The temperature was still 12.5° C at midnight, and this morning it is very mild, but the road does look rather damp. The latest revision to the forecast only shows sunny spells for 10am, 1pm, and 4pm, but the clouds are very mixed at the moment, and we have already had a couple of short sunny spells. The cloud is that "lumpy" sort of cloud that can be thick in places, but does have small gaps where the sun can shine through for short periods. I guess that makes forecasting the real weather correctly almost impossible. The one almost definite positive is 14° C for a few hours from midday. By late tonight there could be heavy rain, but more likely is the temperature dropping to 10° C - which still isn't all that bad. By tomorrow morning it could have dropped to just 4° C which is bad. Lots of sunny spells in the early afternoon may warm the day up to just 8° C.
 
   Yesterday was one of those days that could have been a lot better. The bright start was a positive thing, but the drag of a dangerously high blood glucose level was quite negative. I guess the whole day was ups and downs. It seemed to take a long time before I washed and dressed, ready to go out. I had some very specific shopping in mind.

  The last time I was in Poundstretcher I noticed what I thought were glass food containers with a clip down lid with a gasket in it. I do have a couple of these, but I wanted something bigger that I could cook a bigger dinner in, and I wanted them to be high sided so there would be less chance of a stew boiling over to flood the microwave. When I got to Poundstretcher I was disappointed to find they were not glass, but clear plastic. They suggested they were not suitabloe for very hot liquids, which seemed to rule out cooking in them.

  I might be brave and see what happens if I use one of them in the microwave. I did end up buying three, despite their price, and although it would be a bit expensive to destroy one, I have a theory that maybe they can survive being in the microwave. I also bought a few other things while I was there. I bought two bags of oven baked micro chips. They were a dubious purchase when needing to take care of my food intake with regard to my blood glucose, but I was sure I had eaten a bag of them before, and the next day it hardly made a dent in my blood glucose reading.

  I also bought a couple more of the Reeva, mushroom flavour instant noodle tubs, and two new instant noodles I had not seen before. They were Vietnamese "beef pho" (whatever that is) flavour, and come in Pot Noodle sized containers. I tried one this morning, and while it was not horrible, it was not exciting enough for me to want to buy any more.

  I kept my shopping trip as brief as I could because I was expecting a parcel delivery between 12:00 and 14.30. The first time quoted was obviously nonsense because it didn't leave the depot until gone 12:30 ! The actual delivery took place just minutes before 2pm, or about an hour after I came back from Poundstretcher. That was very early for Amazon, but I think that was the item where I was forced to use "Priority Delivery"...

 ... No, I lie, it was a couple of things that should be arriving today that are supposed to have "priority delivery", and as far as I can see I was not charged for it. It does seem odd that the free delivery came before the priority delivery. It is sort of annoying that my Amazon delivery was split into separate deliveries. Yesterday's delivery was of a laptop mouse.  I spent a little extra money, £9.78, for a model I have used before, and know to be good.

  It is a Logitech M185 wireless mouse. Now one of life's oddities is that I have just checked my two laptops, and neither of them has a Logitech mouse, Both have Kensington wireless mice. One of them uses a long USB wireless receiver, and has to be removed before the laptop goes into it's bag. That is the one I want to replace with the Logitech, but that Logitech mouse seems so familiar that I feel I must own one, and just can't remember where it is.

  It was about half an hour after the Logitech mouse arrived that I remembered to send a text message to warn/remind her that there were no trains through Catford Bridge yesterday. About 15 or 20 minutes later she replied to say she was still in Finland, but was at the time heading to the airport to come home. I quickly took off my drinking clothes, and put my slouching clothes back on.

  With no "beer tasting" going on I had to find some other amusement. I did briefly check what might be on TV, but nothing really took my fancy. I ended up watching a couple of movies I had in my collection, but I can't recall ever watching them before. The first was called "Assignment In Outer Space", originally titled "Space-Men". It was a 1960 Italian made film, and was notable that a "man of colour" played a major part well in advance of Uhura (Nichel West) in the original Star Trek.

  My copy was in extremely faded colour, and poor definition. I found a better copy on the internet archives (there is also a similar quality copy on You Tube, but I was unable to download it). The film was typical early SciFi with little regard to reality, but on the other hand it was not quite as far fetched as some I've seen. The dialogue, possibly that said, or dubbed onto non English speaking actors, was very wooden. It also seems that during editing some bits went missing that would have given some clues as to what was going on at times. It was as if the script was for 110 minutes, but the film distributors would only accept a 90 minute film.

  I can't say I disliked the film, and it seemed good that I had seen it, but I have doubts I will ever watch it again. The second film was very American, and in full colour with stereo sound. It was "Beyond The Stars", and made in 1989. Although it had a SciFi element, I think I would say it was more romance, and the growth from boyhood to manhood. The two main leads were a college boy who was a space fanatic, and dreamed of becoming an astronaut, and an ex-astronaut from the end of the Apollo space programme who had become heavily disillusioned with NASA and the whole of the space programme.

  I don't really know if I enjoyed it or not. Some of it was hackneyed boy meets girls and starts romance, but other bits had some very realistic space/moon sequences. There were also a couple of very emotional scenes toward the end. The film ended without any definite indication that the boy, now man, ever got enlisted into NASA. It actually ends with quite a twist to the story that only had a few hints towards the end when the camera angle of the sequences on the moon was changed.
  I may not have had a beer tasting session with Jodie, but I did enjoy four bottles of beer last night. The two beers on the left, in the picture above, were essentially the same stuff, but one was a Xmas edition. Both were 12% (i.e. VERY strong), and both were VERY nice ! The next beer along, the Pere Noel, was alos very nice, but was just 7% strong. The beer on the right was completely different. I had tried it only a few months back, and remembered it as rather tart, and rather lactic, and indeed it was probably the same last night, but it was a shock to the taste buds after the nice beers. I finished it, but I had to force it down with no enjoyment.

  Those beers, plus a chaser of a large whisky, left me just a little (!) drunk last night, and I can't say what time it was I went to bed, but I doubt it was much later than 9pm. I am pretty sure that I fell asleep really quickly, and slept solidly until about 2pm. After going for a pee I just could not get back to sleep properly. I may have had an occasional 5 minutes sleep, but it was gone 4am before I got anything close to proper sleep. After waking again at about 6am I tried for a long lay in, but just after 7am it was obvious I was not going to sleep any longer.

  There could be several reasons for my bad sleep. The most obvious was a hangover, although I have not had anything like a conventional hangover beyond a slightly woolly feeling. For a lot of last night it was at least 12° C outside, and that made it easy, maybe too easy to keep my bedroom warm. With hindsight I should have turned the heating off completely, and relied on the duvet to keep me warm. I had the heater on low all night, and the room was about the temperature that was too warm with the duvet, and just a tiny bit cool without. I did end up sleeping, when I was sleeping, without the duvet all night.

   One other factor was something akin to a stomach upset. I can't remember any obvious discomfort, but I was doing some vile farts during the night. I guess I was over inflated ! It wasn't until I got up and went to the toilet that I realised how much I needed to have a poo. There was no question of constipation this morning, and yet there was nothing like diarrhoea - it was just one big WHOOSH, and I thought it was all over until 5 minutes later I had to get back to the toilet to do it all over again !

  Considering how high my blood glucose was yesterday morning, I didn't follow all my rules to get it it down. In fact I consider I was a bit reckless. I certainly didn't fast like I felt I should have done. My lunch was almost the final bit of my Indian takeaway from two days ago. It was a vegetable curry side dish served over a pilau rice. I probably only ate about half the rice. Then there was also a middle of the day snack of one of the packets of baked micro chips. Dinner was a far more sensible skinless chicken with cauliflower and broccoli.

  I was expecting disaster when I checked my blood glucose this morning, but I couldn't have been more pessimistic. This morning it was right down at a very good 8.2mmol/l. I have a suspicion that the way my bowels must have almost completely emptied themselves this morning had something to do with it. I immediately celebrated by having a double breakfast of one small tomato flavour Polish instant noodles, and one of the Vietnamese instant noodles I bought in Poundstretcher yesterday (which was also a moderately small portion).

  My original plans for today were based on the simple fact that I thought most of today would be warm and sunny like yesterday. I imagined going out and doing some rail photography. I even got my Canon 600D DSLR camera out, and topped up the battery thinking I would be using it today. What I didn't know was that much of today will be dull even if it is warm (or would be warm in the sun).

   There was one sunny spells when I started writing that lasted little more than 5 minutes. After that it was dull enough to make me think of rain until 5 minutes ago when there was about a minute long sunny spell. It could be warm enough for a walk in the park or something, but photography in overcast conditions rarely produces good pictures. Of course the biggest problem now is that I am back in that interminable condition of waiting for the man from Amazon. I expect it will be a very late delivery today, but I can't count on that. I may have some freedom this morning, but I think I am stuck in again, with little to do, for most of today.