It seems today will be a very grey day with some rain. The latest revision to the forecast shows 1om as being dry, but the chance of rain at 2 and 3pm has been raised to 80%, and it is probably going to be heavy rain. Lighter rain is expected from 7pm tonight. It is going to be a lot cooler than yesterday with a high of just 19° C. Tomorrow could start off wet, but the afternoon is currently predicted to be sunny with a temperature of 21° C. In complete contrast, the BBC reckon today will be dry until 8pm, and even then there is only a moderately low chance of rain until later in the evening. It still shows the day as being horribly gloomy !
 
  I have already described the first half of yesterday in my very late in the day writing yesterday. At the end of that I said I was very much looking forward to an afternoon nap. Before I could do that I had a much lighter lunch than I was imagining I would have. It was just 4 rice cakes with some cheese on them. I also had to do a couple of things on my PC, but then I retired to lay on my bed to read and snooze.

  I don't really have any idea how long I snoozed for, but I suspect it was around an hour. I don't whether it is included in the hour, or after it, but although I seemed to be awake, I preferred to keep my eyes closed. I think it was around 4pm when I finally got off my bed, and the first thing I wanted was another snack. Once again it was more rice cakes with cheese (or was it ham ???).

  I didn't really do anything of note except eat my dinner until I went to bed last night. Dinner was a sort of stew of meat balls with runner beans and mushrooms in a thin, but rich and spicy gravy. It was not long after I had finished that when once again I got the urge to have something like a dessert. I made the terrible mistake of eating a pot of "Vegan" potato salad. I guess it was the mayonnaise that was replaced by something white and gooey made from plants. Oddly enough it was very nice - rather better than many potato salads.

  I expected I would get to sleep very early last night, but maybe my afternoon nap was enough to offset my lost sleep the night before. I spent quite a bit of time, at least half an hour, and possibly a full hour reading, before  trying for sleep. I am currently reading "A Call To Arms" by Alan Dean Foster. It is essentially about humans being very willingly dragged into an interstellar war being fought between two federations of planets.

  One federation is The Weave, and the Amplitur is the other. Both have similar philosophies - one of peace and love between species, but the Amplitur are the baddies because they use mind control and genetic engineering to keep their conquered planets on their side. The main theme of the story, and it is still very much developing as I reach about 75% of my way through the book, is that these two federations have pretty lousy fighters.

   When one side finds Earth they find that Earthmen are very, very good fighters, and this is the opposite to what the very first person the aliens meet tells them. He is a musician, and although the text doesn't explicitly say it, he is of the same sort of mind as hippies who believe that the world is close to being a peaceful, caring place. All this stuff provides plenty of fodder for dreams, and while I can't remember most, and even the ones I can remember I only remember as snapshots, I had plenty of dreams inspired by this book - although my dreams seemed to follow a different path.

  I'll only try and recount some bits of one dream because I found the concept amusing. In the dream(s) the whole Earth was represented by the British, and they (we) went into the war as an extension of the British Empire. I have no idea who I was, but I was in the Union Flag draped embassy office. It seemed that all the different planets had a single room for an embassy in one fairly large building. I don't know how, but it seemed obvious to me that the sub plot was that instead of us joining The Weave, the less nasty faction, or The Amplitur, the baddies, we were going to subsume the whole lot of them into our empire !

  I don't think I slept that well last night, and some of the reason my have been gentle side effects from my Covid booster jab. The site of the injection was a bit tender, but that was hardly noticeable. One potential effect could easily have been the result of too much chilly sauce on my dinner. It was from about 1am, after an hour or two of sleep, I woke up feeling very hot, but unusually mostly dry. I did check my room thermometers, and they said it was still 25° C in my bedroom. I guess the way I was feeling could probably be blamed on all three reasons.

  One oddity must have been something to do with the vaccine. For years now I have experienced discomfort if I try to sleep on my right. At the very worst I can feel click and pops, like bones rubbing each other, along my sternum - where I was opened up for my heart bypass operation. Most often it is just a dull, but still annoying ache on the left of my sternum. Last night I was getting similar aches, but maybe more to the right of my sternum when trying to sleep on my left. It was tricky finding the least uncomfortable position to sleep.

  This morning it really felt like I was getting up too early, and yet no matter how I tried, I couldn't go back to sleep. By this morning most of any aches had faded, and so there was no reason not to find a comfortable sleeping position, but still that sleep would not come. I had a bad feeling about my blood glucose reading this morning. I was convinced that my mid evening consumption of the potato salad (described further up the page) was a very bad idea. It probably was because this morning my blood glucose was up to 9.1mmol/l.

  I should have waited another hour, and drunk a pint or two of water before checking it. I shouldn't have decided I was going to have some breakfast regardless. I was so looking forward to my first real Polish instant noodles this morning. I had a packet of the very nice beetroot flavour noodles, and I enjoyed them a lot. Now I ought to, but probably won't fast until dinner time. I will try and be careful what I eat though.

  On such a dull and gloomy day I have no desire to go out. I am not sure I can even bother to wash and get up properly this morning, but I probably will. The only think I can imagine doing today, in terms of anything outdoors, is a possible visit to Poundstretcher. I'd like to get a few more sugar free drinks in stock, and I definitely out to get more bird food because the pigeons are starving - or so they tell me ! I also want to remember to see if they have the plastic drawers I was going to buy when I had a bedroom clear up a month or two ago. A pair of 4 drawer high (possibly 5 drawers) was part of my vision for a tidier bedroom.
  I almost forgot, I bought these beers from Aldi yesterday morning. They come in a very distinctive yellow and blue box that contains 12 cans of beer. As you might be able to see along the rim of the can, profits from these beers (brewed in the UK under the supervision of a Ukrainian brewer) are being donated to help Ukrainian brewers going through the war out there. They taste pretty nice, and are worth buying just for the taste alone.