There is plenty of evidence of overnight rain this morning, and the rain is going to continue for some time yet. The BBC give a very simplified view of today's rain. They say non stop light rain until 1pm, and then just cloudy for the rest of the day. The Met Office first showed a complicated pattern of rain, including hail at 2pm, but the latest revision does away with the hail, and simplifies things a bit.....or did ! In the very latest revision the hail is back at midday. Before and just after that there will be heavy rain. At 2pm the heavy rain will change to light rain, and by 3pm it should be dry, but cloudy for the rest of the day. The temperature now, almost 16° C, but possible still rising a bit, is the highest today, and from sunset (not that we will probably see the sun today) it will drop down to about 13° C. Tomorrow could be 18° C, and there is a small chance of a sunny spell, but mostly it will be a wet day. The BBC even offers the chance of a thunderstorm !

  I think I can describe yesterday as a very good day ! All the sunshine helped a lot to make it good, but there more important other things too. I managed to get off to an early start, and it wasn't very late in the morning when I had showered and shaved, before stepping out to get some important shopping.

  My shopping destination was about the furthest I will usually walk to get shopping, although the furthest I need to walk is a better way of putting it. It was to the Metro Food Centre who specialise in food from all over Europe and beyond. There were two (or three if you want to be pedantic) items I particularly wanted. They were avocados, both green and brown, plus a couple of Kohlrabis.

  Kohlrabis are a vegatable that is little known in this country, but is a favourite with Greeks and Turks. It tastes a bit like cabbage, but under the skin is a firm centre a bit like a seedless apple. I also bought a couple of cans of Polish (at least I think they are Polish) pork in beans - a thousand time more superior than Heinz sausages and baked beans. The final item was good - sort of. It was a five pack of spicy seafood instant noodles. The packet seemed expensive, but inside there were five x 120gm packets. 120gm is about the biggest packets of instant noodles that you can buy.  The only problem was that instead of a delicate seafood flavour like prawn, it was a very intense flavour of some unknown sea creature bolstered by added seaweed. It straddled that strange barrier between nasty and nice.

  The reason for this shopping was for a "care package" for Angela. At the time I bought they stuff I knew that Angela was back at work, but I wasn't sure if she would feel up to coming to the pub at lunchtime. I sent her a text message just after midday to ask if she would be. It took a while until she replied to say she still felt a bit ill, but she would be there. That was a relief because I was already halfway there, walking through the park.
  I think this squirrel was hoping I might have had some nuts on me. It shadowed me along the top of the fence for 30 40 metres before jumping on to the branch of a tree overhanging the path. The squirrel was partly in the shade, and I had to turn the brightness up a lot to stop it being a silhouette. Unfortunately that bleached out the nice blue sky behind it.
  I probably complain about it every autumn, but Ladywell Fields mostly have the wrong sort of trees for really colourful autumn displays, but this tree never fails to put on a good show.
  It tends to be the newer trees that are most colourful. The basketball court was once just a big cinder patch, but when it was rehabilitated, and the baskball court erected, many new trees were planted, and it seems they chose different types to the mature trees in the park. This one with bright red leaves is one such tree.
  This tall tree is evidently a mature tree, but has a glorious golden crown.
  The river through the park generates it's own micro climate, and together with the shade of some big trees, it seems enough to fool the blackberry brambles to continue to flower. It seems odd to see these bright fresh flowers when everything else is in decay as winter approaches.
  One picture that isn't seasonal is this one of St Mary's church clad in scaffolding. All the boarding attached to the scaffolding suggests that maybe as well as doing some repairs they will be water jetting the outside to clean it up. When the job is finished, maybe next spring at a guess, it should look really good. As I said to Angela, later on in the pub, I am no fan of what they do in churches, but some are magnificent buildings, and looks so good compared to modern concrete monstrosities.

  I arrived at the pub a quarter of an hour early, but by then I knew Angela was coming. I ordered our drinks and gave Asia, the barmaid, one of the Kohlrabis. She is of Turkish origin, and really like the vegetable. You never see them in supermarkets (to the best of my knowledge), but I think Asia would have to go out of her way to buy them for herself, and so she really appreciates getting one as a treat.

  When Angela came in I couldn't help but giving her a slightly awkward  light hug - awkward because I was still behind the table with not enough movement. It is very rare to give Angela a hug when we first meet in the pub, but I was so pleased to see her, plus I wanted to show that I wasn't worried about catching anything from her. Apparently she had been tested for Covid, and found to be definitely infected, but for the last 7 days she was tested clear of it.

  She told me how awful she felt once it got a grip on her. Every movement hurt as stiff joints were moved with aching muscles. The great thing was that she didn't get a lung infection. I believe that is the main difference to the Omicron Covid variant. It was foretold at the beginning by those who knew, that if Covid was too lethal it would die out along with the people it killed, and so it evolved to become far less lethal. It is now almost just another 'flu - which can still be lethal to the old and infirm, but is usually no more than a painful annoyance for a week or so.

  It was obvious that Angela was very happy to see me, and was even more delighted when I gave her the "care package" of 2 green, and 2 brown avocados, and a Kohlrabi. I said I thought she could do with a few more vitamins. She was also delighted when I told her about the results of my blood and urine tests that I had only learned on Monday afternoon. Before I told her about them she remarked on how well I looked. I couldn't really help it - it felt warm and sunny, and I was seeing Angela for the first time in a fortnight.

  Eventually the hour was over, and I walked Angela back to work. It was very bright and sunny when we left the pub, and because we were walking towards the sun I was very glad I had brought some sunglasses with me because that light was blinding ! I don't know if Angela was any drugs that might affect her vodka consumption, but she seemed almost drunk as we walked back to her office. Maybe it was just the lovely sunshine, and having a lovely hour in the pub, that made her very huggable and sort of giggly.

  It felt so wonderfully good to see Angela obviously so happy, and almost carefree (but not so carefree to not get back to work too late). We parted with a kiss on the cheek and a warm hug. I then walked back home feeling mentally very good, but maybe not so physically good. Just two pints of Guinness made me feel heavy and bloated, and it seemed hard work walking home. By the time I was home my chest seemed to ache. I don't think it was my heart giving any problems, but just my chest muscles and wonky ribs and scar tissue.  I feel sure I wanted to take deeper breathes, or maybe more frequent breaths, but I can't seem to do that any more. It was like a variant of being breathless that was more like being on the edge of breathlessness, but not crossing it.

  I recovered about 15 seconds after entering my house. The first thing I did after taking my coat off, was to prepare one of the big packets of "spicy seafood" instant noodles I had bought in the morning. It was while eating it that I concluded that it was a bit too fishy for my liking - although "fishy" is not the right word for it. Maybe it was a very strong seaweed taste, or it was flavoured with a strange tasting fish that is rarely available of eaten in this country.

  With hot noodles inside me, and warm sunshine coming through my bedroom windows, I laid down and had a snooze. I woke up maybe an hour later feeling a little bit chilly. The sun had moved around the sky enough that it was only shining through the window at a very oblique angle, and soon would not be shining through the window at all. The first thing I did was to see what pictures I had taken earlier, and chose a small selection to show here.

  I seem to have lost the flow of events, but before or after I dealt with the pictures, I had a big snack...The more I think about it, the more I think it was before I dealt with the pictures. It was partly because I felt a bit peckish, and maybe that itself was inspired by an idea that came to mind. There was one other thing I bought in the morning that I failed to mention earlier. It was a few bell peppers. One would be going in my dinner, but I had this idea that one, sliced into thin rings might make for a very tasty topping, along with some cheese, on some rice cakes. It was a nice idea, but not "award winning".

  My dinner was meat balls plus mushrooms, green pepper, and runner beans in a very spicy gravy. I think I over did the extra hot pepper sauce in the gravy. When I came to eat it, still piping hot, I managed to come very close to burning the back of my throat. First the extra hot chilli sauce would burn my mouth and throat, and in trying to move the still rather hot meatball around my mouth I would then almost burn my throat. It triggered some very fierce coughing - and some of it involved food. I had to clean my monitor screen after watching some Star Trek while eating !

  One annoyance with the TV schedules at the moment is that now Dave shows two episodes of QI of an evening, and the first one starts just 10 minutes after the end of The Simpsons. That 10 minutes is two sort to start anything, and yet far too terrible to watch any other TV stuff on at the time. I invariably miss a few minutes by starting to read, and find I can't find a convenient place to stop.

  Last night I watched the first (repeat) episode of QI, but I was feeling too tired to bother to watch the one that started at 9pm. I ended up going to bed at about 8.30pm. I read for a while, but after about 10 minutes I came to the end of a chapter. That seemed a good place to put the book down, and turn out the light. I can't be sure, but I think I was asleep before 9pm.

  I think I can only describe my sleep as good with bad bits sprinkled on it. That extra hot chilli sauce in my dinner was still affecting me, and once, or even twice I woke up to a sweaty pillow and damp duvet edge. I think I actually slept for about an hour totally uncovered until I had cooled down - probably too much. I remember having some fascinating dreams, although I can't really recall much from them. One thing that did stand out was a thing, or saying, that seems to only exist in the dream world. The saying is "snow finching", and apparently it is what lesbians do when a pair of them temporarily leaves a noisy environment for some intimate chat, and possibly sex. If I knew any lesbians in the real world I would suggest it as a saying they should adopt. Actually I think I might know some probable lesbians.

  It seems very likely that my sleep was more disturbed than I think it was because after a very early night I had a very late morning. Not waking up until just gone 7am is a rare luxury for me. I'm not sure if I felt any better for it. These days I think I probably hover between feeling good and feeling bad when I wake up. In a very general way, if it is bad it is not that bad, and if it is good it is not very good.

  One thing that was good rather caught me by surprise. It was my blood glucose reading. I thought that 120gm packet of spicy seafood instant noodles would sabotage things, but this morning my blood glucose reading was a magnificent 7.9mmol/l ! That comes into the range that I give a light green background to in my spreadsheet of daily readings. I thought they were fairly rare, but looking back I see that I have been getting four of five readings in that range most months. Oh well, it is not as good as it seemed at first. In fact it looks like they tend to balance out the occasional red readings. That balance is seen in my end of month averages, and more importantly in the official lab done blood tests. As I am sure I remarked yesterday, the (probable) doctor told me over the phone that my blood glucose control is still very good. I think it was only the liver function that was described as excellent, but at least the blood glucose was very good.

  I don't really fancy doing much on a cold and rainy day, but at least the afternoon could bring a bit of enjoyment. Being a Thursday it is another beer tasting day with Jodie this afternoon. There might even be the possibility of Michael joining us, although we won't know that until the last moment. Today we can have the pick of the 24 Brewdog beers that I ordered as officially an Advent Calendar, but really as just a source of assorted beers. As yet none are in the fridge, and we may have to make room for them by drinking some already in there.