Today's weather forecast, even the latest revision, seems to be describing yesterday's weather quite well. Today is going to be very gloomy with occasional spells of just gloomy. There is a 10% chance of rain at any time, but it will probably be dry. By the afternoon, this morning's 4° C will have only risen to 6° C. All in all, a rather unpleasant day. Tomorrow may reach 8° C, but otherwise will probably be very similar to today. The day after tomorrow could be equally bad.
 
   The whole of yesterday was about staying warm and resting in case I was suffering from some sort of unknown illness that was causing me a lot of discomfort - mainly when in the cold. Even today I have no idea if I am suffering from any more than old age, cold weather, and low, or high, barometric pressure. I do know that keeping warm yesterday meant that I only had a few brief twinges of discomfort.

  Of the few things that happened yesterday, one was good news, or sort of good news. I had a letter showing my dividend for the 77 shares I had forgotten I still have with Currys. With a dividend of 1p per share, they gave me a magnificent dividend of 77p ! It is paid directly into my bank account, and if the letter hadn't come I would be none the wiser about it. It is such a small amount that it would barely scratch the surface of the other significant thing I did yesterday.

 I am sure I was stone cold sober, but maybe imagining being very drunk when I ordered rather a lot of beer. It all started when I got intrigued about a web sire bookmark stored on one of my browsers. The quickest way of finding out/reminding myself was to click on it. It took me to the Beer Merchants web site. I made the fatal mistake and checked what they had on offer. I noticed a lot of the special Xmas beers, many from Belgium, were offered for a reduced price.

  Some of those beers I knew would be very nice, and the others were very likely to be very nice.  Along with a "mystery box*" of beers, I ended up spending just over £100. In some cases the bill was pushed up because I ordered 2 bottles of some beers I knew, or strongly expected to be very nice. Most of them are beers that Jodie would be very blasé about, so I can claim them to be mine without having to share them, although I think Michael would still be curious about them, although being mostly strong beers, he would probably not want to have any more than a thimbleful.

  * The mystery box of beers is of beers that are nearing, or even on the sell by/use by date, and are very heavily discounted to clear them. I have bought one before, and it was of mostly nice beer.

  I'm sure I had two lunches yesterday. Both were fairly light, but I am having difficulty remembering in which order I had them, and what exactly they were. I think one was a bowl of instant noodles. The other was cheese on Marmite on toast. I did consider it was excessive considering I am currently worried about my weight. The trouble is that I am putting my blood glucose control before my weight control. What I ate was known to contain very little sugar.

  My dinner was a typical meat and vegetable stew. Last night's was pork and white cabbage with a fair few green finger chillies thrown in for extra flavour, although even the "Kenya" green finger chillies seem to have very little heat. It was a fairly tasty dinner, and if I was very disciplined it would have been quite sufficient. Unfortunately all my discipline had faded away and I had a single cheese sandwich as a sort of desert.

  As usual I spent a lot of the evening watching a few select things on TV. It was convenient that once again the Dave channel swapped around QI and Have I Got News For You. It was QI that was teh last programme, and after watching the first few minutes of it I realised it wasn't all that long ago, or so it seemed, since I had watched the same episode. I turned the TV off, and I was in bed not long after 10pm.

  I didn't try to get to sleep straight away, but read the first short chapter of another book by Edmund Cooper - my author of the month - at least that has how it has turned out to be. The book is titled "Kronk" (although some lists seem to call it Son Of Kronk). Like many of Edmund Cooper's books it is set in not too distant dystopian future, but as far as I can gather, and the first chapter does seem to confirm it, is comedy SciFi - albeit possibly dark comedy.

  After putting the book down, and turning out the light, it was one of those nights where it seemed that I would never get to sleep....and suddenly I was fast asleep possibly little more than 10 minutes after I turned out the light, and it probably happened before 11pm. One the whole I seemed to sleep very well last night. I think I probably woke less frequently for a pee, and on at least one occasion the need was very weak as I discovered when I went to the toilet and just peed about half as much as typical.

  There was only one short period of insomnia, and that wasn't true insomnia. It was around 4am when it seemed like I had one of my own hairs in my mouth, and it seemed ticklish. I', not sure if I ever did get hold of it to pull it out, and maybe I just got bored trying, and went to sleep regardless. As seems quite typical these days, I can only remember something like a couple of snapshots of my dreams.

  I remember having lots of dreams, but none seem to be describable, and I guess that is a reason to forget every detail about them. One thing I think they had in common was that they were set in a sort of cross between home, work, and college. One dream I remember one particular fact about, plus a general sort of background to it, was set in a cross just between home and work. I was at a bench, and above the bench was a shelf that had lots of tapes on it. Some were VHS tapes.

  I seemed to think it was time I tidied it all up, and maybe digitise the tape recordings. I pulled on tape out that seemed to be a VHS tape, but it was actually a box of fancy biscuits that had been opened, and then forgotten about. I am sure the best before date was 1984 ! They looked dry, but otherwise in good condition. I decided it would be best to throw them away.

  The other bit of dream I remember was set in a sort of mix between work and college. I had been invited to jam along with some guitarists - which was strange considering I can't play a guitar (or any musical instrument). When I got my guitar out I found I had restrung it as a 4 string bass guitar (judging by the slack in the strings it would be a deep bass guitar). I said to someone that I had restrung it like that to do some experiments of resonance between it and another bass guitar. That dream seemed to fade out as I prepared to restring the guitar with the proper strings.

  At this point I have to leave the narrative because I have just noticed something weird. My Microsoft keyboard has a key I have never noticed before. It has a calculator logo on it. I can imagine that if used on a Windows PC it would bring up a calculator if pressed. I had doubts it would work on my Linux based PC, but to may surprise and amusement, it does work.

  It seems that most morning these days I have a lay in, and this morning was no exception. I could have got up soon after 6am, but decided on (as the now clichéd) 5 minutes more sleep. It was about 7.30am when I had woken up enough to consider getting out of bed. I went through my usual routine, and it wasn't long before I got to the checking my blood glucose part of the routine. My lack of pee in the night could have been because I didn't have any beer last night, or it could have been because my blood glucose was nice and low. It was higher than a non diabetic would get, but 8.0mmol/l is pretty good, and it helped get my rolling monthly average closer to typical.

  One thing I haven't done this morning is to check my weight, and the reason I haven't done that is that on two visits to the toilet I have done no more than passed some wind. I have a feeling that something more solid will pass sooner or later. That would be good because I want to try and force myself to go out today. Maybe it will be as little as a visit to Tesco, but I have been thinking of putting some miles on my Freedom Pass with a bit of rail travel. It is too gloomy for good photography, but maybe a few rides on the underground would shield me from the gloom, and I could take some better pictures under artificial light. First I have to see if I can drag my carcass to Tesco !