I would say the sunny spells were all before 9am, and now it seems to be getting duller. The BBC predicts a much longer spell of light rain compared to just the two hours of heavy rain that The Met Office continues to insist will happen. After the last few days I seem to have lost all faith in my main weather forecasters. Maybe it is time to hang some seaweed up outside the back door.... The temperature forecasts are usually the closest part of the forecast to reality, and it is looking like today will be quite cool. The maximum temperature today may only be 12° C, but my three outdoor temperature sensors agree it is already 14° C now ! Tomorrow may be a lot brighter and a lot warmer than today. Both forecasters say there will be plenty of sunshine, and the temperature could rise to 19 or 20° C.
 
  It is an odd thing to say, but yesterday was spoiled by the weather being too good ! I'll explain the biggest significance of that later, but one minor significance is that it being bright with sunny spells, made me sort of relaxed in the morning. Maybe it was the threat of some nasty weather that made me think nothing was worth bothering with.

  One of my plans was to go out shopping to Tesco in the morning, but it wasn't essential to do so, and that probably slowed me down. It spent a portion of the morning just laying on my bed reading, and even having a short snooze. I was shocked into action when Michael sent me a message asking if I would like him to get some bottles of Diet Coke while he was shopping. I said yes please, and then hurried off to have a shower. It was gone midday when I did that !

  It was about 1pm when Michael messaged me to say he would be outside in a couple of minutes. At that time one or more versions of the forecast said it would be raining. In fact it was bright and sunny, but there was a huge black cloud to the south east of the sky. Michael dropped off four 2L bottles of Diet Cokes, and we briefly discussed plans for later. It was after finishing writing yesterday that I heard from Jodie to say she couldn't come over for the Thursday beer tasting session.

  That left a simple decision to make with Michael. We could just have a quiet drink together in the afternoon, or we could could go to see The Caz And Steve Duo playing in The Honor Pub in the evening. The third option was to do nothing at all. Michael was aware of the weather forecast, but didn't fully believe it. I saw that both the BBC and The Met Office said it would "definitely" be raining at about the time we would be going to the pub if we chose that option. I suggested we just have a few drinks here in the afternoon as usual.

  The idea that it would rain in the evening was strengthened by a downfall of light, heavy rain just after Michael had got home. I could hardly believe it was rain at first when several large drops of water loudly hit my kitchen window. A closer look showed it was falling all over the garden, and on the road outside. Although the rain drops were big and heavy, there was so few of them that they hardly made anything wet.

  That rain may have been fairly brief (10 minutes maybe), but for me it seemed to justify not wanting to go out in the (potential) rain in the evening. In reality it was warm and dry until after dark, and even then I am not sure there was much, if indeed there was any at all during the night (although next doors car did look wet at first light this morning). It was so annoying that we missed a gig because of a faulty weather forecast.

  At 3.30pm Michael popped round for some beers. We mainly had light, lager style beers, although I did have a few stronger beers (one of them was after Michael went home).  We both stayed relatively sober on beers that were mostly under 5%, and that was good. On the other hand a lot of those weak lager style beers, brewed for the UK market, have a lot of sugar in them compared to German and Belgium lager beers.

  I amused Michael by playing some old videos I had shot of bands in The Catford Ram and other places. That came about when discussing Caz And Steve. Steve, Steven Blessing, is a good guitarist, and Michael thought he had liked his guitar playing for 5 or 6 years. I fact he first "rated" him more like 10 years ago. I had a video of Steve playing in the first Catford Ram open mic session on Sunday 14th April 2013, and so just over 10 years now. It is a pretty crappy video, but it clearly shows Steven Blessing as guitarist for a hastily put together band they called Led Hammer for a while.

  I also showed Michael many more of my band videos that he had never seen before, and didn't know existed. He was quite entertained. Sadly there were too many to play completely towards the end, and I just showed him samples after a while. The drink went on a little longer than expected, and it was about 6pm when Michael left to go home. I poured myself one more drink, a special strong, and maybe rather sweet, Xmas beer from a Belgium brewery (I think).

  I had precooked my dinner of lamb with sprouts and some runner beans, and ate it while watching Star Trek: Enterprise. It was quite a nice stew, although being lamb there was quite a lot of fat floating in the gravy - most which I discarded. I guess it was the influence of the beers that I made two decisions. One was good, and the other would not have been so bad if I hadn't over done it !

  The bad decision was to have a dessert after dinner of some of my now favourite low calorie/low sugar ice cream. The worst decision was that, once again under the influence of the booze, I couldn't stop eating it, and I ate a whole tub of it. It was very nice at the time, but I regret it a lot this morning.

  The good decision concerns outside temperature sensors. One of mine has a fault. I am pretty sure it is because it has a low activity quartz crystal in it. A temperature drop, and possibly other things can cause it to stop oscillating. It was a typical fault on colour TV where quartz crystals were often sourced from the cheapest sources, and poorly made. In the case of my temperature sensor I would find the little display on the unit frozen, or almost blank. I once thought it was a battery problem, but brand new batteries didn't solve it, although just taking one battery out for half a second and re-inserting would shock the crystal back into life for hours or even days.

  Loosing one sensor every now and then was getting annoying, and so I wondered if Amazon sold individual sensors, and I found they did, but..... The price of the display and three sensors was just £29, but a sensor on it's own was £15, or something like that. Last night I decided the best thing to do was to buy another complete kit of three sensors, plus display unit. I can use one sensor to replace my faulty one. Keep the other two sensors for future spares, and maybe use the second display unit in the hall or dinning room.o

  Last night was good and bad. The temperature was back in that awkward area of too warm and too cool. I first went to sleep with the heater off, and all was fine. I fell asleep easily enough. I slept for maybe three hours before I needed to get up for a pee. When I got back into bed I felt really cold. I pulled the duvet up nice and snug, and after maybe as little as 10 minutes, although it felt more like half an hour, I got back to sleep. I then woke up an hour or two later, and found my pillow damp with sweat. After another pee I felt cold when I got back into bed - not freezing cold, but I was caught between pulling the duvet up tight again, and probably sweating all over the pillow, or turning the heater on low, and not have to worry about covering any more (or less) than half myself with the duvet.

  From then on I seemed to sleep better, and had a long dream about coming home from work in a place with several cobbled roads, and a lot of cobbled alleyways. I eventually got on a bus, and it was just as I was about to get off it in Catford that I realised Angela had been sitting behind me for at least some of the journey. It was nice to say hello, but the dream faded out at that point, and I woke up at around 5am. After yet another pee I turned the heater up full, and went back to sleep for another 90 minutes. I woke up to a nice warm bedroom.

  Waking up in a nice warm, even mildly hot bedroom was nice, but checking my blood glucose was not nice. If it wasn't for the fact that I have partly got away with it before, I could put all the blame on the ice cream, but I am sure some of the lagers I drank must share a proportion of the blame, My blood glucose reading hit the red line, but fortunately it didn't go over it. It was 10.0mmol/l exactly.

  I should be fasting today, but last night I set out my breakfast ready to be served this morning. It was Kimchi flavoured instant noodles. I had crunched up all the noodles while still in the packet, because it is far easier, and very much less messy to each short bits of noodle. All I had to do this morning was boil the electric kettle, and pour the boiling water onto the noodles....so I did it.

  I would try and fast for most of the rest of the day, but today I think I really have to go to Tesco and buy more supplies. That always brings temptations. I have been thinking I ought to be getting back into salads as "flaming June" approaches. I think I'll see what the salad ingredients look like in Tesco, but I must remember not to go too heavy on tomatoes - they can have huge amounts of sugar in them !

  I am not sure what I will do for the rest of the day. If it was sunny a walk would be good if I could force myself to start, but it seems probable that the afternoon is going to be very dull, and very wet. Maybe I should try to not make a decision about it until I cans see what the actual weather is like rather what some unreliable forecast predicts. Tonight I have an opportunity to see Caz and Steve, plus the rest of the band, as Hell On Tap in The Lord Homesdale pub. I think I may have already put myself off going - it means a lot of mucking around on buses, and the pub is small and too often very crowded.