Just before sunrise, when the eastern sky was getting light, the sky seemed really clear, and the moon was bright and sharp. Now the sky has completely clouded over with grey looking clouds. The chances of the forecast sunny spells, and even sunshine, looks rather slim at the moment, but the latest revision to the forecast now says full sunshine at 9am - just 45 minutes time as I write this. The other contentious issue is that according to my three outdoor temperature sensors the temperature was barely above 4° C at just after 7am. The latest revision to the forecast says sunshine or sunny spells from 9am until 3pm with only midday shown as cloudy. The rain for 5pm has now been replaced by just "cloudy", and the highest temperature shown as 7° C. Tonight will get very cold, and it will stay very cold tomorrow. The highest temperature is shown as 4° C, and that will fall close to zero by midnight.

  I feel I want to use the word "moribund" to describe yesterday, but I have to admit I do not know it's precise meaning. As a general not much happening sounding word it feels like it could be right to describe yesterday. The biggest reason to not describe yesterday like that is that only most of yesterday featured not much happening.

  Apart for some cooking, the major departure from pure sloth was that I hand washed a couple of towels. I did mention yesterday I had a brand new white towel that I thought best washed with some white t-shirts. I even went as far as to dig out some of my old, and historic, Catford Beer Festival t-shirts. I had selected the 2004 t-shirt to wear yesterday if I was going out.

  I must interrupt my train of thought at this point to say that I stunned to see the sky is clear again. How all that grey cloud cleared in about 10 minutes is a mystery, but it does now look like the 9am sunshine will be a reality !

   It occurred to me that I also had a pale pink towel that needed washing, and that towel was years old, and any dye would have washed out of it ages ago, and so I washed the two towels together. The new white towel survived, and still looks dazzling (sort of) white. I dried them both on the clothes horse in the dining room. For much of the afternoon I had the fan heater on low to help them dry. By early evening those towels were still damp. I didn't want to use a heater overnight, but I was happy to use just a desk fan. This morning both towels are bone dry.

  That laundry was the only significant thing I did all day. I spent most of the rest of the day reading, online and from a book, trying to watch TV, but giving up on that, and going back to some mini binge watching of Futurama episodes. I think I only watched about 4 or 5 episodes. Nothing was a strong distraction from eating, and it would have been so easy to get completely carried away.

  My breakfast, eaten before tedium set in, was the now usual bowl of instant noodles. I think it was one of the bigger packs (100gm). I had a small plate of oven chips for lunch, but they didn't leave me satisfied for long enough. I guess it was mid afternoon when I had some rice cakes with corned beef and cheese on them. They may have included a tad too much guilt to be fully enjoyable.
  During the afternoon it began to feel like I was in a monastery (but without the chanting, prayers, and other weird shit monks do), and to celebrate the fact I opened a couple of bottles of Trappist beers. Those monks may deprive themselves of many of life's pleasure, but they don't skimp on the beer making. On the left is the 9.2% version of Rochefort Abbey beer, and on the right is the 11.1% version. Both are exquisitely nice, and for a while I didn't even think about food.

  After finishing the second bottle, it took about an hour for the main effect to wear off, and instead of diverting my attention from food, it diverted it to food. Fortunately I had precooked most of my dinner. It just needed a load of sliced white cabbage to be added to the stew of beef and potatoes, and then zapped in the microwave for 15 minutes before it was ready to eat.

  There was a large, sweet orange involved in dinner, and I think that instead of having it as a dessert, I had it as a starter. I nearly had two oranges, but once again I left them too long, and one had developed a green furry bit on it. The orange was very nice, but the main course of my dinner was OK, but not as enjoyable as I hoped. Dinner took even more off the edge of the beer effects, and my earlier theory that I might be fast asleep in bed soon after 8pm came to nothing.

  It must say something good about those beers that I never did seem to get a bad hangover from them. I am sure I can't blame them for some aches and pains when I finally tried for sleep at about 10pm. I had been laying on my bed reading for some time before attempting sleep, and I was aware that I was starting to feel stiff and aching. I took the precaution of taking a couple of Paracetamol half an hour before trying to sleep. They usually take about an hour to work, and I think it was at least 10.30pm before I fell asleep.

  I probably got a lot of good sleep last night, but it was in discrete chunks. Apart from the usually light sleep I tend to enter some time after 5am, I think the worst bit of sleep was at the fairly typical time of soon after 3am. It is apparently a popular time for heart attacks, and other deaths, but I wasn't afflicted that way, but I did have a short period of insomnia. It was noticeably cold last night, but I resisted the temptation to switch the heater to full blast until about 5am.

  I got up earlier than usual this morning, and it was nice that my bedroom was feeling nice and warm when I go out of bed. I had no special intentions to get up when I did - it just felt right to get up then (which was about 6.45am). I went through the usual morning routine: A quick visit to the toilet followed by checking my blood glucose. The chips, the orange, and maybe the Trappist beer all contrived to raise my blood glucose, but only to 8.6mmol/l. That is perfectly acceptable provided it doesn't go up a lot more.

  After a longer, and not quite as productive as expected, visit to the toilet, I checked my weight. It was exactly the same as yesterday. If I could have not had had breakfast, and waited a bit I might have made a second visit to the toilet (it will probably happen soon) and maybe my weight would have been a 100gm or more less, but eating breakfast, and drinking some Diet Coke would skew any measurement too much.

  This morning I definitely need to go to the shops - probably just Tesco, but maybe another if I have the time and inclination. The bright sunshine is definitely a lure to go out, or would be if the thermometers weren't showing it is blood freezing out there. Fortunately there should be some indoor entertainment this afternoon with another beer tasting session with Jodie.