The most recent revision to the weather forecast brings no joy. In fact it takes a tiny bit of joy away. After a very dull, and very wet morning, the latest revision to the forecast has the last of the rain, by that time just light rain, finishing at 1pm. Instead of the clouds thinning enough for sunny spells at 2pm, as shown in the screenshot above, the clouds will continue to fill the sky. The only change is that they should be white cloud instead of filthy grey clouds. The only compensation, for what it's worth, is that the afternoon could reach 12° C. Under a bright sky that might even start to feel "mild". Tomorrow morning could feature sunny spells, but instead of it getting a little warmer it will actually be cooler at just 10° C (but with a possible short blip to 11° C).

   I think I am inclined to say yesterday was good, but maybe only on the strength of the events of the afternoon. Last night was definitely bad, but maybe less bad than it seemed at the time. Yesterday morning was neither good or bad. It was sort of very average - mainly because I spent most of the time resting, and recovering from the relapse of the illness I had recently.

  My throat still felt a bit sensitive yesterday morning, and while it was nowhere near bad enough to stop me doing anything I might have liked to do, I thought I would rest it by resting myself a lot during the morning. I didn't have a lot I needed to do yesterday morning, but the most important was quite a lot of washing up. It seemed I hadn't done any for several days. In reality it looked a lot because it included a lot of big stuff. In terms of number of items it wasn't that much.

  One of the things that aided me in doing my resting, or maybe it actually lead it, was reading one of the two new books that came in the post on Wednesday. I was reading "Sea Horse In The Sky" by Edmond Cooper, and really enjoying it. It is classified as a SciFi book, but nearly three quarters into the book there is almost no science, or at least no SciFi science. It is more a mystery book, and it follows a trope that has even been used on Star Trek - that of a bunch of people lifted from their usual environment, and set down in an enclosure on an alien world.

  The best theory that the characters in the story have come up with is that they are in a very humane zoo. Their surroundings, although obviously artificial, are familar, and they have a supermarket where they can get all their food, and even clothing needs. As seems typical with Edmond Cooper's writing, there is a fair bit of sex involved, but no descriptions of the actual sex act. I am racing through the book to (hopefully) find what really happened, who their captors are, and how it all ends.
  As I mentioned above, the one job I needed to do before the afternoon, apart from having the shower that I had, was to do a fair amount of washing up. The job was made slightly more pleasant by having the heater on full blast in the dining room, and leaving the door open. As I washed the stuff that needed washing up I was also cooking some oven chips. The oven chips were in the freezer, and behind them were two bags of sprouts.

  I think I bought those sprouts 2 or even 3 years ago, and I thought that the bag may have had just ordinary sprouts in them. I was wrong, they were two different types of "posh" sprouts. I suspect that having bought them I was put off eating them by their quite high sugar content for a green vegetable. I think that sometime over the Xmas period I am going to have at least on of the bags. I might even have one on it's own for lunch.

  Jodie made a tragic mistake yesterday. She just missed a train, and somehow didn't realise there were was a full service of 4 trains per hour. Rather than wait just 12 minutes she opted to get a bus. She arrived here well after 4pm, and half an hour after Michael had got here. We started drinking without Jodie, but only carefully selected beers that Jodie probably wouldn't want because "they are common - you can even buy them in M&S" or some such derogatory comment.


  One beer, that Michael had found, we saved until Jodie arrived just in case she wanted to try it. It is not particularly rare - a few years back Aldi were selling cases of 24 of it. Jodie admitted that it was a long time since she had last drunk any, and so we split the bottle three ways. Jodie, who has sharper eyes than either Michael or myself, read the small print on the bottle. It was made in some beer factory owned by Carlsberg (or something like that). It did taste like a typical lager lout lager !

  We didn't open many more bottles/cans because one of the bottles was a large (maybe a pint and a half) of a strong Xmas ale. It was delicious, and I ended up with the lions share of it. Michael didn't fancy it, and Jodie didn't want to get too drunk.  I ended up getting very "merry" at the end after we had one or two other very strong beers.

  It was probably lucky that I had "lined my stomach" with the oven chips before drinking, although I can't help but feel that some real, chip shop chips, dripping with grease, might have been more effective. After Michael and Jodie had gone home I was faced with cooking some dinner. I had already decided I would have grilled bacon with ready cooked rice in a sachet that just needed zapping in the microwave for a couple of minutes. It was quite a nice dinner, but somehow it didn't feel fulfilling.

   Of course the trouble was that I was so drunk, and had lost control. My memory of last night is now very blurry, but I can just about recollect making cheese on toast as a sort of dessert. One thing I do remember is that I decided to make the cheese on toast the proper way using the mini oven/grill. I lightly toasted the Polish sourdough slices of bread before putting the cheese on. It is all very vague, but I think I found it to be truly wonderful !

  This morning there was sufficient evidence to show that my theory that I had shut down everything downstairs before taking the cheese on toast up to my bedroom where I think I probably watched something on TV. After eating I brushed my teeth, and had a pee, and then I was ready for bed any time I wanted. It is possible that I might have been in bed as early as 8pm, but it could have been 9pm. I am pretty soon I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  So far, so good.....I slept solidly (as far as I am aware) until I woke up sometime after midnight with a terrible hangover. From then on I didn't seem to sleep at all, and yet there were clues that I did get some sleep. The clock suddenly seeming to jump by an hour was a strong clue that I had slept. I was also aware of dreams, although all but the last dream have evaporated from my memory.

  My last dream must have been a sequence of separate dreams strung on a common theme - each one building on the last. The fist bit of dream I remember was a girl in a bikini on a sort of surf board being pulled along by a small red ex-London Underground tube train. The space between the rails was filled with soft sand, and that is what she was surfing on. There were no third or fourth rails. I assumed the train was being moved by a locomotive attached to the front, but I never did see the front in this dream sequence. Although I never saw any cameras, it seemed obvious the gorl was being filmed either as part of an advert, or movie.

  The next sequence of the dream was once again the same little red train, but it was in a sort of tourist area. As the dream expanded it became more obvious that it was a working museum featuring several types of trains and also trams. It was some way into the section of dream that I remembered I had a camera in my pocket, but I couldn't take any pictures because the camera was stuck on full zoom. I did fix that, but b the time I had the train I wanted to photograph had gone by.

  It was possibly the next dream sequence where I almost got run over by a tram. Actually it would have only been a glancing blow if the driver hadn't driven incredibly slowly so he could nudge me out of the way. The problem was that the museum streets were so narrow that the tram overhung onto the pavement. I got the impression that having to nudge people aside was a regular occurrence.

    It would have been better if the trams made some sort of noise, but they were silent because they actually ran on runner tyres. That must have been true of the trains because apart from the platform area, I couldn't see any railway track anywhere. It was sort of exciting, and very weird. I don't think the dream went any further than that, and I woke up at that point.

  I thought I had missed so much sleep because of what I thought was terrible insomnia during the night that I kept trying to go back to sleep. I probably did get another hours sleep over the next 90 minutes, but after that I gave up and got up. It wasn't long before I checked my blood glucose. I thought chips for lunch, the rice and cheese on toast for dinner, plus two sweet tasting strong beers, would have my blood glucose well over the red line, and into the danger zone this morning. I was astonished that it was exactly the same as yesterday, just 8.7mmol/l. I regard any reading starting with an 8 to be nothing to worry about, although the nearer to 8.0, or less, would be ideal.

  Apart from the very dark grey sky, and the rain this morning. I don't know what is happening today. Ideally I would have already been to Tesco for a few last minute top ups of the larder before the store closes for Xmas. I may still go, but I can imagine it being desperately busy in there. All I really need is a few more bottles of Diet Coke to see me through the holiday, and maybe I can get that else where.

  There is an unimaginably small chance that I may get a call today to meet Angela in the pub. I intend to be ready to go out, but to have other things to do - like reading more of the book I am reading. I reckon I will finish it today unless there is some serious distraction.