I would dispute the heavy rain shown in the forecast above for the start of this morning. It is certainly very wet outside, but it looks more like the result of a long period of drizzle. The BBC comes closer to reality at the moment, and it presents a very simple forecast - light rain almost all day, and the temperature starting at 10° C, rising to 12° C, and then cooling off again. They do show heavy rain for 3pm, 6pm, and 7pm. Meanwhile The Met Office seen to feel that all rain today will be heavy rain, but it could be dry between 10am and midday. In the latest revision they have simplified the temperature profile. They say it will rise a single degree from 10° C to 11° C, and then fall back to 10° C. Tomorrow may possibly be generally dry, but there will be thick clouds and no sunshine at all. The morning and evening will probably be several degrees cooler than today, but the afternoon may be the same 11° C.
 
  I had another pleasant, and mostly lazy sort of day yesterday. After spending a few hours writing from the start of the morning I embarked on a long, but very easy job. It all started when I saw a picture of the new FAB 1, Lady Penelope's car from the Thunderbirds reboot (or massacre as far as I can see). The new car, instead of being a very elegant Rolls Royce, as befits an English lady, is some horrendous American monstrosity. I have a horrible feeling that all the "actors" will have broad American accents, and it will all be very horrible.

  It does occur to me that maybe the Americanized film has already been released, but has rightfully bombed, and been conveniently forgotten. In fact I think I have a feint memory of starting to watch a new series of Thunderbirds years ago, and turning off in disgust. The general topic reminded me that I have several Thunderbirds DVDs. Three of them I seemed to have bought from Tesco, but the other two were actually magazine cover disks.

  One thing I had never done before was to rip them into mp4 files to store on my PC backup disks. Doing just that was my simple, although long task that took until just after 3pm to finish. I am glad I now have backups of those DVDs because one of them had started to deteriorate. I had to scrub it clean with alcohol before I could cleanly (I hope) extract the video data, and convert it to mp4 files.

  The afternoon, from an early start at 3pm, was devoted to a beer tasting session. I think I mentioned yesterday that my super high blood glucose reading meant I had to be very careful about what I ate. I skipped my usual breakfast, but I did allow myself a handful of salted peanuts. Just before drinking I had a single beetroot, lentil and pea "veggie cake" with two slices of ready sliced Edam cheese on it. That was the lightest lunch I have had in ages !

  Jodie was the first to arrive, and she was unusually early at 3pm. She had brought a few beers with her. One was a 13% dark and syrupy feeling stout. It was very, very nice. We thought we would get it out of the way before Michael arrived at 3.30pm. Many of the beer we had yesterday were sort of lagers, or similar brews. Fortunately none were English brewed, and pasteurised before all the sugar had turned to alcohol. That is the big danger of most "high street" bought lagers.

  Jodie left before Michael because she had an appointment to keep, and Michael left very soon after because he too had an appointment, but his was with Star Trek on his TV at home. That suited me fine because I too wanted watch Star Trek. It was hard to resist having my dinner too early, but I think I held out for almost an hour before I had my very simple dinner of stewed (braised ?) chicken breasts with sprouts.

  After dinner things got rather hazy because I didn't seem to feel like I had got drunk (or maybe drunk enough) and I had a couple of large whiskies. I can't seem to remember if I bothered to watch QI at 8.20pm. It is possible I did watch some or all of it, but I seem to think that when Star Trek:Voyager finished at 8pm I went to bed. Up to that point I can be sure that happened, but instead of just reading until 8.20pm, for QI, I think I brushed my teeth, and actually went to bed where I fell asleep really quickly.

  When I do know was that the next thing I remember was waking up just before half past midnight, and feeling fresh as a daisy.....well maybe not quite that fresh, but it certainly felt that I had had enough sleep. I was awake until almost 4am. It is possible that I may have drifted into and out of sleep once or twice in all that time. I know that at 3am I was feeling uncomfortable, and made a very unusual middle of the night visit to the toilet where I did a moderate sized poo.

  I still didn't feel all that comfortable, but it was better than before. Having finally got to sleep at around 4am I only managed to stay asleep for a couple of hours, and in the next hour I had what could be described as short snoozes until I realised I might as well get up. I can't recall having any special reason to not check my blood glucose almost straight away, as I do most morning, but I did a few extra yawns and stretches before I went to the toilet.

  I expected a continuation of what I did at 3am, but all I managed was a small pee. Once that was done I checked my blood glucose, and was delighted to see it had come down from yesterdays; dangerous 10.6mmol/l. All my fasting, and safe dinner, meant my blood glucose had come right down to a wonderful 7.2mmol/l - breaking a record for lowest reading since the last day of January - which I am sure was a fluke. (It was an all time low of just 6.5mmol/l).

  I can't say I feel very wonderful today. I guess some of it is hangover, and some is tiredness after a poor night's sleep, but much of it can be blamed on the awful grey and wet weather. I was planning on doing a bit of shopping today. In fact some longer term planning was to go out somewhere, but that was before I had any inkling about today's atrocious weather.  I might still dare to go out and get some shopping, but mostly I will stay indoors with the heater on. I expect I'll fill in some of the time watching an episode or more of the real Thunderbirds.