The temperature even as I write this is still 13° C, but is forecast to fall as low as 6° C by the end of the day. The forecast heavy rain has happened, and will most probably continue to happen, but it seems to be coming in waves. The met Office say it will stop after 1pm, but the BBC say it will be light rain from midday, and that will continue to 3pm. Clear skies for at least half the night will all keep the temperature rising until after sunrise tomorrow, when it should rise to just 10° C. There is some hope of at least one sunny spell tomorrow, but mostly the sky will be completely light grey all day.

  Yesterday started off with no internet, and it slowed me right down waiting for my broadband to come up again. That happened around 9am, but it was maybe another 20 minutes before it was completely stable. Even before my broadband was working there were a series of sunny spells that the Met Office said would not happen.

  Those sunny spells were short at first, but later in the morning there were a few good ones. They almost enthused me to do stuff, but they also tempted me to lay on my bed, in a big pool of warm sunshine, and just quietly read and snooze. After my disturbed sleep in the small hours, caused by a stomach upset, it was quite easy to doze off for 20 to 30 minutes. Fortunately the sunny spells held out just long enough to start doing a few useful things.

  One such useful thing was to finish washing the quite big load of laundry that I had started, and then stopped on Sunday afternoon shortly before Jodie arrived for some beer tasting. It seemed quite a lot of washing even though it was only two t-shirts and half a dozen pairs of underpants. All i had to do yesterday was the final two rinses and the fabric conditioner before wringing it all out as dry as I could get it prior to hanging it on the big clothes horse to dry.

  I put the clothes horse in the dining room with the fan heater on full blast. My idea was that I would do some work in the dining room, and the full heat would not be wasted. Sadly it was wasted because while I did do extra stuff, like giving the bath tub a good scrub, nothing I did was done in the dining room. Oh well, electricity prices aren't due to rise until the the start of coldest days of winter on January 1st. The cynical might say that was blatant profiteering.

  Ultimately, after the last sunny spell, I started to feel quite miserable. I should have had reason to feel good. The problem is that a lack of feeling bad is not a reason to cross the threshold into feeling good. The lack of bad was that it seemed like my stomach upset had gone away, and indeed it had, but that only turned things to normal, and normal can be pretty dismal with no sunshine.

  There was only one single thing I did during the afternoon, and that was to slowly hatch an insane plan. It was insane on a couple of levels. One was that it was relatively expensive, and the other was just sheer madness to even consider some hot and spicy food straight after an upset stomach....or more specifically and upset lower bowel. However that is exactly what I did. some might say that was very macho, and most would say it was insane !

  I watched all of Star Trek: The Original Series until it ended at 6pm before placing my food order. The restaurant I chose gave a 10% discount on orders over £20, and I easily passed that threshold. After I hit the "order" button I immediately felt remorse over ordering so much. In fact I had ordered enough for three meals, and I will eat it as three meals, although one of them could be a large lunch.

  It took nearly an hour for my order to arrive, and so I ate my dinner while watching Star Trek: Voyager. I ate the tandoori mixed grill with chilli potatoes, and another side dish I had not heard of before - aloo bortha. The latter was mashed potato with sliced green chillies and what looked like a roasted chilli on top as decoration. The chilli potatoes was supposed to be a side dish, but it seems my finger may have slipped, and I ordered a main instead. Both side dishes had a lot of chillies - just the thing for a previously upset stomach !!!

  I couldn't find anything I would care to watch on TV after Voyager, and by 8.30pm I had brushed my teeth, and was reading in bed. By 9pm I was fast asleep (I think).  On the whole I slept really well. I had just one very short period of insomnia - so short that insomnia is probably the wrong word. It happened at about 4am after I had woken up with a gummy mouth, and had a drink. As I laid back down I had a sort of reflux as some of the drink part came up again, but only just high enough to tickle my throat. After 10 minutes of intermittent coughing I was able to get back to sleep.

  I seemed to have a series of mostly short dreams whose contents would go on to inspire another dream. One of the longest had a forgotten beginning, and I only remember it in any detail from the point when I think I was going to work. I had got off a train, and was going down some stairs. The surroundings reminded me of an old tube station. As I was going down the stairs a young, possibly around 30 year old, woman grabbed my coat sleeve to steady herself, and then we were holding hands.

  That triggered off a conversation as we walk down the stairs, and then went through a door into what seemed to be a telephone exchange building, but with a TV repair workshop in it. All this time the woman was getting more and more friendly with me. It started off with her saying how much she enjoyed holding my hand, and ended up asking if I would like to go to bed with her. Of course I would have, but I had to do some work first. She wandered off, and I never saw her again...actually, I may have, but the dream was sort of fading out at that point.

  It is possible she re-appeared in a later dream, but he character had changed, and were were just two people apparently going to the same college. We were heading to the toilets at the end of class, but the caretaker was just locking the toilets up. I called him to say we needed them (at that point there may have been 3 or 4 of us). He walked me over to a sort of receptionist where he said he knew me, and was going to lend me the keys, but would the receptionist make sure I handed them back to her.

  I opened up the toilets, and all four of us entered (it seemed to be a unisex toilet). I let the other three go first, and rather than wait I went down some stairs to the toilet of the next floor down. It seemed to be almost in the open air, and was blocked with leaves and twigs. Using a nearby fallen tree branch I cleaned the pan out, and used toilet paper to clean the seat. I was about to sit down when I noticed an old DJ console behind the toilet. That view triggered a new dream.

  The new dream was different to the others in so much as there was no action at all. It was like pure thought as I imagined how I would build such a console these days. I imagined all the circuitry and controls mounted on printed circuit boards - one for each channel. I also imagined how some channels would be customised for use by microphones, and others for tape and record players. It was a curious dream - all imagination, and yet it was all valid stuff back in the real world.

  After my very yummy Indian takeaway dinner I feared my blood glucose readings would be through the roof this morning. To my astonishment the readings were not terribly high at all, and were not a lot higher than the day before. One was initially rather high, but I did that reading again with a new test strip, and fresh blood. It fell into line with the others. The highest readings were both the same at 8.7mmol/l. That was on the Sino Care and Vivachek meters, and is higher than desirable, but by no means terrible. The other two meters gave lower readings, The Contour meter said 8.4mmol/l, and the GlucoRX meter said 8.2mmol/l. Both the latter although higher than some of the good readings I have had recently, are still below typical average.

  One thing I want to do today is to go shopping in Tesco. It is unlikely to happen this morning, and before the rain has finished for the day. It is not terribly important to go today, but I won't have time time tomorrow. Tomorrow could be interesting - it seems I will be joined by Kevin in The Jolly Farmers, and that could be the recipe for an enjoyable disaster. As for the rest of today....maybe a shower and washing my hair could be all I do, but mostly I will be making it up as I go along.