This morning was "warmer" than yesterday morning with a temperature of 7° C - one degree higher than yesterday morning, but still perishing cold ! As I write this the sun is trying to peep out under a bank of dark cloud to the east. The latest revision to the forecast still shows sunny spells for 8am, but when I look at the clouds in the sky I have my doubts, but fingers crossed.... The only change to the forecast in the latest revision is that the sunny spells at 3pm has gone missing. It would be terribly nice if reality turns out to include a lot more sunny spells in the afternoon. I need them to warm up my front rooms which are now quite chilly. The afternoon temperature may reach 16° C today, and that is a small improvement over yesterday. The temperature will probably be the same tomorrow. However, after a couple of hours of sunny spells in the morning it will probably cloud over, and rain, some of it heavy, is predicted to start as the afternoon is ending.

  Yesterday was a good day - up until mid afternoon. The only important thing I did in the morning was to have a wet shave, wash my hair, and have a good shower. I have to say it was lovely with warm water cascading down me. I felt nice and warm for the first, and only time in the morning. Maybe drying my hair with the hair dryer was also warm, but it was really only my head that was warm.

  There was one little thing I did before I went out, and that was to rummage in the back of my old wardrobe in the spare room. I also had a look at what was hanging on the coat hooks in that room. From the wardrobe I pulled out a very smelly large sweat shirt and what I thought was a sweat short, but was actually just a polo shirt. I am unsure how I could have missed that it only had short sleeves.

  From the coat hooks I found a plain dark-ish blue thin sweater, and a company issued sweater. Once upon a time I used to use the thin sweater a lot, and as a result the front of it has rubbed against the inside of a coat, the front of a work bench, and also clawed by one of my old cats. It is all still intact, but does look a bit crappy. It, and also the sweater with the company logo are for indoor use only I think.

  The smelly sweat shirt and polo shirt smelled badly of old cigarette smoke, and maybe something from the wood that the wardrobe is made from - preservative, or resin maybe.  The last thing I did before going out was to put them into to soak in detergent. I then put on my winter coat, and stepped out into the outside world. It is the second time I have put that winter coat on this autumn, and I find it hard to believe how comfortable it is. I'm sure it used to be a bit tight. Now it feels almost roomy. I am sure my weight is no different to what it was in the winter, but maybe my shape has changed somehow.
  The park was still mostly green, including the grass after so much rain recently, but a few trees, like the one in the picture, were wearing their autumn colours.
  I think that tree is some sort of maple tree. The most vivid colours are on the dead leaves laying on the ground. I don't think my picture shows just how vivid some of them were.

  Apart from stopping to take a couple of photos, I thought I was making very good time walking through the park. It was nice to have a a few less aches, and less stiffness as I walked, and with my winter coat keeping me nice and warm, it was almost a pleasant walk. Despite thinking I was keeping good time, I found Angela already in the pub when I got there. I neglected to check the time, and maybe she was early rather than me being late.

  As I think I suggested yesterday, a lot of our chat was about health matters. Angela was a bit concerned when I told her that coming off Clopidogrel, a blood thinner, seemed to have caused my blood pressure to shoot up, At least one reading was far too high on my first attempt, but some deep breaths, and trying to relax more got it down to "acceptable". It is just about possible that it was my body adjusting itself. I did note that last night it was almost back to normal.

  Another topic of discussion was Halloween, but only so much as Halloween gigs. It just so happens that the closest Saturday to Halloween is the 29th of October, and that just happens to be Angela's birthday. It is also the birthday of one of the members of the band "Strange Fashion" - who Angela likes. Angela tells me she has a great Halloween costume that she intends to wear. Apparently it is quite revealing, and that I have to come to the gig to see it. It is hard to resist an invitation like that. I hope the two negative things about it don't put me off. The pub is awkward to get to, and lover boy will be there.

  We came out of the pub into bright sunshine, and I didn't have any sun glasses with me. Fortunately the glare was not too bad. After walking back to Angela's office we parted with a nice warm hug, and more pleading that I got to the Halloween gig. It would be wonderful if lover boy was going to dep as drummer for the gig. The last time that happened, in the same pub, I had a very intimate evening with Angela, and we shared a cab to our own homes (which was a bit of a shame, but the closest to ecstasy for five years).

  Although I felt nice and warm when I arrived home, I knew it would not last, and went straight into the kitchen to prepare a hot bowl of spicy instant noodles - my second bowl or the day ! They were delicious, but maybe not as warming as a hot bowl of soup - which is what I was going to have. After allowing half an hour for the noodles to settle down I did some warming exercise - hand washing the thick sweat short, and what turned out to be a polo shirt. The sweat short was quite difficult to wring out, and after three rinses I decided to take a break before going back to it a bit later.
  These are two warm tops that were hanging on the coat hooks (on coat hangers) in the spare room. They smelled clean despite being of the same vintage as the smelly tops from the back of the old wardrobe. It does seem that all the smell comes from inside that wardrobe. In this picture the sweater on the left doesn't look too bad, but in reality the front of it is all "bobbly"and the like. The company logo is obvious on the other sweater, but that doesn't matter for indoor use. I would still very much prefer to afford loads of electricity to run a heater in any room I am in, but I fear that will be a luxury item this winter.

  One more wringing out, rinsing in fabric conditioner, and then a super extra wringing out, and I hung the sweatshirt and polo shirt on the clothes horse in the front room, with a fan blowing at them. This morning the windows were steamed up, and the two items still not fully dry, but I guess it was almost late in the day when I hung them up. For some reason I seem to think I hung them up to dry after dinner, but I'm sure I wouldn't have left it that late.

  In the middle of the afternoon I had four rice cakes with ham and cheese on them. It is only with hind sight, every single time, that I think it probably wasn't a great idea to have ham and cheese. one or the other would probably have been just as nice, but no doubt I won't think of that again until after the deed has been done. My dinner was quite simple. I was going to cook a stew of lamb, and possibly the last of the huge bag of spinach, but for that I should have started the cooking process much earlier in the day. I didn't, and so I just had two cans of soup for dinner. One was a "chunky chicken soup", although I think it was only the vegetables that were a bit chunky. The other can was pea and ham soup.

  Those two soups, with a good sprinkle of hot pepper sauce, did keep me warm-ish in the evening. I had a mostly lazy evening watching some Star Trek, Simpsons, Abandoned Engineering, and finally an episode of QI. The latter finished at 10pm. I went straight to bed, finished reading to the end of the next chapter of the book I am reading, and well before 11pm I was fast asleep.

  On the basis I don't really remember much about my sleep, it was probably quite good sleep. I do remember it being lovely and warm under the duvet. I also remember a few odd seconds of a dream I was having shortly before getting up this morning. It was obviously one of those dreams made up of very short scenes that seem to follow some sort of common narrative, but was also very jumbled up. It started off in what was a bit like one place I once worked, but seemed to morph into something like an army camp, but minus any uniforms.

  The first bit of the dream had a military tinge to it. I was supposed to be shown how to analyse urine for radioactive, or biological contamination, but the man showing me how to do it kept wandering off, and I never saw him again until much later in the dream. In another part of the dream I was trying to get a bit of laboratory glassware from the store keeper. The second to last bit of the dream saw the man who kept wandering off back again. He had been selected (or maybe volunteered) to sing a song as part of some sort of radio broadcast.

   We all went outside, and there were half a dozen army style huts around a sort of grassy parade ground. There were half a dozen small clusters of men who would be performing. I heard a radio director tell one group they would be on in ten minutes. I think that was actually the only clue that it was to be broadcast. I got bored waiting around, and noticed a small box on the ground. I picked it up, and inside I found a small, integrated circuit sized hybrid transformer (also known as directional coupler). That was very random, but I then noticed my name etched into it, and there was a test certificate with it saying it had been tested specially for me. I think that was weird enough to be my cue to wake up.

  It was just before 7am when I got up. I think I felt OK at that point, but it wasn't long before the cold got to me. Fortunately it hadn't got to my blood glucose. It was another nice low reading this morning - not quite as low as yesteday, but still just 7.9mmol/l. That get a light green highlight in my spreadsheet record, and takes my running average for the month down to 8.58mmol/l - which is pretty average for most of this year.

  As I write this the promised sunny spells has finally happened - only an hour late. It does feel good with the sun on half my back. With luck we will get a lot more sunshine today that will warm my front rooms up from the chilly 17° C they are at the moment. Two things will probably happen today. I want to go to Aldi some time this morning, and then this afternoon Jodie should be over for an afternoon beer tasting session. It is even possible, although maybe unlikely, that Michael may join us. I think I am going to swallow my pride and put some heating in the dining room when Jodie is here.