There are few small, probably high altitude, clouds, but most of the sky is blue, and the sun is shining. It should continue until sunset. Sadly it won't warm the outside world up (although it should warm my south facing rooms), and today will be another cold day with no more than 8° C expected. This morning started off very chilly, and tomorrow could start as low as 1° C. It may also be misty or foggy - possibly a freezing fog - but from 10am the sun should start to break through, and the rest of tomorrow may be a lot like today - cold, but sunny.
 
   Apart from having a shower, and doing a little very light tidying up, I did very little yesterday morning. Just after midday I set things up to test a few lenses to determine which gave the sharpest image, and to try and prove if the Tamron lens I had blamed for producing "soft" looking images really was to blame. Unfortunately I rushed it and didn't draw any great conclusions.

   It is possible I will have another go today, and if I do I will mount my test image (a reasonably detailed LP cover) a bit higher. The biggest problem with yesterday's test was having to bend over to squint through the view finder. Several of the snaps were grossly out of focus, and I am not sure why - apart from not getting a good view through the viewfinder, and rushing to take the snap. Even so, I expected better results.

  I was expecting Jodie to arrive at about 3.30pm for a beer tasting session, but soon after 3pm she sent me a text to say she was going to be late again, but this time it wasn't because of missing trains, but because she and her boyfriend had gone out beer shopping. They both arrived at around her predicted time of 4pm. By then I had drunk my first beer - a nice, and rather strong Abbey style beer from the Westmalle brewery in Belgium.

  Most of the beer that Jodie brought with her were beers that don't appeal to me. They were all sour beers, and a couple looked like they could have a high sugar content. I decided to just have a small taste of each, and let Jodie and Alan drink most of each can. Of course I didn't want to sit there feeling thirsty, and I had several cans of beer to myself. Of course they had to be beers that Jodie had tried before, and were no longer of any interest to her.

  During the boozing session there was a knock on the door. It was the man from Amazon with my latest order - a new blood pressure meter. I gave it a quick go, and it appears to be faulty, The cuff only ever lightly inflates. I'll play with it some more today, and if I can't make it work I'll have to go through the tedium of sorting out a return to Amazon - easy process, but it may mean printing out a postage paid return label, and taking the box to the post office.

  Our boozing session ended a couple of hours later, and I felt quite drunk, but not so drunk that I didn't realise Jodie had left her phone behind. Luckily she hadn't reached the end of my road, maybe little more than 100ft away, perhaps 200ft, and I used my loudest shout to call her back. Then I went back to heating up the dinner I had cooked earlier in the day. It was a daring mix stew of sprouts and smoked Polish bacon with a couple of shallots.

  I think it was very nice, but I am sure many would describe it as disgusting ! If there was one thing wrong with it, it was that it seemed to be quite a small dinner, but maybe that only mattered because of being rather drunk. While I was eating it I grilled the rest of the smoked bacon. I had that as a sort of dessert with just mustard and tomato source. I have a bit of cleaning up to do in the kitchen today because my bottle of tomato sauce has a wonky exit hole, and if too much exuberance is used, when squirting it onto the plate, it can fly everywhere - including onto the front of the microwave oven.

  There was nothing on TV to amuse me last night, and I ended up making a drunken phone call to my old friend Aleemah. I can't remember why I did it, and I can't remember much of the call, but I seem to remember it involved a lot of laughter from both sides, and so it couldn't have been too bad. When the call finished it definitely felt like time for bed. I think it was probably not long after 9pm, and it didn't take long to fall into a deep sleep.

  I suddenly remember why I called Aleemah. It was to tell her about the book I am reading. "Thrice Born" by Andrew Lester. It is a scifi story set on an alien planet where the native species have some unusual sexual practices. I have a feeling I never did tell her about it in the end !

  My sleep only last for a couple of hours. I think I was woken up by y PC screen flashing up a bright notification. Eventually I got out of bed to see what it was saying. It seems I had lost my internet connection. A brief investigation showed that my firewall box had crashed/locked up. I had to go downstairs to reboot it. Even then I didn't get internet access, but at least my local network was working OK again. I had to reboot the cable modem before I got internet access back.

  The modem seemed to take ages to come up again, and I suspect, from the timing, around midnight, that Virgin Media had taken the network down for some sort of maintenance - something they usually, more annoyingly do, on a Sunday morning (although on on a couple of occasions per year). It was almost 2am before I could try and relax in bed, and try to get to sleep. Unfortunately there was another developing problem that would later be unpleasant rather than just a bit uncomfortable.

  It seemed unlikely, but last nights sprouts were already "fermenting" in my gut by this morning. I got up for a pee at about 5am and then again at 6.30am, and on both occasions I could hear a commotion of gurgling and other strange noises from my belly. On both occasions I tried sitting on the toilet, but that only produced a bit of gas. The full effect was felt when I got up just before 8am, and went to the toilet. I can only describe it as like opening a champagne bottle !

  That, and the next visit to the toilet not that long after the first, was all very unpleasant. What was very pleasant was my blood glucose reading. I was not sure it would be OK after some of those beers, the heavy dinner, and the cheese and rice cakes I had for lunch, but 8.6mmol/l was a good improvement over yesterdays, 9.0mmol/l. With luck I will reduce that a bit more tomorrow morning...or maybe I won't.

  One thing I ought to do today is to go to either Tesco or maybe Aldi. Either would offer temptations that I could easily give in to. I could possibly go for a walk as well today. It may be very chilly, and I'll determine how chilly when I go shopping, but it would seem a shame to waste the nice sunshine. Of course I can still enjoy the sunshine, and maybe even enjoy it more when the sun is shining through the windows onto my bed, and I am laying down on it reading and snoozing. That might definitely be the best option if my guts are still in a volatile state !