Today may be slightly warmer, and it should stay dry, but the chance of any sunshine seems almost zero. Having said that, the latest revision to the forecast shows sunny spells for midday. The temperature may peak at 14° C, and if the air is fairly still that could feel pleasant. Most of tomorrow afternoon should see 14° C, and there could be a few sunny spells, but light rain is shown for 5pm.

   Yesterday started off with me feeling awful, but some "medicine", and probably the weather changing, made me feel not too bad in the late afternoon/evening. It was about 10.25am when I got a slight boost, but ultimately more reason to feel rather depressed.

  As expected, the man from DPD managed to deliver my box of beers 2 minutes early. It was good to get them, and good to getting the waiting out of the way. However, as I opened the box, and started putting as many cans, and one bottle, in the fridges, I felt very deflated knowing that Jodie had rejected nearly every one of my choices. That would be good, in so much as "more beer for me", but quite a few beers I bought to meet Jodie's taste, and I will find them undrinkable.

  With the beer delivery taken care of I could get down to some serious, Olympic level, laziness, or at least I tried to. I laid on my bed reading, and I expected to get a long snooze, but I am not sure if I even got 5 minutes sleep, and probably none at all. I was slightly preoccupied with the idea that I would have liked to go out to stretch my legs, although only as far as the shops. That idea was ultimately blown out of the water by the heavy rain outside.

  I realised I was never going to go out, and so it wasn't worth washing for the second day running (!!!!). That left me free to start washing a medium sized bath towel. When wet, that towel seemed bloody heavy, and wringing it out was very tiring. I did the job in three parts, and took a rest between parts. I had used that bath towel for too long, and it seemed to have soaked up so much soap that even after 7 rinses the water was still not completely soap free, but I didn't have any more energy, or maybe it was no more patience. I hung it up to dry after that. I must remember to not use it for more than a week before I wash it again.
  My "reward" for completing that laundry was to throw caution aside, and have a beer, or indeed two beers. Both, as shown above were delicious Caribbean Chocolate cake flavour beers. Like all well brewed beer, the sugar had all been eaten by the yeast, and they were relatively safe for those watching their sugar intake. At least that was my belief, and it seemed to be true.

  The beer on the left was 7.4%, and the beer on the right was 5.4% (or it could have been the other way round). The cans were just 330ml cans, or about half a pint each. In total I had just a single pint of an average about 6% beer, and that was not enough even for a mild hangover, but I did feel far better for it. There are actually 4 beers in the same range as these two, and Jodie declared they all taste the same, and so she got bored with them after the first two cans.

  The four beers are Siren Caribbean Chocolate Cupcake, Siren Caribbean Salted Cherry Chocolate Cake, Siren Nitro Caribbean Chocolate Cake, and  Siren Death By Caribbean Chocolate Cake. I originally ordered them on 9th November last year, and those last two had been in the fridge for nearly 5 months ! It was about time they were drunk. I have a mind to order more of them - just for my own pleasure !

  Once I was feeling better, both mentally and physically, I did some more useful (or maybe useless) work by top and tailing, plus removing adverts from some off air recordings. The recordings were actually done on my PC rather than my big TV downstairs. There were two episodes of The Avengers, and they are generally simple to do after lots of practice. I guess the other one was just as simple, but....

  It was a very useful recording of an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise season 4. It is the only recording I have from season 4, and with hindsight I wish I had recorded all the other episodes. It was recorded from the Sky Mix channel, and like all Sky channels it was loaded with frequent adverts and promotions - the first of which was just 5 minutes after the start of the programme. It made me quite angry that by the time I had pruned out all the crap I was left with just 40 minutes of clean episode from an hours recording.
  I was just about to mention last night's dinner, but like last night when I forgot to take the picture above until I had already eaten a fair bit of it, I almost forgot to mention my lunch. My lunch was two cans of low-ish sugar content soup. having some hot soup on a cold miserable day was the first step, before drinking the beer, to cheer me up, and dispel the aches and pains.

  My dinner turned out to be extra healthy for one very simple reason. I had cooked the meat the day before, and when I went to add the vegetable I saw that all the fat had risen to the surface, and hardened. It was very easy to lift off the crust of fat to leave an almost fat free stew. It was a dice beef plus pak choi and cauliflower stew.  It wasn't very nice, but it was still very pleasant. Being almost fat free it gave no indigestion like troubles last night. I ought to try removing the fat from most of my stews from now on.

  There were a few things worth watching on TV last night, but they were all at random times, and I decided to record them on the TV downstairs. My TV entertainment was to watch three episodes of Futurama (maybe all about 10 years old). After that I went to bed at around 9pm. I read for a little while, and then fell asleep quite easily. I did seem to wake up for a pee a lot of times last night, which was worrying, but each time I seemed to get back to sleep very quickly.

  I had, or at least I think I had many, many dreams last night, but only one seems simple to describe. Others I only remember as almost single snap shots with no context, although my memory of thos has all but faded now, The one single dream that I can describe was set in a pub that had some similarities, but also some differences to the old Catford Ram. As I sat in there drinking I saw 5 very tall policemen appear from a door at the end of the pub.

  I wondered what was going on to need five big policeman. The biggest fear was that it would be something to disrupt my drinking. As I watched three of them went away for a bit, and when they came back another couple disappeared. It was all very intriguing. Then I overheard from on of the bar staff that "a royal" was drinking in a back room, and they were a royal protection squad. Ultimately nothing happened, but I did think it was very unusual for me to dream about "royals", although I have no idea who they were supposed to be, or even male of female.

  This morning itwas time to find the truth about whether those chocolate beers were as sugar free as I hoped, and that everything I had eaten was relatively sugar free. Some fasting would have improved matters, but my Contour meter read 7.8mmol/l, and that was very good. The GlucoRX meter ready 7.7mmol/l, and slightly better. As seems usual, the joker in the pack, the Sinocare meter read 8.3mmol/l. Well I guess that is not a lot higher than the Contour meter, and is a reading I would be happy with before the string of good readings since a few days out of hospital.

  Despite my eating regime keeping my blood glucose readings nice and low for the last 4 or 5 days, my weight seems to remain very constant. I was hoping that maybe I might lose a bit, but apparently it seems to be constantly locked to the same figure, plus or minus a kilogram, for ages now.

  Today's entertainment is very simple, but also complicated. It is a Wednesday, the chance of sunshine is slim, except perhaps at midday, and it is dry, plus it is going to be quite mild - perfect conditions for a little trip to The Jolly Farmers for a couple of pints of Guinness, and hopefully some fun banter.  The fly in the ointment is that an Amazon delivery, promised for tomorrow, is going to arrive today. The last Amazon delivery arrived stunningly early at just gone 1pm. Today I feel I have to take a chance that it will be left on my doorstep if I am out, and that it won't be stolen. With luck it will arrive later, or they will try again tomorrow if they get no reply.
      







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