I think the first light rain fell later than shown in the screenshot above. It might have been 8am, but it doesn't seem to have been heavy rain. The latest revision agrees that the last rain should fall at 1pm. It still shows sunny spells for some of this afternoon. The maximum temperature may be just 13° C. Tomorrow's temperature could be just 12° C (although that is still pretty good compared to earlier in the month. The current forecast shows the afternoon being bright, but with light rain. The morning and evening may be quite dull.
 
   I had quite a good day yesterday. The morning was not terribly exciting, although the start of the sunny spells was very uplifting. On a different day I might have been a bit irked that the trains were on strike. It could otherwise have been a pleasant time for a ride on a train, but I had better distractions in the afternoon.

  Things started to liven up when Michael sent me a message asking if I would like him to get me some 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke while he was out in his car doing some shopping. As usual I said "yes please". It was a good wake up call to have my morning shower (at gone midday), and to prepare the dining room for a beer drinking session. Yesterday both Michael and Jodie joined me in sampling some good beers.

  Many of the beers we had were only in the region of 5%, and when a bottle or can is split three ways that is not a lot to get drunk on, but later on I did open a couple of stronger beers. At the end, before the traditional tot of whisky, I opened a bottle of 12% beer. Michael and Jodie both said it was too strong, but they both accepted a very small glass so they could taste it. Michael didn't like it, but Jodie said it would be good at a different time. I thought it was wonderful, although maybe even I would draw the line at another bottle.

  I think I had two tots of whisky at the end, and I definitely had a very much larger glass of whisky to wash my dinner down. I had eaten very sensibly, in terms of my blood glucose, but maybe not so sensibly for soaking up booze, until dinner time. My dinner was very sensible for my blood glucose. I am glad I had prepared and part cooked it a lot earlier or I might have been tempted to have eaten something a lot less safe than just stewed diced beef and a heaps of white cabbage.

  Maybe if I hadn't been so drunk I might have stayed satisfied with that dinner, but I got a bad itch to eat what could be loosely described as a dessert. It was a whole, medium sized, bag of baked, mushroom flavoured, crisps. They were very nice - as far as I can remember eating them. I know I couldn't stop once I started. I fear I will have to buy another packet, and eat them sober, and at a more leisurely pace to savour them better.

  I watched a selection of  Star Treks last night, and finished with an episode of Voyager. By that time the booze had really taken it's worst effect (or maybe second worse) effect on me - I can't remember anything about it, but then again Voyager was one of the Star Treks that often never fully grabbed my attention. As soon as it finished I went and brushed my teeth with the idea I would read in bed until it was time for sleep.

  That is exactly what I did, but I don't think I read more than a single page before I turned out the light, and instantly fell asleep. I doubt it was any later than 8.30pm, and possibly 10 or 15 minutes earlier. The next thing I knew was that it was 10:38pm (I am not sure why I seem to remember the exact time), and I woke up needing a pee. I was unsteady on my feet, and I had a real skull cracker of a hangover headache.

  I took a couple of Ibuprofen tablets, and maybe half an hour later I was able to fall asleep again. The rest of my night was a mix of short periods of insomnia, and then surprise when I noticed a couple of hours had passed by. During all that time I had two interesting dreams, but I only seem to remember one. It involved a visit to where my friend Aleemah works - in a Government building as a civil servant.

  There seemed to be no security in this building, and I was one of two people visiting her for no apparent reason. The other person, also a man, was one of her several loony friends. He said he was doing research trying to prove the American army was using behaviour altering chemicals. Back in the real work declassified information showed they one did consider LSD and other psychotropic drugs as battlefield weapons.

  The loony said he was trying to prove they used chemicals derived from human blood to alter people's minds. He was sort of right, but mostly wrong. Once again, back in the real world those chemicals are known as pheromones, and the real unknown is whether humans have got the receptors to detect those pheromones. Many animals have many such receptors, and insects have their lives ruled by these chemicals. Humans are known to react to one in particular - Oxytocin. It is sometimes called the love pheromone because it is used to bind mother to baby, and also lover to lover.

  Meanwhile, the loony was going round trying to get blood samples from anyone who would give them. He used a similar tool to that used by diabetics to get a tiny bead of blood to analyse in a blood glucose meter - a thing I am very familiar with. Probably one of the strangest aspects of this dream was how it faded out into real life. Of course it is a state of mind where it is difficult to say anything is real, but it did seem I started to remember about stuff I had read about human pheromones during the dream, and then continued to consider it after waking up.

  I had hoped that in writing those last two paragraphs I would remember the other dream that I though was notable, but it seems I can't even remember the theme, let alone any of the action in it.  What I do remember was that I got up earlier than anticipated, and strangely seemed to feel OK, or almost OK. In one respect I was good - my blood glucose had dropped right down to a close to ideal 8.2mmol/l. The bad, or was it good? was that after checking my blood glucose I had to rush to the toilet where I seemed to do an economy sized poo ! It is possible, but unlikely, that it was a whole day's worth in one sitting !

  This morning I thought I was feeling fairly good, particularly after how drunk I was last night, but now I seem to be feeling sort of fatigued, and my concentration is wavering. I almost forgot there were a few pictures I was going to show.
  The big picture was taken at 11:40am yesterday, and shows one of the ragged areas of blue sky that would allow the sun to shine. A few hours later most of the clouds had broken up into fluffy blobs with plenty of space around then for the sun to shine. The smaller picture is proof that at 1.13pm the temperature had reached, and approximately peaked at 15.3° C. I think it nearly hit 16° C a bit later. That was good enough to open the bathroom window, and a mild night meant that I left it open overnight, and this morning it didn't feel cold and uncomfortable to go and sit on the toilet in there.

  For years now, probably over ten years, I have been a customer of giffgaff.com for my mobile phone voice and data. It remains very cheap. I don't use a lot of data because most things I do on my desktop PC. These days I buy just 1GB of mobile data for £6 and that lasts me a month with some to spare. Until now I have thought that they are very good, but now they have taken to spamming me a lot.

  I wouldn't mind so much but it is only a few months since I got a new phone, and I won't need to upgrade for a year or two. I also wouldn't mind so much if they had cheap phones, but even their secondhand/refreshed phones tend to be expensive models, and many are either iPhones or Samsung phones - both makes I don't care for. My next phone, if I can find a cheap enough one on the secondhand market, will be a Huawei P40 pro - the next model up to my current P30....On the other hand there are aspects of my P30 that are irritating. The phone has too much artificial "intelligence" built in, and thinks it knows better than I do about how I want to use my phone or take pictures. That is not to say that the artificial intelligence is not completely useless. Providing it can stay dormant until I want to use it, it can do some magic photography such as night shots.

  ...and back to today. This wet and gloomy start to the day is not uplifting at all, and combined with the (fortunately) non painful remnants of my hangover, means that I am not inclined to do much today, if indeed I do anything at all ! Maybe when (and if) the sun comes out this afternoon I may be tempted to go for a walk in the linear park to see some of the hard work the Friends Of The River Pool have done, but somehow I suspect I just won't be bovvered !