The rain shown for 8am, in the screenshot above, probably fell just before 8am, and as I write this there is bright sunshine. The latest revision to the forecast still shows 9am as being dull, but after that it still shows a mixture of sunshine or sunny spells/periods until sunset. Today's temperature should see a short peak of 14° C this afternoon, and that could feel nice in the sunshine if the wind is not too strong. The ends of the day will not be a lot cooler at 11° C. Tomorrow should see the temperature reaching 15° C for the whole afternoon, but there may only be sunny spells mid morning, and then late afternoon.

  I did contemplate the idea of some sort of walk yesterday, but maybe it was some sort of sixth sense that stopped me. After seeing several bouts of heavy rain, including one which was very heavy, and which started with little warning, I am rather glad I stayed in. It did make for what should have been a boring day, but somehow the day seemed to pass quite smoothly.

  There were two things I said I would definitely do when writing yesterday morning. They were to wash up a quite small backlog of washing up, and to prepare and cook a "proper" dinner for the evening. I say there was a backlog of washing up, but once started I realised it was only a couple of big items such as the casserole dish that I would be cooking my dinner in, and so obviously needed to be clean.

  One other prediction came true, and that was I had the other half of the oven chips I had bought from Aldi. I truth it was less a prediction than a necessity. I didn't have room in the freezer for them, and could only store them in the larder bit of the fridge. They were completely defrosted, but still cooked OK. For some insane reason I used up the last slices in a pack of sliced cheese to make chips and cheese. I have a big bag of Tesco oven chips in the freezer, but I thing my flirtation with chips is over for a while - I guess the novelty has worn off.
  One extra bit of eating I did yesterday were these two large oranges. In general they are not good for me because the nicest ones contain a lot of sweet fructose (which is just as bad as glucose). I don't know what inspired me to buy a pack of four from Aldi, but maybe my body told my brain I needed something from oranges - maybe extra vitamin C or something. I hope they did what my body wanted because I didn't really enjoy them. They were like a lot of fruit and vegetables from Aldi - never perfect. They weren't tart, but weren't that sweet either. Maybe that was a good thing.

  It would be nice to report I did a lot more yesterday, but I didn't. I had a very lazy day, and passed most of the day just laying down reading, or slouching in a chair behind my PC reading stuff on the internet. That was all very well, except at time when I did want to move, such as going down to the kitchen, where it was quite cold, I developed all sorts of aches, and felt totally crap. At times I was expecting a heart attack at any moment, but it was only my crunch chest scar tissue playing up.....I hoped.

  I think I held out to about 6.30pm, half an hour before my more usual time, to have my dinners. As I wrote yesterday morning, it was based on chicken, and was a sort of chicken stew with half a leek, leftover from the previous meal I had cooked. A green bell pepper that was starting to get wrinkly because I had ignored it for almost a week, and finally some mange tout. I didn't bother to thicken the thing stock it was all cooked in. It was nice, and filling enough that I resisted any desire for more food (plus I was worried about eating those oranges).

  There was one other thing I did in between watching TV that was sort of worthwhile...
  I had heard that last night was a full moon, and it seemed that the sky was clear (or maybe just the area around the moon). It was a good test for my Nikon D300S camera - the new one that has so far not been used for anything important. I fitted the camera with a Sigma 300mm lens, and got snapping. It was interesting that as soon as I started concentrating on the camera any aches and pains seemed to fade to nothing. I didn't even feel that cold as I stood out in the road to get a clear view of the moon. It was in the east when I took the above picture, and only just clear of the telephone pole and all it's wires.

  This was one of those occasions when a 600mm lens would have been very handy, but the price difference between a 300mm lens and a 600mm lens is staggering - at least on the second hand market. I think I only paid around £100 for the 300mm lens because it was an older one that only works with Nikon cameras with the focus motor built into the camera body. A secondhand 600mm lens would have been in the region of £1000 (and upwards). I can't afford that sort of money for an occasional hobby.

 I was in bed by 9pm last night, and I finished the book I was reading at almost precisely 9.30pm. I put the book down, turned out the light, turned over, and then nothing happened for over half an hour. Once I finally managed to fall asleep it was an almost typical night - including a period when I felt far too hot, and sweated over the pillow. I did think that maybe I had to get up for a pee more often than usual. That made me worry about what sort of blood glucose reading I was going to get this morning.

  I think it was during the last hours of sleep I had some dreams, almost like episodes of a serial, that were disappointing. They were about going to a gig at what I dreamed of as the old Marquee venue, but was actually nothing like the real thing. In what was possibly the first dream I had gone into the usual auditorium, but there was hardly anyone there, and even the bar wasn't open. I seemed to wait in there for ages before I gave up.

  I walked down a corridor until I came to the main, and very much larger auditorium. There were people on there, and the bar was open, but the bar was where the stage should have been.  Obviously there was no band in there because there was no stage. The next "episode" of this series of dreams had me going into the same auditorium. The bar was still where the sage should have been, but there was a band setting up at floor level. That could have been good, but instead of empty floor there were rows of seats set up, and not facing the band who were off to one side.

   To make thing less enjoyable there were a couple of very fierce female ushers who made sure we sat down and didn't try and move around. There was no way I could get a clear view of the band, who still hadn't started to play, and no way I would ever get any photographs. That dream faded out to another "episode" of the dream series. The final episode was set in the same auditorium, and this time there was a stage, but instead of having a band on it, there was a master of ceremonies, and a few helpers. It was to be some sort of presentation, but I don't what it was about because I was bored, and woke up.

  Maybe that was at just gone 4am when I got up to have a pee, and to turn on the heater. As seems to have happened for many recent days, my best sleep seemed to have happened in the last few hours of sleep. It was another case of "just another 10 minutes" turning into almost 2 hours, and getting up later than intended. At first it felt like I could still turn over, and get more sleep, but by then it was light outside, and I thought I had better get up.

  All my fears about eating those two semi-sweet oranges yesterday came to nothing, or almost nothing. This morning my blood glucose was up a bit to 8.2mmol/l, but if it hadn't been for a short run of below 8 reading I would otherwise have thought 8.2mmol/l was very good, but recently it is merely OK.  It will be interesting if I can better that tomorrow, but the odds against are quite big.

  The main reason is that today involves booze. Once again I am going for a couple of pints of Guinness at lunchtime even though Angela won't be there. I can only be 99.6% certain that Angela won't be there. As I mentioned yesterday, we did have a brief, but very cordial meeting on Monday when I bumped into her almost outside Aldi. She did enjoy our Wednesday meeting, and if she has got over the anger of what she thought was a complete refusal to go to her wedding next June, maybe she will turn up at the pub sometime in the near future.

  I do have one more thing to do today, and that is to come home from the pub via the pharmacy to collect, or hopefully collect, my next repeat prescription. After that I can just vegetate for the rest of the afternoon. With luck there will be enough sunshine to get my bedroom really warm, and I will be able to luxuriate in have a nice warm snooze. I have no idea what I will do after that apart from watch some TV tonight.