The weather today could be very variable. The latest revision to the forecast shows 5 hours of unrelenting light rain starting at 10am. After that it may be dull but dry....or a new and different revision of the forecast will appear. One curiosity is the BBC forecast saying it will be dry, with sunny spells when the Met Office says it will rain, and then the BBC says it will rain when the Met Office say the rain will have stopped. I have to say that the rather grey sky at the moment suggests the Met Offices morning rain looks very likely. The best temperature today could be 14° C. Tomorrow could feature a couple of isolated showers with a few sunny spells until more substantial rain fall all through the evening. Once again the best temperature we can hope for will be just 14° C.

   Yesterday was one of those rare (recently) rather good days. My blood glucose readings were not ideal, but better than some. I had lost a bit of weight, and my blood pressure was good. All three were reasons to be cheerful, and possibly contributed to a few less aches and pain.

  As usual, it took a bit of time before I felt in the the right mood (or something like that) before I went to wash. There was no great need for it, but I had a shave, and washed my hair as well as having a shower.  After that, and allowing a bit of time for my hair to get fully dry (I did blow dry it, but I usually miss a bit here and there), and to cool off a bit, I donned a hooded raincoat, and ventured out into the wild world.

  There were only a few minutes when having a hooded raincoat was very much needed, but most of the time the rain seemed light enough not to need that extra protection. That was particularly so when coming home again. I didn't even bother to put my hood up, over my head because the rain was so light. In fact I think it may have even stopped when I was halfway home. However, I seem to recall quite a heavy downpour soon after getting home !

  My outing was to go shopping in Tesco. I ended up buying a lot of stuff, and had quite a heavy load to carry home. Included in that load was my rucksack with 4 two litre bottles of Diet Coke, and two 750ml (I think) bottles of Tesco reduced sugar and salt tomato ketchup. It seems like they only get small deliveries of it, and unless you are there at the right time, it has all sold out in days. I bought two big bottles (they only had the big bottles this time) in the hope that they would last until the next delivery. That is quite possible because I have only used ketchup very infrequently recently.

  After my disaster of the very nice, but ridiculously heavy sugar content Kimchi instant noodles, I checked the sugar content of the instant noodles I bought. Most had very small amounts of sugar in them, but one make of kimchi flavoured noodles was moderately high. I did buy one pack of it, but bought two packs of a different make that had considerably less sugar in it - as did the other flavoured instant noodles I bought.

  I ended up buy a fair amount of ready sliced cheese (mainly because of a Clubcard offer of two packs for something like £4). I also bought a couple of different packs of ham. The cheese and ham, not usually together, were two go on rice crackers for (hopefully) low sugar and low calorie snacks, or even full meals. I bought three packs of rice crackers. One was sweet chilli flavour, and I forgot to compare it's sugar content with the lightly salted version, but I think it was still quite low.

  There were two other significant things I bought. One was a ready cooked whole chicken, some or more of which will be used for my dinner today. The worst thing, but quite tasty thing, was a triple cheese sandwich pack. I know the terrible white bread they use has a stupid high sugar content, but it was just one pack, and it made for not really filling, but tasty lunch.

  My next bit of activity, after a short period of being lazy, was to hand wash three t-shirts and 3 pairs of underpants. It was one of those occasions where I kept thinking I should take a break halfway through, but I slowly realised I didn't need a break for physical reasons, but a small break from the mindless tedium might have been desirable. I just carried on until I was ready to hang that laundry on the clothes horse in the cold front room with a fan on it to help it dry. I haven't checked it but it should be dry this morning, although I might possibly put the fan heater on it to try and get it 100% bone dry.

  With the washing done I could become very lazy for a few hours. It may have been 5pm when I broke my lazy time to make a very simple snack that was almost dinner. It was quite a few rice crackers with ham and cheese, and some slices of tomato. It probably wasn't a bad choice because there wasn't enough to make me feel anywhere near full, and make my soon to come walk too much like hard work.

  It was fairly late in the afternoon when I heard that the open mic night at The Catford Bridge Tavern was cancelled because the lady who runs it had a sore throat. That still left a beer tasting session, but Michael was not initially that interested in going. He later decided he did want to go, and that was a good thing because none of the possibles (but not terribly possible) made it last night, and I could have been drinking on my own.

  I had suitably dressed for the occasion with the 1999 Catford Beer Festival t-shirt seen in the picture on the left. Incidentally, for this picture, taken on my mobile phone in quite low light, I used a phone clamp and small tripod to raise the camera to just above chest height so I didn't have to look down at the camera lens. With some front lighting, instead of mostly side lighting, it might have been a pretty fair picture.

  The last time I refreshed and checked the weather forecasts they said it would be dry from 4pm onwards. I therefore only put on a coat that I could zip up, but it had no hood, although being mock leather it was waterproof. that was good because I found it raining moderately hard when I opened my front door. I probably should have changed coats at that point, but I put my best foot forward, and hoped for the best.

  Getting wet was certainly an incentive for a fast walk to the pub. I was surprised that I seemed to keep up a fair pace, albeit probably no more than  3mph at best, and I didn't seem to suffer too badly. For a short while I seemed to get a bit of a chest ache, and for a short while maybe I felt very slightly short of breath, but both seemed to ease as I neared the pub. I was breathing a bit heavily when entering the pub, but very far from bad enough to affect my speech.
  I am presenting these pictures in the order I took them in, and the rest, except this one, were in the order I drank them in. This one caught my eye because it was the sort of thing Jodie would like, and I wanted to make sure I had a picture of it before I did anything else. I did dare to order a half of it as, I think, my second to last beer. It was exactly as I expected. If you like the feel of the enamel dissolving off your teeth, and you tongue and inner cheeks shrivelling, you would love it. Unfortunately I didn't like any of these things. In short, it was horrible !
  The first beer I drank was The Peckham Pale ale - the same, and just as enjoyable as when I had a pint last Friday night. The pictured beer, Moor's Illumination, golden best bitter, was to be my second pint, but the barrel was empty. Some helpful bastard suggested tipping the barrel up, and the barmaid, with the aid of the second barmaid, did just that. The sludge that came out was obviously completely undrinkable.
  Halfway through my first pint I was joined by Michael. I waited for a few pints so he was relaxed when I took this picture. It turned out to be a nice picture of him. All the pictures shown here today were taken on my mobile phone camera, and it was showing off it's low light capability. On my big Nikon I would either have had to "turn the taps full on" and get a very grainy picture, or use some light flash to get this picture. I think I am rather happy with it.
  After 4 pints (possibly 5) I had run out of cask beers to try, and for what I think was my last pint I tried one of the keg beers. This Portobello V.E.S.P.A. (Very Extra Special Pale Ale) was actually rather nice. It was indeed very pale, and easily mistaken for a lager. Note the little toy Vespa motor scooter clipped to dispenser !

  After that final beer we headed home. I think we were both tempted to have another pint, but I thought it better we went before we got out of order. Michael was in full drunken rambling mode as we walked home ! I said goodbye to him outside my house, and went in as he walked around the corner to his house. The amazing thing is that after all that beer I was not desperate, but just mildly keen to have a pee. I held it in while I grabbed some cheese and rice crackers before going upstairs.

  I did have an impossible idea that I would go to bed without eating anything last night, and maybe if I had just had something like 2 or 3 pints of Guinness, I might have been able to do it, but with probably five and half pints of ale sloshing around in me, some snack was highly desirable, and cheese and rice crackers seemed about the safest thing I could have. I ate those, and I still felt OK to "process" the pictures I had taken ready for today. Then I went to bed.

  I could almost report a good night's sleep, but there were several disturbances. One was inevitable. I think I got up to pee at least three times. At least two were in the first half of my sleep, and both were emphatically not for trivial amounts of pee ! Maybe I peed out too much salt because in my last couple of hours of sleep I woke up with some awful lower leg cramps. Some say those cramps can be caused by low sodium levels, and maybe my experience this morning backs that idea up.

  It was quite cool in my bedroom when I got into bed. I think I may have tucked myself in too tightly because twice in the first hours of sleep I woke up with a damp, sweaty pillow (also the edge of the duvet was cold and damp too). At 2am I turned the heater on low, it took ages to take the chill off the room, but once it had it didn't matter too much if I kicked the duvet aside. In all those sleep disturbances I had two dreams I half remember. One was set in something like college, and is so patchy it is hard to try and describe.

  The other is slightly more straight forward. It was about Angela. I was with some people, although I don't think I can name them, when I informed that Angela had divorced her new husband 3 days after they were married. The official reason was because they had failed to "consumate" the marriage (is that even a thing any more ?). The real reason was that she didn't like the way the new husband wanted to control her assets. The place were were in was a very large field, with a shed in it, and had been bequeathed to Angela by her grandmother.

  He wanted to sell it, to raise money they didn't really need, and she wanted to bequeath it to her grandchildren. Her only option was to divorce him. Of course all elements of this dream are fictitious, but I thought it was pretty inventive, and of course this was only the précis of the dream which was longer, and more detailed - at least I think it was, but memories of dreams fade so fast.

  I was hoping my blood glucose readings might have been better this morning, but some beers, particularly the way we brew them in this country, can have unknown amounts of sugar in them. Fortunately, apart from the reading on one meter, the other two agreed on 8.8mmol/l. That is a bit above my usual average (if indeed this month has a believable average), but just about acceptable. The third meter gave a bad reading of 9.2mmol/l. That is not terrible, but still rather undesirable. I think the meter just didn't get a clean/fresh sample of blood.....maybe.

  One more positive thing this morning is that my weight almost remains 2kg below my official reading recorded in my last medical record. The only trouble is that there has been an anomaly in the space time continuum.....or something. I weighed myself, and took a note of the reading. I am sure I had only a small sip of drink before going to the toilet for a small poo, and a small wee. When I came back I had seemed to have put on 300gm - which is impossible, but seemed to happen. Even that higher reading is only 200gm short of 2kg less than my actual recorded weight at the surgery.

  I think I only have one ambition today. It is to try and raise the enthusiasm to do something about my dripping hot tap on the kitchen sink. I have had a (hopefully) decent now adjustable spanner that should get a good grip on the tap mechanism. If I can just undo it this time I may be able to cure the drip/trickle. I then have to somehow try and find a way to stop the broken spout spouting water everywhere. If I can fix the tap I will have to take a wander to Wickes, and see what new taps they have. I am sure I'll have to get a plummer in to fit the new tap(s) because I just can't get to any of the pipe under the sink because I can't kneel down, or bend over, or reach in far enough. It is all a bit of a nightmare.