It sometimes seems that the BBC weather forecasts are the most optimistic. If rain all day excites you then the BBC forecast is the one for you. Meanwhile, the Met Office only predict rain until midday, and it will probably be light rain. However the chance of rain from 1pm until the end of the day stays at 20%, and that gives a fair chance that there will be more rain. The latest revision says the temperature will be no higher than 8° C for nearly the whole day. Tomorrow may start wet, but maybe the day will be a tiny bit less cold, 9° C is forecast for the afternoon - but I expect tomorrow will make it's own decision about the weather.
 
   Yesterday was a positively miserable day. My whole day was primed by the cold and miserable weather, but there were more tangible reasons for feeling miserable. One was the ongoing saga of Angela ignoring my messages. It almost seems as if she is actively putting me off from going to her wedding in June.

  Yesterday morning I had another go at trying to get the small pension pot that is held by Legal And General paid as a lump sum. I only enrolled in the work pension scheme because I had to, but I was only in for a year and a bit, and so it only amounted to around £1200 (if I remember correctly). It seemed so simple to claim it online, and I went through the online form until, almost at the end, it asked for passport or driving licence numbers to prove my identity.

  I do not have a passport, or a driving licence, or a Government ID card. At that point I gave up and sulked for maybe a year before I tried to phone them for advice. After spending ages on hold, during several attempts, I finally got through to an "adviser" who barely understood my problem. She suggested loads of weird ways of proving my identity, and most seemed equally impossible.

  One thing I did do, as a result of that call, was to note down and email address for queries that was given several times during the very long period on hold. Yesterday I attempted to send an email with scans of two very recent letters from The Department Of Work And Pensions (showing my pension "pay rise" from April) and His Majesties Customs And Excise (showing my new tax code from April) plus a few other possible means of identification. It was promptly returned as unknown (email) address.

   At that point I more or less gave up. I did try and find confirmation of the email address, or a possible alternate spelling to the one I tried, but Legal And General's web site is more geared up to take money from you, and not give it away again. The final nail in the coffin was that I can't find the note I made of my login details for their website to try and get more information after logging in. I am so glad that I am not insured by Legal And General. Even if I had a valid claim I can't believe I would ever get any money out of them.

  I hardly did anything else for the rest of the day. I felt so down in the dumps that I could hardly be bothered to try and do anything about it. The only thing I did do was to keep some sort of control over what I ate. At about 4pm I prepared and half cooked my dinner. It was a beef stew with vegetables. I did fully cook it in the end, but I didn't eat it. My dinner was two slices of sourdough bread toast with cheese and ham on one slice, and just cheese on the other.

  The final thing to piss me off yesterday was when I was serving my toast based dinner. One end got stuck to the foil I was toasting it on, and as I tried to carefully release it from the foil one half of the ham, with melted cheese, slid off the toast, onto the floor !
  What should have been a partial anaesthetic to the woes of the day, three bottles of beer, were not very effective at all. The Milk Stout was not too bad, but it was definitely sweet, and I assumed it would be a big source of sugar. The Old Craft Hen was pretty much how I expected it to be - not very nice. It certainly had no sugar in it. It tasted very dry, and I could not bring myself to like it. The King Goblin Imperial beer had a nasty sort of taste that was like some sort of chemical solvent. The worst thing is that I think it was supposed to taste like that.

  All this negativity didn't seem to effect my sleep, and for one brief period in time it might have somehow made part of a dream very nice. I did seem to dream a lot last night. One series of dreamlets was about getting the train to what I think was Peckham Rye station where we changed for an old 2 carriage slam door train running their final services. There are lots of little facts about the dream that I could list, but I think the more important/strange thing was how big that old train was inside. It must have been 15ft wide. Another unusual thing was that the front was like an old London Bus - you could see out the front from the left hand front seats. It was shame that it seemed to be dark outside, and there was little to see.

  Another series of dreamlets probably happened in the later stages of sleep. I seemed to be in a big house. It could have been a hotel, but it seemed like it was a multi storey private house, and I must have been a house guest.  The best of this dream was what I can only describe as a visitor from my past. It was a young woman who I fancied like mad, but never had the nerve to try and take our relationship further. In the dream she was partly naked, and I was patting/caressing her bare bottom while discussing what we might do after I come home from work.

  I guess the rest of that dream could be regarded as just background wallpaper. Despite the weather deteriorating even more compared to yesterday, and including actual rain instead of perceived dampness, I didn't feel quite as bad this morning compared to yesterday morning. I am still not sure I feel that good though. I did wonder if everything I ate yesterday was a good idea, but evidently it was. This morning my blood glucose has dropped 0.1 to 8.3mmol/l. I guess even in the depths of despair I can still be aware of what, and how much I am eating - maybe I do it subconsciously these days.

  My plan was, and maybe still is, to go to The Jolly Farmers like any other Wednesday. I do wonder if going out in the rain is great idea considering I can still feel some after effects of the cold I had. For instance I still have to clear my throat a few times a day, but at least on those few times it is easy to cough up a tiny bit of mucus. I barely notice I am doing it now. I think I will rely on that old standby of seeing how I feel after a hot shower.  If I feel good I'll put on a raincoat, and go to the pub, and if not I guess I'll just mope here at home.