The forecast shows white cloud, but as I write this it seems much duller than yesterday. It's sort of 10 minutes after sunset dull ! The latest revision to the forecast is still adamant that there will be sunny spells at 11am. That is possible, but I find it hard to believe it when I look at the sky. The BBC is in basic agreement with The Met Office up to 7pm. Both forecasters agree on rain at 5 and 6pm, but the BBC says light rain will continue to fall after 6pm until 3am (or later) tomorrow morning. Both forecasters agree on a max of 21° C today.  Tomorrow could be a lot brighter with sunshine or sunny spells, but the temperature may peak at only 18° C.

   Yesterday was a day of two distinct halves. The morning involved one huge disappointment/annoyance. After I had a shower I picked up my newly washed bath towel, and noticed on end of it was stinky. Some smelly bacteria must have started growing on it, and so back into the wash it went, and this time with a generous amount of disinfectant added to the wash.

  Once I was clean and dry (which included my hair that I washed as well) I got dressed, and headed out to Tesco to get some shopping. On this occasion I was almost laser focussed on only buying "safe" (i.e. very low sugar stuff) food. One item I was not sure about, but I thought I would take a chance because I don't think I have ever cooked and eaten pork meat balls before.

  There were two items I spotted with yellow reduced price stickers, and had quite a decent discount (about half off). They were pots of sandwich filler. One was chicken and sweetcorn, and the other was chicken and bacon. I did eat one of them, and I think it had enough sugar in it to spoil my morning readings. One thing I bought that made my rucksack very heavy was 6 cans of sugar free Cream Soda, and 6 cans of sugar free fizzy orange drink. Those 12 cans, plus two 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke was quite heavy.

  Unlike when I went shopping the day before, I didn't feel an abundance of energy as I walked to Tesco. Walking home seemed slightly hard work, and once I got home I felt almost exhausted. On the whole that was rather odd because my low blood glucose readings suggested I should have had loads of energy yesterday morning. Once home, and having put my shopping away, I tucked into one little, and usually safe luxury - a pair of Tesco "Finest" Scotch Eggs. I think I mentioned recently that it seemed my dalliance with Scotch Eggs was over, and I don't know why I bought them yesterday, but I do know that the enjoyment has waned to very low levels.

  After my lunch I had a lie down. I read for a bit, and then I tried to have a snooze. It didn't feel like I fell asleep, but maybe more time passed by while my eyes were closed can be accounted for. After maybe an hour I should have gone to the bathroom to start rinsing the smelly towel I had left soaking, but I couldn't raise the enthusiasm for it. I did raise the enthusiasm to start preparing my dinner.

  Dinner was to be pork meat balls with sprouts in gravy. I first precooked the meat balls, and while that was happening in the microwave, I tackled the sprouts. I bought those sprouts from Aldi the previous weekend, and like most fresh stuff from Aldi, it seemed to have a very short shelf life. I had to cut off rotten bits from the best sprouts, and throw the rest away. Cooking those sprouts with the meatballs made the kitchen rather stinky. That was unfortunate.

  A little later Jodie would be over for a beer tasting session - not a good day with the kitchen belching sprout fumes ! I decided to put on an appropriate beer themes t-shirt. It was the newly cleaned Young's Triple (or trippel ?) A t-shirt I am sure I mentioned not that many days ago. It was a beer that was discontinued when Marsdens bought out Youngs and destroyed all their beers. I think that was in 2006 - just three of four years after it was first introduced. The t-shirt is probably 20 years old, and if anything it fits better now than it did when new.

 Just a quick aside: I really must use a tripod, with fixture for my mobile phone, when taking selfies like the one on the left. The mobile phone is the best tool for the job because i have a small button sized remote trigger for the camera. The trouble is that I have propped the phone up on a table, and I have to look down to it. It makes for an odd looking picture/pose. A tripod would raise it so I could look direct into the lens.

  Jodie was on her way to a gig yesterday. It was not the day or the gig I thought she had mentioned some time ago, but a new gig that she only found out a day earlier. It meant she was not in a great beer drinking mood, and we ended up only opening three 500ml cans of beer, and two of them were nasty ! I opened up a single 330ml of Aldi lager for an extra bit to drink, and I can't say I enjoyed that either (although it was a different nastiness). It was one of those very rare times I finished a beer tasting session feeling sober as a judge.

  I had a flick around on the TV channels after Jodie left, but there was almost nothing that grabbed my attention. I ended up watching another episode of Sherlock Holmes from my stash of the complete Granada TV series while I ate my dinner. i have to say those pork meat balls were rather bland, and could have done with something like a strong tomato and herb flavoured gravy. My Bisto gravy and sprouts just didn't make for an enjoyable meal.

  I can't seem to remember when it was that I ate a whole small tub of the chicken and sweetcorn "sandwich filler". It may have been as a snack an hour before I had dinner, or I might have had it as a sort of dessert to leave a nicer taste in my mouth. I scooped out the entire contents of the pot (maybe about 100ml) using rice crackers. At least the crackers were zero sugar, but I suspect the sandwich filler may have had a lot of sugar, in one form or another, in it.

  I contemplated watch an episode or two of QI last night, but the first episode had some guests I didn't care for, and so once again I was in bed early. I didn't go to sleep early (approx 9pm) this time. As soon as I laid down I started getting some diverse pains. One was the return of heart burn - maybe caused by fizzy drinks causing acid reflux. It was almost certainly moving around a lot in bed, trying to find some comfortable position, that added a few aches and pains.

  It was only after taking some antacid tablets, and a couple of paracetamol tablets, that I finally managed to fall asleep sometime between 10 and 11pm. Once I was asleep I seemed to sleep well, and I only remember waking up three times for a pee )and the last time was not a lot earlier than I would be getting up any way. However the last bit of proper sleep was plagued with a sort of nightmare scenario.

  In the dream I was in bed, and it was getting close to when I might have got up. I heard noises from outside my bedroom door, and then three young men with Australian accents came in and said they had been told they could doss in my room while they looked for more permanent accommodation. I was not happy, and told them so in quite strong language. As we argued a few more came in. They said they had got my address from the TNT magazine paper/magazine that I would often see outside tube stations in central London.

  Before long even more came in. Now the very odd thing is that my bedroom was getting bigger and bigger, and more and more beds appeared in it ! When I finally got out of my bed, wearing only a stained t-shirt and underpants, I went to my door to find more Australians queueing in the hall. There were Australian women too, and they were trying to doss down in my sisters bedroom (which I think was growing in size, with a similar increase in beds, as my bedroom).

  The dream got so frustrating that I woke up to escape it. The next potential horror was my blood glucose readings. I was only confident up to a point about them. I was fairly sure I hadn't eaten anything too damning, and there was a sort of comfort to know that I wasn't peeing all night, and yet it feels like I am going through another bad patch. This time the readings agreed with each other quite well. The new meter read 9.2mmol/l. That is not terrible, but under 9.0mmol/l would feel a lot safer. The other two meters agreed on 9.1mmol/l. That was a bit better, but once again under 9.0mmol/l would have been far better.

  Today there are two things I have to do. One is to eat the remaining sandwich filler pot - probably for elevenses to get rid of it as early as possible. The other thing is to finish giving the smelly towel its second wash. I hope the disinfectant has killed off the smelly bacteria, and stopped any new growing. When that is done I could have a shower. I will need a shower if I am to go out.

  Last night I had fantasies about going out exploring and train spotting today. It was with the mistaken belief that today might be like yesterday - no sunshine, but a friendly brightness. At the moment it is not bright enough to call it friendly outside. If we do get the 11am sunny spells, that may be enough to trigger me to go out. My plan would be to go to Carshalton, and then see what the short (1/3rd mile) walk is like to The Windsor Castle pub where Ransom will be playing in a years time (yes, 2024 !!). I can get to Carshalton station by getting a train from Catford station to Peckham Rye station where I can change to a train stopping at Carshalton. Along the way I could explore North Dulwich station  - a station I have been through, and I think I have seen outside. I have this odd idea it could be quite photogenic. Of course all this could well be fantasy because at this very minute I feel more of an urge to stay in, rather than go out.