The latest revision to the forecast says 7am will feature sunny spells, and indeed the eastern sky does look fairly clear as I write this, but the sun is too low on the horizon to be seen yet. The rest of today is forecast to be bright with many hours of full sunshine around occasional hours of just sunny spells. The temperature could rise to 22° C, but maybe only for a couple of hours. Some of tomorrow may be bright and sunny, but an equal amount may be dull, and there is also likely to be a few showers. Once again 22° C is expected.

   My stress levels started to drop yesterday morning, but not before they had triggered what was possibly IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). I most definitely needed to go to the toilet many times in the morning, and it was very splattery. To make matters worse, I was suffering a lot from lack of sleep during the previous two nights.

  The good news is that I got myself washed and dressed, and feeling 99.5% comfortable to take a brisk walk to The Jolly Farmers. It took me 13 minutes and 41 seconds door to door, and I kept up 2.896mph (which is as close the 3mph as need be). The only trouble was that Ayse, my favourite barmaid, and who wanted to see any wedding pictures, was not on duty. That was a bit annoying, but the walk felt sort of good, and I also had a nice pint of Guinness.

  The other thing I did successfully was to tether my laptop to my mobile phone to use mobile data for internet access on the laptop. It all worked rather well. The only very minor annoyance is that after using the laptop for maybe 30 minutes it said there was only a possible 50 minutes of life left in the battery. That is probably quite enough to be useful, and I also have a spare battery for the laptop which might be in better condition.

  After my pint of Guiinness I walked home again. Due to slight inaccuracies in the GPS tracking on the phone, it said the return journey, retracing my footsteps exactly, was 0.02 miles longer. The tracker also said I was walking a bit slower at just 2.665mph - which was probably true - I was carrying the weight of a pint of Guinness inside me ! The entire walk, there and back, added up to about 1.3 miles, and although it said I only burnt 120 calories doing it, seemed a reasonable bit of exercise.

  Once home I had a small lunch of two, 6 days past their use by date (but kept chilled in the fridge) Tesco "Finest" Scotch eggs. They tasted fine in terms of any possible deterioration, but didn't seem to be as thrilling as they once were. maybe I am now past the peak of my brief love affair with Scotch eggs. I did have a few other little snack like thinks, including some mini cheese straw like things that didn't seem to be very cheesy, but were very snackable.

  At approx 3.30pm Jodie arrived for some beer tasting. One problem with Sundays is that is when one of the silly children's games on her phone gets it's weekly update of new stuff. She spent a lot of time, using my WiFi and my phone charger, to stay glued to her phone instead of concentrating on the beer. Another annoyance that happens on both Sundays and Thursdays, is that she has her lunch while she is supposed to be drinking, and uses my microwave to cook or reheat it.

  Despite all that we did get through quite a few beers - some nice, some nasty, and some that were just sort of bland. As I usually mention, were were splitting a single bottle between us, and that is how we manage to get through a lot of bottles. One thing Jodie brought with her was a leaflet that she only found in the box that contained the 10 German Oktoberfest beers she bought from Lidl, when she was recycling the box.

  The leaflet was part information about beers in general, and part advert for some sort of logging app for mobile phones, and other boxes of beers that are only available in Germany ! One interesting piece of information in the leaflet (or I suppose it could be called a thin booklet) was how some beers can go well with bread. It gave me an idea. I had two think end pieces, and a single slice of bread left of the loaf of sliced Polish sourdough bread I bought a week and a half ago.

  That bread was getting stale, although it was still usable. I decided to toast it. I then ate it as it was, but with a little bit of olive oil to dip it into. I also added some soy sauce to the oil, and later some chilli sauce. I have to admit I have never enjoyed toast so much in all my life. Of course Jodie wanted to try some of the toast, but didn't fancy dipping it into my oil. She just ate it dry between mouthfuls of beer. I think she liked it.

  Jodie left quite late, and some time after she had given up drinking beer. She was meeting Alan in The Star And Garter in Bromley, and only left in time to get there soon after 7pm. Once Jodie had gone I got my dinner together. I had been contemplating a takeaway, but that seemed foolish. Instead I had a home cooked dinner of sausages (from my freezer) and a sachet of "heat to eat" Spanish "style" rice. It was a fairly nice dinner, and sort of filling.

  There was not a lot going on on TV last night, and once again I had an early night, but not quite as early as the previous night. Once again I was not paying a lot of attention to the time, but I think I was reading in bed at about 8pm. I may have put the book down, and turned out the light at 8.30pm, but I did not go to sleep straight away. In fact for a while I wondered if I would ever get to sleep. it was the usual story of the bed and pillow having new lumps that weren't there when I had got out of bed in the morning. Also, the bed was either too warm of too cool, plus, of course, the old problem of my brain not shutting up.

  The next thing I can remember is waking up, to go for a pee, at around 1am. Evidently I had fallen asleep earlier. I had a few short (maybe 20 minutes or less, but who can tell) periods of insomnia, and I had some half remembered dreams. I can only remember most of my dreams as being rather bland. One was watching a very dull seeming movie on TV, but one dream did stand out for it's spectacular sound and effects.

  The dream was about motorbikes, and not just any motorbikes. It was like old documentary film about experiments of using tyres made of chains for driving on damp surfaces. Almost all footage was of the motorbikes ending up in or under water - and apparently still moving under the water according to the accompanying full (wide) stereo, HiFi sound of motorbikes roaring round a race track that had been dubbed over the ancient black and white film. It sounded great, and was most amusing.

  This morning I was up early again - shortly before 6am. Not being able to sleep longer fitted with my plans well today. As usual, one of the first things I did was to check my blood glucose readings. Despite taking a lot of care, all my three blood glucose meters gave different readings this morning. The new meter said 8.2mmol/l, and I was quite surprised it should be so wonderfully low. The older meter almost agreed, but with an even better reading of 8.0mmol/l. This time it was the oldest meter that was the outlier. It said 8.7mmol/l. That would have been unremarkable by itself, but obviously a fair bit higher than the other two. I think I can say that all readings were satisfactory.

  The most important thing on today's agenda is my DECCS (diabetic) eye test in the hospital. It is the one where, using a really bright flash gun, direct into the eye, they take pictures of the retina at the back of the eye to check for damage. It is so routine now that I barely bother worrying about it, but for one thing.... The drops they put in the eye to dilate the pupil make everything seem blindingly bright, and today is the one day of the year when it would be better to have been heavily overcast, but today I may well emerge from the hospital in blinding sunshine.

  I have considered going to the pub straight after the hospital, but I'm not sure if they will be open when I come out. I think that instead of the pub I will go home via the surgery, and ask the receptionist if she can ask the nurse to print out the diabetic blood tests I need ready for me to collect the paperwork from reception tomorrow or whenever so I can arrange an appointment with the vampires (if they have not resumed the walk in service) to give my armful of blood.

  Once home I shall possibly have a lie down in a dimly lit room, and allow my eyes to return to normal - it usually takes a good few hours. Later on I may go shopping in Aldi. Michael tells me they have some German Oktoberfest beers in there (or had last week). If I can't be bothered with Aldi I will probably go to Tesco because I do need to get stuff to eat from either of them sooner or later.