During the night I am sure I saw my outside thermometers almost reaching 15° C, but right now it is back down to 13° C (a degree higher than the Met Office predicts). At the moment it is grey outside, but the word that keeps popping into my head is that it is sullen. It is unlikely to get better, but it could get worse. The latest update to the Met Office forecast says light rain will start to fall at 1pm, and heavier rain could follow at 7pm (which is an improvement over 5pm as shown in the original forecast). The BBC is a bit more optimistic. They say light rain from 2pm, and then just light rain until 1am tomorrow. Tomorrow could be a much cooler day, just 9° C at best, but the cloud should be white all day. It should stay dry until late evening. On the other hand, The BBC says sunny spells from 9am to 3pm tomorrow, but still only 9° C.

  The worst symptoms of whatever disease or plague I was suffering from had all but gone yesterday, but not completely gone. A few bits ached now and then, but probably no worse to how they have ached for what feels like ages. My chest gave me little trouble, but I was being very careful to be kind to it.

  I am unsure which was worse yesterday - the fear of the hordes of rampaging shopper in, for example, Tesco, or the fear that the cold air would get me wheezing, and or my chest aching. Of course there is a sort of fallacy in the latter argumant because it was not too cold yesterday. If there had been strong sunshine it could have felt nice out if there had also been no wind. Maybe I just couldn't face a Xmas Eve rammed Tesco !

  As I keep reminding myself, there was nothing I desperately needed from Tesco (or any other supermarket), and even any residual need was negated by finding a leek in the fridge that doesn't seem to be in bad condition. This can all be summed up by saying I stayed in the warm and mostly relaxed all morning. I did a bit of reading, and I tried to snooze, but didn't fall asleep.

  One little thing I did turned out to be very slightly bigger. It started with checking a few old USB thumb drives/memory sticks to see if I had one I could use for a future project. One of the USB sticks had some backups from my older mobile phones - mostly pictures, but also some video and other stuff. I found a picture on it, and I had to check that I had a record of it - I hadn't !
  This picture of 456015 was taken in 2015 at Earlsfield station. It was taken on an old Motorola mobile phone that didn't have a very high resolution camera, although the picture quality was pretty good. The reason I got excited about it was that these class 456 trains have all been scrapped now, and obviously there will never be a chance to get new pictures of them. I have added it to my ever growing spreadsheet of train pictures.

  Yesterday afternoon was a beer tasting session with Jodie, and later on, Alan. Michael said he might drop in, but we didn't hear from him. As usual we tasted some good and some bad beers. One thing that added some slight excitement was I thought I might as well open my Xmas presents while I was with friends....or maybe friend, singular at that point.
  The four coloured, but unscented, candles were from Jodie, and the acorn shaped candle was from Alan.











  Michael gave me a bottle of Whyte & Mackay whisky.









  The mystery, but actually obvious - except for the fine details - that I was given by Kevin when I met him in The Jolly Farmers pub on Wednesday, was the four bottles of fine ales in the picture above.
 Most of what I drank was not traditional ales. I did mainly stay clear of the acidy fruit sours that Jodie was enjoying, but I had a few weird beers of my own choosing. This Caribbean Salted Cherry Chocolate Cake Tropical Stout was rather nice. I think there are still 3 variants of this beer still in the fridge for later enjoyment.
  It is possible there could still be a Xmas card still in the post (maybe even from Angela), but this was the state of play yesterday afternoon. Ten Xmas cards is probably more than I can reasonably hope for. One of them was an oddity in that it came from neighbours 2 houses away. We usually say a polite hello if we see each other, but nothing more. I must put them on my Xmas card list for next year !

  I did get one more Xmas present just after Alan and Jodie left. It was a rather posh looking, at least 36 inch, computer monitor that Alan had spied dumped at the end of the road. The chances are that it doesn't work, but I said yes please, and Alan grabbed it and brought it back for me to try later. I expect I'll be playing with it today - and then possibly wondering how I am either going to repair it or dispose of it.

  I think that yesterday I said it was likely madness, but I did end up ordering an Indian takeway for my dinner. it was very delicious, but it, plus maybe the plate of oven chips I had before boozing, has really played havoc with my blood glucose this morning. It was definitely a mistake to eat both the Bombay Aloo potato side dish, and the Chilli potatoes main dish. My excuse is that I was drunk, and they were very delicious !

  I didn't realise it until I had finished eating, and with the extra spicy warmth inside me, that on attempting to turn the heater down I found myself turning it off. That may have been when I thought it was very close to 15° C outside. It seemed quite warm in my room as I ate my dinner, and watched, without hardly a single bit of enjoyment, the first J.J. Abraham's Star Trek movie.

  What a terrible movie ! With cuts between scenes happening at less than 1 second intervals, I could hardly make out what was going on in some places. Plus the replacements of the original actors, and maybe the replacement starship, just made it seem like a cheap Chinese knock off. The billions spent making that movie could have been better spent making a couple of seasons of a TV series of a different crew on a different starship, having different adventures set in the known Star Trek timeline. One fan club was putting together a series based on those who worked "below decks", the engineers and other essential people. Sadly it was cancelled because of copyright problems, but it was an idea worth trying instead of trying to rewrite history like that bloody Star Trek movie.

  After having the heat off for maybe an hour I turned the heater on low, and in another hour it seemed warm enough to go to bed without having to bother fighting with the duvet. It was a huge extravagance in heating costs, but I did sleep really well for most of the night. I can barely remember why now, but I think I was awake from about 3am to 3.30am. I did seem to be dreaming a lot. That suggest my sleep was not that deep, but on the other hand I wonder if some dreams were actually dreams about dreaming ?

  Maybe there was too much to try and remember, or maybe like most dreams, the memories are fading from the moment of waking up. I do remember one dream, possibly in it's entirety because it did seem to a be a very short dream with no remembered lead up and lead out of it. In the dream I was going back to the house I spent most time in as a kid. In realirty it was demolished 50 or more years ago, but in the dream I think it was still owned by my mother (also in reality it was rented from the council). I went up to the front door, and tried to put the key for the deadlock into the keyhole. Someone had changed the lock, and my key was too big to go into the keyhole.

  I had another dream that had a comedy moment, and I made damn sure I remembered it because it was worth retelling to anyone who will listen. I think the dream may have included a tram, but such details have now faded away. The bit I do remember is telling someone that the Roman God of trams and subway trains was "Sparktyarse" - a play on Spartacus if it needs explaining - sparky arse ! Maybe I should have said the patron saint instead of God, but these concepts are alien to me.

  One thing I was aware of during the night was that I did seem to be peeing more than usual, although in most cases it was not an urgent need. It could have been, and indeed was, a warning of high blood glucose.  Three of my meters gave readings that scraped under the red line, but one gave reading well into the danger area. That meter was the Contour meter, and it read 11.4mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 9.3mmol/l. That is high, but still fairly safe, particularly as a one off reading. The other two meters said 9.5mmol/l (Vivachek) and 9.9mmol/l (Sino Care).

  I should have embarked on more fasting until at least dinnertime tonight after those terrible readings, but I felt starving hungry this morning. That is unlike yesterday when a couple of moderately high blood glucose readings lead me to very painlessly fasting all day until the evening. This morning I soon gave in and had a single bowl of instant noodles. They were quite spicy noodles, and once again I got something very hot and spicy in contact with the back of my throat, and itw as like having a bad cold as I coughed, and coughed, while my nose ran with snot. Thankfully it has calmed down now.

  Today, just like a Sunday, but even worse because there are no shops open*, has the potential to be very boring, but there are a few things I intend to do today. One is to catch up on some laundry. The pile has grown quite a lot since the last catch up. There is an extra good thing about this, and it is that I can justify putting some heat on in the dining room. It will make playing with the big posh monitor Alan rescued from the roadside for me, a much more pleasant thing in the warm. It would be great if it works, or can be very simply repaired.

* There are several shops that I could go to in Catford today. The little supermarket on Catford Bridge is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I think the very similar shop, the Metro Food Centre, down near the old townhall may be open as well. Then there is The Catford Food Centre shop on the main road. They never close as far as I am aware.

  Repairing computer monitors can be easy or impossible. I still have in use a 14" Dell monitor I found dumped in a corridor of the place I used to work in Wandsworth. Admittedly I was able to take it to my bench which was for doing electronic stuff. Upon opening it up I saw there was a circuit board that was purely a power supply. A fuse was blown because a small capacitor had gone short circuit. Changing the capacitor and fuse brought it back to life, and 10 or more years later it still works perfectly. I doubt I will be so lucky with the Monitor I got yesterday, although if I am really lucky it could have just been replaced still working, by an even bigger and more impressive monitor !