The clouds that kept the temperature up overnight have also brought rain, and there could be a lot of it today. We have already had two claps of thunder, and one was near enough to be preceded by a flash of lighting that could be seen through the curtains. For all that there has been only one short period of heavy rain, and probably some drizzle. The early version of the weather forecast has seen those jolly forecasters throw everything into the pot. The latest forecast settles down a bit. 10 and 11am use that weird weather symbol of heavy rain pouring from a white cloud with the sun peeping out the side. Hail is not mentioned in the latest revision. The serious weather may start at 4pm for 3 hours when dark clouds with thunderbolts shooting out of them are shown.  The rain will continue, sometime light, and sometimes heavy until 11pm when hail appears on the forecast again. The early afternoon could see the temperature rise to 18° C.  There is another yellow warning for thunderstorms tomorrow, but the forecast shows mainly sunny spells through the day with a maximum temperature of just 16° C.

  This morning I am finding out why I put the keyboard I am using into the back of a dark and dusty cupboard. It looks almost brand new, but it has an annoying property. The keys are hard to push, and some need a very hard push. The Control key has a habit of sticking - which can have some annoying consequences. You'll have to excuse me if some words lack a letter. The spell checker should catch most of them, but..... Anyway, back to yesterday.

  I can't fully blame the weather for another rather boring, unproductive day yesterday. Although it took a little while to arrive, there was some nice sunshine by, or maybe even before mid morning. It could have enthused me to do something, but it seems it didn't. I think I only did one productive thing yesterday.


  That one thing was some laundry, and it wasn't just any old laundry. As well as two t-shirts and some underwear, it also included my red fleece top. That latter item needed some special handling - particularly regarding wringing it out. It is quite thick, and it was almost, but not completely impossible to wring out. That didn't matter much during the rinsing phase, but at the end, getting it ready to hang up to dry needed extra strength and dexterity....or something like that.

  One interesting observation I made while washing that top was the label inside that said "Crane". That is a brand name that Aldi uses. I guess I bought it in Aldi, and it would explain why I couldn't find a second one to buy. I think I used to wear it to work in the winter until the once smooth surface became covered in "bobbles" and just random fluffiness. It still makes for a good top to wear indoors on these cold Autumn days. I has managed to keep it fairly clean while wearing it recently, but the last wash, before I put it away for as many as 5 or more years, was using a fabric conditioner that I no longer like. I may have not liked it at the time, but evidently used it anyway. It should smell much nicer now.


  It is hard to say what else I did yesterday. There was a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. I think I was feeling a lot like the day before. I didn't seem to have the patience to settle down to anything that would need any concentration, or would take a long time to do. I did do a few small jobs such a scanning some documents. It was something I could do as many or as little as I felt like.

  Curiously, one thing I did not do a lot of was eating. Maybe it was a subconscious decision because I knew that In would be eating more (leftover) Chinese takeaway, and potentially how bad it can be for me. I basically only ate 4 times yesterday. I had a single, small, bowl of instant noodles for breakfast. Lunch was a portion of Singapore fried noodles. A late afternoon snack was a portion of sliced, ready cooked, flavoured chicken (Coronation chicken flavoured), and finally I had "Crispy Noodles with Chicken" - although the greasy noodles were anything but crispy, and the chicken was in rather short supply.

  One of the unknowns from yesterday was how much I snoozed. I am sure I had two snoozes, but I can't seem to put a figure on the time I was asleep. I also spent a fair amount of time just laying on my bed reading.  I want to believe I do not possess any "puritan work ethic", but maybe I do feel like I wasted another day yesterday. Oh well, at least there was beer...or sort of beer.
  I had three cans of "beer" from the Brewdog brewery starting late yesterday afternoon. I am not sure any of them deserved the name "beer". The Candy Kittens drink was disgusting. It really tasted like kitten pee (or what I imagine it to taste like). The raspberry and guava flavourings may not have been too bad, but the kiss of death would seem to be "New England IPA". I don't know what makes a New England IPA so revoltingly different to proper Indian Pale Ale.

  The origin of India Pale Ale was beer brewed with extra hops to help it survive the long sea journey to India in the days of the empire. Of course traditional English brewers used nice tasting hops. Evidently in New England they have to some foul tasting weeds that the dog has pissed on. The "Double Hazy" is a "pure" New England IPA, and it was so revolting that I didn't manage to finish it.

  One thing Brewdog can brew is stout. The Layer Cake was a thick dark stout flavoured wit marshmallow and chocolate. It was delicious, and completely poles apart from the other two. I am now rather sorry I bought the advent calendar box of  24 different Brewdog beers. Jodie wants to try maybe 6 or 7 of them, but I will have to drink the rest by myself, and I have a feeling most will be horrible !

  I was a bit worried that my laziness and snoozes would affect my sleep last night. Maybe they did, but not enough for any long periods of insomnia. I did seem to wake up a lot more than usual, and while I went for a pee every time, it was apparent that half the time there was no urgent need for it. It was just force of habit. On at least one occasion I woke up because I was too hot under the duvet. The good thing on these occasions is that I didn't start to sweat heavily - no soggy pillow or duvet edge.

  I only remember some bits of one dream, or maybe just a bit of story thread running through several dreams. The first bit of dream was set in a cave. I don't think I was exploring it, band I am not sure what I was doing in it. What I do remember was  rock fall that buried a couple of friends. It looked serious, but I was not convinced they were dead, or even seriously injured.

  My location seemed to change at that point, and I seemed to be in a workshop. I was looking through the schematics of some sort of listening device that could confirm my friends were still alive, but didn't seem to be working. I noticed an amplifier module had no feedback, and so it would just clip all signals. All it needed was one single resistor soldered to the circuit board. There was even a place already on the circuit board for that resistor.

  Normally I would do the soldering job myself, but the TV cameras had come in, and management decided that Dan (lead singer and lead guitar from the band MT Pockets) would do the job. From then on things became a bit hazy, and I think I woke up. That may have been around 6am. It wasn't so long ago I would have got up then, but with sunrise now being as late as 7.37am today, and it being cold, I managed to get back to sleep again, and like yesterday, and maybe a few other recent days, I seemed to sleep for almost another 90 minutes.

  I didn't wait long until I tested my blood glucose reading. I knew I hadn't eaten much, but then again I had eaten two Chinese food portions. I was prepared for a naughty high reading. It came as a surprise to see just 8.6mmol/l - or just slightly above my typical average reading. That was a relief ! Several things beside loads of rain, plus thunder and lightning should be happening today.

  If she doesn't get drowned on her way here, Jodie should be over this afternoon for some more beer tasting. She left a load of cans she bought from Lidl last Thursday. I haven't seen them yet, but I will inspect them while putting them in the fridge. I hope that some of them will be pleasant - unlike most of Brewdog's output. Another event today will be an earlier than expected delivery from Amazon. The most important item will be my new Microsoft keyboard. The keyboard I am using at the moment is making my fingers hurt !

  One curious thing is that having bought a Microsoft keyboard I have earned a voucher code for a discount on Microsoft Office 365 - the only version of office. Well thank you very much, but I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. I am more than happy with free, but donations happily accepted, Libre Office for all my office needs.