It is going to be another very dull, and damp day, but maybe it won't be quite as bad as the early forecast shown above. The latest revision only shows rain at 1pm, and amid all the gloom there could be full sunshine at 7pm. I must admit that does sound unlikely, but fingers crossed. In fact the sun is making a valiant attempt to push through the clouds as I type this, and I can see a few blue areas of sky. I predict the next revision to the forecast, at 10am, will show a different picture again. The afternoon high seems fixed at 19° C, although that may only be for 2 hours, and the rest of the day will be cooler. Tomorrow may be mostly dull, but sunny spells are possible from late afternoon, and the temperature might reach 22° C for a couple of hours.
 
  Yesterday I suggested I might do two shopping trips. I did the first, but not the second. The first, a shopping trip to Aldi, was probably my greatest achievement of the week....maybe. The significance of it all was that after a lot of rain the sky brightened a bit, the rain had stopped, and I walked to Aldi. On the way back I was bathed in warm sunshine, but to the west I could see very dirty grey clouds piling up. Rain was minutes away when I got home !

  It was quite exciting shopping in Aldi...well, sort of exciting. I hadn't been in there for maybe a fortnight, and suddenly there was lots of new and interesting stuff on the shelves. I must admit I gave in to my strict shopping list, and bought some interesting novelties like a small pack of ready to eat salt and chilli chicken, and a small pack of ready to eat flat tandoori chicken. The former was very nice, and the latter was pleasant, but not enough to warrant buying again.

  I also bought two bags of flavoured peanuts. One was "buffalo wings" flavour, but just had a slightly smoky taste, and while they were nice, they were nothing to get excited about. I can't remember the other flavour, and I haven't tried it yet, but I already feel I will be underwhelmed. The only other weird/exciting thing I bought was a bottle of (I am doing this from memory and may have the spelling very wrong) Krautmeister herbal liqueur. It has some similarities to Jagermeister, but is more floral. I expect the bottle to last a long time, but I like it.

  It was soon after I got home from Aldi that heavy rain started to fall, and from many miles away I heard a couple of claps of thunder. The rain did ease off after a while, and I heard no more thunder, but it was bad enough that I decided I would not be going out again for further shopping. I couldn't be totally lazy at that point because I had washing up to do, including the glasses for the afternoon's beer tasting.

 I also started the early preparation of my dinner. It was to be based on chicken, and I part cooked a packet of boneless chicken thighs in some chicken Oxo stock. A bit later on I would split that in two. One half, cooked some more with runner beans and chestnut mushrooms (plus assorted herbs and spices) would be last night's dinner, and the other will be the basis of today's dinner - probably with broccoli.

  It was after that when I could be very lazy, and lay on my bed reading, but I did one more thing before that. I sent a text message to Michael suggesting he try and pop around for an hour or more during the beet tasting session to exchange some gossip. After that I did nothing of any note until about 3.30am when I was ready to start drinking once Jodie, and hopefully Michael turned up.

  To my surprise, Michael did join us ("just for an hour", which actually lasted about 90 minutes !). I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to say, but I had hoped to chat to him about Angela's engagement announcement on social media, and while we did exchange a couple of sentences, Michael had far too much to say about other things. The trouble is that with his wife going through periods of dementia he finds he has no adult conversation at home, and is bursting to say stuff when here.

  Anyway, we had a nice drink. Michael might have been talking ten to the dozen a lot of the time, but it fills in the long silences when Jodie is pre-occupied with her phone ! Later on, when Michael was saying he had to get back to his wife we were joined by Alan, Jodie's boyfriend. He didn't drink much because he and Jodie were going on to a pub or bar after being here. That was slightly unfortunate because I was hoping he would drive here so I could offload the cardboard boxes I have been saving for Jodie (for packing up stuff from her late parents home).

   Not only didn't Alan have the car with him, which was sensible if they were drinking later, but I was also informed that Jodie didn't need any more cardboard boxes. There are a few I could probably use, but sometime, maybe even today, I can have fun with a box cutter cutting the boxes into sheets of cardboard to go in the recycling bin.

  Once Jodie and Alan left I finished cooking my dinner, and ate it. It was nice, but i think it would have been better in a larger container with more, and thinner gravy. A lot of liquid makes it more filling. What I ate last night didn't seem to satisfy me, and it wasn't long before I had another nibble while watching some TV.  As 9pm approached I decided I could probably remember most of the repeated repeat of QI, and I was in bed by 9pm.

  I read for a while, but my eyelids started to droop, and after putting the book down, and turning out the light, I think I was probably asleep by 9.30pm. It was another of those nights when I kept waking up thinking hardly any time had passed, but then realising 2 or 3 hours had passed with no memory of it. After all these years I still have no idea if that is good or bad sleep.

  I do remember having a lot of dreams in the night, but I can't seem to remember when in the night I had them. There was one dream that was a concept I can't remember now, but I do remember it as a sort of serial dream where the same scenes were re-enacted, often from different angles. One such dream seemed to be based in the garden of a museum. At least I thought it was a museum, but it did seem to have some ancient gravestones in it.

  There was one bit of that dream I do remember. Maybe I made a point of remembering it because it was a strange sort of thing to happen. I was approached by a very plain looking woman - neither attractive or repulsive - and she asked to examine my hand. She started off looking at my palm, and I asked if it was palmistry, but she said no. Then she started gently doing what I can only describe as feeling the bony structure of the hand. Feeling down each finger, and the back of the hand. It was a complete mystery what she was doing, but while it was not erotic, it was sort of sensuous.

  Like a lot of mornings, I woke up at 5am, but didn't want to get up, and like most mornings I doubted I would be able to get to sleep again. After a pee I got back into bed, pulled the duvet around myself, and did my best to relax. Like most morning, the next thing I knew was that almost 2 more hours had passed. I got up just in time to take screenshots of the weather forecast just before they were revised at 7am.

  It was not a warm night, and although I had been peeing a lot on the night after the beer I had drunk earlier, I didn't think I would be dehydrated this morning. I check my blood glucose without drinking any water first. I was sure that I had eaten far too much yesterday, and in terms of trying to lose a bit of weight before seeing the nurse next Friday, I am positive I had eaten too much, but evidently I was careful about not eating anything with know large amounts of sugar in it. This morning my blood glucose was an excellent 8.1mmol/l !

  Today looks to be another day where the weather is so miserable that I don't think I fancy any outdoor activities. I guess I will do some cooking. Cut up some cardboard boxes, and.......possibly nothing else, although maybe I will go to Savers and Poundstretcher today - just to stretch my legs. There is nothing I need from those stores today, but stuff I will probably use in the not too distant future - like bird food for the veracious pigeons, but hopefully for the small birds that are now frequent visitors to my bird feeder when the pigeons leave it alone.