Even the very latest revision of today's forecast shows thick dark cloud all day long, but we just had a brief sunny spell. Like a couple of days ago, the clouds are thick, but also clumpy, and between those clumps a very small patch of blue can be seen. If one lines up with the sun we have a sunny spell. Maybe the clouds will get more homogeneous soon, or maybe they will break up a bit more. Even the BBC forecast, which is often more optimistic, agrees with the Met Office up to late afternoon when the BBC predicts sunny spells for 5pm. Both agree that today may be no more than 7° C, and although the breeze may not be too strong today, there will be enough for wind chill to make it feel no better than 5° C today. Tomorrow may be just as cloudy as today, but it is possible the temperature could be 1° higher.
 
   Yesterday was good in so far as I didn't feel pissed off. The bright sunshine was really uplifting, and an afternoon beer tasting session was the cherry on the cake. Less good was my eating control - it seems that at time I had none, and I ate more than was good for me with particular regard to my blood glucose control.

  I had a fairly lazy morning, and I don't think I even bothered to have a shower until midday. I had had a poor night's sleep, and I think I might have had a snooze after I finished writing yesterday's diary/blog thing. I know I read for a bit, and then closed my eyes. Somehow I can't seem to remember falling asleep, but not remembering could mean I was asleep, so who knows....or cares ?

  After my shower I did a bit of cleaning up ready for the drinking session, and I prepared and part cooked my dinner. I also had some lunch, but I can't remember if it was any more than a couple of rolls with cream cheese and salami in them. The it was a matter of waiting. Michael was first to arrive, and he was followed about 10 minutes later by Jodie. Jodie was not in a big drinking mood because she had a gig or something later in the evening, and so Michael and I had a few extra cans to ourselves. A few of the beers shared between the three of us were mostly nice, and none of those horrible very sour beers that Jodie likes these days.....although I get the impression that even she is finding them a bit extreme lately.

  Jodie left to get the 5.56pm train to Peckham Rye where she should have met her boyfriend, and then changed trains to head in a Hackney direction. Michael actually left a little after Jodie, but only by 10 minutes or so. Once I was on my own I added the last ingredient to my dinner, heaps of red cabbage, put it in the microwave for 15 minutes, and ate it while watching Star Trek on TV.

  I watched the usual TV until 8pm when I usually turn the TV off for a while, but this time, as 9pm approached, when I might have turned the TV back on, I felt like going to sleep. I think I was asleep very soon after 9pm, and possibly just before. I appeared to sleep well for a couple of hours until I woke up needing a pee at about 11.30pm. After all the beer I had drunk I don't think I have to blame diabetes, or medication for that one.

  When I woke up it felt like I had been sleeping on a pile of bricks. After going to the freezing cold toilet I felt even worse when I got back in bed. I felt really cold until I pulled the duvet over me, and then started to feel too hot. I finally got back to sleep, and slept for another couple of hours before waking up feeling cold - and still aching. I think it was during that bit of sleep that I had the first of two dreams that involved Guinness.

  The relevant bit of that dream, and also the only bit I remember with slightly foggy clarity, involved ordering another pint of Guinness. It was just as the pub was about to close in the afternoon, and the barman said he could only serve one person. There was two of us at the bar, and the man next to me was ordering several drinks. I said to serve my "friend" and not me because I was sure my "friend" would be buying me a drink as well (as I slipped a fiver into his hand). That worked, and we both got our last drinks.

  I think the second Guinness themed dream was probably in the last long bit of sleep I had. I had found, although I have no idea where, a voucher for £1 off a pint of Guinness, and used it to buy a pint. I took it back to a table and started drinking. At that point the dream sort of blipped, and I was looking at a notice board near where I was sitting, and noticed a partly covered notice which turned out to a be a different sort of voucher for Guinness.

  It was "A Guinness for a pound" promotion. I took it to the bar, and the Irish barman said "Happy Easter", even though it wasn't, and said the voucher was for last Easter. I looked at it very carefully, and so did the barman, and neither of us could find a date on it. The barman cheerfully gave in, and I got my next pint of Guinness for just £1 ! When I woke up from that dream I needed another pee, although it was far from desperate. I could almost have got up then, but I decided to endure a further hour or two of occasional sleep before I got up.

  My careless eating, and probably the after dinner pack of southern fried chicken flavoured chicken straws were the worst thing, would be strongly implicated in a very bad blood glucose reading. It was right on the red line at 10.00mmol/l. It is just about possible there was one other cause for it to be so high. yesterday morning I only went to the toilet, for a poo, once and it was not a great deal.

  This morning I have already gone twice, and both produced a substantial amount. There is anecdotal evidence that a day where I am effectively constipated, although it didn't feel like it, has some effect on my blood glucose. After all, it does give the digestive tract an extra 24 hours to extract as much energy from those wastes as possible, and that could be worse if what I had eaten 24 hours earlier contained extra carbohydrate (which is converted to sugar in the digestive tract).

  I know one thing, and that is that after this morning's second visit to the toilet I seem to feel better. The peculiar thing is how an excess of waste in the system can cause things like your elbow and right shoulder to ache ! Maybe it is just the everyday morning effect of being up, and moving frees up some of the aching bits. I am not that I feel good enough to force myself outside to do stuff like exercise and exploration, and anyway it is too dull for decent photography today. There is nanoscopic (a thousand times smaller than microscopic) chance I could go to a gig tonight.
  One very minor annoyance for me is that I can never really say when I am cured of a cold or other malady. One case in point concerns my thumbnails. My left thumbnail is pictured above, and one thing to notice is the groove down the middle. It has been there since after I had my quad heart bypass operation in September 2013. I'm only guessing, but it probably took several weeks for some peculiar damage to the nails to grow from the nail bed to the end of the nail.

  That groove was a problem because it was possible to catch, and tear the nail there, and that effect was made a lot worse by a far more irritating problem. The end of the nail was very soft and chalky. It was stupidly easy to break the nail, and for years I used to try and strengthen in with nail varnish. It was a couple of nights ago that I suddenly realised that apart from that groove down the middle, the rest of the nail had recovered, and was strong enough to do things like lift a ring pull on a can of drink.

  What made me very philosophical about it was that I cannot remember when it happened. So many things in life are like that. It is easy to tell exactly when you have hit your thumb with a hammer - the pain is instant, but it fades away slowly, and it is impossible to say when it actually didn't hurt. All you know is that at some point it hurt less, and then you sort of start to ignore it while it finishes healing. I possibly realised the thumbnails had stopped being chalky as much as a year or two, but only in the sense that they were "normal" and therefore insignificant.

  My right thumb was just as chalky, but didn't have a groove down the middle, but like the left thumb it is sort of lumpy. In the picture you can see sort of blemished near the end of the nail, and I guess it won't be until they have grown out that I can claim the nail is back to normal - except for the groove. I assume whatever is causing that will disappear one day in the future. At least now I have been forced to study it more so I can write about it, I can now recognise one marker to look out for - those sort of flat lumpy blemished near the edge of the nail to grow out. Now if only recognising that actual end to a cold, to the nearest minute, was possible !