08:31 BST

  It wasn't too bad yesterday. The sun took a lot longer than forecast before it appeared in any meaningful way. Perhaps it was a OK that the sunny spells started later because they finished a lot later too. There was a bit of wind yesterday afternoon that was great for drying washing, but did make the 20° C feel cooler than it might have felt.

  

  The day has started with a fair few clouds in the sky, but there are gaps in them that has allowed some intermittent sunshine through. However, some of those clouds look a filthy grey, and like they could drop some rain on us despite the forecast saying it will be dry all day. The latest revision to the forecast shows exactly the same as that above. As such we can look forward to the first "official" sunny spells at 10pm, and from midday we will (finger crossed) get pure sunshine, and a blue sky until sunset. It seems surprising that the top temperature this afternoon will only be 19° C. Maybe in reality it will be higher. For tomorrow I think I can quote the forecast as the best description, "Sunny, changing to cloudy by lunchtime". It may also be cooler than today with only a couple of hours in the afternoon reaching 18° C.

   Once I had finally had a shower (at gone 10am) I washed a couple of hand towels yesterday. Towels can be heard work, but two hand towels was very easy, and I sort of wished I had added some underwear to the wash. My timing, although almost random, was perfect. The sun was just coming out as I hung those towel on the washing line. I think I could have taken them in earlier, but after 4 or so hours I brought those towels in feeling warm and dry.

  The next thing of any significance was when Jodie arrived, at about 3.30pm, to start our beer tasting session. She complained that nearly all the beers were quite strong ones. It is my fault only as much as I don't drink the special (exotic) beers when Jodie is not here because she has to taste them, and record her tasting on the untappd website. It is mostly her fault because she keeps saying she fancies a weaker beer, and so the strong ones have slowly accumulated in the fridge, and now almost all of them are strong ones being kept for later. Later has now arrived !

  As usual we had a mix of nice and nasty beers. The way we treat them is often different. Unless the beer is truly awful I tend to gulp it down. That gets it over and done with, but also there is the fact that beer should be gulped - unlike wine which should be sipped. Some marginally horrible beers can taste OK when gulped. Extra flavours seem to come through. There was one beer that I gulped, and thought wasn't so bad, but Jodie struggled with it. While she sipped her way through it, I opened a can of a common supermarket beer, and finished that before Jodie finished her beer.

  One good thing, in fact excellent thing, was that Michael joined up for an hour, and brought a couple of cans of beer he had bought from a micro-brewery in East Sussex (probably somewhere near Angmering). Curiously enough I was the only one who thought that those beers were a little too bitter. Whether Michael will be able to join us more regularly is impossible to say. It was bad timing that his bowel trouble, that kept him away cleared up just as his wife started to go down with the early stages of dementia. She has good days and bad days, and yesterday was a good day for her.

  It wasn't all that long after Michael had gone back to his wife that Alan, Jodies friend arrived. He was meeting her here so that they could get a train from Catford Bridge to eventually get to Highbury & Islington, via the London Overground from New Cross, for a gig. I think they left at about 6.30pm, but it seemed later than that for some reason. Maybe it was later because I seem to remember a rush to get the TV on for the first of two programmes on TV last night.

  The first was The Simpsons on Channel 4+1 at 7pm. When that finished I might have found something else on TV to amuse me until 8pm, but I have no idea what that may have been, but at 8pm I watched an old, original series, episode of Star Trek. Interwoven in all the TV watching was eating dinner. I just didn't fancy the salad I had originally thought I would have, and I didn't fancy trying to cook something more exotic (plus I didn't have that many ingredient for anything like that).

  It is a terrible waste of precious money as the country sinks into a deeper and deeper recession, but, assisted by the booze, I opted for a takeaway. I tried a new place for a kebab takeaway. They did seem to be a bit expensive, but I still went ahead, and maybe in some ways it was not as expensive as thought. I noticed that there was only £1 difference between a small and large kebab, and so I went for the large, and it was very large !

  Instead of scoffing two kebabs, I just had one single large kebab, and had the side of grilled chicken wings for "dessert". Those chicken wings were unusually served on a think bed of kebab style salad - lots of cabbage and onion. There seemed to be quite a lot of chicken wings, and instead of being a side dish, it could have been a complete dinner for a smaller person. I still have a large kebab for dinner today. It is very handy that they added so much grilled lamb that they had to put the salad in a separate box. That is going to make re-heating the meat in the microwave so much easier.

  Back to TV, and the next programme was Qi, starting at 9pm. I was going to watch it until I saw one of the guests was Johnny Vegas. I can't stand the thick &^%£, and so I turned off and went to bed. I read for maybe half an hour before trying to get to sleep. I think I did drop off to sleep because I have an idea I had a short dream, but I have no idea what the dream was about, but I know I was awake again a little after 10pm. I didn't feel comfortable, and I wasn't sure why.

  The only thing I could think of was a very minor feeling that maybe I might need the toilet. There seemed zero urgency about it, but because I thought it might be useful to go last night, and so would need to go less this morning, meaning it would be easier if I wanted to go out today, I decided to go and see what I could do. That was at 10.37pm. I am not sure why that time is burned into my memory.

  At 10.37pm I didn't realise was I was letting myself in for. Two minutes later I went to the toilet (as in having a poo), and it seemed all perfectly normal, but a minute later I realised I had opened to gates to hell (or something like that). I didn't get off the toilet for well over 15 minutes, and maybe 20 minutes. Every time I thought I had finished, I hadn't ! Eventually I thought it safe to go back to bed. I made it as far as my bedroom, had a quick gulp of drink, and had to run back to the bathroom. It was a quicker, but still productive visit, and I had one more very similar visits before I was obviously empty.

  I felt bad after all that. Some of it was just a growing hangover from the afternoon booze, and some of it was aches in the stomach from over used muscles involved in such endeavours. It took ages before I felt relaxed and comfortable enough to get to sleep. I think it was gone 1am before I was asleep, although there does seem to be some unaccountable time in there somewhere. I still didn't sleep all that well until at about 3am, or perhaps a little later, I put the heater on low, and so could stop fighting with the duvet.

  I'll take a guess that it was around 5am when I had a dream that did leave some memories. I feel sure I had an earlier dream that had some very significant events, but all memory of that has completely evaporated. The dream I do remember at least some from was a variation on many of my dreams. It started off as me being in a workshop in one of those old warehouse/factory buildings converted to house many small workshops. I can see it was inspired by the first place I worked in for my last employer.

  The dream started with someone walking in who I recognised as a previous employee. He looked around and said nothing had changed, and that there were still crystallised spider webs in the roof space (an interesting turn of phrase). For some reason we then went out exploring the rest of the building. We climbed an escape ladder, and went through a hatch onto a floor we had never seen before. At that point I found myself alone, and back in sort of familiar territory - a telephone exchange. I concluded it must have been a huge workshop where a prototype exchange must have been built.

  A lot of the exchange equipment was there, but there were huge gaps, and while it was familiar in a generic sort of way, there were individual bits that were new to me. One strange thing was that it seemed obvious that work was still taking place there, there was no one there. I wandered around and didn't see a soul. I guess that was probably good because I wasn't supposed to be there, or at least I assumed I was not supposed to be there. The dream faded out at that point.

  I woke up at 5.30am, and thought it was much too early considering how much sleep I had lost at the beginning of the night. I tried to get back to sleep, and I did manage some scruffy old sleep, but by 6.30am I realised I was fighting a losing battle, and slowly started to get up. After a quick visit to the bathroom for a pee, and to wash any contaminants off my hand prior to pricking my finger for a blood sample to my blood glucose machine.

  I had expected my blood glucose reading to be lower than yesterday morning, and indeed it was, but I was still hoping it would be lower than 8.7mmol/l. That is not a bad reading except it works against my desire for an excellent end of month average. I think that instead I will be getting a very average average !

  There is one thing I am definitely doing today, and one thing I would like to do if the circumstances feel right. The definite is to wash some clothes, and getting them hanging on the line to dry. The possible thing is to go out for a train ride or two with one of my cameras. I guess there could be another possibility - a walk in the park, but for some reason I have gone off those at the moment. I'm probably waiting for even sunnier, and much hotter weather for that. but you never know.