This morning is very grey, but it seems to be dry outside. The latest revision to the forecast says there will be drizzle at 10am, and light rain at 11am. After that there could be sunny spells, but light rain for 4pm is a possibility. The afternoon temperature could reach 14° C.  Tomorrow comes with a weather warning for heavy rain, but it might just be during the evening. The day could be mostly sunny spells, although a few showers, with maybe one of them just being drizzle, could fall. The afternoon temperature tomorrow could reach 15° C.

   This is another late start to my scribblings. The reasons will unfold as I continue to write. First of all, as is tradition, yesterday. As I noted yesterday, I didn't feel all that good yesterday morning, and that slowed me down a lot - mainly because I preferred distractions to sitting down writing all this stuff I put on these pages.

  I was distracted by doing some washing up, and making up two bowls of instant noodles for my breakfast, and then I was further distracted by reading some technical(ish) news at https://www.theregister.com/. By the end of the day I left many items unread, and this morning I have loads of tabs open with stuff to read, and many more articles to click on. Finally I got around to writing yesterday's page.

  Maybe I wrote a bit more than usual, and maybe I was writing slowly, and maybe there were other reasons, but I didn't finish until well gone 11am. That meant a dilemma. I needed to have a shower, but I didn't want to be under the shower when Michael was going to text me to say he was about to drop off the four bottles of Diet Coke he buys for me when out shopping with his car.

  I had my shower with no interuptions, and it was a good hour after I was dried and dressed when Michael sent me a text to say he would bring the Diet Cokes with him when he arrived for out usual Thursday afternoon beer tasting session. I had originally thought I might go shopping myself yesterday, and I guess I could have fitted it into my schedule, but I wasn't desperate for anything, and I preferred to just be lazy, laying on my bed reading, and almost, but not quite, having a snooze.

  Michael and Jodie arrived almost at the same time. Our drinking session didn't get off to a good start. Once again Jodie had had a very heavy night, and didn't want to drink much, and Michael wanted to tell us all his troubles. He and his wife are having a terrible time replacing a broken microwave oven. They have been trying to do it for a couple of month now, and are rowing about the size, shape, colour and types of controls on the new oven. I believe Michael has now bought a microwave oven, but she says it is too complex to use....and so the arguments continue.

  We did manage to open and drink 3 or 4 bottles (each shared 3 ways - so not a great deal of booze) before Jodie's friend Alan turned up. Fortunately he is a fairly relaxed, happy go luck person, and while he has his troubles, often car related, it was good to have someone cheerful to drink with. We ended up trying a few shots of some of my rum and also vodka liqueurs. They were very nice, but I worry about the sugar content of liqueurs.

  One thing discussed was the Catford beer Festival - a slimmed down, single pub version, once again in The Catford Bridge Tavern. It starts tonight for three days. Before Jodie and Alan left we agreed to meet at about 5pm this Friday afternoon to sample a few of their beers. We intend to only spend a couple of hours in there. Alan has to leave at about 7pm to get a 75 bus the Crystal Place Football Club for a match he has tickets for.

   I expect Jodie will get the train home to Elmers End. I am not sure if Michael will be joining us, but one thing was all agreed on is that we don't fancy staying too late. There is a live band on in the evening, and sadly they are a Ska band, and while an occasional, single ska song might be acceptable, no one wants a whole evening of it. I may still take a camera and get a few snaps of the band during their first song - if they have started before we leave.

  I carried out a dangerous experiment yesterday. Apart from a small handful of peanuts to nibble on, and a couple of slices of ready sliced cheese, also as a source of nibbling, I ate nothing but instant noodles yesterday. Most of the instant noodles I had said their calorie content was usually under 300 calories, often around 275, but each varied up and down a bit. One pack, that I don't think I ate yesterday, said 325 calories.

  So a nice simple figure is to assume they are all 300 calories. I had 5 lots of instant noodles yesterday, and three of them were in the evening - the worst time to affect my blood glucose reading in the morning. Ignoring any calories in liquid form, and the couple of nibbles I had, my main consumption added up to 1500 calories, and with most, if not all the packets of noodles I had were more like 275 calories, that gives sufficient leeway to ignore the nibbles, and still end up at 1500 calories. That is actually dieting ! It's just a shame that it is very far from a balanced diet.

  I thought I felt very sober last night, but the fact that I am having difficulties remembering if I watched Star Trek: Voyager suggests I wasn't......but maybe I just had to think a bit harder, and now I do remember watching it, and most of the plot too. That means I went to bed just after 9pm, but I couldn't sleep. I was feeling far too hot under the duvet. I guess I didn't turn the heating off in my bedroom early enough.

  After maybe as much as an hour I got up for half an hour to let my bed cool off a bit. When I went back to bed I eventually fell asleep under the duvet. It was sometime between midnight and 1am when I woke up with a damp patch on my pillow, and the duvet feeling damp where I had been sweating. I think it fair to put a lot of the blame on my last instant noodle. It was very spicy and peppery.

  I tried sleeping with the duvet kicked aside, and I did manage to get to sleep, but I woke up feeling very cold, and a wide assortment of joints complaining about being cold. I think I may have eventually got back to sleep under the duvet, but at 3am I gave in and put the heater on low.  I woke up several more times during the rest of the night, and mostly it was to uncover more and more of myself as the room slowly warmed up. At 5am I put the heater on full so I could get up to a nice warm room.

  It was about 6.30am when I got up. I still ached a lot, and it felt like I had way too little sleep. On top of that negativity I had to face the truth about my blood glucose readings. I needn't have worried. The newsest and oldest meters read 7.7 and 7.9mmol/l respectively - both very good readings, and the older meter (still my official NHS meter) read a bit higher at 8.7mmol/l. That is mildly higher than I'd like, but these days anything under 9.0 I regard as good.

  Today I fancy being very lazy. I have already got off to a good start. Rather than start writing straight after breakfast (of instant noodles as usual) I spent some time reading. Stuff about space is always interesting, and so two of the articles I read were https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/26/nasa_to_equip_international_space/, and https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/26/spacewalking_cosmonauts_find_iss_leak/.

  I must admit I am still not feeling all that good. I have sneezed a couple of times, and even had a single session of a mild cough. On top of that, and the joints that ache, I have a mild headache. It is almost as if I have some sort of bug. Hopefully keeping warm, hopefully having a snooze, and just being very lazy will clear it all up. I don't think I can be bothered going to Tesco today, and I don't think I can find the enthusiasm to do something about the dripping tap in the kitchen.

  The latter has got worse and my dodgy methods are no long working. To make matters worse I have now broken it to the point that the whole mixer unity needs replacing - hopefully with separate taps. If the plumbing was more accessible I could probably do the whole thing myself, but I think I am going to need a plumber for this job in the end. Not today though. I think the next thing I do, after a shower, will be to go and see what beers The Catford Bridge Tavern have at their beer festival at 5pm.