The forecast was just about correct when it predicted 7am to be quite bright. The sun was too low to do any more than light up the tops of some buildings, but it was a dry hour. The latest revision to the forecast only shows 11am and 7pm as being dry. Every other hour is shown as wet - mostly light rain, but 3pm could feature heavy rain. The afternoon temperature could be 7° C, or 2° less cold than yesterday, but even at 7° C it will still feel like winter.  There is a profound difference between the BBC and Met Office forecasts for tomorrow. The Met Office says the first half of the day will be grey, and the second half a bit brighter, but both halves should be dry after some very early morning drizzle. There might even be some sunny spells at 5pm. The BBC show a far more awful forecast that includes rain for most of the day, and some of it may fall as sleet. Both forecasters show an afternoon temperature of just 4° C. Wednesday could be even colder at just 3° C, and may include snow in the morning.
 
   Yesterday was another day that was both good and bad. Generally speaking the morning was good, and the afternoon bad, and the evening even worse ! One good thing for the whole of yesterday is that I didn't seem to ache as much as I did the day before. I can think of no obvious reason for this unless it is a viral thing like long covid, and maybe it is long covid. Whatever it is, it is not being improved by cold, grey, miserable days. I need hot sunshine !
  One of the highlights of the morning was seeing this green bus pulling up at the bus stand behind the multi-storey car park next to Tesco. I think the only other time I saw this bus was some weeks ago, and it passed me so quickly I didn't get a chance to get a camera out to snap it.
  I suspect the bus is actually a regular bus on the 160 bus route, but I have spent so little time outside this winter/spring that I have only seen it twice now. The panel on the side say it is owned by The South East London & Kent Bus Company - one of the very early private bus companies after the buses were privatised, and I think was originally based in Catford Garage. They are now based in East London, and trade as Stagecoach London.

  I am not a regular bus spotter, but the occasional one has to be snapped. It was fortunate I was on my way to get some shopping from Savers and also Poundstretcher, when I saw. I bought quite a few things from Savers, including toilet cleaner, and mouthwash, but the actual reason for going was to top up my vitamin supplies. I guess it is a Brexit thing that they had no cod liver oil capsules. They will probably appear in a week or two after the ship, or whatever, finally makes it's creaking way through our crappy, under funded, and under staffed customs inspection.

  In Poundstretcher I mainly bought food, although I also bought a lot of bulbs for the back garden. They probably should be planted now, or even earlier, but I refuse to do any gardening in the damp and cold. The food items were mainly two items. One was a few Reeva instant noodles. They come in a cardboard tub that doubles as a container to hydrate them in. The "novelty" this time is that they had mushroom flavour. Prior to yesterday I only ever saw curry or chicken flavour.

  The other food item was some matchstick sized baked chips. One was tomato ketchup flavour, and the other was cheese flavour. There were two attractive things about them beside the flavours. They came in a very light feeling big bag, and closer inspection showed an apparent very low sugar content. They were quite greasy, and so not exactly healthy, but I survived one whole bag for my lunch - it was only supposed to be a quick taste, but I got carried away !

  I'll interupt the narrative at this point to say that despite both weather forecasters gloomy predictions, we are enjoying a sunny spell as I type this at 10am !

  It took a bit of time to get motivated, but I finally started doing some useful stuff in the afternoon - copying more old data CDs to hard disk. Sometimes many years pass before you realise the fruits of your labours. Some of the old radio programs just had very simple file names like a, b, c, etc. This was originally to make sure they were played in the right order. What I found is that I had also given them id3 tags that contained essential information like whose show it was, and what date it was for broadcasting. It made adding them to the archives so much easier.

  I think it got to around 5pm, and I was getting bored with that job, and although it was still early, I began to think about dinner. I didn't actually have dinner until about half past six. It was supposed to be stewed beef with red cabbage. The beef was just about cooked, and all I had to do was added the red cabbage, and zap it in the microwave for 15 minutes, but for some reason I found I didn't fancy that. My dinner was a bit odd - more like "tea" or supper. It was three lentil and pea veggie cakes with ham and mustard, and maybe 10 rice crackers (not much bigger than a 50p piece) used to scoop up cream cheese. I washed it down with a large whisky.

  I think it was before dinner that I checked to see what was on TV. It was most disappointing. There was a big fat zero of programmes I fancied watching. I had watched all my recordings of Futurama, and I didn't have anything else I fancied watching. I did end up watching an ancient episode of Danger Man, but I have found that series hasn't worn well over the years. By 7pm I thought I might as well go to bed.

  I didn't go to bed then, and it would turn out that was a good idea. There were a couple of other things I thought In would do first. One, and the most significant, was to order some more beers from Beer Merchants (dot com). I selected them purely for myself, although I suspect there may be one or two Jodie will claim she wants to taste, but never gets around to it "because they are too strong". They are all beers from Belgium, and indeed most of them are selected to be very strong. The good thing about strong Belgium beers, particularly those brewed by monasteries, is they are brewed for flavour first, and the strength is just a by product of that.

  I think it was about 8pm when I actually went to bed. I started to read, but the book I chose to read, "Eternity" by Greg Bear is very dry and stodgy. I think the problem is that it is a sequel, and I don't seem to have the book it was a sequel to. It lacks a preface to tell about the first or previous book(s) and just launches straight into the story with no clue about some of the characters, and particularly the aliens. I assume if I grit my teeth and continue reading I will slowly learn about stuff that is important, but I am not sure if I have the patience.

  I think I put the book down at about 8.30pm, and tried to go to sleep. If it had been in the afternoon I would probably have had no rouble dozing off, but last night I tossed and turned until almost 11pm before I finally fell into a deep sleep. I think I had an occasional minute or so of sleep before then, but just breathing in was enough to wake me - maybe. Once I finally fell into a deep sleep I seemed to sleep well all night until about 4am when my sleep seemed lighter. I had woken a few times prior to that for a pee, but from 4am I seemed to wake easier.

  It was also after 4am that I know I had a lot of dreams - probably because I was waking up every 20 to 40 minutes, and I would remember some of the dream as I woke up. I'm racking my brains, but I can't seem to recall even a vague plot for some dreams, and even if I can remember something, there doesn't seem to be enough left to describe. At (I think) 6.30am I decided to get up, and that was when the last dream memories seemed to drain away through the cracks in my brain.

  Last night, a couple of hours after I had eaten my strange dinner, I got curious, and checked my blood glucose. Usually it is very high soon after eating, but last night it was just 8.2mmol/l. That made me optimistic that it would be even lower this morning. It wasn't ! It had risen to 8.6mmol/l. That is OK as figures go, but it was rather surprising. It could be to do with what I think I was saying yesterday (or recently) about how constipation can give extra time for the digestive tract to extract more sugars from what should be the wastes. Yesterday I think I only had a quite small poo in the morning, and this morning nothing has happened, although yesterday, and so far this morning I don't feel any real discomfort - although there is the mental anguish of knowing something is going to happen sooner or later, and I don't want it to happen when I am out somewhere.

  One good thing this morning is that I have already had an email from DHL saying they have issued a parcel number for my beer delivery. They should get the parcel, or actually a box, from Beer Merchants much later today, and very often they will do an overnight delivery. I could have my delicious Belgium beers possibly before tomorrow lunchtime. At worst they should be here Wednesday morning because it is my plan to tramp through the possible snow to the pub on Wednesday.

  Today I have a couple of possible plans. One is to get some shopping from Aldi, although shopping in Aldi does not seem the fun it used to be, but at least their toilet paper is cheaper than Tesco ! The other possible plan is a sort of double barrelled plan. The first, and more definite part is to take a walk to the station to get a copy of The Metro, and then either take it straight home, or go to a pub, maybe even The Black Cat, and do the crossword puzzles while drinking a Guinness.