I don't have a lot to say about most of yesterday. The most exciting thing I did in the morning was to wash my hair. A bit later on I got all my computer stuff off the dining room table. I then cleaned the table top and then washed and polished the glasses for another beer session with Jodie. She was joined by Alan for the last three quarters of an hour.

  We did some special beer tasting at the start of our boozing session. I had noticed that some cans of the Polish beer "Lech" that I had bought from Aldi were not made in Poland at all, but in Holland. Fortunately I had a couple of cans stashed away of the genuine article brewed in Poland. The consensus was that both were very similar, but I thought the version brewed in Holland left a slightly different, and not so nice aftertaste. Incidently, the brewery in Holland was the Grolch brewery, and the taste was very similar to Grolch.

  The good thing about Alan joining us, despite a strong feeling that he ran off with my Carlsberg bar towel, is that it made Jodie a bit more communicative. I find it frustrating that she can spend so much time on her phone, checking the beers we are drinking, and so getting a pre-conceived idea of what she is supposed to think of them, then spending ages sipping the beer while writing online notes on the untappd web site.

  Maybe it is an old fashioned idea, but I thought it was only wines and liqueurs that were sipped, and beers gulped to get the best flavours. There are some beers that taste very nice, but have bad aftertastes, and so it is best not to stop drinking for too long. It often means I get through beers twice as fast as Jodie, and then get bored waiting for her to catch up. Adding a third person, usually Michael, but Alan last night, helps relieve that boredom.

  Alan and Jodie left to get the 19:11 train to Nunhead. They didn't leave much time, and possibly not enough for Alan who walks slowly on account of he false leg. I don't know if they got the train, but it would have been an hour wait for the next, and they would probably have walked back down to the 320 bus stop to get a bus to The Star And Garter in Bromley if them missed the train.

  Meanwhile, as soon as they left I sorted out my dinner. I had already precooked some pork belly slices, and just needed to warm them up again. I warmed them on a plate with some low sugar baked beans in the microwave. The last time I had some low sugar baked beans I was worried that they still had a fair amount of sugar in them. On that occasion it seems my worries were wrong. On this occasion I compounded the worry because I had sprinkled a generous amount of dark soy sauce on the meat as it cooked - that soy sauce does contain a fair bit of sugar !

  There were a few interesting things on TV last night, including two Pink Floyd concerts. I mostly listened to one, and then switched over to Dave where there was an episode of QI followed by a not too old episode of Have I Got News For You. That didn't finish until 10pm, and then I read for at least half an hour before trying to go to sleep. Getting to sleep was not easy because I was feeling very uncomfortable, and I am not sure why. It felt a lot like trapped wind, but it didn't seem to be in the usual place. Not only that, but during the course of the night I did very little farting.

  If anything I did more burping than farting, but I don't think either really released any great amount of gas. Eventually the problem seemed to sort itself out without gaseous emissions, but it took a long time, and really spoiled my sleep. I think I only got a few snatches of sleep before 2am, and then I got up for over an hour because I thought something was going to happen. I went out to the toilet several times, but the best I managed was a couple of very small farts.

  When I try and remember it, I think it was actually something like 4am before I got some proper sleep - with proper dreams. I remember small bits of just one series of dreams that had a common story line. It started off with what could have been some sort of work outing. There seemed to be familiar, but unknown named faces from several of the places I have worked over the years. We seemed to be in something like a cross between a bar, and a reception area. After a wait we were ushered in to a large auditorium.

  It could have been something like the old Hammersmith Odeon, or maybe The Town And Country Club in Kentish Town. The worrying thing is that we seemed not to have any tickets, and no one said if we were to sit in any particular part of the place. I found a nice comfy seat at the end of a row of seats, and sat down wondering who we were going to see. Several photographers set up tripods near where I was sitting, and I think it was one of them who said the gig was being recorded for DVD release. I asked one of the photographers if I could use his tripod while he wasn't using it because I had my little pocket sized Cannon camera with me, and the extra stability of a tripod would be really good when using full zoom.

  The first indication that things were starting was when a very large "multi-media platform" came down on a series of ropes and pulleys that allowed it to be moved in two dimensions. It had about 4 remote controlled TV cameras , and several clusters of lights on it, and it was huge - about the size of a garden shed. It was made of wire mesh, and I could see inside it. It was obvious it had originally been designed to have an  operator/cameraman or two inside it, but it was now fully remote controlled - even down to robot arms that could load 12 inch Laservision disks into a player.

  Nothing happened after that because I woke up. I didn't feel all that good when I woke up, but then again I didn't feel that bad. I think mostly it was just the loss of sleep rather than anything bad. It didn't take long to find that my blood glucose was back up to 8.8mmol/l. That is not bad in one sense, but it is a bit annoying after a good run of lower readings. I can think of three things that would have helped it go up like that. Two I have already mentioned, the baked beans and dark soy sauce. The other was half a pint of Fullers Golden Pride beer. That stuff is so malty and delicious, but it's like thin syrup.
  Shooting through a slightly dirty window may have reduced the clarity of this picture a bit, but it won't have made it seem any more or less gloomy. This dull picture is how the world looks outside right now, and it doesn't inspire me to do much. Well maybe it inspires me to do one thing - snooze a lot. Ideally I would like to go back to bed, but it is far too late for that now. I have decided I won't do my regular Monday morning shopping in Aldi today. I have enough food for now, but maybe I might go to Tesco tomorrow just to top up a few things.

  The only thing I might do a bit later this afternoon is to go to Poundstretcher to get one of those bird feeder posts I mentioned a week or two ago. I am not 100% sure what it is I want to buy, but if the picture on the box is any clue it is a pole to stick in the ground  with brackets on it to hang bird feeders on it. My existing bird table is too popular with pigeons, and they scare the small birds away. I thought a separate feeder for small birds might be nice. Other than that, I think I will be having a very lazy day today. Maybe later I will get the new (old) PC back on the dining room table, and have another play with it, but I don't feel any rush for it.

  Looking further into the future - It's now only a few days until Wednesday when I hope to have a nice drink with Angela. The idea of that cheers me up a bit. On Thursday morning mandatory masks will no longer be officially required on national rail services (London Transport have their own weird rules). That opens up possibilities for getting trains to paces again. With the weather set to be dull. cold and horrible for the next few weeks, according to long range, and invariably wrong forecasts, I probably won't take advantage of it for a while, but it is encouraging to know it is possible.