a very sour, very cloudy, acid orange flavoured beer brewed with natural yeasts (or any organism that drops into the barrel). At the other end of the spectrum was Kasteel Rouge - a nice sweet fruit beer. That was delicious, and I could quite happily get drunk on that. It would be easy because I think it might have been 8% !!

  I got myself just drunk enough to lose control of my eating. My dinner was cod in batter with the rest of the boiled potatoes from the previous day. I reheated them under the grill with a good sprinkle of oil and some salt and pepper. If I could have been patient enough they could have turned into almost chips, but I put the cod in batter on top of them to cook while only their edges were starting to colour.

  I wasn't terribly impressed by the Tesco cod in batter. They seemed to be made of minced cod, but it was still a pleasaant dinner, and maybe if I was sober it would have been almost all of what I ate for dinner, but sitting in the fridge was something that was calling to me ! It was a Ginsters smoky bonfire chilli pastie. I might have lasted 30 minutes after my proper dinner before curiosity (and alcohol) got the better of me. I gave the pastie a minute in the microwave to heat it up, and then devoured it. Initially it was almost rather nice, but was let down by leaving a very garlic/onion flavour in my mouth that I couldn't get rid of except by eating something else (I think it was a chunk of cheese).

  I hadn't slept well the night before, and so as 9pm approached I was very keen to get to sleep. I think I probably was asleep by 9pm. I slept well but was woken up by a possible brown out, or brief power cut. I think it was actually my computer booting up into the bright full screen, instead of the simple clock on a black background screensaver that runs all night, that woke me up. It took me a few second to realise that something had happened to the computer, and when I got out of bed to examine it closer I saw that all the programs I had left running were no longer running.

   I was awake for 15 minutes or so to check that there was no obvious damage, but I seemed to get back to sleep again fairly quickly. I did have one other short period of being awake sometime around 3am (a very typical time for many people). Other than that I seemed to sleep quite well. I woke up at just gone 6am, and thought it was a little earlier than desired, but it seemed like I was going to get up anyway, and I did.

  My undisciplined eating yesterday (I had several naughty snacks in preparation to soak up the beer) was bound to increase my blood glucose level - and it did, but it was not that high. 8.4mmol/l was still less than my typical monthly average for all but one month this year, and my running average is still a record low. I still have a plan to reduce it even further, but it relies on me clearing out most of the bad stuff I have by eating it ! That time is getting close, and then my plan is to go back to eating a lot of very low sugar soups, and maybe more instant noodles. The latter seem mostly harmless despite me thinking otherwise originally.

  This morning I have had a very rich breakfast of cheese on tomato, on sliced spicy beef , on toast. It was delicious, and has used up the last of a loaf that was going stale. I do have another bit of a different loaf that is also starting to go stale, and I will probably end up making cheese on toast with that as well.  That bread is probably the main thing I need to use up, and not replace, but I think I will allow myself some of my home grown potatoes now and then. They seem fairly safe since my blood glucose level drop a point after my Covid booster jab.

  My plans for today have been confounded by two things. I was hoping there might have been at least an hour of sunny spells this after, and they would have probably tempted me out for a walk of a few miles. If I had managed three or more miles I was thinking of treating myself to an Indian takeaway this evening. Maybe I still will, but the other confounding issue is that I think I have a beer delivery today. This morning I had an email from Beer52 to say my beer advent calendar has been despatched. It would seem that it is at my local depot this morning, and presumably will arrive today. What it doesn't say is who the courier is, although it does give a consignment number. I will have to try it in all the courier firms I know to see if that tracking number works. If it does I may get a better idea of when those 24 beers will arrive. I can plan my day around that information if I can find it.