This last day of October is going to be very autumnal. The temperature by my thermometers is only about 10° C - rather less than the 12° C forecast. The latest revision to the forecast says it will peak at 16° C from around midday, and in an hour or so it will start to fall again. The nice sunshine now will fade out at about 10am, and from 2pm rain is expected, with heavy rain at 3pm. The rain may stop after 5pm, but might be back at 9pm. It is rather curious that the temperature will rise again, maybe by only a single degree, at 11pm. Tomorrow could see some random sunny spells and some random falls of rain. The highest tomorrow could be just 15° C.

  I felt really ill with alcoholic poisoning for a lot of yesterday. I think when I was writing yesterday morning I was still a bit drunk, and so the full force of the hangover hadn't hit me then. It wasn't until I started drinking beer with Jodie, some "hair of the dog" that I began to feel OK.

  Apart from washing and polishing the glasses for the beer, I didn't really do much yesterday morning, and for a couple of hours into the afternoon. One thing I did do was to have some lunch, and it was a bigger lunch than expected. In some ways I didn't really feel like eating, but I knew I had to "line my stomach" before indulging in beer drinking.There was many things I could have considered for lunch, but in the end I decided to go for some fish.

  It was fish in the form of square fish burgers like big square fish fingers flavoured with "Southern fried" flavour. I have been buying these for occasional consumption from Aldi for ages. The last two packets had a different design, and it was only yesterday that I investigate whether it was merely cosmetic, or if it held a bigger secret. The first big difference was on the nutritional pane. The sugar content, per burger, was originally something like 1.3gm. The new version has 3.6gm. That was possibly thought necessary because the the new burgers contain flavourless Pollock instead of Cod.

  I would normally eat two at a time - each packet contains 2 - but yesterday I had three. Two of the new version, and a single one of the old version for comparison. I have to say the differences are subtle, but the old recipe is definitely better. I think I will stop buying any more in protest, mainly at the increase in sugar. The peppery spices on the outside tend to disguise the underlying poor taste of the Pollock.

  Jodie arrived very early yesterday, although it would have been slightly late if the clocks hadn't changed. She had arrived in Catford early to go to the last-Sunday-of-the-month food market by Catford Bridge station. It used to be in Catford Broadway, but has changed for some unknown reason. It is probably better where it is now because Catford Broadway sees no sun at this time of year, and it is quite gloomy. It may be March next year before the sun is high enough in the sky to shine onto the Broadway.

  Jodie wasn't really in a drinking mood, or at least not at first. The first two cans she opened she declared to be "minging", and I ended up drinking most of them. They more or less tasted like some of the lagers to be found in many pubs - not exactly nice, but still drinkable. An hour or two later we were joined by Alan, Jodie's boyfriend, and she opened some Polish beers. They were not the usual, and usually very nice, Polish beers, but beers brewed with sweet flavours. One was more like a cider with pear and blackberry. The other was cream cake flavour. The latter was better than the first, but I can't really say they were enjoyable.

  It was getting on for 7pm when Jodie and Alan left to get a bus into Bromley for more drinking. I was feeling much better by then. In fact my hangover had been cured, and I still felt sober. I still decided to stick to my plan of a light dinner...well, sort of light.  It was grilled salmon with coleslaw made with Greek yoghurt. In theory it was a low-ish calorie, and low-ish sugar meal. It was also quite tasty. A little bit later I grabbed a chunk of cheese while I was downstairs turning out the lights, and closing the doors for the night.

  Being a Sunday night there was not a lot on TV, but I did find an old episode of Have I Got News For You on Dave, and I think there was something else I might have seen, but I can recall what it was, or even if I did watch it. I might have just noted it as a possible thing to watch. It was gone 10pm when I finally turned out the light to go to sleep. If I recall correctly it took quite a while, or at least seemed to take a long time before I fell asleep. It may have been a lot quicker than it seemed.

  One the whole I seemed to sleep quite well. I needed to get up to pee several times in the night, but always seemed to fall asleep very quickly after getting back from the toilet. One time I woke for a pee was also good because it allowed me to remember enough of a dream to describe, although only in concept, rather than in detail. I am quite sure I refined the contents of the dream in later periods of sleep.

  Before describing the dream I need to describe the background to it. Last night I finally finished an sometime tedious book about a future where Mars becomes terraformed, and there are eventually hundreds of thousands of people living there. Some parts ended up all "metropolitan" with shops, bars, restaurants, other places of entertainment, and I feel sure one insignificant sentence mentioned a brothel.

  My dream was about Mars, but from the perspective of hearing about it on the news, or reading more about it in a book. It said that there was just one single well known brothel on Mars, and that twice a year (the Martian year being almost twice an Earth year) the brothel did a special promotion to attract new customers. It was a 10 minute blowjob for just £10 (although I think it might have been Euros instead of Pounds, but I am not sure where the Euro symbol is on my keyboard).

  Maybe that dream was also partly inspired by watching an episode of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl the night before. Anyway, the concept was simple enough that the basic facts were easy enough to remember. What I may not be able to remember was the first version of the dream. I am very sure I re-ran the dream in later periods of sleep, and probably altered it a bit every time. I am sure that in one version there was an even more special rate for pensioners !

  I like how after the clocks changed it seems to get light in the morning so early (but of course by the end of next month it will still be dark even later in the morning). I woke up at about 5.30am, and didn't think I would get back to sleep again, but the next thing I knew was that it was light outside. It was just before sunrise and so the light was a bit grey, but definitely not night !

  When I got up I felt fairly OK, or compared to yesterday I felt incredibly healthy ! Odd enough some of my key indicators showed I wasn't doing two bad. Yesterday morning I was halfway to running a fever. This morning my temperature was 35.5° C. That is a few tenths of a degree above my typical early morning reading, but it is going to take my body some time to learn that the clocks have changed. It was a similar temperature I would see an hour after waking up.

  I wasn't really expecting a lower blood glucose reading this morning, but I was hoping it might be a bit lower than it was. It was in fact a very satisfactory, below typical average at just 8.3mmol/l - a tenth of a mmol/l more than the morning before. At least it was low enough to take my end of month average down to 8.66mol/l. So far this year there have been two other and of month averages a bit higher, and one a lot lower. The average for the first ten months of this year is 8.47mmol/l, and so this month is an above average reading, but we are only talking in tiny percentage changes. I guess I am still, in the words of the nurse and the doctor, "controlling my blood glucose very well !".

  I have no idea what I will be doing today, and no idea what I want to do. The current sunshine suggests going out, but it is not due to last long. By 11am it will probably be grey outside, and of course by 2pm it could be raining, although there is only a 30% chance of rain at 2pm, rising to 40% for 3pm. I may go to the shops today, but probably no further. After I have had a shower, and maybe washed my hair, I think I will do a bit of laundry.

  I have a few items of clothing to wash, and I think I probably have enough space to wash a couple pillow cases. In the coming days I must try and at least wash the sheet I took off my bed last week. I will then have a backlog of two duvet covers. Hand washing them is tricky, and ideally they need to dry on the washing line, but the weather doesn't look good for that for quite a few months !

  One possible diversion for this afternoon is a bit more video digitising. I still have several 8mm/Hi8 tapes I could transfer, although much of what is left is Sony tapes which seem to be deteriorating fast, and many are just unplayable now. I could possibly make a start on doing some old VHS tapes. Many of the one I have already digitised look pretty crappy, but it is possible there might be a small improvement using my new set up, but that improvement is not enough to make me want to re-do some of the tapes I have digitised (and I have already thrown away many of them anyway).