Contrary to what the forecast seems to suggest, it is fairly bright at the moment, and from time to time it sometimes seems that the sun could break through, or find a gap in the clouds. It hasn't happened yet, and may never happen, but fingers crossed.....  The best thing about today is that it should stay dry, and the late afternoon temperature could reach 18° C. Several revisions later, and the forecast hasn't really changed, which could be a good thing, and that includes the 4 hours of sunny spells before sunset - which may be sort of nice. Apart from a dull time between 8am and 11am, tomorrow could be bright with lots of sunny spells, and even full sunshine later in the day. It is a shame that for all that sunshine it could be a degree cooler than today, but I guess 17° C is still pretty good after all the colder days recently.
 
   I don't think there could be a more mixed day than yesterday. It was just littered with good and bad things. On the whole it was still very enjoyable except for very late evening, and also this morning which was a disaster ! It all started with a walk to the pharmacy to collect my latest repeat prescription. Even this simple thing was good and bad.

  I estimated that if I took the indirect route to the pharmacy, going via the high street, it would be sufficient distance to do another 6 minute walk test. In fact it was almost exactly the right distance. I walked as fast as I could, and apart from a brief slow down to let a mother and child pass (who had not intention to try and let me pass, and may not have even noticed me) I was able to walk on level ground, and keep the speed up.

  Yesterday I managed 513 metres. The day before it was only 491 metres. Of course the day before yesterday I had the incline to go on the approach to Catford Bridge station, and I had 10 or 15 seconds spare with nowhere to go. It is possible my speed was actually less yesterday than the faster bits of the day before.

  There is actually another bit to the "6 minute walking test" that I have not bothered to comment on, or indeed take much notice of before yesterday. It is an estimate of how breathless you are. My score on that part would be very low, where low is better. One measure that doesn't need instruments is how easy it is to talk. At the end of both of my 6 minute walking tests I was able to talk with no pauses for breaths. That should indicate good lungs, or it may just be the fact that my legs tire before I am running out of breath.

  The walk test was good news, and in a sort of masochistic way, almost enjoyable. Everything should have been fine, but when I got home and looked through my big bag of assorted drugs I found two items missing. They were the low dose aspirin tablets I take daily, and the blood glucose test strips that I also use daily. There was nothing for it but to rush back to the pharmacy.

  I didn't rush as part of any test, but I did walk as fast as I could, and I doubt that was a lot less fast than the first walk to the pharmacy, although I did go the direct route which is probably closer to 400 metres or maybe even a bit less. When I got in the pharmacy, and was noticed, I asked about the missing items. They rummaged around a bit before announcing both were out of stock, and that I could check today to see if they had arrived.

  When I was back home again it was lunch time, and like the day before, I had another couple of perfectly cooked small meat and potato pies. I found out why they pies looked nothing like the picture on the bag. They used minced meat instead of the expected chunks, and the meat is probably lamb which has a much lighter colour. I made a particular point of carefully looking at the pie filling. It did seem to be a few chunks of potato among mainly mashed potato with small specks of minced meat if you looked carefully.

  With lunch eaten I mostly just hung around doing little until Jodie arrived earlier than expected for our boozing/beer tasting session. She brought a couple of cans with her. It may have been half an hour later when Michael arrived, also bringing a few beers with him. It was just starting to rain when he arrived, but I think it was several hours before the rain became heavier.

  I ended up getting quite drunk during the drinking session. I had warned Michael earlier that I would have liked to stay sober enough to go to a Caz And Steve Duo gig in The Honor Oak pub last night, but the chances were I would end up far too drunk to go out. It is probably just as well that I did get drunk because I would not have been keen going out in what was sometimes heavy rain last night. In that respect, staying sober would have been a waste of a good session.

  There were some simple reason why I got as drunk as I did. One was that Jodie was trying to stay sober before going out to a gig, or other drinking excuse later. She was only taking just enough to taste from the cans of beer, and leaving me and Michael to finish them, and then, because some of them were strong beers, Michael didn't want much more than I taste. I almost had several cans to myself.

  One beer in particular was a strange brew from one of those strange hipster breweries, and it was pina colada flavoured. It should have been the sort of thing that Jodie liked, and she had bought it on that expectation, but she hated it. Michael thought it was pretty horrible too. I thought it was strange, but rather nice, and ended up guzzling most of it myself. There was another beer that Jodie pronounced to be "minging", but I thought was a bit of an edge case, but easily drinkable.

  Jodie left first to catch a train, and Michael left in pouring rain 20 minutes later so he could rush home in time to settle down to watch Star Trek: Voyager (because he fancies Captain Janeway !). At that point I had not prepared any dinner, and decided I would order a takeaway. I was inspired by a flyer I had found under a pile of my old paperwork. The significant thing was it boldly said "Order direct, don't pay Just eat service charge".

  Unfortunately that Kebab shop/restaurant seems to have gone out of business. I did a search for local kebab shops that did online orders. The first one seemed good, but I noticed the link to the menu wanted to take me to Just Eats web pages, and so I killed that attempt, and found another one which had it's own ordering menu. Both unfortunately and fortunately it was actually a Turkish restaurant selling authentic food rather than the kebabs we know and love.

  They still listed chicken and lamb shish kebabs, but they were not in the usual form. I ordered one of each plus some other stuff. One such extra was Lahmacun. I used to buy that from the little supermarket on Catford Bridge when it was mostly Turkish. It is a thin layer of lamb mince on a thin, almost but not quite, crispy bread base with some coriander, and lemon juice. It is really delicious, but I haven't had any for many years.

  I was possibly a bit extravagant with what I ordered, but I was in an experimental, as well as drunken mood. I think I may have saved up to £10 by ordering direct, instead of via Just Eat, and without having used the place before, I obviously can't be sure, but I think the food ordered arrived faster than Just Eat might have got it here. I still have a few bits and pieces I will use later - particularly the chunks of flat bread (not pitta) that came with it. I think I'll be using that for cheese on toast.

  I lost track of time last night, but I think I went to bed soon after Star Trek: Voyager finished at 8pm. It seems like I fell into a deep sleep very quickly, and I possible slept solidly for about 4 hours. It was towards the end of that bit of sleep that I had the most vivid, and completely realistic dream. I dreamed that I had woken up just as the first hints of daylight were appearing. My clock said it was not quite 5am, and so I went back to sleep until I woke up at about 5.30am. That was still too early so I went back to sleep hoping to wake up maybe an hour later. When I woke up next time it was for real, and I couldn't work out how the clock said it was just gone midnight. Of course one explanation is that today is Saturday and I slept through Friday !

  I couldn't get back to sleep again for various reasons. One reason was some chest pains that I was sure were acid indigestion. I took a couple of Gaviscon tablets, and that calmed that part of the pain down. My chest still hurt, but that was just my usual ribs and scar tissue aching after I may have been thrashing around in bed while I was asleep. As well as a few other things like stiff legs, there was one other source of discomfort that I didn't initially realise how significant it was.

  Yesterday morning I went to the toilet twice, and each time I passed a fair sized poo. I was not really expecting to have to go again until this morning. Well I suppose almost 2am was "this morning". I had been passing a lot of wind, and I thought that was all it was until almost 2am when I dropped a very large load in the toilet. I felt better for it, but I was quite cautious as to whether the process was complete, and I did end up going back to the toilet once more, but that was just more wind.

  It might have been almost 3am before I finally got back to sleep. I was partly impeded by the old too hot/too cold problem. Last night was quite a warm night, around 13° C according to my thermometers. That is still too cool to sleep uncovered, but it also seemed too warm to pull the duvet over me. I did my best to compromise with an arm and a leg uncovered, but at around 5am I turned the heater up full, and kicked the duvet aside.

  Despite losing out on a big chunk of sleep, I still seemed to wake up at 6.30am knowing I had to get up. There was no reason why I needed to get up then. I think I had just, somehow, run out of sleep. I continued my usual routine, and went to the toilet when I got up. I was rather surprised that I seemed to go (as in have a poo) that was typical of any morning except a morning where I had passed so much in the middle of the night. I have a theory that much of it was probably the fibrous remains of all the cabbage and leek I have eaten recently. I guess it is great for colonic health, but sometimes it can be a nuisance.

  The biggest nuisance was when I checked my blood glucose reading. Maybe one or two of the slightly sweet beers I had, particularly the Pina Colada flavoured beer, was not so good for me, but that very nice Turkish food must have contained a lot of sugar. This morning my blood glucose reading was a shocking 11.1mmol/l  - that is well over the red line ! I must admit I have eaten a half a handful of salted peanuts to stop the taste of the cod liver oil capsule I took this morning from repeating, but I really do need to fast until dinner time today, and make dinner as safe as I can.

  It is surprisingly mild today. My thermometers are giving mixed readings at the moment. Some of it is probably thermal inertia from the bricks they are mounted on, and maybe some is their exposure to the sky (which radiates some infra red even when overcast). It would be good to get out for a walk today, but I don't feel too keen on going out under a grey sky. Besides which, I feel I would like to try and catch up on some missed sleep. Having said that, I wonder how much I did miss. It seems I probably got a very solid 4 hours sleep before I woke up to all my early hour troubles. I think I'll play today by ear.