There were puddles in the road outside, and so there must have been some rain in the night, but today should be dry. It looks very dull now, as per the forecast, but it should brighten up in an hour or two. The latest revision shows less sunny spells than the earlier version of the forecast (shown above). The best temperature today should be 13° C, and it could last for many hours before dipping down to just 10° C after 10pm. Tomorrow could see 12 or 13° C, but it is likely to be quite a dull day that might end with some light rain.

    Until about 2pm, yesterday was a great day. The sunshine and unexpected warmth felt wonderful. The very best bit was after I had my beer deliveries, and I was standing outside by the recycling bin cutting up boxes in the brilliant sunshine. There was enough wind to blow the boxes about, but it was a warm wind. I had not felt so good for months !

  My first beer delivery was of a case of Kestrel lager (9%), and it was delivered quite early by Royal Mail. That was at approximately 9.30am - very handy ! After that I continued writing yesterday's diary/blog. Once finished I lay on my bed in the warm sunshine, and of course being behind glass it felt really nice and warm. Eventually I had a shower, and got dressed in fresh clothes.

  My second beer delivery was of Oranjeboom black label lager (8.5%), and that happened at about 1.30pm. That was delivered by DPD. It was soon after that was delivered that I started to cut up the boxes that the two deliveries came in yesterday, and a couple of boxes from some previous deliveries. In the middle of cutting up the boxes I got a text message from Michael.

  He said he was on his way back from Tesco, and had some bottles of Diet Coke in his car that he could drop off in 2 minutes. I replied yes please. It felt more important to have a quick chat with him than to get the Diet Coke. Once he arrived we had a little chat. He confirmed that his wife was now out of hospital, but she was still in a bad way - just sitting there mumbling to herself.

  The hopefully good news is that he hopes than in a week or two, once he feels confident he can leave his wife unattended for a few hours, he may be able to join us on a Thursday for a few drinks. It would be good to see him again, and good to see him finally be able to relax for a while. The strain of caring for his wife every day, all day, while his wife was in hospital, has left it's mark on him. There is still hope that now she had been cured of the infection that was affecting her brain, she should recover, and become "sane" again.

  I don't know if it was the bacon I had as a buffer against the beer I would be drinking, but something upset my gut yesterday afternoon. Jodie was late again, and so we started drinking late. Whether that made any difference is unknown, but I was beginning to feel slightly nauseous after a few beers. It didn't feel like I was going to throw up, but it did feel like I could possibly throw up.

  Nothing happened in terms of things like throwing up, but I did find I couldn't finish my last beer. It was Oranjeboom Black label lager, and it began to taste sort of sickly. I was drinking an occasional mouthful at a time between drinking other beers. One of more of those beer might have had a bad amount of sugar in it. I hope it was not the Oranjeboom because I have another 23 cans of it to drink, but it is worrying that it is made cheaply by substituting glucose syrup for proper malt.

  Jodie left to get the 6.29pm train, and I heated up part two of the previous day's Chinese takeaway. Despite a sort of feeling of bloat, and some of the fizzier beers making me belch a lot, I was really looking forward to my Chinese dinner. The main course of "Roast Pork - Chinese style" was very tasty, although not terribly exciting. I ate it with what I thought was Malaysian style fried rice, but I later realised was just egg fried rice.

  However it was not like egg fried rice as I know it. It was very dense and stodgy. I gave up trying to eat it before I had eaten half of it. A lot of it that I did eat I ate with the gravy of the pork dish. The last couple of mouthfuls were hard to swallow. It was as if I was completely full, and yet I don't think I had eaten anything like as much as I could eat usually. It was really unusual, and I wondered if some or more of it was gas from the fizzy canned lagers (and other styles of beer).

  Before finishing on the subject of beers......A week ago Jodie lugged over a box of 6 cans of beer. Yesterday she examined what she had brought over, and found she had already tasted, and logged in her Untappd account five of them. She finally had a dose of her own medicine when she complains that she has already had beers that I have bought for us. Now sitting all together in a corner of one of the beer fridges are 5 cans I am allowed to drink unsupervised. The only catch is that I think that several or more of them are nasty sour beers.

  I watched a bit of TV last night, but less than usual. I was reading in bed before 8pm.  I had decided to take a big bottle of chilled water to drink with my dinner, and for the rest of the evening, and through the night. It was still water, and so I wouldn't be adding to any gas in my gut. I was probably asleep by 9pm, and I seemed to sleep rather well. I can't recall getting up to pee more than a few times.

  I thought I had gotten away with it, but when I checked my blood glucose I got a shock. Two of the readings were in the red zone (above 10.0mmol/l). The Contour meter read 10.2mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read a bit lower at 9.5mmol/l, but the Sino Care meter confirmed that my blood glucose was dangerously high with a reading of 10.3mmol/l. If it were not that I felt ravishingly hungry I would have skipped breakfast. I didn't. Beside the extreme feeling of hunger, I also wanted some food in my stomach before I took my morning medication - which includes a low dose aspiring tablet.

   Low dose, but still enough to burn the stomach lining if taken on an empty stomach. Since taking more care when taking that aspirin I seem to have had less pains like acid indigestion - another pain that can be confused with heart pain. I had no trouble eating a single bowl of spicy instant noodles, and my guts feel perfectly normal this morning...at least I think they do. On the other hand, I do seem to feel the return of some of the aches and pains that had just completely vanished in yesterday afternoon's warm and sunny weather.

  Among those pains seemed to be something like a pulled muscle pain on the side of my chest, just below my right man boob. Certain movements were very painful, but they seemed to have gone away since getting up and eating. The same is true for a very painful right shoulder. Apart from a growing hint that a second trip to the toilet might be useful, I actually seem to feel mostly OK while I am sitting here, just typing in a warm room (helped be some sunny spells that started maybe an hour ago).

  One of my flights of fancy yesterday was the idea that going out for a walk would not only be good practice, but might also be pleasurable, but that was while we had warm sunshine and a warm breeze. Today will not be like that, but in theory, 13° C should be warm enough if the breeze is light enough. It should stay dry, but without any sunshine it might not feel that warm. At this time I don't know whether to chance it or not. I definitely need to get into practice again, but a walk, even just 1.5 miles would probably make me hungry on a day when I need to fast until a very light salad for dinner tonight. Oh well, I think I'll just make up the day as I go along.