The forecast for today omitted a misty start to the day. It was the sort of start where it was easy to believe that once the most had lifted there would be some nice sunshine. The first version of the forecast agreed with that idea, as did the BBC weather forecast. The latest revision to the BBC forecast still says there should be a few sunny spells a bit later this morning, but the Met Office now says it will remain grey until 4pm when it will get even darker grey, and rain will start to fall. The BBC says the rain could start at 3pm. Some of the rain may be very heavy rain. Once again the temperature should reach 16° C. Tomorrow should see random sunny spells popping up all day, and the temperature should climb to 18° C.
Update: At approximately 8.30am the sun broke through the mist. The sky is now looking fairly blue with no nasty clouds visible to the south, or the north.
  This is the view to the north. Unless I am hallucinating that is blue sky and sunshine. I've suddenly lost a lot of faith in the weather forecast. I am expecting to see a drastic revision to it at 9am.

  It is hard to believe there could have been another good day, but yesterday was only marred by how cold it was indoors during the morning. I had to wrap up very warm until the sun started warming my front rooms. I seem to think the sun was a little slow breaking through the clouds yesterday morning. I don't think it was shining when I walked to Aldi, but it certainly was when I walked home again from Aldi.

  What I wrote yesterday contradicts what I wrote above, and that the sun had come out before I went to Aldi. Maybe I went out when the sun had popped behind a cloud for 10 or more minutes. What I do know is that I put on my winter coat, and I didn't feel too warm at all - just comfortable. The sun was most definitely out when I was walking home, and with all the stuff I was carrying I got very warm. When I got to my front door the very small porch area traps the heat of any sun, and with the sun full on my back as I opened the door I felt like I was being cooked !

  At that point it was still very cool in my bedroom as I changed out of my outdoor clothes, but being so hot myself, it was good to cool off in the cool room. I felt more than comfortable putting on an ordinary t-shirt instead of a long sleeved, thicker top. I didn't stop me having an extravagant lunch. I started off with some cold, ready cooked, flavour chicken. I think it was "Red Thai", but apart from being slightly spicy, it didn't have any special taste.

  I followed that chicken, that I had eaten out of curiosity, with something that was probably far less good for me - prawns in a spicy batter ("cooks in the oven at 190° C in just 15 minutes !").  I'm not sure what opinion I had about those prawns. They were probably no nicer than some types of savoury crisps. Maybe it was years of smoking that killed the taste buds for prawns. I can remember loving them as a kid, but I find them quite bland these days. At least the batter they were in had a nice spicy taste.

  There were several things I definitely wanted to buy from Aldi in the morning, and bottles of Diet Coke were near the top of the list. I lugged three 2.25 litre bottles of Diet Coke home. Aldi is the only place I know that sells 2.25 litre bottles. Everywhere else only seems to sell 2 litre bottles. One exception is. or was, Iceland who do or did sell 3 litre bottles, but they don't fit in my fridge. I mention all this because early in the afternoon I got a text message from Michael asking if I wanted 4 bottles of Diet Coke from Tesco while he was shopping there. I said yes please.
  Down in the dining room I lit 5 big candles, and after a while they were starting to warm the room up. Michael had dropped off the 4 bottles of Diet Coke, and said he would be around later. Both he and Jodie are thin skinned, and I must admit I thought it would be nicer if the room was warmer, and I switched on the fan heater on it's 1kw setting, and after half an hour the room was quite toasty, and I switched it off again.

  It was a good drinking session with both Michael and Jodie there. With Michael there, there were no long silences while Jodie was glued to her phone. It is sometimes quite amusing the way she starts grumbling to her self about something she has seen on her phone. Things like "Alan has booked something in from the beer festival he is at", and then going silent again for another 5 minutes. Usually we have a vague idea what she is on about, unless she is playing one of several games she plays on her phone.

  We had a fairly good selection of beers yesterday afternoon. Most were very pleasant, and even the worst was not that bad (it was a sour beer). One beer in particular seemed to be very good despite that fact I was scared of it. It was a porter brewed with Mexican chocolate. I didn't notice it on the can, but Jodie instantly zoomed in the fact that it mentioned chillies. I was strongly put off by the word coffee on the can. I was the only one who thought it tasted wonderful. It had quite a strong dark chocolate taste with no hint of coffee or chillies.

  By the end of the session I was feeling mildly drunk. As soon as first Michael, and then Jodie left, I finished the final preparation of my dinner. I feel sure it wasn't just the case of needing to warm it up after cooking it earlier in the day. I feel I probably added something, but I can think what. It was a lamb stew with leek and broccoli. It seemed to be very tasty, but somehow it was not completely satisfying. Half an hour later I ate a small pack of thinly sliced salami.

  I watched a few things on TV, but when it came to the gap between 8pm, when the last thing watchable finished, and 9pm when QI starts, I got bored and went to bed. I thought I was having a very early night, but it seemed to take ages before I fell asleep. It felt like a couple of hours, but maybe it was less than that, or maybe I fell asleep in the middle of it. What I do know was that I was having that old battle between hot and cold. My bedroom had cooled off since it was warmed by the sun, but not enough to need the full warmth of the duvet. I felt hot under the duvet and too cold without it.

  There were a couple of times when I woke up, and then couldn't get comfortable because of that temperature problem. It didn't help that my dinner had a fair bit of extra hot chilli sauce cooked in it. It didn't taste very hot when I ate it, but I think it was still responsible for me feeling too warm at times. Apart from a bad start, and maybe just one hiccup early in the night, I probably slept well for a lot of the night. By 6am I certainly felt like it was definitely time to get up even if I had no need to get up for hours - or even all day !

  I remember dreaming a fair bit last night, and there were two bits of dreams I particularly wanted to remember, Unfortunately I can only remember the salient points of one of them. That dream concerned a beige box with some very small buttons on it, and they controlled a viewer/player for internet based radio stations. Like on things like clocks, each button would have several functions depending on how long it was pressed for, or what button(s) had been pressed before it. basically it was a completely crap control system.

  Not only was the control system crap, so was almost all the "radio stations" this box could "tune in to". It was a system a bit like You Tube where anyone could upload radio programs - some with a video accompanier. I only found one station that stood out, but only for it's novelty value. It would be too tedious to listen to it for long, but I can imagine some masochists would. It was a station (or "channel") where readers could read out reviews of the books they had read.

  I could almost imagine something like it existing in real life paid for my adverts restricted to publishers pushing their own books.The one bit of book review I listened to was sort of amusing. I can't remember the authors name, but something like "Rocky Redneck" would be appropriate. It was a book called Civil Defence, and the author apparently described many ways of protecting your home (mostly involving murder, which is almost legal in America these days). One thing stood out to the reviewer, and it was a chapter called "how to blow up a home". It apparently involved filling a kettle with "gas" (or petrol in more civilised parts of the world), and putting it on to boil. The reviewer said it sounded like the idiot had tested it on his own home !

  With the need to line my stomach before boozing, and the later effects of the booze, I was worried that I had badly over eaten yesterday. Along with a couple of sweet tasting beers, I expected my blood glucose to go through the roof this morning. In fact it wasn't too bad. It was just 8.4mmol/l, and that is less than the cumulative average of the month, and less than the average for all the months so far this year.  That is pretty pleasing.

  I must have subconsciously guessed it wouldn't be too bad before I took the reading because I decided I was going to have two warming bowls of instant noodles this morning. Sometimes I wish my subconscious would agree with my conscious ! The question now is what am I going to do today. In the perfect world it would be a lot warmer, and sunnier. At the moment the sun is still trying to shine, but it looks a very thin sun that is shining through a layer of thin cloud or mist.

  In theory, now many of my joints are recovering, and maybe even recovered, from taking those blood thinning tablets for far too long, and going for a walk could be pleasant, where pleasant =  free from most pains. The one fly in the ointment is my guts. The previous two days I was "very regular". I went to the toilet first thing in the morning, but there was a feeling that it wasn't enough. This morning has chosen to be the morning when the excess is passed. Maybe the two very productive visits to the toilet earlier was enough, but I want to wait until I feel more sure of that fact. By then it might be getting too close to when it might start to rain. Incidently, The Met Office still hasn't recognised any sunshine this morning, but the BBC is still saying sunny spells for 11am and midday. They also say the first rain will fall at 3pm - The Met Office still insists it will start at 4pm.