At the very least there should be drizzle right now, at worst, light rain, but the sun is shining instead. Maybe the rain is still coming. The latest revisions to the forecast are sure of it, and heavy rain (Met Office) or drizzle (BBC) is "definite" for 9am. Both forecasters now agree the rain will stop after 11am. It will remain a cloudy day, with no sunshine predicted, and at a max of just  11° C it is not going to feel warm. Tomorrow may see just 10° C, and from mid afternoon onwards, it could get very wet.

   Yesterday started off medium OK, but went downhill in the afternoon. I must admit I did not feel very dynamic in the morning, and it took me until just gone midday before I had a shower, and put on clean clothes. It was too late to go out and do any shopping, although I think the idea had passed through my head earlier in the morning.

  Once washed a dressed I had a couple of hours to prepare for an afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie. I did the usual of doing all the washing up, including the beer glasses, and gave the kitchen a quick, and not in depth, clean up. Everything was ready, and I had a very simple lunch. It was rice crackers with spreadable cheese. It was also a taste comparison test with two different types of cheeses.
  Both these spreadable cheeses came from Aldi, and the one on the left is an Aldi "own brand" product. I think they were the same price, £1.39 if I recall correctly, but the one on the left claims to to be 150gm. The one on the right is only 110gm. I think it is the same brand that Tesco sell. The one on the left claims to be STRONG cheddar flavour, but it is the one on the right that I think had a much stronger cheese taste.

  After my lunch I put my feet up in the 45 minutes to an hour, at the earliest, that I expected Jodie to arrive. As I mentioned yesterday, I hoped that she was over the trauma of having to set up her new mobile phone, and we could get on with some beer drinking with tears and other interuptions. I waited and waited. At just after 4pm, about the latest I would have expected her to arrive, I sent her a message asking if today was the day she was going to a gig instead of coming here.

  I do remember her saying there was one Sunday she was not available, but I didn't think it was yesterday. Apparently it was yesterday ! The problem was compounded by the gig being in Kingston - the complete opposite direction to come here. Had it been in central London she would have done what she has done before - stopped here for a couple of beers before getting back on the train to central London.

  I have to admit I felt very deflated about Jodie not coming. It wasn't that I would miss her, although it would have been good to relieve the monotony of finding things to do, but mainly that it feels like I had started the afternoon with no back up plan, and had wasted all the time getting things ready for some serious boozing. It was some of the small, almost intangible things that mopped up some time - things like making sure the two beer fridges were full stocked, and the more likely beer at the front.

  I felt sort of empty as I contemplated how I would fill in 3 or 4 hours. I tried just laying on my bed reading, but that didn't feel like it could fill in too long before I wanted to take a breather from it. Under more relaxed circumstances I have been known to read for hours, but not yesterday. I eventually decided I would have to force myself to start editing more recordings from my TV.

  I decided to start on a full movie I had recorded on the "Talking Pictures" channel. Once I got started on it I was OK, and more than that, I started to enjoy it. The movie was called "The Fast Lady", and it was romance comedy, or comedy romance, and featured many well known, to people of my generation, faces. One such "face" was James Robertson Justice who was one the leading characters, and whose bluff character I find funny. Having top and tailed the movie, and edited out all the advert breaks, I sat down and watched it.

  As I mentioned yesterday morning, I had precooked my dinner before I started drinking, or assumed I would, but didn't. It was a simple stew of diced beef, broccoli, and some ready prepared crispy fried onion, plus stock cubes, herbs and spices. It was typical of the sort of meals I was eating before I started getting much lower blood glucose readings in the morning (as were the rice crackers and cheese I had for lunch). I ate while watching the movie. For some reason the broccoli seemed to spoil the flavour. I though I had almost learned to love broccoli, but evidently not.

  I think the movie ended just after 8pm. It seemed too early to go to bed, but it also seemed to late to try and do anything else that might be useful in it's own right, or just to pass the time. I poured a second small glass of whisky, and relaxed as I read a few things off the internet, but I think I was in bed before 9pm. Once in bed a finished a short story I had started reading earlier in the afternoon. To my mind it was a long short story, and it must have been at least 9.3pm before I finished it.

  It took a little while before I fell asleep, but once asleep I seemed to almost sleep OK. I did have one short period of insomnia. I think it was after the first time I woke up, and had been to the toilet for a pee. I had been sleeping almost uncovered, and then subjected to the cold in the bathroom where the window was open. When I got back to bed I felt almost shivery, and the cold had a few of my favourite joints aching. Maybe 20 minutes later I was asleep again.

  The next time, or was it the time after that, after waking up, I turned the heater up full, and slept far better once the room had finally got nice and warm. At some time in the night I had a long series of dreams all on a common thread. I don't remember many individual bits of the plot, but I do remember the general idea. It was to make a surprise visit to someone I once knew well, and to go by bus.

  To make matters more interesting I decided to first get to where she once lived, north London, and to try and find how she could have travelled by bus to where she currently live (west London). The woman never did live in West London in reality, and she never actually appeared in the dream. In fact I am not ever sure I mentioned her by name, but I knew who I was thinking/dreaming about.

  I had many adventures on three or four buses until I arrived at her old north London home. I knew she didn't live there any longer, but I still called there, and found people I knew there. One was a man I had seen only a few months back for the first time in 20 or 30 years. Over the years he has put on loads of weight, and must far surpass my own weight now. In the dream he was wearing a long, maybe 1960s style beige raincoat, and he kept spinning round to make the coat bell out.

  Apart from being a weird thing to do, he had some heavy stuff in his coat pockets, and maybe it was by design, because he took great delight in going in close to others so they got thumped by the stuff in the pockets. I didn't stay too long there, and was soon heading for a bus stop where I intended to catch some unknown bus that seemed to be heading west. I was greatly aided, and perhaps the whole adventure was based on having my Freedom Pass to give me unlimited free travel on London Buses.

  I don't actually recall getting on a bus before I woke up. I do remember having an unrelated dream after I went back to sleep. At least I think it was unrelated, but I can't remember a thing about it, and I guess that proves nothing. By about 6.30am it seemed like it was a good time to get up. I went to the toilet, had a pee, but no more. I am back to being "unregular" again. I think something should happen soon, but it seems there is a lot of stinky gas to expel first.

  Yesterday was an interesting, although not terribly satisfactory experiment. What I was eating, and the quantities of it, were very similar to how I was holding down my blood glucose before I discovered I could eat some of the stuff I have been eating lately - stuff like potatoes, and a few semi sweet things. Also a lack of beer all suggested I should get extra good blood glucose readings this morning. I didn't !

  The Contour meter gave a reading of 8.3mmol/l. Last month I would have considered that rather good, but it was disappointing. The GlucoRX meter read a far better 7.4mmol/l, and that is the sort of reading I was hoping for at worst. The Sinocare meter decided to go along with the Contour meter with a reading of 8.4mmol/l. I have to say this is very disappointing, and maybe there is a lesson to be learned here - stop trying so hard. It seems my somewhat loose eating in the last few weeks has produced better results than this morning.

  Today I have a sort of plan that should take care of the morning. Even if raining I need to go to the pharmacy to order my next repeat prescription, but also to ask them to check that the new drug, prescribed by Lewisham Hospital, has been added to my "usual medication", and if it will be part of my repeat prescription. If not, can they do anything about it, or have I got to try and see/talk to one of the doctors at the practice ?  After the pharmacy I will go round the corner to buy more stuff from Aldi. It was only last Thursday when I last went there (or was it Friday ?) , and there is stuff I already need. It will include two bottles each of their own brand diet Cola.
      







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