Even the very latest revision to the forecast still shows today as being a very sunny day. The only unfortunate thing is that only a maximum of 9° C is expected. The sky will stay clear leading to a cold night, tonight. Tomorrow morning could see a few hours of sunny spells, but it will be mostly a bit dull. The temperature could be similar to today, but not the same. Only 8° C is expected tomorrow.

    Yesterday was a generally good day, but I made a terrible mistake in the evening. More about that later. The mild air, and a sunny spell or two made it seem easy to go out shopping after I had had a shower. Of course I opened the front door to find I had just dodged a light shower that I hadn't even realised had fallen.

  My shopping trip was to Tesco, and it seemed mild enough to put on a fairly light coat. The rain that had fallen just before I went out, had stopped, and so I didn't even bother doing up my coat. I was perfectly comfortable walking to Tesco, but I could feel I was just starting to get some chest pain by the time I had reached Tesco after about 6 minutes of walking. I am unsure if it was heart problems or just the scar tissue from my 10 year ago operation that was starting to flare. I think the latter is probable because I didn't slow down when I was in Tesco, or at least not much, but it being warmer in there seemed to cure it.

  There were several things I wanted from Tesco, but only bottles of Diet Coke were very important. I did get some meat and green vegetables for future dinners, and for the dinner I should have had last night. I ignored most other stuff, but I did buy one oddity - a tub of low calorie and law sugar ice cream. I had a cunning plan that I could use that for lunch, and more importantly, to line my stomach before the Thursday afternoon boozing started.

  It was a mistake to buy that ice cream, and I should have eaten the left over chips from the previous night's takeaway. If I had done that I would have have had a nice simple and safe meat and green vegetable casserole for dinner last night. Sadly I ate the ice cream, which I must admit was delicious, and that meant I had chips as part of a very unhealthy dinner last night. The consequences of that were a complete disaster as I shall explain later.

  One curious thing was how hot I seemed to feel walking back from Tesco. It was definitely mild out, and I was carrying some moderately heavy shopping (mainly 4 x 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke in my rucksack), but I still didn't expect to be pouring with sweat by the time I got home. It was like I had been walking under a hot sun on a 30° C day !  I feel sure it was a medical problem, but I don't know what it could have been. I actually felt reasonably good except for feeling overheated. I expect I am going through the manopause !

  I guess it sort of all fitted together when I started to eat my ice cream lunch with my shirt off, and no heating on.  Thanks to the sunny spells we had in the early afternoon, it was some time before I felt tempted to put a shirt on, or turn on the heater. I very nearly had a snooze after my lunch, and I did try after reading a couple of pages of the book I was reading, but I don't think I snoozed. Maybe I was worried about waking up feeling very cold.


  Jodie arrived for our beer tasting session at about 3.30pm, or maybe 10 or so minutes earlier. As seems very usual now, she had a skinful the previous night after one of the dives she goes to had some new beers in "that had to be tried" ! She opted for mostly the weakest beers we had in the fridges, and didn't have too many of them. That left me some freedom to select a few beers to drink by myself - but obviously only beers that Jodie had previously tasted and logged on her untappd.com account.

  One such beer I tried was from the Vault City Brewery, and called Fiery Ginger Iron Brew (pictured on the left). It tasted like 20% Irn Bru, 20% ginger beer, and 60% drain cleaner. It was truly revolting ! Fortunately I was able to drink some nice beers too. I actually finished the session with a can of Skol while Jodie nursed a nasty (to my taste) cloudy fruit beer that was only about 4.3%. I think she made it last well over half an hour !

  I kept myself amused doing crosswords while Jodie was glued to her phone. She had brought me a copy of The Metro, and the Evening Standard. The quick crossword in The Metro was very easy. I think I surprised myself as much as Jodie when I seemed to finish it in little more than 10 minutes. It was perhaps more surprising when I admit I had made a few mistakes that made solving some clues more difficult, but having solved them I could then correct the answers I got wrong.


  After about two thirds of the drinking session had passed one of the candles on the table had burnt down to nothing, and it was time to light up another candle. That candle, pictured on the left was the acorn candle that Jodie's boyfriend had given me for Xmas.  We wondered if it might smell like acorns, but neither of us really knew what an acorn smelled of - apart from "acorny". The candle only smelled of candle, but it looks nice.

  Jodie left to get the 6pm train, a bit earlier than usual, and I started getting my dreadful dinner together. I say dreadful purely for what it would do to me. It all tasted rather wonderful. It started with reheated, in the mini oven/grill, chips. It was not a huge portion, and maybe could have been described as moderate. It is possibly only in the last 4 or 5 months that reheating chips in the mini oven/grill is a thousand times better than tying to use the microwave. They came out almost like fresh.

  The chips were bad enough, but I also had to pieces of bread that were supposed to have been eaten with the shish kebabs the previous night. They were not pitta bread, but were more like a sort of flat bun made of the same sort of mix as would be used for a loaf of bread. I have reason to believe that like a lot of white breads, there was a lot of sugar in it.

  Incidently, I recently read somewhere that some call the buns of a big burger chain (possibly in America) cakes because of their sugar content.

  I converted those pieces of bread into something like pizza. I didn't have any tomato purée, and so squirted some low sugar tomato sauce on them. On that I sprinkled some "Italian style herbs", and finally covered them with sliced cheese before grilling them for  about 12 minutes, or enough to full melt all the cheese.

   I have to say those mock pizzas were very pleasant (except when I burned my tongue on lava hot tomato sauce !). As good as they were to eat, they were also desperately unhealthy on many levels. The worst was the effect they had on my blood glucose - but that was because I could actually measure it. The amount of feeling a bit stuffed was purely subjective. At least it didn't seem to interfere with my sleep.

  I was going to stay up to watch all of Have I Got News For You on "Dave" last night, but after watching a few minutes I decided it was not a great episode. One thing I made a definite note of was that it finished at 11pm. On previous days I couldn't seem to remember if it finished at 10pm or 11pm, but now I know for sure. After turning it off at, say, 10.05pm, I headed straight for bed where I read for a while.

  It was not a long read because it was just the last 3 or 4 pages of the juvenile novel "Space Cadet" by Robert Heinlein. Although simply written for youngsters, it still had a fair bit of science in it, or at least science as known in 1951 - before it was known that the planet Venus was a real hell hole with sulphuric acid rain falling on rocks hot enough to melt lead or aluminium. In the story it was thought to be like a steamy hot jungle under dense clouds that didn't allow astronomers to see through to the surface. Only the first very short lived landers, and the use of things like radar, allowed a view of what conditions are really like on Venus.

  Once I had read the last page I turned out the light, and as far as I can remember, I fell asleep very quickly - and that despite a bloated feeling from my gut. I did seem to sleep quite well, and I can't remember waking up more than normal, and possibly it was less than normal. While I can't remember enough to write anything that makes any sort of sense of my dreams, I do remember they were about being back in college, and some of the disorientation of going to a new college before it all becomes routine.

  The big, earth shattering stuff about this morning is my blood glucose readings. They were absolutely terrible after my dinner last night. If I had had the chips for lunch, and given the bread to the birds,I might have got away with it, but eating them all in one evening meals has left a big mark on me - big enough that I am going to fast for as long as I can make it. I doubt I'll be able to skip dinner tonight, but at least I can try and make something for dinner that is as safe as I can make it.

  The best reading I got was from the GlucoRX meter. It read a truly terrible 10.9mmol/l. Next was the Contour meter with an outrageous 11.3mmol/l. The Viva Chek meter, which always seems to read a bit high, except for rare occasions when it can completely agree with the others, read a staggering 12.6mmol/l. I haven't see a reading that high since the days when I was drinking gallons of full sugar Coke (and very, very quickly changed to Diet Coke).

  I am currently drinking chilled water because I can drink loads of that without the gas of Diet Coke making me feel bloated, and drinking a lot is a sort of substitute for food (but it takes a lot of imagination to think that way). I am not sure what else to do today. A long walk would distract from hunger, but could leave me feeling very hungry afterwards. So it could be good or bad. The thing is, to burn off some of this blood glucose would mean walking a lot further than I think I could manage.

  Maybe I might try a walk in the park because there are any places I can turn back without having to retrace my steps if I start getting chest/foot/knee/other pains. Although it is not strictly necessary to have a shower before going on a solitary walk, I would prefer to have one, but before I can have a shower, I have washing that has been soaking overnight. I need to finish that before I can have a shower. It is a light blue hand towel, a white t-shirt, and two pairs of light blue underpants. Washing the white t-shirt should be fine with light blue stuff - and light blue dye that comes out will just make the t-shirt look a brighter white (or so the pre-millennium TV adverts used to try and convince us).