The latest revision to the forecast shows sunny spells for 9am and 11am, but not at 10am, as shown in the screenshot above. The sky seems to be mostly cloud, but some of it is thin cloud, and there are small gaps that have already let some sunshine through. This after noon the temperature should reach 12° C fir a couple of hours. If the sky is bright, and the wind light, that could feel almost nice. The cloud may thicken tonight, and tomorrow will probably see the return of some occasional light showers, although at the moment much of tomorrow is shown as dry. It will probably be a couple of degrees cooler than today. Some colder days are possibly on their way, and Sunday through to next Wednesday could possibly see a morning frost. Winter is not over yet !

  The day before yesterday could have easily been described as miserable, but yesterday was extremely good in parts, and close to pleasant for much of the rest of the time. The highlight of the day, meeting Angela for a lunchtime drink, did involve a walk through drizzle in the park, but I took one of my waterproof cameras with me. Unfortunately the battery in it was only half charged (or maybe the cheap Chinese battery has come to the end of it's life).
  This was the view towards Ladywell as I walked through the park. It was grey, there was mud and puddles, and all the while there was the steady drizzle. The drizzle was often almost like a mist rather than discrete rain drops, but it all added to the horror film atmosphere !

 A quick aside: As I write this there is some hazy sunshine breaking through the clouds. The quality of the light reminds me of a day that starts foggy, and then the sun burns through the fog to leave a brilliant blue sky. Sadly that won't be the case to do, and that just makes the idea seem even worse.
  All along the riverbank, and other places too, the daffodils were in bloom. Some were bent over after the heavier rain in the night, and some even looked like they had bloomed for long enough, and had done their duty. There were still unopened flowers to be seen, and they were further away from the river.
  This duck and drake both turned to look at an intruder in their muddy bit of stream. That bit of stream is the man made channel that loops away from the river, through what was once one of the playing fields before returning to the river where this picture was taken. Until the recent rain that artificial stream has been dry since last summer (or maybe before), and it was more a series of connected puddles than a flowing stream yesterday.
  This was the "intruder" that the ducks were looking at. It is a blackbird, and I'm guessing it was looking for worms or grubs at the boundary between the mud and water. It may possibly have been collecting mud for nest building. I have seen what I think was a wren doing just that several years ago, and as I took this picture there was a robin, partly obscured by the vegetation, that might also have been collecting mud.

  I got to the pub a few minutes before Angela, and got the drinks in just before she arrived. It wasn't one of those rare extra special, extra scintillating meeting, but it was still very enjoyable.  It was a shame it couldn't go on a bit longer, but not too long because I wouldn't have liked to have any more than a third pint of Guinness. I drunk the two pints I had on an almost empty stomach, and later on it felt like I had a hangover.

  That hangover didn't kick in until I was home again, and other stuff happened before I got home. For a start I had a nice, and very warm hug from Angela. It is obvious that she really likes our Wednesday meetings, and I feel sad for her (as well as myself) that she has to ration it to once a week. She gives so many hints that she would like to spend longer with me if only she could, but she has "responsibilities".

  After our hug goodbye I went home via Poundland. There were a few things I wanted from there, but either they didn't have any, or I forgot to look for them. I think I was relying on seeing them to remind me I wanted them. Although I say "them" in the plural, it was mainly one thing I wanted - a spare shower head. When I think about it, I used to buy them from the 99p shop, and not Poundland. I may have bought the last one from Poundstretcher, but theirs are more expensive, somewhere in the region of £3.99. Maybe for £3.99 I can expect it to last 5 years instead of 2 years for the 99p version.

  I bought two things in Poundland that were a bit silly when I had started the day with my blood glucose being a bit high. They were two 6 packs of Walkers baked crisps. They were two for £2.75 - a whole 25p off for buying the pair. Being baked they are supposed to have less fat, but their sugar content seemed to be a bit high - which I discovered when I got them home !

  I had planned to eat the last two pieces of battered cod from the pack I started the previous night for my dinner. It was those cod, with their very crispy and crunchy batter, that I part blamed for my higher blood glucose reading yesterday morning. I didn't want to waste that cod, and it was rather delicious. It seemed I would just have to put up with another morning of high blood glucose. In that case I might as well eat some of those crisps too - which I did.

  One peculiar thing about coming home from the pub, and even more so on the final bit after I had been in Poundland, was that I just could not seem to walk slowly despite feeling it was knackering me.  I doubt I got anywhere near traditional walking speed, 5mph, but it seemed fast, and it seemed like really hard work. I don't know if doing that had any bearing on how rough I felt in the afternoon. It doesn't feel right to put the blame fully on a hangover, but it did feel very hangover like.

  I was almost feeling like I didn't really want to eat, but of course I did. I had already pre-cooked my dinner the previous day, and it just needed another 10 minutes in the microwave to get it ready to eat. It was stewed/casseroled beef with onion and new potatoes. It should have been really nice, but the beef seemed tough, and bits of it got firmly stuck in gaps between my teeth, and needed lots of poking and prodding to get out.  What was quite disappointing were the new potatoes. They seemed to have an odd, and not very pleasant taste. I am wondering if this is another Long Covid thing like how it affected my taste of cucumber.

  It was another very quiet night on TV last night, and my bed seemed more appealing. I spent most of my evening either reading online, or from a book. By 9pm I may have been asleep. My bedroom was quite warm enough to not bother with the duvet, and I ended up sleeping quite well, possibly even very well. I had lots of dreams, very short, and sort of confusing dreams in the last hours of sleep, but it was dream I had much earlier in the night that intrigues me.

  That dream, maybe at something like 1am, was very confusing, or maybe it is just my patchy memory of it that is confusing. I just don't know my place in the dream. I could have been reading a book, seeing something on TV, or even taking part in the action. It was a very SciFi dream, and concerned using some unknown technique to convert red giant stars, and blue dwarf stars to ordinary "G type" yellow suns so their planets would become habitable. One hint that I was actually reading about this in the dream is that there was no wait to see the results. They job worked or it didn't work, and there was no delays due to lightspeed to get those results. It could equally have been a film or documentary I was watching. The most interesting thing is just how inventive my mind can be when left to rest. Maybe I should have been a writer of SciFi books - but it's tricky doing that when asleep.

  This morning I was very happy to see my blood glucose being back down near my current target at 7.7mmol/l - down from 8.6mmol/l yesterday morning - and that was despite eating more battered cod, and 4 packets of baked crisps. It leave me unable to explain yesterday morning's little blip. I was going to say that I didn't feel too bad this morning, but that was before the sky has finally greyed over - curiously enough at the time when the weather forecast said there would be sunny spells. Incidentally, the latest revision to the forecast now says absolutely no sunny spells for the rest of the day. The next sunny spell is forecast for midday on Saturday, but that will have changed beyond recognition by the time we get to Saturday. It will probably show snow instead !

  There is only one thing on the agenda today, and that will be a beer tasting session with Jodie, and maybe Michael too. Other than that, it could just be another lazy day, as befits a miserable cold and grey day.