It may not be raining now, but it is still very wet outside. The temperature here is 12° C, and it seems it is as high as it is going to get today. The latest revision to the forecast shows mainly white clouds for a lot of today, but that is at complete odds with my view of the sky. I would describe those clouds as a sort of dirty grey. I would not be surprised if there is not several sprinkles of rain today before the next forecast time (according to the latest revision). Rain is supposed to fall between 3 and 5pm with 4pm seeing heavy rain. After 5pm the clouds will thin right out, and maybe even disappear for some hours, and the temperature will start to drop. By tomorrow morning it could be down to 7° C. Tomorrow might be a mostly sunny day, or at least between 11am and sunset, but the temperature may only rise to 10° C. Both today and tomorrow will feature some gusty wind that will make it feel cold outside.

  Yesterday was a day that started off well, peaked, and then went rapidly down hill, although it was not until late evening that I realised it had gone down hill as far as it had, and this morning it was confirmed as a disaster, and probably because I got caught in the rain again.

  Yesterday started bright....err, maybe it didn't start bright, but soon after 9am the sun appeared properly, and it was instantly a great day....or so it seemed. It was lovely and bright, but there was a very chilling wind when I went out. It was after the luxury of a full shave, shampoo, and shower that I went out shopping to Tesco. Those ablutions seemed luxury because after some low water pressure, causing my water heater to sometimes go cold, the water pressure was back to normal, and the water temperature nice and warm with no worries about suddenly being drenched in cold water.

  The top of my shopping list for Tesco was some vegetables. I bought a whole white cabbage, a head of cauliflower, and some more of those miniature potatoes that I have had in some meals recently.  Not on my shopping list were three possible bargains from the reduced price shelves. They were two sausage rolls made by Walls (or for some reason I keep thinking that maybe they were branded Heinz). The third so called bargain was also a sausage roll, but it was a Tesco own brand. It was an ideal opportunity to compare the two types.

  Time was running out when I got my shopping home. I had sufficient time to put my shopping away, visit the toilet again, just in case, and then walk to the station. I did have enough time to walk all the way to the pub, but I fancied going to the station to pick up a copy of The Metro, and then get the train one stop to Ladywell. It was good in one respect. I managed to get decent snaps of two trains I had never photographed before to add to my huge spreadsheet of every train I have photographed.

  I thought I would have enough to to maybe get the quick crossword, in The Metro, fairly complete before Angela arrived, but I barely had time for more than about 5 clues before Angela arrived. Some of it was because I was chatting with Ayse, the bar maid, and possibly because Angela was earlier than expected. It was nice to see Angela, and we spent a most pleasant hour together. In some ways it was like it used to be maybe sometime last year when there was some sort of intimacy between us.

  As soon as we left the pub I noticed that we had just missed a very light shower, but another started again after a minute or so, and by the time we got to Angela's office the rain was starting to get heavy. It meant another very brief, rather soggy, quick, low pressure hug, and then I continued walking to home. The rain fell even heavier on the way, but I don't think it got quite as heavy as the week before. I arrived home feeling cold and miserable.

  It was the trigger for a bad afternoon. It started, actually as planned, to have the three sausage rolls for a post beer, late lunch. I cooked them in the oven for the required 22 minutes, and then started eating them. It was instantly obvious that all three were pretty horrible. Maybe it was me, or maybe it can be blamed on Covid, but they seemed rather tasteless in a way that other food didn't - thus suggesting it wasn't me or Covid that as the cause.

  Not only were they very bland....or maybe it was just the sausage meat inside that just tasted bland compared to my expectations, but they had a bad affect on me. I did mention yesterday morning that I was semi constipated, and pushing more stodge on top of that made me feel a bit uncomfortable. It seems stupid, but it seems I am wired to believe any form of stomach pain as hunger pain.

  Only about an hour passed before I thought I was hungry again. I decided to have some cheese on toast. I only had two slices because I have almost run out of bread - I only have one thick crust left now. As it was cooking I had the totally insane idea that I would like some chips. I put some in the oven straight after I took the cheese on toast out. The sad thing is that I didn't really fancy them by the time they were cooked. I think it was a strong dose of guilt setting in, but I ate them anyway.

  After that I resolved not to eat again for the rest of the day. I kept to that resolve, but I did have a few large whiskies. I am unsure if they had any affect on what was to come later. At some time in the afternoon, and it was probably after eating that I had a nice snooze. I woke up in time to catch the finish of an episode of Star Trek on "Legend" (the channel previously known as The Horror Channel).

  During the evening I watched more TV until a repeat of Have I Got News For You finished at 11pm. While watching TV I had felt fairly OK, or at least I thought I did, but once I got into bed I started to feel quite uncomfortable. This time it wasn't any of the common aches and pains (choose any three !), but my gut. The worst thing is that I seemed to be belching a lot, and eventually it seemed like I might vomit, but before that it seemed that what I can only describe as the missing poo from the morning, and maybe the morning before that, seemed to finally be on the move.

  It was good to sit on the toilet feeling that movement, but at the same time it became a battle of nerves. I increasing felt like I was going to throw up - which is tricky when sitting on the toilet. I managed to hold the vomit down until I had finished sitting, and then let it go. There was far less than it seemed like there could be. It was all very unpleasant, but in total it was probably no more than a cupful, and it was practically all liquid.

  As that came to an end the roles reversed again, and it was back to sitting on the toilet for yet more poo. The way I describe it may sound like it took no more then 10 minutes, but a surprising amount of time slipped by. Add to that a period of uncertainty after I went back to my bedroom, and then a final visit to the toilet where I think I did no more than fart, and it was almost 3am before I got back into bed, and fell asleep.

  I think I slept mostly OK after that, but obviously I didn't get a lot of sleep because it was not long after 7am when I got up. There was a real reason for getting up at that time. I was (and I still am) expecting a large parcel delivery. It will be the three crates of beer I ordered from Beer Merchants on Tuesday. As can be seen, they are very fast workers, and DHL should be delivering my boxes between 14:58 and 15:58 today. If Jodie arrives early today she may have the pleasure of seeing the unboxing of at least one box. I regard some of the beers ordered as "mine" - mainly because they are the sort of beers that Jodie no longer enjoys, but has drunk them before - maybe.

  This morning all my excess eating, plus possibly the excess time in my gut for older food to be more thoroughly digested (or something like that) has caused my blood glucose to shoot through the roof ! My reading this morning was a dangerous 11.0mmol/. Today is not a good day for a reading like that. The dull, gloomy, and sometimes wet, day is not ideal for fasting, and neither is drinking a lot of beer this afternoon.

  I feel sure my semi-constipation had a hand in that high reading, but that seems to be over, or close to it. Last nigh I made a few good deposits in the toilet, and then so far this morning I have made a couple more. I would not be surprised if I have to visit the toilet again before this is all over. So far any attempt at fasting has failed because I have had my now usual breakfast of instant noodles. In my defence I can say it was just a single, small packet.

  I guess it would be wise to have something in my stomach later on if I am expecting to pour a load of beer into it. Being a Thursday it is another beer tasting session with Jodie, and possibly Michael too. What I really must do is to prepare my dinner before this afternoon so I can make sure it is nothing too bad for me. Other jobs for this morning are to have a shower, and most probably have a snooze or two. I am glad that my beers should not arrive until this afternoon. It would be annoying to have to stay alert this morning after a bad night's sleep.
  It was sometime before Xmas, possibly as early as November, that I showed pictures of one of the area's landmarks, St Mary's Church (almost next to the pub) with scaffolding up around some of it. I speculated what it was all about, but now a board outside the church, first spotted yesterday on my way to the pub, explains it all.