The forecast for today is a lot like the forecast for yesterday. Yesterday it turned out to be generally wrong, but this morning the clouds do look a lot more substantial, and maybe there will be no sign of the sun today. It gets worse if the BBC weather forecast turns out to be closer to reality. That predicts rain for 2pm, but only 2pm. All three of my outdoor temperature sensors agree that it is just over 12° C as I write this, and that make me feel that today's temperature could go as high as 14° C.  Tomorrow could see sunshine/sunny spells until early afternoon (or later according to the BBC), but it could be several degrees cooler than today.
 
   Yesterday felt like a moderately busy day. It wasn't really, but I did get a few things done including a shopping trip to Tesco, and hand washing a t-shirt, a pair of lounge pants, and some underwear. I could add some washing up, and some cookery to the list, but the latter two things usually get done every day no matter how little of anything else is done.

  My shopping trip to Tesco seemed to be very satisfactory. For one thing it felt mild enough to go there wearing my sleeveless denim jacket. Sadly there was not enough sun on my bare arms to even start a very slow tan, but it did feel comfortable walking like that.

  Most of what I bought in Tesco was from an "approved" mental shopping list, and I did not deviate to far from it. The biggest deviation was to see for the first time, and buy the Kallo Beetroot & Balsamic "Veggie Cakes shown on the left. Their sugar content is three times that of rice cakes - which they resemble - but then again the sugar content of rice cakes is tiny. I had a couple with spreadable cheese on them, and they were rather good.

  Another slight deviation from the shopping plan was whisky. I was considering whisky, but initially I thought I would only buy enough Diet Coke to fill my rucksack (4 x 2l bottles), and would not have room for a bottle of whisky. That was the case until I spotted that very strange offer was back. With £11 savings when buying with a Clubcard, a 1 litre bottle of Haig whisky (that I really like) was cheaper than the 70cl bottle. I couldn't refuse that, and I suspect it won't be many days before I am back in Tesco to buy another bottle while it is so cheap.

  My other indulgence from Tesco was three types of spreadable cheese. One was a tub of strong cheddar flavoured cheese. Another was a tub of chive flavoured Philadelphia, and the third was not exactly a spreadable cheese. It was a soft French blue cheese that was so soft it was easy to spread.

  My lunch was rice and beetroot cakes with cheese spread on them. The beetroot cakes were slightly peculiar in that they were not, as expected, bright red, but the fleck of beetroot in them were intensively red, and could colour a whole thumb ! They did go extremely well soft cheeses - including the blue cheese. I had a couple of rice cakes taken from the bottom of a packet that had been open for too long. Even the bottom ones were a bit soft, and tasted very slightly stale, although the biggest put off was the texture being so soft.

   I did the laundry that I mentioned at the top of the page, a little while after lunch, although I had left all the items soaking in detergent several hours earlier. For some reason I never expected I would do all the rinses and fabric conditioner in one go. I expected I would stop near the end, and have a breather before continuing. That was mainly because my ongoing illness had left me feeling like I had little stamina, but maybe I am very slowly getting better because once I started I didn't stop until it was all hanging up to dry.

  I hung the clothes of the clothes horse in the dining room. It seemed almost warm in there (although really it was about 18° C), and I just used a desk fan to blow air at the drying items. I then went straight from that to doing the washing up in the kitchen. There was not a lot of it, and maybe 10 minutes later I was preparing my dinner. It's base was beef stew, and this time I only used half the diced beef in the pack. I also added some small chestnut mushrooms before zapping it for 20 minutes in the microwave.

  Finally I could go into extreme lazy mode, although maybe I only managed to achieve light lazy mode. One thing I did do was to lose all track of time. I thought it was later than it really was, and somehow that equated to it seeming like it was a long wait for dinner (even if how I described it would seem to suggest the opposite). I had an urge for  bowl of instant noodles because I thought I felt hungry - and at that point I hadn't started on the beers I decided to have yesterday evening. I chose one of the smallest packets of instant noodles, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.


  In about an hour it was time to turn on the TV. At 5pm I watched an episode of Warehouse 13, and at 6pm I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. At 7pm I watched an episode of The Simpsons. After The Simpsons I turned the TV off until 8.20pm when I turned on again to watch a compilation episode of Have I Got News For You covering the best of 2020.

  As well as eating my dinner, which I had topped up with loads of white cabbage before it's final cooking for 15 minutes in the microwave, I drank some beers. Fortunately I drank them in the best order - but only by luck. I started off with a can of Guinness, and I might have stuck with Guinness, but I fancied a St Bernardus Abbey beer. I followed that by a bottle of white label Chimay.

  The label of my final bottle of beer is shown on the left. It was a pure German import, and had no English writing on it at all, and so I did not know what to expect beyond knowing that being German, it would be good ! It was rather better than good. It was a dark, almost syrupy beer. I was quite concerned that it could have a high sugar content. It did seem sweet. The barley was was roasted to give the dark colour was roasted to perfection. Sometimes brewers, or those who prepare the barley, over roast it, and allow it to burn. That can give the beer a sort of coffee taste that I do not like. The barley in Impulsator was roasted enough to go dark, but before it started to burn. That gives the beer a delicious chocolate taste. It was a great beer to finish with. The only trouble is can't remember where I bought it, and the chances of getting more are slim.

  Through the day I would have occasional fits/bouts of coughing, but it was apparent that they were turning dry. Quite often there would be a trigger to start the cough. While I was eating dinner a particularly hot bit of cabbage was the trigger to start me coughing. I did wonder how I would fare when I tried for sleep. It seemed good that while I did cough in the night, it didn't seem to stop me sleeping. I was probably asleep from about 10pm, and on the whole I slept well, although I did need to get up to pee quite a few times. It was a toss up as to whether the extra peeing was due to excess blood glucose, or just from drinking 4 cans/bottles of beer.

  There is not much to say about my sleep beyond the fact that the first 3 or 4 hours were done with no heating on. I did turn the heater on low during the night, but I can't remember when that was. It was just after 7am when I got up after almost an hours lie in bed. It wasn't long before the truth of my blood glucose level was revealed. After 7 rice/veggie cakes with cheese on them, the nice but truly superfluous instant noodles in the afternoon, and the sweet tasting beer, it would come as no surprise if my blood glucose had risen a lot. In fact it has risen by just a small amount. Yesterday it was an excellent 7.8mmol/l, and this morning it was 7.9mmol/l - which is also excellent these days.


  The thing about this morning is it is not very cold. As the poor quality picture on the left shows, my three outside temperature sensors, one on the back bedroom windowsill, one by the kitchen door, and the other where the house ends and the garden starts, all agree that it was just over 12° C at 8.30am - when the forecast said it should just be 11° C. 90 minutes later they agree that it is 13° C. The early version of the forecast said it should still be 11° C, but the latest revision does say 12° C.

  It does seem possible that it could be warmer than the forecast thinks, but the cloud is still thick, and while we did have a few tens of seconds of watery sunshine shininbg through a tiny crack in the clouds, it does seem that today is going to be a fairly miserable sort of day - even if it is a mild feeling sort of misery ! It seems unlikely that I will find the inspiration to go out today beyond a local shop, and even that may never happen.


  I don't think I know what I am going to do today. Like yesterday, I would like to go to a gig, but I decided not to go out into the night air last night, and it would probably be better for my cough not to do that tonight either. One thing I will do, and probably before midday, is to start to prepare tonight's dinner. It should remove any temptation for a naughty, and expensive takeaway tonight. One thing I would like to do if I feel I can find the patience, is to pull apart, for more intensive fault finding, the nice, but faulty laptop I was given for Xmas (or thereabouts).