It was obvious there had been some rain early in the morning, but it seems to be dry now, and the sun is doing it's best to shine. The clouds looks thin and streaky, and so short sunny spells, sometimes watery sunshine, do seem possible. On the other hand, if you check the headline description of the day (in the screenshot above) it says "Heavy showers changing to cloudy by lunchtime". The latest revision to the forecast now shows light rain for 11am, heavy rain for midday, and then light rain again for 1pm. That could be followed by sunny spells for 2 and 3pm. With so much inconsistency, and frequent changes, it seems to today is one of those days that cannot be forecast. One thing that is consistent is the temperature. It will peak at 10° C early in the afternoon, and then start to fall to just 7° C. Tomorrow should be mostly dry, and the temperature will be it's highest in the early evening when it should hit 12° C as warmer air is blown in on gale force winds. Those winds will continue into the day after tomorrow.

  Off to a very late start this morning for reasons I'll explain further down the page. Much of yesterday was a fairly good day, and indeed there was only one very bad bit, but even that had nothing to do with my late start this morning. The first good thing was that I finally got to Aldi to do some shopping.

  It was getting on for midday by the time I had had a shower, and was ready to go out to Aldi. It didn't seem to be that cold out, and the sun kept trying to come out. I walked there in a warm coat, but it felt safe to leave the front unzipped. That made the walk seem more pleasant, although still not as pleasant as no coat at all as in the warmer months.

  Aldi itself was sort of disappointing. They had the usual bare necessities, and I bought some meat and vegetables for future dinners. What was lacking was all the weird stuff that have down the central aisle. Once upon a time, pre Covid, and probably pre Brexit, they usually had one or two things minimum that I sometimes had to force myself not to waste money on, but yesterday there seemed nothing to attract me despite there being piles of stuff in that central aisle.

  Maybe once the baby, Xmas, and New years selling times are over they may get some more interesting stuff. One annoying thing is that the food side of the central aisle was packed with stuff that was made from loads of sugar. That would be bad enough for my type 2 diabetes, but most of it would also be terribly fattening. Luckily I have trained myself up to about 95% of just completely ignoring it all. Maybe the remaining 5% is so I can look at it all and feel angry.

  One thing I bought a lot of was drink. In y rucksack I stuff four 2l bottles of Diet Coke, and a 2l bottle of Aldi own brand lime flavoured cola. In my shopping bags I had a 4 x 330ml pack of lagers (a brand I had not seen before, and had to try them), a bottle of beer, plus two bottles of shower gel. Of course the latter are not drinks, but still heavy liquids. As I put all the stuff from my small trolley through the checkout I wondered if I was going to be able to carry it all.

  To my surprise I found it almost comfortable. Also to my surprise I saw that it had rained while I was in the store. Fortunately my walk back home was similar to the walk to the store. It was moderately bright even if not actually sunny, and it was dry. It didn't seem to feel too cold either, and even with my coat undone, I still felt I was starting to overheat when I got home. Best of all was that my chest didn't seem to complain about the air I was breathing in, or exposed on the outside through a thin t-shirt.

  Soon after I got home there was another shower - I had dodged that one nicely too ! I put all my food away except for what I had bought, but shouldn't have bought, for lunch. It was a 6 pack of mini, "seasonal" pork pies. I have nothing good to say about them. As soon as I stopped to read the packet I saw they had quite a lot of sugar in them. Maybe that sugar was from the cranberry sauce flavoured pork in some of the pies. Those ones, at least I think it was them, actually tasted quite nasty. The others also were not very nice.

  At about 1.30pm I got a text message from Michael to say he had some more bottles of Diet Coke for me (I now have enough for a week !), and that he would be drawing up in his car outside in 2 minutes. I assumed I would be as comfortable as I was when I was going to and from Aldi. I went outside in just a t-shirt, but what I hadn't realised was that it had become VERY windy. I felt frozen by the time I went back indoors after being out in the wind for 5 or 6 minutes.

  Maybe those rotten (not literally) old pork pies didn't help. Perhaps stuffing them all down gave me a bit of indigestion on top of that freezing wind making my chest scar tissue have a major flare up. My chest was very sore for a while, and I felt weird enough to wonder if it was not something worse. It was good to have down the walk to and from Aldi earlier to make me believe I was still mostly robust (or not about to have a heart attack).

  I was glad that I had suggested to Michael that we have a normal drinking session, without Jodie, at home. I didn't fancy going out in the cold wind again, and there was also the threat of rain in the late afternoon. I think there probably was some rain, but I was paying more attention to what was in my glass rather than what was happening outside.

  We had an almost typical boozy session with just a minor change that most of the beers I drank were English ales. We both tried one each of the 4 pack of new lagers I had found and bought in Aldi. Strangely enough we both came up with similar thoughts about that lager - mostly that it had no plus or minus points. It was easily drinkable, but had almost no enjoyment about it. Maybe one negative thing was a slightly unpleasant after taste.

  We chatted about beers and stuff, plus a few observations about people before we got down to the nitty gritty. As I feared, Michael hasn't even bothered to try my Xmas present to him of the Freeview box which can record onto an external USB device (which I made sure he had as well). It was just the thing he was moaning about not having since the day his last VHS machine became useless as a recorder because it has no digital TV receiver in it.  He is apparently waiting for a day when he feel calm enough to plug it in, switch it one, and start using it (we did most of the setting up, the only slightly complex thing, here).

  After that we went on to the eternal "you shouldn't like that music, you should like this music" spat. Some of "my" music doesn't meet Michael's approval because it is pop music, or some other derogatory description. I was most amused that after Michael had gone home again, "my" music was apparently thought of more highly in some places, and a whole documentary concert about it was shown on the Sky Arts Freeview channel last night.

  I can't blame the booze because I should have prepared, and at least part cooked a nice healthy dinner before we even started drinking, but it never happened.....and I am not entirely sure why not. It was almost as if there was no time, but there should have been. In the end I shoved a small pile (the last in the bag) of oven chips, plus some Tesco frozen pork sausages in the oven, and had that for dinner.

  There must be many who are familiar with the idea of lost time as the result of a lot of booze. I must have drunk almost enough for that to take place, and indeed I find it hard to remember what Star Trek: Voyager was about, but it doesn't take booze to conveniently forget many of the useless episodes - as I think last night's was. Of course it didn't help that I was flipping back and forth between channels to try and watch the music documentary while still trying to work out if anything interesting was happening on Voyager.
 
  What happened last night is that I gained time rather than losing it. I think I was in bed, and asleep around 9.30pm. At just after 11pm I woke up believing it was time to get up. Several blurry eyes minutes later I realised it was not only not time to get up, but it was still the same day ! This has happened before, but I have never suffered such bad insomnia as in last night.

  It is hard to be sure, but it seemed like until about 5am I only slept for very short periods with long periods of being awake between most sleeps. Some periods of sleep could have been as short as 2 seconds, and in one case that was rather good. One such dream was directly inspired by the book I am reading. In the dream I was a soldier who had found an uninjured woman, from the enemy side. As per the times and circumstances the book was set in, I had the choice of raping or killing her. I am very glad that after 2 seconds of that dream I woke up and didn't have to make either very repugnant choice in the third second.

  Another very short dream started by me looking at a new "thing" on one of the walls of my house. It was a frame with some undecipherable words on it, and a large circular clock inset into it. While regarding this thing I heard my doorbell chime. For some reason I thought I might have heard it in real life, and so I woke up again wondering if it really was someone at my door, and who presumably would trying ringing again. Of course it was all in the very short dream. While awake, at least I think I was, I realised what the indecipherable text was. It was because the displays, based on moving thin sheets of  metal, like parts of a 7 segment display, had no power, and so were in random states.

  I think it may have been between 3 and 4am that I turned the heater up full to see if extra warmth would send me into a deeper sleep. Eventually it did but before that there was another impediment to my sleep, and one that left me feeling cold and needing extra heat. I started to get a bit of a stomach upset, and ended up spending three cold sessions sitting on the toilet. The first two were rather productive, and the last one was just a precaution, and nothing happened.

  I seemed to get some longer periods of sleep, or maybe the periods of insomnia because much shorter, from about 5am. It seemed worth trying for as much sleep as possible before getting up. It was almost 9am before I got up - one of the longest lie-ins I have had for ages. I felt pretty dreadful when I got up, and even now, a few hours later, I don't feel like I am sizzling with energy !

  My blood glucose readings were not as awful as expected this morning, but they were still rather awful. The best was the Contour meter which read 8.9mmol/l. Next best was the GlucoRX meter. That read very slightly higher at 9.6mmol/l. The cheapo Chinese meters both gave high readings. The Vivachek meter read 9.6mmol/l, and the Sino Care meter read right on the red danger line at 10.0mmol/l.

  There was plenty or reason to fast for much of today in those readings, but I felt so yucky that I had a single bowl of "Creamy, shrimp, Tom Yum flavour" instant noodles. It is a strange flavour, and one I rarely have because the description makes it sound ten time as delicious as it really is. It may have a sort of underlying seafood sort of taste, and it is sort of creamy, but I think the stand out flavour is probably fresh lime. That does give a sort of fresh flavour, and so it is enjoyable in that respect.

  I did have one very tentative plan for today, but it is feeling very unlikely now. I was thinking of seeing Chain playing in The Pelton Arms tonight. It has a potential to be good in as much as gigs at this particular time, between Xmas and New years eve, tend to be not over crowded. If it was not a two bus ride away, and if the weather was warm and dry, I might make the effort, but I can't see me going tonight. (To make matteres worse it doesn't start until about my bedtime - 9pm).

  I am not sure if I will do anything major today....on the other hand, I may do yet more shopping in Savers and Poundstretcher, although I am not desperate for anything from either store. One thing which is, or will be, important, is making up the spreadsheets for my health measurements through the year. Most of it I can cut and paste from this year, but every year I tend to make a few small modifications to how I make the measurements. I have still to make a definite decision about how, or how many of my blood glucose meters I will use next year. The obvious thing is the two reliable meters, and one of the others as a sanity check - even though both those cheap Chinese meters often seem to give insane readings. The really tedious thing is typing out the calendar, and that is something I have already made a small start on. Once I have done the day and date for, for instance my blood glucose spreadsheet, I can copy and paste that into the other spreadsheets. It is a very boring job, but at least once it is done it doesn't have to be done again until the following year.