Earlier this morning we had sunny spells, but now we are heading to the thick cloud predicted on the forecast for today. Of course the BBC website said no sunny spells, and only light cloud today. It denied the possibility of rain. However, in the latest revision the Met Office have hedged their bets to show two hours featuring rain now. They now show a 50% chance of a heavy showers at 4pm, and a 30% chance of light showers for 5pm. The fact that they have moved the first rain from 1pm originally, to 4pm now, strongly suggests they are just making it up, and yet it does suggest there will be some rain, sometime today. Some of the heavy looking clouds that are thickening as I write this look like they could drop a lot of rain on us any minute now ! It was a fresh morning, and it's almost going to be a fresh afternoon at just 22° C by the latest reckoning. After a dull start, tomorrow could feature some sunshine, and an afternoon temperature of 23° C. Oh, and they have thrown in some random rain for 6pm, and then later in the evening. I can imagine many changes to the forecast by tomorrow morning !

   I think I can describe yesterday as a good day. It somehow felt good when it started despite the despite the bad blood glucose reading in the morning. It is probably only with hindsight that I can say I felt a lot better in all sorts of minor ways, and a lot of minor things add up to a good thing ! I felt in the mood to do two productive things yesterday morning.

  Now the silly thing is that I can't remember what order I did those two things, but logic dictates that I must have down the laundry first so the bathtub would be free for a shower before going out shopping. The laundry was in the form of just one single item. It was a large bath towel, and it was very heavy when saturated with water. It needed a full five rinses, and if I had had the energy I might have done seven rinses. After the main wash, the five rinses, and the fabric conditioned I not only had to lift the saturated towel free of the water, but had to wring it out to the best of my ability. It was a relief to get it hanging on the washing line to dry in the sunshine.

  My shopping trip to Tesco was another feat of weightlifting practice. My rucksack had Four 2 litre bottles of Diet coke in it plus three cans of soup in it. My shopping bag had another 4 cans in it plus a heavy bag of peanuts for birds, along with a pack of suet balls for birds, and some food for myself. Although the cans contained food for me (two of them were canned Irish stew), I did not buy a lot of human food. It was just a bag (or two ?) of mixed salad leaves plus some cold meat for salads.

  I think I felt good walking to Tesco (possibly after some initial stiffness eased) and despite the heavy load, I felt fairly good walking home again. All the same, it was still good to put the shopping down, and straighten my spine (or whatever). I was pretty hot when I got home, but I seemed to cool down quite quickly. After my high blood glucose reading in the morning I should have attempted to fast until dinner time, but with afternoon drinking likely I decided to line my stomach with grilled bacon.

  The bacon I grilled was "thick cut" smoked bacon, and it was really nice. It was quite fatty, and that makes all the difference to the taste. It was extra succulent because it was not cooked as much as I had intended. It was perfectly cooked, but I had intended to cook it enough to make the fat crispy, but despite setting for what I thought was enough cooking time (in the mini oven and grill) the fat only had a hint of crispiness. I have more of the bacon, and next time I will preheat the oven/grill and add another 10 minutes to the cooking time.

  After lunch there was nothing to do but wait for Jodie to arrive, and it was a long wait. If it hadn't been for her texting me to say that she had just missed the train, and would be getting a bus, I would have thought that she wasn't coming. "Getting the bus" turned out to be getting 3 buses. The first bus took her to Beckenham where she used up some of the waiting time by getting a bit of shopping. Having finally got the bus to Catford she, and the other passengers were turfed off the bus at Catford Garage, and had to get on another bus.

  Jodie arrived soon after 4pm. If she had waited for the next train she would have been here half an hour earlier.  She was slightly peeved that I had drunk the 5 bottles of ale I drunk on Saturday night without her being able to taste them. When she had been drinking her first drink so slowly that I got bored, and poured myself an English ale, she demanded to taste it. To both our surprise she declared it to be very nice. The next time I opened one of "my" bottles she didn't really care for it, but then again, neither did I.

  I think I enjoyed most of the beer we drank yesterday afternoon, and that made a change. There was even one beer that Jodie had brought over didn't like, that I thought was quite pleasant, and I drank most of her share. Many of the beers we had yesterday were in the "session beer" range - typically between 3 and 5%. At least one was just 3.5%. In consequence I felt quite sober when Jodie left to get her train at about 6.15pm.

  Being sober had it's advantages - mostly being in better control of my food intake. I had a nice pre-cooked (from Tesco) small chicken breast on a heap of mixed salad leaves dressed with balsamic dressing. Later on I did have a a bit of ham and cheese to nibble on. I spent most of the rest of the evening watching more Sherlock Holmes stories from the excellent Granada TV series.

  After watching three stories I headed to bed to read for a while. Only a few things stand out about last night. I think it took me a little while to get to sleep. That was possibly around 10.30pm, and it was warm enough to turn the fan on. At some time in the night, maybe 2am, it was staring to feel a bit too cool for the fan, and yet still a bit warm without. It may have been then that I opened my bedroom window for some cool fresh air. By morning it was feeling a bit too cool for uncovered sleep, but somehow that is what I did, and it was about 7.30am when I woke up feeling ready to get up.

  Since then I have fed the birds, and I have indulged in some instant noodles for breakfast. I didn't think I had eaten much yesterday, but I have thought that before and got a high blood glucose reading. This morning it was a very average 8.5mmol/l. Such a reading, even after drinking beers, at least one of which was sweet and malty, suggests something has changed. It make me wonder if for the last week or so I have been fighting some sort of infection - maybe even a touch of "Long Covid". Well, whatever the reason, I am glad that is over for now.

  Today I ought to be doing lots of exciting things, but when I look out the window at all the thick grey clouds that have gathered, I hardly feel enthused. They even make a mockery of one thing that has to be done.... I have been soaking a hand towel that was saturated with dry sweat. I was using it to protect my pillow all through those very hot days we had. I am soaking it in bio detergent in the hope of liberating a lot of the greasy sweat, but that detergent doesn't smell nice. I have to give it maybe three rinses in plain water before washing it again in ordinary detergent. The original idea was to do that second wash with a few other things. At the current rate I can foresee it might be better to dry it indoors.

  Apart from that laundry there is one other thing I still want to do, and that is to get some shopping from Aldi. I really only want a few things, but to use a manned checkout I need to use a trolley, and make it look fairly full. I guess that mean buying some stuff that will keep for ages, like cans of soup, and maybe some stuff that will get used quickly, like birdseed. Both the cans and birdseed will be heavy. I think I will be doing more "weightlifting" today !