The sun has only just risen high enough to shine over the house roofs to the east, but is now lighting up my front rooms. With luck the forecast will hold, and the sun will shine at full strength for the rest of the daylight hours - which are slowly getting longer and longer. The forecast says the Ultra Violet content of the sun is still low, and maybe that is ideal for starting a summer tan. It will get hot behind glass, but outside will only reach 10° C. Tomorrow, another day of full sunshine could raise the outside temperature to 12° C. Provided the wind is very light, that is shirt sleeve weather provided you keep in the sun, and keep moving !
 
    I can't make up my mind whether to say yesterday was a good or bad day.  I did eventually hear from Jodie who confirmed she was too busy getting ready for going away somewhere today to come over for a beer tasting session. That made yesterday the seventh day since I had seen anyone because I didn't see Angela last Wednesday, and I didn't see Jodie last Thursday. Once again I had to amuse myself by myself.

  It's hard to use the word amuse in conjunction with a situation that had a high annoyance level. I am talking about a shopping trip to Aldi. The high annoyance level was because it was so busy in there. I made the stupid assumption that at 1pm most people would be sitting down to Sunday dinner, but it seems everyone was in Aldi. It was so busy that I had to walk to the far end of their quite long carpark to get a suitable sized trolley.

  I can't really say I enjoyed the walk there. The cold air did trigger a bit of coughing, and made my nose drip a bit, but neither was particularly significant. My nose was no worse than at any other time when the air is cold, and it had nothing to do with my recent cold. The cough, while not directly attributable to that cold, was heavily influenced by it in the form of wheeziness caused by mucus.  There will be more about that later.

  I don't think there was anything in particular that seemed to be missing from Aldi's shelves. They haven't had their rather good balsamic salad dressing for a long time now, but hopefully it might re-appear this summer. I think the biggest disappointment was that in the "specials" area there was nothing that even tempted me to think about it. In the "specials" food area it was a similar thing, although maybe that was only after I blanked a huge load of stuff that was very unsuitable for a diabetic, or even a non diabetic who wanted to stay that way.

  My real gripe was that the queues for all three checkouts were huge, and there was also a huge queue for the self service checkouts too. I think I was lucky in that the woman in front of me seemed to go through the checkout very fast. It wasn't until I got closer to the checkout itself that I saw that she had two big trollies of stuff, but she also had what I assumed to be her son to help her. He was at the front putting the stuff  back into the trollies as fast as the man on the checkout could scan it through, while she was at the back putting stuff on the conveyor belt in one smooth process.

  It is often the case that the walk home is easier than the walk to the shop - even when carrying heavy shopping. I will admit I didn't rush home, but I don't I went that slowly. It was nice to get home, and put my shopping down. After I had put most things away I prepared some lunch. It was a bit of a stupid lunch considering my high blood glucose reading in the morning. It was a two part lunch, and I am not sure which half was worse for me.

  I suspect both were equally bad for me, but also not that bad. Part one were a couple of seeded rolls that claimed to have a low sugar content. I used them to make ham, tomato and basil rolls, and both were really delicious. Somehow the ingredients just seemed to compliment each other so well. Part two was a couple of corned beef crunchy cakes (like fish cakes, but made with corned beef). I don't know if it was just me, maybe some sort of legacy of my cold, but they tasted very bland. It was so disappointing, and although not expensive, I wish I hadn't wasted my money on them.

  Part of the weight of my shopping were the three 275ml bottles of beer shown on the left. I can skip over the afternoon until the time came to start drinking these beers. My afternoon was about as lazy as I could make it, and the only thing I ended up doing before the afternoon was over was to start a binge watch of series 5 of Futurama. I would end up watching all of series 5 before going to bed last night.

  I think I started the beers at 5pm, and I started with the Leffe Blond. It was probably the nicer of the beers - not surprising because it is, or was brewed by monks. Instant searching shows that it indeed was brewed by monks in a monastery, but now is brewed in a beer factory. Fortunately it does seem to retain some of it original quality. Reading the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leffe) shows that there are a multitude of Leffe brews, and I have never seen most of them. I must ask Jodie of she recognises any of them some time.

  The middle beer in the picture, the Triple, is made specially for Aldi, although "specially made" could equal "has a special Aldi label on the bottle". It claims to have monastic origins, and does taste that way. The disappointment was the third beer in the black bottle. The black bottle does look very enticing, but it is just a gimmick. The beer inside, brewed for Aldi in France, is not wonderful at all. It is pleasantly drinkable, but brings no thrills. I think the Leffe was 6.5%, the Triple 6.0%, and the black bottle just 5.5%.

  I thought I felt fairly tired last night, and hoped for a good sleep. That was not the case. I suffered form several periods of insomnia last night. Some of it was caused by coughing up lumps of mucus. It seemed like every time I laid down, and started to relax, a ball of mucus would climb to the top of my throat and irritate me. That mucus was so sticky* that it took a lot of coughing to dislodge it.

  * I didn't actually investigate/examine the mucus, and I am only saying what it felt like.

  I had one episode like this when I first lay down, and another at 1am, and maybe the last one at about 3am. The 3am period of insomnia is more notable because it seemed to last for maybe 70 or 80 minutes - except I feel sure it didn't in reality. What I am sure was happening is that I would be awake thinking about something, and I would drift off to sleep, and continue my thoughts in a dream. I would then wake up, possibly to do something physical like clearing my throat, and  then seamlessly continue the dream as real thoughts when awake. I am sure I must have done that 2 or even 4 times, but the transitions from awake to dream, and back to awake were so smooth it was very hard to tell what state I was in.

  It is hard to say how much sleep I got last night. Maybe it was just enough because I don't seem to feel too tired now, and it seemed easy to get up at just gone 7am. Maybe I was awoke by some vile smelling farts ! I don't think I really had any great predictions for my blood glucose reading this morning beyond knowing it would not be very good. It was actually 9.0mmol/l. That is a good improvement over yesterday's 9.7mmol/l, but something a bit lower would have been ideal.

  The latest revision the the weather forecast says it could reach 12° C from 2pm. That, and all the sunshine, means I really ought to get some exercise today. I don't feel terribly keen about it now - particularly when I am still farting a lot. I have been to the toilet once today, but I think it will take another one or two visits before I will feel comfortable going out. Assuming I do get out, I am considering a walk along the south bank of the river Thames. It is a walk with many possibilities for walking to further and further exit points to get a bus or train home again. One day I'll make it all the way to Greenwich after starting at Blackfriars, but not today.