Today is going to be a slightly improved version of yesterday. The day has started at -2° C, a degree less cold than yesterday, and by mid afternoon the temperature may reach 4° C. Once again a degree less cold than yesterday.  One other improvement is that the sunshine shouldn't change to only sunny spells in the afternoon. It may feel quite nice in a greenhouse, or inside my bedroom with it's south facing windows. Tomorrow could see the temperature rise to 6° C, but at the cost of no sunshine, although the cloud should be white cloud, and the day modestly bright.

    Yesterday was another semi good day.  Some bits were good, and other bits bad. One bad thing the return of a problem experienced last winter. There is a pronounced sag in the pipe that carries waste water from the bath to the main soil stack on the back of the house. Like last year, water trapped in the sagging bit froze, and I could have a shower, or wash my hair.

  This year the problem was not so bad. Last year that pipe remained frozen for a couple of days, if I recall correctly. Yesterday it seemed to thaw enough for the small amount of water in the bath to empty by about midday. I could have had a shower, aned washed my hair then, but I opted for just a flannel wash using the hand basin that has a different waste pipe which was not frozen.

  I spent some very lazy hours yesterday. Apart from my flannel wash, I did nothing of significance until just before I expected Jodie to arrive for out beer tasting. As expected, I didn't hear a thing from Michael. I assume he was still at the hospital caring for his wife. I still feel he needs to take some time out to look after himself. He is going to get frazzled if he is spending all day, and maybe even all night, at the hospital. You would think that the staff at the hospital are trained well enough to look after his wife, but he evidently thinks not.

  Jodie actually arrived a bit early yesterday, and so it was lucky that I had got every thing ready early too. I had actually put the heating on low in the dining room early in the morning. By 3pm it was feeling mostly comfortable, but I turned the heating on full to make it very toasty in there - except when Jodie was messing around in the freezing cold kitchen, and all that icy air was going into the dining room.

  Like last Thursday, Jodie had brought me a copy of The Metro, so while she spent hours flicking through Instagram, I did the crosswords. Once Jodie had exhausted the possibilities of Instagram we did actually have a conversation ! Some of the beers we had were more to Jodie's taste, but they seemed mild by comparison to some of the worst stuff she likes to drink. One was almost nice ! What were very nice were the cans of Tiny Rebel "dessert" beers featuring tastes like coconut and caramel. I liked those.

  Jodie left to get her usual 6.30pm train, and I tucked into my dinner. I had started it cooking before Jodie arrived, and it just needed an extra 10 minutes in the mini oven/grill to get it completely cooked and hot. It was my famous, or infamous, sprouts and diced lamb. This time I added some mint for extra flavour (the previous one was flavoured with Rosemary). It was very enjoyable, and a safe meal for me.

  I was only very lightly drunk at dinner time, but I drank more whisky during the evening. I presume I got very drunk, but I got stuck on a very long phone call, and hardly noticed I was drinking. I noticed it this morning. I had quite a hangover on top of some aches and pains where I had woken mostly uncovered in the night, and when the heating was on low. Not only did the cold cause some aches from my right elbow, as well as my chest scar tissue, but it felt almost shivery cold.

  I think it was about 3am when I woke up. I turned the heater on full, and then went for a pee in the really cold bathroom. I felt terrible when I got back into bed. I was in the state where it felt far too hot under the duvet. I knew it was because I was so cold, and did my best to endure it until things had equalised. That stopped me getting back to sleep for a while. At that point I would have been happy to have slept through to at least 9am.

  I was actually forced to get up just after 6am by two things. One was cramp starting in my calf muscles, and the other was the realisation that I really needed a poo. I most definitely did not suffer from constipation this morning, but it wasn't exactly the opposite. It was all perfectly normal apart from the quantity, and then a slightly small quantity 15 minutes later, and then a large quantity about an hour later.

  I am unsure if I can ever remember doing so much in one morning ! The peculiar thing was that there seemed no reason for it. I think I went perfectly normally the previous couple of days, and I am sure I hadn't over eaten much in the previous couple of day. I feel a lot lighter now, and that is a good thing because my weight had seemed to have gone up a couple of kilograms in the last couple of days. Maybe I have been eating something in my sleep without realising it, although all the food in the kitchen seems accounted for.

  Strange things didn't stop there. When I checked my blood glucose I had two almost identical readings that were good, and one reading that was horrendous ! The GlucoRX and Contour meters read 8.0 and 8.1mmol/l. The Sino Care meter decided on 9.4mmol/l ! I have written off that high reading because it is so different to the others. I was taking care to only test fresh blood. Maybe I should have tried another test strip, but I decided I couldn't bother to do so.

  After taking my morning pills, prescribed and vitamins, I went back to bed. I didn't think I would sleep, but I did, and it turned up an interesting dream. It was set in a sort of mirror image of the school my friend Ivor used to work at as a media services technician/consultant. I don't think I actually saw Ivor, but one of his staff said he was probably with Kevin in the old print room. She gave me two little magnets with instructions to just wave them at any doors that didn't want to open.

   She said to go out the room I was in, and then go left, but there was no door to the left. I went through a door to the right, and ended up outside the building. I knew where I thought I was heading, but it would mean going through a class that was going on. I went round the outside of the class until I came to a door leading back into the building. I recognised it, and headed straight for the door. That is when the dream ended. The way I describe it makes it sound like it all happened in little more than a few seconds, but in dream time it seemed to take much longer.

  I woke up and got up at about 7.30am. The first thing I did was to go down to the kitchen and prepare some nice hot instant noodles to help warm me up. It was while waiting for the kettle to boil that I realised I needed to go for the third poo I mentioned above. It did become quite urgent, and I nearly spilled one of my bowls of noodles rushing up the stairs. After the toilet I had my noodles, and eventually started to write all this.

  Since eating my hangover has faded away, although maybe not completely. The aches and pains I had, of which the chest pain was the most bothersome, have also faded away. In theory I could do something, but I think the first thing I do once I have uploaded this to my web server, will be to lie on my bed. I will do two things. I will read for a while, and I shall just lay there luxuriating in the warm sunshine coming through the windows.

   As I write this the sun has only come around enough to shine on the foot of the bed, but in an hour or two it should be shining on most of the bed. In a few more hours it will have travelled around the sky enough to shine right into my eyes. That is very annoying, and yet sort of wonderful in these winter days. I have no idea what I might do later. Maybe I'll just continue to practice being very lazy until I have reached grand master levels of laziness !