Like yesterday, the latest revision to the weather forecast has "stolen" all the sunshine. It is now shown as a predominantly grey day, but it should be dry, and the temperature should still be 15° C until mid afternoon when it will slowly sink towards 12° C. It would be nice if the BBC forecast turned out to be right. They still predict even more sunny spell through the entire afternoon with the temperature briefly peaking at 16° C. Considering that as I write this we are almost having a sunny period, which neither forecast admits to, today's weather could be another lucky dip sort of day. After a dull start, tomorrow could see sunshine or sunny periods from mid morning to sunset, and the temperature could reach 17° C.

  Yesterday was not a particularly productive day. In fact I think the only productive thing I did was to cook my dinner, and do a few items of washing up. Despite doing so little it was a day when I wasn't bored, and I think I can easily classify it as a good day.

  The main feature of the day was the afternoon beer tasting session, but before that there was a small errand to run. I waited until just gone midday to walk to the pharmacy to see if there was any news about my next repeat prescription. When I got there I was told to sit down - not that there is anything to sit on except a narrow window ledge. I remained standing as one of the girls there made up my prescription. A second girl checked it, and put it in a carrier bag for me.

  When I got home and checked it for myself I found everything was there, That was good because I had used the last of some of the drugs that very morning, and I needed the new drugs this morning. It is a shame that the amount of very helpful staff in the pharmacy has dropped to just one or two. Some don't really seem to know what they are doing, and what I assume is the senior pharmacist, and presumably owner, is a grumpy old git !

  Jodie arrived around the expected time of 3.30pm. She was delighted to see the beer advent calendar box from Beerwulf. Both she and I were delighted when she examined the contents of it. I think there was only one of the 24 beers that she had had before, although I there were a couple she had had on draught, but not the canned/bottled version. The little beer fridge is not completely full of beers that we will make a start on this coming Sunday.

  We were halfway through our first beer, and not very nice (for me) sour beer, when I got a message from Michael asking if we were drinking. I replied yes, and feel free to join us. Soon after that Jodie hardly got a word in as I introduced Michael to his new phone - my old phone. We didn't start to set up the new phone by using the Phone Clone tool from the Google play store, but I did check out some stuff about his old phone.

  One of the first things I checked was his SIM card. It is a mini, but needs to be cut down to a nano size to go in the Huawei phone. I also noted he didn't have a memory card fitted. I am unsure of the memory capacity of his old phone, but I don't think it was all that much - it was a budget phone sold by EE, and most carrier sold phones are cut down versions of the same phones sold at full price. I think when Michael comes here some afternoon in the unknown future, it should be a fairly quick business to transfer the contents of the old phone to the new.

  Michael usually tries a small sample of the beers that Jodie and I drink, but mostly drinks his own weak lagers. That is a shame because there are some beers that you need as much as a full half pint to get the full flavour of. Some of it is to flush out the taste of the previous beer. If it were a proper beer tasting I would provide glasses of water, and a bucket to spit it in after using to clean the mouth.....but that would be a bit yucky.

  I must admit I didn't really care for most of the beers we had - all of which I think were sourced via Jodie. All were cloudy and sour except for one. It was an imperial stout (or porter) - very dark, and 11.5% alcohol. It was rather delicious, and a great beer to finish on. I think Michael had gone home when we had that last beer, but Jodie poured a small glass of it as a taster for Alan, Jodie's boyfriend. Trouble on the trains meant he turned up nearly half an hour later than expected.

  Alan and Jodie only stayed for about half an hour while Alan tasted two small glasses of beers that Jodie had saved for him. One thing that was mentioned was a confirmation that Alan has an old, and to his eyes, worthless laptop I can have when he can get it to me sometime in the future. His basic description suggest to me that maybe it is not as bad as suggested, but for me it will be quite a good machine. Apparently it has Windows 10 working on it, and that means it can't be that badly specced. I wanted it as a spare for my old HP laptop that is now the current server for these webpages. Maybe it is too good for that, and I might end up getting some battered old laptop from Ebay or somewhere.

  By the time Jodie and Alan had left I had missed nearly all my usual diet of evening TV, but I think I saw about 2/3rd of The Simpsons while I ate my dinner. Dinner was a beef stew with leeks and sprouts. It probably could have had more vegetables in it to make it a bit more substantial, but it was still very enjoyable. Even so, I still had a small bit of cheese to nibble on a bit later while watching the first QI of the evening on Dave.

  The guests of the next QI to be shown at 9pm on Dave were not very enticing, according to the programme guide, and instead of staying up to see it at 9pm, I went to bed not long after 8pm. I read for a while, but put the book down, turned out the light, and tried for sleep as early as 8.30pm. It must have been a good hour before I fell asleep. Last night was the worst ever for feeling too hot under the duvet, and too cold without it. I think that in the end I slept only half covered all night. I still woke up to a sweat dampened pillow a few times.

  To my surprise I did seem to get a couple of near three hour blocks of sleep last night. On most nights it seems rare these days to sleep non stop for more than 2 hours. It felt like a great relief to realise I had slept right through 3am - often the very worst time of the night. It was 4am when I next woke up, and after a pee I turned the heater on low. I am sure I woke up one more time before my final sleep took me to almost 7.30pm. I do seem to need an awful lot of sleep these days. I am almost edging up to a full 12 hours (including a snooze or two). I guess it is because I can, rather than need to.

  I don't think I have suffered from sleeping half (or more) uncovered, and in the cold last night. I don't seem to have any more than the usual aches and stiffness this morning. Maybe burning a few extra calories to keep warm, and sweating out a bit of extra sugar was actually good. This morning my blood glucose was 8.3mmol/l. That is not nearly as good as the previous couple of days, but it was still below my running average for the month (and most months), and so my running average has dropped a bit - which is very satisfactory.

  My earlier thoughts about going out in the afternoon sunshine have come to a shuddering halt now that the weather forecast says there is not going to be any sunshine this afternoon. Having said that, I can currently see quite a bit of blue sky. It is more to the west, while the sun is more to the east, but even to the east the clouds look streaky with tiny bits of blue visible. We have already had two almost sunny spells. There was enough blinding light getting through the clouds to make it seem quite bright out. Maybe we will get some sunshine today, and maybe it will be before the morning is out. I still don't know what I am going to do today - except I think I will at least go to the little supermarket on the bridge and buy a load more Polish style instant noodles.