There is supposed to be light cloud at the moment, but I still need full lighting indoors to see what I am doing ! Personally I think we are there already, but officially, from 9am it will get darker with dirty grey clouds filling the sky, and from time to time they will rain. The times for rain are boldly predicted in the forecast but I bet they are more random. In an effort to try and find some positives I can say that this morning has started off mild at 9° C, and his afternoon will be 12° C - which seems almost the standard temperature for this month. Having said that, it seems tomorrow may each 14° C. It should be a fairly bright day, and there could even be sunny spells at 3pm (or other random time). There may also be a couple of light showers, but I expect the forecast may change a lot by the time tomorrow arrives.
 
  I finished writing yesterday with a sort of cliff hanger - would Jodie come over in the afternoon for some beers, or not. It turned out the answer was not. It made yesterday a very much blander day, and also a boring day. The only thing I did of note was to hand wash two pairs of lounge pants and a single pair of underpants.

  I guess I could add a bit of tidying up, and stuff like washing and drying the beer glasses could be added to the list of things I did yesterday. Cooking the base of my dinner was another brief diversion, but oddly enough I didn't eat it. In many ways I was glad to be able to be lazy because I was not feeling too good, although paradoxically it was probably being lazy that was one reason for not feeling good.

  The laziness induced stuff was in the form of assorted stiff and aching joints - a selection from the usual ones I complain about these days. On top of that I had a rather vague stomach ache that seemed to be enhanced by some lower back pain (caused by laying on my bed for too long without enough walking to straighten out the muscles). I feel sure the stomach ache was constipation, although it didn't seem to be exactly like it.

  The fact remains that I didn't have a decent poo yesterday. I did have a little one, but it just never felt like it should have been adequate. I might have even written it of as imagined, but I know I didn't imagine some of the vile smelling farts. I let a few go while in the spare bedroom, and when I went in there again, an hour or two later, it smelled a lot like one of the tunnels of the old East London Line until TFL managed to repair the sewer leak, or whatever it was, when the line was rebuilt for the London Overground.

  At about 1pm I had some lunch. It was a very simple lunch of cheese on 4 Marmite flavour rice cakes. I didn't seem to enjoy it as much as I could have done - mainly because of the stomach ache - which I should add was very mild, and a bit intermittent, but never quiet for long enough that I could forget I had it.

  One brief diversion in the afternoon was to take down my St Bernadus brewery card-backed poster that was gathering dust on the staircase. It needed a wash before I could do anything with it.  Once dry I used it as a back drop to show off my collection of St Bernadus beers. I currently have 5 of them, and that includes the "Pater 6" and the "Abbot 12", but I have not got, and can't even remember ever seeing a bottle of "Prior 8".

  After fixing the poster on the wall overlooking the dining room table, where all beer drinking tends to take place, I set out to try and find a source of Prior 8 with it's red label. I did a web search, and initially came up with https://www.beersofeurope.co.uk. I went to their website and quickly realised that while they listed it, it was out of stock.

  To my great annoyance, but maybe also to my relief, I found loads of beers were out of stock. That still meant many were in stock, and many of those looked "interesting". They do free delivery for orders over £60, and it wasn't long before I had an order of 18 beers costing £61.02. I placed the order, and it might even get here in time for Thursday's beer tasting session.

  I have to admit that most of the beer I ordered were to (hopefully) match my tastes, but I did get some that Jodie and/or Michael might like.

  I still hadn't managed to find and order any St Bernadus Prior 8. Amazon had it on their site acting as a front for The Real Ale store. The only problem was that it was a bit expensive, about £4.50 a bottle, and I had to order a case of 12. At first I though that there was no way I wanted to buy 12 bottles, and then I thought "why not ?". I am sure I trust the brewery to make good beer, and so I am sure it will not be a heavy ordeal to drink 12 bottles - only one or two at a session though. So I ordered a crate of 12.

  As dinner time approached I felt quite strange. I did have a fall back plan if Jodie didn't appear in the afternoon, and it was to go to an early starting gig in Bromley. Jodie didn't appear, but my guts still felt mildly uncomfortable. Some of it may have been just gas rather than constipation. In such a state, with the possibility of a sudden urge to use the toilet, put me off going out. That meant I could have dinner at my usual time (between 6 and 7pm).

  The odd thing is that I didn't feel hungry. I have doubts it was anything to do with excess gas or anything like that. On the other hand it is so rare as to be almost unprecedented to not feel hungry at dinner time that it must have been to do with my guts. I could have eaten anyway, but that would just be giving into routine, and I decided that I wouldn't eat last night. It was very easy to do. I had no bad hunger pains, or anything like that.

  Not eating would probably be good for me - particularly at a time when I was doing almost zero exercise. It turned out to be so easy that I was left wondering if I could do it more often. I suppose it all depends on circumstances. Tonight I will definitely have dinner because the meat is already cooked/stewed and all I need do is add vegetables, but I might possibly skip lunch. The trouble is just the thought make me feel hungry !

  I still had some stiff joints and stuff at bed time. I think I blame the weather - maybe because it can't defend itself. Rather than have another poor night's sleep I took a couple of Paracetamols before going to bed. That seemed to work, and I mostly slept OK. I think there was only one part of the night where I seemed to be awake, and thinking about a dream I had just had. It was almost as if I was thinking how I might improve the story if I were writing it.

  I am not sure if that was not just more of the dream, and I was dreaming I was awake. The SciFi book I am reading is about a SciFi writer, and that could have provided the seed for a dream about being awake thinking about a dream. It is probably lucky that I did spend time thinking about the dream, whether awake or still dreaming, because the basic plot of the dream was very thin.

  The dream was about some big alien molluscs who would build a shell around themselves if frightened. Something, and I can't remember if it was ever an actual thing, or just implied, scared them a lot, and the shells they built totally encased them. They were sealed off from the outside world, and so had no idea if it was ever safe to come out. They had to rely on the shell decaying to experience the real world, and that could take several years or more. There was a hint of scatological humour in this dream. The mollusc creatures were the size of a dog, and the full shell they grew made them look exactly like a huge turd !

  I seemed to wake up, ready to get up, rather early this morning - just a few minutes after 6am. Since than I have done the usual - been to the toilet, taken my morning pills, prepared an eaten my breakfast of instant noodles. I was quite happy to go the toilet this morning because it felt like I passed a moderately large stool with no effort. The only trouble was that, at a guess, it hit the bottom of the pan, and dived down to come up on the wrong side of the U bend. Apart from a hint of something just visible poking out from under the U bend, I had not proof of what I thought I had just done. It felt a reasonable amount, but maybe it was tiny.

  Before eating my breakfast, and not eating dinner made a big difference to my blood glucose reading - as would be expected. It was an almost perfect 7.7mmol/l. (Perfect would be my imagined target of 7.5mmol/l, but I have doubts I'll be seeing result that low ever again - unless I can start doing 5+ mile walks several times a week again.

  Today's weather does nothing to inspire me to go out today, and yet I am going to try and raise some enthusiasm for going out for a walk. Maybe it will just be to the shops, but maybe I'll try something more ambitious. One problem at the moment is that I don't feel all that good. It is like I have a worse hangover than I did after getting very drunk last Thursday. Last night I had a couple of whiskies, but not enough to even feel a hint of drunkenness. There is no reason for a hangover this morning, but that is how it feels - complete with headache that is now, thankfully, fading.