By now the clouds should be looking thinner, and closer to white, but it is pretty miserable as I write this. Hopefully the sun will break through before midday, and the after should be gloriously sunny, although still not warm at just 11° C. I guess in direct sunshine that 11° C may actually feel nice until you step into a shadow. Clear skies mean the temperature is going to dip quite deeply during the night, and it could be just 4° C (The BBC say 3° C) at sunrise tomorrow. Tomorrow could be even sunnier than today, but the Met Office predict the afternoon high to be no more than 10° C -  (The BBC say 11° C).
 
  There were reasons why yesterday should have been quite a pleasant day. I did several important things, and yet that dull weather seemed to draw any sense of satisfaction away.  After a shower the day started with a shopping trip to Tesco. It was superficially nice, but the negative effects of the grey sky and cold transferred to negative buying - sort of.

  I did get several good bargains in Tesco, although it could be argued that the prices I paid for some stuff that had a Clubcard reduction on it, was more like the price those items should have been before needing a Clubcard reduction. That probably even includes a 70cl bottle of Haig whisky that was £11 cheaper at £17 with a Clubcard. I think it is delicious whisky, but only worth £17 a bottle at any time, anywhere.....or used to be before Brexit.

  I found some cheap stuff on the reduced price shelf, and that was good, although for some things it was bad as well. The pack of boneless chicken thighs only has a measly £1 knocked off the price because they were on the sell by date. While passing the vegetables I noticed some bagged vegetables had a ridiculously small reduction despite half the contents looking seconds away from turning into compost. It is no wonder no one was buying them.

  I don't know why it was that the walk home from Tesco seemed like a bit of a slog - as if I was finishing a 5 mile walk or something. It was nice to get home, and into the warm, and to have a truly terrible lunch. Now when I say terrible I am not talking about the flavours, which were enjoyable, but all the negatives of crap food. I stuffed my face with two "tikka slices" and a pack of satay chicken wraps. The latter almost certainly had a high sugar content, although I will admit I was too scared to check it. All of that lunch probably had a high fat content, and high salt content, but once again I didn't check, and it did taste nice !

  One of my afternoon jobs, once I had let my lunch go down, was to wash a pair of jeans. It was the pair that I was wearing when I slipped over last Monday, and I had been wearing them rather a long time without washing them and after that slip they would have added skin and dried blood inside that came from my grazed knee. Washing jeans by hand takes some healthy manual handling ! I split the wash into two parts so I could rest my hands after the effort of trying to wring those jeans out. The last bit, before they were ready to hang on the clothes horse, required some serious strength to wring out !
  I remembered to take a snap of the dropped kerb, with it's slippery-when-wet granite kerb stones. This was the scene of my pratfall last Monday (or was it Tuesday ?). When dry those granite kerbstones have plenty of grip, but when wet they were incredibly slippery - maybe only with the hiking boots I was wearing. When I slipped the rain had washed them clean, and so there was no nasty black slime that you can see here/ That has been washed up by a car passing too close to the kerb. It was seeing this, and thinking about all the muck I probably sat in (although my bottom came down firmly, very firmly, on the wet pavement, and not on wet slime) that inspired me to wash my jeans.

  I spent a fair amount of yesterday afternoon doing something useful, but quite boring. Some time ago, maybe a few weeks, I mentioned going through old CDR and DVDR disks to copy useful stuff external USB hard disks for more compact storage (one single 2.5inch hard drive can store the equivalent of about a foot high pile of recordable DVD disks). Yesterday I did a bit more work on this never ending job. It was from a couple of recordable DVD disks, and to was not only a copy job, but a sorting job. The two DVDR disks turned out to be identical copies of each other, and that was a relief. They contained back ups of mp3 music files from 5 to 10 years ago, and I copied anything I didn't appear to have into the appropriate part of the file structure of my mp3 back up hard disks. I may have spent 3 or more hours doing it.

  Being bored, and depressed about the grey weather (and the cold) was not a good state of mind to be in when dinner was under two hours away. There was a strong temptation to cook up something very nice, and maybe not too healthy, but I decided to start by stewing the second half of the pack of diced beef left over from the previous night's dinner. I would add the vegetables later. I should have waited for that, but once I got the beef cooking I made a large snack. It was 4 beetroot, pea and lentil "veggie cakes" extremely liberally covered with another "bad thing" - pate with smoked bacon. The very worst thing about this naughty snack is that I didn't really enjoy it. I almost forgot to add that I never did bother with the vegetables, and I ate the diced beef in stock by itself. It was quite nice not having it diluted by other tastes.

  After perusing the electronic programme guide I settled down to watch a couple of hours (or about 20 minutes when the adverts are subtracted) of David Gilmour doing a part Pink Floyd gig in Gdansk. I watched it very carefully, and listened even more carefully for one particular song. Like the last time Sky Arts showed it, the programme guide said it includes the Pink Floyd some "Fat Old Sun". That is one of my favourite (among very many) Pink Floyd songs. I know it was played at the gig, but in order to fit in more hours of adverts, Sky edited it out, and that made me very cross !!!!!!!!!

  That gig was followed by another Pink Floyd gig. I watched some of it, but maybe because I was still seething about being lied to about "Fat Old Sun", I turned off before 10pm (and maybe not long after 9pm. Admittedly I did think I was feeling rather tired too. I brushed my teeth and went to bed where I read for maybe 20 minutes, maybe less. Things are a bit hazy from this point on, but I think I might have fallen asleep quite quickly.

  Like a few nights ago, I woke up at maybe half past midnight, and couldn't seem to get back to sleep again. Part of the problem was that bits of me ached. I think I had slept with my left arm mostly uncovered, and it felt cold and aching. My right elbow and right shoulder was aching as usual, and I had other aches, generally minor, but including a vague sort of stomach ache. Each by itself would have been no problem, but as soon as I found a comfortable for one thing I became aware of a new ache elsewhere.

  It was probably after 1am before I gave in and took a couple of paracetamol tablets. Of course they can take a full hour before they give any relief, and I have no idea if they were fully working before I fell asleep. One oddity is that I only seemed to wake once or twice for a pee, and even then there seemed no urgency about it. It seems to be a habit now of wake up, go for a pee, and then go back to sleep whether that pee was needed or not. I guess it is good training for when I am even older, and there is the dreaded possibility of the bladder getting so weak I could pee the bed. I hope that never happened, but then again I once hoped I would not suffer the other inconveniences of old age.

  I had several more medium to short periods of insomnia before I got up. I know for sure I had some dreams, and I am sure that some were fascinating, but I can't remember a single thing about any of them. I didn't/don't feel all that wonderful this morning. I think it is this grey start to the day, but at least we did just have a single sunny spell that lasted maybe 7 or 8 minutes. Hopefully there will be many more to come.

  I did wonder if my bad eating yesterday might be another cause for not feeling too good. It appears not in the specific case of my blood glucose. This morning it was slightly less than yesterday at 8.4mmol/l. In the grand scheme of things that is close to my most popular averages most months.

  Today I am in with a good chance of eating badly unless I plan ahead. The only thing happening today is that Jodie should be over for an afternoon beer tasting session. There is a small possibility that Michael might join us as well. Provided I prepare, and at least half cook my dinner before getting drunk, I should be safe. I intend to have chicken thighs with mixed, shredded, cabbage and leeks. It is still many hours before boozing time, and I guess I'll find other stuff to do - like laying on my bed with the sun pouring through the windows onto me, and luxuriating in the laziness of it all.....maybe.