There is a differing opinion about today's weather. The Met Office, who sometimes gets it right, say there will only be rain at 10am today, but the day will be very grey and overcast. The BBC predict light rain and drizzle for all morning, and some of the afternoon. Both agree that the morning will start off at 8° C, and then the temperature will fall to 6° C by midnight. Tomorrow will probably be quite grey, but little rain is shown in the current forecast for tomorrow. One difference to today is that the temperature peak of 8° C will occur late in the afternoon. The morning could start in the region of just 4° C.

   I find it very hard to account for all my time yesterday. So little happened that I wasted/enjoyed a lot of the day just quietly reading or snoozing, although I may only have had short snooze, but with so few time markers it is hard to be anything like accurate.

  One thing I did do was to make sure the iMac was working in case Alan and Jodie turned up. They didn't, and I heard nothing from them. Maybe Alan has decided to pick up his Ebay purchase in Catford on Thursday so he can pop in, and drop Jodie off, at our regular Thursday beer tasting session.

  Another thing I half did was some laundry. Once again this involved a towel, but only a small hand towel. It still seemed to take a lot of rinsing and wringing out to get the rinse water not all frothy. In fact I never achieved that, and ultimately I guess it could be said that I abandoned the job after the fourth rinse. I did intend to get back to it later, but it is still in it's washing buckets in the bath this morning - a morning when I definitely want to have a shower, and to wash my hair.

  It was utter madness, but another thing I did was to make another order with Amazon. The principle thing was two bottles of Welsh whisky.  One was Penderyn Single Malt Welsh Whisky with a Madeira Finish. The other was Penderyn Celt, a Welsh Single Malt Whisky. The former was 46%, and the latter 41% - both stronger than the typical 40% of most whiskies. In an added moment of madness I also ordered yet another blood glucose meter.

 One thing I almost forgot was that at about 1.30pm, a few hours later than usual, I had my second beer order from Beer Merchants delivered. The whole thing about it was to use up about £8 of reward points before they expired. That was one side of the coin, the other was to order enough for free delivery. Most of what I ordered was for my personal consumption - strong Belgium beers that Jodie will have had before, ages ago, and so have no interest in at all now.

  However, one beer she may well be interested in. It was the most expensive beer I have ever ordered - about the price of a bottle of whisky, but only 11%. It is pictured on the left, and as can be just seen, it is a Xmas blend. I am hoping that for the money spent on it, it will be extra delicious. Of course the possible flaw in that idea is that beers have such a wide taste that we can't like every single one. To a person who likes the style of this Xmas blend it may be on the level of nectar, or ambrosia, but other could find it undrinkable. I hope I am in with the first group !

  In one respect, waiting for that beer delivery set the tempo for the whole day. On the other hand, with a horribly grey and wet afternoon, I was unlikely to want to go anywhere, and although I would have hoped they would give some sort of advanced warning, I wouldn't want to miss Alan and Jodie if they did pop over even if it was just to drop off the Apple Mac Alan has said he is dumping on me.


   I confessed to this the day after I bought it, but here's the first picture of the mini Xmas tree I bought from Poundstretcher. You'll notice that the lights and branches are not evenly distributed. With both Jodie and Michael providing the peer pressure to buy it, it will be their duty to "beautify" it when they are here for the beer tasting on Thursday.

  I cannot remember why I never got around to cooking my dinner last night. Maybe it was a subconscious idea planted by a Just Eat marketing email. Maybe it was less than subconscious. I did get an email at 11.39am reminding me that on Tuesday many restaurants give a 20% discount for orders above a certain value - usually about £20.

  I'll admit I was suckered in to order a kebab dinner instead of cooking something just as healthy, and considerably cheaper.....although maybe not quite a delicious, but the latter does depend on the shop/restaurant who supply it. I tried somewhere new last night, and it was good and bad.

  The first good bit was that the order was delivered quite near the beginning of the advised time slot, although it was still quite a wait. From then on it had little going for it. The very first bad thing was that they didn't do a lamb shish kebab. I expect they do them, but it was somehow omitted from the Just Eat menu system. I had to opt for a lamb donor. The meat was very nice, albeit a little crispy in places where it was probably overcooked on the spit. The accompanying salad was very poor, and the chilli sauce was almost tasteless.

  The second bit of the order was a chicken shish kebab. I guess it made no difference to the flavour, but the chicken was cut into strips instead of vague cube like lumps. It did mean that only the top and bottom were obviously grilled (or possibly pan fried). Once again the salad was very sparse, and the chilli sauce was a waste of time. I added my own, nice and hot, hot pepper sauce. I have added notes to my slowly growing list of kebab orders, and added not to use them again.

  Last night I watched some or most of the usual three Star Treks, once again selecting Enterprise instead of Deep Space Nine. None were particularly notable. After the Star Treks I had the pleasure of watching an episode of Thunderbirds being shown on (I think) The Talking Pictures Channel. It was both good and bad. I doubt I have seen that episode for maybe 50 years (!!!!!!), but I could still remember bits of it. In fact I remembered enough that I could fill in the visuals from memory when I was only listening to it while doing other stuff.

  I think it was getting late, or after 10pm, before I was in bed. As far as I can remember, I fell asleep very quickly after I put my book down, and turned out the light. I slept well last night, with only a single, very short (10 minutes ?) period of insomnia. One curious thing was having two dreams about Dr Who. In one, the doctor, who I think was David Tennant, was examining a red telephone box. He thought it was booby trapped in some way.

 After examining what looked like a possible trap door in the floor, but finding nothing, he next snipped the wires going to to phone itself. That phone was actually fixed to the door instead of more conventionally to the back wall of the box. What happened next was so fast it was a blur, but essentially the telephone box took off like The Tardis is often shown to do when it doesn't just dematerialise. It made the typical Tardis taking off noise, but it started off ear shatteringly loud. I can't ever recall hearing anything really loud in a dream. I'm sure I had second dream featuring The Doctor, but it seems to have faded from memory.

  This morning would have been a good time to use my, on order, fourth blood glucose meter. I got three very different readings on my current three meters this morning. As usual the Sino Care meter gave the highest reading, but even 8.0mmol/l is very good compared with my typical (or once typical) monthly averages. The Nexus GlucoRX meter gave a lower reading. It is the meter I officially get test strips for on prescription. It read 6.7mmol/l, and that is rather excellent. The oldest meter, the Bayer Contour, which often seems to match the GlucoRX meter, gave a fantasy ready of just 5.8mmol/l. I haven't seen a reading that low for years !

  The whole idea of using three meters is so that I can have some confidence in the reading if two of them closely agree. This morning's wide range of readings needed a fourth meter in the hope it might have agreed with one of them.....of course this idea could get absurd, and I could end up with 5 or 6 meters - and no blood left in my fingers to check. In reality, I am going to semi retire the Sino Care meter for perhaps a month. It is the meter that gives the most different readings. If the new meter tends to agree with the other two more frequently I will stick with it.

  On the other hand, I do have an awful lot of Sino Care test strips to use up, and so I doubt I will give up using it completely, and who knows, maybe the new meter will turn out to be extra weird. It is claimed to be NHS approved, and that might suggest it is known for it's accuracy.  It is probable that it will be delivered today instead of the originally predicted delivery tomorrow. That could be inconvenient.

  Today, being a Wednesday, I shall be going for my usual two pints of Guinness in The Jolly Farmers. Hopefully I will make it home before the Amazon delivery. That should be very likely because typically it could be any time after 6pm, but now and again the buggers do surprise me with an early afternoon delivery. Maybe they will just dump it on my doorstep, and I'll find it there when I get home.