The lowest temperature I saw in the small hours of this morning was 4.4° C but it started to rise soon after. It is currently just over 5° C, and should reach it's peak of just 8° C at midday before falling back to 4° C by the end of the day. At the moment, as I write this, I am enjoying a sunny spells that I am sure has lasted over an hour, and with at least 75% of the sky looking a lovely blue, this sunny spell, or more of them, could last a long time, but both forecasters agree that it will cloud over by midday, and an hour or so later there could be rain until sunset. By 11pm the temperature will have dropped back to 4° C, and by tomorrow it may drop to just 1° C. Tomorrow will be like today. A sunny morning followed by rain in the afternoon. Once again, the peak temperature tomorrow may be just 8° C.

    There were just enough distractions from the foul weather outside to say that yesterday was a fairly good day. It was even a bit productive. Soon after I had finished writing yesterday's page I tackled the unfinished laundry, and got it finished, and hung up to dry.

  One of the things I wanted to do, but I was not sure if I had the time or inclination, was to go shopping in Poundstretcher. I did go, but it was more like early afternoon than in the morning. I had seen a short pause in the rain, and hoped for another, but no such luck. I put on my hooded rain proof coat, and set out in the rain. Although the coat I was wearing kept my top half completely dry, it is fairly thin, and it definitely felt cold out.

  Top of my shopping list was to get a few packets of Gollom (I think that is how it is spelled) sugar free "fibre" biscuit, or any others in their range. Sadly that had none at all, but I did find some biscuits that claimed to be "no added sugar". I am not terribly sure about them, but I did buy a packet that I shall try and eat slowly just in case they contain a lot of so called "natural sugar".

  I arrived home dripping, but dry under my coat. The cold got to me, and my chest was starting to ache, and I felt a bit wheezy without actually being wheezy. Getting in the warm and dry cured most problems fairly soon, although I did have to spend maybe half an hour in the cold kitchen preparing stuff for a bit later - including cleaning the work surfaces and suchlike in case Jodie wanted to do some complex cooking of her lunch/dinner.

  One bit of good news was when Michael sent me a text message to say he had been to Tesco, and bought me 4 bottles of Diet Coke. The intriguing thing is that he said he would bring them here a bit later than usual. I asked if he might be dropping in for a few beers, and he replied yes, but only if his wife seemed calm. He then added that he emphatically had to be home before 5pm before his wife started to try and cook her dinner. He had fears she would burn the house down !

  Michael arrived at about 3.30pm, and Jodie arrived about 10 minutes later and was surprised to see Michael. We had a nice session yesterday, but a few beers severely let me down. I had two bottles of beer brewed in some Scottish brewery from my last beer order. I bought them because they looked interesting. Sadly they were foul. Both were different styles of beer, with slightly different colours, but both seemed to be contaminated with possibly a wild yeast that gave a quite disgusting taste. The kitchen sink consumed almost both bottles, but Jodie did manage to drink a few mouthfuls of her share before agreeing it was "minging !".

  By 4.45pm I was starting to feel very slightly drunk, and Michael was very relaxed. It was a shame to do it, but I had to call "last orders" on him, and get him out in time to get home just before 5pm, and the start of his wife either cooking, or burning the house down ! Jodie stayed for about another 90 minutes, and I consumed enough extra beer to get  get quite drunk, although it didn't seem to feel like it at the time.

  After Jodie left I had my dinner. It started out as grilled herb infused meatballs with a heap of wild rocket on them. One reason why I now know I was drunker than I thought I was, was that I can't remember if my suspicion that I might have had a part 2 dinner was correct or not. If it is correct then I would probably have had ham and mustard with more wild rocket.

  I assume wild rocket is part of the lettuce family, and lettuce is a mild soporific. After I finished my dinner, and finished watching to the end of Star Trek: Enterprise, I felt really tired. I had half an hour to kill before the next TV programme, and I decided to lay on my bed to read for a while. That was at 8pm. The next thing I knew was that it was 11pm, and I felt terribly confused. Also, after 3 hours of presumably very deep sleep, I found it impossible to get back to sleep for hours.

  I think it was 2 or 3am before I started sleeping again, although it is possible I dropped off for 5 minutes once or twice before full sleep started up.  Sometime in the early hours I had an awful dream. It was a bit like a nightmare, but I didn't feel threatened, or scared in it. It was all about being totally unprepared for where I found myself - which was some sort of music festival.

  I had been invited along by Jo and/or Chris (from Chain), and told I would be on the guest list as their official photographer. I seemed to meet them after work, and we all got on an old London bus to take us to the venue. When a good few miles from work, and maybe more from home, I realised I didn't have my big cameras with me. I felt deflated, and thought I would never be allowed in without them. Jo said not to worry, and just go in with her acting as her roadie.

   When we got to the venue I found I had a shopping trolley with me with a flight case strapped to it. At that point Jo and Chris were still with me, but as we approached the security line Chris disappeared, but then so did the first line of security. As we approached the second line I noticed Jo was on a different path. I had no option but to approach security. The looked at the flight case, and let me through, but didn't issue a pass, and I definitely hadn't got a ticket.

  As I got deeper into the venue I kept expecting to be stopped, but no one challenged me. When I got to the stage I checked to see what was in the flight case, and it turned out to be a couple of my camcorders. So at least I could get some pictures, but they were not big and professional looking like my Nikon cameras. At the stage I noticed a very strange thing. The audience was on the stage, and the bands were playing in front of it. I asked another roadie, or at least someone who appeared to be "official" if he had a running order so I might find what time Chain were due on, but he said he didn't know. I think that was when I woke up.

  Considering I seemed to be awake for half the night, I seemed to get up very early this morning. One the other hand, I did have the unexpected 3 hours of sleep before bedtime. One thing I forgot to mention was that at about 2am I went to the toilet, and did quite a substantial poo. At about 6.30am this morning I did another quite substantial poo. Both were comfortable to do, and it does seem that stopping taking the Turmeric, Ginger, and Black Pepper pills has restored my system back to normal.

  Beers can be an unknown quantity when it comes to sugar content. Most of the beers we drink have almost no sugar in them, but there was one that we agreed tasted quite sweet, and I had a few beers that Jodie did not have, and one of those possibly might have had a bit of sugar in it. Then there was the fact of the large poos - that suggested I had eaten quite a lot, and that would not be good for my blood glucose level.

  The first two readings were much better than expected. Both the Contour and GlucoRX meters gave an identical, and rather excellent reading of 7.7mmol/l. This morning I chose to ignore the Sino Care meter because it read 8.7mmol/l, and although still well into the safe zone, is a little higher than ideal. I recorded it anyway, but for my purposes of planning my day, or at least my meals for the day, I will be working on the two readings of 7.7mmol/l.

  As far as I am aware, the current sunny spells has lasted about 2 hours now ! The latest revision to the Met Office weather forecast now says full sunshine for 10am, but still predicts it will cloud over soon, and rain will start from about 1pm. The BBC weather forecast still says sunny spells now, but agrees on it clouding over soon, and rain from 1pm. While it feels like it could be nice to be out right now, it wouldn't be because it is still very chilly, just 6° C, and of course there is the threat of rain later.

  I suspect I'll be staying in today, but in theory I have plenty to keep me amused, and I welcome the chance of a few long snoozes. One thing that will soak up a lot of time is editing more off air recordings made on my TV. Last night should have added another two programmes to top and tail, and removing the adverts, but I still have at least half a dozen older recordings to work on. One of them is a full movie called "The Gelignite Gang". It seemed like it might have been interesting when I set the recorder, but I am not so sure now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gelignite_Gang Maybe I might watch it as I edit it, or maybe it will be boring.
 







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