Once again the BBC are being very optimistic about sunny spells. The met Office forecast (above) only predicts sunny spells for 11am, and full sunshine for midday. before and after that it will generally be dull. On the other hand, The BBC predicts sunny spells for a lot of today. Fingers crossed that they are right ! Both forecasters agree the temperature will peak at 13° C today (but maybe at slightly different times). It should be another very mild night, but the temperature will actually drop after tomorrow morning. It should start at 10° C, and soon fall to just 8° C. There will be no hint of sunshine, and the cloud will be filled with medium dark grey clouds.

    Yesterday was a fairly pleasant day that was really only marred by one thing - an excessive hunger that spoiled, but didn't ruin my blood glucose readings this morning. On the whole I had a very lazy day, and apart from having a shower, the only other thing of note that I was to prepare and cook my dinner....oh, I also drank some beer !

  The sunny spells in the morning made it so easy to lay on my bed quietly reading. I might have even had a snooze, but I think it more likely I was just laying there resting my eyes. I seem to recall saying I had a good night's sleep, and that would make it unlikely I would need a snooze......on the other hand, "need" is not always a factor when it comes to the pleasure of a snooze.
  One odd thing I did was to take a few pictures. Every time I opened one of my light tool drawers I saw the item above. I knew exactly what it was, but I wondered if many other people would recognise it.
  Had it been a real quiz I could have offered this picture as a clue, but unless you had ever used it, it would be unlikely that you knew what it was, and even if you did use the tool it is likely you never saw these naked !
  The wheel above fits the Dymo lettering gun at the rear of this picture. I can't remember whether the wheel in it, or the wheel on it's own was the original wheel. I never saw any for real, but I know you could order wheels with special graphics on them - some might have accented letters for alternate languages, and some might have specialised symbols for scientists.  I think my spare wheel produced smaller letters that better suited thinner embossing tapes.

  Without going downstairs to check it, I don't think the wheel can be changed, or at least definitely not interchanged, in the machine in the foreground. The big difference is that machine has the tape cutter blade embedded in the wheel, and that was fine until the blade started to get blunt, and you needed to use more and more pressure to get it to cut. That extra pressure caused what I think "anvil area" is the best description, to split. It still works if you press down as hard as possible where the blade is trying to cut upwards.

  I had an early visit from Jodie yesterrday. She was going to take a wander around the Catford Food Market (between the two railway stations) on her way here for some beer tasting, but she found the food market was not there for some unknown reason (it was definitely the last Sunday of the month yesterday). That could have left her glum, but she called into The Three Hounds, near Clockhouse station, on her way here to make sure she was able to get first dibs on some new beers that there Instagram (or some such messaging site) said were going on sale when the place opened.

  A pint and a third, and Jodie was unusually perky when she was here. Maybe it helped that I was playing some very unfamiliar, interspersed with a few known songs. I had dug out all my Kerrang! cover CDs, and ripped them to play in one big playlist on the dining room computer. There were some little gems hidden among the piles of crap that appeared on those CDs. I put some of the blame on Jodie for them. Possibly all the copies of Kerrang! I bought were part intended as hand me downs for Jodie. At the time I was earning quite a decent wage, and Jodie was on the dole.

  As usual we had some good and bad beers. I was drinking a bit faster than Jodie, and I may have had 2 more cans than she did. I know I definitely had three shots of whisky at the end to her single shot. Jodie left to get the 6pm train, and I gave my dinner 5 more minutes in the microwave to warm it up. It was a sort of casserole of mainly meat balls (found on the reduced price shelves with about £1 off) with cauliflower.

  I didn't feel particularly drunk, although I can't claim to have been sober while eating my dinner. It should have been a moderately substantial meal, but the booze seemed to give me a raging hunger. I was going to have some rice crackers and cheese as a sort of dessert, but I spotted a bag of microwave in the bag rice. I think it was described as "spicy rice". Two minutes later it was cooked, and I dug into it with relish !

  Rice is funny stuff. It is almost pure carbohydrate (unless brown rice), and sometimes that can raise my blood glucose a substantial amount. I think I almost got away with it, but about that a bit further down the page. There was a very poor selection on TV last night, and while I found some crap programme about aliens to eat by, I gave up on that after a while. At that point I seemed to be developing a hangover - which seemed very soon after last drinking. I opted for some hair of the dog - a single, but a bit large, neat whisky.

  After drinking the whisky, and with no real distractions on TV, I went to bed rather early in the evening - it was before 8pm. I read in bed of over an hour, maybe as much as two, and finished the book I was reading. By that time I was feeling perfectly normal - no bloat and no hangover. When I turned out the light I had no difficulty falling asleep. One thing that worried me is that I seemed to be peeing a lot during the night. That is either a symptom of high blood glucose, or drinking a lot of beer before going to bed.

  It seemed that the "a lot of beer" theory may have been correct. When I checked my blood glucose it was rather more typical than high....although it does seem my "typical" this month is generally lower than many months last year. The Contour meter read 8.3mmol/l, and that is actually slightly below average. The GlucoRX meter read 8.5mmol/l, and for a lot of the last months of last year that would be very typical. On this occasion the Sino Care meter closely agreed with a reading of 8.6mmol/l. As a loose rule I say anything under 9.xxmmol/l is a good reading, and so I am satisfied with this morning's readings.


  At just gone 7am this morning I received a test message from Royal Mail to say my new Leather Jacket, ordered from China (indirectly via Amazon) would be delivered tomorrow, the 30th, between 11.04am and 2.04pm.

  Ten minutes later I got another text message to say my parcel would be delivered by 7.30pm TODAY ! Knowing how early parcel deliveries by Royal Mail can be here, I made sure I was wearing trousers in case it was rather earlier than 7.30pm. It was ! It arrived just after 9am. That was handy because I no longer have to be on high alert, listening out for the doorbell today.

  I unwrapped the parcel as soon as I got it indoors, and tried the jacket on. I have to admit I am rather disappointed, and have (mostly) wasted my money. The basic garment feels like it is probably quite a tough leather, and would probably protect against falling off a motorbike (not that I likely to ever be riding a motorbike). One bad thing is that it had few pockets and none of them are zipped, or have some sort of stud to hold them closed.

  The very worst thing is that despite ordering the biggest size they offered, it is smaller than the previous leather jacket I ordered. At least I can do the last one up with a modicum of struggle. This new one is a few inches short of even getting the two halves of the zip to meet. There is a minor plus point, and that is the sleeves are not too long, and it does seem to hang on me quite comfortably when not zipped up.

  I am not entirely sure what I am doing for the rest of today. There is still sunny spells for 11am, and sunshine for midday forecast, and I guess going out in that could be a nice thing to do, and there is the plus point that the temperature could be 12° C in the early afternoon. On the other hand I can't say I am very keen on going out. I did consider spending a couple of hours putting some miles on my Freedom pass, and taking some railway photos. I might still do it, but somehow it doesn't feel likely. The only thing about doing it today is that I definitely can't tomorrow because of a rail strike. I guess I am just going to make up what I do as I do whatever it is I do !