More strong winds feature in the forecast today, but I think we may be past the peak of them even now. The latest revision of the forecast that I checked showed gusts of 41mph at 11am, and from then on the gusts get less and less.  The steady wind speed is shown as just 22mph, and by 11pm tonight it will be no more than a breeze at 8 mph. With lighter winds the 11° C predicted from 2pm may even start to feel mild, or better. From 3pm there may be a few hours of sunny intervals to make it feel better still. There was a little bit of sunshine at 8am this morning, but it wasn't shown on the forecast. Tomorrow may reach 12° C by 11am, but it will also start to rain. The rain may give way to sunshine at 3pm. Tomorrow afternoon may get pretty windy. Maybe not as bad as today, but gusts of 32mph are predicted.
  I'm finding it hard to decide as to whether yesterday was a good or bad day. I guess when the pros and cons are added up it comes down to it being an average day. Nothing particularly bad happened, and nothing particularly good happened. Of course there were some individual good and bad things. One sort of, in a way, clutching at straws type of thing that might have been good is that I did get some exercise. It was in the nature of going up and down the stairs many times as I alternated working/using two different PCs.

  I have complained more than once that sometimes beer drinking sessions with just Jodie can be a bit boring at times, and yesterday was no exception. On the other hand, Jodie did not complain about my choice of music. I can't say that she enjoyed it, but the important thing is that she didn't say I should choose something else. I was playing a few obscure CDs that I had ripped earlier. I think they were promo CDs that came from the record companies in my days of doing (pirate) radio shows. It is probably astonishing that some fairly good music is wasted because the record companies can issue so many recordings that some have to be ignored at the time in favour of a few high profile releases.

  We had a few interesting beers yesterday - maybe about 6 small bottles/cans split between us - or, once again, little more than about a pint and a half in total. One good thing happened (for me). Jodie was not expecting to see Alan until possibly a lot later than it turned out. He was supposed to be drinking with a mate south of Croydon, but it seems he was stood up, and Jodie noticed he was drinking in The Three Hounds by Clockhouse station.

  Jodie decided to meet him there, and left about an hour earlier than usual. I was happy with that because I was really looking forward to the third and final part of the Chinese food I had ordered on Saturday night. I decided to wait until it was gone 6pm before I ate it. Before that happened I had the joy of another delivery from Amazon. I was expecting it sometime between late afternoon, and early evening, and I think it was probably very close to 6pm when it arrived.
  It was my new speakers to replace the pair that had failed last Friday morning. In theory it was a joyous occasion, but it was rather less so for two reasons. One reason being that these are identical to the pair I use in the dining room, and so I am perfectly familiar with them. The second reason being that they were replacements for the failed speakers (just one speaker of the "no-name" PC speakers I have had for years), and once I had plugged the new speakers in, just a 5 or less minute job, everything was back to normal, and normality is nothing to be excited about.

   I guess there is still a little bit of excitement. These Creative speakers has some subtle bass boost, and sound a bit fuller than the old speakers. It sounds pleasant most of the time with most of my records, but sometimes it can give the impression of being a bit boomy. I doubt they would get a good review in HiFi circles, but for playing fairly quietly when sitting 2ft away, they seem good enough for me to enjoy, and ultimately ignore. I guess if you can ignore the source, and enjoy the music, that is more than enough.

  My Chinese takeaway dinner was very slightly disappointing only in that there was less of it than I thought. I had eaten all the rice before last night (the last being the Singapore rice I had for breakfast) and so there was no rice to bulk it out. As usual, the dry spare ribs came in a big container, but of course a lot of it was just inedible bone. There were several things I could have done, and I chose the worst option. I heated up my last (ever) tub of "Korean street noodles". I once had bought four of those tubs, and I didn't like the last three, and I didn't like the one I had last night. The very worst thing, and with hindsight why I kept the last one so long, was that they have a very high sugar content.

  Last night was another night when there was not a lot of TV that I fancied worth watching. I did listen to an Eric Clapton concert, featuring loads of guests on Sky Arts, but it was too boring to actually watch. In truth, I found some of it was boring to listen to as well. In the end I spent most of the evening reading, and at a little after 9pm I had put the book down, and drifted off to sleep. It seemed to be mostly good sleep too.

  I doubt it is unusual to dream in the early part of sleep, but it is probably rarer to remember dreams from that part of the night. I can actually remember very little from one dream, and I remember more of thinking about the dream when I woke up to go for a pee. The dream was set in the 1950s, and I was somehow involved in investigating the upper atmosphere - probably as a prelude to space flight. I don't know if it was actually the case that I was the main inventor, but I think I had a large input into inventing a scientific package that was lofted by a balloon. It was the balloon that was the memorable part of the dream because it looked like a giant condom !

  I had some complex and disjointed dreams in the late stages of my sleep. This seems very common. Try as I might I find little to describe of these late sleep dreams. Only one thing sticks in my mind and that was being with a group of dodgy looking people who were suspected of handling explosives. Two people came in to check them (but not me as far as I can remember). One was American, and the other was Russian. The America had a little hand held sniffer, and the Russian had equipment mounted on a wheeled trolley. It had two slots to put your hands in it, and it was far more sensitive than the American sniffer. It turned out that it wasn't the gangster looking guys, but the little old lady, who looked like the tea lady, who had been handling explosives !Q

  I knew it had to happen, and I feel the blame comes down squarely on those Korean Street Noodles. This morning my blood glucose had shot up to 8.8mmol/l. That is more typical of readings I was getting over a month ago. At first I decided I ought to panic a bit, but then I decided that if I went back to my normal routine my blood glucose should settled down again. Of course it is not that straightforward because I went shopping in Aldi this morning.

  On the whole, apart from a few treats, I was careful about what I bought this morning. Most of it is safe, although there is an element of doubt about a 4 pack of bottles of Welsh lager. That can be made to taste nice if the fermentation is stopped early to leave unfermented sugar in it so it tastes sweet. It is the reason German beer is generally much better for diabetics - they leave it fermenting for weeks or months until every bit of sugar is converted to alcohol.

  I somehow bought an awful lot of stuff in Aldi. I suppose that was bound to happen when I hadn't been in there for several weeks or more. It cost a lot of money, and was very heavy to carry home. Oh well, at least I have a spare bottle of laundry detergent, unfortunately not the one I thought I wanted (I thought it was a different fragrance to the stuff I am currently using), and I have two big bags of bird table quality peanuts to keep the greedy pigeons happy.

  While I was going around the shop I checked the sugar content of Aldi's own brand pot noodles. I was shocked. One pot had 11gm of sugar in it. That is almost as much as a Mars Bars (maybe only a tiny one, but.....).  One thing I bought was not ideal for breakfast this morning. It's sugar content was not that high, and it seemed very appealing. Unfortunately the beechwood smoked bacon quiche was not very enjoyable, and not worth chancing the effect it may or may not have on my blood glucose tomorrow morning.

  Having been out in the wind and cold once today, I don't feel terribly inclined to go out again. I did have fantasies about going out for a walk earlier, but that was back at 8am when there was a few tens of minutes of sunshine. It would be interesting to see if Friday's storm has left it's mark on any of the local parks, but at the moment I fell more like having a snooze. Maybe I might have a quick walk if the sun comes out at 4pm, but I doubt it. In the meantime....I was going to say there is the rain to contend with first, but I've just checked the latest revision of the weather forecast, and what was shown as dark clouds in the version at the top of the page is now shown as light clouds, and it confirms that today will be dry. However, the first sunny spells are now predicted to occur just before sunset - which isn't very user friendly. I think I'll be doing whatever I do indoors today.