There was rain at 7am, and it looked like there was probably heavier rain in the early hours of the morning. The latest revision of the forecast has changed all grey hours to white cloud, and thrown in a few more sunny spells - and taken a few away. In fact the predicted times for sunny spells have almost all changed. I would suggest that reality could turn out very different today, but whether it will be sunnier, or wetter is anyone's guess. The latest revision shows 4 hours of 15° C - rather better than the single hour shown in the early forecast above. Tomorrow could start a bit cool, just 8 or 9° C, but it should warm up to 17° C. There should be some sunshine, but a splash or rain may happen at some time.
 
  Yesterday was a good even though until this morning I thought it had ended as a disaster, but more of that later.  I was lazy for much of the morning, and didn't have a shower until about 11am. Once I was washed and dressed I was ready to go out into the blinding sunshine - not wearing a coat - which felt good.

  I didn't go out for exercise, but just for a short walk to Tesco. I still wanted some tomato sauce, and I still didn't get any, but at least I remembered to look. Tesco appear to have run out of their own brand reduced sugar and salt tomato ketchup. They did have Heinz joke version of reduced sugar tomato ketchup, but I seem to remember (from the last time I checked a year or two ago) that still has more sugar in than Tesco's ordinary tomato ketchup.

  What I bought as a substitute was a small bottle of Tesco's  reduced sugar and salt brown sauce. Generally speaking I am not keen on brown sauce. I find the leading brands to be too sharp and vinegary, but the stuff from Tesco was quite acceptable, and maybe I'll buy more if they don't have tomato ketchup.

  Most of the rest of what I bought was stuff I should have got when I went to Tesco a couple of days ago, but in one case I didn't have room to carry it. That one case was 6 bottles of beer. It included two bottles of Vocation Mint Chocolate stout. It is 13%, and very delicious ! I thought it would be the main reason for my expected downfall last night. More about that later.

  There was one notable thing I bought, and it was a pack of 6 cheese and onion sausage roll style rolls. They were on the reduced price shelf, and could have done with a bigger discount considering how beaten up they were. I suspect eating those for my lunch, and using them to test the Tesco reduced salt and sugar brown sauce, was the best candidate for an upset stomach this morning.

  After my lunch I rested for a while, to let my food digest, before doing some washing up, and preparing the dining room for a beer tasting session with Jodie. I was not 100% sure she was due over, but at just after 3.30pm she turned up, and the beer drinking commenced...or should have done, but Jodie had some fussing around to do first. Out of the beers I bought from Tesco there was, much to my huge surprise, one beer that Jodie had never tasted before. It was Northern Monk "Heretic", and I can't say it was that nice, but it was drinkable.

  There was a lot of confusion about what time Jodie should leave. It seems that Alan, her boyfriend, was running a bit late. In the end Jodie decided she would not meet him in The Three Hounds near Clock House station, but would get a bus from there for a mile up the road to another beer place I have never heard of. It would, in theory, be easier and quicker for Alan to get to. I never heard how and if they met up there.

  What I do know was that Jodie started to slow down a lot after about 5pm, and that gave me the chance to slip in a couple of beers of my own. One was a bottle of Shepheard Neame "Bishop's Finger", a fairly strong English ale, and a bottle of the previously mentioned Vocation "Mint Chocolate Stout". I think I had something else after that, but things were getting hazy by then.

  Once Jodie had left I dug into a nice healthy salad I had prepared earlier. It had lots of green salad leaves, plus some fresh coriander as well as spring onions, tomatoes and half a red bell pepper. I dressed in Aldi's own brand vinaigrette dressing. I have to say it was delicious, and it should have been filling, but probably because of the booze (actually, certainly) I fancied eating something more, something very tasty. I thought a few spoonfuls of ice cream could do much harm, but I got a bit carried away.......

  TV was very bland last night, and I watched another episode from my stash of Star Trek: Picard collection. It seemed better than recent episodes, but maybe being drunk helped. I didn't seem to need any heating on last night, and I went to bed with the heater off - which I am sure should be the case every day in May, but maybe May is not the wonder month I thought it should be.

  I'm not sure what time I fell asleep. I know I read for probably half an hour before turning the light out. What I do know was that I woke up needing a pee at about 11.30pm, and usually the first time is around 2 hours after getting to sleep. Oddly enough I didn't seem to pee much last night. Even when I did go to the toilet because I may have woken up for other reasons, I didn't seem to do that much.

  What I was doing quite copiously during the night was farting, and they were pretty stinky farts. It is possible that they were being caused by those beaten up cheese and onion, sausage style rolls.  I feel they must take the blame for what happened soon after getting up this morning, but before that I'll backtrack to about 2am this morning. I thought all the farting was reaching a sort of crescendo, and surely that must indicate I needed to visit the toilet for a poo, even though I didn't really feel like I needed one...and it turned out nothing happened.

  I got up around 6.30am, and then it did feel like I needed to poo. I went to the toilet, and sat down. Initially nothing happened, but after a while I started to almost painfully pass something. Suddenly it all let go at once, probably propelled by high pressure gas, and I did what might have taken two visits in the space of about 10 seconds ! To my even bigger surprise I was back on the toilet five minutes later for a smaller, but definitely not negligible, second deposit.

  It was all a bit unpleasant, but at least it all seemed to be over and done with in the space of 10 minutes, although it has taken a few flushes of the toilet to get rid of nearly all the unpleasantness, and once the cistern has filled again I will pop out to the toilet, like I did at the end of the previous paragraph, and hopefully give it the final flush.

  I rather expected that one or more of the beers drunk in the afternoon, and maybe even those cheese and onion rolls eaten earlier, plus a whole tub of ice cream, would prove disastrous for my blood glucose level. I was almost stunned to find it had actually dropped from 8.7mmol/l yesterday morning to a very average 8.5mmol/l this morning. That makes up for the disaster of my upset digestive tract, but not for another sort of disaster.

  It was a day or two ago I noticed what seemed like a crack in the bath tub. I dismissed it as probably just a tide mark or something. This morning it looked a bit different, and it is indeed a crack. It is almost in the centre of the tub. There has been a sort of soft spot there for years. I think a support bracket underneath broke ages. Well now it has started to split. As far as I am aware it has not leaked any water. As a temporary measure I have scrubbed the area clean with Isopropanol alcohol, and stuck down three layers of duct tape.  I'll try to avoid treading in that area, and keep an eye on it, but I can't help but thinking I am looking towards a very expensive replacement bath tub.

  It is possible that today could be a good day to go for a walk. I don't really feel like it at the moment, but maybe once I've finished this, and taken 5, I might gain some enthusiasm. The good thing is that there is a full train service today, and so I could walk away from home as far as I can, and get a train home....or I could go train spotting. We'll see,