It is about 7° C now, according to my outdoor thermometers, and the sun is doing it's best to shine over the top of a bank of cloud to the east. The latest revision to the forecast shows either sunny spells, or full sunshine starting at 9am (or right now) until sunset. The latest revision also agrees with my measurement of 7° C. Sadly, the highest temperature today may only be 8° C, but any sunshine should make that feel slightly mild. Tomorrow may see a return to 12° C, but it will come at a cost of grey skies, and probably lots of light rain.

   I think I can declare yesterday to have been a good day, although it was not without a few slightly bad things. One such bad thing was Aldi's website saying the store would open at 11am when I walk there showed it was definitely closed ! Oh well, it was a bit of very light exercise because I walked the long way home again. I probably walked as much as half a mile !

  It didn't seem to take that long before it was time for a more productive walk, but because that walk would involve booze I decided to have a small plate of oven chips for lunch. Just before 2pm I called on Michael, and as planned, we walked to the new Catford Constitutional Club. The new one is based in the old Argos store building. I had heard that it was big inside, and had all the charm of drinking in a draughty aircraft hanger. It was actually fairly pleasant.
  They had some good beers on, and two bad beers. The bad were the Volden beers - their sort of house brand. I must admit I only tasted one, and as expected, it was terrible. I was not so sure that there good beers were at their best. I know real ale is flat rather than sparkling, but the two Wimbledon brewery beers, and the Jaipur seemed very flat. The Wimbledon Phoenix, "London Porter" was not only very flat, but rather watery for a porter. It did have a nice taste though.

  The best thing was that it was the first time I had had a face to face conversation, or indeed any conversation since I was in the The Jolly Farmers on Xmas eve afternoon. Unlike Michael, who can talk the hind leg off a donkey, I did not have a great deal to say. Michael took full advantage of talking ten to the dozen. The curious thing was that most of it was not about his favourite subject - music. Some of it was actually about beer.

  After sinking four pints it was inevitable that we would both need a pee before we left. I was volunteered to find out where the toilets were hidden. Once you are opposite it, there is a door with a sign on it at the end of the bar, but you can't even really see there is a door there when looking down the length of the pub. Having gone through the door you have to go up two flights of stairs, and each flight is probably half as high again as a typical house flight of stairs. I must admit I found it far easier than I thought it would be. I guess it helps to start off relaxed after sitting down for the previous half hour. Maybe being drunk helped too !

  I felt quite surprised how drunk I felt after just 4 pints of moderate strength beer. I only noticed it a bit while walking home, but once home it became far more obvious. For one thing I felt a raging hunger. I prescribed myself three small slices of cheese on toast for that. I put the bread in the mini oven/grill, and went for a pee. When I came back down I realised I had not closed the door of the mini oven/grill. Apart from wasting a bit of electricity because of the heat being lost, the bread was still starting to brown. After almost a week that bread is getting a bit dry, and so it toasted very easily. I just wish I had used more cheese. I used single slices of ready sliced Cheddar, and once melted it seemed like it had almost melted away. It still made for a very tasty snack.

  After my snack I laid down and had a snooze. I felt even worse when I woke up with a hangover, and had to force myself to start preparing, and part cooking my dinner. It would end up as a beef stew, using the other half of a pack of diced beef, with some miniature potatoes, a few chopped green chillies, sugar snap peas, and as a final tough, a generous sprinkling of curry powder. The latter is really just a mild flavouring unless you use half a carton of it. It did make it smell nice as it was cooking though.

  I ate my dinner close to 7pm while watching more episodes of Futurama that I had ripped to mp4 files from my DVD box set of all episodes. Not much later I watched an episode of QI. It all seems a bit vague now, but I think that finished at 8.40pm. I went to bed after that, although I spent the next hour or so reading. There was one unusual thing I did before I went to bed. It was to check my blood glucose. I thought it would help soften the blow when I would come to read it this morning. I was stunned to see it was only 7.8mmol/l. That seemed wonderfully low after all that beer and food.

  The latest book I am reading is "Prisoner Of Fire" by Edmond Cooper. It is not exactly science fiction, but it is set in the not too distant future (from when it was written in 1974), and typically it is a distopian future. It seems all Edmond Cooper's books after his first couple, are nice and fluidly written, and I probably read for an hour before deciding to to go to sleep. I don't think it took lone to get to sleep, and once asleep I seemed to sleep well.

  I remember very little from my night, although I seemed to have retained the more salient points of the last dream or two before waking up. I was back at work in the dream, or maybe I was simply at work, but it was not in any place I ever worked in. There were a few people there from my last job, and they were doing some sort of research or development on satellites. It was interesting watching it, but I can't remember actually taking part in it.

  After some time I said I was feeling tired, and was going to have a lie down. I went up to me bedroom, or at least a room with a bedroom in it, but it seemed to be a room with quite a few people in it doing various stuff. It was a sort of L shaped room, and the bed was around the L bit. I was just about to retrieve a cheese sandwich from the top of the bed, before laying on it, when a tall woman, who I think was supposed to the company secretary, appeared, and announced she had been awake in the park all night, and was going to bed.  She took off her skirt, and actually got into bed, under the smelly sheets that I hadn't changed all winter. In seconds she was asleep. I was still feeling very tired, but I didn't want to share my bed with her. As I tried to think of alternatives I woke up.

  It was about 6am when I woke up. It felt too early, and after going for a pee I went back to bed. I seemed to fall asleep really easily. I woke again maybe 30 or 40 minutes later, and I could just about see it was just started to get light outside, but I still felt another 5 minutes in bed wouldn't hurt. I was most surprised to next see that it was about 7.40am. I'm not sure I wanted to get up even then, but I did so anyway.

  As usual, the first thing this morning was to check my health. This morning it also included checking my weight, and entering it onto a brand new spreadsheet "constructed" for the first time this new year. It did not surprise me to see that I had put on about 500gm since yesterday morning, but it did surprise me that even after a moderately sized poo the scales said my weight had not changed a single gram ! I was also a bit surprised that my blood glucose had risen slightly while sleeping. Last night it was 7.8mmol/ and this morning, possibly after slowly digesting the potato in my dinner, it had risen to 7.9mmol. Compared to the last 3 or many more months, that was still remarkably good. It would be really great if I could hold it in the sevens, but I expect it is more realistic that it will be back in the eights maybe as early as tomorrow.

  I have no idea what I am doing today - apart from one thing. I assume that Aldi will be open today, and I would like to go there this morning. I might see if the pharmacy is open, and if it is I will pop in to request my next repeat prescription. Today is supposed to be sunny (and it now is as I write this). I ought to go out and take advantage of it, but maybe it is a bit too chilly for walking. There is a full train service today, and maybe I ought to go out for a train ride somewhere. It could be my last chance for a week because it seems strikes may stop train services from tomorrow until next Sunday !