All my thermometers agree that the temperature this morning was just over 1° C, and the car roofs and shed roofs are covered in frost. All being well it should warm up to 6° C this afternoon. The day has started with a clear sky, and once the sun has risen high enough to clear the nearby houses, it should be brilliantly sunny, but from 1pm a few clouds will reduce that to just sunny spells. Once again the temperature will drop down to 3° C by the end of the day. Tomorrow may start with a very cold sunny morning, but clouds will soon intrude. The temperature will rise to about 6° C again, and be accompanied by rain.

   I guess I had a hangover yesterday, and that made it hard to get into any mood to be creative, but I did manage to be a little creative. You might notice the new purple icons on this page. I was hoping for something a lot better than these, and I don't think I really like them. It was soon after finishing them that I came up with a better idea, and I may spend a bit of time and get the ready for next year.....or maybe I might do a switchover in summer or something.
  There is not a lot to say about yesterday, and so I fall back to a picture I meant to show on Monday. It was the very fiery looking sunset on Sunday evening. Unfortunately it didn't herald good weather for Monday. 
  This picture was taken on Monday when we had Sunday's delayed beer session. It is a lousy picture ! Jodie was in a bad mood, and would not even look up. Alan was looking at Jodie paternally, or something. It is the only picture I have of Alan. I must try for a better one on a better day.

  The only other thing to say about yesterday was the usual boring stuff about food. My blood glucose was nice and low in the morning, and I ate a small packet of "lite" crisps, and two small packets of some weird lentil based crisp like things. My lunch was a can of soup, and a can of "stewed steak" - mostly gravy, and very much like a steak soup. Dinner was diced beef, a single large mushroom, and spinach.

  Of course by the time it was cooked the huge heap of spinach wilted down to just a few spoonfuls ! The other thing of note, which I am slightly proud of, is that I only used half the diced beef in the pack, and I can look forward to another beef dinner - maybe even tonight. It is probable that the biggest mistake I made was to have a slightly later supper of  cheese and silverskin pickled onions. I have strong doubts about the sugar content of those onions this morning.

  I read for a while before turning out the light, and I think I was asleep possibly before 9.30pm. I seemed to sleep really well last night. As usual I woke up every 2 to 3 hours, but it took little time to fall asleep again. I think there were three dreams I was going to comment on, but I can only think of one so far, but other memories may surface as I describe a précis of the one I do remember.

  In the first dream I was at work, but I am not sure where because I only remember from the point where I decided to slip out of work, and get a bus to a sweet shop in Catford. It was only supposed to take 5 minutes on the bus, but the bus was diverted for unknown reasons, and approached Catford down the side road alongside the railway line leading to Catford Bridge station.  In the dream Catford Bridge station had taken on the characteristics of a mainline station. It had it's own siding, and more, and grander buildings.

  I got off the bus by Catford Bridge station, and another weird thing is that the bus stop was on the wrong side of the main road. It was not where I wanted to be, and with time running out I crossed the road to get the next bus back to work. I didn't have to wait more than a few minutes for a bus, but it then broke down before it had moved 100 feet. The bus driver said "follow me, and I'll get you a replacement taxi". We went to a house on the road that leads to my house. It seemed a long wait until the taxi driver came to the door, and showed me (and I think a few other passengers) his taxi. It was in the style of a black London cab, but was painted a two tone brown colour. I was just about to get in when I realised that by the time I got back to work it would be after home time, and so I decided to walk up the road to my own home.

  I probably couldn't have slept any more after what seemed to be a good night's sleep, but I could have been tempted to try if it were not for other circumstances. At that point I hadn't been given the estimated delivery time for the bottles of Hot Pepper sauce (previously described as chilli sauce - but basically the same thing). This was the replacement for the coffee cake I had been sent in error. It was lucky I did decide to get up because it wasn't long before the estimated delivery time came through.

  It was between 07:46 and 08:46. In fact it towards the end of the one hour slot that it arrived all safe and sound. In the meantime I had checked my blood glucose, and also my weight. I think I am going to blame those late night pickled silverskin onions for my blood glucose going up to 9.0mmol/l. That is far from terrible, but so annoying after getting a couple of really nice low reading the previous two days. I thought I had taken as much care, or possibly more care than the previous days.

  I was selecting my food to be both low sugar, and slightly low calories yesterday. It wasn't until after my third poo of the morning that I saw I had lost another couple of hundred grammes. After the first poo it almost looked like I had put on weight, but once again we are only talking about tiny amounts, and they don't really count until they have added up to a whole kilogram. If I can keep up this very slow progress it is still possible that the 1st kilogram could go in another week and a half - maybe the weekend after the next one one in a few days.

  Next on the agenda is a wet shave, a shampoo and hair conditioner, and a shower. This is all necessary because I am going out in the sunshine today. It probably won't be a walk for exercise, although if I choose to leave earlier enough it could be, but it is mostly to walk to The Jolly Farmers to meet Angela for her lunch break. I haven't been in contact with Angela since we met last Wednesday, but I think everything should be OK for today's meeting.