Today seems to be one of those days when the weather is changing faster than The Met Office can keep up with. They have already moved the sunny spell shown above at 2pm, to sit at 11am, and the sunny spell for 9am has moved to 10am. At the moment it is sunny, and it is only The BBC website that says there will be sunny spells now, and through all the daylight hours. Curiously enough, both forecasters agree that there will be light rain at exactly 5pm. Both agree that the temperature could reach a very mild 16° C. Tomorrow may also feature a lot of sunny periods, but it will be a bit cooler at about 13° C.

    The day before yesterday was quite miserable, but yesterday may have been the best day for ages. The big magical ingredient was the weather, aided by Kevin who turned up at the pub at lunchtime. The weather, a combination of the temperature, and maybe the barometric pressure rising, was such that I hardly had any aches or pains yesterday.

  My nice low blood glucose readings did nothing in themselves to make me feel good, but knowing they were low was a good feeling.  Despite all the positive things, or maybe the lack of negative things, it seemed to still be a very slow morning. I wondered if I would wash my hair, and have a shower in time to to get to the station in time, and not turn up at the pub late.

  I needn't have worried because I got to the station in plenty of time to catch the 12:34 train, and that gets me to Ladywell just 2 minutes later. It is then just a 5 minute walk to the pub. My walk to the station was slightly slower than usual because I was stuck behind a family with a pram, and although not dawdling, they were walking a bit slower than I usually walk - not a lot slower, it took a couple of minutes to catch up with them, although I was walking slower to avoid catching them up too quickly.

  Maybe the slightly slower walk, or maybe the higher air temperature (the wind was still a bit on the cool side), meant that I arrived at the station with no ache from my chest. It was only after walking over the footbridge that I got the first hints of a bit of an ache accompanied, by, or maybe preceded by some clicks and pops from my rib cage and sternum.

  I had no aches at all at Ladywell, but over half the walk was done quite slowly because I was looking for squirrels. There are usually loads of them at the Ladywell end of the park, and in the grounds of St Mary's church. I didn't see a single one ! That was very ironic because I finally remembered to take a bag of mixed (unsalted) nuts with me to try and get some squirrels being friendly enough to pose for my camera.

  There seemed to be a cheerful feeling in the pub as soon as I arrived. I was a bit late starting the crosswords because of the banter. I was about three quarters through my first pint of Guinness, and with the quick crossword complete, and had solved a few of the cryptic crossword clues when Kevin walked into the pub. He had had a visit to the hospital next door, and knew I would be in the pub.

  It is always good to get some company in the pub. Of course my first choice would always and ever be Angela, but I can't seeing that ever happen again. Kevin is a pretty good second choice, but quite dangerous in terms of long boozy sessions instead of quick couple of pints. One good thing is that despite some ongoing health problems, Kevin is a lot fitter, and seems to be getting a stronger and stronger urge to go out for a bit a rail exploration/train spotting.

  The last time I saw Kevin we were talking about trying to get out possibly no earlier than summer, but it seems possible we could put a few miles on our Freedom Passes in the next few weeks if all goes well. Of course with Kevin we rarely stuck to one subject, or even finished a subject, but veered off to something completely different. We ended up trying to remember many facts and figures, peoples and places, from our time working for British Telecommunications, later to become British Telecom, and finally BT.

  As I was finishing what I think was my fifth pint of Guinness we agreed we should call it a day. I went for one final pee before we hit the cold (but not very cold) air outside. I came back to find a double whisky on the table - something we agreed we weren't going to do this time after the trouble that caused the previous time (me falling down in the park twice, and twice more when I got home). This is one of the dangers of drinking with Kevin !

  Originally Kevin was going to get the bus back home, but ended up walking with me to the end of my road before continuing on to his place across the main road. I didn't realise it, but I set quite a fast pace as we walked along, and Kevin was tiring as we said goodbye, and said he intended to continue at a slower pace. I may have slightly slowed down on the last 5 minutes from the end of the road because I was starting to feel my breathing getting deeper.

  On the whole, that walk home was generally painless, and I didn't feel too bad. Maybe I had drunk enough to get the right sort of level of drunkenness where I was relaxed enough to not feel an urgent need to eat, but enough to start thinking how nice a takeaway would be. It was only just dark when I got home, and I think it was about 5.30pm. It being only just dark was good, and it not being too long a wait for dinner was another good thing.
  It getting dark so late was a part reminder of how we are now heading towards summer, or at least Spring, and that reminded me I took some pictures in the park to show some nice spring flowers. Here's some golden crocuses and snowdrops.
  A denser clump of crocuses. In the slight dim, overcast light they seemed to almost glow.
  The golden crocuses wee very nice, but I really like the colour of these crocuses.
  I think these are narcissus flowers. I took this shot just in time to capture what I think may be a mason, or stone bee sitting on one of the flowers. Of course it could also be one of the rarer wasps or some other fly.

  Back to last night: I thought I would dare to order another Chinese takeaway. I got away with the first of pair of meals I had ordered from "The Taste Of China" from their own website. That website does seem to be slightly cheaper than going via Just Eat, and it almost seems like the cook uses very little sugar in his recipes (except, obviously, sweet and sour dishes - that I have to avoid). I ordered two main dishes and two different rices, for dinner last night and tonight, plus some "salt and pepper" spare ribs.

  I had the salt and pepper spare ribs as an extra treat last night, and they were delicious. They were the spare ribs that were cut into short lengths, and so easier to eat than gnawing on a long bone, and they had some lightly fried onion and sliced green chillies.  I ate dinner while watching Star Trek: Enterprise. It was a medium good episode. Half an hour later I watched The Simpsons, and an hour later I turned the TV back on to Watch Have I Got News For You.

  Five minutes later I turned the TV off because I recognised it as a not very good edition. I went to bed to read until the end of the book I am reading. Next on my reading list is "Starman Jones" by Robert A. Heinlein. I am enjoying, or mostly enjoying his early stories. His understanding of space flight at that time was almost all theoretical because the biggest real rockets were the German V2 rockets, but he uses his knowledge to great ends to make it all seem so "possibly" believable.

  Of course he got a lot of things very wrong, and perhaps his biggest error was not believing that radio transmission couldn't happen of the distances between our nearest planets, or at least not using equipment that was small enough to fit inside a spaceship. Routine communications with the tiny rovers on Mars, and the incredibly weak, but still usable signals to and from the Voyager probes, so far away that they might have left even the sun's influence, prove that even very low power transmission is easily possible.

  I'm not sure when I finished the book, put it down, and turned out the light, but I do think I remember that it was only 5 or 10 minutes before I was fast asleep. Last night was very good in one respect. With the night temperature outside being quite mild, it only took the heater on low to keep my bedroom just warm enough to sleep without being covered by the duvet. I seemed to sleep well, and was only troubled to get up for a pee a couple of times.

  I did have a period of insomnia lasting about half an hour starting at approximately 4.30am after waking up, and for a while thinking it was time to get up. Once I fell asleep again I didn't wake until about 6.30am. I only have patchy memories of one dream, or probably little bits of short dreams. Some of it was standing at a bar waiting to be served. Later I was there again having bumped into Matt Fielder, lead singer of the band Ransom. I was waiting to buy him a drink. Kevin was there to, but he boldly went behind the bar, to a staff bar to get his drink there. It seems like it was one of those dreams where it seemed like a lot happened, and yet nothing really did happen.

  My blood glucose readings could have gone either way this morning. I was taking a big chance on the Chinese takeaway, albeit with some hope based on the last time I used the restaurant/takeaway. It must have helped that I had fasted between breakfast and dinner - it is one of the advantages of a long afternoon boozing session ! My actual blood glucose readings were very average, and nothing to worry about (beyond the everlasting wish that they could be lower still, but that is unlikely to happen until I make the transition to Insulin use).

  The Contour meter read 8.8mmol/l. That is well into the safe area, but a still a bit higher than desired. The GlucoRX meter read 8.3mmol/l, and that is a little bit lower than my typical average. The Sino Care meter was once again almost well behaved with a reading of 8.9mmol/l. That is a bit too close to the first steps into the danger zone which I say starts with figures starting with a nine. Ten is the actual danger zone according to the hospital diabetes nurse who seemed to know what he was talking about*.

* Actually that may not be an accurate representation of him. I can imagine a situation where he, working in a hospital, is usually seeing patients with far higher readings, and so my mostly, with maybe a occasional over 9.9mmol/l reading once or twice a month, probably looked looked low compared to his other patients. Meanwhile, the nurse, particularly the last one I saw, at the doctors surgery, was saying I should aim for below 7mmol/l - something I have only very rarely achieved even after my finest efforts in the last 10 years.

  I have already done a few things this morning. I've had had a tasty breakfast of two small-ish packets of Polish beetroot flavour instant noodles. They both fit with room to spare in a bowl that can be very full with a single bigger packet. I have changed the battery* in the doorbell push switch on the front door, and about an hour ago now, heard the door bell ring. It was one of my insane strength cases of lager ordered from Amazon, and delivered a lot quicker than Amazon can manage, by Royal Mail.

* The battery in the push button on my front door is a 12V A23 battery, and it failed after quite a few years of good service several months ago. I thought I had a replacement here, but it was not an A23 but an A27. Both look a similar size, and both are 12V. The difference is little more than an extra millimeter in width and length. The small A27 battery needs a shim of cardboard to make fair contact to the top, unsprung contact. Being slimmer it is not supported centrally, and it needs to be got in just the right position to let the spring on the bottom end make good contact. There are two reasons why I must try and get an A23 batter (plus a spare). The obvious is that is the correct battery to reach the terminals correctly. The other is that the A27 batteries I had in my drawer, bought from Poundstretcher in the mistake belief they were 1.5V cells have an expiry date of 2022 on them. I don't think the new one will last long before it needs replacing - ideally with the correct battery !

  Two more things should be happening today. Between 1.15pm and 2.15pm I should be getting the second case of silly strong lager delivered by DPD. It will be 24 cans of Oranjeboom Black Label, 9%. I had never heard of it before. I hope it is nice. There should be plenty of time to crack open the case and get one can chilled in case Jodie wants to try it - whicvh I think she will, but only a taster. She is over the cold that kept her away on Sunday, and is now fighting fit.....unless, as is often the case, she arrives with a hangover again.