It was a warm night, and it was 14° C at midnight. It cooled off a couple of degrees by sunrise, but is slowly climbing, and could reach 18° C again today. It seems highly likely there will be rain today, but the time and intensity seems to keep changing every time the forecast is revised. The more significant difference in the latest revision is that the thundery showers, seen in the early morning screenshot above, have no been replaced with light showers. Heavy rain might still be possible at 11am and 4pm. There might even be some sunny spells between showers today. The BBC forecast said it should be raining right now, but there is no sign of rail yet, and the clouds don't seem like rain clouds. The rest of the BBC forecast says the rain should be over by 4pm, and sunny spells and even full sunshine could follow until sunset. Tomorrow could be a bit grey, and probably wet. The BBC gives a 70% chance of rain for a lot of the day, but the Met Office shows a lower chance except at 4pm when they say a 80% chance of rain.
 
  Most of yesterday was a good day, although the wheels fell off later in the evening and overnight. I don't feel too bright this morning after a troubled night, but more about that later. The highlight of the (late) morning was a shopping trip to Tesco.

  It was one of those shopping trips where I had to think ahead because I wanted to top up my stocks of what could be called long life foods - mainly frozen or instant noodles, but including baked beans. I hadn't seen that variety of beans before. They were healthy eating, HP branded baked beans. Two things made that interesting. I once compared the sugar content in various makes of baked beans. If I recall correctly it was HP that came out lower than even Heinz low sugar beans, although that wasn't so hard because Heinz seem to put shitloads of sugar in all their products - including so called low sugar versions. The other good thing was that the HP beans were on special offer - £1 each, or 4 cans for £2.50.

  Other stuff I bought for hopefully medium to long term storage was frozen sausages, frozen meat and potato pies, and two tubs of Oppo, fairly low sugar ice cream.  The meat and potato pies were the same ones I was saying were not very good last week some time. I guess their simplicity of cooking is a plus point, and once I realised they did have some sort of pale minced meat (possibly lamb) in them they went up a tiny notch. I'll probably still moan about them when I come to eat them.

  I didn't buy any bottles of Diet Coke because I knew Michael would be getting 4 bottles for me. That gave me plenty of room in my ruck sack for a one litre bottle of Haig Whiskey - £10 off when bought with a Clubcard. I also bought 4 cans of beer, and I think I probably filled some of the remaining space left in my rucksack with packets of instant noodles. I did buy some stuff for almost instant use - stuff like some green vegetables, and a pack of 6 pork sausages.

  Walking to Tesco did not seem quite so free and easy as usually, and walking home was definitely harder than usual. My legs and knees felt rather stiff. I assumed it was because of the expected rain. In one forecast some rain was expected yesterday. Later on, when I mentioned my stiff legs to Michael he said exactly the same thing about the change of weather affecting his legs. Having said that, as I write this the sun has come out. The Met Office said it should have come out an hour ago, for just a single hour, and the BBC said it should be raining right now !

  Nothing much happened after going to Tesco until the afternoon, and another beer tasting session with Michael and Jodie. Michael was the first to arrive at about 3.30pm, and Jodie arrived about 15 minutes later after missing her intended train. One of the highlights was tasting the four coronation themes beers from Aldi. Actually it wasn't a highlight at all because the general concensus is that they were the same minging beers that Aldi always use, but put in a can with a special label. One was agreed to be sort of OK, and there was another where I went against general concensus and thought was actually fairly nice.

  I guess some of the beers I drank were pretty good because I ended up moderately drunk by the time we finished the session. Michael was also a bit tipsy despite trying to control his drinking. His problem is that he didn't stop talking for long enough to concentrate on what he was drinking. Maybe I drank more because I could hardly get a word in edgewise. Jodie was the only one who remained mostly sober at the end, but she was going off for more beers with hey boyfriend.

  I started cooking a special dinner as soon as it was obvious the drinking session was coming to an end. Initially I had more control over what I was eating than I did over what I was drinking. I cooked just three sausages, and three rashers of bacon in the mini oven/grill. I had that "mixed grill" with (alleged) low sugar baked beans, and it was all rather delicious. It was such a long time since I last had baked beans that I couldn't resist eating the second half of the beans that I was originally saving for today. I ate them cold, from the tine, with some cheese crumbled in them. Delicious !

  I ate dinner while watching Star Trek: Enterprise, and because I visited the kitchen twice or three times while watching I lost the plot, and didn't enjoy it like maybe I should have. It was followed by Star Trek: Voyager. Now that Star Trek series is always a source of conflict between me and Michael. He thinks it's great because I think he secretly fancies Captain Janeway. I think it is slightly more boring than many Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes. Of course bother series have their high points, but Voyager seems to have less.

  I have a nasty feeling that while bored, watching Voyager, I might have eaten some pork and pickle pies. I have not checked the fridge yet to see if they have gone, or are still there. There was some other evidence that I probably ate them. I was feeling quite tired when Voyager ended, and I didn't bother to stay up to watch QI or Have I Got News For You. It is all very hazy now, but I think I was in bed shortly before 9pm, and fast asleep minutes later.

  I slept solidly until about 1am (if I recall correctly). By then I was overdue to "syphon off the beers" (or have a pee), and I duly got up and had a pee. I also seemed to start farting a lot at that time, and they were terribly smelly farts. On top of that I began to feel sort of bloated. For a while I thought that maybe the booze was going to cause me to throw up, but that seemed unlikely from just an excess of beers.

  I was feeling mildly uncomfortable, and I am not sure if I managed to drift off to sleep before getting up again sometime around 2am. I went to the toilet, and this time I had a poo. I hoped that was that, but at 3am I had to do the same again. I was finally comfortable enough to get some sleep, but I seemed to have a couple of tumultuous dreams before I woke up again.

  One dream was set in a three or more storey telephone exchange, although the ground floor seemed to have classrooms in it. I think I may have gone to a dining room, and possibly even eaten something, but the next thing I remember with some dreamy clarity is going to the toilet. When I got there I found a cleaner cleaning the toilet. He told me to go to the toilets upstairs. On the first floor I found the stairway blocked by some sort of barrow being used by some builders. They seemed to have stripped the place bare, and as I discovered when I squeezed past the barrow (or whatever it was) they had stripped out the toilets as well.

  I then went up to the next floor, and it was a health and safety nightmare. There were unguarded holes in the floor. Some of the floor had been replaced with flimsy looking mesh, and the power supply for the building, with it's three phase electricity supply seemed open exposing live terminals.  I found several toilets on that floor. One had a padlock on the door because the builders wanted to keep everyone else out. I did find a single cubicle tucked around a corner. It was fairly unpleasant in there, but at least I could have a pee, although I wanted more. As I stood over a broken toilet bowl, part filled with old toilet paper, and was just about to pee I woke up.

  Back in the real world I did need a pee, although not desperately. That was about 6am, and despite having a decent sized poo at 2am and 3am, it seemed I wanted more. As far as I could estimate, what I did at 6am would be about the usual morning amount. I went back to bed after that, and decided to try and sleep for as long as I could. It was about 7.30am when I got up, and once again I went to the toilet, and passed another large(ish) amount of poo.

  It was strange in that it didn't have the violence of something like food poisoning. If anything it was like how constipation tablets describe how they will convert constipation to smooth relief. Maybe someone slipped me some Exlax or something in one of the beers. Nothing has happened now for nearly 4 hours, but I still feel like something more could happen. Luckily I have already resigned myself to not going out today because of he rain. (We did have a heavy looking cloud pass over recently, but the sun has come out again).

  I doubt it has anything to do with my over active digestive tract, although it could do, but maybe the possible late night pork pies are more to blame for my blood glucose going just over the red line at 10.1mmol/l this morning. Maybe those beans had more sugar than "low sugar", or maybe there was sugar in the sausages. Hopefully I can do better tomorrow. This morning I am hungry because I decided not to have any breakfast, but I think I will have some lunch today.

  Today could be quite boring. The only definite thing to do is to finish washing a bath towel. I started it yesterday with the stupid idea I could finish it while or after drinking. At least I did manage to do two rinses before I gave up. Finishing that should be top priority today. I'm not sure what else I might do today. I've just been down to the kitchen, and I noticed two things. The first was that, yes, I did eat those mini pork and pickle pies in a flourish of drunken exuberance last night.

   The second thing was looking out the window, to the north, I could see a big patch of blue sky. I am starting to have doubts that today will be rainy after all....although the view to the south is mostly grey. Maybe rain will fall on the road outside while my garden is bathed in warm sunshine. It is fairly unlikely, but I could end up doing some more gardening today.  I think there are a few gigs I might possibly be interested in on tonight. The chances of going out tonight are very slim, but it could be possible.