Today is another of those days we seem to have had a lot of recently, yesterday excepted, it has started rather dull, but the sun could break through enough to give sunny spells by 11am, according to the latest revision to the forecast. By 2pm the sky is supposed to completely clear to give full sunshine ofr the rest of the day. Sadly, the afternoon temperature may only reach 19° C today, but that should still feel hot in full sunshine. It will cloud over late tonight, and that should usually keep the temperature up, but tomorrow morning is still predicted to start at 11° C. The rest of tomorrow may be almost the same as today - dull, sunny spells, and then full sunshine in the afternoon. The afternoon temperature will probably be the same as today, 19° C.

  I had to wait until midday yesterday to send Jodie a text message to ask if she would be coming over for a beer tasting session in the afternoon. About half an hour later she replied to say yes ! From then on I didn't have to think up any alternative entertainment for the day.

  I could almost put my feet up and rest until about 3pm, but I had to take the computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and all the software disks off the dining room table, and to do a small amount of washing up before I could put my feet up and relax.

  I almost forgot a little job I did before the morning was over. For a while now it has been apparent that there has been a leak round the back of the toilet. Fortunately it is only clean water from the cistern. When I got a torch out for a good look at what was happening it was easy to see it was an old problem. The pipe down from the cistern enters the toilet bowl through a soft rubber grommet. Over the years the grommet had worked very slightly loose. The cure was to push it back into place, and then I cut and shaped a piece of wood to wedge the downpipe forward to stop anything working loose again - hopefully. I've seen similar things in some pub toilets, and until yesterday I wondered why they were there. I think I now now !

  Jodie was in quite a good mood when she arrived, and not half hungover as sometimes happened. She even selected an 8% Gueze beer to start the session. It was nice, apart from one thing. It had a lot of sediment in the bottom of the bottle, and it wasn't just a fine haze of yeast, but big soggy lumps. It looked quite disgusting, although I am sure it was harmless. Jodie poured hers first, and got a clear half bottles worth. I then poured mine without taking too much care. It was like watching a lava lamp as these big clots of yeast would ride up and down on the bubbles. I ended up leaving a half inch of beer in the glass before flushing it down the sink.

  The rest of the session went OK. We tried a peach flavoured summer ale which I had bought from Aldi. It smelled deliciously peachy, like a freshly opened tin of peaches, but it left a slightly sour or musty yeast taste. After that we opened up a small 25cl bottle of Belgium peach flavoured beer. It was absolutely delicious, although I feared it's sugar content.

  Jodie left early to get the 5.50pm train to London Bridge station where she was meeting Alan. They were going on to a beer bar where some special tasting session, or something, was taking place. I started building my dinner. It was basically another salad - piles of mixed salad leaves with some German peppered ham, and a few other things tossed in for good measure. It should, as always, have been enough, but, as always, particularly after booze, it didn't satisfy. I made a mess of my diet by scoffing a pack of ready to eat chicken thighs. The last ones I bought from Tesco seemed a bit insipid, but last nights from Aldi tasted really good - maybe too good to exercise any restraint.

  There was almost nothing of interest on TV last night, in fact I could say there was actually nothing at all of interest on. I felt bored, and so I ended up reading in bed at 8pm when it was still broad daylight outside. I didn't seem to read for long, and I doubt it was any later then 8.15pm when I fell asleep. I managed to get a lot of sleep last night. I don't think there was any time I was awake for longer than it takes to go for a pee, and as far as I can remember, I only did that a couple of times.

  I do remember lots of dreaming, but I think only one dream is noteworthy. It was quite ludicrous ! In the dream I was in a helicopter flying to Colchester if I recall correctly, although the dream finished long before I would have reached my destination. For most of the time I was not even aware we were flying. The helicopter was huge with a capital H. It's interior was styled like an office block with many small rooms around what would be the equivalent to a lift shaft, but it was a circular shaft, and I knew that was where the shaft was that turned the blades up above.

  It was a dream where nothing really happened except wandering around discovering various offices, and the only windows that were behind the round drive shaft (the bit that looked like a circular lift shaft). It was after looking out the windows, where I didn't really see anything, that went round a bit further and found the little office room where there were two managers. The last bit of dream I can remember was we were flying across London quite low, and dodging tall building - sometimes flying through a gap that seemed impossibly small considering how large the helicopter seemed to be from the inside.

  After getting to sleep so early I could almost have got up when I woke up not long after 5am, but I thought I would try for a bit more sleep, and before I knew it it was almost 7am ! That felt like a good time to get up. This morning, maybe thanks to one or more of the beers, or more likely caused by scoffing the roasted chicken thighs*, my blood glucose was up to 9.0mmol/l. I would have accepted a fraction under that, but I guess I ought to try and take some precautions today to try and get it lower tomorrow morning.

* In theory the chicken thighs should have contained almost no sugar, but it is a theory of mine that sugar water is often used to give a darker brown glaze to roasted, and sometimes fried food.

  Once again, when I could almost have skipped breakfast, I have already had a medium sized portion of "spicy" instant noodles. Once again it was to stop the taste of the cod liver oil capsule I had, along with all my other pills when I got up. There is nothing more horrible than the burped up taste of cod liver oil.....well there probably are many worse things, but I don't care to think of them.

  This all leads on to the same question most mornings, "what am I going to do today ?". The grey sky fills me with no enthusiasm, and I am counting on the first sunny spells to inspire me. If I can get into feeling the right mood I could try and reach a few stations on my quest to visit the furthest reaches (by rail) that my Freedom Pass will take me to for free. Maybe Cheshunt, Chingford and Enfield Town could be today's quest.