The clouds thickened overnight, and today lots of rain is forecast for the whole day. In fact light rain is predicted for any minute now, but the sky, although cloudy, does not look like it will rain. This morning is the "warmest" it will be all day. My thermometers said it was 10° C and hour ago. By 2pm it could be down to 7° C, and in potentially heavy rain that could feel awful. The temperature will continue to drop overnight, but the lowest temperature might only be 4° C at 2am. Apart from the morning not starting as warm as today, most of tomorrow will be similar to today, and that included a fair bit of rain. although with luck it will not rain quite as much as today - assuming the forecast is vaguely correct.

  Yesterday, like most days, started with a visit to the toilet, and while it seemed fairly normal, I had a feeling like it was unfinished business. That would turn out to be an understatement. The story continues later....  Halfway through the morning I partly forgot about it, although an odd twinge did remind me now and then, but it wasn't enough to stop me going out to The Metro Food Centre (or MFC).

  MFC is another small supermarket run by either a Greek or Turkish man, and once you get past all the varied fruit and vegetables at the front of the shop, there is a very wide variety of stuff inside. Much of it is the same stuff that can be bought at the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. MFC is a few hundred yards down the hill, just past the entrance to the old Catford Constitutional Club.

  I had a good look around in there, and paid particular attention to their beer section. I didn't see anything I hadn't seen before, but I did treat myself to a bottle of Banana Bread Beer brewed by the Eagle Brewery (formerly Charles Wells Brewery). I also bought some "Onion Chicken" flavour instant noodles. I had never seen that flavour before. I also bought some extra strength garlic sausage for Michael, and a tin of what turned out to be smoky bacon in giant beans in tomato sauce.

  One thing I noted in there was that there was a lot of stuff that had no English language information on it. It makes me wonder if the little supermarket on the Catford Bridge prints and sticks on their own translations. In the case of the smoky bacon and giant beans in tomato sauce, the picture on the label provided enough information to take a guess at the contents, and happily it was quite sufficient. What it, or even a written description, couldn't describe was the bacon. It was sufficiently fatty, nicely diced, and nice and smoky. Those big beans were nice and soft and squidgy. When I next visit MFC I will make a beeline for them to buy more because they were delicious !

  The afternoon with Jodie and a Thursday beer tasting session was typical. Sometimes it was almost as if I was not there. Jodie first had to use my microwave to cook possibly her only hot meal of the day, and then to eat is slowly while taking the occasional sip of beer. I could have died of thirst, but fortunately I had my secret weapon - the banana bread beer that I had bought in MFC.

  Jodie hates banana tasting beer - as some wheat beers can taste - and thought that a blatantly named banana beer was the work of the devil or something. I was able to pour the whole bottle (almost a pint) into a pint glass and luxuriate in the taste. Jodie looked on almost enviously, and eventually asked for a taste. I poured a little into another glass for her, and she took one mouthful before declaring it as awful as expected, and washed the taste out of her mouth with a gulp of some awful sour tasting beer were were sharing between us.

  Fortunately not all the beers we tasted were nasty and sour. At least one was just plain nasty, but there were a couple of nice ones. I think Jodie left at about 6pm to get a 320 bus where she was going to continue drinking with Alan at The Star And Garter in Bromley. Sometime before she left I started to cook my dinner. It was an interesting new recipe that was basically invented by considering stuff I wanted to use up.

  I think it could be called a stew. It was mostly sliced new potatoes, and diced Polish sausage and Turkish garlic sausage. For a bit of greenery I added 5 sprouts. I seemed to be the sort of mix that would benefit with a very generous squirt of tomato purée, but I didn't have any. What I did have, and it worked really well, was a small can of Campbells Condensed mushroom soup. I am sure that on the can is does suggest it could be used in pies and stews as well as just made up as soup. It worked really well. It looked like a very big dinner once everything had been added and cooked, but I had nothing else with it, not even a dessert, and so I ate the lot.

  Apart from the repeat of The Simpsons on Channel 4+1, there was nothing on TV that grabbed my attention. That, on top of the booze and and big hot dinner, left me feeling sleepy. I read in bed for a while, but I have a feeling that I was asleep quite soon after 8pm. I obviously slept well because the next thing I new was that it was 1am, and that I was not feeling good. I had a stomach ache. No so much as an upset stomach, but the resumption of the unfinished business I mentioned at the top of the page.

  First there was some wind, and then a visit to the toilet. It seemed a reasonable job, and I expected to get back to sleep. That did not happen. I had not even found a good comfortable sleep position before I was up again, and on the toilet. It suddenly felt like it was going to be a long night. It may have been an hour later, after no sleep, that I thought it prudent to go to the toilet again. That time it did seem like I was completely empty, and I could finally get to sleep, but it seemed to be a rotten sleep. I seemed to have long complex dreams, and I sometimes I couldn't tell if I was asleep or awake.

  At roughly 7am I got up feeling awful. It felt like I hard hardly slept at all, although the first 4 hours of sleep had probably been good sleep. Now the funny things is that while I felt terrible, all my health measurements suggested I was fighting fit. My temperature was 35.3° C, although admittedly that is a few tenths of a degree higher than average. The amazing thing was my blood glucose. I was sure that if nothing else, the potatoes in my dinner would push it up, but in fact it was a really nice and low 7.0mmol/l. I guess I had pooed all the nutrients out in the night or something.

  Even more remarkable was my blood pressure. I don't tend to check it first thing in the morning because it is usually rather high when I first get up. This morning I checked it after eating a breakfast of two bowls of instant noodles. It was remarkably low, just 95/58. I am not aware of any problems of low pressure apart from possible impaired kidney function. This is mostly because my various doctors are always going on about it being too high  because it always is when I am in the surgery.

  I thought all the unpleasant business was over after my three visits to the toilet in the night, but those hot noodles must have stirred something up. So far this morning I have been to the toilet anther 4 times, and it feels like I have passed quite sufficient for an ordinary morning. I am not sure I feel empty even now, but I fail to see where it could all be coming from. It is probably just as well that today s forecast to be an awful day - even if the first rain is now an hour overdue.

  There is nothing I have to do today, although until I realised how bad he weather forecast was I was considering going out spotting trains or something *.  Now I feel I definitely want to stay in to be near a toilet, just in case... and to try and catch a few snoozes. I expect I'll find a few odd jobs that I will end up doing, but I feel like laying down for a while before anything else.

* That "something" could be a new challenge I have recently thought of while looking at the map showing where my Freedom Pass is valid. The challenge is to visit each station at the end of the Freedom Pass area. There is no intention to do any more than one single destination is a day, although there are a few that might happen naturally. I am also not setting a time limit on - might do it by the end of summer, or maybe by the end of next spring. It is just a thing to do. Of course I have already been to quite a few of the stations already, but I think I will start afresh, and then tick them off one by one.

Good news: I have just been to the toilet for a wee, and nothing else !