It is bright and sunny now, and has been for an hour or two. The latest revision to the forecast shows full sunshine until 4pm when there will just be sunny spells until the sun sets. That could make for a colourful sunset. The maximum temperature today is still forecast to be just 6° C, and that only for a single hour at 3pm. By 11pm it will have fallen to just 2° C. By 6am tomorrow morning the temperature may have fallen to -1° C. Once again there should be plenty of sunshine or sunny spells, but the maximum temperature could be just 4° C.
 
   There doesn't seem to be any particular good reason for it, but yesterday was another good, or maybe medium good, day. Of course lots of sunshine, like yesterday had, always raised the spirit, and can turn a bad day good. There were still enough non weather related reasons to make yesterday good enough. Maybe not fully taking advantage of the sunshine was a negative point, but on the other hand, I certainly appreciated it warming my front rooms up.

  While I didn't go for a long walk yesterday, I did walk to the little supermarket on Catford Bridge, and buy some Polish sourdough bread, and a few other good things. I think the walk there and back confirmed my thought that while it was nice and bright, and the sun did warm the front of my coat a bit, I didn't really enjoy the walk in the same way I enjoyed my walk to Tesco the previous day.
  Part of my lunch, soon after I got home from the shop, was these two small pots of "salad". I have mentioned these many times in the past, and how they are not a conventional salad as we know them, however the picture shows that the maker definitely describes them as salads. My personal opinion is that they benefit from a good sprinkle of hot pepper sauce to really bring out the nice flavours.

  The pictures on the front hardly match what is inside the small pots. For instance I don't think there is a single variety that has any artichoke in it ! The written description is quite accurate. They are very low in sugar, but the oil in them makes the calorie count a bit high, although sometimes oil doesn't seem to count. In the past, when I was at work, I still managed to lose some weight when eating 2, and sometimes, 4 pots for lunch. Of course in those days my hour and bit, in each direction, commute was pretty good exercise !
  Another thing I bought was three nice juicy oranges. I had one yesterday as part of my lunch, and it was delicious. I always worry about the sugar (fructose) content of fruit, but the evidence this morning, and indeed on some past mornings, suggests that one or two of these oranges seem to be benign. Perhaps the vitamin C and the fibre, and possibly other good-for-you stuff offsets and small negatives.

  There was one other important thing I did yesterday, and it was some laundry - all done by hand as always. I thought it was going to include two black t-shirts, but there was only one because I have been wearing a couple of white t-shirts recently. I've still worn a selection of underpants, and they are best washed with black t-shirts, and so they had mounted up. I had to wash 6 or 7 pairs of underpants. Obviously they are very lightweight, particularly in relation to even a small hand towel, but lots of small things can be more fiddly that a few large things.

  In the end I got as far as the third rinse, and decided to take a break. It was about 4pm before I wrung out the 4rd rinse water, and did the fabric conditioner - obviously followed by a really good wringing out before hanging it all up to dry. I gave it all an hour with a fan heater on full blast, and then turned the heater to low. for several more hours. In the end I turned the heater off, and substituted a desk fan to blow it all dry overnight.

  Apart from some cooking, that laundry was the last thing of any great significance that I did yesterday. I guess you could include ordering another case of 12 bottles of Caribbean Hot pepper Sauce, via Amazon, as of some minor significance. Mostly I just read. I must say the current book I am reading, Edmund Cooper's "A Far Sunset" is a sort of interesting read. It is about the last survivor of a Star Ship landing on an alien planet. The aliens have a culture which seems to be based on something like South American Inca culture. It is a bit brutal in places, but oddly enough, most of the aliens seem quite happy.

  From 5pm, as usual now, I started to watch some TV, and at 6pm I had my dinner. It was another beef, mushroom, and white cabbage stew. There were two small differences to the stew I had the night before. One was that I had put some sliced chillies in it. I bought them during my shopping trip at the end of the morning. They were described as "Kenya" chillies, and I presumed they different to the slightly fatter green finger chillies in that they would be very hot. I didn't notice any heat at all - which surprised me. The other difference was some gravy powder to thicken the stew up.

  I made a good effort at getting to sleep earlier last night. I am not sure why I did it when an earlier plan was to consider going to a gig last night, but it was obvious I had settled in for the night even before I had my dinner - dinner just sealed my fate ! Last night the Dave channel swapped around the last QI and Have I Got News For You. I didn't bother with the second QI and went to bed straight after Have I Got News For You. It finished at 10pm.

  I read for a short while before turning out the light. I seemed to have no trouble getting to sleep last night, and I think I may have even been fast asleep by 10.30pm. For the first 6 or so hours I slept very well, although it did seem to be the case that I woke up every 2 hours for a pee. I think on at least one of those occasions it was from habit rather than need. During that 6 hours I know I had dreams that were influenced by the book I've been reading. I don't remember any more about those dreams than that they didn't seem to be nasty in any way.

  Later on, in the lighter sleep for the next three or more hours, I do remember having several dreams that involved being in a pub. I can only remember a few brief snatches of those pub dreams. In one I was waiting for a friend who was parking the car before ordering beers. I can remember in a vague sort of way that it was a very long, and annoying wait. Another "fact" from another dream was a pub with the bar on two levels. One side was conventional, but the other side had a bar the height of something like a coffee table, and the bar staff served from a sunken floor.

  My lie ins seems ti be going on longer and longer, and I am getting up later and later. From the time I turned out the light, to when I actually got out of bed, possibly as many as 10 hours had passed. I most definitely got all my 8 hours beauty sleep, and with some to spare ! Once out of bed I did my usual routine. That included checking my blood glucose. There was good news this morning. It was back down to 8.0mmol/l. My weight was not such good news, but I seem to be going through another period of something like, but not exactly, constipation.

  I did finally got to go the toilet after I had finished writing yesterday morning, just as I had written that I expected to, but it was hardly worthwhile. It was a tiny amount. This morning it was bigger, but stall far from enough. Hopefully more will happen later or it will be very annoying. Since going to the toilet there have been all sorts of distractions. Preparing and eating my breakfast of tomato flavoured instant noodles was one distraction.

  Receiving and sending some messages to my old friend Aleemah was another distraction - a slightly annoying distraction! One more interesting distraction was looking at some of my diary scribblings from the past. I have been keeping this diary/blog thing for coming up to 20 years now, and I think only a few entries have ever been lost when a server has crashed. The servers have been making backups every morning for a long time now, and if the server crashed the worst that can get lost should be, in theory, just one day.

  The actual anniversary of my first even blog entry will be in June, and if I remember I will make more of it then. In the meantime you can see my first ever post by clicking here, and scrolling to the bottom of the page - the layout has changed a lot since then - most daily entries were just a few lines once, but now I write thousands of words every morning !

  By the time I have finished here, and then had a wash, it will be almost afternoon, if indeed it is not actually the afternoon. I really have no idea what I will be doing for the rest of the day. I guess I could go out for an afternoon walk, but it seems like it is too cold for that. I would like to get to a special gig tonight, but I have no idea how I am going to get in the right frame of mind to go out in the evening. I am so out of practice at it, and even though sunrise in now slowly getting later, it will still be dark several hours before I would need to go out. The trouble is that once it gets dark I sort of going in primitive man mode, and shut down until it is light again. We'll just have to see what happens.