The latest revision to the weather forecast has downgraded 3pm to just sunny spells, but otherwise is the same as the screenshot above. It seems it is going to be bright and sunny (almost) all day, but for all that sunshine the temperature is going to peak at just 7° C. Tomorrow should see the temperature up to 8° C, but the price for that will be mostly light rain all day long, with an occasional burst of heavy rain when no light rain is falling !

  One of the things I forgot to mention yesterday morning was that the night before I managed to kick one of my boots with my bare foot while stumbling about in the dark. It left my left little toe feeling rather sore, and it lasted quite a long way into yesterday. It was another good reason why I didn't go out for a walk yesterday. An ambition from the previous night was to go for a walk, camera in hand, in what was forecast to be mist and then fog. Had it been foggy I may have forced myself to go for a walk, but with no fog there was no need, and nothing else would be worth enduring the pain of walking with a sore toe (although I am assuming that it would have been sore when in a boot, but for some reason I wonder if that would be so).

  As usual, the horrible greyness of the day sapped all my enthusiasm for anything yesterday. I did very little except read. I did spent maybe half an hour playing with the old motherboard that I was testing on the dining room table. I had hoped that turning off the boot sector virus protection would allow a completed installation of Linux Mint 17.2. It turned out it was already turned off. Just to make sure I turned it on, and then off again, but still the install failed at the last moment, and yet the operating system was working perfectly, albeit a little slow, running off the live DVD. That proved, or at least I think it proved, that everything was compatible. It all remains a mystery because I gave up after a while.

  One thing I seemed to do yesterday was to be careful about what I ate. To my surprise that included a couple of large sandwiches, but on reflection it was probably just the sandwiches that were of dubious quality. For lunch I had a couple of cans of hot soup to warm me up. My dinner was Aldi souther fried flavour chicken steaks. I had them with raw white cabbage and raw red onion as a sort of salad.
  There was one other thing I had yesterday of unknown nutritional quality. It was the beer pictures above. I have to admit I didn't really like it, although it did seem to be growing on me by the time I had finished it. The label is written entirely in Polish, but it was easy to recognise the names of two of the hops used to make it (Citra and Cascade). Both those hops are very bitter, and it was the bitterness I didn't like (plus I was worried that the bitterness of the hops might be masking any sweetness from sugar).

  It was getting on for 11pm when I got to sleep last night. I'm not sure why it was so late, and originally I was feeling like it should have been much earlier. Maybe having a couple of snoozes in the afternoon was one reason, and reading in bed was another reason why it was later than usual (although I am not sure what "usual" is these days). On the whole it was another good sleep, but I did have one short period of insomnia in the early hours. I can't quite remember when it was, but I think I was actually asleep again before I had even finished cursing and swearing (possibly) about not been able to get back to sleep !

  Many of my dreams in the early hours were about photography. I assume I had a whole series of short dreams, although it seemed that each scene followed on from the last like a cut in a film or TV. I was in a whole lot of locations trying to take pictures, but each time something stopped me getting the perfect shot. On one occasion there was condensation on the lens, and by the time I had cleaned the lens the scene was lost. On another occasion I was just about to take a snap of the sun setting over some bridges (London bridges I think), and was interrupted by some urchin with an Irish accent asking me if I had any whisky in my camera bag. In other bits of dream the band were in the wrong place, or the high power floodlamp (provided by another photographer) couldn't light up a couple of character in the snow.

  I guess those dreams were a bit depressing, and probably a reminder that I haven't been out to do any photography for ages (except for a few snaps when out walking). There could be a good, or very bad opportunity on Saturday at the Petts Wood Xmas carnival. They promise live bands, and stuff, but there seems to be no advance warning of what the bands will be, or anything else for that matter. Jodie was hoping that we could have a drink on Saturday because she can't make today, or on Sunday. Maybe Jodie might like to go to Petts Wood too, but I doubt it. The weather forecast suggests it will be a very cold, and possibly wet day, and I doubt she would like the service in The Daylight Inn (it gets very busy, and uses plastic glasses, plus doesn't stock the exotic beers Jodie likes).

  This morning I felt as stiff and creaky as anytime. For some reason my right hand seemed to have a few aches as well. Maybe I slept on it or something. However, the good news is that this morning my blood glucose has come right down to 7.9mmol/l. That is still not quite as low as my target of 7.5mmol/l, but it was among the three lowest readings so far this month. What I don't know is if the secret is the sugar free/continental recipe bread, or the white cabbage I have been eating. Curiously enough, I think it might be the bread - a food I have generally shunned in the past when trying to regulate my diet.

  Planning today is very difficult. The sunshine suggests I ought to try and go for a walk, and that is a possibility. It is later on when things get difficult. Jodie won't be coming over for a beer session today, but I will probably still see Michael. He will probably do his shopping in Tesco today, and get me 6 bottles of Diet Coke. I can't just say no drinking after that, but I am wondering if he would fancy going to a pub for a couple of pints - maybe one in The Black Cat, to see what the Winter Warmer situation is like, and maybe one in The Catford Bridge Tavern to see if they have any winter beers on yet.