08:02 BST

  It was very nice yesterday. There was plenty of sunshine, and the temperature probably very slightly exceeded the forecast 16° C. To get the best of it you had to be in the sun, but, for instance, in my back, north facing, room it did seem like there was a chilly wind lowing through the open window.

  

  I've checked the latest revisions from both the BBC and Met Office websites, and still today is not looking good. The BBC forecast is most optimistic. It predicts a temperature of 15° C, a whole degree higher than the Met Office, and also says that 7 and 8pm could feature full sunshine, but for most of the day it agrees with the Met Office that it is going to be dull and gloomy. Only light cloud is predicted for right now, but it is like the sun has forgotten to rise this morning. Tomorrow might see the temperature reach 15° C, and there could be an hour or two of sunny spells in the afternoon,but mostly it will probably be very dull like today.

  Yesterday was a good day for various reasons. I guess there was nothing outstandingly wonderful, but lots of little bits added up to make the day very satisfactory. There was one very bad thing, but I'll come to that later, and I didn't even know it was so bad at the time. The thing that was the key to it being good was the glorious sunny weather, although it really only impacted on one thing, but of course it made the whole day cheery.

  The big impact, in a very good way, that the weather had was in relation to laundry. It took me much of the morning to work myself up to it, but I washed a pair of jeans. They were sort of winter jeans - the denim seems to be thicker than some jeans. Hand washing those jeans was no easy matter, although the real difficulty was trying to wring them out through the staged of washing them

  The first stage was with detergent, and when I saw the colour of the soapy water, when I tipped it away, I realised it had been an essential decision to wash those jeans. Much of the colour was just mud that was splashed on the bottom of the legs when I wore them for walks in the muddy park. I gave them three rinses, plus fabric conditioner after the soapy stage. I guess I did manage to wring more water out of them than I thought I would be able to do. Ultimately it didn't matter because I would be hanging them on the line outside, and they could drip to their hearts content - except they hardly dripped at all.
  It was just a couple of minutes after midday when I got those jeans on the line. It would be a few hours before the sun had moved around enough to shine directly onto them. I think it was around 4pm when I turned them around, back to front, so the other side could be sun dried. By 6pm they were bone dry, and ready to wear again, although I may not wear them for some time now as I rotate through all my wearable jeans.
  While I was in the garden with a camera I took this snap to show all the tulips that are now flowering. There should be more to come later, as well as (hopefully) some other seeds I sowed there. There was nothing worth taking a picture of, but I noticed lots of shoots coming up in the flower bed at the back of the garden. I think the reason that I am not a more keen gardener is that I lack the faith in what I am doing. For so many weeks it looked like nothing was going to happen, and then suddenly, among the weeds (or probably weeds ?) there are no shoots and stuff.

  I guess it is because it is so late in the spring before my garden gets any sunshine that it seems to lag behind other people's gardens, and the flowers in the park. Maybe in a month or so it will burst into colourful life for the summer. Sadly, the flower bed on the left of the garden is even later at getting any sun, and it is looking rather bleak still. Curiously enough I am still optimistic that even that flower bed will spring to life eventually.

  It was getting on for 4pm before Jodie had arrived for out beer tasting session. She had taken the scenic route via a couple of "Polish" shops in Catford where she bought a few cans of exotic beers to try. She also walked by the edge of the park to forage for edible flowers and leaves. She is good at that sort of thing, although there was one bunch she had to go online to identify, and they turned out to actually be poisonous !

  We had some nice, and one less than nice beer. Two of the beers were special fruity "summer" beers, and they were basically a light lager with fruit juice added after brewing. Unfortunately there are indications it was less fruit juice, and more like fruit syrup. They did taste rather sweet. Jodie was not good company yesterday. She spent ages sorting out all the leaves and flowers she had picked, and then spent ages checking in her beers on that website she uses.

  It was difficult getting a word out of her at time, but she did mention a beer company called "Beautiful Beers", and how they had a lot of Ukranian beers that she wanted to try. She has tried some, but I didn't bother to consult her when I just left her to her own devices and went upstairs to my PC to investigate further. I found the website, and although their prices were sometimes a bit steep, I ordered a box of beers that cost £82. There was no indication on the website of how much you had to spend for free delivery, but I found my £82 had reached that value. Hopefully they will arrive in time for our next Thursday session.

  Jodie left at about 6.25pm to ge the next 320 bus to Bromley where she was going to meet her friend Alan in The Star And Garter pub. I set about getting my dinner ready. I had cooked the beefburgers before Jodie left, and they were still warm. All I had to do was to heap the plate with salad leaves and some tomatoes before my dinner was ready.

Weather update: Against all expectations the sun has just come out.....and gone in again !

  My dinner should have been mostly healthy, although there is some doubt about the mayonnaise I liberally squirted on the salad.  After dinner there was nothing much to do for an hour until the first of two episodes of QI were shown on Dave. I wasn't sure whether I should watch the second episode because I was starting to yawn, but I did in the end. I then read in bed for 15 or 20 minutes. Very soon after I was fast asleep - and dreaming.

  My dreams were heavily inspired by the book I have just started reading - "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. It is a greatly expanded, full length novel version of the short story of the same name.  My dreams mostly went over the same ground over and over again as I considered some flaws in the story. The story is set on an alien planet that is surrounded by five suns, and so never sees darkness except for once every 1000 years when all the suns line uo, and then are eclipsed by a moon that can't be seen because if the glare of the suns.

  The original short story was inspired by one of the magazine editors he wrote for asking what would it be like if the stars only came out once every 1000 years. The basic idea was that the inhabitants would go mad because they had never experienced darkness before. To my mind that seemed unlikely. There are clues in the story about condition on the planet, and they include such things as glass in windows, and stuff made from metal.

  Making glass uses a lot of heat, and that would more likely come from coal. Now coal can be stripped mined, but eventually there would be deep mines, and they would need some sort of artificial lighting. The other thing is that most metals, particularly silver, as used in photographic plates (which form a core part of the story) would need to be mined. There were other clues that the idea that this planet had never developed artificial lighting seemed very unlikely. In part of the story the "scientists" who worked in the observatory invented a crude and smoky sort of candle using grease for meat. It is a good story, and it would be a shame to spoil it by saying more, but it did seem to provide a whole heap of fodder for my dreams.

  This morning I guess I had a slight hangover despite not feeling anywhere near drunk in the evening, but that is the best way to describe how I feel. My mood was not improved when I checked my blood glucose. I feel sure I have to blame it on those fruit beers that this morning it is only just under the red line with a reading of 9.8mmol/l. That and the dull weather makes me feel a bit depressed, or maybe "unenthusiastic" is a better word.

  I did have thoughts about going to a gig tonight, but at this end of the day I seem to have zero enthusiasm for it. We have just had another short burst of sunshine, and it makes me wonder if the forecast got that wrong, could it also get the predicted absence of rain wrong too ? I haven't got much that needs washing, but I thought I could get some stuff on the line in the hope it might dry today. At this very moment I don't think I feel like doing anything at all.