I think I'm pinning my hopes on the BBC weather forecast for today. Unlike the Met Office, as in the screenshot above, the BBC thinks there will be lots of sunny spells today, although when I look out the window at the dense covering of clouds I wonder if sunny spells could be a fantasy. At least they both agree that this afternoon could see 15° C. A few days ago the long term forecast for tomorrow was warm and sunny. That seems to have been turned down to some sunny spells and only 15° C in the afternoon. They day after tomorrow was also supposed to be warm and sunny may only see 13° C and a few sunny sunny spells. However, even predicting this afternoon's temperature seems impossible for the great super computers the forecasters use, and all we can say about the day after tomorrow is that it will be somewhere between a snow storm and a heatwave.
 
  Yesterday was yet another day when it seems little happened, or to put it another way, was a day when I had plenty of spare hours on my hands. At least it was a day when I had a shower, and washed my hair, although I am not sure that a shopping trip to Tesco deserved clean hair !

  I only have one theory as to why I needed another shopping trip to Tesco seemingly so soon after that last. Perhaps one reason is because I forgot to buy some things the previous time, and in turn, that was partly caused by limiting what I bought so that it would fit comfortably into a basket, rather than a shopping trolley. One oddity about yesterday's shopping is that I only ate one thing that I bought.

  One other significant thing I did was some some laundry. I don't know if it is the influence of the days seeming to race by now, even the boring days, but it seems I am doing laundry more frequently than I used to. In reality, I do laundry as soon as I have enough to make it worthwhile, and in that respect I am probably doing less because things like t-shirts can last an extra day without a wash when it is not a hot and sweaty day. Once spring starts to turn into summer, if that ever happens, I guess I'll be doing even more laundry.

  I conducted an interesting experiment yesterday. I decided it might be better to eat the first of my spare takeaway portions from the previous night, earlier in the day. I had one for lunch. It was the very unhealthy, in all sorts of ways, "donor meat" and chips. Three minutes in the microwave seemed to restore it nicely, although the chips lost their crispness. On the other hand, more fat from the donor meat made the chips nicer than if they had been reheated alone.

  I still had, and still have, a portion of grilled wings and chips to eat, but I thought that would be too much on the same day as the donor meat and chips. I devised a cunning plan, or as I said above, and experiment to test the limits of stuff. I didn't eat anything more until about 5pm when I ate a couple of oranges. The sugar content of oranges sometime seems like it might be high, but sometimes, and only sometimes, it doesn't seem to affect my blood glucose.
  It was a week or two ago that I was feeling really bored, or depressed, or something like that......maybe, couldn't care less might be a suitable description....anyway, I decided to have a dessert after my dinner, and scoffed a whole tub of Oppo ice cream. It is notably low in calories, although the 84 calories mentioned on the tub in the picture almost refers to just licking the spoon......anyway, it also claims to be lower in sugar than many ice creams.

   That did seem to be the case a few weeks ago because in the morning my blood glucose was high, but still acceptable. One of the things I bought in Tesco, and the only thing fromm that shop I ate yesterday, was the tub of ice cream pictured above. I decided I would have it, and nothing else for my dinner last night. It was very nice, and as I will explain later, I seemed to get away with it.
  I nearly forgot this picture taken at 5.15pm yesterday afternoon. Maybe half an hour before this there was the last sunny spell for the day. The clouds built right up after that, and as can be seen in this picture, the northern sky was not that much different to the southern sky (but easier to photograph) and it was looking very grey. The first rain fell about 15 minutes after I took this snap.

  My evening's entertainment was very dubious last night. The best, but also the worst thing on TV was Guy Harvey's "From The Vaults". It was a double episode and covered the year 1988. That was a year when it seems there was a very small amount of not awful music, and a whole steaming heap of terrible music. We thought the disco years were pretty awful. but at least they also brought Motorhead, but 1988 saw rap, hip hop, and acid house enter the mainstream, and most of us left by the back door to safer genres.

  That double episode was followed by a concert by The Moody Blues. It was a comeback concert, and while the band could still play and sing, they came across as old and musty. I have never been a fan of the Moody Blues - I like some songs, and some of them a lot, but they also have many songs I am indifferent to. After two songs I turned off, and sought out other entertainment - like a book, but also other stuff from the internet.

  It was a night when ideas popped up at random, and I would be getting nice and relaxed before I had to go and look something up. One such things was when a memory of a gig listing came floating through my brain. It was Devanna Music (half of The Dirty Perks as an acoustic duo) were playing in The Joiners Arms in Lewisham. I confirmed it will be tonight, and it starts early-ish at 7pm (I thought an earlier listing said 6pm). I wanted to confirm where The Joiners Arms are. It is the pub that I thought was a strictly Irish pub almost opposite Lewisham Police Station.

  It was a bit annoying that my brain would not shut up last night, and I ended up getting to sleep gone midnight. It was partly caused by the novella I was reading. It was "Dawn Of A Flame" by Stanley G. Weinbaum, and written in 1939. The story was set in a post apocalyptic future when most of civilisation has reverted to an existence similar to medieval times, but as is always the case with these stories, there is a small enclave that has preserved the sciences, and in this story they had a charismatic leader who decided to try and conquer the world, and bring his vision of civilisation back.

  The story was notable for two things. The baddies, who really wanted to be goodies, had hand weapons that must have been the later inspiration for the Star Trek phaser weapons. They also had the means to explode gunpowder from a distance by causing induced high voltages that caused sparking (I thought that even in 1939 it was known to take electrostatic precautions with explosives).

 The other notable thing about the story is that it featured a very beautiful woman (on the side of the baddies, although she was not all bad). The mores of the time meant the write couldn't say what it seems obvious he probably wanted to say about her. He couldn't even bring the seduction scene close to a possible conclusion. It was evidently very frustrating to the hero, although he did keep a very stiff upper lip (and probably a stiff something else). It was also very frustrating for me !!

  Once I did get to sleep I seemed to sleep well, and even woke up feeling closer to refreshed than I have recently. I still had a few of the annoyances of sleep these days - having to get up for a pee a few times in the night, and feeling too hot or too cold - usually in that order after kicking the duvet aside, and waking up later feeling cold. At about 3.30am I turned the heater up full and I was no longer bothered about the temperature, plus of course I woke up to a nice warm room.

  I feel sure I had many interesting dreams, but only one seems to be partly holding on by it's fingernails in my memory. I probably only remember the bit that I do because as I woke up I realised how stupid it was. I know I was in a three or four storey building with a central staircase that went round and round (albeit in a square rather than round). I was near the top and had tried to drink something horrible (maybe something like one of Jodie's disgustingly sour beers).

   I wanted to spit it out, but there was no where to spit it. Then I remembered their was a toilet at the bottom of the staircase. I leaned over the railing, and aimed at the bowl. I almost hit it, but the wind blew some of it astray. I had to go down and wipe the misses up with an old rag. It was only as I woke up that I thought that maybe the stairwell might be a fair place for a toilet, but why didn't it have a roof. Anyone could look down onto anyone doing their "business".

  I have a sort of cunning plan for today. This afternoon should be a beer tasting session with Jodie. It would probably be a fair idea to finish the last of my Friday night takeaway, the grilled winge with chips, for lunch. Those greasy chips should be a good buffer against the alcohol, and there is a wholly unlikely possibility that I might feel OK to go out into Lewisham, and take a few snaps of Devanna Music performing in The Joiners Arms.