The BBC forecast said mist, and the Met Office said fog, but all I saw was a sort of haze. I guess it was thin mist. The latest revision to the forecast now shows dark clouds until the sun breaks through sometime around midday. There will then possibly be a couple of hours of sunny spells, and then full sunshine until sunset. The latest revision offers 15° C in the afternoon. Before leaving today: The latest revision to the BBC forecast shows mist until 10am. That seems like it could easily be right. Tomorrow may, or may not start with a couple of hours of fog. That will be followed by a dull grey day, but the temperature may well be similar to today.

  I didn't feel particularly motivated yesterday. I almost went out for a bit of shopping, but found I didn't seem to have time for it - which is strange because I wasn't really doing anything. I did start some laundry yesterday. I got as far as leaving a couple of t-shirts, and some underwear soaking in detergent, and then never getting around to do the rest !
  I took the above picture last night, and so I have jumped many hours in my narrative, but then it is the same laundry I was referring to in the last paragraph - the laundry I put into soak, and then did nothing more. Last night I thought it was time I showed how I do my laundry. On the right is a big blue builders bucket in the bath, and it has the clothing and detergent in. What should have happened next, and will have to happen this morning if I want to use the bath for a shower, is that I will put on a big pair of Marigolds and squeeze and squidge the laundry in the blue bucket, and then wring out the clothes before putting them in the dark bucket with clean water in it to do the first of three rinses before final treatment in fabric conditioner (sometime 5 or more rinses for towels). At each stage I go from bucket to bucket. The hardest part is wringing stuff out - something big and heavy like a bath towel needs much grimacing, and gritting of teeth !

  Apart from the usual almost last minute chore of cleaning and polishing the beer glasses, I did very little before Jodie arrived at about 3.30pm. The little thing I did was to prepare, and half cook the base of yesterday's dinner. That first stage was diced lamb, potatoes and sliced leeks cooked/stewed in lamb stock with a very generous helping of dried mint.

  Yesterday's beer tasting was one of those sessions where half the beers were in 330cl (approx half pint) cans, and those were divided so we could could half each. Ultimately it meant that despite ending up with at least half a dozen (maybe 8) cans in the recycling bin, we only drank about a pint and a half - possibly less. I felt remarkably sober at the end. I think most of the beers were on the weak side - no 11.5% dark porters this week !
  The first thing I should say about this photo was that it was taken yesterday afternoon using my first ever proper Android phone - an HTC G1 branded as T-Mobile. https://www.mobilephonemuseum.com/phone-detail/t-mobile-g1 As you can see in this picture of Jodie having a long conversation on her phone, the G1's 2.3MP camera was not all that good, although under good lighting conditions it could produce far better pictures than this one. Some of the problem is motion blur because of the long exposure under dim lighting, and the other problem is that it's auto white-balance couldn't find a good setting under not very bright LED lighting.

  I was inspired to charge my old G1 to see what the camera was like compared to a 2.3MP camera in an ultra cheap Android phone I once bought from Tesco out of curiosity. It was a Blue Chip "Neon" phone that Tesco were selling for £99 (or possibly £89). It was a dreadful phone, and didn't even have working GPS in it. It's camera was truly awful. I took a couple of test shots in the garden in the morning. It was while it was still overcast, but it should still have been bright enough for a semi decent pictures, but the two snaps I took were dreadful beyond words. I am sure the G1 would have been far, far better under that light.

  While Jodie seemed to spend something like 15 minutes on her phone conversation, I went out into the kitchen where I made a potential terrible mistake. I knew that sooner or later I would need a wee, and in the cool kitchen the need got considerably stronger. At the time I was putting the last vegetables in my lamb stew. They included 3 green finger chillies. Having once made the mistake of handling my penis after chopping up chillies I did not want to do it again ! It is a very painful experience ! Ideally I should have washed my hands in warm soapy water before going for my wee, but as the urgency grew I could only spare the time to rinse my hands under cold water. On this occasion that seemed to be enough, but it was a dangerous thing to do !

  Jodie was meeting boyfriend Alan in a pub in Croydon, and so left just before 6pm to get the 5.58pm train. My dinner was still nice and warm after it's 10 minutes in the microwave half an hour earlier, and so I had an early dinner last night. There was nothing of interest on TV last night, and so I did a binge watch of most of series five of Drop The Dead Donkey. After about three episodes, or approx 90 minutes, I began to feel peckish again. Mindful of starting the day with a very high blood glucose reading I was wary about eating any more, but then I thought "so what", and ate the last two little salad pots I had bought the previous day (or was it the day before that ?). One was a bulgar wheat with red beans, and the other was green lentils and herbs.

  I wasn't particularly tired, and despite a couple of large whiskies with and after my dinner, I still felt remarkably sober, but I still ended up reading in bed before 9pm. I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep - I just didn't seem to feel tired, but at least I wasn't having any trouble with the temperature. I didn't seem to have any trouble with the temperature through the whole night, although I do know there were a couple of bit of sleep where I wasn't fully covered (except my face) by the duvet.

  On the whole I probably slept OK until after about 4am. My sleep then was disturbed by a series of dreams that weren't frightening, or anything like that, but were not happy dreams. Once again I was dreaming about being in a telephone exchange. This time I think it was Eltham exchange. In some ways it was like my first few days there when I was on loan there to help them out, but in the dream the experience was ten time worse.

  All the old style electro-mechanical, "Strowger" telephone exchanges were very similar in the beginning, but over a long period of time they grow, and new stuff is fitted in any available space. The few few days at a new exchange meant exploring to find where everything was, and also to find any "odd" stuff. Many of those old exchanges had experimental stuff tried in them towards the end, although it all depended on what sort of customers they had. If they were mainly residential there were few unusual things, but if it was a very business orientated area all sorts of weird stuff could be fitted.

  In my series of dreams the exchange was huge, and I was having a very hard time trying to work out where everything was. To make matters there were things like racks of equipment installed back to front, or even rotated by 90°.  As I say, it wasn't frightening, but it was a very frustrating time - and I hadn't even experienced the frustration of actually having to start doing any work there. I was sort of glad to wake up, and have, I think, a couple of hours of sleep with no dreams - or at least nothing I remember. I did wake up at 5am for a pee, and turned the heater on before going back to bed.

  The odd thing is that the heater is still slowly warming up my bedroom even now, several hours later, and so it would have barely made a dent in the room temperature when I woke up just past 6am. I woke up to find I had gone to sleep with no more than my feet still under the duvet. When I got up I checked my body temperature it is was very low, although until recently it was not that low. It was 34.8° C. The trouble is I can't be 100% sure that I took my temperature before taking a drink to wet my dry mouth. After years of practice it is not the sort of mistake I would expect to make. A couple of hours, and two hot bowls of instant noodles later, and it is up to 36.2° C.

  It was not just my temperature that was low this morning. My blood glucose reading was a most satisfactory 7.5mmol/l. I knew I had eaten very carefully earlier in the day, but I thought my late supper of two of those little bean based salad pots would ruin my reading. Evidently I really know very little about managing the condition I seemed to be managing quite well for the last 20 years of something.

  Another morning, and another morning when I only have a vague idea of what I am going to do today. If the afternoon is truly going to be sunny I should be going out, but I can only imagine doing a bit of shopping today. Of course I have to finish that laundry that has been soaking for 24 hours, and then I can have a shower. Once I am clean I could go shopping, or maybe go further.