Yesterday was another day where the grey skies and cold in the morning knocked all enthusiasm out of me. That happened even though there was a chance the afternoon would be sunny and a bit warm. The trouble was that the sun was late appearing, and when an hour had passed from the forecast time, I began to think it would never happen. There was another factor that was nothing to do with the weather, at least not directly, and it was my guts felt a bit volatile during the morning, and that too took away any enthusiasm for going out.

  I did go out eventually, but it was only to Poundstretcher where I found their 50% off everything, warehouse clearing sale was still on. On this occasion I filled up my rucksack, and had to use my emergency overflow shopping bag. I didn't buy anything expensive, and indeed, most things were very cheap even before the discount. I now have enough hay fever tablets to last the year, and I have enough disposable foil pie containers, which I tend to use for grilling stuff on, to last for some time - but the actual time depends on how many times I want to grill stuff.

   I bought another 4 bags of spicy potato rings - one of which was stale, and I maybe ate a quarter of the bag before throwing the rest away. I feel relatively safe eating them because I had a packet last Saturday, and on the Sunday morning my blood glucose had dropped from the previous day's figures. I am not implying that they were instrumental in that drop, but they had a fairly neutral effect.

  I spent a lot of the rest of the day doing what I didn't enjoy doing the day before - adding more and more information to my spreadsheet listing all my train photos, or all the "not crap" train photos. Yesterday I almost enjoyed it. It was less tedious, and maybe could be described as neutral. Of course it does help that I estimate that I could easily be 75% of the way through it all now. That still means a lot of work to do, but at least it feels like I am on the home straight.

  It was getting on for 6pm, but I wasn't feeling particularly hungry because my stomach is still working on Greenwich Mean Time, and I haven't yet trained it on British Summer Time. I am thinking of possibly keeping dinner to 7pm now, but time will tell, if you'll excuse the pun. Instead of think about dinner I decided to phone Kevin, a mate of mine since primary school days. The last time I tried phoning him he was a bit grumpy, and we didn't talk for long.

  Like all of us, he has his medical problems, and his problems are worse than many of us. Like most of us, he has good days and bad days, but his bad days are more debilitating. Yesterday he seemed to be in a good mood, and our quick call lasted for about three hours ! There was 2 covid years to catch up on, plus the usual stuff from the past and stuff. At the end of it we had decided on two possible time to meet for a "swift half" (which often lasts all evening !).

  One could be after I have had a drink with Angela tomorrow lunchtime. The other could be sometime on Friday - possibly an early evening drink. We may end up doing both, but neither is set in stone - it all depends on how we are feeling on the days. That seems to be a common thing these days because we are all in the throes of old age when some days are good, and some days bad. We plan to meet in the Catford Wetherspoons because it is about halfway between us, and they have a beer festival starting tomorrow.

  I have to confess that in the last hour of our call I had a couple of large whiskies. It was the result of talking about booze. By the time we had finished on the phone I was just a little bit tipsy - just enough to make cooking a proper dinner too bothersome. However, it was not to bothersome to pop the 4 Cyprus sausages in the mini oven/grill to cook for 20 minutes under the control of the timer (which fortunately didn't get stuck just before the end of the cooking time like it has done just once before).

  The sausages were nice, and quite filling, or at least I can't remember wanting anything else in the 90 or so minutes before I went to sleep for the night. It is curious that since the clocks have changed to BST I seem to be getting to sleep later, and getting up earlier (although this morning was slightly complicated). I think I took a couple of paracetamol tablets an hour before going to sleep to help me sleep after having a less than ideal sleep the night before. Either they, or the whisky, or more likely both, worked to good effect, and I did seem to sleep really well until a little after 4am.

  I think it may have been nearly 4.30am when I woke up, and felt like it was time to get up, but obviously that was a silly time. I thrashed around trying to get back to sleep this way, or that way, or any way, but sleep just would not come for about a full hour - and that was based on the last time I saw on the clock. Then suddenly a couple more hours passed on the clock without me being aware of it, and I ended up getting up slightly late.

  Since then I have done a bot of this and a bit of that, including checking my blood glucose. It was down to a nice 8.0mmol/l, and I thought that deserved at least one bowl of instant noodles for breakfast. I had that, and I had some potato rings for some unresolved reason. I also went to the toilet, and it was rather explosive. That worries me because it is rare for these things to happen just the once.

  I think I can expect to have to go again before the morning is out, and while that may not stop any afternoon activities, I don't feel I will be going anywhere this morning. This is one of those "it depends how I feel on the day" things I mentioned when writing about my phone call with Kevin further up the page.  I think the gloomy weather, with a raised risk of rain for a few hours, probably rules out anything this afternoon too. Oh well, it's probably back to my train pictures spreadsheet today, but it could also be a good day to finally getting around to fitting the solid state hard disk in my laptop because I may take it with me to the pub when I meet Kevin, and if the solid state drive can extend the battery life by 10 minutes or so, it would be handy.