Apart from the temperature at sunrise being higher, at about 3° C according to my reckoning, the forecast for today looks a lot like should have been forecast for yesterday - except for one important detail. No rain is forecast for late afternoon, and the sky will/might be clear giving rise to the temperature dropping to 3° C after 9pm. The afternoon high will only be 6° C. The temperature will probably fall to around 2° C in the early hours of tomorrow, but then the temperature will rise to 10° C by midday. This will be at the expense of it being a mostly wet and rainy day.

   I don't think I actually mentioned it yesterday morning, but I did my shopping in Tesco without wearing a face mask, and no one said anything, I didn't get lynched, and I noted that there were many people in there without a face mask - maybe something like 1 in 3. I'm never sure if it would be ethical to say I should be exempt. There are no published targets to say whether you are, or are not.

  I have several medical conditions that when added up might suggest I could be exempt. The simplest, although it may not be valid when in a warm shop, is that in this cold weather my nose can drip so much that a face mask would be a soggy mess by the time I got to the shop. Years of heavy smoking, until I stopped in September 2013, has left a mark on my lungs. One doctor suspects I have COPD, and it is true that any walking leaves me breathing deeply through my mouth. I usually walk around supermarkets very fast, and while I am not gasping, I am breathing heavily by the time I get to the checkout. It is also the reason why I can no longer walk as fast as I used to. I am lucky if I can sustain 3mph for more than 15 or 20 minutes, and a more comfortable pace is around 2.5mph.

  The other reason for face mask exemption is for psychological reasons. I suspect that this is mostly aimed at those who are recognised as autistic, and who just can't manage to remain calm in a mask. In a way that could be me in a borderline way. I can wear a mask in relaxed circumstances, like when I have the occasional medical appointment - which invariably means a lot of quiet waiting for action. Other than that, I just really hate wearing the bloody things, and I won't wear one just to go on public transport despite that meaning I can never go anywhere I can't walk to (and walk home from again).

  Nothing much more happened yesterday until it was time for the afternoon beer session. Michael arrived first, and we started on a beer or two that Jodie would not be interested in (I hoped !). Jodie had had a delay showing a man who might have done a house clearance around her parents old house. He declined the job, but did suggest someone else who would be more likely. Jodie caught a later train, and arrived just after 4pm.
  A little late on we were joined by Mark. He was there principally to pick up Jodie and take her to Penge where they would meet Alan for more drinking in the Penge Wetherspoons pub. With two guitar players in the room I got my guitar out, and both Mark and Michael had a strum on it. It all made for a rather good session, and my earlier fears about Jodie being miserable and withdrawn (although she did still spend a lot of time on her phone), and Michael just talking non stop about how all music is wonderful, never came to pass.

  At the end of the session I was feeling mildly drunk - as usual. About the only real affect of being drunk was to have difficulty controlling my eating. I was feeling ravenous - something that almost always happens after drinking. The amount of late night fast food shops suggest I am not alone in this feeling !! I had a healthy meal planned, and I stuck to my original recipe. It was basically braised diced beef with brocolli. If I had managed to drink all the gravy it could potentially have been filling, but the gravy was hot, and I had already drunk enough to drown in.....well, not exactly maybe...

  Maybe the problem was the dearth of anything gripping on TV to watch. The only thing on at 7pm was Star Trek: Voyager, and it was not one of their better episodes. It wasn't long before I got the munchies. I ended up eating a whole, but rather small, truckle of cheese. It was a Xmas release from a few years ago that I found at the back of the fridge. The solid black wax shell kept it well sealed and fresh. The stupid thing is that it wasn't actually very nice, and I should not have been so enthusiastic about eating it all. It was Wensleydale cheese with white chocolate, cranberries and Prosecco.

  Apart from it not being very nice, and possibly having a high sugar content, as well as a fistful of calories, it was probably "mostly harmless", or at least in the context of how I was starting to feel. I think I have to blame the hot gravy with the broccoli and braised beef for causing the food in my intestines to ferment. Of course it didn't help that I hadn't been to the toilet for a poo all day. As the evening wore on I began to initially suffer from trapped wind.

  It didn't stay trapped for long, and I seemed to be farting under the duvet for much of the night, or at least the bits of the night I was aware of. I did get up again just before midnight to see if I could shift anything in the toilet, but all that came out was high grade methane ! It was one of those mild discomforts that it is easy to ignore with any form of distraction, but in the dark of night it was the only thing I was aware of.

  Last night was yet another night where I got to sleep a lot later than I wanted to, or felt the need to. It all seems very vague now, but I think I probably got half an hour of sleep before I got up again just before midnight to try my luck in the toilet. I probably got to sleep again 15 or 20 minutes after midnight. From then on my sleep was probably fairly typical - I woke a few times for a pee, and as dawn approached I turned the heater up full before going back to sleep.

  I was quite surprised at how cold it was this morning. The night before it was not exactly warm at 7° C, but the heater on low seemed enough to keep my bedroom comfortably warm. With the temperature back down to 3 or 4° C I still have the heater on full blast, and only now is it feeling comfortable warm.  I am happy to report that I have successfully been to the toilet twice this morning.

  Until this morning I believed that this obsession with my bowels was a fixed thing on the agenda of all old people, and on reflection it is, but not for the obvious reason. I think my toilet habits haven't changed all that much over the years. i think the reason I, and many others, talk about it is because so little happens in the wider world there would be nothing else to talk about. We all need to have a hobby, and as an official Old Age Pensioner, I have joined the club of bowel movement reporters.....or something like that !

  Of course my real obsession is my blood glucose level because it is rather important to my ongoing health. I was not surprised to see it was up to 8.8mmol/l this morning. That is higher than I would like, but well inside the safe area, and not too dissimilar to many mornings last month, or the month before.  Sometime it seems to be harder and harder to control it, but at other times it is fairly easy. I guess I can hold out for maybe another year, maybe two before I might have to consider using insulin.

  I'm not sure what I am going to do today. It is sunny but rather cold - reasons for both going for a walk, and for not going for a walk. I can't say I definitely will or won't go for a walk yet. If I stay in I can imagine doing little more than quietly reading, but I do have a hand towel, and a couple of tea towels that could benefit from a wash. If I could raise the enthusiasm I still have Jodie's mum's old computer to play with - if only I could decide if working on it is fun or a complete waste of time. There is a strong bias towards a waste of time because I have no rational use for it, but then, on the other hand, I am loath to throw away something that is in good working order.