The latest revision to the weather forecast shows an even worse picture than the early screenshot above. The rain is now predicted to continue until 3pm, although only most of it is supposed to be heavy rain. It is supposed to be heavy rain right now, but it seems to be fairly light rain (or was for the few minutes I was outside topping up the bird table). The only good thing is that the afternoon temperature is supposed to reach 9° C, and even that is only marginally good. It seems we are unlikely to see the sun until next year, and many or most  of the days, including tomorrow, will feature rain. However there will be an unusual peak in the temperature coming up. Tomorrow may see 10° C, and each day will be a degree or so warmer until the 29th of the month that might see 15 or even 16° C. Of course reality could be very different, and usually is.

  Yesterday, being like, but often worse than a Sunday, actually turned out to be a fairly productive day. It was a day when I didn't dare turn the TV on, didn't drink any booze, and managed to fast until 6pm when I had a fairly small dinner of sausages.
  They were no ordinary sausages. I am not sure where they came from originally, but I think "East European" is broad enough to cover any of several likely places. In some ways they were like the British Saveloy, but made with coarser meat, and they were less floppy, but the taste was very similar. I followed these 4 sausages (with some mustard and tomato sauce) by 3 little "easy peeler" oranges, and an apple.

  This extravagant Xmas dinner was only made possible after my fasting brought my blood glucose down from a bad 10.7mmol/l to a rather excellent 6.6mmol/l. I must admit that drop did surprise me. It was also a surprise how easy it seemed to do such a long fast. I can't remember when I last ate the previous night, but it must have been close to a full 24 hours without food before I ate my sausages.
  Earlier in the day, just after midday in fact, I took this photo showing how grey it was to send to Patricia in Argentina. Of course being in the southern hemisphere, they are in the middle of summer. She didn't reply with an actual temperature, but did say it was hot there. Oh well, in 6 moths it will be our turn while they shiver.

  Other stuff I did yesterday included doing a medium sized load of laundry by hand. I almost got it dry yesterday, but didn't want to leave the fan heater in the front room on full blast the whole day. Besides the expense of the electricity, I was doing a bit of work in there, and didn't want it all hot and steamy while I was using my laptop and scanner to scan some stuff. The other main thing I did was related to the scanning. It was to copy/digitise/transfer a few more VHS tapes to digital files on my PC.

  One tape is worthy of a special mention - apart from wondering why I bothered with it in the first place. It was a special promotional VHS tape for Agfa video and audio tapes. At the beginning there are were two adverts - one for audio tapes, and one for video tapes. Both said how good the tapes were - of course. They were followed by 20 pop videos. That was not ideal material for VHS video tape. All the bright saturated colours, so typical of pop videos from the mid 1990s, really showed just how awful colour reproduction could be on the VHS system - particularly when using Agfa tape ! The colours were certainly bright, but the were noisy with colour breakthrough from other colours, and just horrible streakiness.  I have seen better quality 2nd generation pirate video copies.

  After dinner, which I covered above, I passed the time on the internet, and some reading until it felt like a good time to go to sleep. I think I was asleep by 9pm, and on the whole I slept well. I remember having some dreams based on the book I was reading (Isaac Asimov's "Pebble In The Sky"), but I hardly remember anything of them. I do remember some of the dream(s) I was having shortly before I woke up.

  It was an other in a series of dreams based on a mix of places I have worked or studied at. They are like a mild nightmare, and revolve around looking for a working toilet. On curious thing is that this morning I managed to solve the riddle of the building I was in. In all these dreams previously there were two staircases in a 5 or more storey building, but they always go to all the floors. One problem is if you went up the wrong staircase you had to walk to the far end of the building to try and find the other staircase.

  This morning I realised the building was "L" shaped, and that the end of one limb was a lot less tall than the middle and other limb. That explains how the staircases didn't reach all floors. My explorations are occasionally about trying to get back to a classroom on time by the wrong route, but this morning it was a very typical looking for a working toilet. I went to several, but they were all broken. I knew that there was usually a very reliable toilet near one of the entrances, and of course it was at the bottom of the staircase that didn't go to all floors.

  I never did get as far as that toilet before I woke up, but I did get as far as seeing the name on the door of the toilet. You would probably expect that I would wake up bursting to go to the toilet, but oddly enough that was not the case. I did eventually need a pee, but I had time to take screenshots of the weather forecasts, and to check my temperature. Then I had a pee, but nothing else despite it being something else I needed to do in the dream.

  This morning my blood glucose was a perfect (according to my personal target) of 7.5mmol/l. I thought that was good enough to warrant a breakfast, but I couldn't bother to do any cooking, and there was something else that had been tempting me for almost a week - a big (but not huge) packet of crisps. They were about the worst thing I could have had, but they were very, very nice !

  I really don't know what I am going to do today. It is even worse than a Sunday today. It is a Boxing day Sunday. I guess that means many shops could be open for the sales, but there are no trains from Catford Bridge, and I have no idea of any buses are running (not that I want to use a bus because of face mask rules). It is going to rain almost until it starts getting dark at sunset (not that it is very light even now), and while I keep thinking it could be an amusing diversion to go for a walk in the rain, I don't think the reality of it is very appealing. Perhaps I will have a shower, and then reconsider my options.