It is looking like today is going to be a thoroughly nasty day ! The latest revision to the forecast now shows heavy rain from 9am until midday, and then light rain until 1pm. From 2pm the sky will be dominated by thick grey clouds, and at 11pm heavy rain may fall again. The only positive thing, but not enough to outweigh the dreadful greyness and rain, is that by mid evening the temperature might have risen to 13° C. Tomorrow should be dry, and brighter. The Met Office suggests just a couple of hours of sunny spells. The BBC say there could be sunny spells all through daylight hours. The temperature may only reach 11° C, but maybe that is not so bad for three quarters of the way through January, and any sunny spells may make it feel almost nice.

    Yesterday was a semi productive day, and that was because, once again, I was feeling almost good. I still felt modestly lazy (or was it very lazy ?). Apart from a few minor tasks, like washing up Sunday's beer glasses, and preparing and cooking my dinner, I did do two major things.

  One major thing was to finally finish washing a couple of t-shirts and some underpants that I didn't manage to finish on Sunday. I have to admit I just had to wring everything out after their final rinse, and then do the fabric conditioner part. With everything wrung out as well as I could, I was able to hang it all up to dry on the big clothes horse in the dining room. The sunny spells were doing a good job of keeping my bedroom warm most of the time, and so I didn't begrudge using a fan heater on low to help that washing dry.

  It felt good to finally get that lot of laundry done, and I celebrated by laying on my bed with one of the longer sunny spells playing warm sunshine over my bed. I read another chapter in the book I have been reading, but I don't think I had a snooze. I did get up again for a light lunch of rice crackers and cream cheese. During the day, with a lot of sunny spells, I didn't feel very hungry, but hungry enough to enjoy those rice crackers, and in turn, they were good enough to hold off any thoughts of hunger until almost dinner time.

  It was almost mid afternoon when I decided to do some more laundry. It was to be just two items - a thick pair of sweat pants, and a long sleeved t-shirt. With just two items, one being easy to deal with, and the other actually a bit of a bugger, I gritted my teeth, and did the whole job non stop. I could hang the t-shirt on the clothes horse already in use in the dining room, but I had to hang the sweat pants on the small clothes horse. I put that in my bedroom with the fan heater on low (and later on, on high for a bit).

  After some more reading, dinner time approached, and I did the last bit of cooking for my dinner. Actually, when I say I did the last bit of cooking, all I really did was to turn the dial on the mini oven/grill to give the bacon and sprouts an extra 10 minutes......although I did turn the bacon over before doing so. It was quite a nice meal, but I should have spent time to cut the bacon rashers into small pieces before roasting/grilling them with the sprouts.

  If there was one negative thing about the meal it was that my later burps were a bit "sprouty". I was hoping that eating the last two bitter orange, dark chocolate biscuits I had left, might have reduced that sproutyness. Incidentally, eating those two chocolate biscuits was a calculated risk, and I think I almost got away with it.

  As usual, I ate my dinner while watching Star Trek, but I don't really know which I watched more of - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, or Star Trek: Enterprise. Both were on at the same time, and neither really grabbed my attention. The other thing of note about dinner is that I washed it down with the first of three cans of Carlsberg Special Brew - made to the genuine Danish recipe - allegedly ! I feel sure the original Danish recipe didn't use glucose syprup as a cheap substitute for malted barley. Fortunately, like in the case of Skol lager, they do let the yeast eat up all the glucose syrup, and no sugar remains in the finished product.

  I watched more TV, including an episode of The Simpsons, and an episode of Secrets Of The London Underground before going to bed just after 9pm. I read the last couple of pages of "Farmer In The Sky" by Robert A Heinlein before starting on another of his juvenile novels "Space Cadet". It is another easy to read book....well, almost easier to read. The type face in the book is a bit on the small side for reading without a reasonable amount of light on it.

  I may have read unto 10pm before I put the book down, turned out the light, and as far as I can remember, fell quickly into a fairly deep sleep. I think I woke again around 1am, and I am not really sure why. I did go for a pee, but there didn't seem to be enough to make it feel urgent. Having had half a pee then, I woke up again an hour and a bit later to do the other half !

  I know that some time in the night I had several dreams, and I am sure one was special, or exciting, or.......or something, but it seems I can remember a thing about any of the dreams. There is something about a later dream that is on the tip of my tongue, so to speak, that I had in the last hour of sleep when I was hovering between sleep and wakefulness, but even that dream refuses to surface. Oh well, at least I know I had dreams even if I can prove it be recounting anything from them.

  I was actually up a bit earlier than recently. I first woke up a little after 5am, but I thought that was too early to get up in winter. Even about 6.15am when I did get up, seemed too early with sunrise still nearly an hour away. Sunrise was supposed to at 7.52am, and so it was over an hour away when I got up. This morning it was even worse - if the sun still exists, or works, it has been up over 90 minutes now, but it is still very gloomy outside.

  One significant thing is that after a couple of bright, dry and almost warm days, this dull, cold and wet morning has revived a selection of aches and pains that had taken a rest yesterday and the day before. None are particularly bad, but they are still very annoying. I feel sure that if I was to go out today I would soon get chest pains.

  The is better news about my blood glucose readings. In fact there is very good and very bad ! My Contour meter gave a very good reading of 8.0mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter was not quite as good at 8.4mmol/l. The Viva Chek meter went out on a limb and read 9.0mmol/l. I have to assume that is an error, and I shall ignore it. If I hadn't had the two bitter orange chocolate biscuits last night I could have improved on those blood glucose readings.

  Today I want to have a shower, and wash my hair before I do anything else. I'll probably have a shave too, to save time tomorrow. My plan is to do two lots of laundry today. The first lot will be a single thick pair of sweat pants. The second lot will be a light blue hand towel, and a white, long sleeved t-shirt. I will be quite happy if I manage both of those today. Pretty soon now I will be forced to change all my smelly bed linen. It has been down all winter, or longer, and I am sure it must stink.....although I don't notice it. The significant thing is that with no other backlog of laundry I can try and get at least the sheet and pillowcases washed, and hopefully the duvet cover too. It is a fairly thing duvet cover, and I think I can manage it, or at leasts manage to wring it out enough to dry it indoors without having to wait for later spring/early summer for better outside drying conditions.