Most of the hours of sunshine, shown in the screenshot above, have now been downgraded to sunny spells, but that should be enough to keep the day cheery. Also in the latest revision to the forecast shows the temperature from 11am until sunset should be a constant 10° C. That might sound like it could feel warm, and maybe behind glass, indoors, it will be warm, but there is still a lot of wind expected today that will make it feel a lot cooler. 40mph winds are now expected from 4 to 5pm. The rest of the day may only see gusts of 20mph. Tomorrow could see 13° C by the end of the day, but it will start at 6° C. The rise in temperature will be from more warm and damp air. Quite a bit of rain could fall from 9am to 1pm.

    Yesterday felt good for several, probably interlinked, reasons. Maybe it was because it was milder, maybe it had to do with barometric pressure, and maybe it was something as simple as fighting off a, possible viral, infection that was not instantly obvious. The fact is I felt practically pain free for the first time in ages.

  I say practically pain free, but while brushing my teeth, prior to having a wash, one of the muscles in my right arm did start to ache for a short while. Once again I had a flannel wash rather than a shower because I still had a bucket of laundry blocking up the bathtub, but at least I had a shower, and washed my hair the previous day. My hair was still clean and fluffy !

  A flannel wash seemed adequate to finally go shopping in Tesco.  I put on my thin(ish) mock leather jacket to go out, and while it is not a warm jacket, unless caught in direct sunshine, and that can broil you until you can take it off or get out of the sun, it seemed perfectly adequate to walk 5 or 6 minutes to Tesco. The great thing is that during that walk, and the walk home again, nothing hurt, although it must have been a close run thing. As I walked I could feel what seemed like bone rubbing against bone.

  It was my own fault. Back in 2013 when I had my quad heart bypass operation I tried, and succeeded in carrying far more shopping, by a factor of 10, than my surgeon recommended for at least the first three months after getting out of hospital. I barely waited a couple of week, and I felt what I believe was my sternum partly ripped apart. My doctors say that was impossible, but the surgeon wouldn't have warned me without good reason, and the doctors never felt what I felt. It could be the cause of most of my troubles to this day. If I ever go in for a rebore I will treat my chest with more care after it is put back together again.

  While it was very mild while I was out, it was also very windy. I don't know what I looked like in Tesco, but I know what I looked like after getting home, and took the picture of my hair blown in all directions when I got in. That picture is on the left. It looks like the hair on the left was blown behind my head, and that on the right up into the air !


  I was very seelctive about what I bought in Tesco. Almost top of my shopping list was 4 x 2l bottles of Diet Coke. I also bought some diced meat for either stews or grills with sprouts. Sprouts, and also some mixed broccoli and cauliflower florettes were almost the only other things I bought, but I couldn't seem to leave all the crap behind. I bought a pack of 4 "Pepperami buns", and a bag of mixed root vegetable crisps. The Pepperami Buns made for a tasty, but a bit naughty lunch.

  One thing about yesterday was the way time seemed to slip by so quickly. I was fairly late getting to Tesco, and it was nearly 1pm when I got home. After eating my 4 rather small Pepperami Buns I laid down to read, and let let the food start to digest. before I knew it I only had an hour or so before Jodie would arrive for a beer tasting session. I tried to finish the laundry that was clogging up the bath, but only managed to get the clothing into the last rinse bucket before I stopped and did the last bit of quick preparation for boozing.


 For the drinking session I put on a beer themed t-shirt. It is the second of only two long sleeved t-shirts I have. I very rarely used to wear them because they felt too hot, but suddenly they seem like a good idea. The other thing is that this 20+ year old Sol t-shirt seems to be a better fit now than when it was newer. I guess I must be smaller now than I was then, although that idea seemed wrong based on my weight yesterday. However I have been to the toilet a rather lot of times this morning, and now my weight is back to where it was. More unpleasant notes about this later.

  One of the mildly amusing things about yesterday's beer tasting was when I gave Jodie a small glass of beer that I had kept cold in the fridge after pouring it about 20 minutes before she arrived. I told her to taste it, and say what she thought about it before telling her it was 8% Skol Lager. She agreed that she might have turned it down if she had known what it was, but admitted on a completely blind testing it tasted nice.

  Even more curious is that she later volunteered to taste some Carlseberg Special Brew (7.5%). She said that tasted better than she expected. She entered both beers into her untappd.com account, and gave them a fair score. The Skol lager earned her a merit badge for Swedish beers - even if the Skol was actually brewed in Marstons (apparently now Carlsberg-Marstons) Wolverhampton brewery.


  It was quite a good boozing session, and because I was not self-medicating because I was not in any pain, I felt less of an urge to get very drunk. I still got a bit drunk, but not completely "bladdered" like the previous Thursday. Jodie left to get the 6pm train, and so the session ended a bit sooner than usual. I headed back to my PC with the cold chicken shish kebab left from the previous night's takeaway.

  There was not a lot of TV to watch last night. If I recall correctly I gave up on live TV, and watched a few episodes of Yes Minister from my old recordings. That old TV went down very well, as did my cold kebab, although as I mentioned yesterday, they weren't very good kebabs compared to those from several other restaurants/takeaways.  I misdiagnosed an odd feeling in my gut as hunger, and topped off the kebab with a bag or assorted root vegetable crisps (which seemed be all parsnip and beetroot - which is not a great assortment).

  It got to 7.30pm, and I felt like I wanted to sleep. There was no real reason why I shouldn't go to bed, and so after brushing my teeth, I went to bed......but I didn't sleep for hours. At least I don't think I did, but I have a feeling I might have had a dream while I thought I was awake. One reason for not sleep was because it soon became apparent I had some sort of stomach upset. It didn't seem to have any more then a mere hint of discomfort about it, but I cannot believe the amount of farting I was doing. I seemed to be more than double full of wind, and my bedroom soon smelled like a sewer.

  There were a few times I tried to go to the toilet, but nothing came out except for more farts. I did eventually get some thing like more proper sleep, but it seemed to rarely last for more than an hour. One other problem was the old problem that with the outside temperature higher than some of the very cold nights, I only needed the heater on low, but even low was too high, although no heater would have been too cold. At one time I woke up mostly uncovered, and I felt really cold, and yet I couldn't stand the duvet fully over me after a while.

  I had two dreams, or sets of dream, that were not pleasant. One was a very SciFi based dream. It was about the appearance of grey discs, about the size of a dinner plate. They had a small rim, and a thicker hub. At first it was thought they were explosive. They certainly seemed to "remove" people, but with no mess or sign of explosion, no one knew how. I found myself trapped in a room with just one door, and a disc outside. Fortunately the door had a small window, and I could see that when I closed the door the disc bumped into it, and didn't explode. Even better was that it got bored after a while, and went off looking for other "prey". I don't know if it was towards the end of the dream, or maybe after I woke up, that I realised they must work on the same principle of a Star Trek "transporter" and was beaming people to some other place.

  That dream was not exactly fun, but it seemed a lot less scary than the other dream I can part remember. In the dream I found myself in a French château or maybe hotel, where there was a gathering of WW2 veterans for a reunion. I had no idea how I got there, or why I was there. I had no idea how to get home, and there seemed no one to ask. I didn't know anyone there, and I didn't speak French. In another dream that was like another episode of the same serial, I seemed to be on a school journey, but once again I didn't know anyone, and no one seemed to know how long we would have to be there.

  It almost seemed nice to apparently run out of sleep, although I didn't, and still doesn't feel like I had enough sleep. One thing was certain: I definitely was not constipated when I got up. There was absolutely no urgency to get to the toilet, but once I was on the toilet I was very glad I hadn't wasted any time getting there. So far I have been three times, and the last too included a lot of flatulence too - sort of rocket powered poo !

  I expected my blood glucose readings to be awful again this morning, but to my surprise they were quite good. Both the Contour and Viva Chek meters read a fairly good 8.2mmol/l, and the often lower reading GlucoRX meter read a bit higher at 8.6mmol/l. That was OK, but lower would have been very welcome. It takes my running average for this month up to 8.3mmol/l. That is still less than my end of year averages for the last three years. I guess it must be good then.

  One of the first thing I must do today, after a little rest, is to get back to the well overdue laundry. I need to wring it out, and then put it through the fabric conditioner before hanging it up to dry. I will then probably have a shower.....although I am not sure if I will be going out, or seeing anyone today, and I may skip having a shower. What I will try and do is to do a bit more laundry. I have two thick sweat pant type pants that are useful in these wintry days. Being very thick I will have to wash them by themselves. If I find the energy and enthusiasm I could do two of them, and I think I could hang both on the small clothes horse.

  Other than that I am unsure what I will do. If the sunny spells really enthuse me I could get the hoover out, but that seems like fantasy. I expect I will be quite happy to pass some of today quietly reading. Incidently, one reason for a very late start to this writing is that I was catching up with some technology news from last week. One single item, and the comments for it, took a fair bit of amusing reading. It is here - https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/19/on_call/.