I think the BBC's forecast came closer to reality this morning. They said just light rain that would continue until just after 9am. That seems to be what I think happened/is happening. If the BBC forecast continues to be correct there should be sunny spells from 10am until almost sunset. The Met Office still insist there will be some light rain this afternoon, although the latest revision has moved it to be at 4 and 5pm. There is a choice of temperature today. In Met Office world the max will be 14° C, but over in BBC world it should be 15° C. With these two different forecasts, and both of them changing hour by hour, I expect reality will be even more different.  Tomorrow could start quite wet again, but there is a chance of some sunny spells in the afternoon. It may be a cold day with the temperature between 12 or 13° C.

   Yesterday was a partially productive day. I originally said I doubted I would go out, unless it was to a pub with Kevin, because I didn't think there would be enough sunshine to make any outside experience very pleasant. In fact I did go out, not to a pub, but to the shops.

  It was after I finished writing that I heard from Kevin. He turned down my invite for an afternoon drink, and suggested that he might be OK for today. A little later he informed me that he had just heard that his appointment at the hospital for 10.30am had been rescheduled for 4.30pm - right in the middle of a possible drink. I left it in his court to suggest another possible time for a beer or three.

  As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to have a shower in case I was going to go out, and with nowhere else to go to I decided that while it was dry, and for a time almost bright, I would get a bit of shopping. I did my usual scheme of going to Savers before crossing over and going in Poundstretcher. There wasn't a lot I wanted from Savers, but I got some bleach and some hand cleanser. I also bought another couple of the all aluminium, LED torches they are selling for £1.49, plus a pack of AAA batteries it go in them.

  Those torches are really nice. They take three AAA cells in a sort of internal barrel, and are very bright. They are sold loose with no leaflet, but I can imagine they are probably waterproof. I now have three of them, and a fourth I will offer to Jodie. One thing I like is that they are like an improved version of some torches Poundland were selling for £1 each, and those Poundland ones were fairly good, the Savers torches are better finished and brighter.

  The real bargain came from Poundstretcher. I noticed they were selling Trust Web Cams, as pictured on the left for just £4.50 - reduced from £9. Even at full price they would have been a bargain. They are capable of high definition, or 1280x1024 sized pictures, and unlike my hardly ever used other web cams (bought out of curiosity rather than need) it give a nice bright and sharp picture even under poor lighting.

  Maybe the best thing is that I plugged it into my Linux PC, and it just worked first time. The sound didn't initially work until I found I had to select the inbuilt microphone from the audio mixer. I expected to be able to select it from the apps I was using. It is the sound that is the poor relation in this partnership. It sounds like a cheap telephone sound, but no bass, and no treble, is probably a good thing when using it for video calling - it would help to stop howlround.

  Less exciting from Poundstretcher was some instant noodle pots I had not seen before. One was a curry flavour. I am not generally keen on curry flavoured noodles because the "curry flavour" is usually very naff, and these were no exception, although, having said that, they weren't that terrible. The other one was a Chicken Curry flavour. It bore little relation to curry, but was almost, but not 100%, nice, although I doubt I will be buying any more of either flavour.

  When going shopping I walked moderately fast. When coming home I got stuck behind a couple of very slow walkers. At the first opportunity I put on full speed to overtake them. I then seemed to almost keep up full speed all the way home. I must admit I felt knackered when I got home after just 3 or 4 minutes of exertion, but in a curious, and possibly masochistic way, it did sort of feel good, and was a reminder of what I should be capable of more often, and for longer distances.

  Once I put my shopping away I made up one of each of the two new flavours of "Cup Noodles" (as they like to call them). Of course I didn't get the full flavour because I judged each would benefit from a good splash of hot pepper sauce. As I said above, they weren't good, and nor were they bad (although their calorie and possibly sugar content, may not have been ideal for me). After that noodly lunch I laid down, and ended up having a snooze.

  I couldn't snooze for too long for two reasons. One was that it was a bit too cool in my bedroom to be inactive for long, and the other was that I had left some laundry soaking after my morning shower, and I had to finish washing it. It was just two t-shirts, but also half a dozen pairs of underpants. I think it was as late as 4pm before I had finished it, and hung it on the clothes horse to dry in the front room with a desk fan blowing on it to help it dry.

  Despite some other temptations, I only ate pot/cup/instant noodles - two for breakfast, and two for lunch. My dinner needed to be something a bit healthier. I had left it a bit late to cook anything, but a random chain of events offered another option. During the morning I got a text message supposedly from my bank with a feasible message, but I did not trust the link it provided. It basically said that a new payee had been added to my others, and did I know about it ?

  I completely ignored the most dodgy web link on the message, but I did log on to my bank from my PC using a known good bookmark. That confirmed my suspicions that the text message was a phishing message. One good thing was that I noticed my bank balance was looking very healthy - mainly because my state pension had just been paid in. I felt wealthy enough to order a shish kebab takeaway last night, and it was very delicious and healthy too.

  Last night was a typical weekday night - three Star Treks, and then nothing on TV to attract my attention. I didn't end up having a very early night, but it was early enough. Maybe it was 9.30pm before I fell asleep. I didn't wake up for almost 4 hours. Initially I assumed it was because maybe my blood glucose was low, and I just didn't need to pee so often. Maybe that was the case, but I seemed to pee enough for three more frequent pees.

  I think I ten slept for another three hours before I woke up again.  I'm not sure if it was during that last sleep, or the one before it, that I had a dream that seemed to last for ages, and yet not a lot happened in it. The dream was inspired by a childhood memory. My uncle, who had been in the navy during WW2 smoked "Senior Service" cigarettes. The cigarette box had a round logo on it, and one of my cousins had worked out away of cutting the logo from the box, and then with maybe another cut, make a chain, or belt from the logos.

  I can't remember how it was contrived to link each segment together, and my dream seemed to consist of a lot of staring at some other round logo from a box of something other than cigarettes, and trying to think how I could link them together. With hindsight it was rather a boring dream, although one tiny highlight was the conclusion that I would cheat, and just stick the round logos together with sellotape.

  One further strong desire for a pee woke me up at about 5.30am. At other times it would be quite an annoying time, but on these cold mornings it was useful to turn the heater on before going back to bed for about an hour (although I didn't sleep much of that hour on this morning).

  It wasn't long before the truth of my eating would be part revealed. The unrevealed part was to weigh myself. That has to remain a mystery, but I did, as always, check my blood glucose readings. Two of the readings were coloured coded green in my spreadsheet of results. They were 7.6mmol/l and 7.5mmol/l. it seems the magic of shish kebabs has worked again, although the new, cheap Chinese meter, gave a higher reading of 8.3mmol/l - which is still very acceptable.

  As I write this there is some thin watery sunshine getting through a thin patch of cloud. That is a bit earlier than expected, and probably won't last long enough to count. I am sure it is not good enough to tempt me to go out today, although maybe later sunshine might possibly do the trick. I was reminded yesterday that really I ought to somehow toughen up.

  I was looking at some photos I took almost exactly 14 years ago during a trip to Dover and Samphire Hoe (an artificial extension to the land near Dover using spoil from the Channel Tunnel). I mostly remembered all the dark skies, and getting soaked a couple of times, but my diary entry says I actually started out in brilliant sunshine, and the heavy rain only started when I was very far from any shelter. All the pictures, and what I said about them can the seen here subpages/journal/2009/SamphireHoe23Oct2009.html.

  I don't propose doing anything like that trip to Dover today, and I doubt I will even consider a walk in the park, but you never know. More realistically I will probably do some more laundry today, and I really do need to do a small backlog of washing up in the kitchen, plus I need to prepare my dinner and start to precook it - I just cannot afford another takeaway for a while (although one exception would be if somehow I ended up in the 'Spoons this afternoon - which has a kebab shops almost next door. Getting a kebab from there is much more economical than using Just Eat).